Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

Q. Can you pick five novels by other writers that you feel have influenced the way you write?

A. No, I can't.

Kidding! I can, but it's hard to narrow the list down to just five. I'll give it a go, though...

The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison (1961). It's not my favourite of Harry's books, but it was the first one I read and it's still brilliant. It's about James Bolivar diGriz, one of the few criminals in an ultra-conservative future. He's inventive, compassionate, greedy, heroic, anarchistic and at times hilarious. I discovered The Stainless Steel Rat when it was adapted in 2000AD (by writer Kelvin Gosnell and artist Carlos Ezquerra) in 1979. I loved the strip and sought out the novel. Loved that even more and found more of Harry's books. He very quickly became - and remains - my all-time favourite writer. The first book is a little disjointed compared with the later entries in the series, because it was cobbled together from two novellas (that's often how science fiction novels were done in the 1950s and 1960s!), but it's still a great read.

The Stand by Stephen King (1978, revised and expanded 1990). A great big epic sprawling novel, part horror, part post-apocalyptic-survival adventure. It begins with a flu-like epidemic that wipes out almost the entire human race, and then things start to go downhill. Across America, small groups of survivors band together and mysteriously find themselves drawn to Boulder, Colorado... A lot of King's later books are better written (and considerably shorter!) but for me The Stand is his masterpiece. (Also, Salem's Lot is the best vampire novel I've ever read!)

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend (1982). The first Adrian Mole book was a phenomenal success this side of the Atlantic: most people today don't seem to realise it, but it was the Harry Potter of its time: everyone was reading it! The books, for the most part, are related in diary form. Adrian's bright, a little dour, highly precocious and - at first - incredibly self-obsessed and pretentious. He's convinced right from the start that he's a gifted writer (he's not) and that most people around him are idiots. As the books progressed, Adrian aged in more-or-less real time: the final novel, published in 2009, features Adrian as a 39-year-old. Townsend's style also evolves appropriately, with the first few very definitely YA novels and the later entries undoubtedly aimed at adults. And they're all very, very smart and extremely funny.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (1987). After the success of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was adapted by Adams from his own radio serial, this was his first original novel (though its main plot was taken from an unmade Doctor Who script). It's very creative, very funny, and for me represents Adams at his best. While I love the Hitchhiker's books, this one has always struck me as his most complete and most satisfying work.

Bugs by John Sladek (1989). In his long career Sladek only produced nine novels, but each one is a masterpiece. Like much of his other work, Bugs is about robots and artificial intelligence... On the surface. Deep down, though, it's about people. Sladek uses robots to view the foibles and frailties of human race in a detached manner, and the results are maddeningly over-the-top and, at the same time, so credible that they can make for uncomfortable reading. Most of Sladek's books are hard to find these days, but I urge everyone to track them down, especially Bugs and Tik-Tok!

 

Q. When writing, do you develop the story to fit the characters, or do you create characters that best fit the story?

A. For me, it's always story first, characters second... But when I get further along the development process and the characters start to find their own voices, they begin to drive the plot. The primary rules I've developed are these:

Every scene must advance the story.
There's a temptation when writing a novel, because you have so much room in which to play, to indulge in fun or interesting tangents that don't have a bearing or an impact on the tale. This works with certain types of novels where the "world-building" aspect is more important than the rest of the story, such as Lord of the Rings. As we saw from Peter Jackson's movie adaptations, great big chunks of the novels were dropped and moviegoers who hadn't read the novels didn't notice their absence. (I'm looking at you, Tom Bombadil!)

For a character- or plot-driven story, it's important not to waffle too much. Keep the story moving! You are of course allowed to have cute little moments and funny parts and so on, but remember that a novel is for the readers, not for the writer! If a scene doesn't advance the plot, then it should reveal something relevant about the characters.

This is why planning the story in advance is vital! It'll help keep you on the correct path, plus you're more likely to catch major problems with the story before you start painting yourself into a corner. You don't want to be 40,000 words into a novel only to discover that one of your basic premises has a major flaw.

Every character thinks that he or she is the hero.
Imagine this situation: A busy city street. A car is approaching a crossing at speed and is about to hit a man who's walking with his young grand-daughter. A young woman screams and the old man looks up in time to see the approaching car. He scoops up the little girl and jumps back just in time.

So, here's that story from the point-of-view of the various characters involved:

The old man: My hands are still trembling! That maniac came out of nowhere! If I hadn't pulled Judy out of the way he'd have hit her for sure. I keep thinking, "What if he had hit her? What if he'd killed her?" I don't know if I'd be able to live with that. And even if I could, how would I ever be able to look my daughter in the eye again, knowing that it was because of me that Judy died? I'm telling you, if that driver had stopped I would have beaten him to within an inch his life! I hope someone got his number and called the cops because idiots like that shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel of a car!

The little girl: Grampa and me were crossing the road and there was this scream and grampa just grabbed my arm and pulled me back. And it really, really hurt and I was crine and he kept hugging me and I think he was crine too. My arm is still all sore.

The young woman: I was, like, about to cross and this car just jumped the lights and I swear that it looked like he was about to plough into the crowd. He wasn't going that fast, and probably no one would have been killed or anything, but even so you don't do that! Traffic lights are there for a reason! I totally lost it - I yell, "Hey, slow down!" at him but he didn't hear me. He was just lucky he didn't hit anyone.

The driver: So I was driving downtown today and you know what it's like. The pedestrians just wander across the road without even bothering to check whether there's anything coming. Like they think they're all invincible. There was this doddery old guy crossing against the lights with a little kid, right in front of me - if I hadn't swerved and slammed on the brakes, I might have hit them! And you know what would have happened if I had? I'd have been arrested! The people in this city are all nuts, you know that? I was so tempted to stop the car and go back to him, give him a piece of my mind!

So... Here we have one incident reported by four different people, and each one sees it solely from her or his viewpoint. The young woman, for example, didn't notice the old man. Likewise, he didn't mention hearing her scream. The little girl didn't even notice the car at all. And the driver believes that he was in the right and everyone else was in the wrong.

When writing a novel or constructing any other lengthy piece of fiction, it's important that the writer treats every character, however minor, as the hero of his or her own personal story. There's usually no need to delve into that in great detail, of course, but it should be borne in mind. One of the primary antagonists in the Quantum Prophecy / New Heroes series is Max Dalton. That man is behind so much chaos! But he doesn't see it like that. Max always believes that he's doing the right thing. The best baddies in fiction are those who make the audience think, "No, he's wrong, but I can kind of see where he's coming from." Baddies who are presented as purely evil are boring!

The story affects the characters, the characters effect the story
English lesson time: The words "affect" and "effect" are very often misused (and for a long time I couldn't ever remember which was which!) but they are very different words...

"The story affects the characters" means that the characters should not remain unchanged after the events of the story. In the first Quantum Prophecy / New Heroes book, Colin and Danny discover that they have superhuman abilities. They can't go back to their normal lives after that! ("Affect" means "Change.")

"The characters effect the story" means that the story wouldn't exist without characters making it happen. Colin and Danny's discovery of their powers changes everything for every other character in the series. ("Effect" means "Create.")

So characters and plot are interdependent: you can't have one without the other, and they feed off and guide each other. (OK, so there are some cases where successful stories have major characters who aren't at all affected by the events of the plot - James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, etc. - but even in cases like that, there are always secondary characters who do change.)

At the start of Hunter, for example, Lance McKendrick makes a relatively small decision that, ultimately, changes not only his own life, but also has a major impact on the rest of the New Heroes universe.

 

Questions from Maura McHugh:

Maura McHugh is a writer living in Galway, Ireland. She's written two fantastic collections of fairy tales and myths published in the USA, and writes comic books for Atomic Diner in Ireland and Dark Horse Comics in the USA. Visit Maura's awesome website for just a taste of how amazing she is!

 

Q. At the beginning how far ahead into the series did you plot your novels?

A. Right from the start I knew I wanted to create something big, something more than just a single stand-alone novel. Some writers find a good starting point and just start writing in the hope that an ending will present itself along the way, but that's never really worked for me. So when I came up with the initial idea I worked backward to find the right starting point and then forward to how I wanted it all to end. It was all a long time ago now so the details are a little fuzzy, but I probably spent over a year just working out the basic plot!

Once I had that, it was a matter of breaking that down into book-sized chunks. But experience has taught me not to be too rigid in the path from beginning to end... Things can happen along the way that throw the plan off-kilter! For example, it was always possible that someone else would release a book or a movie that featured a plot-point similar to one of mine before I got around to writing it. So to that end, I built in a number of trap-doors and alternate routes! I took this idea from J. Michael Stracyzinski, who created the classic science fiction TV show Babylon 5: he plotted a five-year arc for the whole series, but was aware that actors might drop out, or he might not get the go-ahead for a particular idea, so he devised the plot in such a way that, if necessary, whole sections could be dropped, moved around, or replaced without having a major impact on the overall story.

I'm glad I did that with The New Heroes, because - as mentioned elsewhere - my initial contract was for three books, and then when I was writing the third I was told that a fourth book would be required. So I moved a huge chunk of the book 3 plot into the fourth book, brought the Trutopian War forward, and completely dropped two major new characters...

 

Q. How much did they evolve - and your writing process evolve - after the first trilogy?

A. Well, the first trilogy ended prematurely so that kind of messed things up a little! When I began to suspect that the fourth book wasn't going to happen after all, I wrote the short-story collection. Some of the stories in there - "The Footsoldiers," "Out of Sight" and "Flesh and Blood" would have appeared (in truncated form) in the fourth novel.

Then when the good people at Penguin / Philomel wanted to continue the series, I came up with the prequel idea. The background story of the first two prequels - the rise of Krodin, the first superhuman, and the creation of his empire - was to have been revealed through anecdotes and flashbacks in the third and fourth novels. The prequels gave me a chance to tell his story with more detail. After that, Stronger allowed me to greatly expand on Brawn's story while strengthening the links between the prequels and the original trilogy.

As for my writing process... That's a tough one! I still find myself developing stories connected to the New Heroes' universe that will probably never be written, but I'm now a lot more realistic about that than I was when I started. I'm definitely more focussed these days and less inclined to spend so much time poking at the story before I get started.

I still develop each book in detail before I begin the first draft, but I'm now finding the process a lot faster and easier. For the third novel in the original trilogy, for example, my development document (in which I write lengthy, rambling conversations to myself about the story, where it might go, how best to get there, what can or should happen to the characters, and in which I try out dialogue samples and so forth) is about 45,000 words - quite a lot for a novel that's only about 70,000 words in total! For Hunter, though, the development document is only about eight thousand words.

So it's getting easier as I get older... Of course, it helps that most of the main characters have already been introduced in the series, plus as we get closer to the end there are fewer deviations from the overall plot!

 

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