Mike Murphy's writing diary: January 2016

Tuesday, 5 January 2016

An outline is essential

It fascinates me when people say they just write without planning. Their minds must work differently to mine. They must set themselves a premise and follow it through to a conclusion along a reasonably narrow path. When I set myself a premise my mind expands in all directions and presents a hundred pathways, some of which might lead to the conclusion I am looking for but others wandering off into deserts and dense bushland from which there is no return. I'm sure that is why I have started so many novels, never to finish them. They took me to place where I discovered I was lost and couldn't find my way back, My mind spawns new scenes, new characters, new ideas - so I need a way to control them - to know which are relevant to my story and which are not. The alternative for me is a chaotic kalaidoscope of imaginative ideas that don't have any real form.
I have to plan - not in intimate detail like some authors - but in broad outline. I have to know where the story is going to end because everything I write has to work towards that end. Every character must contribute, every scene. I have to have a basic structure because I have to build towards climaxes, fall away and then rebuild again.
Once I have this outline I feel comfortable, finishing each day's writing knowing where I am going to go tomorrow.

Authors I like

Anna Jacobs

A mentor in my early writing days and still one of my favourite authors. Her sagas about family life in Lancashire are among my favourites but she is a prolific writer and it's all good.

Michael Robotham

Michael urged me to keep writing when I was in a depressed period after another publisher's knock-back. He is basically why I kept writing and turned to self-publishing. I've read all his books and I'm always waiting eagerly for the next one.

Dave Warner

I only recently discovered Dave as a writer after having had his Dave Warner and The Suburbs album since it was on vinyl. It's interesting having another writer who sets his stories in Western Australia.

Dick Francis

I've read all his books at least twice and sometime more often. He's the writer I always return to when I need to feel totally in my comfort zone. Good stories, tight plots, easy writing style. I'd love to know if it really was his wife Mary who wrote them. His son Felix is doing a great job of keeping the family business going.

Leslie Thomas

Ever since Virgin Soldiers I've been hooked on Leslie Thomas and his Dangerous Davies series are among my all-time favourites.

I am because I write

I come across a lot of people who would like to be writers and I often wonder why. For me there has been no question. Since a very young age I have been a writer. Certainly not a famous or even successful one but while other people were doctors or teachers or sportspeople, the thing I did best and was most comfortable doing was writing. For some reason I had a natural flair for it and that raw talent was honed when I became a journalist and learned that what bubbled out of my head was not what was needed. I had to to be able to write to order. One of my earliest lessons came from Bob Duffield, a reporter who took the story of the closure of Perth's Roe Street brothels and wrote different versions of it for convervative, sensationalist, religious and sociological publications. I learned that writing was a craft to be learned, and I have spent many years learning not only the craft of writing, but of story-telling, which is an art in itself. Whether it's a poem, a short story, a novel, my family history, one of my blogs or web sites, I will always be writing something. It's simply who I am and what I do.