Mike Murphy's writing diary

Saturday, 10 September 2016

Into the plotting stage

I'm a sort of hybrid pantser/plotter, starting off with a spurt of seat of the pants writing until the shape of the story becomes apparent, then going back to plot and rewrite.
It's the plotting stage I am in now with The Man Who Didn't Like People. The story is about a man who deserted his family because he resented his wife having a career and this came to a head when he was made redundent. Twenty years later he has acquired a large amount of money but has learned he has a fatal illness. He returns to find his family and decide whether he should leave the money to any of them. My original concept of the central character has changed dramatically and I am beginning to see that the events of his early life, leading up to when he deserted his family, impacted on them as well as on him. That means his interactions with them as he makes his decision about the money will be largely effected by their reactions to him. It becomes a much more complex story with multiple layers of motivation on all sides. A big part of its success or failure will be how and when I introduce different aspects of the back story.

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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.