A beautiful morning today, hazy and grey and cold but quite bracing. Lovely walk through the woods, where I spent some significant time muttering into my voice recorder to untangle some plotting problems. I also threw a stick for Poppy The Labrador and a ball for Gem the Spaniel, so that was a nice start to the day.
ON DECK: The voice recorder muttering came about because I got quite stuck working on my high-level outline this morning, trying to work out if I had too much plot for the planned book length, or not enough, or just the right amount but in the wrong places. It was pretty painful working through it, but I made some decent progress.
TOOLS AND PROCESS: I'm experimenting a bit with my outlining process this time around, mainly because the Project DRIFT outlining (and re-outlining, and going back and breaking things down and then outlining again) 'process', such as it has been, has been very painful.
What I'm doing now is working with three distinct parts. The first part is the pitch (which is what my editor has seen) and that is very much a query-style setup/mystery description but doesn't actually explain the plot.
The second part is the high-level outline. This is a breakdown at the 'part' level, with a paragraph for each, so prologue, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 etc. It's high level but it allows me to see the overall shape of the book and to plot the key action moments, cliffhangers, tension rising and falling etc.
Once that's done, I'll move on to my detailed outline, which is at the chapter level, where I take the big beats from the high-level and work out how they'll actually be sequenced, whose POV will be used and so on.
There's a fourth stage, which is micro-outlining, which I do as I'm actually writing the book, which is where I work out the scenes and the beats within those scenes in more detail. I only go a half dozen chapters ahead for that, which allows a degree of discovery and serendipity.
Whether this will actually work in practice or whether I'll just throw my hands up and plunge into the draft is an open question. We shall see!
LISTENING: I really enjoyed this interview Always Take Notes with Ella Griffiths of Faber Editions, talking about 'making backlist frontlist' by publishing new editions of classic books. Absolutely fascinating.
WATCHING: A bit of CELEBRITY RACE AROUND THE WORLD last night, which is the rare celebrity version I enjoy as much as the regular version. These shows always give me an immediate case of wanderlust though.
READING: A big chunk of THE TRIALS OF EMPIRE by Richard Swan (Bookshop, Waterstones, Amazon) and it's proper kicking off. Having a great time.
LINK: A couple of self-promotional links this morning - a wee reminder that my debut novel A RELUCTANT SPY is currently on a Kindle Monthly Deal:
Other eBook platforms often price match, so do shop around if you're not a Kindle user. Since the paperback of SOLITARY AGENTS has just come out, this is a great opportunity to get started with the series.
Second bit of promo - there's just a week and a half until I'm appearing at the London St Andrews Book Festival alongside Charles Cumming, in conversation with Scottish broadcaster Nicola Meighan.
Make sure and grab your ticket sharpish and I'll see you there!
UP NEXT: More outlining! I think I should have it done by Friday. I might even start drafting, if things go well. And next week will be (huzzah!) new words for the first time in a while.
Onward!