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| Boris Karloff - Frankenstein |
Somebody said to me
the other day that they were surprised that I didn’t just sit down and write
the story starting on page 1. This is a reasonable question, after all that’s
how Jack Kerouac did it with On the Road
but unfortunately I’m not Jack Kerouac.
To stop me feeling
overwhelmed and confused by the scale of the story, I have decided to break the
novel into bite size pieces. I have written all the key events onto Post-It
notes and stuck them onto a wall in front of my desk. My plan is to decide which
event I want to tackle first and then write that part. When that event’s
finished I can look at the wall again and decide what to write next. The joy of
this method is that if I have difficulties with one event I can just leave it
and turn my attention to another one. There is a danger that the end result of
this experiment could be something that looks like Frankenstein, a stitched
together monstrosity, but I shall do my best to smooth over the seams and cover
up the bolts.
Anyway, the picture
below shows you my wall:
Apologies if it’s
illegible, but I wouldn’t want you to know what I plan to write too much in
advance, would I?
Well, that’s that. I’ve chosen my characters, I’ve tried out some of their
voices in my back stories and I’ve got the plot. I really haven’t got any more excuses
now. Better get to work. Just to be obvious, I think I shall start with the
prologue. How about this?
It was a perfect day. The sun was bright but
not too hot and a few clouds provided a tasteful amount of shade from time to
time. The trains from central London
arrived punctually and those who came by car found the normal traffic snarl
around the church unusually restrained and could park without difficulty. The TV
crews sent to report the event were overjoyed to find a cricket pitch in front
of the doors to lend an air of English nostalgia to their filming. In short, it was a perfect day for the
Atkinson family to hold a funeral.
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