From fact to fi A
Lynne Wallis on the ways to make dreams of writing a bestseller a reality
ny journalist who harbours a desire to write fiction knows how the old gag goes. Two journalists in a bar. One says to the other: ‘Have you started your novel yet? “Yes, is the reply. “Neither have I,” comes the response.
Getting a novel published is the stuff of dreams, and the
path is well trodden. Journalists from Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway to Val McDermid and former Guardian/ Observer columnist Michael Frayn have turned to fiction. Those working in journalism can create their own worlds instead of (or perhaps as well as) covering real life events. Novelist Sandra Ireland, a former reporter on local papers in Scotland, whose second novel Bone Deep has just been published, believes journalists are well placed to write fiction. “For a start, they have unrivalled access to news stories, contacts and real life material that the novelist can only dream of,” she says. “All fiction starts with the truth, so journalists really do have a head start. And they already know how to write for dramatic effect.” Ireland regularly uses news stories from papers as a source of inspiration for her novels. Journalists must be succinct and engaging, know how to
check facts, work to deadline and deliver a good-quality product to specification. Ireland adds: “They have to understand prevailing trends and the needs of the marketplace, which are also vital qualities for the fiction writer.” Ireland, who runs the Chasing Time creative writing
workshops with two other writers in Angus in Scotland, points out that delivering a gigantic beast of 100,000 words over months or even years requires a huge change of attitude for journalists who are more used to hitting ‘send’ after 1,500 words. Word count alone can be a major barrier to journalists, believes Ireland. “To sustain a narrative for a novel requires a certain type of mindset. It’s necessary to slow the pace, to drip feed information to the reader. The journalist has to learn to pull back, to omit and conceal in order to ramp up the suspense, which is the very antithesis of journalism”. The watchword of good fiction writing – ‘show, don’t tell’ – can be a challenge for those who have been trained to place hard-hitting facts in front of the reader. “The narrative in a novel must play out over a sustained period of time. Emotions must be explored and characters fully fleshed out,” explains Ireland. “I enjoyed reporting, but I had to fight the urge to elaborate unnecessarily on my stories. I was fascinated by the people I interviewed and would often add quirky background to my copy – I was building a story, writing ‘creative non fiction’, which is a way of delivering the
George Orwell was a polemic journalist, famous for saying ‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.’ His most celebrated works are Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm, written in the 1940s.
AN Wilson is a newspaper columnist and writer of both novels and non fiction. He has published 20 novels, most famously Scandal in 1987, which was inspired by the Profumo affair.
Graham Greene is best known for his novels The Third Man, Brighton Rock and The end of The Affair. He wrote from the 1930s through to the 1980s. He was previously a reporter on The Nottingham Journal and a subeditor at The Times.
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Joan Didion is a memoirist, journalist and novelist, best known for literary journalism. Her novels, written from the 1960s to the present day, explore moral and cultural chaos, the eradication of the individual and the fragmentation of society in the US.
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EVERETT COLLECTION HISTORICAL
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