Starting On The Ground Floor

A while back I did a post here on my love of the-map-in-the-front-of-the-book, and my own mapping habits while writing. And much in the same way that Winnie-the-Pooh books inspired me to map, I can credit Dame Agatha Christie for one of my other odd habits: the drawing of floor plans.

I think I own every book Agatha Christie wrote, and I loved when she put in the floor plans of houses to show us what rooms were where, and how impossible it was for anyone to have committed the murder in question.

My own stories didn’t really call for such elaborate measures, but the more I wrote the more I saw the advantage of using a floor plan as a writing tool. As clearly as I saw some scenes and settings in my mind, I could get turned around sometimes, so I got into the habit of sketching out rough plans of houses my characters lived in. Just a few lines on a page, really, so I didn’t have someone walking into a cupboard when they were supposed to be in the kitchen.

In the photo above you can see, on the right, the rough floor plan of Greywethers I drew when I started work on Mariana, back in 1990. 

I’ve done this for all my books since. Like my maps, these are just for myself, to refer to while writing (although I included a floor plan in Season of Storms, because that house was like an insane warren—as you can see from the picture here—and I knew readers would have a hard time keeping track of the rooms).

Nearly all the houses that I’ve set my books in have actually existed. Sometimes, as in the case of “Crofton Hall” in Mariana—Avebury Manor in real life—the floor plans already exist, and a very nice person at the National Trust will send them to you. And sometimes you have to create them. 

Either way, I begin with photographs. If I can get inside, I sketch the layout of the rooms, keeping in mind I may have to change things around a bit for my own story. If I can't get inside, I do an internet hunt for similar houses of the period and look for floor plans, then cobble those together to make my own.

I’ve done a bit of both for the other floor plan at the top of this post, on the left, which is for the new book I’m now working on: Bellewether. The house I’m using for this book is based on Raynham Hall, a museum on Long Island, and after visiting the house and taking photographs and notes, I went online to search for other saltbox houses of the period to find out how to put the central chimney stack where it would be (Raynham Hall lost its chimney to a Victorian makeover, which also rearranged the entrance hall).

The result is a floor plan that perfectly fits what I need for my story. Not only does it give me a visual reference for the movements of my characters, but it shows me where the windows are and when the sun comes in, and what view would be.

If nothing else, my floor plans give me something I can work on when the words are slow in coming, so I can fool myself into thinking I’m being productive.

What’s your opinion of floor plans in novels? Have you ever done one yourself?

Career Planning, or Sailing Blind

© Krzysztof Ostoja-helczynski | Dreamstime Stock Photos

In the day job, there are supervisions and appraisals. Evaluations and training needs assessments. Recently I've been looking at coporate, team and personal goals. Short, medium and long term. I can look at strategies, plans and peg my own aspirations to them. I can work with my line manager, area manager and team to set realistic, appropriate goals. Beyond that, I can career plan and set where I want to be in a few years' time.

 I feel the need for some writing career planning, but who do I work with? I need direction and an action plan.

"Are you okay, you look sad," asked Husband the other day. I wasn't sad, precisely, just preoccupied with trying to work out something I didn't appear to be able to work out... I couldn't figure out what to do and how to get there.

Yes, I know I could just write, but I feel like that old adage, "if one does not know for which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable." I've had a long break from writing seriously, and my writing confidence has suffered and I no longer know for sure what I can do.

Should I finish the big blockbuster or the abandoned Third Book? Should I try something completely different, or turn my attention to short stories? I feel like I can't afford to get this wrong, but have no idea how to work through it to get it right.

But maybe - unpalateable thought - there is no right or wrong thing and everything must take its chance.

But, man, I need a plan.

Life

As in “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (from John Lennon).

I was on top of things this week. Or I was at the beginning. Blog posts, work, revisions all ticking along nicely. I even had a plan about how things are going to be in the next few months. Done, I thought. Now I can just get on and do my stuff. You know churning out x words a day, every day.

And that is when life came knocking. Nothing shattering, nothing awful just the unexpected which made most of those plans unworkable. So now the blog is late, revisions have stalled and the next few months are all over the place. I am discombobulated to say the least. Now every thing is whirling round my head as I try and juggle it all. The easy rhythm of revisions has stuttered to nothing. Damn.

It was a timely reminder that I have to be more flexible. I am a planner/project manager by trade and I instinctively take tasks and break them down to the basics and work out the critical path. This works reasonably well with IT projects and building projects but not so much with other stuff. Stuff where it turns out other people have been making plans too... and they got theirs out there first. I'm not sure everyone got the memo that I was in charge... ;-)

I suppose it isn’t any different to how characters in a novel feel.  There they are making plans when BAM we, the author, make life happen to them. Maybe this is my comeuppance? I have been being nasty to my heroine and she’s had a word with someone and I am getting my just deserts.

All I ask is that I get a happy ending…

Come back on Sunday to see what has been happening in Susanna’s life…

Maps: A Love Story

Maybe it started with Winnie-the-Pooh, and that map of the wood drawn by Christopher Robin. Or with the map above, from my own loved and battered copy of the Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories by Joyce Lankester Brisley. I'm not sure which book I read first, as a child, but together they made me a fan of the map in the front of the book, and inspired me to make my own maps of the places I write about.

Being an engineer's daughter, I'm hard-wired to love the whole concept of maps — their precision, their detail, their orderly lines. And I like to imagine my characters moving within them; to know where the streets and the trees and the fields are, and where the sun rises.

I don't need to hand-draw my map, if the setting I'm using is real — I just print off a map that's already been made and then mark it to show where the characters live and where certain scenes happen. But if I've adapted the setting, as I did with Avebury in Mariana, or with Gardone Riviera in Season of Storms, I happily get out my pencil and paper and set to work.

Usually no one but me ever sees these. They're filed in the ring binder where I keep all my stray notes for that novel, along with my research. They can either be a close view, like this one I did of Exbury (above) for Mariana, or a wider landscape like the one I drew for my upcoming book The Rose Garden (below), which takes place in a reworked version of Polperro, Cornwall, with an altered coastline and a Beacon and a cave and stream thrown in where none exist in real life.

I'm not sure what it is with me and maps. I don't do outlines for my novels, and I've long since given up the notion that I'm in control of what my characters are doing, so perhaps in the absence of any real structure I find all those orderly lines reassuring.

Or maybe it's all down to Winnie-the-Pooh and the map in the front of the book — an associative reflex, or something.

My son and I just started reading The Hobbit together, and one of the first things he wanted to do was to study the map at the front, showing where Bilbo travels, so maybe it isn't just me...

What do you think of maps? Do you love them, or hate them (or make them?)

Be sure to come back here this Thursday, to read Julie's post.