How Do You Do It? Three Authors Reveal the Seeds of Their Stories

One of the perennial questions authors are asked is, "How do you think up your stories?" Sometimes we even ask ourselves that. There's never any one answer for any writer, but I think each one of us has a favorite way of working or a favorite story source.

I almost always start with background, the historical events I want to portray and the places I want to visit, then I put my characters in that time and place and build a plot around that. Plot elements often come to me when I'm doing my on-site research and a building or bit of landscape suggests a mysterious or even dangerous happening.

I asked three of my favorite mystery writers to tell me  how they 'get' their stories. After you've read their replies, please leave a comment and tell us how you do it. I expect no two answers will be alike. It will be fun to see.

Veronica Heley:

How do I do it? I read the papers, I listen to people, I wonder 'What if . . .' and I pray a bit. Somehow or other, the stories pop into my head. After which the real work of getting them down onto paper begins. Sometimes I think up a character from scratch. That takes a lot of thought; no one person is absolutely good or bad, are they? Suppose they have this flaw, which negates all the good they try to do? Or a talent, which they misuse? Do they have any particular mannerisms? What sort of clothes do they wear/car do they drive? It takes time and thought to create a believable character.

Veronica's latest— Murder in Time— Ellie Quicke has her work cut out when past wrongdoings put the future of a child she loves at stake.

Fay Sampson:

The well-spring for my books is almost always a sense of place. This is particularly true of my native West Country of Devon and Cornwall and the Celtic fringes of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. I look at these wonderful landscapes and seascapes and think "What could happen here?" It helps that many of them come with their own evocative legends or colourful history from the Celtic past. A bonus is that I get to visit or revisit this soul country, to recreate the experience of my characters in that setting.

Fay's latest— Beneath the Soil— Suzie Fewings is stalked when she investigates a mysterious shooting.

Dolores Gordon-Smith:

How do I get the idea for a book? I like to start with an intriguing situation. There's often an element of mystery, a sort of magic trick about the set-up. For instance, in After The Exhibition poor Betty goes into a supposedly empty cottage in the dark (she's not TSTL or Too Stupid To Live – she has a good reason for being there!) and, by the light of a match, sees the body of a strangled woman. However, when she goes for help, the cottage is corpse-less and seems untouched. I'd thought of that situation ages before the solution of the how, why and who came to me.

That coincided with a background I thought had a lot of richness to it, that of church art. That setting allowed discussion about the difference between supposed piety and genuine devotion. And, of course, the characters take on a life of their own....

Dolores' latest— After the Exhibition—  Jack Haldean investigates when a church art exhibition turns deadly.

Claire Dunn:

It all begins with a good story, something I would want to read and as tempting as fudge. Stories are everywhere - in the news, a half-heard conversation, a memory - but the best are often supplied by history. Even my contemporary novels have a large dose of history, for where would we be without the past? 

It’s less a question of where stories come from, rather the process of sifting through an endless stream of thoughts and images to select the bits that will work as a whole. I’ll be quite happily chopping veg or pulling weeds when an idea drifts out of nowhere and plants itself in my imagination. I might ponder it for a while, turn it over and examine it from all sides, before developing strands of a story like roots that stretch backwards to a beginning and forwards to a conclusion, giving me the plot. In fleshing it out it has to grip, but be more than mere entertainment, and it must have enough depth or risk being as vacuous as cotton candy. 

I enjoy language - words are a writer’s crotchets and minims making prose sing. More than anything, I’m fascinated by individuals and their past. History is largely the result of choices, driven by motivation. Motivation derives from people’s experiences and shapes the future.  Stories are people. I like stories.

Claire's Latest— Rope of Sand Emma unravels Matthew's alarming past and meets his sinister family. Can the lovers have a life together?

Posted by Donna Fletcher Crow— A Newly Crimsoned Reliquary— Murder stalks the shadows of Oxford's hallowed shrines.

Fay Sampson on Her New Book The Hunted Hare

I am so pleased to have as my guest again today the prolific author of history and mystery Fay Sampson. I've asked her to tell us about her newest book  The Hunted Hare which has just been released in North America, having been out in the UK for some months.

I was privileged to review the book and found it is a truly lovely book with characters you really want to spend time with, a beautifully developed background in mystical Wales and a plot full of twists. It’s amazing how Fay balances realism and mysticism, poignancy and mystery. I’m so glad this is the first of a series because I want to get to know Aiden and Melangell better.

And now, here's Fay to tell you about the plot and the background of how she came to write The Hunted Hare.

Aidan and Jenny have brought their young daughter Melangell to see the sacred place for which she was named. Pennant Melangell has a small pilgrimage church surrounded by yews going back thousands of years. Inside, carvings tell the legend of the saint who protected a hare from the hunters. It has long been a place of healing. Jenny is suffering from cancer and has been given months to live.

The tranquillity of this remote Welsh valley is shattered by a violent death from an arrow. Who, in this small community, is responsible? Even Jenny comes under suspicion.

Undercurrents seethe below the surface, involving both staff and guests at the House of the Hare where the Davisons are staying, and the local residents.
 When it seems that Jenny may hold a vital clue to the murderer’s identity, the Davison family themselves are in danger. Can Aidan save them?


Background. I was on a course, studying the ancient Celtic history of Wales. We were taken on a field trip to a remote valley in the hills of Powys. A dead-end road led us to an ancient pilgrimage church set amid meadows by the river. A little further on, the road ran out at the foot of the mountains, down which tumbled a high waterfall.
Even before I entered the church of Pennant Melangell I was struck by the peace that hung over the valley. This is one of those "thin places", where the physical and the spiritual come close.

Melangell was a 6^th-century Irish princess, who fled to Wales to escape a forced marriage and became a hermit in this valley. One day Brochwel, prince of Powys was out hunting. He discovered her praying in a thicket, with the hare he was chasing hiding under her skirts. The hounds backed off, howling, and the horn stuck to the huntsman’s lips. Brochwell was so impressed with her courage and sanctity that he gave her the land to found an abbey and to be a refuge for the hunted. Her legend is carved over the rood screen in the church. In the chancel there is a shrine where people lay cards of thanks or prayer. The apse beyond has a slab of rock which was probably her original grave. The medieval shrine, to which pilgrims came for healing was destroyed at the Reformation, but more recently pieces have been salvaged from where they were thrown or reused and the shrine rebuilt.

This was my setting. The couple who come here have a daughter named Melangell.

Fay Sampson has been a published author for 38 years. Starting with children’s novels, she became best known for her Celtic fantasy series Pangur Ban (Lion). She gave up her first career teaching mathematics to concentrate on full-time writing, and branched out into novels for adults. The five-part sequence Morgan le Fay tells the story of Arthur’s half-sister, and shows that there may be more to her than the wicked witch and failed seductress of popular fiction. Star Dancer does the same with the Mesopotamian myths of Inanna. A number of historical novels followed, set in Dark Age Britain. More recently, a novel about a woman researching her family history, one of Fay’s enthusiasms, turned into a crime novel, blending dark deeds from the past and present. This has become the Suzie Fewings series (Severn House). The Hunted Hare is the first of a new crime series, The Aidan Mysteries, for Monarch/Lion. They will be set in sacred places around the British Isles.

She lives in a 16th-century cottage in Devon, the county where half her ancestors have lived as far back as she can trace them. You can visit her website here: http://www.faysampson.co.uk/

Posted by Donna Fletcher Crow, the author of 40 books, mostly novels dealing with British history. The award-winning Glastonbury, A Novel of the Holy Grail, an Arthurian grail search epic covering 15 centuries of English history, is her best-known work. She is also the author of The Monastery Murders: A Very Private Grave and A Darkly Hidden Truth, as well as the Lord Danvers series of Victorian true-crime novels and the romantic suspense series The Elizabeth & Richard Mysteries. For more information go to: http://ning.it/ca9gTf