Plot is arguably one of the most important elements of fiction writing – from it stems, the characters, the mood, the pace. It sets the scene for the whole tone of a fiction novel, so it’s important to get it right. When you’re writing crime or thriller novels, it is absolutely key, and there are ways of raising the stakes to keep your reader hooked.
Here are a few that I noticed, while watching the BBCs recent new thriller, Vigil. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it on catch-up. As a writer, it’s difficult not to consider plot, when watching high-tension drama on television and and in Film!
Put your characters in a challenging environment or physical danger.
Introduce vulnerabilities and character flaws.
Create secondary characters to add new tensions to the plot.
Allow tension to ebb and flow.
Create obstacles and conflict between characters.
Keep raising the stakes.
Make the viewer (reader) ask questions.
Create internal and external conflict.
Leave things unresolved until close to the end.
Remind the reader of the stakes.
Photo: imdb
The plot hinges on a Detective Chief Inspector Amy Silva (played by Suranne Jones). DCI Silva works for the Scottish Police Service and is sent to HMS Vigil, a Trident nuclear submarine, by helicopter for three days, at first, to investigate. Shortly after the mysterious disappearance of a Scottish fishing trawler, a member of the crew on Vigil is murdered, and DCI Silver has been sent to investigate. The series takes viewers on a journey into a world of submarine warfare and security threats.[Skip ahead to the next paragraph to avoid a plot spoiler] Having lost her husband in a car crash, where the car is submerged in water, Amy manages to rescue only her daughter. She suffers from flash-backs, depression and anxiety, for which she is taking medication.
Much like Carrie, in Homeland (a highly-skilled, but bipolar CIA operative), it’s this vulnerability that makes Silver so likeable and her achievements all the more impressive as the plot unfold (see no. 2 in raising the stakes). Finding character flaws and vulnerabilities draws the reader to the character. The human need to connect through vulnerability is best illustrated in Brené Brown’s TEDxHouston Talk, The Power of Vulnerability. In this twenty minute TED talk, she describes vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure, but says that vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our most accurate measure of courage. It’s this courage, despite character flaws and vulnerabilities, that makes the best protagonists so appealing and keeps viewers and readers hooked.
DCI Silver’s investigations, along with her team on land, create conflict between the police, the Royal Navy and MI5 (see no.5 in the list of raising the stakes). She is in a challenging physical environment (see no.1) in a confined space, away from her daughter, her normal routine and recent partner, DS Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie), leaving her conflicted.
While there were a few plot holes and inconsistencies in places, it was a gripping series, with tensions ramping up towards the end. The finale provided both the tension and resolution that viewers were hoping for, with some impressive redemptive qualities.
Photo: imdb
You can find out more about plot, tension and story arcs, from several of my other posts (links below):
Independent Publisher, And Other Stories, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this autumn with a redesign as well as physical and digital events. They invite you share your book photos and videos with fellow readers using the hashtags #AndOtherShelves and #aos10, as well as tagging them on Instagram (@andotherpics), Twitter (@andothertweets), Facebook (@AndOtherStoriesBooks), YouTube (@andothervideos) and wherever else you hang out.
I’ve supported them for some time and have my name inside the covers as a previous subscriber. Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home, reviewed here, is one of my favourite books. Their authors are bold and daring, with each book surprising the reader. I love the variety of styles and the different settings and cultures in which the stories are set. These are just a few that I own, but I have more scattered around the house in various places. I don’t like to be too far from a book! I love the cover designs, too.
Founder and publisher Stefan Tobler says that the team will mark the milestone from September on into the new year with new designs, online events and in-person parties and bookshop displays. The publisher’s titles will get a different look from September onwards, thanks to new house-style typefaces as well as the appointment of an art director, designer Tom Etherington.
Reflecting on the early days of And Other Stories, Tobler says: “To be honest it feels like a minor miracle that the press started at all. I was a single parent, not living in London, and so not getting out all that much. I had never worked in publishing. It was amazing how ready with advice others in publishing were, like Pete Ayrton, and organisations such as Arts Council England.” He notes that while And Other Stories was something of a pioneer with its focus on translated writing and its subscription model when it began, in the last decade the landscape for both has changed a lot (The Bookseller, 23 July 2021).
And Other Stories publishes contemporary writing, including many translations. As a publisher, they aim to push people’s reading limits and to open up publishing so that, in their own words, “from the outside it doesn’t look like some posh freemasonry.” They believe that more of the English publishing industry should move out of London, Oxford and their environs. In 2017 And Other Stories moved their main office to Sheffield and recieved a warm welcome. The move helped them to discover great new writing from the North of England, including Tim Etchells’ Endland, Amy Arnold’s Slip of a Fish and Rachel Genn’s What You Could Have Won.
And Other Stories is made up of readers, editors, writers, translators and subscribers, with books distributed widely through bookshops, although they say that subscriber support is what makes the books happen. They now have about 1,500 active subscribers in over 40 countries, receiving up to 6 books a year. If you are interested in subscribing, click here.
Do you have any And Other Stories books? Let us know and share any snaps in the comments…
I will be reading one of my short stories at an online performance of positive stories and poems celebrating local and national environmental initiatives with Pens of the Earth next Wednesday 22nd, 7-9pm. Sign up at eventbrite
About this event
Pens of the Earth and spoken word troupe T’Articulation invite you to an online evening, via Zoom, of prose and poetry inspired by environmental initiatives. Come and hear writers perform work written in response to our various themes including fresh pieces written for our 2021 Small Differences Add Up theme. (Submission window closes 30th September.)
These stories and poems celebrate local environmentalism – bringing a message of hope and empowerment through imagined encounters, actions, events, and settings; increasing awareness of our surroundings, our connections, and our ability to effect change.
We are also delighted to welcome Jenni Jones, Sustrans Liveable Cities & Towns Officer for Portsmouth, as our guest speaker. ‘School Streets are coming to Portsmouth!‘ She’ll tell you more…
Tickets to this event are free. However contributions to our Wilder Portsmouth fundraiser are greatly appreciated: donations will help seed change in the city, benefiting both people and wildlife.
The Zoom link will be emailed out to you the day before the performance. Please contact the organiser if you don’t receive it.
I first discovered Nicholas Royle when I began reading Best of British Short Stories, which he edited, published by SALT. I began with Best of British Short Stories 2011, and was hooked. I have a deep love of second-hand bookshops, and when I wrote a recent blog post on how people arrange their bookshelves, and he responded with a photo of his white-spined Picador books, I knew it was time for an interview.
White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector (Paperback – 15 July 2021)
A mix of memoir and narrative non-fiction, White Spines is a book about Nicholas Royle’s passion for Picador’s fiction and non-fiction publishing from the 1970s to the end of the 1990s. It explores the bookshops and charity shops, the books themselves, and the way a unique collection grew and became a literary obsession. Above all a love song to books, writers and writing.
Your latest book, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector, has just been released. Can you tell us about your passion for second-hand books, notably, white-spined Picador books, and the inspiration behind White Spines?
It goes back to my late teenage years. A surrealist painting on the sleeve of a single by Bauhaus. A painting by the same artist – Paul Delvaux – being used on the cover of a novel, Ice, by Anna Kavan, which was published by Picador. A wall of white-spined books – all Picadors – in a second-hand bookshop, Skoob Books, in London, where I’d moved to go to university. A Christmas present from my parents, Alberto Manguel’s Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature. That was it. I was hooked.
Do you have any favourite second-hand bookshops or charity shops?
Skoob has to feature in that list, since they’re partly responsible. Some of my favourites are closing, or have switched to online only, which is little better than closing, like Sharston Books in Manchester. But, in or near to Manchester, we still have Greenhouse Books, Didsbury Village Bookshop, George Kelsall, Lyall’s. Barter Books in Alnwick is amazing; Leakey’s in Inverness is incredible. Church Street Bookshop in Stoke Newington, north London. Loads of great branches of Oxfam Bookshop and Oxfam Books & Music, in particular Islington, Crouch End, Herne Hill, Bold Street in Liverpool, Leeds (at Headingley). I could go on. I could fill the internet.
Having written several volumes of short fiction and edited many anthologies, I have to ask, short fiction or novels?
Short stories. Then novels. Short novels ideally.
What’s your best editing advice for authors editing their work before it reaches a professional editor?
Read it out loud. If you wince at a word or phrase, if you just feel the tiniest doubt, whip it out, because otherwise you’ll wish you had done when it’s published. If publication is not necessarily on offer, bear in mind that editors (and agents) are not only looking for something that makes them sit up; they’re also looking for a reason to reject your work as soon as possible and move on to the next thing. So don’t give them an excuse.
What led you to set up Nightjar Press, is there a freedom in being able to hone in on one story at a time, and how do you discover stories for chapbook publication?
For many years I’ve believed that short stories are so special – the really good ones, I mean – that they need their own cover, their own artwork, maybe even their own ISBN. Short stories are worth making a fuss of, worth cherishing and treasuring, and collecting. I invite submissions, from writers who get what we’re doing, and I’m open to submissions, ideally from writers who get what we’re doing. I’m not massively keen on those submissions that come in with an email from someone, who has never ordered a Nightjar, saying, I think my 25,000-word historical fantasy set on Venus would be perfect for Nightjar.
What have you learned from being head judge of the Manchester Fiction Prize and and Reader at MMU, and how quickly can you tell whether or not you will like a story?
I can tell on the first page if the writer can write. It takes longer to work out if they’ve written a good story. That’s what I’ve learned from being head judge of the Manchester Fiction Prize and it’s also the answer to the final question. What I’ve learned from working with MA and MFA students at Manchester Met is that anyone can improve their writing if they want to, if they listen to feedback from peers and tutors. Obviously you have to make a judgment about what advice to take and what to ignore. Very occasionally you get someone who doesn’t listen – and they tend not to give either, in terms of generous, intelligent feedback. We try to weed these writers out at application stage, maybe in interview, and usually succeed.
What should writers look for in a good mentor and how do they go about finding the right one?
A mentor should get what you’re trying to do and be able to help you do it better, much like both a creative writing tutor and an editor. The three roles are very similar. How do you find a mentor? There are some schemes. Arvon run one. I was lucky enough to be one of their mentors and work for a year with three excellent writers – Sonia Hope, Nicola Freeman and Adam Welch – who I was able to help select. Otherwise, I think it’s probably a good idea to try to get personal recommendations.
Your impersonation of Dominic Cummings during lockdown, followed by many other well-known people, was highly entertaining. I think the highlights were Adele and Moby. Who’s next?
Thank you. I’m doing some Picador authors at the moment. Someone requested Picasso. Shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
You are stuck in a bookshop with four authors or public figures, who would they be, and why?
Anna Kavan, Giles Gordon, Elizabeth Young, Joel Lane. You didn’t say they had to be alive. It’s a second-hand bookshop, of course, given that that’s the only place where we might find books by all four of these writers. Some of Anna Kavan’s work is in print with Peter Owen, and Joel Lane’s back catalogue is being reissued by Influx Press in beautiful editions, but you’ll struggle to find anything by Liz Young or Giles Gordon in a new bookshop. For now. I imagine a reading. Each of the four reads one of their stories and, as long as we are stuck there, they keep on reading. Bliss.
What are you currently reading?
I’m reading DM Thomas’s The White Hotel, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. I last read it 30-odd years ago. I’m reading the 1981 King Penguin paperback edition with cover illustration by Peter Till, which I regard as the edition against which all other editions should be judged. I’m also reading Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry (Fitzcarraldo Editions), which I found recently in the Oxfam Bookshop Shrewsbury. I wouldn’t have bought this new, as I’m not a fan of Lerner, but I’m not a fan of poetry either, so thought this might be interesting. Thirty pages in, I’m on the fence. I’m also reading a novel published in the last few years that’s supposed to be hilarious, with laughs on almost every page, one reviewer suggested. I’m on page 96 and have had four LOLs and one half-smile.
Nicholas Royle is the author of seven novels, including Antwerp (Serpent’s Tail) and First Novel (Vintage), and four short story collections, most recently London Gothic (Confingo Publishing). He translated Vincent de Swarte’s novel Pharricide for Confingo and is series editor of Best British Short Stories for Salt Publishing, who also published his latest book, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector. He is Reader in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, head judge of the Manchester Fiction Prize and founder-editor of Nightjar Press. You can find him on Twitter or his website.
F C MALBY 
You must be logged in to post a comment.