What Makes Writing Exciting?

Having spent more time at home over the last few month than, well, ever, I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on what keeps writing exciting for me, and what I learned along the journey.

My head has always been filled with stories and I started writing them down as a kid. Something would happen that would intrigue me, and I would create a story to wrap around it. Sometimes I’d share it with a few close friends, but often it was just for my own amusement. I never had any inclination of taking it further… until following a bunch of “what-ifs” developed into my first novel.

And it really was as simple as following the “what-ifs”. I have a lot of respect for authors who can, not only craft the peaks and troughs of their stories before they start, but actually comply with the plan. I, on the other hand, was the kid in school who wrote the outline after the text, and it would seem not much has changed. On the plus side, I’m not being graded on that outline anymore.

When I started writing City of Spies, I had a character: a female Special Operations Executive agent that I “met” when working on a different story, but back then I’d written her as a mouthy blonde Northerner. While I got the mouthy bit right, she wasn’t blonde and she wasn’t from the north. It took a few tries before I got her character right and she allowed her part of the story to flow. And in general, I find that when I listen to my characters, they tell me who they really are (as opposed to who I think they are) and what they would do next. Which means, my story becomes truer to them than to my idea of them.

Here’s where following the what-ifs became fun. I had my main character, Cécile, but what if she has her cover story blown and has to get out of France before the Gestapo get her? What if she has a bit more bad luck (because a straightforward journey is boring) as she flees France?
Cécile, despite being accident prone, has a better idea of what she’ll do next than I do, and when I allow her a bit of leeway, she surprises me. When she (or any of the other characters) stop talking to me, it’s my version of writers’ block. Which means, I’ve got something wrong and need to go back to the last point where it flowed, figure out the mistake, and fix it.

So, I followed Cécile and a string of what-ifs to Lisbon, the real-life City of Spies, something I hoped would happen when I started writing the story. Why Lisbon? Because a Portuguese friend of mine suggested that I write about Lisbon. For a few moments, I was confused by that – after all, wasn’t Portugal neutral during the war? Fingers flexed, I started researching and quickly became intrigued. It was because Portugal was neutral (or at least technically neutral), and with its capital a major port on the Atlantic, that it attracted exiled aristocrats, businessmen, diplomats, smugglers, refugees and of course, spies. In this magical city, no one was who they pretended to be, and I could work with that.
But.

Writing historical thrillers, sometimes set in countries I don’t live in, meant I had to do my homework to make sure the story was consistent with both the location and what was really happening there at the time.

The good thing is that I love research. The bad thing is that sometimes I like it too much and I found myself following the history down a rabbit-hole, and had to keep reminding myself that City of Spies was a thriller, not a history book, and that I could only include the bits that were relevant to the story.

I also indulged myself by combining my story with another interest: travelling. In the spirit of making the story authentic, I like get a feel for the places I write about, something I find I can’t do over the internet alone. Interestingly, I found that the locations also wanted to have their say in how the story developed.

For example, in City of Spies, I knew something would happen in Sintra, a town about a half-hour from Lisbon. I still had no idea what that would be when I boarded a bus from Lisbon and went to investigate. I won’t ruin the story by telling you what it was, but let’s just say that what happened in Sintra won’t stay in Sintra, and it certainly was not what I had expected!

The worst bit of advice I was given has got to be ‘write what you know.’ For me, what makes it exciting is indulging my curiosity; writing about what I don’t know (but will learn), and to allow my characters to take me with them on their journey. City of Spies was exciting to write and – I hope – has become a story that is exciting to read!

City of Spies will be published in September 2020 by Bonnier Zaffre.

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Mara Timon is a native New Yorker and self-acclaimed Citizen of the World who began a love affair with London about 20 years ago.  She started writing short stories as a teenager, and when a programme on the BBC caught her interest, she followed the “what ifs” until a novel developed.  Mara lives in London and is working on her next novel. She loves reading, writing, running, Pilates, red wine, and spending time with friends and family.  Not necessarily in that order, obvs!

Her debut novel, City of Spies will be published by Bonnier Zaffre in September 2020.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips