Jennifer Pittam

Been working every hour of the day on setting this week. I'm fascinated by the way mood in a story can be implied by the setting - that includes the season, the weather, the wildlife, the antics of the general public. As a Londoner born and bred, I love to be out and about in my beautiful, diverse city. It's like a character itself, with its many moods and changes. Today, on Good Friday, Trafalgar Square was sombre Passion of the Christ, Trafalgar Square and grey, as thousands gathered around Nelson's Column to watch a bloody but beautifully acted Passion of the Christ. It was a great moment to make notes for the lowest scenes in my current novel - the haunting, the despair, the bits where Thomas can see no way out. It seems barely a couple of weeks, in fact it is barely a couple of weeks, since the same square was bright and full of laughter for Chinese New Year. On that occasion, too, I took my notebook and tried  to etch the details on my Chines New Year Ce...

I've been working on the characters I need for my second novel. When I started my first book I knew nothing about planning a novel so I just launched in and typed away until I ran out of steam (around one and a half chapters in). I didn't want to be one of those ghastly people who say, at every social gathering, 'I've got one and a half chapters in my desk drawer but of course I've no time to finish them' so I joined a writing group. One of the first things they taught me was how to make a character chart - by taking 10 or so names, and writing each at the head of a long column in your notebook. If, like me, you're comfortable with spreadsheets, then do it electronically. Then, you start to fill in the columns with names, characteristics, relationship to the others, jobs, and so forth. It's vital that you have this material noted down in order to avoid those awful mistakes, halfway through a novel or maybe in your third, when the blue-eyed boy becomes ...

So, we're all getting hot under the collar about the bankers' bonuses which are, apparently, 'not even enough to brag about in a coffee bar'. You could buy five coffee bars of the kind I frequent for one banker's bonus, only we call them cafes out here. Still, it's been a good week - lost 3lbs now, still amazed that Cheesy Wotsits are only 3 points but a nice piece of apple pie is 7. Where's the justice in that, eh? Extended my work on plot to include 'setting' and this week I've been learning all about the secret agenda. Tried this exercise in which you describe a garden shed as seen by a man who's just lost his son in the war. You don't mention the son, or the war. Let it roll around in my subconscious while prowling about London until I came upon Covent Garden, the setting of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Eliza Doolittle - now there was a girl with a secret agenda. I think of my almost-finished WIP, the one about the glassblower, a...

So Wikipedia has gone dark but most of Britain are watching the stars with dishy Professor Brian Cox in any case. Meanwhile I've lost a pound on my Weightwatchers' diet, progressed to drinking two bottles of water a day and made pleasing progress with my outlining. I never realised it could be like this - usually I'm wrestling with the plot and the prose at one and the same time, and the plot points get all lost in the 80,000 words minimum it takes to write a novel. I've been able to construct my plot using real details from actual crimes, as it's a mystery. That's stage 1. Then, of course, I'll be letting the creative voice take over, and the real work of fiction will begin - the true life crimes are just a beginning point. To use a real-life crime only barely disguised, especially when the many victims, including the family and friends of the deceased, are still alive - very poor, in my opinion.

Just got back from the Faversham Hops Festival - a glorious, English end to the summer indeed. Faversham is a lovely old town in the heart of the 'Garden of England', the county of Kent, and it took no more than a couple of hours to get there on a red London bus. To while away the journey I revisited J. B. Priestly's Good Companions, which I'd downloaded to my for the purpose. The Good Companions has a fascinating history since Priestly wrote it at a time when he was worn down with tragedy - the effects of the First World War, the death of his young and beautiful wife from cancer and the loss of his Father, tragically early at the age of 56. A single dad, trying desperately to pay the bills and bring up two daughters alone, Priestly would not have been able to take the time out to write the book were it not for the supreme generosity of his friend Walpole. Walpole, knowing that Priestly would be too proud to accept a gift of a year's salary, although he was wealt...