In my continuing effort to read outside my preferred genres – and also because Stella Rimington was a special guest at last year’s Perth Writers Festival, and I really liked her (and she appeared outdoors in the sunken garden, pictured above) – I’ve just finished reading her first novel At Risk. Rimington was the first female head of MI5 (the British Secret Service, basically) and after she retired she turned to writing spy novels – which are especially interesting because you know she writes from the voice of experience. It’s a real page-turner, yet it doesn’t feel scrappily-written or trashy, as those typical buy-at-the-airport spy stories have always seemed to me.

Now, to the relevance of a spy novel to what I’m writing: I have a new theory that every good novel needs to be a bit of a spy story. Perhaps not a spy story, but a mystery. In other words, a really important part of a modern novel, even a very literary one, should be that there is information that not everybody knows. It’s something I’ve been working on with my latest novel outline (more thoughts on that in another post).

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m trying to pay more attention to getting the plot right in my novels. And in particular, leaving parts of the plot open or unknown to some or all of the characters, and sometimes to the reader, and so on. This is something I think I’m not very good at. Not all literary fiction does this, of course, but certainly the novels I end up enjoying the most do. Everybody loves a good surprise.

The big problem I have with getting the plot right is that it seems to involve knowing the plot in advance. I’m not so good at writing in this way; sometimes spontaneous works a lot better for me, but the main difficulty I have is that whenever I try to plan a novel, I get half way through the planning stage and really don’t know exactly how things are going to happen next. Of course, I have a good idea of the broad arc of the story, but often not enough of the details to be able to plot in twists or turns or information revelations, because these seem to arise out of exactly what the characters do, something I can’t predict more than a few chapters ahead.

Any other writers out there have some good tips for me on getting my plots right in advance? I really want to capture readers the way I get captured by other novels; sure, you can capture them simply with interesting characters and a story where they want to know the ending, but I really like the idea of spreading out the information across the plotline. Will I ever be able to plot my novels completely in advance? (Allowing, of course, for brainwaves and alternative inspirations during the writing process). I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.