Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [29]
Some ideas come from other people. I’ve had both good and bad experiences writing books based on the ideas of others. Years ago Donald E. Westlake got an idea for a suspense novel—a bride is raped on her wedding night and the bridal couple take direct revenge on the bad guys. He wrote an opening chapter, found it didn’t seem to go anywhere, and he put it away and forgot about it.
A year or so after that I called him up and asked if he had any plans for the idea. When he said no, I requested permission to steal the notion—it had been percolating on a back burner of my mind ever since he first mentioned it to me. He graciously told me to go ahead, and Deadly Honeymoon became my first hardcover novel, a fair success in book form and ultimately the basis of a film, called Nightmare Honeymoon for reasons I wouldn’t presume to guess.
Agents and publishers have come up with other ideas and given them to me. Sometimes I’ve written the books their ideas sparked, and sometimes they’ve turned out well.
On the other hand, I’ve had several experiences where ideas originated by other persons led me to books that proved ultimately unwritable, or books which gave me a great deal of trouble, or books which simply failed for one reason or another.
It can be quite difficult, for example, working from a publisher’s idea. The temptation to do so can be considerable, since one is not working on speculation; the publisher, along with the idea, generally dangles a contract and an advance in front of one’s eyes, and the more attractive the contract and the larger the advance, why, the better the idea is going to look. Thus you find yourself bound to an idea you might have dismissed out of hand if you’d thought it up all by yourself.
Sometimes—and I’ve had this experience—the publisher has only a vague idea of what he wants. In order to produce a book you’ll be able to write effectively, you have to transform this idea and make it your own. If the publisher’s got an open mind, that’s no problem. Occasionally, however, he’ll be struck by the discrepancy between what you’ve produced and the sublime if hazy vision with which he started. If the book’s good enough in its own right you’ll sell it somewhere sooner or later, but it doesn’t make for the best feelings all around.
What it boils down to, then, is that you really have to be sure you like another person’s idea before you use it. Remember, your own ideas bubble up from your own mind; when you work on them, that bubbling process will continue and the idea will develop. When you’re working on another person’s idea, you’re adopting it. It has to be the sort you can love as if it were your own or you won’t be able to bring your subconscious fully to bear upon it. It won’t grow organically the way an idea must if it is to become a fully realized book.
How well developed does an idea have to be before you can start writing the book? It depends.
The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep took a couple of years gestating until various plot components fitted themselves together. By the time I sat down to write the book, I had a very strong sense of the character of Tanner and a pretty good grasp of the book’s plot. I didn’t know everything else that was going to happen by any means, but I had the general outline of the book pretty clear in my mind.
With Deadly Honeymoon, I could fit the book’s premise into one sentence, and that was as much of a handle as I had on the book when I sat down and wrote the first chapter. I think now that I might have written a better book if I’d known more about the various characters and had given the plot more thought before I started, but I was impatient to get on with it, and it’s possible the book gained by the impatient enthusiasm that gripped its author.
One night Brian Garfield parked his car on the street in Manhattan and returned to it to find the convertible top slashed by some archfiend in human form who wanted to steal a coat from the back seat. Brian’s first reaction was murderous rage. He realized he couldn’t find the villain and kill him, but he could find some