Continuing my series on inspiration and influences for my novels, in this post I am taking a look at the ideas behind my romantic drama Love vs Honour.

This book stands apart from the rest of my novels, as teenage romantic fiction is not a genre I generally dabble in. However, themes of religious oppression, deception and revenge are definitely mainstays in a lot of my other writing, and they are very much to the fore here. I have always been drawn to unusual love stories, and I wanted Love vs Honour to succeed on that level, as well as, given the potentially contentious subject matter, on the level of a thought provoking drama that would attract readers outside the teenage romance crowd.

Here are two key influences on Love vs Honour:

Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare) – The most obvious influence on the novel, purely because disapproving families have always been a staple as a blocking force in romantic fiction. Also, I think as protagonists Johnny and Sabina share some of Romeo and Juliet’s characteristics, although certainly they evolve in very different directions.

House of Sand and Fog (Andre Dubus III) – Pre-revolutionary Iran under the Shah hangs like a shadow over the character of Massoud in this novel, as it does over Sabina’s father Ahmed in Love vs Honour. I have always been fascinated by the appalling damage caused by the Iranian revolution to those whose beliefs were insufficiently radical for the new regime, and their subsequent exile in western nations.

I have to confess, I struggled to think of other writing or stories that were an influence on the novel, although I am hardly the first to try and tackle interfaith romance. Tonally, some of Peter Weir’s films (particularly Picnic at Hanging Rock, Dead Poets Society and Witness) were touchstones in their explorations of emergent teenage sexuality, loneliness, overbearing parents and clashing cultures.

The truth is the main inspiration came as the result of a long train of thought whilst stuck in traffic on a long and boring bus journey. The setting came to me later, once I moved to Devon and I was inspired by locations in that part of the world.

You can download or buy print copies of Love vs Honour from Amazon here.

So far, 2017 has been a very productive year for me. I have finished the first draft of The Spectre of Springwell Forest, and am awaiting feedback from a couple of willing guinea pigs, whose critical eyes are passing over said prose. In the meantime, I am working on my second novel of the year, tentatively titled A Statement of Disbelief. That project remains top secret for now, but here are a few more details regarding The Spectre of Springwell Forest.

1. It’s a ghost story for grown-ups.

2. Although it is bookended by sequences in the present, most of the story takes place in 1979. Many of my favourite horror films are from the 1970s, so this seems oddly appropriate.

3. Once again, my home turf is the setting, ie the South-West of England.

4. The plot involves a sinister painting, a disused railway tunnel, a potentially haunted forest, children who might be possessed, secret government research and suspiciously tight-lipped villagers who are obviously hiding a major secret.

5. Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black is a key inspiration.

6. I hope readers find the ending as bone-chilling as I did when I thought of it.

7. The Spectre of Springwell Forest is my fourth full-on horror story currently awaiting publication, along with The Wormcutter, The Irresistible Summons and The Thistlewood Curse. Or fifth, if you count The Faerie Gate, which is aimed at children.

Speaking of The Thistlewood Curse, I really am hoping to have news on that front soon. Sorry about the delays. With any luck, it will be downloadable sometime in April once I have finalised one or two final details.

I once read that “the first draft is you telling yourself the story”.

I’m not sure where to attribute that quote, but this is certainly true for me. Whilst I have a good outline of the story whenever I write a novel (including the ending, which is crucial), the precise details of that story are rendered fairly anxiously in a first draft. By anxiously I mean the story is over-explained, repetitious, states the obvious and character dialogue is merely functional at that stage, making sure I know what emotions need to be conveyed. I have to make sure the whole thing makes sense to me, before it can make sense to anyone else.

Should I expose readers to such a draft, they would no doubt feel horribly patronised. However, subsequent drafts eliminate over-explanation and repetition. In fact, the withholding of information, the adding of ambiguity to events, dialogue and so on is a hugely enjoyable process, once you as an author have made sense of the story for yourself. It is almost as though I say to myself “I know what I mean by this. Now I want the reader to add their own interpretation”.

Of course, some writers autocratically want to tell their readers what to think, but the older I get, the more I think this approach is a mistake. What is important to an author will be inherent in the text, but it is better for a reader to bring their own baggage and have wriggle room on interpretation, taking what is applicable to them.

In essence, telling the story to myself also encompasses telling myself how I respond to that story. The rewriting process removes the latter stage, stripping it down to the story only and leaving the interpretation to the reader. The final act in my novel Children of the Folded Valley is a prime example of this. I know what I meant to convey, but I removed the explicit stating of what that is. It is up to the reader to decide.

I have heard some storytelling gurus state that the use of coincidence in a story is a heinous crime and should be avoided at all costs. Obviously Charles Dickens didn’t get that particular memo, as many of his greatest novels, including Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, contain all manner of fortuitous coincidences, many of which are integral to their plots.

My personal opinion is that if coincidence is used in a story, it must be done deliberately with a well-thought through reason. In the case of the Dickens novels mentioned above, the moments of coincidence have fabulist feel, ie the reader feels that they are reading a fable. As such using chance meetings or the like to turn the plot doesn’t seem out of place but rather an organic part of the storytelling process. For example in Great Expectations, when Pip discovers the truth about the relationship between Abel Magwich and Estella, it underscores the entire point of the fable regarding Victorian hypocrisy, the folly of class prejudice and our common humanity.

Outside of such stories, coincidence can be used, but is best kept to the openings – a chance meeting between two characters who then become lovers, for example. However stories that use coincidence later, especially if used to turn the final act, can feel forced, phoney and unsatisfying. This is particularly true if said coincidence comes in the form of deus ex machina, a poncey term for coincidence-zilla whereby a seemingly unconnected act of God gets the protagonists out of their trouble. Pixar’s legendary storytelling rules include “Coincidences to get characters into trouble is great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating”.

One of my favourite Agatha Christie novels, Sleeping Murder, has a terrifically spooky opening that is entirely the result of coincidence. A young recently married couple on holiday in Devon just so happen to drive past a house for sale they rather like the look of. They decide to buy it, but as they go about various decorative renovations, a series of eerie discoveries sets the entire plot in motion, all as a result of the opening coincidence. But because it is the first major part of the story, the inciting incident if you will, what follows feels plausible rather than contrived, even though the odds of the couple coming across this particular house, which has ties to the woman’s past, must have been astronomical.

In conclusion, I think it is foolish to say coincidences (along with adverbs and – whisper it – passages that tell rather than show) are the work of the devil for writers. Instead, I see them as simply tools and techniques that should be used strategically and sparingly.