A Writer''s Tale

  I don’t remember much about the trip. As I recall, however, I got away from Glendale so quickly that I was ahead of any majors jams that might’ve been caused by the disaster.

  At home, everything was fine. The quake had been somewhat milder because of our distance from the epicenter. Ann and Kelly and the house had gotten shaken up considerably, but there was no damage.

  Though I continued to ‘work at the Glendale office for nearly a year after the quake, I never again parked in its lot. Every morning.

  I left my car on the street to avoid any possibility that an earthquake might trap it behind an electrically powered gate.

  People are often asking writers how they get ideas for their stories.

  That’s how I got the idea for Quake.

  But I didn’t immediately sit down and write myself a novel on the subject. The quake happened on October 1, 1987, and I didn’t start working Quake until December 14, 1991.

  What took so long?

  For one thing, my big idea consisted of a guy trying to get home after a major earthquake.

  He would have a lot of adventures along the way. Meet people. Help people. Fight for survival against looters, etc. I needed something more, but wasn’t sure what.

  Also, I wasn’t eager to embark on a “disaster novel.” The scope of such a thing seemed overwhelming. A major Los Angeles earthquake? Good grief, how could I even begin to get a handle on such a thing? How could I do it justice?

  Plus, there had already been several major movies about earthquakes. While playing with ideas for Quake, I actually saw a made-for-television movie that featured a young woman struggling to get home after a big one. It seemed a bit too much like my idea.

  And then there was one more factor. A minor thing. Nothing I took very seriously. On occasion, however, elements of my fiction have a disturbing way of coming true. (The Stake, for one.) So I did rather feel that writing an earthquake novel might be “tempting fate.”

  What finally prompted me to go ahead with Quake?

  As of December 6, 1991, an attempted novel entitled The Caller wasn’t going well. So I sat down at my computer and fooled around with ideas for a different novel. I came up with several possibilities, but nothing I really liked. So I tried again on December 10 and wrote, “Actually, an earthquake novel could be the answer. Several main characters.

  Mainly a guy who is at work many miles from home. And his family at home wife and a kid or two. He urgently wants to get to them, but roads unusable.”

  Going on from there, I decided that the wife should be alone in the house. “Someone is after her. Wants to use the quake, maybe, as cover for his crime. Wants to nail her.”

  When I came up with that idea, I knew I would do the book. Suddenly, it was not just a disaster story. It was no longer like any of the earthquake movies. It was suddenly a “Laymon story.”

  I’d found myself a nifty plot setup.

  Could the husband get home in time to save his wife from the sadist who wants to ravish and kill her? Would she find a way to save herself? Maybe she wouldn’t be saved.

  The “kid or two” turned into a teenaged daughter. For a while, I thought that she would be in her high school at the time of the quake. Then I decided to put her in a car, instead out taking “driver’s education” lessons with some other students and an adult instructor.

  And that was it.

  I’d come up with the basics of a major, threeway plot.

  It went like this.

  After a major earthquake strikes the Los Angeles area, the husband is desperate to get home. Because of the massive destruction, however, it will probably take him all day. In the meantime, his wife is trapped in her bathtub under the rubble of their house with a perverted neighbor trying to get his hands on her. While all this is happening, the teenaged daughter is trying to get home after being stranded in downtown Los Angeles which is not a good place to be.

  All three plots needed to be coordinated, the distances and timing worked out so that everything would intersect properly.

  I ended up making very extensive notes in which I developed all three plot-lines. The single-spaced plot synopsis turned out to be 15 pages long and contained a total of 62 different scenes. Each scene description included the time of day at which it was supposed to happen.

  Because I felt that the climax should take place after dark with Daylight Savings Time in effect the final events of the story were scheduled to take place after 9:00 p.m.

  This was to be my working outline.”

  As I worked on the novel, I checked off each scene on the outline after writing it.

  Along the way, the story grew overwhelming.

  The pages piled up, I checked off scenes, but there were still so many scenes still to go. I soon realized that, if I actually followed the outline, the manuscript would end up over 1,000 pages long.

  I was in over my head.

  (In retrospect, it seems ironic that my first real experience with getting “in over my head” occurred while working on the most carefully thought-out and outlined novel of my career. That’s what is supposed to happen when you fly by the seat of your pants, not when you outline.)

  Befuddled about what to do with the situation, I quit writing Quake on April 3, 1992.

  Maybe I would get back to it someday, maybe not. After leaving it behind, I wrote Endless Night (a nice, simple story) and In the Dark (less simple, but still a long distance from the complexity of Quake).

  Just a few days before quitting Quake, however, I’d sent a synopsis and sample chapters (a few hundred pages, I think) to Bob Tanner. I did this because Headline had asked for information about my new project.

  Bob had not only sent a copy to Mike Bailey at Headline, but he’d also submitted it to Tom Dunne at St. Martin’s Press.

  I had no idea that he might submit it anywhere.

  About the time I was finishing In the Dark, Tom Dunne made an offer on Quake.

  I was shocked, delighted and aghast.

  Suddenly, I would have to finish writing Quake whether I wanted to or not.

  I suppose I could have turned down the offer…

  But I figured, why not go for it?

  So I returned to Quake and analyzed the problem with my plot. The problem was easy to identify: there was too much of it. And why did I need so much? Only in order to stretch everything out so the climax could take place in the dark. My solution?

  Scrap the darkness. Let it all take place in daylight. Suddenly, my problems with the novel evaporated. On September 30, 1993, I received a letter from Tom Dunne in which he praised what he’d read so far of Quake and offered several useful suggestions about revisions and ways to go with it in the future. The next day, I resumed writing the novel on the sixth anniversary of the Whittier quake that inspired it.

  Remember what I wrote about “tempting fate”? On January 17, 1994, about two months before I finished writing Quake, the Los Angeles area was struck by a 6.6 magnitude earthquake. We were shocked out of sleep at 4:31 a.m., the house roaring and shuddering around us. “This is it,” I thought. “This is the Big One.” There was massive destruction. Buildings toppled. Freeways went down. The power was knocked out. Quite a few people were killed, and hundreds were injured. In our own case, a lamp fell on Ann’s head and I cut my foot on broken glass. Kelly, the lucky one, somehow slept through most of the quake. We were briefly trapped inside our house, but finally made it to the safety of our parked car. There, we waited in the darkness.

  When dawn came, we were startled and delighted to find that our house was still standing mostly intact. We entered to survey the damage and clean up. Bookshelves and television sets, window blinds and framed pictures had fallen to the floor. Most of our cupboards had thrown their contents onto the floors. Our bed was broken. The inside of our fireplace had collapsed and our chimney had broken away from the house. The walls were cracked.

  And about 500 manuscript pages of Quake, stacked on top of a wobbly television tray in a
back room of the house, remained neatly stacked on top of the tray as if nothing had happened.

  I do realize of course, that I didn’t cause the earthquake by writing Quake. But I may resist the temptation to write a novel about the end of the world.

  I finished Quake on March 24, 1994.

  The manuscript came in at 679 pages.

  It’s certainly not the biggest book in history, but large and complex enough to present special problems.

  When writing a small, less complicated novel, I don’t have much trouble keeping track of things. If I want to remind myself of certain details (such as what a character is wearing), it’s a fairly simple matter to leaf through the earlier pages.

  Not so easy, however, when there are multiple plot lines, a crowd of important characters, and hundreds of pages.

  So I want to tell you about a few methods I’ve developed to help me keep things straight.

  If you’re a writer, you might find some of this useful.

  First tip. Outline if you need to. Even though I am generally opposed to the use of outlines, they become almost a necessity if you’re trying to write a complex novel with several intersecting story-lines. You have to coordinate the events, or you’ll end up with a real disaster. Just don’t feel compelled, when writing the actual book, to follow every detail of the outline. Follow it like a map, but feel free to take detours.

  Second tip. Make “character notes.” Whether writing a small novel or a monstrosity, it’s a very good idea to keep a page of notes about each character. I don’t work out sketches of my characters in advance; I let them develop as I create them in the course of writing. But while I’m creating them, I take a few moments to jot down their hair color and style, their age (if it matters), what they’re wearing, and other details such as unusual traits or mannerisms. But here’s a trick don’t just make a note of each detail write down the number of the manuscript page on which it appears. That way, you’ll have an easy time finding it again. Later on, you may want to double-check what you wrote there, or even change it. Having the page number handy can save you a lot of time and frustration.

  Third tip. Draw rough diagrams and maps of any settings that might be revisted later in the book. It’s very easy to forget the layout of a house or a neighborhood or a section of wilderness (where was that lake again?). Maps and diagrams can make your life easier. I suggest you do the drawings as you go along, based on what you’ve just written.

  Fourth tip. Create a “log book” for your novel. This is something completely different from your working outline.” You should create the log book as you go along. It is your record of what you’ve written labeled by chapter and page numbers. Here is a sample of my “log book” for Quake.

  PLOT

  Chapt. 1 Stan pov. Earthquake hits. 8:20 a.m. Friday. June. Afterward, he murders his mother.

  2 Clint pov. Quake hits. Runs from office. Car accident. He joins up with Mary Davis. They’ll drive together.

  3 Barb & others at time of quake. Driver’s ed. Teacher heads downtown speeding dangerously.

  4 p. 50. Stanley goes over and finds Sheila. They talk, but she is still covered & out of sight.

  The purpose of the log book is to give you a quick reminder of what happened and where, and to provide an easy way for you to relocate passages that you may have written months earlier. It can be a major help.

  Quake was published by Headline in January, 1995. It was chosen to be the main selection of World Book Club, which ordered 24,000 copies.

  In the U.S., it was published by Thomas Dunne, St. Martin’s Press, in June, 1995. It was given no publicity by the publisher. A couple of copies ended up in some stores.

  Other stores received no copies at all.

  Like Savage and The Stake, Quake was a novel that “coulda been a contenda.” I feel that those three books in particular, treated properly by a publisher, would have sold extremely well in the U.S. I think they could have been bestsellers here, just as they were bestsellers in Great Britain.

  Instead, they were flops in this country.

  They never had a chance of selling in the U.S. because most readers never had a chance to find out that they existed. Even if I had done something to bring attention to the books, they had been printed in such limited quantities that interested readers would’ve had a terrible time finding a place to buy them.

  Authors are always taking it on the chin.

  But one of the worst blows of all is to write a book, sell it to a reputable publisher, wait for its publication date, then make the rounds of the bookstores and find that very few are carrying it or ever will.

  After discovering that some of the major U.S. chain bookstores had ordered no copies whatsoever of Quake, I decided that I would no longer play the game.

  I make enough money from the U.K. and the rest of the world that I don’t need money from America.

  I don’t need it badly enough to put myself through the agonies involved in watching my novels get “thrown away” by one publisher after another.

  Quake was my last novel to be published in the United States, and I intend for it to remain the last.

  At least until a publisher makes me an offer I can’t refuse.

  So far, that hasn’t happened.

  ISLAND

  I didn’t get started on Island until May 25, 1994, about two months after finishing Quake.

  What led me to write Island?

  I suppose that I’ve always had an urge to write about people who have been marooned on a tropical island. It’s a naturally great setup. The people are isolated. They are reduced to the basics of survival. And they are on their own with no easy way out.

  On top of that, who knows what dangers may be lurking elsewhere on the island?

  The problem, of course, is that almost everyone is familiar with Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, Gulliver’s Travels, Lord of the Flies, “The Most Dangerous Game,” and Gilligan’s Island. Plus a ton of lesser-known books, short stories, movies and television shows about people who get stranded on islands and in other desolate areas.

  Writing a “marooned” story is a bit like writing a vampire story. At first glance, it might seem that just about everything has already been done.

  But there are always fresh approaches.

  I wanted to give it a shot.

  Instead of being marooned when a storm destroys their ship, my group is already ashore, picnicking on an island when their yacht blows up. Within a few hours after that, one of the castaways is found hanged.

  I employed a special technique in the writing of Island.

  The whole story is told by a young castaway who is keeping a journal. We see the entire adventure through his eyes.

  What makes this different from the usual first-person narrative (such as I used in Savage) is that the writer of the journal is telling the story as it happens. And the writing of the journal becomes part of the story.

  Most first-person novels seem to have been written years after the events of the story occurred. We usually don’t know what has prompted the narrator to tell his or her story.

  The telling seems unrelated to the actual events of the story. And it is generally obvious from the start that the narrator survived to tell the tale.

  Not so with Island.

  We know why Rupert is keeping the journal. We know when he is making entries in it.

  We know where the journal is at all times during the course of the novel. But we never know what may happen next or whether Rupert will even by alive to finish the story.

  Because he is writing the journal as he goes along, anything can happen.

  The technique opened up a lot of new ways to play with the story, new ways to surprise myself and my readers.

  Rupert’s journal was actually a variation and expansion of the tape recorder technique that I used in the “Simon Says” sections of Endless Night. I simply changed the tape recorder to a written journal… then took the possibilities as far as I could.


  With Island, I developed no plot outline. It is a fairly straight-forward story, all of it told from Rupert’s point of view. I put together a group of characters who seemed colorful, placed them on the island, blew up their boat, then just let the plot unfold in the ways that seemed most natural.

  This is not to suggest that I allowed chaos to rule the story.

  Every story has its own integral logic.

  One of the major tricks, in writing, is to discover the natural logic that is inherent in a story’s basic situation, then release it. Develop it. Explore it. Exploit it.

  Let’s take Island as an example.

  The situation is this this: a small group of people, vacationing in the Bahamas, are having a picnic on an apparently deserted island when their yacht blows up.

  What happens next?

  Do they sing “Deck the Halls”? Do they toss around a Frisbee for a while? Do they split up to go bird watching?

  Of course not.

  Not unless they’re nuts.

  What would people with common sense do?

  Easy. They would take their dingy out to the site of the explosion and try to recover any items that might prove useful for their survival. Such as food, utensils, weapons, clothing…

  This almost has to be done first, before the salvageable items are washed away, eaten by fish, or otherwise lost to the sea.

  What next?

  After salvaging everything useful from the wreckage, any reasonable person would probably embark on a limited exploration of the island looking for a source of fresh water, signs of civilization, and generally taking note of any nearby resources or hazards.

  And so on.

  To a large extent, the story is writing itself, telling the writer what should happen next. Or at least giving him a limited selection of reasonable alternatives, As new elements are added to the story (such as a member of the castaway group being murdered in the middle of the night), the situation changes. And the new situation gives the writer certain ways he has to go if he wants to tell the story correctly.

  If one of your castaways gets killed, what naturally follows?

  Shock. An investigation into the cause of the death. Disposal of the body. Maybe a funeral. Discussions about who might’ve done the deed and how to keep the rest of the group safe. A gathering of weapons for self-defense. Cautions against going anywhere alone. A buddy system for leaving the camp to get firewood, relieve oneself, etc. Guards to be posted overnight. And so on.