It's a bit of a cliché to say that Katherine Neville burst on the scene with her first published novel, The Eight (1988). But in her case it's absolutely true. To an extent. "In reality it was fifteen years from spark to ARC," Neville says.
The spark happened during an actual "dark and stormy night" in the 1970s, when Neville was working in Algeria. "I'd been exiled there by my employer, an international consulting firm, and I had just learned that one of our clients, OPEC, had decided to declare an international embargo on the chief export they controlled: petroleum. I saw this 'Third World' move as something completely new in a global game that had been going on since the end of World War II--a shift in the balance of powers."At the same time, Algeria was celebrating the tenth anniversary of its successful revolution against France. "The entire scenario reminded me of the French Revolution when all bets were off after the destruction of the nobility, the bourgeoisie, even the proletariat. The picture around me suddenly seemed like a game of chess where an unexpected move had upset the game as well as the rules."
Publishers Weekly called The Eight "daring, original and moving" and "destined to become a cult classic." The book was a huge success and now Neville's sequel, The Fire, is about to hit the shelves. Early reviews have been raves.
I asked Neville what she had learned about writing thrillers between these two books.
"When it comes to craft, the most important thing I learned through the writing-publishing process was something that isn't taught in any creative writing program, literature department, drama or screenwriting school. It's considered inessential to literary writing. But it's definitely essential to writing thrillers, adventure stories, horror, mystery, crime--you name it. In a word, Pacing."Neville says she learned about pacing only after writing her books and working directly with some of the best editors in the business.
"The first major editor I worked with, when I asked him what pacing was, told me, 'I don't know how to define it or explain it for you. I just know-- whatever it is--it's what makes me want to turn the page.' Amen."
Neville's idea-generating process is intuitive, springing directly from the life she leads. "I often say: Life is Research. I go and live in places or do jobs my characters do, to learn about them. The rest is more of an organic process, and that process for me has to begin with a character or characters that I'm interested in enough that I want to spend at least a few years of my life--or 500 pages--living with them. Many of us don't even want to spend that much time with our own friends, colleagues, families, or loved ones!"
In the case of The Fire, Neville began with two of the major characters. "I knew well in advance that the character of Xie (daughter of Cat and Solarin from The Eight) was highly conflicted about her relationship with each of her parents because she had a special gift or talent that not everyone could understand or relate to enough to help her be able to exercise that gift. The same is true of Charlot, the historic hero (son of Mireille and Talleyrand from The Eight.) Both of them have gifts that estrange or even frighten people--leaving the two characters as 'outsiders' even to their own families. Never having been a prodigy at anything myself, that was the hardest research I had to do for The Fire."
When it comes to plotting, though, Neville does "try to plan everything up front. I know the entire plot and all the characters intimately--and in a perfect world I would even know the last sentence--before I write the first line of a book."
But it is all subject to change. "I admit that when Napoleon or Lord Byron or a child chess prodigy or the Chief of Staff of the US Treasury accidentally drops into my plot or my research, I always go wherever the flow suggests."
For new writers, Neville offers the following advice:
1. Write. Remember, people may keep you (or me) from being a published author but no one can stop you from being a writer. All you have to do is write. And keep writing. While you're working at a career, while you're raising children, while you're trout fishing--keep writing! No one can stop you but you.
2. Write three books, not one. No publisher wants to gear up the huge machine to promote a one-shot wonder who will never publish another book, no matter how brilliant it may be. Before you get an agent, have at least one novel completed and more in draft. Stephen King and Steve Berry both demonstrated their prolific natures before becoming commercially successful authors, and that has helped each of them remain successful.
3. Most important: Write what you love to read! Otherwise, no one may ever get to read it.
Contributing editor James Scott Bell is the author of Try Darkness (Hachette/Center Street) and Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure (Writers Digest Books)
