When authors are interviewed about their
novels, they usually talk mostly about their characters. There’s a good reason
for this: characters are what readers relate to most easily; they are the
emotional route into the story. But there are other dimensions to a novel too,
one of the most vital being setting.
When, in 2004, I started writing
what turned into a pair of science fiction novels called My Future in the
Past, I thought about how I could bring a new twist to stories about time
travel. Before I’d even written the first chapter, I decided that I must first
have a vivid sense of place, and that place needed to be unusual — something
different from New York City or London, or a space station or future metropolis
from central casting. I found that not only did my choice of setting provide
background — a place for the characters to act out their story — but it started
to fundamentally alter my original plan for the
novels.
My previous story had been about
a tsunami striking Boston. Thanks to the internet, I could recite locations,
give the name of taxi companies, and write about the Big Dig. I even had a
critique partner who had lived in Boston and corrected my Bostonian speech.
Perhaps I did a good job on the Boston setting, but I could never know for
certain because it wasn’t somewhere I could go.
For my new novel, I wanted
somewhere I could visit easily, somewhere contemporary where I could hide a time
station without anyone noticing. Tricky! I settled on Elstow Abbey. One of the
useful things about Elstow Abbey is that it doesn’t exist, not any more. Henry
VIII dissolved the monastery in 1539. What if I brought it back? After all, you
can play such tricks with time travel.
My wife was born and bred in
Elstow and told me of the stories they used to tell when she was a girl, of the
ghosts of the nuns who still guarded the monastery’s treasure buried deep
underground. Well, what if that wasn’t entirely nonsense? What if there really
was something underground: a time station?
So I set my story in Elstow, a
tiny village that is being slowly swallowed by the neighbouring big town of
Bedford. Other than the abbey, there is one other thing Elstow is famous for:
John Bunyan, who lived and preached there. I knew about Bunyan, all right. When
I moved to the Bedford area twenty years ago in search of work, everything in
the area was named Pilgrim this or Progress the other, after
Bunyan’s famous book. I even used to meet my friends in a pub called the
Pilgrim’s Progress, which featured a cupola with a stained glass frieze of
scenes from the book, and cask-conditioned De Koninck (but that’s another story
entirely).
As I wrote the first draft, I
made the appalling mistake of slipping in annoying facts about Elstow and
Bunyan.
See the children playing tipcat
on Elstow Green, just as Bunyan did when he felt the call from God. And, by the
way, did you know this is where the original Vanity Fair was held? Marvel in my
research!
You know the sort of guff. Well,
I grew out of that phase and cut out almost all of these facts. But I did keep
one thing. As I wrote about Bunyan and his Pilgrim’s Progress, I felt an uncanny
resonance. I read Bunyan’s book and was spooked by the parallels with my own.
Bunyan’s character, Christian, was facing similar challenges to my own
characters. Instead of splitting the books into parts, I now split them
into stages, just as Bunyan did, naming the stages after his. One of the
key characters in the sequel to the Pilgrim’s Progress (yes, they had
sequels even in the 17th century) was Mr. Great Heart. It’s no
coincidence that my publishing business is called Greyhart Press, though to
explain more would be giving far too much
away...
One of the strangest things to
explain to non-writers is the exciting feeling we get when a novel starts to
write itself. It sounds like sloppiness, like a writer not in control of the
story. In reality, it happens when the characters, setting, plot, and themes
become so vivid that the writer sees new connections and enticing possibilities
that were hidden when the story was first planned
out.
And now my story was telling me
to rewrite, to emphasise the thematic parallels with The Pilgrim’s
Progress. Bunyan’s book set an obstacle-laden allegorical path for the main
character to follow, with spiritual fulfilment as the ultimate destination. And
that is now the theme for my novels. They feature two main characters, one human
and one not, who exist in parallel worlds. Each faces similar challenges on
their path from Slough of Despond to Celestial City. Except a happy ending would
be too easy. These parallel realities are at war with each other, and by the end
of the books, one must be erased from existence. That’s now woven in as an
integral theme that, hopefully, leads to some powerful scenes as the reader
begins to suspect that one set of characters is doomed.
So thank you, Elstow. If I hadn’t
chosen you for a setting, my novels would have been poorer for
it.
The first volume of My Future in the
Past will be published by Greyhart Press early in 2012. Check www.greyhartpress.com for announcements.
