About writing a book
Have been wondering today whether or not it would be possible to write a novel the way Mike Leigh makes a film.
I’m guessing you’d need to do a lot of background work first. Read a lot, get a strong idea of the themes and setting, sketch out a few scenes. Then get some characters and think about what motivates them, how they think/talk/act. Then put the characters in those scenes and see how it pans out.
Thinking about it, it’s probably a very good way of writing a novel. I guess what I mean is not allowing yourself to think of an ending, but letting the story end itself by the actions performed by the characters. It would make it more real, I should think. If you were a twat, you would probably call it ‘organic’.
I should add that I only have a limited idea of how Mike Leigh makes films. What I do know, and this must be true of all films, is that there is at some point a shooting schedule. At the moment he is making something with a shooting schedule of three weeks, which sounds quite short.
I like the idea of applying this to novel-writing. You do all of your background research over a six month period and then write it in three weeks, head down for twelve or fourteen hours a day. You take yourself off somewhere to do this and have little contact with the outside world.
This could solve the problem for those of us who aren’t professional writers, and have to squeeze writing into otherwise busy lives. I always have time to read, so why not read lots and lots around a particular topic over six months, maybe a year, without writing a thing except notes and scenes (could even write a treatment, as is done for a screenplay, but only a very rough one and without an ending). Then take two weeks annual leave, go away and work solid. That’s about 200 hours writing time, plenty for a first draft.
The problem comes with editing and redrafting. I think that you would need to get straight down to this after the first draft, and go back to the ordinary sort of writing routine (evenings and weekends) to get it done. You would sacrifice reading time for this.
Not sure how realistic this all is. Life is a bit more haphazard in reality.
