Funnily enough I'm reading Le Carrie's first Smiley novel (possibly his first ever novel) - Call For The Dead - and Smiley is excrutiatingly emotional. Completely at odds with the Alex Guiness characterisation. I'm finding all the emotional stuff a complete turn off, but the twists and turns of the plot are there, which keep me readng. Maybe I've got a 'man brain'

- NaomiM

Whereas it's what brings me back to Le Carré over and over again: I find the emotional dimension is what lifts his work out of the ranks of standard spy thrillers and into being really good books.

Emma

I much prefer Agatha Christie. Give me old, cold, calculating Miss Marple anytime

Oh, I love Miss Marple, but in a different way...

Emma

The mind boggles, Emma
And do you have stirrings for Poirot?

Nah. Having spent too much of my childhood in Brussels, Belgians have limited appeal...

Emma

Imagine Agatha commenting on this thread (and forum)!

Oddly, I'm a huge Heyer fan, and I love detective fiction, but I find her detective fiction entirely dispesable. I think she did to, mind you.

Emma

<Added>

or even dispensable

To answer the question, I'd say it really does depend what you're writing. Even with crime, I know there are some writers who just set off and see where they end up. I can't write like that any more, because whenever I used to, I would always reach a standstill and end up thinking, "I wish I'd worked out where I was going with this before I started!" But that's just me.

My crime books are mystery stories, whodunnits. I worked out the plots and wrote a fairly developed synopsis before I started. And in both cases, Gentle Axe and the new one, I wrote the ending more or less completely at the same time as I wrote the synopsis - that's to say, I wrote it through with a para or two for each chapter, then when it got to the denouement scenes I wrote the dialogue and to a large extent found that I could use considerable chunks of what I had written because I had stuck to my plan.

Had an interesting conversation last night with a crime writer who is also a clinical psychologist. About the unconscious and conscious minds, and some experiments that have been doing with brain scans. Some guy got people to perform actions, you know, just do stuff, and to register the moment they made the decision to do what they are going to do. The brain scans showed that the brain activity related to that activity started well before the conscious thought was registered, proving that the unconscious, or subconscious, had made the decision first and only let the conscious mind know at the last moment. The conscious mind, in fact, was not where the decision was made, which raises lots of interesting questions. Anyhow, I think maybe the same thing happens with our writing. We probably formulate our plots in our unconscious - those, like me, who indulge in plotting, probably only do it because we don't have the confidence to trust our unconscious. It's a kind of security measure. Plus, in my case at least, it saves time in the long run.

Roger, that's absolutely fascinating, and certainly fits with how it feels...

Emma

Rodger, that probably explains why some people can't force themselves to write simply by sitting in front of a keybord and a blank screen. something in the subconscious still needs to trigger the action; unblock the word dam.

- NaomiM

Naomi, I find I need to mentally work out what's going to happen before I write a scene. Sometimes I write a few notes/snippets first, and sometimes not, but if I haven't thought it through I can't start writing. I have nothing to write down!

Deb

I was thinking in terms of those writing exercises where one is told to start with a word or a phrase and just write - anything. Some people can build a chapter out of it, some can't.
And then there are the ones who spend years on the planning stage, but don't actually write any prose. What's stopping them?
In both cases there must be a subconscious block.

- NaomiM

It's interesting, how we all tackle this in different ways, under the general headings of To Plot or Not. I begin my crime fiction with an idea which I then see if I can scribble to fill half an A4 page. If I can do that, I then 'save' it, because I'm ususally in the middle of something else and want to finish that first.

When I go back to it I try to draw an outline - where its to start and the general idea of the end. I won't know the end at this point, just the moral point I want to get across. Then I try to break the outline into say, a dozen sections, so I can check where the main action needs to be. I read that Jeffrey Deaver works this way and it certainly helps me. By this stage I have about 100 pages of 'story.' This is when I actually begin to write - to describe the characters and their surroundings and put in the dialogue - which will expand over three or four drafts. At this stage I have no real knowledge of the ending, but I am confident my characters will take me there.

Not sure I really agree, Naomi.

If someone plans and plans, yet doesn't write, then it might be a subconscious block, but could be that they simply don't know the craft, so don't know how to write it. I remember reading one writer say that his grandmother had loads of great ideas, but couldn't write her way out of a paper bag.

As for writing a chapter from one trigger word, I don't think that's necessarily caused by subconscious block. It could be, but in many cases it's just that some people find freewriting useful and some do not. I don't. No subconscious block - I just like to plan (mostly in my head) what I write before I write it, because I prefer to come up with a reasonably well-structured first draft.

Oh, I can write loads of gobbledegook, sure - but I don't see the point.

I know others really can develop ideas on the hoof, but I don't think not doing so implies a subconscious block.

Deb