Serials or Novels? That is the Question by Juliet Greenwood

Most of the time, I don’t get confused by writing as two people...

Some days I sit down as Juliet Greenwood to write historical novels, and other days I sit down as Heather Pardoe, to write short stories and historical serials for magazines. I’ve got so used to it over the years I no longer think about it.

Over the past couple of months, however, I’ve been editing a novel as Juliet, while Heather’s serial Daughter of Conwy has been in The People’s Friend, and any free brain has been working on ideas for the next novel and the next serial. For the first time, I’ve found bits creeping to both and wondered if they are Juliet or Heather.

Daughter of Conwy - Heather Pardoe
(The People's Friend)

So what is the difference? It’s a question of genre. Lots of writers write under different names for different kinds of books, because your name, like your book cover, is a kind of pact with your reader – and yes, that applies to literary fiction, which is a genre just like the rest. And the term ‘genre’ is nothing to be looked down on, either. Some worthy critics might have the idea that readers need to be stretched and challenged, but, personally speaking, I find that’s known as life.

And in life – and particularly when life becomes very challenging indeed – the last thing most of us need is to always be ‘challenged’/‘educated’/‘improved’ in our few hours/minutes of spare time. Hence the pact. So whether it’s Miss Marple or the team from Welsh noir Hinterland putting the pieces of the jigsaw into place and the world to rights, or Scarlett O’Hara battling through whatever life throws at her, we all know what we are getting. Fifty Shades is fifty shades, and Elizabeth Bennett never stumbles across zombies without prior warning.

That doesn’t mean it’s a soft option. Ask Heather. Characters still go through the emotional mill and face life changing (and life-threatening) situations. Readers aren’t stupid. As a reader, I want to find a something I can identify with, which is usually an experience that relates to one I’ve faced. That’s the investment I have in the characters and in the story. A book might have won zillions of prizes, but if that investment isn’t there, I’m off.



Serials or Novels?

At the moment I’m in the slightly odd position of having similar subjects for my next serial and my next novel. There’s plenty of nastiness in the subject (no, I’m not telling!), which Juliet will be referring to, but won’t appear on the page in detail, because that’s not in the pact. Heather, meanwhile, won’t be referring to the nastiest of the nastiness at all. But that doesn’t mean her story will be soft, or that her readers are daft. Far from it.

It’s a question, as with all stories, of which part you tell. There’s a reason why Mr Darcy never grows old and dies, leaving his Elizabeth behind. You don’t need to inform your readers that’s what happens, or how. They know. That’s the thing about story telling: for that moment in time, both as readers and writers, we can choose the rules. They don’t have to be the same rules all the time, but in the boundless world of the imagination, as in life, they are a measure of safety. Don’t knock it: we all need it, and sometimes safety can give the greatest freedom of all.

Juliet Greenwood at her launch for
We That are Left

The Story Behind Safe Harbour by Beth Francis

Safe Harbour has just been published as a pocket novel by People's Friend. Author Beth Francis tells us how she was inspired to write the story.

 

With the rain lashing the windows, gale force winds and dire warnings of tide surges it’s hard to imagine the hot summer’s day when I sat on the sea wall watching a yacht edge towards her mooring. An idyllic picture. I imagined a woman at the helm and wrote the first page of a novel, before turning back to my current writing project.

 

A year or so later, slipping and sliding along the muddy paths of the forest at Pentraeth I pitched the idea to Erika, another of the Novelistas, who was demanding to know what I was writing next.

 

“What’s her name. Why is she unhappy? Why did she leave if she loved him? Why did she come back? Is she a wimp?”

 

The questions came thick and fast and I became defensive about Jess, who until that moment had simply been a cardboard cut-out on a boat. By the end of the walk I was eager to get back to my computer and tell her story.

 

We used to own a small boat but I was a cautious and slightly nervous sailor, never comfortable out of sight of land, always happiest recollecting the day’s sail once we had safely moored. I was also always slightly anxious that my sailing skills would not be good enough to bring the boat to land if my husband was suddenly taken ill. I had no idea, when starting to write, that Jess would face just that problem, but hope I would have managed as well as she did.

 

It was the setting that first inspired me, and as I wrote, I walked the coastal paths around Amlwch with my husband trying to see the familiar scenery through Jess’s eyes. With the story almost finished, I sent the first few chapters off to People’s Friend, intending to take a picnic to Llandwen Island on the next sunny day to make notes for the final chapter.

 

Life intervened and before the sun came my husband collapsed. He was recovering in hospital in Liverpool when an e-mail arrived from People’s Friend asking to see the rest of the story. It was impossible. My life was taken up with trains, hospital visits and confusion. But Erika had other ideas. A few days later we were walking on Llandwen Island, where I found the perfect spot for the end of the novel.

 

I wrote the last chapter on the Liverpool Metro and was on the last paragraph when a Canadian tourist asked me if I was a professor. When I said I was writing fiction she told me how her boyfriend had just proposed. It was so romantic! But that’s another story …

 

 

 

When Jess Tyler's brother, Oliver, phones from Johannesburg ...and persuades her to go sailing with him, he doesn't tell her he's trying to avoid certain individuals, nor that the yacht he has conveniently been loaned is moored off Anglesey. Having spent the intervening years trying to forget an idyllic summer there with local boy Matt Pritchard, Jess finds herself once more sailing along the coastline that she and Matt explored together.

 

Available now, at supermarkets and newsagents, price £2.99