{"id":1106,"date":"2014-08-01T14:59:46","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T04:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/readingtime.com.au\/?p=1106"},"modified":"2014-08-01T14:59:46","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T04:59:46","slug":"meet-james-ologhlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/readingtime.com.au\/meet-james-ologhlin\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet James O’Loghlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"James<\/a><\/p>\n

James O’Loghlin tells Reading Time how he comes up with story ideas. \u00a0He shares his ‘torch on a dark night’ method of story development, and gives us all the detail on how he develops a story that will delight and entertain young readers – even if it does involve being mean to his characters!<\/em><\/h3>\n

I\u2019ve always been jealous of those who have come up with a wonderful premise for a book.\u00a0 For example, 10 people come to an uninhabited island and one by one start to get murdered (And Then There Were None<\/i> by Agatha Christie) or, a 16 year old wakes up in the body of a different person each day (Every Day<\/i> by David Levithan)<\/p>\n

When I wanted to write a story, I couldn\u2019t come up with something that neat, but I did start thinking about the idea of a cowardly knight.\u00a0 I thought that would be interesting because when you think of a knight, you think of someone who is big, tough and brave; someone you can rely on to protect the kingdom.\u00a0 But what if the person whose job it was to protect the kingdom was actually a scaredy cat who had to deal not only with giant cockroaches, a mysterious sorcerer and snakes that fall from the sky, but also with his own spectacular lack of bravery.<\/p>\n

I liked the idea because most heroes and heroines in adventure stories don\u2019t seem to get scared much.\u00a0 When a giant spider or a pack of zombies or a flying crocodile attacks them they always seem to act decisively and bravely, whereas I think that a lot of us \u2013 and definitely me \u2013 would be cowering in the corner and trying not to cry.\u00a0 So I wanted my hero to have to deal not only with external threats, but also with his own cowardice.<\/p>\n

Once I had my starting point \u2013 a cowardly knight – then I simply tried to be as cruel to Roderick as I could.\u00a0 I kept asking, \u2018If I was a cowardly knight, what would be the very worst thing that could happen?<\/em>\u2019 And whatever unpleasant things I could think of, I made them happen to Roderick.\u00a0 Then I tried to work out how Roderick would deal with it.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t plan the entire story.\u00a0 For me it works like this.\u00a0 Imagine you are walking along a track in the middle of a night with a torch.\u00a0 The torch beam won\u2019t show you your destination, but it will show you a little way ahead.\u00a0 And when you get there, it will show you a bit further ahead.\u00a0 I just try and see the next thing that will happen in the story, and hope that when I have written that bit, I will then be able to see a little bit further ahead.\u00a0 And usually I can.\u00a0 When I get stuck, I go back to the beginning and go through it all again, improving and polishing, and then by the time I get back to the part where I was stuck I will usually have worked something out.<\/p>\n

The other thing I wanted to do in The Adventures of Sir Roderick the Not-Very Brave<\/i><\/a> was to create a big, jaw-dropping plot-turning surprise about two-thirds of the way through the book.\u00a0 My favourite stories are those where, just when you think you have worked out what is going on, you suddenly find out something surprising that changes everything; maybe it\u2019s that a character you thought was wise and kind is actually evil, or the other way around, or that someone you thought had died is actually still alive.\u00a0 I love it when the whole story gets turned inside out and you realise that everything you have thought up until that point has been wrong or incomplete \u2013 so I tried to do that with Sir Roderick<\/i>.\u00a0 And it was quite complex.\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of like designing a jigsaw puzzle, but with every piece having another pattern on the back, so that when you flip the whole puzzle over there is another picture that is kind of like the picture on the front, but a bit different.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to say what happens at the end of Sir Roderick<\/em> of course, but I will say this.\u00a0 At the start of the story Roderick is pretty sure that he\u2019s hopeless at being a knight, and that he\u2019ll never get any better at it, and I think we all sometimes feel like that about something.\u00a0 In fact, you feel like that a lot when you are trying to write a story!\u00a0 I do, anyway, and I think lots of other writers do too.\u00a0 But then eventually you realise that if you keep going, putting one word down after another that\u2026well I\u2019m not going to say it gets easier, but eventually it does get finished!<\/p>\n