Authenticity

I’m a contemporary fiction writer. In the words of a lady attending my fiction workshop, ‘You just make it all up!’ Her face expressing utter outrage that anyone could write down such lies.

I remembered this while I was looking at Cambridge colleges for 16+ education. I chose all the books for my character’s English A level and read all the syllabuses for different versions of the BTEC in Performing Arts and in UAL Performance and Production. I hunted for music at A level in the same college for her friend and made a note that I needed to visit one of the further education colleges to be able to describe with some accuracy the foyer where the two characters enter the building and go to their separate courses. I found out that my guessed/imagined version of what clothes and equipment was needed for a dance and drama course is more or less accurate, but have not yet discovered whether there is a college that has courses to suit both girls, one being much more academic than the other.

Does it matter? After publishing one of the Dr Mike Lewis novels I was challenged by a reader over the numbers of the buses the fictional Dr had boarded to travel to his clients’ house. That was fine, I’d worked out the route and reminded her the timetable and bus numbers had changed. There was another query that ‘There are no steps there’ when Dr Lewis walked out of a public building. Maybe I had written it a little unclearly, there were no immediate steps, but there were steps to sit on nearby.

It’s difficult to know where to imagine and when to ground the story in reality. I became rather lost when looking at curricula. While I tried to work out whether a BTEC and A Level could use the same Shakespeare text and whether AS had to be achieved before the texts for the A level could be studied, I remembered I had a writer friend who had taught English at A level. She was able to reassure me that I was looking at the right website for A levels and had worked out my characters’ book requirements well. If I can’t find out whether the drama in the BTEC can use the same text, I can re-imagine my story. But what I cannot change is the need for my character to meet the requirements to go on to a degree in dance.

So, no, we writers don’t make it all up. We research, we walk in the places where our characters walk and listen to the noises around, and see the place where our character stumbles. We find a street name and identify a building there to house an imaginary Mental Health Team. We walk into hospitals and take the lift to the top of the building where the imaginary ward will be and eat in the canteen, identifying those who have worn their scrubs into the cafeteria. We count the steps from our non-real avenue where our character lives to the bus stop to go to the cinema.

Thus the reader is grounded and the world is recognisable. Our fabrication of the story is woven through with reality. Or maybe reality is woven in throughout our story.

Annie Try is the name Angela Hobday uses when writing novels. Her novels reflect her training in psychology, especially the Dr Mike Lewis series published by Instant Apostle. Her most recent novel, published by Kevin Mayhew, is mainly for young adults: The Dangerous Dance of Emma JJ. It features a teen who lives with her foster carer but has overcome unsafe situations in her life and now meets more challenges. Annie is always eager to talk about writing, runs workshops and loves encouraging other writers.