Catherine Forde was discovered on the slush pile. Before turning to writing full time, she worked as a lexicographer for Collins and taught in secondary schools. She lives in Glasgow with her husband and two sons . Catherine's latest thriller Sugarcoated will be published in April 2008.

In this story starter she advises writers to use what they know and to 'keep it real'.

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I was inspired to write Sugarcoated when my husband told me about a horrific attack that took place outside his Optician’s shop. Two men threw a third man against the shop window and proceeded to attack him with hammers. The incident happened in broad daylight, and was over in moments. The three men involved fled the scene leaving one of my husband’s staff crouched behind the reception desk, terrified by what she had partially witnessed. The scene my husband described so vividly was so out of the ordinary but its setting so familiar to me that my mind started to consider all sorts of possible motives for the attack: Who were the men involved? What did they look like? What happened next? I felt that I had been handed an empty film set; all it needed were characters. I was intrigued that there was a real-life witness to this hammer attack and decided that the main character of Sugarcoated would also be a witness, albeit a reluctant one. Since I love putting downbeat, misfit teenagers at the heart of my stories I replaced the adult witness with eighteen year old Cloddy Quinn and let the story unfold through her eyes. By making the main character young, inexperienced and socially isolated I was able to entangle her in a world of crime and put her in situations that a more mature adult would avoid through common sense.

How to use real life in stories.

CHARACTER: When you are writing a story why don’t you try to include people you actually know as characters in it? I base a lot of minor characters on people I have met or who I know. This is just another device that helps me make a character more realistic and believable. I don’t lift a character from real life and put him or her in my story but I might base aspect of a character on a real person. Maybe somebody’s voice, or appearance, or idiosyncrasies of dress. By building a new character from someone who really exists, I feel my character has meat on the bone from the start. I change the name, of course.

Try to use familiar settings that have made an impression on you.

 Everyone knows familiar places that affect them deeply. For example you might pass a house that draws you in or intrigues you. Is it haunted? What is like inside? I like to use places like this in my stories, rather than invent settings from scratch. When creating settings for a story, think about places that stick in your mind: eg spooky houses, atmospheric walks, places that put on edge, or make you happy etc. Your emotional response will enrich your descriptions.

 Look out for the history of your surroundings

No matter where you live there will be places you know or have heard of that have an interesting history attached to them: battle grounds, scenes of crime, dwelling of famous people etc etc. Seek out stories about your surroundings and incorporate the history of such locations into your writing. ( For example in The Drowning Pond I use a local park that has a real Drowning Pond and a grisly history as the setting for several chapters of the novel) .

Steal your local geography.

When I am describing places I rarely invent them from scratch but picture in my head everyday streets and parks and shopping centres that I know well. I find that using familiar geography helps me to focus on my characters and the plot of my stories without having to fabricate backgrounds as well. Is it cheating? Maybe, but a reader will never know that the location that you are writing about and putting your characters in actually exists.

Try to bring all the senses into your writing.

When I am describing interiors, for example, houses or rooms, I nearly always envisage ones that I have actually been in: friends’ houses, my granny’s kitchen, my old bedroom, grotty flats. The same goes for school scenes in my novels. When I am writing them, in my head I see my characters in either the school I went to, or schools I have taught in. I use classrooms, corridors, dinner halls, staffrooms, gyms and by recalling concrete places I am able to conjure up, not just the way some place looked but its smell and sound and atmosphere and taste. I think it’s much easier to write about these things if you have genuinely experienced them.

2008-03-17