Ben Tufnell: 'A novel is all about taking your time, both as a reader and a writer'
BY Emily Powter-Robinson
26th Apr 2023
Former student, Ben Tufnell, took two CBC courses during the 2020 lockdowns. Now, his debut novel The North Shore, will publish with Fleet, an imprint of Little, Brown Books on 27 Apr. We spoke about how writing a novel compares to writing short stories, crafting story settings and the books he’s enjoyed reading lately.
You took two CBC courses in 2020, Writing Short Stories in the summer and Edit & Pitch Your Novel in the autumn. How did your time studying with us impact your writing journey?
I did the short story course with Cynan Jones first. I didn't really know what to expect - I hadn't been in a learning situation for many many years - but it was brilliant. Very focussed on the craft and thinking about how and why a story works or fails. I'd been writing stories for many years but hadn't tried to publish them. The course gave me the confidence to begin to submit and in fact one of the first stories I published was one I'd worked on during the course. Fellow alumni might even recognise the prompt.
The edit and pitch course was quite different in that it was more focussed on the publishing side. The process of preparing a manuscript, pitch, synopsis etc and submitting to agents and publishers is a deeply mysterious one to the uninitiated. The course opened all that up. It made me realise I needed to do even more work on my book. And it encouraged me to get organised and take my creative writing seriously; to be professional about it. I've published books (about contemporary art and artists) before, but it felt like a massive leap to start putting my own creative work out there.
Many of our students find lifelong writing friends on our courses. Are you still in touch with anyone you met during your courses?
A group of us from the Edit and Pitch course have kept in touch and do a monthly catch up via Zoom. We share tips, work and give feedback. We're all working in very different genres, but I think the support and encouragement the group offers are really important. From the group of ten, four of us now have agents. Niamh McAnally published a nonfiction book last year but I'm the first off the mark with a novel. It's a really international group and hopefully 2023 is the year we all get to meet in person at last.
Your debut novel The North Shore is being published by Fleet, an imprint of Little, Brown Books in April. Set on the Norfolk coastline, it is described as both an unsettling story of transformation and a coming-of-age story. Can you tell us a bit more about the novel and the inspiration behind it?
The original inspiration came from a C15th account of a 'wild man' caught in fishing nets, who was imprisoned in Orford Castle. That and a very particular landscape. The book begins with the classic Gothic trope of a storm and something left behind in its wake. I worked on it for more than ten years and the final book is very different to the one that I set out to write. Somewhere along the line I got stuck but the story eventually suggested a radical change of direction, and I had no choice but to tag along.
You’ve had short stories published in journals and have been longlisted or highly commended for several awards including the BBC Short Story Award (2022), the Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize (2022) and the Society of Authors’ ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award for short fiction (2022). How does writing short stories compare to novel writing?
They are completely different games. I love the focus and concision of short stories. You have to work hard to make everything count. However, I do also like stories that go off on tangents and diversions. Usually, less is more, but sometimes you need to break the rules and let some space in.
A novel is all about taking your time, both as a reader and a writer. Sometimes I can wake up with a fully formed short story there in my head and get the best part of a first draft down in a day. Of course, the editing and rewriting can take months (or even years) but the spontaneity of that initial burst of inspiration is something special. With a novel, the idea that you’re sitting down to write something that might take months, or years, or even decades, to complete is in itself both terrifying and exhilarating. All that time hopefully enriches the work.
The sense of place in The North Shore is one of its most powerful motifs, with the Norfolk coastline acting as a medium to convey the mystery of the story. Do you have any tips for writers who may be struggling to craft their story setting?
It's kind of obvious to say 'write what you know' but there's some truth to it. The flipside is that sometimes writing what you don't know is effective too. It makes your imagination work overtime. I grew up in Norfolk and I feel that landscape is part of me. But when I wrote the book I didn't want to be too tied to reality. I didn't go back and check things but relied on my very unreliable memories. So it's all filtered through the imagination. It's a fictional Norfolk, which is why it's never explicitly identified in the book. All the place names are changed, and different locations are mashed together. That said, one early reader actually identified the village that served as the model for the village in the story, which blew my mind. I thought I'd hidden it pretty well.
What books have you enjoyed reading lately?
Two recent contemporary novels that also deal with place and nature and which really impressed me are Emergency and Gathering Evidence (his new novel, In Ascension, just came out). For short stories the Reverse Engineering series from Scratch Books is really worth checking out. There are two volumes so far and they feature great contemporary short stories with author interviews about the writing of them. Highly recommended for anyone interested in writing (or indeed reading) short fiction.
Finally, what’s next for your writing journey?
I'm putting together a collection of stories. That's an interesting process, going back and looking at them all and trying to work how they might work alongside each other, discovering the thematic connections, piecing together the jigsaw. I'm also working on a new novel. Like The North Shore it will focus on the relationship between a protagonist and a place – not in East Anglia this time - but I want it to be very different in feel. It should be ready in about 2033.
The North Shore is out on the 27 Apr. Order your copy here.
For more information about our short courses, including Writing Short Stories and Edit & Pitch Your Novel, visit our courses page.
The books linked in this blog can be found on our Bookshop.org shop front. Curtis Brown Creative receive 10% whenever someone buys from our Bookshop.org page.