Dreda Say Mitchell: ‘All the things I thought might be a disadvantage made me unique . . . No one writes like YOU’
BY Discoveries
26th Sep 2024
CBC and Curtis Brown are proud to be partnering with the Women’s Prize Trust and Audible to run Discoveries for a fifth year. This unique writing development prize and programme offers practical support and encouragement to aspiring female novelists of all ages and backgrounds, from across the UK and Ireland. The prize accepts novels in any genre of adult fiction, with entrants invited to submit the first 10,000 words of their novel and a synopsis.
We spoke to award-winning crime and thriller author Dreda Say Mitchell about her approach to planning and plotting, and what she’ll be looking for as a judge for Discoveries 2025.
Plotting and twists are so integral to crime and thrillers. What’s your approach to planning big reveals, do you have an ending in mind when you start planning a new book or series? Would you say you’re more of a ‘plotter’ or a ‘pantser’?
I’m definitely a plotter. I think it’s a hangover from my teaching days where I always had a lesson plan. Also I’d never know when an inspector might be lurking near the door. Plotting provides me with some much – a clear narrative drive of the story, ensuring the pacing works, getting the characters right, pinpointing exactly when I want those OMG moments to be. Plotting provides me with a safety net where there’s no writer’s block and a roadmap which means I will finish my book. I never forget what my first publisher said to me after I asked her why she chose me out of everyone else. Her answer was simple: ‘I knew you would finish.’
There are so many tools for planning the Big Reveal – foreshadowing, red herrings, multiple suspects, unreliable narrator, controlling the release of information etc. My favourite is dropping an incredibly important piece of information in a scene where there is so much going on the reader will probably miss its significance.
I always know what’s going to happen at the start and at the end, including sometimes another twisted ‘I never saw that coming’ moment after the denouement.
Your latest novel Girl, Missing is fast-paced psychological thriller, with a missing schoolgirl at its heart. It is full of twists and turns that keep readers guessing. Do you have any tips for aspiring authors on how to build suspense and maintain intrigue in their work?
The main character has to have a major league dilemma. What sits alongside this is that you, as a writer have to get the reader invested in the main character so that they are there every step of the way caring about this character solving their problem. Here are four more tips:
- Have strong hooks: Draw in your reader from the first word. Pull them in with gripping moments. One of the areas that I focus on is the first line of every chapter. For example, which is more gripping: ‘Mary was in the kitchen so she made a cup of tea and then there was a knock at the door.’ Or: ‘The loud bang at the door shattered Mary’s calm.’ Start with that dramatic action. Who’s at the door? Why does it shatter Mary’s calm? The door to where?
- Pacing: go from high octane, fast-paced scenes to slower, tension-building ones. It can’t be all fast-paced or the reader will become exhausted. Slow-paced because the reader may become bored. A mix of both gives the story a terrific narrative drive.
- Misdirection: lead the readers down a false path, such as making them believe it’s a certain character who is the villain/antagonist. This will really keep your readers on their toes.
- Cliffhangers: These are great to end chapters on. But it’s important to remember that a cliffhanger doesn’t have to be a visually dramatic moment such as a bomb, it can equally be dramatic to find out something crucial about a character.
Your characters are so vividly drawn, gritty, complex and compelling. When you’re creating a protagonist like East End gangster Maureen ‘Big Mo’ Watson, how do you ensure that they are engaging and believable in a way that can sustain a multi-book series?
I love people. Love finding out about people. Who they are? What they do? What has been their journey to…? My family are from Grenada and we are notorious for being nosy! I use the same questions to create complex characters. On the surface they can appear one thing but what is really driving them? So in the case of Big Mo she wants to be the Queen of London’s Underworld. Beneath all of that what drives her is she never knew her father and she wants to prove herself worthy. Beneath all that tough swagger is a young woman who craves the love of a parent. For me, the things that make characters complex are the essential needs and wants of human beings. A character may be seeking love while another wants revenge.
In the case of a multi-books series I ensure that readers are engaged with my main character. The character must be on a personal journey, so by the end of book one they have to be in a different place to where they were at the start of the book.
One way to create believability is through the character having relatable dilemmas that readers may have found themselves in. In Big Mo’s case she may exist in the world of gangland but she still struggles with the weight of family expectations and moral challenges. The key is to show that beneath the tough exterior of a gangland boss, she faces emotional and practical challenges that readers can recognize from their own lives.
Who is your favourite fictional character?
Lady Macbeth. I found Shakespeare very hard to penetrate at school, usually because of the language . . . And then Lady Macbeth rocks up! Oh my goodness, what a revelation. A woman whose ambition would stop at nothing to get her husband to the top. What she doesn’t contend with is the moral consequences and guilt and that’s what makes her such a complex and tortured character. Tortured character has to be one of my best loved tropes as a reader. She goes through a fierce internal struggle and that eventually sends her over the edge. Would I like to meet her down a dark alley . . . No!
Which books do you always recommend to others?
The Colour Purple by Alice Walker: this book changed my life. I read this as a young black woman growing up in the East End and it gave me such strength to forge forward. It made me laugh, cry, rail at the unfairness of the world. But above all it made me see that I am unique and worthy of love, respect and have the power to shape my own destiny. Alice Walker’s book reminds me that literature has a transformational power.
Jack Reacher series by Lee Child: a masterclass in creating an extraordinary protagonist and how to sustain a book series.
The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre: this story is better than fiction. The author writes with an edge of the seat style that kept me reading into the small hours.
On Writing by Stephen King: an honest and open book about the technique of writing and being a writer. Incredibly authentic.
Wild Swans by Jung Chand: I came across this in on a tiny shelf in a family run hotel in Tanzania. Once I opened I couldn’t stop. Such an emotional, poignant and in places gut-wrenching memoir about three generations of Chinese women.
We’re delighted to have you on board as a judge for Discoveries 2025 – do you have any advice for writers getting ready to submit to the prize?
I don’t want to give the usual advice of polish your manuscript, start early etc. I want to talk from the heart. I was so scared the first time I ever went to a creative writing class – mainly because I was a young woman from a migrant family, both my parents left school before they were sixteen and I grew up on a housing estate in the East End of London. In that class I thought there would be lots of journalists, people who’ve written for years. It was the tutor who ran this class who eventually published my first novel. Years later, she told me one of the things that made my writing standout was it sounded different. What made it different – coming from East London, coming from a migrant family, coming from a background with a history of oral story telling. All the things I thought might be a disadvantage made me unique.
Be YOU! No one writes like YOU! Believe in YOU!
What will you be looking for from entrants when reading for Discoveries?
I want writing that has ‘heart’. It beats with a unique rhythm. It’s able to grip and grab me into a new world.
Dreda Say Mitchell is part of the Discoveries 2025 judging panel – she will be joined by chair of judges and founder of the Women's Prize Kate Mosse, acclaimed authors Chloe Timms and Claire Kohda, Curtis Brown literary agent Jess Molloy and CBC’s founder Anna Davis.
Best of luck preparing your submission to Discoveries 2025. We’re so excited to read your work!
For advice preparing your novel-in-progress to enter Discoveries 2024, sign up for our free webinar: Your Novel: How to Get Started (taking place on Weds 2 Oct). This special panel event will feature expert speakers, including Dreda Say Mitchell. Click the button below to find out more about the event.
Get your hands on Dreda Say Mitchell’s latest novel Girl, Missing.
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