How TRC was written – Part 2
Part 2
Somewhere above Ireland on a plane on our way to the USA six weeks after we started plotting TRC. We now had an established plot and characters. Once we settled down after the usual kerfuffle around boarding the plane and taking our seats, we started straining our imaginations to outline the content of the novel’s chapters. We’d worked intensely, independently, liaising regularly, researching the genesis of our plot, Prince Albert Victor (PAV), second in line to Queen Victoria’s throne plus Tsarina Alexandra, the extensive Russian Imperial Family and Rasputin. We had dreamt up present day British and Russian characters as well. These would dramatically and revengefully bring the consequences of the sins of their “forbearers” into today’s world.
As we chatted away, building up our chapters, I became aware of a man and a woman sitting across the aisle from me looking at us askance but continually. If I thought anything of it at all, I hoped that they believed we were writers developing a play or a novel. Which was what we were doing! But we quickly went back to our chapter building. We threw out to each other different scenarios which we thought would be the natural, consequential outcomes of our plot. We tested them against Kipling’s Six Serving Men (mentioned last time), plausibility and their excitement value. If we thought an outcome was, for example, very exciting but not entirely plausible, we worked backwards, proposed scene by proposed scene, to the source of the outcome. And with a bit of creative mental sleight of hand, the writer’s version of the magician’s distraction technique, we twisted our outlined circumstances or disguised their significance to justify the outcome.
We found the process of developing our chapters and the likely narrative to be time consuming and demanding work. But we weren’t bothered. We realised that this phase of writing a novel was critical and was always going to be hard work. We had read quite a bit about writing and its process, including Andrew Crofts’ “The Freelance Writer’s Handbook”
But before any of that I experienced one of life’s “there I was minding my business” irritations – but nothing compared to the twists we were planning for TRC. Having passed through immigration, I was standing in the hall waiting for Autumn, before going to collect our main luggage. Our two onlookers from the plane approached me and the gentleman said I’d left a bag near the immigration desk. Even though I knew that could not possibly be so as I had the one piece of hand luggage I’d taken on the flight, I instinctively looked down to check that I did have my bag which was hanging heavily from my shoulder. When I said, “Thank you, but I have my bag here,” the middle-aged gentleman thrust out his chin and replied somewhat belligerently, “Well, it wasn’t there before you got there but was after you left!” Visions of spending the Winter days of my life in Guantanamo flashed, albeit briefly, through my already pumped-up imagination. Be cool, Bonny, be cool, I thought. It is at times like this that my old age and experience of working directly with people for decades are of great benefit. So I smiled, and said, “That would mean I had two pieces of hand luggage. As you see, this one is enough for an old man like me to carry.” My accuser relaxed, looked me in the eyes closely, sort of smiled, mumbled “sorry” and left with the woman he was with. “Strewth!” or something like that, I thought . Later, it occurred to me that our overheard talk of spies, royalty, lies and revolution must have convinced that gentleman that I was up to no good!
Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed our family’s company and both the east and west coast of the USA, and finished outlining our chapters during the seventeen hours of making our way back to London.
Next week, in Part 3: How the seasons and the year’s events merged with writing TRC, and inspired some of it.
The Ruthless Court 
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