Jessica Ruston’s latest
novel, The Lies You Told Me, is a riveting novel about one girl’s search for
the truth about her mother…
I’m sure you’re already familiar with the idea that you should use
all of the five senses in your writing - describing the smell of a croissant as
well as how it looks, the crunch of footsteps as the killer walks up the path
towards his victim... All of those kinds of details that can help bring the
scene you are writing to life. But it can also be worth thinking about how you
can use these different senses, as well as other forms of inspiration, to evoke
the world of your novel as you are planning and writing it - and to help bring
it to life in the minds of readers once it’s published.
Here’s what I mean. My new novel, The Lies You Told Me, is a
psychological thriller of sorts - a family mystery about a woman in her thirties
trying to find out the truth about what happened to her mother, who disappeared
when she was small. The novel begins when Klara, the daughter, is sent a key in
the post, which turns out to belong to a lock up garage containing a box of her
mother’s possessions, including her diary. We follow Klara’s search back into
her mother’s past as she - and we - read extracts from her mother Sadie’s
diary. Sadie isn’t always the most reliable of narrators, so Klara has to piece
together the real story using various types of evidence - the diary, her
memories of her mother (which of course are unreliable as well), what her
father has told her about the woman he loved and who left, others of Sadie’s
belongings contained in the trunk...
People always ask where writers get their ideas from, and in this
case the original seed of the idea came from a line in one of my favourite
poems, Autumn Journal, by Louis MacNeice. The line - ‘All of London littered
with remembered kisses,’ had always haunted me, and one day I began to build a
story around it. The idea of these memories floating around London, ready and
waiting to trap their owners as they went about their business... it caught my
imagination (still does - I’m not yet done with the theme of memory and these
mental maps that we all carry about with us). As I was writing the book, I kept
returning to the line, turning it over in my head. What sort of a love affair
might have littered London with these recalled moments? A passionate one, an
obsessive one... (another theme I return to again and again). And so, bit by
bit, the novel grew from that single line. Of course it grew beyond that
original image - but that line, that snag of interest is still at the heart of
the story, for me, at least, and as I wrote, I kept on returning to that poem,
reading it over and over as I try to hold on to the feeling that the line first
gave me, and somehow imbue the writing with it.
I don’t know whether any of you listen to music as you write - in
general I don’t. Even lyric-less, classical stuff fills my head too much,
distracting me and pulling me towards the world it is trying to evoke, when
what I need to be doing is immersing myself in the world I am creating. But
sometimes when I’m writing I will hit upon a song that seems to sum up the mood
of a scene, or chapter, or even of the whole book. When that happens I’ll
listen to it on a loop, over and over again, while writing (do all novelists
have a touch of OCD? I suspect maybe so...). With The Lies You Told Me this
song was Love Her Madly, by The Doors. The line ‘don’t you love her as she’s
walking out the door,’ could have been written about Sadie, or a woman like
her, and it filled my head with images and emotions that flowed directly into
the novel. Now, post-publication, I’ve put together a playlist of songs that
link to the novel somehow, and this is, of course, top of the list. It’s one of
those things that can link the fictional world of your book to the real one,
tying the two together in a way that I always find interesting, and that I hope
others do.
I’ve always been a visual writer, and I often use images as I write,
for research and inspiration. The internet has helped with this, of course -
it’s easy to find all manner of old photographs and other memorabilia online.
So for The Lies You Told Me, I looked at old fashion photography and
advertisements from the late 1960s and early 1970s (Sadie was a model in her
youth), video footage of London from the same period, newspaper and magazine
features, and maps of the city that Sadie fell in love with (and where she fell
in love). Youtube is fantastic for this - though it’s easy to spend hours and
hours lost in it, calling it ‘work’.
Inspired by some of the images I had used while writing the book,
when it was published I created a Pinterest board that gives a teaser of the
story using 10 images - it’s here: and tools such as Pinterest are useful while you’re writing and planning as
well. I now collect images relating to ideas on themed boards (you can make
them private so no one can see them until you’re ready), and refining the spine
of your story down to a selection of carefully chosen images can help you
clarify where the heart of it lies, if you’re that kind of thinker.
So a poem, music, imagery - inspiration and atmosphere can come from
all sorts of places, and by actively surrounding ourselves with them we can
help ourselves create a piece of writing that contains something of the spirit
of those other works, other worlds. I’m sure there are a multitude of other
ways that I haven’t stumbled upon yet - some writers include recipes in their
books, and maybe cook their characters’ food as they write?! How do you go
about finding and retaining inspiration, and working it into your books?
Jessica Ruston’s bestselling debut novel, LUXURY, was published in 2009 by Headline Review and was the winner of the Debut of the Year 2009 category at the Elle Magazine Literary Awards. LUXURY was followed by TO TOUCH THE STARS in 2011 and THE DARKER SIDE OF LOVE in 2012. Her fourth novel, THE LIES YOU TOLD ME is now available. She is the author of two non-fiction books as well as a number of screenplays.
Jessica’s journalism includes a weekly fiction serial for The Lady called COME FOR DINNER, features for Grazia, Red, Woman and Home, Scarlet, the Guardian online and Mslexia, as well as book reviews for Mslexia, The Lady and The Spectator.
Luxury is under option to Lex Filmed Entertainment.
Jessica is represented by Simon Trewin at William Morris Endeavor London. Her website is: http://jessicaruston.com/


