Away with the facts. Think of the story.

I’ve been struggling with the last third of a story, much of which takes place mainly in the Lake District. I knew the ending, on the Scottish border close to Gretna Green, but I could never work out how I could find enough story for my 12-year-old heroine as she walked there from Lake Windermere. 

I spent hours studying books of photos and Google Maps, measuring distances, calculating how far she could walk in a day and trying to mould my plot around all those distances. Trying to be as faithful to the landscape as possible, I kept asking myself what she could do in all those miles. I ended up covering pages and pages with her walking and looking for food and water and shelter. And it was BORING! Nothing happened. There was no drama!

Then one morning I realised that I was writing a story. My story. And since it’s set in the future, in a landscape destroyed by pollution, I’m not exactly constructing a documentary. So if I wanted to cut the distance from Lake Windermere to the Scottish border in half, I could. And add a castle where there isn’t one. Which I did. 

Once I’d done that, the ideas emerged and everything began to flow. I was able to get a decent storyline down with little trouble. 

And it all became fun again.