Writing is a lonely business. No-one can write your book other than you since no-one else knows how the plot will turn out and whether this or that character will survive but writing is a mixture of skills and each of them is employed at every stage of the process so a good writer is someone capable of dealing with several differently sized plates and keeping them all spinning at once.
In order to produce a readable work of fiction, the writer needs first to know what he or she is writing about. That is, unless you are inventing a whole new world (and post-apocalyptic books are very fashionable at the moment) the book must be factually correct. In order to achieve this, you need to know what you don't know and where to find the answers. Obviously, the internet and Wikipedia are invaluable here and, in some cases, can replace years of study at the British Library but, unless you know something of the subject matter in the first place, you run the risk of making a mistake since you will not know the extent of your lack of knowledge.
Then the writer needs a plot or plots and this is probably the moment when you need to decide whether your book is to be 'literary' or not. The hallmark of a literary work is that the prose is lapidary but not very much happens and plot, if present at all, takes a back seat. In 'popular' (i.e. books that people actually read and enjoy) fiction, plot tends to be foremost and, in some genres (Action & Adventure and Crime, for example) plot is nearly everything and characterisation is only superficial.
In popular fiction you need several plots points and twists. Truly talented story tellers like Jeffrey Archer (yes, Jeffrey Archer) work into their plots a mixture of short and long plot points. The long plot points are laid at the beginning of the story to hook the reader into wanting to know what happens at the end and the short plot points keep him/her entertained while turning the pages. The very successful TV series, Mad Men, is a superb example of a beautifully plotted story with twists and turns and events which seem to come from nowhere but the strands have discreetly been laid sometimes in a much earlier episode.
Then you need to know your characters. In a good book, they should be well-rounded with a hinterland that is unconnected with the plot. It is important if a character is to feel real, that we know something of his or her life outside the main story. For example, in a crime novel, if our hard-bitten Italian detective has a secret love of English country dancing this makes us feel that we know him better than if we had observed him only in the execution of his duties. In order to be interesting though, the hinterland must be quite different from the plot so that a detective whose hinterland was reading Agatha Christie novels would not tell us anything about the character which we did not already know.
Characterisation matters less if your book is very plot driven and the reader is expecting only thrills and spills but it is instant death to any credibility you may have gained with your readers if either your characters or your plot show inconsistencies. You know the sort of thing I mean - a man who has previously been upright and law-abiding suddenly takes a bribe or a woman leaves the house in a green coat and comes back home in a blue dress - this is lazy and unacceptable and it just makes the reader question everything else in the book.
The need for consistency is there in all works and is something the writer needs constantly to keep in his or her head but is a much greater burden when one is writing a series of books and must keep up with the characters' ages and stages of life, world events, relationships and interaction with the plot; if, for example, there are references to a full moon and/or a new moon in a plot, then you need to be careful that you do not have a full moon only days after the new one.
In my view, a plot, irrespective of the genre, needs light and shade. Every day reality is a mixture of happiness, grief, humour and tragedy and I see no reason why art should not imitate life. Shakespeare knew a thing or two about story telling and he was always careful to lighten the clouds of his tragedies with a little strategically placed humour.
Above all, I think that a book needs to be readable and, in addition to the non-negotiable rules of grammar, syntax, spelling and punctuation, the writer needs to ensure that his/her book is accessible to his/her target readership.
Well, there you have it, J. A. Gordon's rules for a good book. Anyone fancy trying their hand at it?
