On these pages I'd like to offer readers a speech, essay, article, interview, workshop note or perhaps a short story, updated on a regular basis. Please follow the links on the left to other stories.

         In February I was once invited onto Writerspace.com to chat with readers, and it was a lot of fun. One reader asked us both how we arrived at the plot for a new novel, and I found myself answering just as I always do, because for me it goes: situation, character, and then plot. Here is a fuller explanation, in the form of a short article I wrote in October 1998 for HeartsTalk, the magazine of the Romance Writers of Australia.

         When a novel is taking shape, the dynamics of character and situation are vital. Your hero and heroine have lives that begin long before page one, and if you and the reader take a compelling journey with them between the covers, you can imagine them living on into delicious infinity. Their situation, therefore, is of huge significance: it may have formed them (he grew up on an outback cattle station), it may be a challenge or danger (she is a raw recruit on a sailing vessel), it may represent a goal (they are climbing the Matterhorn together).

         The possibilities for situation and character are thrilling, so cast about for excitement. Your kind of excitement. Real life is full of the right stuff: here is one example.

         I know a man who paints wonderful, very sought-after pictures of wild Australia. Not long ago he decided to go sketching in Antarctica, and spent weeks in cramped quarters, making forays amongst the seals and penguins, in the windiest spot on the globe. Out among the icebergs he produced stunning gouaches, many of them blotched with white where flurries of snow had frozen to the paper. When it came time to leave, the pick-up ship was delayed by pack ice; if it had been held up just a few days more, his group would have had to winter over for another six months. But he and the paintings got back safely.

         Having told you his situation, I don't even need to sketch in his personality: you have already guessed his deep love of nature, his willingness to take risks, his self-reliance and creative energy. I can also tell you that he has sea-blue eyes with not a particle of ice in them.

         I am not suggesting anyone write an Antarctic romance on this basis, I am simply drawing attention to the dynamics between character and situation, and how they give life even to a mini-story. So, when you are thinking about your hero and heroine, concentrate on their individual situations. You may well find that situation actually gives rise to character. I once asked myself: what if a slave escaped from Martinique in mid-eighteenth century and fled to France, seeking liberty and revenge? From that situation to knowing about my heroine, Ayisha, was one easy step: to throw herself against such odds and survive, she had to be both totally desperate and blessed with exceptional moral strength and endurance. She also had to be able to grasp help when it was offered. She would need it!

         Ayisha is impelled by a profound desire to change her world. This is partly what draws her to the hero, but I had no need to spell this out. It was obvious, once we learned that he wrote illicit books that criticised the government of France. Ayisha’s lover, the Marquis de Richemont, sprang from my research, which even gave me his name: in 1749 a Paris student, Dupré de Richemont, was arrested and thrown in the Bastille for having a banned manuscript under the mattress in his lodgings. When I read this, in an obscure volume in a university library, I thought: ‘My hero!’

         For historical novelists, such discoveries are the sparks that can ignite scenes, encounters and whole storylines. If your novel is going to be set in the past, focus on what makes you interested in your chosen period: if it’s the political conflict, place your hero and heroine close to the seat of power, or in it, just as Isolde Martyn does in her wonderful medieval novels. Be a king- or queen-maker: the field is yours. If it’s a particular event that grabs you, such as a crusade, put your characters in the thick of it. As they struggle, they grow in stature before your eyes. If your period is one of great change, even chaos, perhaps your main character is on the move, driven by ambition, or by love for someone who seemed beyond their reach but who is suddenly thrown in their path. If you have a vague, sensual ‘feel’ for a favourite period or place, focus on it until you find out where its deepest potential lies for you. Maybe your heroine should be a perfume maker, or your hero constructs beautiful armour, or they are both after the tippet concession at court ...

         The dynamics of situation and character are vital in contemporary novels also. Never put a character in a situation that bores or confines you. Let your mind range. When you have chosen the situation, ask how your characters feel about it: if they are both top jewellers bidding for a superb diamond in Amsterdam, does your hero really mind if he loses to the charismatic woman who spends the whole encounter trying to pretend she’s not attracted to him? If she wins, does she suspect that he is subtly patronising her? After all, if he feared her as a rival, he would have done his best to gain the gem.

         Once you have a compelling situation and people who are enmeshed in it, responding to it in different ways, you are on the road to creating a world that you and the reader can really plunge into. Another good thing about dynamic situation and character is the dialogue that results: it sounds real rather than artificial or forced. Put your characters together for a scene, as though you were running a movie in your head, and let them talk: they’ll have plenty to say because something is already going on and they need to deal with it. Select the significant parts of their exchanges and write them down; don’t bother taking down the bits where they’ve wandered off the main subject. They may talk for five minutes and you’ll only salvage a few lines … that’s all right: those lines will leap off the page, taut with conviction, when your book is read.

         Never let anyone put you off a situation or character, either. If they fascinate you, and you can explore the dynamics in your book, you will carry the reader into a thrilling new world.