I’m delighted to have the wonderful Claire Fayer’s on the blog today sharing a piece about how she came up with the idea for Tapper Watson – and it is a fascinating process, with brilliant advice for anyone struggling to come up with their own writing ideas. Read on to be inspired!
Why Tapper Watson?
Often on school visits, someone will put up their hand and ask if I’m ever going to write a book without magic.
Now I can point to Tapper Watson and say that I have. This is my present day, Greek myth, wacky technology sci-fi versions of Jason and the Argonauts adventure, with not a scrap of magic to be found anywhere.
Why did I write it? Why do I write anything? The simple answer is because it’s fun.
When I started my first book (the Accidental Pirates, Voyage to Magical North), I took a notebook and wrote a list of everything I’d like to see in a book. Then I challenged myself to see how many of them I could put into one story. Given that the list included pirates, libraries, sword fights and penguins, it was quite a challenge.
I still use that method. Mirror Magic started with mystery, magic gone wrong and two parallel worlds. Storm Hound had Norse gods, Welsh magic and sheep.
After Storm Hound, for a long time, I found it difficult to come up with a new story. I feared I had nothing left to say, and clearly, it was a better use of my time to swoon around the house like a Victorian lady, lamenting the death of my imagination.
After a while, my husband, who is far more sensible than me, pointed out that even if it was true that I’d said everything I had to say with Storm Hound, that was over a year ago. I was a different person now with new experiences and new thoughts.
Why does my husband have to be right about these things?
I was going to need a bigger notebook.
I started playing with the ideas of memory loss, Greek myth, heist stories. I wrote exploratory chapters set in Victorian England, in outer space, in modern day Wales. At some point it struck me that one of the oldest heist stories in the world is Jason and the Argonauts, and I suddenly knew I was going to write a Jules Verne quest adventure based on Greek myth and set in a weird version of outer space.
The actual story took at least eight drafts. I started in different time periods, I added characters and took them out again. With every draft, the story became less like normal science fiction and more like the world of Tapper Watson.
Why Tapper Watson, by the way?
I give a reason for his nickname in the book, but the actual reason is because I wrote a trial chapter set in Victorian Britain. I discovered that factories use to employ ‘tappers’ who’d walk the streets at daybreak, knocking on people’s windows with a long stick to wake them for work. Walking alone in the semi-dark armed with a big stick, seemed like a perfect situation for adventure to happen.
I soon decided the Victorian setting wasn’t working and I moved the Earth sections to modern-day Swansea, but Tapper’s name stuck.
I’m very grateful to Penny Thomas and the team at Firefly Press for bringing Tapper Watson into the world. I hope you enjoy reading his story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
