If you’re like me, you pants your way through writing a book.
Afterwards I always retrospectively apply certain frameworks to help gain some outside perspective on what I’ve written. These usually centre on where the action occurs and how it builds throughout the narrative. I call this “heat mapping”.

You know what a world looks like. You live in one. It is complex and dysfunctional and implausible and glorious. Creating a world as rich and diverse as the one we currently live in is impossible. At least, there is far too much to include in a book that anyone would want to read.

As a result, I have found that building a world is also an exercise in building the walls that contain it.

…So here I will say that copywriting is the art of isolating and communicating one single idea, whereas novel writing is about weaving together a whole ragged bunch of them. And more than that, the idea being communicated in copy, needs to be upfront, laid bare and said quickly… In a novel, ideas have space to move around and to grow and to form slowly in the reader’s mind. Crucially, there’s often more than one, they can be complex and they can also be up for interpretation.

Disney’s Moana has been highly acclaimed for its masterful fairytale narrative, its respectful approach to the polynesian culture, and its compelling and well rounded characters. Moana herself is bold and inspiring and the motives that drive the plot are compelling. However, what is most interesting about the film is the way in which Moana’s story develops and what ultimately gives her the strength to finish what she starts.

Imagine you’re writing a book and one team is working on chapter 1, another is working on chapter 2 and another is working on chapter 3 ...while the teams are concentrating on chapters 1-3 there’s hope that with the right management the story set-up will be coherent and successfully support the rest of the plot.

Then imagine that an editor runs in and says:

“We need chapter 6 right now!”