Writer Of The Week: Joanne Duncan

Welcome, Joanne! Your short story, ‘Familiar Danger’, opens this week’s issue and is set in 1935. How do you approach writing historical fiction?

I do spend a fair bit of time on research when writing period stories, and find it quite absorbing.

The internet is great for checking facts and timelines but, for stories set in the 1930s, a familiarity with fiction actually written during the era also helps.

You can pick up a lot of social history from authors such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers – attitudes to class, relations between employers and employees, even just the way people spoke then.

This story features a detective agency called ‘Bateman And Niece’. How do you find writing about dynamics within a family?

My original reason for introducing the uncle was that it seemed less implausible for an inexperienced young woman to be employed as a private detective (as opposed to a secretary at a detective agency, say) if she was related to the senior partner.

It would make him a mentor rather than a boss and she could just get straight on with her detecting – no agonising about having to prove herself first.

The mother of their client also appears in the story, so there is a bit of a family theme going on.

An insight into a character’s upbringing can be useful for explaining why they behave in a certain way.

Do you find historical or contemporary fiction comes to you more naturally, or does it depend on the story?

On the whole, I tend to set more stories in the past than in the present day.

I think there’s a lot of fun to be had in taking different genres from different periods and seeing if you can adapt them to fit the requirements of a short story.

How do you come up with your wonderful story titles? Does the title come first, or the story idea?

Thanks for the compliment, Lucy, but I don’t find it easy at all.

In fact, I cudgel my brains for hours over story titles which are nearly always a late addition.

I think I owe this particular title to Agatha Christie, several of whose novels were named after nursery rhymes, although she seems to have decided on the rhyme first before cleverly engineering her plot to fit it.

Other good sources are proverbs, famous quotations and song titles. I always feel happier about a story once it has a (hopefully) snappy title.

What’s your favourite genre to write, and why?

My favourite genres are cosy crime and mystery, probably because those are my favourites to read.

It’s one of those things – some of us love a puzzle and would feel hard done by if every tiny anomaly wasn’t accounted for while others get a sinking feeling whenever the detective gathers everyone together in the library.

I’d never attempt a straight love story, although I might include a bit of romantic interest.

There’s lots of interesting dialogue in this story. How do you make sure it feels natural?

By tweaking and re-tweaking, basically, until it sounds natural in my head. In mysteries and cosy crime stories, the dialogue has to convey essential information but, if there’s too much exposition, it can become laboured and there’s a danger of giving away a possible future twist! You have to try to pare it back as far as possible while still leaving the meaning clear.

And finally – what are you reading at the moment (or what was the most recent book you read)?

At the moment, I’m reading  John le Carré’s George Smiley novels and am just getting towards the end of ‘The Honourable Schoolboy’.

I don’t belong to a book group due to the time commitment but I probably should, because I love discussing books.