I’d been in a pleasant moving trance with the rain on my skin and the footpath making a little wet sound at each step. I hadn’t been thinking about anything at all, much less that recalcitrant book sitting on my desk.

So why was it that, at the moment I put my hand on the front gate to push it open, I saw exactly what I needed to do? It was so simple. Get rid of William and Sophia Warner. Cut them out, kill them off.

Next morning, pen in hand, ready to cross out entire scenes, I could see what the problem was. I had two different stories in one book. One was a story about settlement—Wiseman and his family and their relationship with the Aboriginal people. The other was a classic revenge-and-romance story—Wiseman plotting over many years to square things with Warner and get Sophia.

I knew there was nothing wrong in principle with two stories in one book. But these two didn’t make a happy marriage. The first was a sombre story based on real, tragic events. The second was a lightweight, contrived thing. Neither looked good in the light of the other. It was like eating steak and fairy floss together.

When it came to drawing a line through the words, though, and removing that part of the book, I couldn’t seem to do it. Sophia was such a likeable character. That scene in the churchyard, where she and Wiseman had a cuddle, so moving. Perhaps I could make it work. One more list? One more lot of sticky notes on the window?

I remembered a trick I’d learned writing a previous book. I made a folder called ‘Good Bits To Use Later’. I got out my big scissors again, literally cut Sophia and William Warner out, and put them into the folder. It was a grief to lose such a juicy plot, and the character of Sophia, but I knew it was a necessary sacrifice.

Straight away it was as if chains had dropped off the story. The Wisemans and the Aboriginal people were left alone to get on with it, staring at each other up there on the Hawkesbury. It was just the two of them, working it out together, and that was what the story was. White meeting black, black meeting white, and everyone trying to decide what to do.

The slash and burn approach to writing: try anything, and if it doesn’t work, try something else.

There were still plenty of problems to be solved, but for the first time since I started writing, nearly two years earlier, I thought I might have a novel.

23. FINDING THE CHARACTERS

23
Finding the Characters

I had a story, sort of. But who were these people? Why were they doing the things they did?