In conversation with Nicci French
The Nicci French Partnership Kicks Off the Author Events Programme at ‘A New Leaf’ in Marsden
What a privilege to host Nicci Gerrard and Sean French at ‘A New Leaf’ in Marsden on Thursday 12th February – and on the publication day of ‘What Happened That Night,’ their 27th novel. A new psychological thriller, telling the story of Tyler Green, released from prison after serving 28 years for the murder of his University friend. Such a gripping read.
Celebrating their 36th wedding anniversary this year, the couple, who met when working as journalists in 1989, said that reading and writing has always been at the heart of their relationship. Speaking to the thirty-strong audience gathered in the Marsden shop, they talked about their writing partnership, their ideas and inspirations and their unique method of novel-writing.
Nicci and Sean started work on their first ‘Nicci French’ novel on the first day of 1995, having read an article on the controversial subject of recovered memory. At that time, this was something of a ‘hot topic,’ generating debate regarding the reliability of memories recalled during psychotherapy, particularly in cases of childhood abuse. With a young family and demanding jobs, it took them some time to complete the novel but ‘The Memory Game’ was finally published in 1997.
Over the intervening years, their novels have continued to be inspired by interesting ideas that generate discussion as Nicci explained at the event: “Our novels don’t come from reading other people’s books. They come out of an ongoing argument about what things mean. What does it mean to be jealous? What does it mean to be bereaved?”
When planning a novel, the couple take long walks together, discussing not only the ideas but also plot, characters and dramatic pacing. Each character is crucial, not just the main protagonists, as Sean explained: “Every character is the centre of his or her own drama so we need to know the journey that character is on. We write about people who are living ordinary lives and then something happens to crack open that life and we think about what happens next. Books and characters aren’t obedient though – they don’t always do what you want them to do.”
Research is also a crucial element of Nicci French novels: the couple visit the actual locations; they experience the settings, walk the streets and talk to experts. When they each have the ‘same book’ in mind, they go their separate ways and write independently. Nicci writes a chapter and emails it
to Sean who edits, corrects or even writes over what she’s written before emailing it back to her. Sean then writes the next chapter and emails it to Nicci for her amends. This technique was initially an experiment; they were curious whether or not they could finish a book in this way and were surprised to discover that it worked so successfully. Working together in this way would not be possible without email which allows them to make corrections ‘invisibly’ which is much less wounding for an author than having someone make changes in ink on a manuscript.
Nicci explained that they have a couple of rules, the first being that if one of them sends a piece of beautiful writing over and the other ‘mutilates’ it before sending it back, it can be rewritten but what has been removed can never be put back. The other rule is never to tell anyone which author wrote which chapter – and this is because the finished novel belongs to both of them; indeed, it belongs to Nicci French.
“We have very different styles so when we write together, we write in a third voice – that of Nicci French,” said Nicci. “It’s not a power struggle. It’s an unwritten contract to trust each other.”
“I feel free to write in another way when I’m writing as Nicci French,” added Sean, who has written several novels under his own name, as has Nicci. But if the protagonist of our first novel had been a man, we might have chosen a different name – we might have written under the pseudonym Sean Gerrard.”
This first event at the new Marsden shop was a tremendous success and we hope to be able to persuade Nicci and Sean to return on another occasion. In the meantime, tickets are on sale for a number of other events to be hosted at The New Leaf Book Shop in Marsden.