I
started writing fiction by accident, literally. Last year I broke a
bone in my foot, and sitting bored day after day, with my orthopaedic
boot propped up on the coffee table, my eldest daughter suggested
that I write a book. I wouldn’t say I took to it like a duck to
water, but in a few days, I was hooked.
Having
worked all over the world during my career as a television producer
and director, and having met a vast variety of interesting
characters, I decided that I would base the places and people in my
books on my personal experiences. I believe that if you want people
to enjoy your writing, no matter how far-fetched the plot or
outlandish the characters, there has to be some factual basis.
My basic concept was to have a
story about a young woman secret agent, incredibly smart, good
looking and adept at martial arts – a sort of female James Bond. I
thought about this for a while and wrote some test material featuring
this super-woman. It then occurred to me that I could create an
interesting story of how an ordinary girl becomes this extraordinary
person and why.
I selected the name of Sam Smith
as it sounds like the girl next door. I needed to have a mental
image of the woman, and I recalled a beautiful, blonde and athletic
dancer I once worked with. She was stunning. Picturing her, I started
to write, and my story took
off. I
describe how my heroine
embarks on a journey to change herself physically and mentally from a
feeble victim into a fearless avenger. But how could I explain what
might motivate a young woman to take such a drastic step?
I lived both in Leeds and
Harrogate during the dreadful Yorkshire Ripper murders. Recollecting
the awful events enabled me to recreate a similar fictional scenario
to drive my main character to take the course of actions to exact her
retribution. My beloved Yorkshire is where much of the action is set,
and having worked on many regional TV programmes, including coverage
of the Great Yorkshire Show, I
was able to draw
on my local knowledge to add colour and realism to my
story.
Some writers outline their plots
before they start writing in great detail, but that didn’t work for
me. Years
ago, on a screenwriting course, I came across Alfred
Hitchcock’s mantra: you
have to have a McGuffin.
For him, the McGuffin is the ultimate goal of the hero or heroine,
and it is essential that no matter how the plot twists and turns, all
these wrinkles must be relevant
in getting the protagonist to achieve their goal.
First
and foremost, I define my McGuffin and then I start the wiring
process. I have evolved a system which suits me. Each night, I go to
bed with a clear idea of the action and characters in the current
chapter. Next
morning, the outline of the next chapter is usually clear in my mind.
After breakfast, I sit down with a pot of (Yorkshire) tea and write
the next one to two thousand words. As I go
along,
I re-read sections and ruthlessly edited out anything that doesn’t
work. I
stick to the guidelines of the radio programme “Just a Minute”:
no hesitation, deviation or repetition.
Maybe I’m a masochist, as I
rewrote the first third of the book three times. Finally, I started
again with a completely new and lighter opening which I’m happy to
say works well.
Miss Smith Commits the Perfect Crime?
Recovering from a
brutal attack where she was savagely raped, university student Sam
Smith attempts to rebuild her life and overcome the ongoing effects
of her ordeal. Her ultimate goal is to bring her assailant to
justice, but before she can do so her life and loves take a series of
intriguing turns as she continues her sometimes unconventional
education.
Eventually she
is able to identify her attacker and decides to exact retribution in
her own particular style, but during her preparations Sam becomes
aware that her every move is being tracked by a mysterious
organisation. To avoid detection by the police and also her hidden
watchers, Sam Smith attempts to commit the perfect crime. However in
the aftermath of her vigilante action events change rapidly to bring
about a most unexpected outcome.
Miss Smith
Commits the Perfect Crime? is the first book in the Sam Smith
Adventure Series and can be read as a standalone.
Guy
Caplin worked in television broadcasting for over 40 years and is one
of the few people to have achieved success in both the technical and
artistic branches of the medium. He has worked with many celebrities
including, the Beatles, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Hope and Maria Callas.
He
moved to ITV’s Yorkshire Television in 1969 as a Producer and
Director of Sport, Outside Broadcasts and special events. Among the
many programmes he devised was the quiz programme “Winner Takes
All” fronted by Jimmy Tarbuck and Geoffrey Wheeler, which under his
tenure was regularly amongst the Top Ten TV programmes and twice
reached the coveted Number One Spot.
When
the final series of the hit American programme Dallas ran into
technical problems in Hollywood in 1989, Guy left YTV and joined a UK
broadcast engineering company to try to come up with a solution. The
solution proposed resulted in the creation of the DEFT process, which
although too late to be used on Dallas, was used initially on the
Simpsons and subsequently on Friends, Frasier, Superman and many
others America series. DEFT was awarded an Emmy for outstanding
technical achievement.
Back
in the UK Guy owned and ran a company creating video productions for
both broadcast and industry, was a freelance trainer at the BBC and a
visiting tutor at the National School of Film and Television
For
the past thirteen years Guy has also been a regular lecturer for P&O
cruises and Cunard and has effectively travelled twice around the
world.
Now, having closed his video company, he spends his time writing
under the name of Guy Rolands and has now completed four novels in
the Sam Smith Adventure series. Having worked all over the world and
encountered hundreds of remarkable characters, his experiences
provide colour and intrigue to his work.
