GARETH BROWN

Arch plotter: meet the Scottish novelist who wants his books to be fun

- Jonathan Wright

IT’S POSSIBLE TO BE TOO CONFIDENT. JUST ASK Scottish writer Gareth Brown. Writing his debut novel, The Book Of Doors, took four months. Then he sold the book. “I thought, ‘Well, I’m brilliant at this;” he says, gently poking fun at himself. “This looks easy, I can do this.”

This impression lasted until Brown began what we probably have to call his Difficult Second Novel, The Society Of Unknowable Objects. This time around, for “a couple of reasons”, the writing process took a year. First of all, when he sat down to begin, Brown didn’t really have a clear idea of the book he was embarking upon.

Then there was a strong sense of trying not to repeat himself, while at the same time being conscious that publishers value consistency. “I was just creating problems for myself,” says Brown, who adds that to get to a finished manuscript, he wrote 300,000 words – three times the length of the published book – and wrote himself into several “cul-de-sacs”.

Perhaps because Brown himself didn’t always know where he was going next, it’s also a book where the narrative often seems to eschew the plot beats you think might be coming. Here is the upside of writing as an act of discovery rather than planning ahead. “I'm a bit of a masochist sometimes when I’m making up as I go,” says Brown. “I'll get to the end of a chapter and ask myself, “What would surprise me if it happened now?, and then I'll write it.”