Learning from the Experts: Agatha Christie

Critical opinion on Agatha Christie's writing is divided, but love her or loathe her, her novels are still selling 40 years after her death. As author of 100 novels, and doyenne of the detective novel, there is no discounting her success.

Characters

I loved her novels, and remember putting off reading Poirot's last case as long as possible, because I didn't want to acknowledge his death. Christie famously hated him, and it is perhaps such strong characterisation that is part of her recipe for success. Her detectives Hercule Poirot; Miss Marple, Toppy & Tuppence Beresford, are all well drawn, well developed characters. Reading her books, we feel we know them, and this sense will perhaps account for whether you think Peter Ustinov, David Suchet or even lately Kenneth Branagh are the definitive Poirot. (I must confess a preference for David Suchet).

Even though some of her lesser parts may appear as caricature of class and society, they are still finely drawn. Her detectives show a keen understanding of human nature, as they unravel the mystery - think of Poirot's 'little grey cells' - and this too is reflective of Christie's knowledge of people. Christie did try writing about people she knew, but found it more effective to simply imagine her characters.

Plot-lines

Christie is famously the master of the detective novel, and her writing is to some extent formulaic- a formula that she created and developed. If you have a winning formula, why change it - it's a version of 'if it works, don't fix it.' Many very successful authors stick to their genre or formula for writing. While this may never garner critical accolades, it can lead to a very successful writing career.

In a Christie novel, any weekend in the country is going to end in a murder, but even so, we are still enamored with her writing - so much so that a new film was made of her Murder on the Orient Express last year, and the BBC has just shown a new production of Ordeal by Innocence.

Writing Technique

Christie once said "the best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes." Her process involved thinking time, formulating an idea in her imagination, before committing it to paper."Nothing turns out quite in the way that you thought it would when you are sketching out notes for the first chapter, or walking about muttering to yourself and seeing a story unroll."

Imagination seems to have been a key to her process, and hers was clearly vivid.

Other quotes tell us more about her process.

I particularly like: "The secret of getting ahead is getting started." It echoes what Terry Pratchett and Stephen King say about just getting on with it. "There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well."​

Find your own voice: "When you begin to write, you are usually in the throes of admiration for some writer, and, whether you will or no, you cannot help copying their style. Often it is not a style that suits you, and so you write badly. But as time goes on you are less influenced by admiration. You will admire certain writers, you may even wish you could write like them, but you know quite well that you can't. I have learned that I am me, that I can do the things that, as one might put it, me can do, but I cannot do the things that me would like to do.'"

"Your criticism is bound to be that you yourself would have written it in such and such a way, but that does not mean that it would be right for another author. We all have our own ways of expressing ourselves."

Should you talk about your WIP? "I learned in the end never to say anything about a book before it was written. Criticism after you have written it is helpful. You can argue the point, or you can give in, but at least you know how it has struck one reader. Your own description of what you are going to write, however, sounds so futile, that to be told kindly that it won't do meets with your instant agreement."

What about editing: "There always has to be a lapse of time after the accomplishment of a piece of creative work before you can in any way evaluate it."

Writing is a learned skill: "It is no good starting out by thinking one is a heaven-born genius- some people are, but very few. No, one is a tradesman- a tradesman is a good honest trade. You must learn the technical skills, and then, within that trade, you can apply your own creative ideas; but you must submit to the discipline of form."

And finally...

"I can't imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author's business to write, not talk."

So, back to that WIP.