The truth in fiction

mrtedmaul
Aug 7
3 min read

My books are works of fiction. Mostly.

Even the shortest, tightest novel requires a huge amount of detail and invention to render its world solid and believable. Each character has to be distinct in appearance, attitude and speech. Each location has to ring true. Every plot point has to be reached logically, in a way that doesn't betray the hand of the author (always one of my bugbears with any work of fiction: When characters are clearly doing what the author wants them to do, rather than what they would do).

There is, in short, an awful lot of imagination and invention required in the creation of a work of fiction. I've found, though, that all of the invention stands up straighter and stronger with a substructure of truth around it.

Besides giving my characters a light dusting of traits from real people I've known, I like to set them loose in locations and situations I know well. Glasgow features strongly in both 'How Soon Is Now?' and 'End of a Century', with Edinburgh a vital recurring setting for the former.

With so many different characters and stories to tell in 'How Soon Is Now?' – and a large leap into the fantastical for readers to make – it made sense to ground our time-travelling eccentrics in a real place, so I used a lightly fictionalised version of a real Edinburgh pub as the base for The Nostalgia Club.

I spent a lot of time visiting friends in London during the 1990s, so London – and Camden in particular – was a perfect fit for 'End of a Century', a novel about the complexities of nostalgia set in 1995.

Des McMenemy's impressions of the scale and speed of London aren't too far removed from my own experiences, and the shoebox-sized converted garage in Wimbledon in which Des spends a night with his pal Ash isn't a million miles from a similarly-cramped property inhabited by one of my own friends back in the 90s. The idea behind that kind of detail is that, often, the particular can become the universal: A specific detail can ring true for the widest range of readers. We've all lived in, or known someone who lived in, a cramped flat, dysfunctional shared space or barely-functional crash pad.

The University Cafe provides the setting for key encounters in both 'End of a Century' and 'How Soon Is Now?'

Likewise, I let my lead characters borrow a few of my own experiences. Time traveller Luke has a riotous night out with his college mates in 1987 which ends in an impromptu taxi journey with a bunch of unpredictable strangers and a quick exit from legendary late-night Edinburgh venue Sneaky Pete's. Most of that happened to me. Except for the time travel. That came later.

Des in 'End of a Century' shares one of my embarrassments, but I decided to make his even worse than mine. Rather than just have his hangover and awkwardness around the object of his affection lead him to walk out of a cafe without paying, I made him fall backwards off of a chair, too. I was never quite as clumsy as Des, thankfullly.

One of my own 1990s fixations – vintage 1960s suits – formed the nugget of the story for 'End of a Century', so I gave that interest to Des (I wrote more about my suits here, in a blog post which pre-dates the writing of 'End of a Century' and which might actually have sparked the idea for the book in the first place).

Luke in 'How Soon Is Now?' lives in Pollokshields in the south side of Glasgow, where I lived until the early 2000s, so I dotted that book with familiar south side streets and landmarks. Des in 'End of a Century' lives in Glasgow's west end, so I gave him a flat above an off-licence, in the very same block a good friend of mine occupied briefly in the early 1990s.

Des and Poppy spend a memorable night at Glasgow's magnificent Mitchell Library, and the fabulous University Cafe on Byres Road features in both books.

All of these little details add to the solidity of the world the characters live in. If you're busy packing books with runaway tailors, time travelling perfumers and flamboyantly sarcastic comic shop workers, it's not too much of a cheat, I hope, to let a little reality slip in alongside them.

In fact, there's only one 100% real character in either book, and that's Harry the Pollokshields cat, who appears in 'How Soon Is Now?' and is, I hope, still out there scamming milk from tipsy passers-by, 30 years on.