Silje O. Ulstein on Plotting Like a True Panster

Where plotters are usually defined as storytellers who plot their stories before they start writing them, pantsers write by “the seat of their pants”. Most of us, I think, need a little bit of both, but some of us definitely has more inclination for planning their work than others. For me, writing seems to start with a few images or scenes in my head, or perhaps just a good sentence. From there I start to search through a hazy cloud after clues, and new images pop up as I go. If I don’t know exactly what will happen in the next scene, I just jump to one that I know, and work from there. It is a magical technique, but it is also a frustrating one. It takes a lot of editing to make everything work as a whole. And when writing four hundred pages with five protagonists, multiple timelines and plenty of plot twists, it became necessary at some point to do some plotting.

It all started with the image of a huge python. A friend of mine who was doing charity work helping ownerless cats find new homes, told me that she had this fear that one of the cats would end up at a snake owners house, as prey. I just couldn’t shake the thought. I started thinking of what sort of person would do such a thing. Could this be a good idea for a story? So, I knew what the basic idea was, but I didn’t know anything about the protagonist or what was going to happen when I started writing. I wrote about a man, then changed him into to a woman. I was going for a cold and heartless character, but as I was writing she grew more and more complex. I was writing scenes here and there, building character and figuring out the details of the story, doing research when it felt necessary and discovering interesting themes that I would never have guessed to begin with. Not until quite late in the process did I start to make plot charts or even taking plotting seriously.

For me, plotting is the least fun part of the process. I guess that’s the best reason I have for postponing it. I just love searching through that hazy cloud, and I love how the characters seem to constantly surprise me. I truly believe that the freedom I had in my writing process has worked wonders for the creativity, and that plotting ahead would have killed that creativity for me. But after dreading it for the longest time, I found out that I just had to do my plotting in a fun, creative way. So instead of making everything fit into neat little boxes, I let the whole plotting process be as messy as I wanted. And it worked. Not only did I finish my novel, Reptile Memoirs received great reviews and has spread wide across the Norwegian borders.

So, how to plot like a pantser? Colorful pens, physical paper and all the freedom you need. No need to limit or structure what you put on there. The plot chart is an assistive device, not a straitjacket. If you have an interesting thought, a new idea, a good sentence, feel free to put it anywhere. Don’t let the plot holes scare you – simply leave question marks and comments. Trust that you will find solutions to your problems. If you get bored, feel free to start drawing your characters on the side. If you start to feel that the chart is becoming an imprisonment, try to find a way out. After all, we could always use more rule breakers. 

I recently sat down and started to draw a plot chart for the novel I’m currently working on. As I was putting down my planned and written scenes, I looked at it and felt that this straight line just didn’t make sense. Life is not like this, I thought, life is not this ridiculous straight line. So, in a spontaneous moment I wrote on the corner of the paper: “This is not a linear timeline. The story unfolds in an ever-expanding spacetime.” Then I drew a circle. I’m still not quite sure what it means, but it immediately spiked my imagination. I trust that everything will fall into place in the end.

Reptile Memoirs by Silje O. Ulstein Published by Grove Atlantic Press (Out now)

Liv has a lot of secrets. Late one night, in the aftermath of a party in the apartment she shares with two friends in Ålesund, she sees a python on a TV nature show and becomes obsessed with the idea of buying a snake as a pet. Soon Nero, a baby Burmese python, becomes the apartment’s fourth roommate. As Liv bonds with Nero, she is struck by a desire that surprises her with its intensity. Finally she is safe.  Thirteen years later, in the nearby town of Kristiansund, Mariam Lind goes on a shopping trip with her eleven-year-old daughter, Iben. Following an argument Mariam storms off, expecting her young daughter to make her own way home . . . but she never does. Detective Roe Olsvik, new to the Kristiansund police department, is assigned to the case of Iben’s disappearance. As he interrogates Mariam, he instantly suspects her – but there is much more to this case and these characters than their outer appearances would suggest.

You can follow her on Twitter @siljesalat

Photo credit - Oda Berby

The Riverton Prize Winner

 

The Riverton Prize for Best Norwegian Crime story was awarded to Sven Petter Næss for his second book “Skjebnesteinen” (Fate of Stone/ Stone of Destiny)was chosen as the best detective novel of the last year and he received the generous Rivertonprisen crime prize in Slottsparken near Litteraturhuset in Oslo on Thursday 29 April 2021. 

The Fate of Stone/ Stone of Destiny’ is the second book in the Harinder Singh-series. 

According to the jury - ‘The Fate Stone/ Stone of Destiny’ is a crime novel of the best brand: well written, well structure, with intricate crimes and correspondingly difficult police work. They go on to say that the prize goes to a book that satisfies all the requirements of a crime novel with realistic and credible description of police work, while it also creates unrest, fear and excitement in the reader. Nothing is accidental or unclear in ‘The Fate Stone/ Stone of Destiny’'

The Riverton Prize (Norwegian: Rivertonprisen) is a literature award given annually to the best Norwegian crime story (novel, short story, play, original screenplay). The prize is named after the Norwegian journalist and author Sven Elvestad (1884-1934) who published detective stories under the pen name Stein Riverton.

2021 Norwegian Silver Knife nominees

 

The nominees for the 2021 Norwegian Silver Knife have been announced.

The nominees are 

The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl

So It Got Cold by Frode Eie Larsen

Fate Stone by Sven Petter Næss

The winner will be announced on 16 March 2021

Kjell Ola Dahl on The Courier

The Courier is about a murder in a country at war. One of my earlier crime novels, The Man in the Window, also featured the occupation of Norway during WWII, and when I was doing my research I learned a lot about how the German authorities delivered justice and coped with crime in the country. It was partly this research that inspired The Courier, in which the murder victim is closely connected with the resistance movement. My initial idea was that the investigation into such a crime – at such a time – would automatically be influenced by politics; and I liked how a search for truth would inevitably be infected by lies. 

Another inspiration for The Courier was the Norwegian Holocaust; I particularly wanted to write about the fact that it was planned, organised and performed solely by Norwegian Nazis. The Germans were not involved in the arrests; their involvement only started with the transportation of Jews from Norway to Auschwitz. 

The choice of 1942 as one of the timeframes for the book was therefore natural, as the arrest of the Jews and their transport from Norway to the gas chambers was conducted in the autumn of that year, and at the same time, a lot of Norwegian Jews escaped. 1942 is also one of the most interesting years of WWII, because it was then that Hitler made his fatal decision to attack the Soviet Union, an invasion that had serious implications for the resistance movement in Norway. 

What I really wanted to do with this book was write a story of revenge. I like to think that people's choices are affected by things that have happened to them previously in their lives – it’s a Freudian thing. I wanted to explore how things that happened during WWII had implications for the characters much later. But I also wanted the present day to feature in the book, so I decided my protagonist had to around twenty in 1942. In the sixties she would be in her forties, which I liked, because she is mature by then, has developed a stronger will, but at the same time she is not old and could therefore still be searching for a direction in her life. 

Ester as a character was mainly inspired by a man I once knew. His family were all killed in the gas chambers, but he managed to flee – first to Sweden in 1942, then to Scotland, where he was trained as a saboteur. He was then sent on commando raids behind enemy lines in Norway. However, I was more interested in his personality than his wartime history, as I did not want to write a soldier’s tale, and that is one of the reasons I decided my protagonist had to be a woman. I also liked how her gender made her somewhat distant from me, the writer; it made her more mysterious. 

I chose the other main timeline to be 1967. The sixties reflect the forties in one way: there was a war then too, but it was a cold war, with new frontlines. Twenty-five years have passed since 1942, and those years have affected all the characters in various ways. Ester’s life after WWII is a mystery, as is Gerhard's life after the war, and the lives of Markus and Sverre. 

Writing about the same characters in two layers of time – one when they are younger, idealistic and a bit innocent, and one when they all are shaped by life – was truly inspirational. I found they were all different people in 1967 from the ones they were in 1942. I had to explore what had happened to them after 1942, what directions their lives had taken, and of course how the fate of Åse – the murder victim in 1942 – had shaped the people they eventually become. 

The Courier by Kjell Ola Dahl (Published by Orenda Press)

In 1942, Jewish courier Ester is betrayed, narrowly avoiding arrest by the Gestapo. In a great haste, she escapes to Sweden, saving herself. Her family in Oslo, however, is deported to Auschwitz. In Stockholm, Ester meets the resistance hero, Gerhard Falkum, who has left his little daughter and fled both the Germans and allegations that he murdered his wife, Ase, who helped Ester get to Sweden. Their burgeoning relationship ends abruptly when Falkum dies in a fire.  And yet, twenty-five years later, Falkum shows up in Oslo. He wants to reconnect with his daughter. But where has he been, and what is the real reason for his return? Ester stumbles across information that forces her to look closely at her past, and to revisit her war-time training to stay alive...

Cinenord and Good Company Films to produce the new major Norwegian drama series Wisting

Jørn Lier Horst’s wildly popular and award-winning books about homicide detective William Wisting will now become a TV series – with Sven Nordin in the leading role.

Sven Nordin is a beloved and revered character actor in Norway, and has also enjoyed great international success recently with the Norwegian drama series “Valkyrien” (NRK).

In the role of William Wisting, Sven Nordin will portray the hard-working, compassionate investigator who is trying to be a force of good in the world, without losing himself to the darkness. Wisting has dedicated his life to solving the senseless and vicious murders that shock his small coastal town. But trying to make the world a safer place comes at a huge cost – failing your own family.

”Wisting is a complex and intriguing person, and I can’t wait to portray him. I am a great admirer of the author Jørn Lier Horst and it is with great humility and joy that I embark on this task. This will be exciting! I look forward to it!” says actor Sven Nordin.

“I am delighted by the great enthusiasm the project has been met with, and that the Wisting series will become a reality. I’m grateful that Sven Nordin has accepted the leading role of William Wisting. It is an excellent choice. He is stylistically assured and one of our very best character actors”, says author Jørn Lier Horst, a former Senior Investigating Officer in the Norwegian police force.

The first season of the series is based on two of the most popular and prized books in the Wisting literary series, The Hunting Dogs and The Caveman. Shooting commences on January 17th, 2018 on location on south-eastern Norwegian twin towns Larvik and Stavern.  The family Christmas is ruined as homicide detective Wisting wrestles with the most challenging and shocking case of his career: a wanted American serial killer lives among them! Meanwhile, Line – Wisting’s intrepid journalist daughter – is chasing headlines, leading her straight in the path of the serial killer. Suddenly, an old case comes back to haunt Wisting, and a dreadful accusation is hurled at him. How will Wisting save other lives when now he finds himself suspended and fighting for his own reputation, career and life?

Seasoned producer Anni Faurbye Fernandez from Danish Good Company Films was

formerly executive producer and CEO of Swedish production company Yellow Bird, who had phenomenal success with the seminal Nordic Noir crimes series Wallander and Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.

“The thrilling books of Jørn Lier Horst captivated me from the outset and I am very pleased that we have managed to raise substantial financing, allowing us to realize our vision for this TV series. The project has great international appeal, and we have received overwhelming interest from foreign broadcasters and distributors”, Fernandez says.

”We are immensely proud to greenlight a project we so wholeheartedly believe in. Our ambition is to create a Norwegian drama juggernaut, that will last for many seasons. Jørn Lier Horst’s detective novels featuring William Wisting are incredibly popular, and we look forward to translating them into a tremendous drama series”, says producer Silje Hopland Eik from Cinenord.  GoodCo and Cinenord will produce Wisting for Scandinavian Viaplay, TV3 Norway and German broadcaster ARD Degeto.

Directors
Trygve Allister Diesen is an experienced writer-director of TV-series, such
as Hotel Cæsar (1998 – 2004), The School (NRK, 2004) and Torpedo (TV2,
2007). He was responsible for the TV2-series The Third Eye, and has also directed several episodes of Kommissarie Winter and Arne Dahl. Diesen has also made several movies following his debut with Mørkets øy (2007), and holds a PhD in film directing.

Katarina Launing belongs to the Norwegian Film School’s first graduate litter in film directing. She is currently in post-production with Battle, her third feature film as director. Her directorial debut was Christmas night in Blåfjell (co-directed with Roar Uthaug). Her award-winning 2013 movie Kick It received great reviews and a long festival life.

Screenwriters

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Trygve Allister Diesen and Katrine Valen Zeiner have co-written the series, based on Jørn Lier Horst’s books The Caveman and The Hunting Dogs. Since graduating from the Norwegian Film School, Zeiner has become an established screenwriter, with award-winning and internationally acclaimed credits, including the recent thriller series Valkyrien (NRK) and Emmy-winning Eye Witness (NRK). Kjersti Ugelstad and Anne Elvedal are episode writers.

Welcome to Bergen! by Gunnar Staalesen

Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen, Norway in 1947. He made his debut at the age of 22 with Seasons of Innocence and in 1977 he published the first book in the Varg Veum series. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Epsen Seim, and a further seies is being filmed now. Staalesen, who has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour), lives in Bergen with his wife. There is a life-sized statue of Varg Veum in the centre of Bergen.

I am not sure if the tourist industry in Bergen is entirely happy with the picture I paint of the city in most of my books – rainy, dark and dangerous (at least to some of the characters). But I know that tourists travel from UK, from France, Germany and Denmark – even the USA – to walk in the streets of Varg Veum… ‘Down these mean streets a man must go…’ as Raymond Chandler wrote about his own detective, Philip Marlowe. And Varg Veum is, without doubt, a Norwegian cousin of both Marlowe and Lew Archer, the detective in Ross Macdonald’s books.

But of course the image is much darker in a crime novel than in reality. The same law rules for real-life Edinburgh and the one you meet in Ian Rankin’s crime novels. Or whatever city in which you find your detective.

Gunnar Staalesen & Varg Veum

There is a relationship between detectives and their cities, and that started – I believe – with London in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. When reading these stories, we get a vivid image of a foggy, dark and Victorian city, not as detailed as in the books of Charles Dickens perhaps, but fascinating enough.

To give just a few examples, the tradition continued with Dashiell Hammett’s The Continental Op and later on Sam Spade in San Francisco, Maigret in Paris, Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer in LA, Martin Beck in Stockholm, John Rebus in Edinburgh and Pepe Carvalho in Barcelona. When I wrote my first Varg Veum novel, published in Norway in 1977, I took a humble place in this tradition. And that is why the city Bergen plays an important role in my writing. (I have also written a very popular trilogy about the city, published in Norway, Denmark and France, which takes the reader through all the whole of the 20th century, from the night that a murder was committed on 1 January 1900 to the day that it is solved – by Varg Veum – on 31 December 1999. In Norway the series is very often referred to as “The Bergen trilogy”, in French “Le roman de Bergen”.)

So what and where is Bergen?

Bergen is the second largest city in Norway, with c. 250,000 inhabitants today. It was the unofficial capital of Norway in the 12th and 13th centuries, before the country experienced 400 years of governance by Denmark and almost 100 years in union with Sweden. It was not until 1905 that Norway became an independent nation again, and this is why so many Norwegians were – and still are – sceptical of joining the European Union.

Ian Rankin and Antti Tuomainen in front of Varg Veum’s street.

Bergen is situated on the West coast, a beautiful city surrounded by between six and nine mountains (the traditional count is seven, a holy number), and the tourist office calls it ‘The gateway to the fjords’, which is correct. There is a fjord leading you to the good harbour in Bergen – the reason why the city is situated just here – and you are not far from the two longest fjords in Norway, the Hardanger fjord and the Sogn and Fjordane fjord. In the tourist season the city is more or less packed with tourists. In the autumn, winter and early spring – when most of the Varg Veum novels take place – it is a rainy city, and the inhabitants love it when a new record of rainfall pro anno is reached. (The latest one was set in 2015, but I won’t not tell you what it was…)

Not a bad city for a private detective, or…?

Where Roses Never Die, by Gunnar Staalesen (Orenda Books) translated by Don Bartlett, is out now.

September 1977. Mette Misvær, a three-year-old girl, disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close, middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch, suspicions are raised, but Mette is never found. Almost 25 years later, as the expiry date for the statute of limitations draws near, Mette’s mother approaches PI Varg Veum, in a last, desperate attempt to find out what happened to her daughter. As Veum starts to dig, he uncovers an intricate web of secrets, lies and shocking events that have been methodically concealed. When another brutal incident takes place, a pattern begins to emerge …