Published December 2024
In this week’s author interview, NOWW Creative Director Allison Alsup interviews author Dylan H. Jones about how he gets his ideas for his popular crime and thriller novels, the choices we all must make as writers, setting as a character, and writer’s block/ his writing practice.
Dylan H. Jones is the author of the best-selling Detective Tudor Manx series, set on the idyllic Welsh island of Anglesey. Dylan’s debut novel, Anglesey Blue, was an immediate hit, taking the Amazon #1 spot in Welsh Crime on the first day of release. The novel was also long listed for The Guardian newspaper’s prestigious Readers’ Choice Award. His following two novels, Doll Face and Shadow Soul soon became crime fiction fan favorites, and established DI Manx as a fresh, compelling protagonist in Welsh Noir.
[“The best advice I can give is to avoid throat clearing — get into the scene quickly.” – Dylan H. Jones]
Allison: You’re an accomplished thriller and crime writer. Do you map out your plots in advance? Or do you just begin with an inciting event and wing it from there? Somewhere in between.
Dylan: I’m much more of a pantser than a plotter, but I do need an idea or two to spark my imagination. It’s less than an inciting incident and more of an overall theme, usually cribbed from something I’ve read or seen. I’ll give you an example: for my thriller, What Follows, set in Oakland, California, I read an article about the rise of syphilis cases in some major US cities. This led me to the character of Jessica Swift, a local health inspector who teams up with a detective to solve the murder of a young girl. To be honest, I think I’d get bored If I knew beforehand everything that happened in my story. For better or worse, I prefer letting my characters drive the story.
Allison: How important is setting to your novels? In what way do settings shape the events of the storyline?
Dylan: It’s an old cliche, but setting is another character. Like the name suggests, it’s a setting: it sets the reader in a time and place and helps anchor them in the story. Taking that further, I imagine settling as the opening wide shot in a movie, then I guide the reader with a series of medium close-ups and close-ups, then pull out again. In my DI Manx novels, which are set on a remote island in North Wales, the setting is a huge part of the story. In fact, I’ve set the first three books in different seasons because the island shifts and ebbs with the seasons, not just the weather, but also the terrain and the people. Anglesey is a major tourist destination for people from all over UK, and during the summer months the population swells by at least fifty percent, perfect for a new cast of nefarious characters to step on my stage.
Allison: Given the kind of novels you write, what do you think makes for a great beginning? What elements or qualities does it contain?
Dylan: Huge question! It could be a grizzly murder, the discovery of a body, or, as in my last DI Manx Book, Shadow Soul, a very tense standoff in the control booth of drone strike happening several thousand miles away. The best advice I can give is to avoid throat clearing — get into the scene quickly. I’d avoid starting a book with dialogue; readers don’t know your characters yet, and won’t know how to feel about them. I’d also offer the same advice about starting a book with your character waking up; best avoided, it’s been done to death. Of course, there will always be exceptions, but those are my go-to strategies. A powerful beginning should contain suspense, some sense of the familiar made strange.
Allison: When you get stuck and wrangle with a choice, are there certain principles or criteria you come back to? How do you talk your way through tricky spots?
Dylan: I’m always writing myself into corners; it’s an occupational hazard. I’m partial to figuring out the next scene or chapter before flipping my laptop closed for the day, that way I know the road ahead for the next morning. (BTW- morning is my best time for free-form writing, the late afternoon better for editing).
Writer’s block is a slippery old bugger. Often, I think it’s less of a block and more a case of having too many choices. At its essence, writing is all about choices —character names, titles, scenes, motivation, resolution — they’re all choices we writers have to make, and those choices can sometimes be paralyzing. To work through that, I go back to what’s true to my story and to my characters. How would they act or respond to a situation? That can often help me out of a tight spot. Sometimes, that entails going back in the story and changing some details, but that’s the joy of pantsing!
Choices, at the end of the day, are the engine of your story. You just have to trust your writer spidey instincts. They’re the right choices, and don’t forget, the reader will never know the choices you didn’t make!