Looking at this on the timeline, I thought, that's actually the beginning and end of the story. In his early 20s, he goes to prison for 3 days: he's been a drug dealer and an addict, he's beaten people up and threatened to kill people, but here he is in prison because he's not paid £2000 in tax.

Just the freedom to be able to throw these events around made me realise I had been getting it entirely wrong. I realised I could take the events from the timeline, and arrange them any way I wanted in the narrative. But with seven drafts in seven years, David found it was not a natural transition from journalism to fiction writing. There was one interview subject that led to a change in direction for David, when he realised the material was best suited to a work of fiction. But I could show her on the timeline how all of these things were connected.

Lyn paddled for 14 months, she is tough as nails, and just wanted to tell her story on the boat. These are actually the key moments of her life: I could add notes and links to other events and the book started to take shape in front of me.īecause I had these bigger themes, the whole story became about being solo for her entire life. Suddenly, the deeper story is taking place. As we talked, she started to reveal things about her past, and so I plotted all of these events back to her childhood. We built up the timeline like this, but of course, that still isn't a story. From those bird's eye view dates, I asked her to tell stories, which I would plot as events and mark the ones I knew would go into the book. When I was working on Finding Solo, we sat down for 12 interviews - in a cafe, with Aeon Timeline open - to get a clearer sense of the timeline.

Andy and david williams