Rachel Greenlaw on the inspiration behind The Ordeals
Inspiration for a novel is never one singular idea. It’s a myriad of thoughts and images and lines, pieces of plot and character, all slotting together to form one irrevocable whole. The Ordeals was first the few lines of a pitch, then the atmosphere wrapped around the central idea like a whisper, I drew the magic system from an old document that had sat languishing on my laptop, then the main character, Sophia DeWinter walked in, and everything settled into place around her.
There is some debate over what should come first. Character or setting? Surely the characters, they drive the plot, and a reader would follow a great character anywhere. But particularly for fantasy books, is it the world? When an author nails down the details of the world, the characters can grow organically from that world they live in. Their experiences effect their life views, and therefore their actions. So is it perhaps better if the world is created first?
With The Ordeals, it was that small pitch of a young woman desperate to get away from her cruel uncle by securing her place at a college for magic wielders. And from that point, on a long and winding train journey from the depths of Cornwall up to London one July day, the world was born, then the main character. As I stared out of the window, tapping away at my laptop keys, the evocative setting emerged, shrouded in mist, gothic and foreboding, and I realised I was picturing Killmarth College as a version of St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, and indeed, the main city of Dinas Tar where Sophia works for the Collector as a version of London. Books and life really shape all novels, and I drew on my love of the gothic, atmospheric works of Daphne DuMaurier to craft the setting. It was only later when I discovered that her daughter was called Tessa, after I had named a character in the story Tessa…and I wondered if she was peering over my shoulder as I typed.
This book is the culmination of many books I have loved and reread, particular the ones I grew up with. Books like Sabriel by Garth Nix and the Solly Lockhart books by Philip Pullman, full of captivating adventure, feisty heroines that lead the story and worlds I wanted to linger in far longer. The last piece of the puzzle of inspiration was a TV show many of us grew up with: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I used to count down the days each week for the next episode to air, and it was the first time I truly believed that the hero could be female, but not only that, she didn’t have to be perfect. She could like makeup and clothes, she could be sassy and forget her homework, she could fall in love with more than one person. And then, she could go out and absolutely kick ass.
If there’s one thing I want readers to take away from The Ordeals, is that Sophia DeWinter is the most unlikely of heroines. She’s not the best illusionist, she’s not the bravest, the fastest or the strongest. But she is the most determined. The most desperate. She has grit in her heart and when she fails, she gets back up. As I wrote the first draft, I poured my journey to getting my first book published as a young, newly minted mother, into Sophia. The many setbacks, the passes, the research online to learn and get better. I live on a remote island, I didn’t have connections, but I wanted it, more than anything. Even through sleep deprived, hazy days, when my attention was fractured, I kept that desire burning. And eventually, I broke through. I hope wherever you are, at whatever stage of your life, you find the grit inside you as you fight through the ordeals alongside Sophia, and her story inspires you to get back up.
Rachel’s new book The Ordeals is out on 7 October (HQ, HarperCollins).
