I am very fond of my first crime novel, Little Face. It's about a woman who claims her baby has been swapped for another baby, and no one believes her. I loved the idea as soon as I thought of it. I love stories where someone is desperate to be heard, and yet no one will listen, however hard they try to convince.
What genre(s) do you consider this story primarily to be, or how would you describe this story?
The psychological thriller genre, but also the protagonist-who-no-one-believes genre - like Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, in which no one believes the hero when he insists that the world is being taken over by pod-people! The disbelieved-protagonist genre is comfort reading for paranoid people everywhere!
What is a published fiction story by another author you would compare this story to and why are they similar?
Apart from Invasion of the Body-Snatchers? I can only think of films, for some reason: Flightplan, the Jodi Foster film, is about a mother whose daughter disappears from a plane while it's in mid-air, and no one believes her that her daughter was ever on the plane.
To what extent did you use any pre-existing story formula, template, paradigm, plot design, archetype, or theory or principle of story/plot structure in planning, writing, editing or rewriting this story?
I didn't use any of these things consciously at all - but once Little Face was published, quite a few people said to me, 'Oh, it's like the foundling stories' - so I now think there probably is something archetypal about a mother who believes her child has been replaced by an imposter. I plotted the novel (as I do all my novels) very carefully. I think structure is crucial to crime fiction. Everything has to balance properly. For example, if the mystery is a relatively simple one - for example, who murdered Derek? - then the solution can be simple too: Maureen murdered Derek. But if the mystery is a very unusual, high-concept one (as mine tend to be!) then the resolution must be slightly more unusual and complex and...showy, I suppose - to balance it out. Otherwise it would be architecturally wrong, like having the top floor of a two-bedroom tiny cottage on top of the ground floor of a huge palace - it just wouldn't work.
How would you describe the first chapter, scene or section of this story in one paragraph?
When her baby daughter Florence is two weeks old, Alice goes out alone for first time since the birth, leaving Florence at home with David (Alice's husband). When she gets back a couple of hours later, Alice walks into the nursery and screams. There's a baby in the cot, wearing Florence's clothes - but Alice swears blind that the baby in the nursery is not Florence. David is equally insistent that the baby is Florence, and accuses Alice of having gone mad. The police are called, a DNA test is arranged...but the night before the test is due to take place, both Alice and the baby disappear...
What makes this chapter, scene or section an effective opening for this story?
It's dramatic, emotionally engaging and (hopefully) the reader will be desperate to find out what's going on. Why would a husband and wife, apparently happily married until this point, disagree so violently about whether the baby in their house is theirs or an imposter? Why might anyone swap one baby for another? If Alice is lying, as David soon starts to suggest, why would she do such a thing? And how can the police know where to start with their investigation once Alice and the baby go missing, not knowing whether they have one missing baby on their hands or two? A gripping, unpredictable storyline is what makes readers turn the pages, I think - certainly that's true of me as a reader, so that's the kind of story I try to write.
Major stages, twists or turns does the story conflict take in this story before the conflict is resolved (or not resolved)?
I'm not giving anything away, but there are lots of twists, turns and revelations along the way! There have to be. You can't keep the reader waiting until the very end of the book to have his/her curiosity satisfied - you have to offer little tit-bits of revelation as you go along - as well as creating new layers of mystery all the time, of course.
How would you summarise the major sub-plot or sub-plots in this story? If this story has no sub-plots, how would youe describe the main sub-plot or sub-plots from one of your favourite published fiction stories by another author?
A sub-plot is the relationship between the two police detectives working on Alice's disappearance, and the baby's. Their names are Charlie Zailer and Simon Waterhouse, and they are in all my psychological thrillers, with their relationship developing unexpectedly in each one. They have a very strange relationship. She is in love with him, but determinedly promiscuous with other men while she waits for Simon to fall for her, and Simon is incapable of having a proper relationship or getting close to anyone.
What does the story gain from the sub-plot or sub-plots?
Realism. In real life, you might be obsessed with your own concerns/problems, but the people you interact with have other priorities. A lot of the drama in life comes from these various priorities clashing: my needs and your needs often don't mix well.
To what extent would you describe your story discussed here as typical or atypical of your fiction stories?
Fairly typical - all my books start with a really baffling mystery which puzzles the reader - an apparently impossible situation, which I then have to resolve to the reader's satisfaction.
Author website: http://www.sophiehannah.com/
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