Have you got what it takes?

Published on Saturday 20 October 2007 00:55

FIRST A SPOT OF TIME TRAVEL. GO to the National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge and turn the clock back about 24 years. There's a lanky, dark-haired figure sitting in his usual seat at the end of a long table in the reading room, scribbling furiously. He's meant to be working on a PhD, but he's actually writing a novel.

Ian Rankin is in his early twenties, studying for a PhD in Muriel Spark at Edinburgh University, but increasingly he's spending his days writing a novel called Knots & Crosses, featuring a hardbitten Edinburgh DI called John Rebus. He finds the studious atmosphere of the NLS conducive to writing, and he's right on top of his crime scene: the book's final showdown takes place in a tunnel almost directly beneath where he's sitting.

Knots & Crosses would be published in 1987 after Rankin moved to London, but it would be a few more years before a thoughtful editor suggested that DI Rebus might be the basis for a series. The books steadily grew in popularity, each outselling the last, and now account for one in ten of all UK crime fiction books sold.

To mark Rebus's 20th anniversary, publisher Orion organised a year of celebrations. In the past 12 months, Edinburgh's favourite cop has seen an exclusive Rebus20 single malt released in his name by Highland Park distillers, and Caledonian Breweries - makers of his pint of choice, Deuchars IPA - launch a limited edition Rebus beer, as well as exhibitions, events and publications.

The celebrations culminate with Crime Scene Edinburgh, a major exhibition about Rankin's detective at the National Library of Scotland, where he scribbled as a student. The focus is on Rebus's police work, and visitors will have the opportunity to collect clues to a whodunit devised by Rankin and analyse them in a police-style forensics room, identifying the culprit.

"Kids are fascinated by that, and just look at the fascination of teenagers with CSI - apparently CSI Miami is the most popular programme on the planet," Rankin says. "That's why cheekily I asked them if they could call the exhibition Crime Scene Edinburgh. Maybe it will dispell a few of the myths as well. People watch CSI and think these people are infallible, and they have all the technology in the world available to them. It's not true in real-life policing."

By the time Rankin was sitting in the National Library of Scotland writing Knots & Crosses, he had already had a measure of success with his short stories. In 1983, he won second place in the Sinclair/Scotsman Short Story Competition (the winner was Iain Crichton Smith) with a story called The Game, about a factory closure in his native Fife. His prize? "A 48K Spectrum home computer."

Now, as then, short stories are a key forum in which writers cut their teeth and get their talent noticed. Scotland's crime-writing scene is particularly strong, which is why The Scotman is launching Criminally Good Writing, in partnership with the National Library of Scotland. Shortlisted writers will win the opportunity to attend a crime-writing masterclass with Ian Rankin. (For details of prizes and how to enter, see page 2 of this magazine.)

"This is a great opportunity," Rankin says. "Crime fiction is as popular as ever, it's attracting a lot of good young writers, especially in Scotland. Scottish crime fiction is buzzing, and there are publishers looking for the next new voice."

And who knows where the story could end? The Ian Rankin sitting scribbling in the NLS 24 years ago would have been incredulous at the thought that one day he would be among the country's best-selling crime writers.

The 19th Rebus book, Exit Music, which was published in September, saw him forced to make some tough decisions. As he set the books in real time, and Rebus was 40 in Knots & Crosses, last year he turned 60, making him legally obliged to retire from the Force.

Rankin says: "The final few pages of Exit Music were the hardest I've ever written. I wanted to get the tone exactly right. Was it going to have an explosive climax? Would Rebus just slink into the night? I kept tweaking it, which is very unlike me."

The book was already with the publisher when he decided to add the final scene.

Rankin says he had compared notes with JK Rowling, one of his neighbours in Merchiston, about bringing a highly popular series to an end. "She said it took a few days for it to sink in, and when it did sink in she cried a lot. I went to the pub. Different ways of dealing with grief I suppose!"

He has not confirmed whether Exit Music will be the last Rebus book, but there is a certain finality in the air as he talks about it. He won't be considering a return to Rebus until 2009 due to other commitments, including a stand-alone graphic novel for DC Comics using Hellblazer character John Constantine and a 15-minute libretto for Scottish Opera ("It starts with a bloodbath and ends with a bloodbath - I think it's going to be great fun!").

"It seems to me that almost everything is conspiring for the series to end. Ken Stott has said that he doesn't want to do another TV series, although he's said he will do one-off episodes. I do sense that there might well be some unfinished business between me and Rebus - but whether there's enough for a novel, or a short story, or just me scribbling things to myself and putting them away in a drawer, I'm not sure."

Whether he returns or not, Rebus is firmly established as part of Edinburgh's literary landscape. His Arden Street flat and favourite watering hole, the Oxford Bar, feature on literary tours of the city along with the sites associated with Scott and Stevenson. In the summer, his name featured behind every bar in the capital.

"It was so funny to walk into a pub and have Rebus ale staring out at me," Rankin grins. At the same time, success has strings attached. Rankin is constantly in demand. The week we meet, his diary is packed with the BBC, American television and German Vanity Fair magazine.

"No writer doesn't want to be a success; you want as many readers as possible. But you do start to lose control a little bit. Rebus has become an entity almost in himself, separate from the author.

"And none of the attention makes it any easier to sit down and write another book or another story. It's that old clich about rock bands who make it big and haven't got time to record their next album. At the end of the day, no writer becomes a writer because they want to go out and do lots of publicity. You become a writer because that's how you best communicate with the world."

He's just as happy writing, or in the library on George IV Bridge where he does a lot of his research. He was there while writing Exit Music, reading up on the events of November 2006, when he had decided Rebus would be investigating the murder of a Russian dissident poet in Edinburgh's King Stables Road.

As he was writing the book, the Scottish election was imminent and the politial parties were neck and neck in the polls. The book's political subtext explores the potential of an SNP government moving the country close to independence.

Rebus overhears a conversation among the smokers outside the Oxford Bar: "In 20 years we'll be Norway," says one, and another counters: "Either that or Albania."

"If you look at the positive side, we could be a prosperous small nation, very go ahead and gung-ho, led by a charismatic leader who would give us a prominent position on the world stage. If you want to be cynical you might say that all the worst aspects of Scottishness might bubble to the surface. Really, we wouldn't be the new Ireland, the new Norway, the new Albania, we'd be Scotland. We've got a very different mindset, a very different philosophy of life from those countries."

Given that Rankin had the chance to meet and interview First Minister Alex Salmond just before the election, I wonder if he was convinced? "I wasn't entirely, but then I'm very seldom convinced by anything in the world. There's still that little nugget of Rebus inside my head that's incredibly cynical and refuses to be forward-looking. I've always got my Mr Hyde inside my head."

• Crime Scene Edinburgh is at the National Library of Scotland from 24 October until 13 January. For more information visit the website at www.nls.uk

Rankin's mini masterclass

Scotland has a history of producing fine writers of short stories, from Robert Louis Stevenson and Iain Crichton Smith to AL Kennedy and Michel Faber. "I love short stories," says Ian Rankin. "I love writing them and reading them. Every novelist I know likes the short story form, and they're great admirers of people who do it well." Here are three of his writing tips:

CUT THE SLACK

2,000 words doesn't sound like very much. So what can you leave out? "A short story is a fantastic discipline for a writer. You've got to try to get across as much information as possible in very few words. Write something down, then start taking out a word or a phrase. Does the passage still makes sense? You'll be surprised how much you can take out, and at the end it's usually better."

GRAB THE READER'S ATTENTION

A good novel seizes the reader's attention in the first chapter, but a short story doesn't have that long. Have you hooked your reader in the first sentence, or the first paragraph? Are they compelled to read on? "The opening sentence is the most important sentence in a short story," says Rankin. "You've got to grab the reader from the very start. You usually do that with an arresting opening sentence, they need to be compelled to go to the second sentence, then the third."

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

"Short stories are a great laboratory. You're free to experiment. You can take risks. It's all about experimenting with different voices, perspectives and time frames. You can write short stories set in the future or in the past. A crime story doesn't have to be about a detective, it can be from the bad guy's point of view. It could be morally ambiguous, or light-hearted. You don't need a whodunit element, you need a central character who is coming up against a situation they've never had to deal with before."

So, it's over to you. Look at the information and photograph on page 2 and put your imagination in the driving seat. We're looking for original writing talent, not Inspector Rebus clones. As Rankin says: "You should feel there are no rules. Don't play it too safe. It's only through taking risks that you'll find out what really works."