Where do you get your ideas from? This is the most common question readers ask writers, and I usually find it impossible to answer. Novels often arise from a combination of sources and influences but with my latest thriller, The Last Resort, I can pinpoint a very specific inspiration.
Many years ago, when I was studying German at A-Level, one of the set texts on the syllabus was a 1956 play called The Visit, by the writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt. In the play, a fictional town called Güllen is facing bankruptcy. All of its industry has shut down and its inhabitants are living in poverty. Their last hope is a visit from Claire Zachanassian, a former resident of Güllen who is now a millionairess. The townsfolk hope she will save them with her money. When Claire returns to Güllen, she does offer the desperate inhabitants a generous donation, but only in return for them killing one of their own.
This gripping tale of morality and revenge has always haunted me. For a while, I’d been thinking of setting a thriller in an alternative spiritual community. It occurred to me that such a community could, in the right circumstances, be as vulnerable to temptation as the citizens of Güllen.
In The Last Resort, a group of people calling itself the Pure Heart Community has been living in the Troodos mountains in Cyprus for nearly twenty years. Thanks to their generous benefactor, Charles, the community members have never had to work. Instead, they live a charmed life in an idyllic setting. A refuge from the outside world and from their troubled pasts. Until Charles dies and they discover he wasn’t as rich as he claimed to be. Now they have huge debts to deal with and are at risk of losing everything.
Using this predicament, I was able to transfer some of the premise of The Visit into the story. As I wrote the first draft of the novel, I had to put the play aside and let the situation and characters develop independently. Yet I often returned to the play and used its structure and main events to help me shape the novel’s framework and main turning points.
Where do you get your ideas from? Sitting in my German classes all those years ago, I could never have imagined that the play I was reading would one day help me write my fourth novel! Proof that story ideas can come from the most unexpected places and that no life experience or learning is ever wasted.