For a while now I've had the notion to write a novel about a man who is sent to prison for the first time in old age. His crime is 'historical' - it happened thirty years or more before he is sent down.

I've met a number of chaps in this position during my research in prison. I became intrigued by their experience, and by comments made by them but also by prison officers that some of them were in all likelhihood innocent. What is it like, I thought, to reach your retirement and to find yourself suddenly accused of a serious crime and sent to prison. What is it like to be released having lost almost everything as a consequence of the sentence?

We live in a society that seems to be obsessed with sex, and the infantilisation of sex, too. Most of the chaps I interviewed for my research were in prison for rape or sexual assault. Many of them said they had been stitched up by their families or by the victim or by someone they knew. Of course, they would say that, wouldn't they? But some of the officers I spoke to said the evidence they had been convicted on was thin to say the least. What level of proof can be achieved after thirty years without dna evidence?

I began to ask myself, 'what if a man who has led an outwardly exemplary life, perhaps a public figure of some sort, is suddenly accused of having committed a serious crime decades ago and is sent to prison for it? What is that like? What are the effects on his family? It seems to me there are likely to be a number of, shall we say, thresholds of conflict. For example, there is the conflict within him - did he do it? How is he going to deal with guilt if he should feel any? What lies / statements / confessions will he tell to escape? There's the conflict between him and his family, his wife, for example. What secrets have lurked in their relationship? Is she surprised by the accusation? Did she know all along? If so, what stories did she tell to herself? And the children - how does it affect them? Exactly who - or what - is their father?  What of the victim? How straightforward are his or her motives? How reliable are her memories, and his?

Now, I'm not usually sold on the novel as a fictional form, not per se. I prefer the short story. But as I say in my lectures on doing research, use the right tools for the job: don't pick the job for the tools. Writers need to be able to work in many forms. It seems to me that this is a subject for a novel. There are simply too many influences on the outcome, too many lines of action and motivation to be handled by a short story form. That still leaves a question of the right form for this novel, and just now that is to be decided, but a novel it most surely is.

So a few days ago I dived in. A novel seems to me to be too complex a thing to make to work without some degree of planning. This is a story that must run over many years, decades even, though I may in the end foreground only part of that process. Not only do I need a long time line, I need a location. In my experience novice writers tend to shy away from setting their work in particular places and times, prefering an imaginary landscape that has few points of reference outside the psychology of the the protagonist. I think this is a mistake. I believe the universal, if I can put it like that, is best achieved through the particular.

My basic plot is as follows: Arthur Means, my protagonist, is making some kind of public appearance. I don;'t know what just now but I know he needs to be visible. Among the people who are looking at him is one who has not seen him for many years. She (my antagonist) realises he is the man who raped her when she was fifteen.

Encouraged by her family or friends (I haven't decided yet) she takes action. She easily finds out where Arthur lives and throws a brick through his window. Then a few days later she posts a threatening letter through the door. The poilce trace the letter and question her. She - her name is Millicent - turns out to be from the very opposite end of society to the one that Arthur is used to. But under questioning she makes some serious allegations about Arthur, allegations that have to be taken investigated. Somehow (I haven't figured out how yet) Arthur is charged and brought to court. He is found guilty and sentenced to five years

I think that if the novel were to stop here it might provide a satisfying enough framework, though it would leave out his expeience of living in prison, something I know a bit about and which I find intriguing in itself. The first part could be that of his sinning. The second his descent into hell. It would require a third, a ressurection, of sorts.

All this is no more than a sketch of the boundaries - a stage if you like on which to enact the play. Of far more importance is the feeling that drives the story, which as in every story will come through action and character but needs ito come from something in me. I'm not sure what that feeling is, and I can only hope that my sense that I have such a feeling will be borne out in the writing. Arthur, Millicent and Charlotte need each to have voices. Henceforth, apart from such planning and research as is necessary, it is an adventure into unknown territory

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