The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - Dennis Wheatley’s Writing Technique

Polishing throughout the process

Even the typescript sent to the printers contains a major amendment

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...as well as some more minor ones

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As DW observed in his Cantor lecture:

'Best-sellers are not just gaily knocked off on a typewriter or the finished article produced by a few hours dictation every day. Every sentence has to be gone over again and again'

And he added in 'Drink and Ink':

'I have also found that it never pays to correct work a day or so after writing it. Somehow one does not spot the faults. The thing to do is to write about five chapters - say a month's work and only then read and revise them before having them typed. After that one should leave it until the whole story has been typed; then read it through to make certain that a minor character who appears in an early chapter with blue eyes is not said in a much later one to have brown; and those kinds of details'.

As the exhibits show, DW would be refining and amending as he was writing both his pencil and ink manuscripts and the various iterations of the typescript, and the process did not stop until the last minute.

As can be seen from the above exhibit, DW changed the name of the hero of 'Unholy Crusade' from 'Archie' to 'Adam' at the very last minute, as well as making other - and more minor - changes to the typescript. In one illustrated above, he changes a 'short ladder' to a 'folding ladder'.