Authors Electric

How embarrassing. I was interviewed for a podcast in the US recently, and it quickly became apparent that my interviewer knew my books better than I did. Admittedly, the last book in the Divide trilogy was written twenty years ago, but nevertheless… I had to re-read all three books, to find out what happened to whom, and why. It was actually rather interesting, because it was like reading something someone else had written. I used to tell my students always to put something lengthy to one side and write something else before they went back and re-read what they’d written, as the time-lapse gave the reader some objectivity. I’m not sure I ever suggested leaving something for twenty years though! I had forgotten on whom I had based some of my characters. Some of the original inspirations had grown up, and become very different people. Others had died. Yet more rang no bells at all, and I had no idea what person inspired them – if anyone. Most people don’t recognise themselves, and it’s o...

Some characters seem to spring out of thin air, but others have a starting point with a real person. Eccentric people provide the best material – they’re more interesting, their reactions are more exaggerated, they often have a hobby or obsession that informs everything they do. Because of this warts-and-all element, you are unlikely to provide the most flattering of portrayals, and so a name-change is needed. You can, of course, go a lot further, and alter the age, gender and appearance as well. However, the person you know better than anyone else is, of course, yourself - so you use aspects of yourself quite a lot as well. I also think there’s a lot of acting in writing. I imagine myself as my characters, and try to see things from their point of view. This can suddenly give you a completely new insight into someone you thought you knew extremely well. It’s also true that when you know someone very well you tend to assume that the reader knows what they look like too, and it’s eas...

  I nearly always watch the technology programme Click on a Sunday morning, and the episode that dealt with 360 ˚ cameras really got me thinking. There was a shot of someone strapped into a chair that tilted in every direction, mimicking what was occurring in the presentation where you could look around you, just as though you were turning round or moving your head. This guy’s chair had tipped right forward, and he looked as though he were throwing up. Whatever he was experiencing was all too real. Or was it?             It’s been bothering me for some time, this move to an alternative world. We get our natural history in exotic locations via a screen, edited and selected with its stunning visuals and recorded birdsong and absence of mosquito bites and tummy bugs. There’s nothing to discover – it’s all been done for you, and the sensory experience narrowed to sight and sound alone. A walk in the countryside is so diffe...