The source of inspiration for thriller writers (and the need for conflict)
Saturday, 20 December 2008 21:41
When it comes to getting ideas for a novel (or even novel ideas) thriller writers are at the forefront of fiction, busy interweaving news items, plotlines from history and characters which we all feel we have somehow met somewhere with stories and developments which are based in the modern world today.
This means that we draw inspiration from a great many walks of life and a great many strands, not least that of what happens as we write. The writing of a novel usually entails the production of at least 150,000 words and the re-writing of the same no fewer than three times as we polish up the prose, tighten up the pacing and develop the characters. The result is that what we start with, more often than not, is much, much different to what we end up with, suggesting that a novel in the process of being created is much more fluid in its construction than most novelists would readily admit.
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Anarchist Logic
Tuesday, 16 December 2008 19:51
We've had a visit from the Anarchists' Profound Slogans Department...
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Perfect book for Christmas present this year
Monday, 08 December 2008 09:14
When you think of Christmas this year it pays to think of giving a Christmas present that combines action, excitement, intrigue, history and the age-old need for justice all in one package. It’s a tall order which is why nothing can match it apart from a well-written, critically-acclaimed international thriller focusing on a post-second world war topic.
As the author I am duty-bound to say that Theft of the Master is a masterpiece of its genre, a perfect action/adventure book and just the kind of Christmas present you can give with equal ease to your grandma as your nephews. Beyond my own opinion and the fact that as the author I need to promote my book come dozens of reviewers who pretty much echo this opinion, hundreds of readers comments and the kind of feedback which makes me feel, as the author, proud to have been involved in the enterprise of writing the book in the first place.
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You want to get at the truth - ask a writer
Friday, 05 December 2008 21:10
Writers have a better grasp of the world according to an official report published by researchers from Manchester University and the London School of Economics. The news while fresh as far as research evidence goes is hardly surprising. Novelists and poets, in order to create their work and imbue it with the verisimilitude required to create the necessary suspense of disbelief in their readers need to absorb and render so much of the world about them that they actually (and here perhaps I should say ‘we’ actually) act as a filter for the external reality, boiling down and condensing things and then focusing on what it is that makes them tick, much like a Secret Service summary for the President or an Academic study designed to highlight specifics.
Why writing is more about art than craft (and how to tell when to draw the line)
Monday, 24 November 2008 14:46
A friend of mine who is in the book-publishing business likes to create controversy by saying that writing is too important to be left in the hands of writers. He is kidding of course. He knows that often writers produce drivel and knows that all writing, no matter how good it is, needs to be edited before it can be published and, as a result, likes to stir things up, particularly when he is talking within the hearing range of writers.
But I know that he also has a point. Writing, when it comes to fiction and particularly when it comes to thrillers is, in equal share, art and craft. The writer who is caught up if the fugue of his creative drive way too often works too fast to pause and consider such details as the height, hair length and even the names of minor characters.
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Never argue with a Sfakiot
Friday, 21 November 2008 21:51
The death of a 27-year-old Cretan man, whose body was found riddled with bullets near his car in the Cretan region of Sfakia on Wednesday night, may have been a revenge attack as the victim had been linked to the murder of a local farmer three years ago, police on the island said yesterday.
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Four suggestions for writing your own thriller
Tuesday, 18 November 2008 19:41
If you are ready to make your name as a writer you need to be able to begin from somewhere and writing your own thriller is the perfect place to start. So where exactly would you place this imaginary ‘X’ marking the spot where your thriller-writer’s journey will begin from? What is it that you need to have in place in order to get from where you are to wherever you want to be?
Well, as you can imagine no writing journey is ever easy and there is no definitive starting point, if you are serious however about getting your thriller novel written here are the ingredients you need to have amassed:
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Lies, lies and damn lies (that’s what helps us find the truth)
Monday, 17 November 2008 10:42
The story of Tippi Degré whose ‘jungle girl’ life that seemed to be out of a storybook and too good to be true and which we now know this to have been the case, goes to join such notorious public liars as Margaret B Jones and James Frey who duped the publishing world and the reading public into believing that their tales of larger-than-life survival-against-all-the-odds were somehow true.
Whatever moral ambiguities might be highlighted by these very public acts who, somehow, they would get away with it, are beyond the scope of these pages to discuss and it has, at any rate, already been talked and written about to death in the Blogosphere. What interests us here is ‘why’? – Not why these writers thought they should do what they did (fame and fortune are motives enough) but rather why did we so readily buy it?
Why did Oprah, a person who is as astute at reading other people as she is at running her multi-million dollar empire was so ready to accept James Frey at face value? Why did we really think that a former drug-running gang-chick was really able to transcend the difficulties and become a world-straddling writer? Why do we really want the ‘jungle girl’ tale to be really true?
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The novelist’s journey and the world at large
Sunday, 16 November 2008 22:27
I am often asked whether I find it difficult to write and whether I have to lock myself away in order to complete a novel. Despite what most people think the answer is actually quite easy.
A novelist’s journey in the world is informed and inspired by, in equal measures, by the world we live in. Thoughts, ideas, concepts as well as dialogue and even trends within the style of writing are all the result of the distilled mental process of a million interactions.
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