Linda Gillard

I mentioned Dorothy Dunnett earlier. The sequence of books I've been re-reading for more than 20 years now is The Lymond Chronicles, 6 long books about one man, Francis Crawford, a gorgeous 16thC Scottish (anti-)hero who develops in the most complex way over the course of the six books. The books are full of action, complex plotting and a host of vivid characters, but the real hook is Francis, what happens to him, wondering what he is going to do next. I don't know of a more complex, fully developed or satisfying hero in British literature. He surpasses both Darcy and Mr. Rochester for me - by a wide margin! The first book in the series is called THE GAME OF KINGS. I wrote an article for a blog about Dunnett (now dead sadly and much missed by her fans) and I then put it on my website. If you're interested in reading more about her (and Francis) see http://www.lindagillard.co.uk/further-reading.php I think believable characters must be the key to a good book - characters you can get involved with. I think plot is of secondary importance. (Although I also think character is plot.) Do you have favourite book heroes? I adore Heathcliff, although I know a lot of people think he's loathsome! WUTHERING HEIGHTS fascinates me and my 2nd novel, A LIFETIME BURNING was an attempt to write something like a 21stC version of it. I've no idea if I succeeded but the anti-hero Rory certainly divided readers. Some loved him, but mostly they disliked him. (I loved him, despite his appalling faults.) Linda

Some of those characters really did have a mind of their own! That was the first book I wrote where I had a distinct and weird sense of taking dictation. I might plan a certain scene and then the characters would say "No, that's wrong, it was like this" and I'd write it differently from how I'd planned. In the creative writing How To books they tell you to plan your books chapter by chapter and that you should be in control of the characters and know everything about them. That's certainly not the way I work. I think a character has taken off if s/he starts arguing with me and doing surprising things. For me that's like a real live person. One of the tips I give students is that if you're a bit stuck with a character, if they are seeming a bit dull, make them act out of character. People do it all the time! I think some of the most gripping moments in fiction are when people suddenly act out of character. Something I say to my students (and myself) is "Never give in to the temptation to simplify." Life isn't simple. People aren't. And characters shouldn't be. Linda

Can I ask a question now? What makes a book "unputdownable"? What makes you read on? Is it just wanting to know what happens next? Or is it that you don't want to leave the characters? Or that a book is just easy to read? As an author I'd love to know what this quality is, not least because I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of readers "complain" to me that they were up into the small hours, finishing one of my books because they just couldn't put it down. (Now when I sell books at author events I warn people not to start them late at night. ;-) ) But I don't know what this unputdownable quality is! A certain fluency of style does it for me. Vintage Margaret Forster (I'm not so keen on the more recent stuff) is just so easy to read because it's beautifully written. (Don't start SHADOW BABY late at night!) Linda

Hi Karen Another good question! You're right - a disproportionate number of authors are ex-journalists. Publishers like journalists. They have a proven track record, a writing CV. They are used to being edited. They understand marketing. They meet deadlines. They are full of ideas. Perhaps most importantly they know people, they listen and research for a living, so their work is likely to have a certain depth. There is also the factor that journalists are social animals and will have made a lot of contacts and publishing is a small, incestuous, back-scratching world where networking is an essential part of getting on. None of this applied to me however! I was a freelance living in East Anglia and was never on the London circuit even though I wrote a column for IDEAL HOME for 12 years. And when I was trying to find an agent and a publisher for my first novel I was living on the Isle of Skye, my current home, so there was no London/journalism factor operating in my favour then. But I think being a journalist taught me how to write concisely, how to edit and how to think about marketing myself and my books. As a journalist you are trying to write so that the casual reader will read to the end of your article and not turn the page in search of something more interesting. You are constantly aware of the need to entertain and inform. I think this training pays off when you come to write fiction. You know that you absolutely must not bore your reader which means you mustn't waste words and you must maintain their interest. As a writer of fiction I aim to make it almost impossible for you to put my books down. As a journalist I wanted your eye to travel smoothly on till it got to the end of the piece. It's the same aim and you use some of the same techniques. Linda

That's a very interesting question, Andrea. I think my problem is not so much trying to discipline myself to write as trying to make myself do something other than write! I'm a workaholic really and there's nothing I'd rather be doing. But in the early days it was harder, I think because I lacked confidence in what I was doing and thought it was a bit ,well, mad, getting so involved in these made-up stories and falling in love - no, really - with these heroes that I'd created. (My 22 year old son refers to my writing as "playing with my imaginary friends".) My books are also quite ambitious and I didn't know if I could actually do the things I was trying to do, so I think I often needed a confidence boost and an energy boost. I've always used music for that. (Springsteen is great for making you think you can achieve anything!) I have a kind of playlist for each book. I lot of writers do this. Music will take you directly into the world of the book the way scents allow you to access memories. The other thing I do which helps me get into the world of the book and get down to work quickly is that I collect pictures - mostly photos of people - which represent places and characters in the work-in-progress. So above my PC there are a lot of photos clipped out of magazines or printed off the internet representing the characters in my current book. A character doesn't really take off for me until I have found a visual real life equivalent. Their personality doesn't have to resemble my character's, just their face. I teach creative writing occasionally and I find that mostly what stops people writing is fear. Fear that it won't be "good". But if you stop trying to write "well", but just tell the story, the writing flows more easily. You have to get that critic off your shoulder, the one who sneers, "Whatever makes you think you can write?" I don't ever worry about writing well now, I just try to say what I want to say, in the way that I want to say it. For me, that's good writing. :-) Linda

Hi Jules I don't read that much for pleasure for a variety of reasons and this is a source of great regret. I write fulltime and I tend to work long days. I like to watch DVDs to relax. Reading when you're writing can be very distracting stylistically and I tend to read anything but the contemporary fiction I write. If it's good you get depressed, if it's bad you get depressed ("Why is this selling in shedloads and I'm not?!"). So I like to read historical fiction (esp. Dorothy Dunnett whom I re-read all the time) and biography (I loved M Forster's biog. of Daphne du Maurier) because there's no overlap with my own work. The other kind of reading I do is for research and I will always have a stack of books sitting on a table which I dip into, eg I read 3 autobiographical books written by blind people when I was researching STAR GAZING. For the book I've just finished drafting I read a biography of Enid Blyton. (Fascinating!) But I do read some contemporary stuff. I recently discovered Sophie Hannah whom I'd recommend if you like psychological thrillers. I really admired Stef Penney's TENDERNESS OF WOLVES. My favourite read so far this year is MR PIP by Lloyd Jones which I thought was brilliant. I also loved the Victorian detective romp, SILENT IN THE GRAVE by Deanna Raybourn. Linda

Hi Michelle (and everyone in the forum) Thanks for inviting me to participate. I suppose I have always written. I've certainly always made up stories in my head! I used to be a big letter writer too. I worked as a freelance journalist and as an actress so words have always been my thing. I wrote my first novel many years ago when I had 2 small children and was quietly going mad at home (as you do). I tried to get that one published but after 2 years of rejection slips I gave up. I cringe now when I think how awful that novel probably was, but there were some interesting characters in it which I "recycled" in my 2nd novel, A LIFETIME BURNING. I think because I'd lived with those characters for about 18 years, it gave ALB a sense of depth and I was able to write about those lives in some detail. (ALB covers a period of 58 years in one family.) I didn't try for publication again until I'd turned 50. By then I'd abandoned a career as a primary teacher after a breakdown and long period of illness. I'd taken up writing fiction just as something to do - for pleasure and as a kind of therapy. The novel I began then eventually became EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY, my first published novel. I'd joined a writers' e-group and they encouraged me to try to get an agent. I didn't think I'd stand a chance because EG was such a quirky book and had a 47 year old romantic heroine and this was in the heyday of Chicklit, so I sent off the manuscript with no expectation of success. But I found an agent who loved it (actually I think she loved my hero ;-) ) and then we found a publisher. So I began my 5th career (if you count motherhood) at the age of 53 when my first novel was published. It's never too late for a new start! (Which is one of the "messages" of EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY.) Linda