Barbara Copperthwaite : How do you pick character names? Do any have special meaning to you?
Jane: I’m actually picky about names. I decide
how old a character is and look at the 100 most popular baby names the year
my character was ‘born’. I read through
these lists again and again until the right name leaps out at me. Dickens said
he could not write a character until he had the right name and he had a point.
Barbara: How do you go
about plotting your book?
Jane: Most novels have a central plot idea and
then subplots which reinforce or comment on the main plot in some way. When I
start I have the central plot idea and a rough idea of where that will take my
characters but the detail emerges as I write. For example with THE LIE OF YOU I
knew that one woman was trying to destroy another woman but didn’t know why and
that was what I had to work out.
However with my third novel, WOMAN OF THE HOUR,
I did more work planning the sub-plots as well as the main plot before I
started writing and one of the sub plots became very important.
I also create a page for each of the main characters
where I list key characteristics, back story, quirks, strengths and weaknesses
etc. I find this is a useful thing to do.
Barbara: What is the
best writing tip you have ever been given? How has it influenced you?
Jane: The best writing tip I ever saw was on a
blog called The Writing Prompt Boot Camp and came from James Scott Bell. He
said that people don’t want to read about Happy People in Happy Land and that
readers engage with a plot via trouble, threat, change or challenge. I thought
that was so neatly and memorably put and I try to keep that in my mind when
writing. Novels need conflict to work.
Barbara: How has your
writing style developed over time? And the way that you approach writing?
Jane: The only way to develop your writing is
to write and I have learned more with each book and hope I will continue to
learn with each new story and set of characters.
I am particularly interested in the issue of Point of View. My first book THE LIE OF YOU was told in the first person by two women, Heja and Kathy, in alternating chapters.
With my second book AFTER THE STORM I moved to
third person narration as I had four characters who were all equally important.
I noticed that writing in third person was less intense. It did however have some
advantages as you are not tied to what only one character can see!
With my
third novel, WOMAN OF THE HOUR, I have gone back to first person narration from
a single female character and I think on balance that this is what I like to do
best. It is the immediacy of first person narration that appeals to me.
Barbara: What book do
you wish you had written?
Jane: The
Shipping News by Annie Proulx. It has everything I love in a novel: a
magnificent sense of place – Newfoundland; a flawed hero who is an outsider
despised by most people; a cast of authentic believable characters and a plot
that allows the hero to find redemption. I do not like hopeless books. A bit of
hope at the end is necessary for me.
ABOUT YOU
Barbara: If you could
be a character in any book, including one of your own, who would you be?
Jane: I am reading the Neopolitan novels by
Elena Ferrante and I'm drawn to Lila and would choose to be her. She can be very annoying but I love her
fearlessness and her intense way of experiencing life.
Barbara: How much do
your own life experiences appear in your writing?
Jane: My experiences play a big part in what I write.
For example I did the sail from Belize City to Roatan which I describe in
AFTER THE STORM. The characters are fictional but the setting, the food and the
weather comes from a holiday journal I wrote at the time and the many
photographs I took.
In WOMAN OF THE HOUR I have drawn on my fifteen
years as a TV journalist, then producer and commissioning editor to create
StoryWorld, a London TV station, with all the monster egos and high-octane
drama that entails.
Barbara: Do you ever
surprise yourself with what you’ve written?
Jane: Yes because sometimes a scene seems very
important to write. I don’t know why it is
relevant but it’s as if it won’t be silenced. Only after it has taken shape and been written down do I realise that
there was a fictional problem I was grappling with and that the scene has
dramatized that problem and brought it to life.
AND FINALLY…
Barbara: Describe your
current work in progress in five words.
Jane: Workplace intrigue at TV station. (Woman of the Hour)
My novels are published by Head of Zeus.
Available here:
This interview first appeared on Barbara Copperthwaite's BLOOD TYPE blog. My warm thanks to Barbara.
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