Ask the Author: Michael Varga
Answered Questions (6)
Michael Varga
I lived it. I was in the Peace Corps in Chad in the 1970s and due to civil war we were evacuated from the country. I used that as the basis for the interactions among the characters in Under Chad's Spell.
Michael Varga
I find inspiration in most encounters between real-life people. Something unexpected always can happen, and therein lies the story, the drama, the reason a reader may be compelled to care about these characters.
Michael Varga
I am working on the sequel to my Peace Corps novel, Under Chad's Spell. The two main characters, Charlene and Madison, go off in different directions after Chad.
Michael Varga
Think about your biography. There are seeds in your own life story that you can use to transform a narrative. Rather than what may have happened in your actual life, let a character--who's based on you but is not you--experience a different outcome. You can sprinkle real life details into your scene to give it that sense of "someone actually lived through this." But you alter the outcome to give it that dramatic weight.
Michael Varga
The best thing about being a writer is that you can deal with serious consequences of assorted actions, but since they remain in the fictional world, the consequences only need to be thought of as affecting these fictional characters in this fictional world. There is such power in that for an author. And in telling a story, a reader can be transported to that fictional world, where nonetheless those consequences have great import.
Michael Varga
When I get stumped writing a scene and can't figure out what the characters should do, I let my imagination go and consider the most outrageous act a character might perform. I think about the implications of that act, and gradually it becomes clear how the character should act: something usually less than that most outrageous act, but still something I might not have come up with if I merely considered "conventional" actions by the character.
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