Ask the Author: Verity Brown
Answered Questions (8)
Verity Brown
Most of my stories begin in my sleep, as a dream. If a scene or a scenario is really compelling, I will keep thinking about, wondering how the story goes from there. That's how AMA got started--I had a dream in which Snape and a student were immobilized, hand in hand, inside a house, with Death Eaters about to attack. I woke up wondering: what happened next? And a story grew. The details of that initial scene changed (as you know if you've read AMA), but the dream was what got the story going in my head.
Verity Brown
At the moment, I'm trying to work myself up to starting again on my space opera. The pot has been bubbling a lot this winter, and I'm hoping that I actually have enough of the alien culture to work with now that I can get past chapter 6 without giving up in despair.
Verity Brown
Write. Write a lot. Come back later and read what you've written with fresh eyes to see where you went wrong. Then fix it. Also, read the work of good writers, not just to enjoy their stories, but to figure out how they do what they do. My own biggest breakthrough came when I was trying to make Andrea (in my Shannara fan-fic) a more sympathetic character at the beginning of the story. I had recently read Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword, and I realized that she had a similar character (in Harry) to the one I was trying to create: a girl who was discontented with the way her life was going. So I read and reread and reread the first few chapters of The Blue Sword, analyzing *how* McKinley made that character sympathetic instead of whiny. And then I tried to apply what I had learned.
Someone told me once that the first 100,000 words a writer writes will be crap. I'm not sure whether that's true for everyone or not, but I do know that you have to practice in order to get better at anything. That is as true of writing as it is of sewing or knitting or cooking.
Someone told me once that the first 100,000 words a writer writes will be crap. I'm not sure whether that's true for everyone or not, but I do know that you have to practice in order to get better at anything. That is as true of writing as it is of sewing or knitting or cooking.
Verity Brown
Being able to tell the story I'm seeing in my head so that other people can see it as well. I've been making up stories with fictional characters since was about 6 years old, but it wasn't until I was a teenager (and found a best friend that wrote, despite being a normal teenager like me) that I began to take the idea seriously that I could actually write those stories down. And I wasn't good at it at first. I cringe to remember some of my early efforts! But I was determined to perfect my craft, so I kept at it, year after year.
Verity Brown
If I know what I want to write, writer's block usually isn't an issue. It's when the pot is still bubbling on the back of the stove but doesn't have the right combination of spices in it yet that I have difficulty writing. That was one of the reasons that the epilogues took so long. I knew there were things that needed to be included in the drabbles, but I wasn't always able to identify what those things were.
I've been dealing with that kind of writer's block with my original stories for years. I will reach a point when I realize that don't have enough background information, and since I have to generate my own background information in an original story, I find myself putting things on hold, sometimes for years, waiting for the "stew" to be ready.
I've been dealing with that kind of writer's block with my original stories for years. I will reach a point when I realize that don't have enough background information, and since I have to generate my own background information in an original story, I find myself putting things on hold, sometimes for years, waiting for the "stew" to be ready.
Verity Brown
I'm sure it was tense. But Snape must have been moderately confident in the fact that Dumbledore *couldn't* do much, not without ruining a number of other carefully laid plans. And Sarah was too valuable as a playing piece for Dumbledore to resist the opportunity to control her on the board (yes, I've always been a believer in scheming!manipulative!Dumbledore).
Verity Brown
I haven't thought in great detail about that issue. The immediate post-war years would have been emotionally difficult for everyone involved, and without the space to deal with those issues in the drabbles, I didn't delve into it at all.
Verity Brown
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