Dorothy’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2012)

Dorothy’s comments from the Q&A with Frederic S. Durbin group.

Very evocative writing! Yes, you certainly are a writer of place! Reading this makes me eager for summer, so that I can once more walk into a cornfield to experience that green solitude, and so that I can look for paths in the hedgerows.

Thanks; I enjoyed reading this!

You described yourself as a "writer of place." What are some of your favorite places to visit? Are there certain places you like to go to receive inspiration for your writing? How about your favorite fictional places to visit, in the books and stories of others?

Thanks for the writing tips! Now I'm wondering, out of all your books and stories, do you have a favorite or two? Perhaps a favorite story you would like us to know about? Or is your favorite always the one you happen to be working on at the time?

It's very encouraging to know that there are multiple ways of approaching the writing of fiction! Now I'm wondering, if you start with the setting and allow your characters to develop within the setting, where does the plot come from? Does that all develop, too, as you go along, or do you have some basic plan of where the story is going before you start to write?

What advice would you give to writers seeking to create believable characters, characters that other people will care about? Are your characters modeled on people whom you know? Do you keep a notebook with ideas about characters? Do you ever go to a mall to watch people and maybe make up stories about the people you see walking by? Do you study people and try to figure out what makes them act the way do?

You and Tolkien in a canoe--that's quite a mind picture! That might be too much of a good thing. I rather think that you two would have such an interesting discussion that you would forget what place you were actually in and capsize the canoe! :-)

So many worlds to explore . . . I fail to understand when people complain of boredom! :-)

Interesting about the four types of writers! I have a tendency to think that all stories must begin with the characters. Thanks for enlightening us!

Your stories have such a sense of place, such an atmosphere. Maybe, for you, the setting is the first character to show up, the one who defines all the rest of the characters!

Do your stories generally begin with the setting? Or does a character ever come and tap you on the shoulder?

What is the genesis of The Star Shard? Did it begin with a mental image of Cymbril? Or with the Rake? (You mentioned that a sense of place is vital to your writing.) Or did the beginning ideas come to you in some other way?