Christy
asked
Tana French:
You write such real, layered characters. Has there been a narrator that you personally had a harder time connecting with? If so, what do you do to tap into that character?
Tana French
Thank you :-). Scorcher Kennedy in Broken Harbour was definitely the one I've the hardest time connecting with. I don't have much in common with any of my narrators, but I really don't *get* a lot of the things that are fundamental to Scorcher - his obsession with following rules, his devotion to doing things the way you're 'supposed' to, his desperation to turn everything into a positive even if it's clearly a bad thing, his fanatical need for control... In real life, I tend to get irritated with people like that. And yet i knew he was the right narrator for this book, so I had to find a way to understand him.
So I started thinking about what might make someone like that, and I thought one thing that might do it was if he was terrified of his own mind - if he thought of it as something slippery and unreliable that might let him down at any moment. That would explain why he had such a need for rigid, externally imposed controls - because he could rely on them, when he felt he couldn't rely on himself. Once I could understand why Scorcher might feel that way, I was able to make him into a real character rather than an irritating rule freak.
It also made me less impatient with real-life people like that. It can be pretty humbling, spending your time trying to understand people who are different from you.
So I started thinking about what might make someone like that, and I thought one thing that might do it was if he was terrified of his own mind - if he thought of it as something slippery and unreliable that might let him down at any moment. That would explain why he had such a need for rigid, externally imposed controls - because he could rely on them, when he felt he couldn't rely on himself. Once I could understand why Scorcher might feel that way, I was able to make him into a real character rather than an irritating rule freak.
It also made me less impatient with real-life people like that. It can be pretty humbling, spending your time trying to understand people who are different from you.
More Answered Questions
Colleen
asked
Tana French:
I have read all of your books and just finished The Secret Place. I loved it; as an educator pf adolescents and young adults, I compliment you on how well you captured their lives and minds. Please refresh my memory on Holly and Stephen; how did they encounter each other in a previous novel?
Cristina Ferrandez
asked
Tana French:
Tana, I found the idea of the 'animal' in Broken Harbour extremely chilling and a superb metaphor for mental illness and/or depression, but also loved the ambiguity of it (we can never be quite sure that the animal didn't exist - what about the skeletons in the attic?). Could you please tell us how you came up with the idea of the animal, and whether this ambiguity was intentional? Thanks!
Greg
asked
Tana French:
So many authors develop a character and then write a long string of books, from 3 to 30, based around the one character. But reading your books, each one is individual, with its own set of characters and a rather loose connection to the others. In many ways, this is very refreshing. Why do you prefer to write completely new story lines rather than revisiting established characters?
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Oct 01, 2014 07:30PM · flag
Oct 09, 2014 04:48PM · flag