Brendan
asked
Tana French:
I love how the protagonists in your books are characters we've already seen in smaller roles in previous novels. How far in advance do you plan that? When you're writing a supporting character into a book, do you know that you intend on making them a main character in a different story?
Tana French
I don't plan it in advance. What generally happens is that there's a stage, about halfway through a book, when my mind starts wanting to do something else, anything else - all of a sudden, cleaning the oven or trying to braid the cat starts to sound totally enthralling. And one of the things it does in order to keep me from writing is come up with ideas for the next book - which is at least more useful than, say, painting my fingernails in stripes. And so far, at least, the new idea is usually a good fit for some minor character from the book I'm actually supposed to be writing.
More Answered Questions
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?
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!
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Dec 15, 2016 01:28PM