Tana French
Cut the dream sequence.
My husband is my first reader, and he's amazing at it. In particular, he has a demon eye for any kind of structural sloppiness. And he's killed every dream sequence I've ever written (except the prologue of The Likeness; he let me away with that one). He says that a dream sequence is almost invariably either a repetition of something that's already done within the actual action, or a lazy way of doing something that should be done within the actual action. And he's right. These days I just kill the dream sequences before I even hand the book over to him.
My husband is my first reader, and he's amazing at it. In particular, he has a demon eye for any kind of structural sloppiness. And he's killed every dream sequence I've ever written (except the prologue of The Likeness; he let me away with that one). He says that a dream sequence is almost invariably either a repetition of something that's already done within the actual action, or a lazy way of doing something that should be done within the actual action. And he's right. These days I just kill the dream sequences before I even hand the book over to him.
More Answered Questions
Jzj
asked
Tana French:
Secret Place:The endings were (although I love this book and only felt a little let down by this aspect!!!) so obvious to me from early on that I want to ask you: Was the whodunit-aspect not important to you in this book? and You took some risk by making the supernatural elements (light bulbs, hot and flying objects) sound real, literal. Why did this step seem necessary?
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!
Keith Ellis
asked
Tana French:
Were edits made for the US editions? I've noticed many US-specific cultural references which I thought would be obscure to others. For example, one character jokes someone having a house in the Hamptons. I don't read many Irish books, but do read many UK books and I've never noticed so many US references in the latter. If not edits, is it the case that Dubliners are more aware of American culture than other Europeans?
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