Tuesday 04 April, 2001
Authors Advise
Blockbusters returns providing another chance to learn the secrets of literary success from some of the best selling authors of today.
Literary stars talk openly about how they go about creating their work, how they develop their ideas and the process of writing, their inspiration and influences. From comedy to thrillers, from auto biography to magical realism learn the language of popular literary genres and the different approaches involved.
Jung Chan
Jung Chan's first novel, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, has become one of the best selling, non-fiction books in the world. It tells the history of 20th century China from a personal perspective and is an inspiring tale of three courageous Chinese women and how they coped despite great hardship and suffering.
In order to write a credible, historical account of life in China throughout those troubled times Chan had to carry out a lot of research, an essential part of writing all non fiction. She travelled around China for a month and pieced together a family saga in a historical setting.
Whilst structuring the novel was not a problem for Jung Chan, telling the personal stories of her grandmother, her mother and herself was often hard for the author. She comments:
'There were two difficult aspects, one was very personal and emotional when I wrote about my grandmother's death and when I wrote about my father's insanity in the cultural revolution they were very, very painful. The other problem was how to explain the historical background as clearly and succinctly as possible. It was very difficult because I had to understand the whole thing, before I could put it in the simplest language.'
Colin Dexter
Famous for being the creator of Inspector Morse, Colin Dexter was inspired to write whodunits after reading two terrible novels and believing that he could do better. He took to writing quite late in life, having been a teacher of Greek and Latin, Dexter went on to hold a post on the Oxford University Examination Board, before writing his first book in 1975.
He has now completed 14 novels centring on his famous character Inspector Morse. Each one has been a best seller around the world, and the character has since been adapted for television. Dexter is now world renowned for his insights into the world of criminal investigations. However according to the author, it is always better to leave the plot to the imagination, rather than over research it. He comments:
'Don't do any research. I know nothing about the police whatsoever… you don't want to really re enact in a novel a story, which really is purely police procedural, because most of this is enormously tedious. There's no great mystery about most murders and if you are going to write Whodunits you want there to be mystery…you have to make it up as you go along.'
Michael Rosen
Michael Rosen's poems take the scariness out of poetry. Typical of all his writing is a sense of humour, sharp observation and word play. Rosen has the ability to convey a sense of being onto the page and this is probably why children and adults alike love his work.
As a regular presenter of BBC World Service's Poems by Post programme, Rosen is happy to explore all types of poetry. However in his youth Rosen was not a fan of poetry, as he explains:
' I didn't like poetry very much when I was at school. It was a bit like medicine, you were told that it was good for you, but it didn't taste very nice.'
Later as a teenager, the poems of DH Lawrence began to appeal and a young Rosen emulated the style. In his own words the resulting work was 'actually no very good and really rather boring', but he persevered until in 1966 he decided that he would write about his own childhood in the voice of a child. The talent to recollect and record those childhood feelings has given Rosen a style of his own.
Quentin Blake
As an author and illustrator, Quentin Blake's output is prolific. As well as writing and illustrating his own books, Blake is probably best known for his illustrations for Roald Dahl's tales. His artistic style is immediately recognisable; straw haired children and hook nosed witches, faithful dogs and hopping crows, crazy and chaotic figures who never fail to delight children and adults alike.
Despite training as an English teacher, Blake began his career as a freelance artist for Punch magazine and later for the literary magazine the Spectator. However, finding that he had little interest in political satire, Blake began to work on cartoons for children's books.
Having created his first children's book, entitled Patrick, when he was 36 years old, Blake has continued to write and illustrate his own tales as well as illustrating the work of other authors, most notably Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling. In fact Blake has provided the images for over 200 hundred different titles.
Blake's book are witty, appealing both to children and the adult reader and in recognition of his outstanding contribution to children's books, he has become Britain's first ever Children's Laureate. Of the post he comments:
'The main purpose [of the work] is not to encourage children to like books, because I think they do like them a lot, but it was to get adults, journalists, and writers to take them seriously and to realise that children's books are not child's play.'
Maeve Binchy
A reviewer once wrote of Maeve Binchy's 1992 novel The Copper Beech, that it was like sitting with an old friend by the fireside. Binchy is famed for her character led plots and engrossing tales, a popularity that was greatly contributed too, following the then-First Lady Barbara Bush's comment that Binchy was her favourite writer.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Binchy graduated from University College Dublin in 1961 with a degree in French and history. She went on to teach, but has spent the bulk of her career as a professional journalist, holding posts as editor, correspondent and columnist for the Irish Times.
By her mid 30s Binchy had written a collection of short stories and in 1976 her first play opened in Dublin. By her third book her publisher encouraged her to write a full-length story and the result was the highly acclaimed Light a Penny Candle. Her book's detail the relationships between families, friends and lovers and all take place in Ireland or England and have been widely translated, achieving success around the globe.
In a review of her 1988 novel Silver Wedding, the New York Times Book Review, summed up the appeal of Binchy's work, when it claimed:
'Instead of a sprawling saga, she gives us an elegant literary construction, a comedy of manners as well as a soap opera.'
Gore Vidal
American writer and commentator Gore Vidal is author of 24 books, he's a playwright, historian and essayist. And he's known everyone who's been anyone on the American scene over the last half-century - from the Kennedys to Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
His writing career began in 1946, with the publication of his first novel, "Willywa". Hits on Broadway and Hollywood screenplays followed with the adaptation of amongst others, Tennessee William's Suddenly Last Summer.
A shrewd observer of the American landscape, and the elites that inhabit it, he stood for election himself to the Senate, as a Democrat in 1960, the year his friend John Kennedy was elected US President. Gore Vidal is also renowned for his forthrightness and wit.
Asked once if he agreed with corporal punishment, he replied:
'Only between consenting adults'.
The grandson of a Senator, his wider family's political ambitions now have a new hope: Al Gore, his distant cousin - though, when Al was nominated by the Democratic Party as its choice for President, Mr Vidal said they'd chosen the wrong Gore. His new book, "the Golden Age", is set in America in the 1940s and '50s.
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The most recent books by the featured artists are:
Jung Chan Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Anchor World View, 1992.
Colin Dexter The Remorseful Day, Crown, 2000.
Michael Rosen We're Going On A Bear Hunt, Little Simon, 1997.
Quentin Blake Clown, Henry Holt & Company, 1996.
Maeve Binchy Aches and Pains, Delacorte, 2000.
Gore Vidal The Golden Age, Doubleday, 2000. |
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