I prefer to write about ordinary people who find themselves in a singularly bizarre situation - that is to say, the one moment in their lives when they are forced to confront danger or mystery.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm drawn to stories about ordinary people who get tangled up in an extraordinary event or idea or emotion. I'm not saying I don't love films about super-people or super-doctors, but my preference is for stories about how we get through this life, what it is to be human, because I'm always struggling with it myself.
As a novelist, I have always been interested in how people come to terms with difficult, life-altering events.
Above all, a well-imagined story is organized around extraordinary human behaviors and unexpected and startling events, which help illuminate the commonplace and the ordinary.
Stories about mental aberration and oddity only make sense in context. Just how do people live with someone who is peculiar, gifted, strange or alien? It's odd because there's a little part of me that wants to write about exotic, strange bizarre subjects. Instead, I've rather reluctantly realised that what I write about is families.
I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations.
I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
I have always written about characters who fall somewhere in the spectrum between solitary and totally alienated.
I happen to go for the simplest, most ordinary things. The extraordinary doesn't interest me. I'm not interested in psychotics. I'm interested in the person you don't expect to have a story. I like Everyman.
I like stories where normal people are in abnormal situations, and that's what appeals to me about history.
I surround myself with bizarre people. They're more fun to write about.