I start with theory rather than people. I don't like novels which have no theoretical or philosophical underpinning. I hate the contemporary novel where people just sit and talk to each other about their relationships.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior.
To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.
People who don't read seem to me mysterious. I don't know how they think or learn about other people. Novels are a very important part of our education.
Novels aren't pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline. A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it's a good starting place for me.
I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.
I don't very often read novels.
I really do believe some people are naturally novelists and some people are short story writers. For me, when I was in middle school or high school, I started with novels.
When you get inside a literary novel you feel that the author, more often than not, just doesn't know enough about things. They haven't been around enough - novelists never go anywhere. Once I discovered true books about real things - books like 'How To Run a Company' - I stopped reading novels.
As a reader, I much prefer to read a book where people embody all kinds of ideas and everybody is making mistakes.
I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.