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When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.

As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.

A story is told as much by silence as by speech.

Listen to other people tell their story, but don't believe them. You know that it's just a story that is only true for them, but listen because the communication can be wonderful.

I'm trying to make the readers feel as if he or she is right there in the conversation, and so I don't try to manipulate it too much.

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart.

I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.

I have no particular reader in mind, but a passionate desire to tell an honest, moving story.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

One of the rules of the road is that if you want to create the sense of silence, it frequently has more pungency if you include the tiniest of sounds. By manipulating what you hear and how you hear it and what other things you don't hear, you can not only help tell the story, you can help the audience get into the mind of the character.