I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.
Novelists seem to fall into two distinct categories - those that plan and those that just see where it takes them. I am very much the former category.
As a novelist, I tend to know significantly more about my characters than I do about my friends.
I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.
I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience.
I became a writer because I love to read, yet I never get to unless I'm reviewing a book or doing research.
I can't inhabit my characters until I know what kind of work they do. This requires research because my jobs for the last decade have been author and professor, and I'd like to spare the world more author or professor novels.
I love research. Sometimes I think writing novels is just an excuse to allow myself this leisurely time of getting to know a period and reading its books and watching its films. I see it as a real treat.
I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.
I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.