The Interview - David T. Wolf
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Can you describe your writing process?
For me, it has to start with an idea and a main character. He or she is faced with a problem, a dilemma, a goal. I toy with how they react and think about adding complications. At some point, I get excited and try writing a couple of pages. If it feels right, I buckle down and get started in earnest.
What’s the most challenging part of writing for you?
Honestly assessing my character behavior: is it only to make my plot work, or is it genuine, motivated by real human feelings or desires or repulsions? The characters must be relatable or the book fails!
How do you develop your characters?
First, I create the characters the plot requires. Then for each, I put myself inside his or her head and react to events as they unfold. I cast myself in each role and try to be as honest as possible. All their actions and reactions need to be clearly and realistically motivated.
What’s your favorite book that you’ve written, and why?
So hard to choose! Mindclone was my first published novel--a look at the personal, social and worldwide consequences of mind-uploading. The Final Millennium was triggered when I read that a presidential candidate believed in The Rapture. A Murder Foretold had the hook of a writer reading a chapter to her writing group describing a beautiful real estate agent found dead in an empty mansion--only to find her body in that very mansion later that night. (This book took almost 5 complete rewrites before I finally got it right!)
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Find a critique group to get other eyes on your writing. Listen to what they say without getting defensive, but don't necessarily take their advice without giving it a lot of thought. I find it too easy to fall in love with my words, or to be satisfied with a passage without examining it too closely. Also, you MUST develop the ability to hear that tiny voice of doubt about this or that passage, and pay attention to it.
What do you enjoy most about being an author?
I love inhabiting the worlds of the characters I create! Much more compelling than my day-to-day existence! The relationships in my books, whether romantic or threatening or frightening or compulsive, are so much more intense than what goes on in my real life, in which I'm happily married and engaging in the usual socializing with friends and family....
What’s your favorite genre to write, and why?
I enjoy writing crime fiction, probably because the plot allows me to create a problem and find tricky ways to solve it. I also enjoy taking the reader along, leading them astray, planting clues in ways they will not notice, adding red herrings to mislead them. And of course I love the fact that readers of crime ficdtion enjoy this kind of chicanery, and expect it.
If your book were turned into a movie, who would you cast?
If I were casting for A Murder Foretold, serial killer Charlie Novak would be played by Joachim Phoenix, his partner Owen would be Jake Gyllenhaal, the tricky female Sydney Waters would be played by Florence Pugh.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about yourself through writing?
In the beginning, I didn't have a lot of confidence that I could actually write novels, but once I finished the draft of my first (unpublished) novel and got a great idea for the next--The Darwin Project, a YA novel about a genetically enhanced chimp who attends 5th Grade, my confidence grew and grew with each novel.
Which book of yours was the most difficult to write, and why?
A Murder Foretold was extremely complicated because the hook made it almost impossible to tell the story from the point of view of the main character: she somehow wrote about a murder scene before it happened. I tied myself in knots trying to come up with an explanation for this until it finally dawned on me to rewrite the entire novel from the point of view of the two killers. I was able to use many of the chapters I'd written from the point of view of that main character--but recast them as coming from an unreliable narrator. The end result has been described as "so twisted it makes a pretzel look like a pencil with salt."
Do you outline your books, or are you more of a ‘pantser’?
I seldom do a complete outline because I know the writing will provide new ideas and directions. It's very much an iterative process. But I do create a general structure before I begin. Sometimes I'll even write an agent pitch letter just to make sure the idea sounds compelling--and use that brief description to keep me on that path as I proceed with the writing.
What do you think makes a story truly unforgettable?
Characters the reader becomes emotionally involved with, or that readers can understand on a deep level even if they don't like them. Characters that take them on an emotional journey into territory they seldom venture into in real life.
What role does research play in your writing process?
It depends on the specific topic, but I always do as much research as necessary--and then make sure none of that appears in the book as research. For Mindclone, about mind-uploading, I read around 20 books plus countless articles online, in order to describe the technology involved. That was great fun for me.