Gary Reynolds interviews
Adelaide author Sean Williams on the "Concept Sci-fi" website.
How do you approach the art of writing a novel? What techniques do you use in novel design/planning and editing/ revising?The birth of a novel is marked with fireworks, but that's not the real miracle. Ideas are cheap, just like conceptions: it's what happens next that really matters. Every now and again an idea comes along that's so dense with possibility it has its own gravity. Other, lesser ideas are drawn to it, one by one, and pretty soon the agglomeration hits critical, unstoppable mass. Once the boulder starts rolling down the hill (to careen wildly to another metaphor) I know it's time to start taking some serious notes. Not to start writing the actual story, because I don't really know what the story is yet; I just think I do, like those mornings you wake up sure you have an entire dream in your head, but the moment you try to put it into words, it evaporates forever. Putting pen to paper at this point almost certainly guarantees an unhappy result, as the untamed thing blunders its way downhill, through power lines and unsuspecting villages, leaving a trail of devastation and dead-ends in its wake. I need to understand it better before even considering taking a ride on its back. I need, first, to be sure I can direct it where I want to go.
