Ask the Author: E. Lockhart
Answered Questions (35)
E. Lockhart
Thank you. And sorry for your migraines. No, it isn't firsthand knowledge, but I do have two people in my life who suffer them.
E. Lockhart
Thank you. I started with the idea of the private island, and a family that summered there year after year. I wanted to write about that incredible bond the youngest generation would form, and what would happen when they got old enough to interrogate the values and people behind those idyllic summers.
E. Lockhart
No sequel for Frankie. I would rather readers keep thinking about her than tell them the answers (which I don't know). Some people are loners. Maybe Frankie is one. It isn't a bad fate. And some people find a community of like-minded people much later in life.
E. Lockhart
Thank you. I started out wanting to write about pranks that escalated in some interesting way on a boarding school campus. Pretty soon I realized there needed to be a driving reason for the pranks -- otherwise they wouldn't matter. I searched for a way to make them really important to my main character. I am a feminist, as is anyone who believes women are entitled to equal rights, and I was excited when I found a way to explore some feminist issues in a way that I hoped would be fun to read.
E. Lockhart
I don't outline, but I often have a sense of what the biggest events in the book will be -- and the general place the characters will end up. Scene by scene, I am winging it, and there's a lot of discovery in that process. My books are always different than the book I thought I'd be writing when I started, but if the story is really not as good as I want it to be, I rewrite it. I rewrite a minimum of 12 times, I'd say.
E. Lockhart
Thank you. I have never heard of this technique but I think it is something all storytellers are always doing. I tell my own story, one way or another, in all my novels, even though they are quite different from one another.
E. Lockhart
Thank you. It just came naturally for this story. I didn't plan it deliberately.
E. Lockhart
I type very fast -- haven't touched a pen to write a story since college. A normal word count goal is 500 at the start of a book, when I am feeling my way. In the middle, 1500 or 2000.
E. Lockhart
I think the only writers who have more trouble creating female characters than male ones are those who on some level do not believe women are all the way people. To an open minded person, both genders are equally hard. That said, it is very challenging to write well-rounded, believable characters, no matter what.
E. Lockhart
Honestly, I don't know. I could spout a lot of stuff about wanting to write about family dynamics and real estate and fairy tales and first love, and wanting to challenge myself with a kind of plot I had never written before. But really, my own creative impulses are mysterious to me.
E. Lockhart
Thank you. Dramarama is my most autobiographical novel, but always my characters become more and more distinct from me the more I work on a book. The things that happen to Sadye in Dramarama -- many of them happened to me, but she isn't me in many ways. I would most likely befriend Johnny in We Were Liars. He is an enthusiast, and that is something I really like in a friend.
E. Lockhart
I was absolutely not born to be a writer. I always enjoyed writing and could always make pretty sentences, and I always loved books -- but I did not feel I could write fiction for a long time. The writing of scenes and plotting of stories -- all of that only came with hard work. I set out to learn it and it took a long time.
E. Lockhart
Good question! The present-tense just brings the story to a close -- the past-tense things are over, and now we are in the present moment, looking forward to the future. The narrator has been opinionated throughout, and I am not entirely sure this is the first time first person singular is used, but using intrusive narration to reflect is a second way I brought closure to the ending of the story.
E. Lockhart
Film versions are far out of an author's control -- but thank you. As for the form, it really is just what came out when I wrote. I like the free verse format as it allows me to control the pacing of certain scenes.
E. Lockhart
Thank you so much. But no. That story is finished. I want to write something new.
E. Lockhart
I don't do any of those exercises writing books recommend -- figuring out characters' interests, backstory, and so on before actually writing. Mainly, I search for the voice. I do this by writing scenes and rewriting them. Eventually I can hear the characters talk and that helps me know how they think.
E. Lockhart
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Far Far Away by Tom McNeal. And loads more. I read a lot. A list of my favorite summer reads is here:
E. Lockhart
I knew the ending and I figured out a five act structure for the novel using the word-processing program Scrivener. What wasn't clear was which scenes actually went in which acts, because of the juggling of the two different time periods, the fairy tales, etc.. Scrivener allowed me to move my parts around from act to act, and to try them out in different places within the acts.
E. Lockhart
Tough question without more information -- but I have many projects that haven't found publishers, and most authors I know are in the same position. What do we do? Write a different book. That's tough to hear but it is true. Most working writers are embarking on the new book as the old one is out on submission anyway. If you are confident your book is strong, then work on your query letter. Write a new one. Follow the #askagent hashtag on Twitter to learn more. Read agents' blogs and follow submission guidelines on agency websites very carefully. I know from agent friends that most submissions they receive are unprofessional in some way! I wish you loads of luck.
E. Lockhart
Ahhhh I don't know! I haven't thought about those dudes for a long time. But your question made me smile.
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