Friends-
I recently sat down with Sharon Goodwin, a book blogger over in the UK! I'd like to thank Sharon for the time it took to do the interview (I know book bloggers are busy people), and also convey how impressed I was with the effort she put into doing her homework on me and my projects when writing up the questions.
Here's one of my favorite questions and answers from the interview:
Q: Joss Whedon has an influence on you. In what way has this affected your writing style?
A: The better question is, in what way hasn't it?
I think that consuming a lot of Joss Whedon's fiction is what gave me the tools I needed to make my writing good. As I said before, for a long time it wasn't. I took creative writing classes, read books in which other writers talked about their craft, and all sorts of things like that, but I still wasn't telling stories the way I wanted to tell them.
And then I found Buffy. The things Whedon did with his plot and character arcs just blew me away. He took his characters to places you didn't think they were capable of going, and he did so believably. Whedon's development wasn't BOOM, this bad guy is now good. It was gradual, it was step-by-step, and Whedon made you understand why the characters were taking each step they took. For a brief period in the series, he had turned things on their head so successfully that he had me feeling more sympathy for Spike than Buffy. That was when I knew that this was how I wanted to tell stories.
There are other things, too. For instance, I learned genre-mixing from him (although he has said that it has hurt his career). I won't say I got mood-mixing from Whedon, since that was something I already liked in my stories. I wanted fiction that could engage all my emotions. But he definitely taught me how to do it better.
The full text of the interview can be found here.
I recently sat down with Sharon Goodwin, a book blogger over in the UK! I'd like to thank Sharon for the time it took to do the interview (I know book bloggers are busy people), and also convey how impressed I was with the effort she put into doing her homework on me and my projects when writing up the questions.
Here's one of my favorite questions and answers from the interview:
Q: Joss Whedon has an influence on you. In what way has this affected your writing style?
A: The better question is, in what way hasn't it?
I think that consuming a lot of Joss Whedon's fiction is what gave me the tools I needed to make my writing good. As I said before, for a long time it wasn't. I took creative writing classes, read books in which other writers talked about their craft, and all sorts of things like that, but I still wasn't telling stories the way I wanted to tell them.
And then I found Buffy. The things Whedon did with his plot and character arcs just blew me away. He took his characters to places you didn't think they were capable of going, and he did so believably. Whedon's development wasn't BOOM, this bad guy is now good. It was gradual, it was step-by-step, and Whedon made you understand why the characters were taking each step they took. For a brief period in the series, he had turned things on their head so successfully that he had me feeling more sympathy for Spike than Buffy. That was when I knew that this was how I wanted to tell stories.
There are other things, too. For instance, I learned genre-mixing from him (although he has said that it has hurt his career). I won't say I got mood-mixing from Whedon, since that was something I already liked in my stories. I wanted fiction that could engage all my emotions. But he definitely taught me how to do it better.
The full text of the interview can be found here.
You're a very welcome guest John! Wishing every success with all of your creations. Shaz
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