A Quote by Peter James
Every novel starts with a theme, and I am constantly looking for big ideas.
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Every story I write starts with a dilemma or a theme. Once I am convinced that this is the issue that is perturbing my thoughts, I start to look for characters capable of representing it.
Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking.
A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.
My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.
The story of practically every great fortune starts with the day when a creator of ideas and a seller of ideas got together and worked in harmony.
If your ego starts out, 'I am important, I am big, I am special,' you're in for some disappointments when you look around at what we've discovered about the universe. No, you're not big. No, you're not. You're small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that's limited on Earth.
If your ego starts out, "I am important, I am big, I am special," you're in for some disappointments when you look around at what we've discovered about the universe. No, you're not big. No, you're not. You're small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that's limited on Earth.
A novel is a collision of ideas. Three or four threads may be floating around in the writer's consciousness, and at a single moment in time, these ideas collide and produce a novel.
I am very blessed to be able to play tennis, the sport that I love and very grateful for the opportunities to play in the finals of big events, when the season starts you are on the roll constantly and obliged to be committed to daily routines on and off the court.
The DNA of the novel - which, if I begin to write nonfiction, I will write about this - is that: the title of the novel is the whole novel. The first line of the novel is the whole novel. The point of view is the whole novel. Every subplot is the whole novel. The verb tense is the whole novel.
The first theme that every audience can get easily everywhere in the world is the theme of judgment. You are constantly judging if this character is doing something wrong or right, or the other character is doing something right or wrong.
So much of what deejays like myself do is, I'm very interested in - I'm constantly looking for new music, constantly digging, but then also I am thinking about how to present it in a way that kind of makes sense to people who are less - sort of less with their hands in it than I am.
While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme.
When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.
With a novel, no matter where I am in it, I'm fretting about it. Every time I write a book, it starts with great forward momentum. Then there seems to be a period where it slows down a bit, and other things intervene. Then I gain momentum.
A novel, even a social realist one, can't simply be a comprehensive rendering of what is. A novel requires a special angle or approach, whether in structure or language or theme, to justify itself.
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