Tony Bradman Quotes

What I do is put my characters into situations that are so precarious there is no way to get out. And then I figure how to get them out.

Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a 'what if.'

My goal is to write books that are quality books with very real characters and a gripping plot.

To combine telling an interesting story with brilliantly written characters is the most difficult thing to do.

My writing has always been what you call 'narrative fiction' in the sense that it's got very strong plots and twists at the end.

I do not read SF as much as I used to. It's too much like a busman's holiday.

You get so caught up in what you're writing - action sequences tend to do that more than anything else because you're living it, and feeling for your characters.

When you think of a great twist or a red herring or a way of misdirecting the reader, it is good, but you know that they are just tricks at the end of the day, and the way to keep interest is to write characters that people care about.

My job as an author is to tell the story in the best way possible, to make it flow seamlessly and get the reader to keep turning the page.

In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination.

When writing fiction, you only have to know enough to be convincing on the page. I mean really convincing, of course - but you don't need academic depth.

All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all take in the world through our five senses and we accumulate details, consciously or subconsciously. This accumulation of detail can be drawn on when you write fiction.

A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

When I decided to take writing seriously, I did a lot of reading and analyzing of the books I liked, and came up with what I thought were pretty sound plotting and structure basics.

I do extensive research before I begin writing, but only a fraction of the research goes into the novels. The writer does not need to tell the reader everything. But one hopes that the writer's belief in his characters is evident in the telling, just as the mood created in the writer's mind comes through in the atmosphere of the scene described.

I like making stories and characters that people can relate to. I also like giving the audience a departure from whatever they're thinking about in their life and enjoying a show or a movie.

I've spoken often of how the fantasy genre is able to, with the greatest freedom among all the genres, take a metaphor and make it real. But of course that's only the starting point.

You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.

The way I express ideas is through the plot, Suspense is an important part of expressing an idea.

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

Personally, I believe in fiction because the stories I like are those with a beginning and an end.

My crime novels are highly structured. I never start out with a dead body. I start with an impossible scenario. Opening questions should be mysterious, weird, intriguing, and contain the seeds of the solution. The structure has to be meticulous - I'm a structure freak.

It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.

I tend to start with a kernel, a vague concept, and just begin to write things down - notes about a character, lines of dialogue, descriptive passages about a place. One idea fires another. I do that for about a year. By then there's a story, and I'll go on to a complete first draft that sews many of those ragtag pieces together.