I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.
I'm a novelist. I'm not a crusader, and I'm not an editorial writer. And I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything.
No one looks at a baby and says, 'You are going to be a great novelist, and you really need to start writing now.' Something in us says: 'This is what I must do.'
I feel very strongly that where the facts exist, a historical novelist should use them if they're writing about a person who really lived, because a lot of people come to history through historical novels. I did. And a lot of people want their history that way.
What is the difference between the novelist and the liar? At some moments, I have often wondered.
History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do research to get the facts right - how a glove factory works, for example, or how courtesans in imperial Japan dressed.
As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren't so different.
As a novelist, there are three phone calls you never expect to receive in your lifetime because if you waited for them you would grow despairing - one calling from Stockholm with a Swedish accent, one from the NBA, and one from Oprah Winfrey.
I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn't the most athletic guy at school.
I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.
