I don't want to write about violence, and I don't want to hang a plot on a murder. I think it's cheap.
Character is primary. What happens as far as plot and events is not as intriguing to me as what's happening inside this particular person.
Stripped of its plot, the 'Iliad' is a scattering of names and biographies of ordinary soldiers: men who trip over their shields, lose their courage or miss their wives. In addition to these, there is a cast of anonymous people: the farmers, walkers, mothers, neighbours who inhabit its similes.
I'm a stickler for structure. So I tend to make sure I'm hitting certain points in the script and that I'm progressing and moving things along. You know, are the characters keeping the plot moving along? And are they true, and do I know their motivations?
I read Claire Messud's 'The Emperor's Children,' I read Joseph O'Neill's 'Netherland' - but to me, they're not 9/11 novels. In 'The Emperor's Children,' 9/11 felt to me like a piece of the plot; the novel wasn't wrestling with what 9/11 meant. And 'Netherland' felt the same way. I liked both books a lot but I don't see them as 9/11 novels.
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.
As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.
My feeling for reality TV isn't ironic, guilty, or apologetic. Reality TV is one of the few remaining modes of popular entertainment in which characterization is permitted as plot.
When I started 'Still Missing,' I had a few key plot points in mind, which I played around with mentally for a couple of months, then one day I just started writing. Not having an outline led to some cool plot twists, but also many rewrites! A lot of the plotting happened on subsequent drafts.
Sometimes television can just jump from one bit of plot to the next, and the words fill in the in-between.
