Long before she came to prominence as the writer and central character of her memoir (and subsequent film) An Education, Ms Barber has been producing pithy and unflinching interviews with the great and the good, most recently for The Observer.
She is renowned for not pulling her punches and her pieces consist of reported conversations with her interviewee, but running alongside that is a gritty commentary about the celebrity in question as well. It occurred to me that this might be a useful starting point for developing a character....
Why don't you subject your hero/heroine to a Lynn Barber-style grilling? Write an interview with them, (in which you ask them their past, the situation they find themselves in within the plot etc) which combines their own account, in their own words, with your commentary as interviewer (is your hero being evasive, disingenuous, secretive or over-confiding, for example?) In this way you will put a little bit of spin on things, revealing your character through what they say of themselves as well as through the observations of others. Little exercises like this can easily be adapted to fit into a scene in your story and may be a good way of getting some momentum going.
SMALL PRESSES
Blue Nose Poets are a London-based group of writers dedicated to bringing poetry to a wider audience by means of events and international writing competitions.
Independent Black Publishers does exactly what it says on the tin - it's an umbrella organisation of publishers specialising in African and Caribbean literature.
Brandon Books has been a leading imprint in Ireland since 1982, producing about fifteen fiction and non-fiction titles every year.
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