Sarah
asked
Elizabeth Wein:
You are an amazing author. Code Name Verity is the best book I have ever read, and believe me, I've read a lot. You had me laughing at Queenie's wit and sharpness, and had me crying my eyes out. Once I finished it I immediately turned back to page one and read it all over again. How did you think to write the book as the confessional journal? It is such a unique way of writing. Did you have the overall plot planned?
Elizabeth Wein
"best book I have ever read," WOW, that certainly is music to my ears! Flatterer. What a lovely thing to say.
The answers to your questions are yes and yes - before I actually started writing the general plot AND the idea of how to frame it (confessional told in two parts from different points of view) came to me in pretty much a flash of inspiration, and at that point it kind of felt like a matter of filling in the blanks. I knew that if I could pull off the actual *writing* of it, the structure would work very well.
I got the idea of writing the confession because I thought I wanted to create a coward (the thought was there anyway) - and I thought that it would be interesting to try to write the story from the point of view of someone who has broken under pressure, and that a written confession would be the obvious way to do it.
There is a book called "Pereira Maintains" which, although not exactly a confessional, was of some influence to me in framing the book as a "found" document: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
The answers to your questions are yes and yes - before I actually started writing the general plot AND the idea of how to frame it (confessional told in two parts from different points of view) came to me in pretty much a flash of inspiration, and at that point it kind of felt like a matter of filling in the blanks. I knew that if I could pull off the actual *writing* of it, the structure would work very well.
I got the idea of writing the confession because I thought I wanted to create a coward (the thought was there anyway) - and I thought that it would be interesting to try to write the story from the point of view of someone who has broken under pressure, and that a written confession would be the obvious way to do it.
There is a book called "Pereira Maintains" which, although not exactly a confessional, was of some influence to me in framing the book as a "found" document: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
More Answered Questions
Julia
asked
Elizabeth Wein:
The story goes from 1938-1943, with the primary action in late 1943. So that's over five years, and Maddie and Julie have to be over 20 by the end of the story. They were enlisted when they met, they'd have needed to be 18, the military wouldn't have wanted to take charge of under-age girls, they didn't boys. So why is this YA? The content isn't especially YA (not that it's R) and the characters are in their 20s.
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