Ask the Author: Clive Warner
Answered Questions (12)
Clive Warner
I've already used that plot device. As a kid, I wondered what had happened to Uncle Buddy, whose photo in army uniform sat on the mantelpiece. My mother wouldn't discuss it and I failed to ask my grandparents until it was too late. I discovered much later in life that he'd died in his Seaforth barracks of the 'flu, before he'd ever fired a shot.
I used this as the driver of the 1942 part of my historical novel, When Things Go Bang. The main story is set in 1959. Uncle Buddy emerges from a stain in the wallpaper in young Jim's bedroom, and takes him back to 1942, where he has to fight - and die - in the Battle of Alamein, against Rommel's final attempt to beat Montgomery.
Buddy becomes Jim's mentor, helping him to negotiate serious problems in his 1959 life.
I loved writing the story and acknowledge the help I got from Critique Circle during its rewrite. Last year I visited the UK and went for lunch at the village pub, and it was obvious that some of the older residents hated the novel because it paints the 1959 village as a very bizarre, cranky place!
I used this as the driver of the 1942 part of my historical novel, When Things Go Bang. The main story is set in 1959. Uncle Buddy emerges from a stain in the wallpaper in young Jim's bedroom, and takes him back to 1942, where he has to fight - and die - in the Battle of Alamein, against Rommel's final attempt to beat Montgomery.
Buddy becomes Jim's mentor, helping him to negotiate serious problems in his 1959 life.
I loved writing the story and acknowledge the help I got from Critique Circle during its rewrite. Last year I visited the UK and went for lunch at the village pub, and it was obvious that some of the older residents hated the novel because it paints the 1959 village as a very bizarre, cranky place!
Clive Warner
Robert loved the texture of the soil, gritty yet velvet, and its colours, a whole panoply of dark pastels to be stained, to be emitted into.
He would have liked it even better if they had taken off his clothes before lowering him in.
He would have liked it even better if they had taken off his clothes before lowering him in.
Clive Warner
Wow, what a question! The first thing that springs to mind is the opposite. I immediately thought of several that I would rather NOT visit, with the leader being one of Phillip K Dick's worlds - for instance, "World Of Chance" (Solar Lottery). Dick's worlds are so dystopian.
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OK. Where WOULD I like to visit. I think it would be the parallel-Earth of Philip Pullman. It is similar to our Earth but fascinatingly differerent. Wouldn't you want to have a dæmon? I would! The Golden Compass trilogy is one of my author influences.
~
"Then staid the fervid wheels, and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe, and all created things:
One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure"
— Book 7, lines 224–229, Paradise Lost (Milton)
~
OK. Where WOULD I like to visit. I think it would be the parallel-Earth of Philip Pullman. It is similar to our Earth but fascinatingly differerent. Wouldn't you want to have a dæmon? I would! The Golden Compass trilogy is one of my author influences.
~
"Then staid the fervid wheels, and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe, and all created things:
One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure"
— Book 7, lines 224–229, Paradise Lost (Milton)
Clive Warner
Sure! But possibly looking to move to Lake Chapala. The climate here is a bit too extreme.
Clive Warner
I don't have a favourite fictional couple in books. I read stories that generally are about one person. Stories about couples would be romances; as an Aspergers male, I'm not into that, I'm afraid.
Clive Warner
I don't have a favourite fictional couple in books. I read stories that generally are about one person. Stories about couples would be romances; as an Aspergers male, I'm not into that, I'm afraid.
Clive Warner
I've always wanted to write a book based in the late 1950s/early 1960s so I decided to base a story set in and around the village of Hightown, where I grew up. I also wanted to write an action-adventure, and like many of my generation I am fascinated with World War 2, which still hung like a cloud over our childhood days. It was while I was editing a historical novel set in the Boer War that I realised I could combine the two, by use of a literary device that enabled me to send the main character back to fight in the battle of El Alamein.
Clive Warner
Story comes into my head in the form of videos. I can actually picture my characters as they act in the story. I just press "play" and report what happens. When the video runs out I have to stop writing until whatever creates the videos, creates a new one.
Clive Warner
Story comes into my head in the form of videos. I can actually picture my characters as they act in the story. I just press "play" and report what happens. When the video runs out I have to stop writing until whatever creates the videos, creates a new one.
Clive Warner
I'm currently putting the finishing touches to my memoir of the international radio industry, 104,000 words and 80 images. I've also begun work on the sequel to When Things Go Bang.
Clive Warner
It's not easy to write your first novel. Most first novels are pretty awful. I joined a critique group and spent three years (!) learning such things as how to properly signal to the reader that a shift in viewpoint is taking place (e.g. in a third-person narrative), how to write using active verbs rather than passive voice, and so on. It was invaluable. At the same time, however, we need to be able to turn off the "inner censor" and write what we want (need) to write, regardless.
Clive Warner
Inventing things. Giving free reign to the imagination.
Clive Warner
I'm a character-driven writer. When I encounter writer's block, I have learned that it's because I am making the characters in a story behave in ways that are out-of-character. When that happens I step back from the story, and then begin cutting back until I get to the "last good growth". Then I think, "What would this person / these people do next to achieve their aims?"
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