Ask the Author: Francesca Hampton
Answered Questions (5)
Francesca Hampton
Sorry not to answer sooner - just noticed this! My reading this summer is mainly focused on researching the cultures of the steppes for a future possible novel. The Peoples of the Steppes by Stuart Legg stands out from all of them - a rare historian who gets his facts right but also writes so vividly you can almost see the people in front of you. Cecelia Holland, long one of my favorite writers of historical fiction has also, happily, produced a novel, Ghost on the Steppe, that I am reading, since it is set among the Mongols just after their first campaigns. Last but not at all least I can recommend the Midwife's Revolt by Jodi Daynard. I love writing that takes you so far into a story you forget you are reading and she definitely manages this - it is set during the American Revolution and told by a young woman who is a friend of John Adams wife Abigail.
Francesca Hampton
Much has been written by better writers than me on this - and certainly by more successful ones! But I might add this idea. Take a moment from time to time to imagine the unknown people who may read what you are writing one day, and send out a sincere wish that they may find some benefit in what you have made. You may also ask yourself what it is that WOULD benefit others who read your writing, and write, at least partly, in accord with the answers you find.
Francesca Hampton
I have been known to write wild tangled poetry - the kind where you just set down every gorgeous word you can think of and then start weaving phrases and finally whole sentences of thought and imagery. Once in a while i even like these odd creations, but basically, they serve to put my mind into writing gear. Re reading what you have written before and sinking your attention into it can also help - just naturally you start thinking of more to say, or ways to say it better.
Francesca Hampton
I visualize the scene i am tackling as if i were going to the movies, living it as completely as possible and trying to experience as the character(s) would. Then I begin writing in detail about what i am experiencing in a way that will allow my readers to follow me into that imagined land and know it with the same vividness. If it is not clear to me when i begin, it will not be clear to them.
Francesca Hampton
I just finished a two novel adventure story for younger readers and am studying how to promote it as I venture once more into Print on Demand Land. This is the Voyage of the Makai Series - Dolphin Singers and Greenstone's Promise. I am also nearing completion of a volume of memoir essays on my days as an overland traveler in Asia in the 70's and last but not least, finally - after two years of research - beginning the fun part of writing a longer novel - the writing! This one has no name yet but will be set in three epochs of Buddhist history, including the lost kingdom of Gandhara.
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