BLOOD TYPE: An interview with Barbara Copperthwaite

Barbara Copperthwaite : How do you pick character names? Do any have special meaning to you?

Jane: I’m actually picky about names. I decide how old a character is. I then look at the 100 most popular baby names the year my character was ‘born’.  I read through these lists again and again until the right name leaps out at me. Dickens said he could not write a character until he had the right name and he had a point.
Barbara: How do you go about plotting your book?
Jane: Most novels have a central plot idea and then subplots which reinforce or comment on the main plot in some way. When I start I have the central plot idea and a rough idea of where that will take my characters but the detail emerges as I write. For example with THE LIE OF YOU I knew that one woman was trying to destroy another woman but didn’t know why and that was what I had to work out.However with my third novel, WOMAN OF THE HOUR, I did more work planning the sub-plots as well as the main plot before I started writing and one of the sub plots became very important. I also create a page for each of the main characters where I list key characteristics, back story, quirks, strengths and weaknesses etc. I find this is a useful thing to do.
Barbara: What is the best writing tip you have ever been given? How has it influenced you?
Jane: The best writing tip I ever saw was on a blog called The Writing Prompt Boot Camp and came from James Scott Bell. He said that people don’t want to read about Happy People in Happy Land and that readers engage with a plot via trouble, threat, change or challenge. I thought that was so neatly and memorably put and I try to keep that in my mind when writing. Novels need conflict to work.
Barbara: How has your writing style developed over time? And the way that you approach writing?
Jane: The only way to develop your writing is to write and I have learned more with each book and hope I will continue to learn with each new story and set of characters.I am interested in the issue of Point of View. My first book THE LIE OF YOU was told in the first person by two women, Heja and Kathy, in alternating chapters.

With my second book AFTER THE STORM I moved to third person narration as I had four characters who were all equally important. I noticed that writing in third person was less intense. It did however have some advantages as you are not tied to what only one character can see! With my third novel, WOMAN OF THE HOUR, I have gone back to first person narration from a single female character and I think on balance that this is what I like to do best. It is the immediacy of first person that appeals to me.  Barbara: What book do you wish you had written?
Jane: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. It has everything I am drawn to in a novel: a magnificent sense of place – Newfoundland; a flawed hero who is an outsider despised by most people; a cast of authentic believable characters and a plot that allows the hero to find redemption. I do not like hopeless books. A bit of hope at the end is necessary for me.
ABOUT YOU
Barbara: If you could be a character in any book, including one of your own, who would you be?
Jane: I am reading the Neopolitan novels by Elena Ferrante and am drawn to Lila and would choose to be her. I love her fearlessness and her intense way of experiencing life.
Barbara: How much do your own life experiences appear in your writing?
Jane: My experiences shape what I write about. 

For example I made the sail from Belize City to Roatan which I describe in AFTER THE STORM. The characters are fictional but the setting, the food and the weather comes from a holiday journal I wrote at the time and the many photographs I took.

In WOMAN OF THE HOUR I have drawn on my fifteen years as a TV journalist, then producer and commissioning editor to create StoryWorld, a London TV station, with all its monster egos and high-octane drama.
Barbara: Do you ever surprise yourself with what you’ve written?
Jane: Yes because sometimes a scene seems very important to invent. It’s as if it won’t be silenced and I don’t know why it is relevant. Only after it has taken shape and been written down do I realise that there was a fictional problem I was grappling with and that the scene has dramatized that problem, brought it to life.
AND FINALLY…
Barbara: Describe your current work in progress in five words.
Jane: Power struggle at TV station.  (Woman of the Hour)

My novels are published by Head of Zeus.Available here:
WOMAN OF THE HOUR
AFTER THE STORM
THE LIE OF YOU
This interview first appeared on Barbara Copperthwaite's BLOOD TYPE blog. My warm thanks to Barbara.