Sara Rupnik
asked
Tana French:
Because your novels have such a strong sense of place, I'm wondering if you choose the location before you decide on the crime, the suspects, and the victim? What comes first?
Tana French
Yes, the location is one of the first things I come up with! Usually I start with the basic premise, the narrator, and the core location. For The Secret Place, for example, I had the idea of a school noticeboard where teenagers could reveal their secrets anonymously, and of one teenager using it to reveal what he or she knew about a murder; I knew I wanted Stephen Moran from Faithful Place to be the narrator; and I knew I wanted to set it in a very insulated, small, enclosed private boarding school, where the students were as cut off from the outside world as possible. I didn't know who had been killed, how, why, who had done it...none of that. But I knew what the location should feel like.
More Answered Questions
Brendan
asked
Tana French:
I love how the protagonists in your books are characters we've already seen in smaller roles in previous novels. How far in advance do you plan that? When you're writing a supporting character into a book, do you know that you intend on making them a main character in a different story?
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