Thank you, Steve and Bruce, for a continuously thoughtful, helpful interview. I truly enjoyed Bruce’s insights into fiction-writing, as well as his own soul, and his take on readers’ responses. Really, every word of this interview surprised and satisfied me. One such moment:
“The best way into a character, for me, has always been through the body, through the five senses. Experiencing the world that way is one of the few common denominators of the human condition.”
I have researched, thought-fought and tried to be patient while roughing out characters and waiting for them to be “real” to me, and sometimes I despair about one or the other character’s appearing. Therefore, his “five-senses” idea was a pure delight to read. At last I’ve read words that encompass what I’ve been, largely unconsciously, doing!
Those boys’ crooked “horse” necks is weird and wild.
And this bit about researching is terrific:
“I once heard Tom Franklin say that all you really need to write a novel set in the past is a Sears and Roebuck catalog from whatever year it is you’re writing about. So I got one of those. And I read all of the small-town newspapers from the surrounding four towns that printed weekly papers in 1910 and 1924. I read all of them. The ads, everything. It was important to know that there were things in the world such as California Fig Syrup, and that one could cure just about anything with it: malaise, female trouble, headaches, distemper, jaundice, bowel issues by the dozens.”
Lovely job, both of you.