Michelle Paver
Michelle Paver
Michelle Paveris a British novelist and children's writer, known for the fantasy series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, set in pre-agricultural Stone Age Europe. For the concluding book Ghost Huntershe won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a book award judged by a panel of British children's writers...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 September 1960
experience field main online point rather simply sitting trips
Doing field trips rather than simply researching online allows me to experience the story from the point of view of my main character; you can't get that by sitting at a desk.
agents leave work
In general, when I'm writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it's for.
life tour writer
There's this whole thing of being two people. You are the person you want to be - the writer - and then there's this weird other life of going on tour and talking about the writing. And that really is weird.
believe horses stories
I want to make the world real. I have to be able to believe that it could happen. I can't put Pegasus in my stories because horses can't fly. It's just a quirk in my brain.
apart books boys compared fact flattering next
I'm not the next J. K. Rowling. We've got one already. It's flattering to be compared to her. I like her books and loved the first three particularly, but apart from the fact that they've got young boys as heroes, they're very different.
climbed dark driving polar
To get the feel of the polar night, I went back to Spitsbergen in winter. I went snowshoeing in the dark and experimented with headlamps and climbed a glacier in driving snow.
broad chapter knew outline plan sat six took
By about chapter six of 'Wolf Brother,' I was having so much fun that I knew I wanted it to go on and I couldn't tell Torak's story in one book. So I sat down, and it took me about a week to plan in broad outline all six books.
boy paragraph point supposed tried university
At university - when I was supposed to be studying biochemistry - I had tried to write a children's book about a boy and a wolf cub, and there was a paragraph in that which was from the wolf's point of view.
answer people writers
People often ask writers where they get their inspiration, and for me, the short answer is that I haven't a clue; I'm just grateful that I get them.
Mostly, research is much more fun than the actual writing.
bare bones trips
It's true to say that once I've got the bare bones of a story, I often get ideas from my own research trips to faraway places.
indigenous people quite
Indigenous people all over the world take quite a lot of trouble with their hair and their clothes.
change
If you get a sense that your writing isn't quite working, change it. Or cut it out. Don't just tell yourself it'll do, because it won't.
I've wanted to write a ghost story for years, and my main aim was to write the most frightening ghost story that I could think of.