“Every
reader re-creates a novel - in their own imagination, anyway. It's only
entirely the writer's when nobody else has read it.”
– Susan Hill
English author Hill, who celebrates
her 75th birthday today, is a leading light in the modern day “gothic”
world. Her novels include The Woman
in Black, The Mist in the Mirror, and I'm the King of the Castle
for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award. She was appointed Commander
of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2012 for services to literature.
A champion of
traditional English “ghost story” style (which relies on suspense and
atmosphere to create impact), Hill has written both “ghost” stories and eerie
suspense, including (since 2004) a series of crime novels featuring a
protagonist detective named Simon Serrailler. That series is now being adapted for
television. Her ghost story Woman in Black, done in 1983, has also
been a long-running play on London’s West Side and is a great example of her
descriptive gothic style.
For aspiring writers in the genre, Hill’s
advice is 
to temper the writing to the length of your story. “If you were
writing a short ghost story, I would say start very quietly and go, 'One, two,
three jump.' Or start with a jump and make it jumpier,” she advised. “With a long story, it must have both rises
and falls.”
Books help to form us, Hill said. "If you cut me open, you will find volume after
volume, page after page, the contents of every one I have ever read,
somehow transmuted and transformed into me."
Share A Writer’s
Moment with a friend by clicking the g+1 button below.
No comments:
Post a Comment