I got the impression in this discussion that she is very strong minded. I’ve often wondered how authors feel when their books are turned into films, so I asked Emily Lockhart about this. Some emotions are conveyed with actions, others just expressions, words, slight gestures. This makes the book more interesting.” At first I didn’t understand but now I realise. They make your characters want to do something. However, excitement, anger, desperation, they make you want to do something.

Sadness is not active, happiness and boredom are not either. I think that fiction is meant to be interpreted in different ways by different readers in different times of life in different times in history, so I am comfortable with people reading my work any way they want to.”įurthermore she said “If your book is based on one emotion, make that emotion active. If I had a crystal clear message I would put it on a billboard.

Emily responded to this by saying, “I think the purpose of fiction is not to give a crystal clear message. For example, her description of Mirren, Cadence’s cousin was “Mirren she is sugar, curiosity and rain”. Later, I asked her about her use of metaphor because, from my reading of her books, I find that she leaves a lot of the construction, particularly of personality in the characters, to the reader. I have not experienced these things, however I have been heart-broken, lost and desperate, emotions similar to those Cadence experiences.” For example, in We Were Liars, Cadence suffers from amnesia and chronic migraines. I believe you don’t have to, but if you write based on an emotion which is true to you, then you can go anywhere. She said “Some people say, write about what you know. In her talk she had emphasised the importance of creativity and imagination. Could it be someone from her past? A character in a Shakespearian novel? No! She got it off a baby naming website! This was shown when I asked her where she got the name Cadence from as the heroine of her novel. It really is surprising I suppose many people think writers waltz around in flowy dresses and ride in the comfort of a limousine from a restaurant to their mansion in New York, like in my visions of Stephanie Meyer. My initial reactions to meeting the author whose writing had gripped, mystified and bewitched me over the summer were apprehension and slight bewilderment. The thing that had surprised her the most when touring England was the uniforms in the USA, she said, ‘Kids just wear whatever they want’. You have to walk outdoors to the gymnasium or to a different lesson’.

She answered, ‘No, well, it has the same feeling of beautiful buildings and a campus in between. To break the ice, we first talked about my school, and whether it was similar to her high school in America. I’m in year 7, but because of my review I was given the opportunity to interview her afterwards. The coincidence was that she was visiting my school to give a talk to Year 8 and 9s.

We were liars description