Best-selling author Sophie Hannah describes the importance of structure in crime novels and poems alike
© Mark Mather Photography
Sophie Hannah writes psychological thrillers, poetry, short stories and children’s books. She won first prize in the 2004 Daphne Du Maurier Festival Short Story Competition. Her first crime novel, Little Face, has sold more than 100,000 copies, and has been followed by Hurting Distance, The Point of Rescue and The Other Half Lives. She tells us how the “secretly warped psyches of allegedly normal people” draw her to write crime fiction.
What inspired you to become a writer?
I have always written, from when I was a very young child. As soon as I learned how to write at all, I started to write creatively. It soon became a passionate hobby, and something I couldn’t live without. Writing is my response to life, and my way of shaping it into something presentable.
Did you find a literary agent or a publisher first? How did you find them?
I write in different genres - poetry, crime fiction and children’s books - and it was different in each genre.
For children’s books and poetry, I didn’t need a literary agent, because those worlds are still relatively small and intimate, and editors still read submissions that don’t come from literary agents.
For my fiction, I found a literary agent first - a wonderful woman called Lisanne Radice who is now an editorial consultant. She took me on when I was 18 and had written a very immature novel, and she told me that the novel was unpublishable, but she liked my writing, so she took me on and said she’d wait for me to write a proper novel!
By the time I did, more than ten years later, she was no longer an agent, but she did help me edit my first thriller, Little Face. And I now have another brilliant agent for my fiction: Peter Straus.
Did you face much rejection initially? How did you deal with it?
I would say I’ve had an average mixture of success and rejection over the years. I dealt with the rejections by not taking them personally, and keeping trying. I knew that it was just a matter of finding someone who liked my stuff - it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste, I thought, but it was bound to appeal to someone. And luckily it did.
What is it about the psychological thriller genre that intrigues you so much?
I love crime fiction because of the mystery element. For me, mysteriousness is one of the most important forces in life. If we all knew exactly what would happen next, we’d have no reason to get out of bed in the morning.
In real life, we often find ourselves wondering about something and desperate to know what’s going on, but we might never find out, which is why crime fiction is so satisfying - we know that our urge to discover the truth will be satisfied by the end of the novel.
I love psychological crime fiction in particular because human behaviour and human relationships are what I find most fascinating - I’m less interested in people killing each other for profit-related reasons than I am in the secretly warped psyches of allegedly normal people.
What research methods do you use?
Before I start each novel, I interview all sorts of people: police, doctors, lawyers; anyone who will talk to me who has a connection with the subject matter or world of the novel. I also do a lot of reading and internet research.
How do you make the transition between writing poetry, suspense novels, children’s fiction and short stories?
Easily. I need to keep my creative streak interested, and it really helps to work in several different genres - it means I’m less likely to get bored. Also, poetry and crime fiction have more in common than some might think: in both genres, structure is crucially important.
In a poem, every word and line has to be in exactly the right position, in order to support the whole. In a crime novel, if you want to have a big revelation in Chapter 30, you need to plant certain information in Chapter 3, and another bit in Chapter 11, to support the big revelation when it comes, otherwise the whole thing will have an unbalanced, wrongly-shaped feel. I suppose I’m sort of obsessed with shape and structure!
How do you divide your time between publicity events and the actual writing?
It’s tricky, because I’m being asked to do more and more publicity events, and it really eats into the writing time. I have to be disciplined, and try to keep certain months free (or free-ish!) of events in order to write.
Usually my writing months are November, December, January, February, March, April and May - and the rest of the year I’m on tour, both in the UK and abroad.
What are the biggest challenges of writing?
Keeping it vibrant and fun - not allowing it to become a chore. Not becoming a parody of yourself. Enjoying writing your 40th book as much as you enjoyed writing your first book. Competing with yourself and trying to make each book better than the last in some way.
What do you enjoy most about it
I most enjoy the magic of it - the way the perfect idea arrives in my head exactly when I need it, like a gift from on high!
Whose writing do you admire?
Wendy Cope, Ruth Rendell, Nicci French, Robert Goddard, Val McDermid, Tana French, MR Hall, Nick Hornby…
What inspires you?
Real life.
Where do you carry out the majority of your writing?
In my writing room, in an annexe attached to my house, with a lovely view of the garden.
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
There have been lots: when I heard that Hodder & Stoughton wanted to publish my first crime novel, Little Face, when Little Face got to no. 1 on the Amazon Crime Chart, when I signed a new five-book deal with Hodder a couple of years ago, when my latest crime novel The Other Half Lives, got to no. 2 in the official UK top fifty…
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
Keep trying, never give up, but if it’s not working, realise that something needs to be fixed, and then fix it.
What are you working on now?
My sixth crime novel, Lasting Damage. Here’s the blurb:
It’s 1.15 a.m. Connie Bowskill should be asleep. Instead, she’s logging on to a property website in search of a particular house: 11 Bentley Grove, Cambridge. She knows it’s for sale; she saw the estate agent’s board in the front garden less than six hours ago.
Soon Connie is clicking on the ‘Virtual Tour’ button, keen to see the inside of 11 Bentley Grove and put her mind at rest once and for all. She finds herself looking at a scene from a nightmare: in the living room there’s a woman lying face down in a huge pool of blood. In shock, Connie wakes her husband Kit. But when Kit sits down at the computer to take a look, he sees no dead body, only a pristine beige carpet in a perfectly ordinary room…
Sophie’s novels are available to buy from Amazon
For more on Sophie Hannah, please visit www.sophiehannah.com
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