Author Julie Gilbert Discusses the Writing of Her New Book ‘Giant Love’
Julie Gilbert Today, we delve into the enduring relevance of the themes explored by Pulitzer Prize -winning author Edna Ferber
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This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter— sign up here . I always take my characters grocery shopping when I’m working on a novel. I like to push a cart around a supermarket, deciding what my character will buy. It’s the single best way for me to understand a character well enough to inhabit her on the page. I need to know if my character shops for convenience or comfort. If she’s buying ingredients for elaborate recipes, or frozen ready-meals. I usually take her to a supermarket when I’m about a quarter of the way into a first draft. By this point, I know my character’s disposition, her internal weather, and I’m working out the particulars of her life: her job, her home, her routines. A supermarket trip can shake some of those pieces loose. For my new novel, Trust Her , I figured out that Tessa cooks for control and order, as threats mount around her. She’s an ambitious, aspirational cook. Her sister Marian finds cooking boring and constraining. Figuring out that one dynamic between them opened up so many other tensions in their relationship as sisters. Some of this supermarket research never makes it onto the page. I know, for example, that Eamonn’s fridge is empty, except for beer and sauce packets from past take-out orders. This is not wildly relevant to the story, but it gives me the confidence to write his dialogue and actions. People are a bit vulnerable in a supermarket: they might be tired or hungry, stopping on their way home after a long day at work; they might be consumed with worry at the prices; they might be caregivers, carefully choosing food that someone else will eat. They might be optimists, cheerfully buying greens that will absolutely wilt before anyone cooks them. They might be choosing their groceries in a fit of nostalgia, or gloom, or restlessness. One of my top-ten fictional supermarket scenes comes from The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld. In the first chapter, Viv stops at a supermarket in Musselburgh, on the coast of Scotland: “I […]
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Julie Gilbert Today, we delve into the enduring relevance of the themes explored by Pulitzer Prize -winning author Edna Ferber
The Mallorcan Joana Marcús is a young bestseller in Spain and America, writer of young adult novels with a romantic
