Randomly Interviewing My Brother

My brother Paul and I had some time on our hands as our family drove across town to a birthday party. We had notebooks. We also had goofy brains and the idea of doing unique interviews of each other. This post is the result of the questions I asked him. 😉 

But first, an introduction of sorts.

“Paul Willis is a young Christian author in Arizona. He is learning (and always will be) the crafts of writing and independent publishing. His style alternates between comedic and poetic. He hopes others will benefit from his experiences and mistakes.”

He’s also the author of Diamond a short, brilliant mystery. “Novel X” is the working title of his NaNoWriMo novel. He blogs at Project Blank Page.

Now the questions…

What was the weirdest thing you had to research for “Novel X”?

I had to Google the difference between a “hankering” and a “hunch”. ‘Nuff said.

Have you ever killed a main character?

Bwahaha! Yeeesss…

It actually doesn’t make me happy, but my characters keep putting themselves in dangerous situations that they shouldn’t be able to live through. In my defense, so far their deaths have been mercifully quick.

Who would you cosplay?

I could do BBC Sherlock, the most recent Spock, or Peter from Divergent; but I’d prefer to be Captain America if I could pull it off.

I have pictures to prove it. 😉 Have you learned anything about how to handle a large cast of characters?

Yes. I learned very quickly that if you introduce a crowd early on, you should kill off side characters at the pace you develop the main ones. This way your few MC’s will be the only ones standing at the climax and will bear all attention and emotional load. Your reader can maintain the required focus on the well developed important people.

Real answer: My best tip I learned is to try to keep all but a few (less than 5) characters of interest out of the scene. If the POV character needs to talk to 100 cast members, have her move from conversation to conversation, room to room. Both authors and readers know how confusing it can be with a dozen characters contributing to the same dialogue.

What was the most challenging part of creating a case for Diamond?

Probably back engineering how the detective solves it–how he finds clues, without giving the answer away too early. I got the criminal’s part almost right off the bat, but he was naturally smarter than the detective. I wonder what that says about my brain.

What’s the most beautiful paperback you’ve ever seen?

That’s hard. Really hard. I like The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau, but Airman by Eoin Colfer or Counted Worthy by Leah Good is the coolest.

Thanks for doing that with me, Paul! 😉

You can find his interview of me HERE. Enjoy! 😉