Tana French biography

Interview

Tana French talks about The Likeness, the sequel to her successful debut novel, In The Woods, and explores the characters in the book, their motivations, and how her experiences made them come alive.

Q: How has your background in theater helped you create your characters?

A: When you get right down to it, writing – or at least writing in the first person, which is what I do – is basically the same skill as acting. For years, my job as an actor was to create a character – hopefully a full, three-dimensional character – and spend hours a day operating completely from her perspective, bringing an audience into her world. Writing is just an extension of that process. These days, my job is to create a narrator and see everything through her eyes, filter it through her perceptions and describe it in her voice, so I can draw readers into her world. I play my narrator on paper, rather than on stage, but the mental process is the same. Writing scenes with a lot of characters gets complicated – I have to 'play' all of them at once, juggle all their perspectives and motivations in my head – but it's still that same skill. I keep meaning to e-mail my old acting teacher and thank him!


Q: Are any of the characters in The Likeness based on anyone you know?

A: No, I don't base characters on real people. As soon as you do that, you're limited by what you know about the real ...