PL: I see a lot of my sentences like a camera tracking through a film. My mind is a film shoot that doesn’t lose anybody any money. I would be a nightmare filmmaker. I did consider it for a while before I realized novel writing was really what I was about. A good thing too — I am such a perfectionist, I would require hundreds of takes to get each scene right. My budget would overrun by millions. In my writing, I see a lot of what I write about cinematically, and roam about as if my mind were a camera. I love the idea of making a novel feel a little bit like a film — climbing into the mind's eye of the reader and making them "see" what they are reading. DW Griffith invented cinematic grammar by reading Dickens. And writers for many years now have been learning from cinema.
AF: Do you have any advice for young or aspiring writers?
PL: If you want to be a writer, you must be a serious reader. You must read the good stuff, the stuff that has bite. Read the modern-day masters from all over the world. Read the classics — the great masters who have stood the test of time. You can learn everything you need to know about writing by reading them. You do not need to sit a class. And do not be afraid of the “difficult” books. They ask more of you but return so much more. I do not know a single good writer who hasn’t been devouring books most of their life. Reading matters more than writing. Great writers are even better readers. I could happily give up writing but I could not give up reading.
AF: What's next for Paul Lynch?
PL: I'm in the deep of writing my third book. It will be a follow up of sorts to Red Sky in Morning, and tells the story of Coll Coyle's children. My wife has read some of it and thinks it is very different to anything I have done before. I am delighted with this — I cannot abide the idea of repeating myself. I seem to have been writing solidly now for over five years without much of a break, having leaped from one book to the other. I can feel it taking its toll. The back is getting sore. I have another year of solid writing ahead of me I reckon, but after this, I will take a little break.
