Literary Birthday – 26 February – Elizabeth George

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth George, born on 26 February 1949.

Elizabeth George Quotes

1. I wish that I had known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn’t have found it so frightening to write.
2. It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
3. Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.
4. I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can’t be taught. Frankly, I don’t understand this point of view.
5. I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.
6. Lots of people want to have written; they don’t want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.
7. Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first… You can’t do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.

Elizabeth George is an American author of mystery/police procedural novels set in Great Britain. She started writing the popular Inspector Lynley series in 1988 after the publication of the first in the series, A Great Deliverance. In the award-winning novel she introduced her characters, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley of Scotland Yard, an aristocrat, and his working-class assistant, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. In their 22 outings, the two have become a formidable team, bonded by their integrity and their desire to see justice done. The latest book in the series is A Slowly Dying Cause.  The novels have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and more recently as Lynley. She is also the author of a series of young adult suspense novels, namely The Abandonment of Hannah Armstrong Series. You can visit George’s website at elizabethgeorgeonline.com and follow her on Facebook.

Read Elizabeth George’s Writing Process

Source for image: Viking Penguin Books / Photo credit: Jennifer Adams / Source for some of the quotes

by Amanda Patterson

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