The Verb at Hay Festival: How to write a Novel
The Verb
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The Joy of Fiction
The Constant Princess ends on Catherine of Aragon's victory over the Scots. She sends James's blood stain coat that's drawn off his battered body to Henry VIII in France and says look what I've done. From a ruling Queen's point of view, it's a pretty good move. And that's where I end the novel. But as a novelist, I'm not limited by the life. In a way that if he was writing a biography of history, the tradition is you go from the beginning to the end. You don't have to do that if you're writing a novel. It gives you the chance of ending obviously tragic lives at the moment of absolute triumph.
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