Thread by @sarahmagarey

What a fabulous final SWF session for me yesterday - Hilary Mantel interviewed by Jonathan Green! A quick thread of some of the points which came up during the discussion:
#sydneywritersfestival @SydWritersFest

Cromwell was always at the heart of Wolf Hall, from its conception - the story of a man rising from obscurity to great power based only on personal magnetism and the force of his personality.

Making him likeable by bringing out his dry warmth and humour helps the reader to identify with him all the way through. This allows them to stay in the moment with him and feel it's all there to play for, all over again.

When writing historical fiction, she gets her ear in by reading the prose of the time, so she can give the novel a flavour of the language. This gives the reader a suspicion of another world, without holding them up or dropping them out of the story.

The historical record is not just facts on the page - it's also the blots, the elisions, what is between the lines, what's vanished or was never there in the first place. This is where the novelist finds space - to free the characters from the pages of history books.

The consequences of Anne Boleyn's death continued on - some of the men arrested with her lived while others died - and this uncertainty was a way for Cromwell to exert control. The reader knows what happened but the characters don't - they are living real lives, not in chapters.

Characters come to her as an energy, a voice, always in motion. They become embedded in her mind like friends and neighbours.

She knows the historical record before writing - and while she challenges it, she doesn't cheat it. Facts give the bedrock of a historical novel its strength. Research is part of the writing, not separate from it... both happen together, a specialised part of remembering.

When she gets ready to write a scene about Cromwell - first, she finds out where he is, who he is with, what else is going on, which letters he has received that day. Then, she writes what happened and keeps the context on the surface of the scene as she writes it.

Everything spins around Cromwell in the story; we are on his shoulder, looking through his eyes. Although we also have to keep our eye on Henry!

Choosing point of view, voice, tense came to her in the first minutes of writing Wolf Hall - it wasn't necessarily a conscious decision. What could he see, hear, feel, right from the start? Then, she stays with that consciousness.

Thank you very much!