Exercise 1

When readers read my novels I want them to feel... at the end. That's because to me novels are...

When readers read my novels I want them to feel the emotions that some else is feeling. Each person's life experience is limited to this one life and this one set of circumstances. In reading of other people in situations close to and removed from their own, people begin to sympathise with "other" people. It is "otherness" that has spurned wars and the destructions of countless cultures and nations. If a book can help people to feel what other people fear, they might not be so afraid of each other anymore. Knowledge is power and imagination is the only thing that sets us apart from the animals. So, let us imagine and feel and taste the life that other people live, if only through words and a little make-believe.

That's because, to me, novels are empowering and also liberating. The foreign-ness of cultures and lifestyles different from our own is far less scary when we can imagine being in their moment, in their heart and mind. Even a drug-addict, thief and murderer can become someone a well mannered debutant could relate to. Novels are very close to acting. Acting is all about motivation, impetus or "reason". The actor must have a reason for doing an action. In acting out that motivation the audience has a chance to feel what the character is feeling and understand why they are doing what they are. It is a cathartic process for the audience/reader, who comes out of the make-believe world having felt things they might never have had the chance to feel and in so doing, learn to question social constructs and pre-conceptions and decide for themselves what is valid motivation and what is not.