Neil Cross interview

On the BBC Writersroom, novelist and scriptwriter Neil Cross talks about his writing life.

As a novelist, I'm slightly suspicious of outlines. When I was a teenager I read a book about becoming a writer which cautioned - wisely, I think - against telling anybody your plot, even yourself, before you've actually written it. This is because writing, as much as reading, a novel is a process of storytelling. Once a story is told, it's told - and telling it, even verbally, diminishes the imperative to tell it again. So for novels, I tend to keep the story to myself and work from the loosest possible guidelines. I very rarely have much of an idea where a book is going next, although usually I know where its going to end up.