Val McDermid at Writers' Week

Val McDermid, in her charming Scottish accent, started the session by giving some details about what brought her around to becoming a crime novelist. In essence, it was her childhood reading patterns, in particular a healthy dose of Agatha Christie, that led her to an early conclusion that all good books should have a dead body in it.

Talkng about her experiences as a student at Oxford, she noted that she often spied detective and crime novels amongst the more scholarly tomes in her tutors' rooms, which signalled to her that while crime fiction might not always be considered "literary" by the establishment, it was nonetheless an intellectually respectable pleasure.

I found it interesting that McDermid said that she has no interest in "true crime" professionally. The main reason that she does not want to draw on real life is that she would hate for a victim of a tragedy be further hurt or upset by encountering or recognising themselves or their loved ones in a supposed work of fiction. I think that it is a very noble position for a writer to take.

McDermid also commented on her writing techniques. Usually she says that she writes to a very detailed synopsis, that the entire plot is laid out and she knows exactly what has to go where. However she revealed that her last two novels came much more difficultly--she knew the beginning and end, but found the middle to be a great unknown. McDermid referred to what E.L. Doctorow calls the "driving by night" method of writing: you know where you are leaving from, and you know where you want to end up, but the road ahead is dark.

In a piece of Wire in the Blood trivia, McDermid revealed that the character of Carol Jordan will be leaving the series, which is a huge loss to the show.