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Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.

Emma Donoghue

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Emma Donoghue
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: October 24
Literary Historian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Happens
Planning
Without
Structure
Need
Writers
Needs
Scene
Plots
Going
Produce
Chapter
Novel
Chapters
Particular
Marvelous
Happen
Plot

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The way to my heart is through Belgian milk chocolate.
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When I tell her what I’m thinking and she tells me what she’s thinking, our each ideas jumping into the other’s head, like coulouring blue crayon on top of yellow that makes green.
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...real loneliness is having no one to miss. Think yourself lucky you've known something worth missing.
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I guess the feminism in Room springs to mind most.
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I've been in a long and happy relationship for 22 years and it's never inspired me to write anything. It's too good - nothing to say. Problems, conflict, that's what makes for good stories.
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I think I know what it's like to have a family that the outside world sees as peculiar or lacking.
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For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have...
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Writing stories is my way of scratching that itch: my escape from the claustrophobia of individuality. It lets me, at least for a while, live more than one life, walk more than one path. Reading, of course, can do the same.
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I've certainly seen stats that if you have a woman director or a woman screenwriter, the number of female characters goes way up.
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I think ultimately the film 'Room' is a kind of hymn to motherhood and to the everyday heroism of parents who find their smiles in terrible times.
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There may be certain genres that men dominate, but fiction not so much. The question of prizes is tricky because there are so many prizes.
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Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up.
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When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I'm five I know everything
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...sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.
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For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.
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I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless.
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Goodbye, Room. I wave up at Skylight. Say goodbye, I tell Ma. Goodbye, Room. Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.
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Something we do know is that review coverage does go to male authors more than women authors. That's a fact. I think it's one of those examples of unconscious bias: If you hire a lot of male journalists, they're more likely to pick up the latest Ian McEwan novel than the latest A.S. Byatt novel.
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When people write to me with stories, they are never ones that work for me. There's something mysterious about which ones catch you.
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