AOL, October 1994

The following is an abridged transcript of an America Online chat that was conducted in October 1994. Be forewarned that there may be Spoilers for upcoming books in the text of the interview. You may find that some of the information is outdated. Updates on the publication of books, tours, etc. are more current on the pages of this site that are devoted to those topics.

Intro: Okay, everyone I think knows our guest or is at least familiar with her work. But I’d like to start by having her tell you about herself and her books. Diana...
DGabaldon: Well, my last name is pronounced GAB-uhl-dohn (long o).. which seems to be what everybody wants to know {grin}. It’s gav-ahl-DOHN (still long o), in Spanish, but most people use the English version. I’ve written three-and-a-half books; Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, and Voyager -- Drums of Autumn in progress. These are big, weird, unclassifiable books, involving sex, violence, time-travel, murder, religious mysticism, botanical medicine, the Loch Ness monster, and everything else I could think of. What would anyone like to know?

Question: Thank you. DG, what’s your background, and how long does it take for you to write a book.
DGabaldon: Easy answer first -- it takes 18-22 months to write one of these, because I do the research concurrently with the writing, and also I write like a two-toed sloth. Background--er...well...I have a Ph.D. in Ecology, an M.S. in Marine Biology, a B.S. in Zoology, and one of my previous professional incarnations was as an expert in scientific computation. You don’t want to know {grin}.

Question: Where have you done the principal research work, from your home or did you go overseas a great deal... the books have a tremendous on-site feel to them.
DGabaldon: I did Outlander entirely from library research. I did take part of the advance money and go to Scotland for two weeks. I was very pleased to find it like I’d been imagining it {grin}... and even more pleased to get letters from people in Scotland, asking me how long I lived in the Highlands before moving to Arizona!

Question: Any short stories? Procure an agent for first book (Outlander?)
DGabaldon: Have I written any short stories {giggling}? I’ve never written any fiction under 300,000 words {grin}. I got my agent through an introduction by an acquaintance who had seen some of my writing in the CompuServe libraries and thought I was good. The agent took me on before I had even finished Outlander, much to my surprise. Once I did finish, he sent the manuscript to five editors who he thought might like it -- within four days, three of them had called back wanting to buy it, and we were off to the races.

Question: Your characters are so real - do they spring full blown from your head or do you have to rework them at all?
DGabaldon: They pop up like mushrooms. Some -- like Brianna -- I have to live with for awhile to get a feel for them. Some -- like Master Raymond and Mr. Willoughby and Murphy the cook -- they just leap out at me, often without my knowing they’re there at all.

Question: Do you know yet how the fourth book is going to end, or are you still thinking about it?
DGabaldon: Oh, I know the end. I just have no idea what happens during the 5 or 6 hundred pages in the middle. I don’t write in a straight line, and I never work from an outline. Very disorganized of me {grin}.

Question: Curious about film rights and how you/agent handled the option.
DGabaldon: Well, I have more than one agent; one handles book rights, one handles film rights, somebody else does audiotape rights.. and so on. The film agent basically reports to me any offers that he’s gotten, along with his opinion of the production company making the offer, and advice on whether or not to take any specific deal. I turned down the first three offers he came to me with, but the one we took is from the production company who did The Stand -- reputable, and they were offering us good terms and a decent price.

Question: How long did it take you to flesh out the initial idea of writing about Jamie and Claire?
DGabaldon: Well, as I say, I don’t write to an outline. Therefore I have no plot, to begin with. It grows organically as I write. I began with a scrap of paper fished out from under the seat of my car after Mass one Sunday. I write discrete scenes, and these tend to stimulate other scenes, and stick together in chunks...and pretty soon I have bigger chunks, and so forth and so on. The final stages of assembling a book are a lot like working a jigsaw puzzle.

Question: You said you research concurrently with writing. Did you have to do some general research on the time period before you got a feel for it?
DGabaldon: Well, it’s hard to distinguish general from specific research, when what you’re dealing with is both a foreign setting and an antique time-period--to say nothing of national character, dialect, and so on. What I did, the day after I began to write, was to go the ASU library (I worked at ASU), and type “SCOTLAND, HIGHLANDS, 18th CENTURY” into the card catalog. It came up with 38 references, and I went from there.

Question: Any thoughts on who should play Jamie in the movie?
DGabaldon: No {grin}. I’ve never seen anybody who looks like Jamie Fraser--with the partial exception of my husband, who is the body model from the neck down {grin}. Minus scars, of course {cough}.

Question: I’m wondering about loss of control from print to film.
DGabaldon: I’d be the wrong person to ask about that, since it hasn’t happened yet, but from all I hear, an author almost never has any control over the filmed version of his or her work. Or, as my film agent said, “If you really care about having a good movie made of your work--don’t sell it to Hollywood.”

Let me ask you guys a question, if I may? I’ve been invited to teach a six-hour workshop on Writing Historical Fiction, for the University of British Columbia, during the Vancouver Writers Conference stop on this book tour. While I don’t doubt my ability to talk for six hours {grin}, I’d really like to know what people would want/expect from such a workshop? Hands on--should I give short exercises? Or should I just talk, giving examples, readings, etc.? Any suggestions?

Question: I’m a guy who really enjoys your book. Are you comfortable with them being “marketed” as books for women? Aren’t a lot of us guys missing out?
DGabaldon: Well, thanks! My major objection to having my books sold as romance, frankly, is that it eliminates a good many male readers (like most of them!). And no, I don’t like having them marketed as books solely for women, because they aren’t. However, as I said above....they’re virtually indescribable in published terms. In order to get any decent readership for them, you have to call them something, and “romance” was by far the biggest market that they would conceivably fit in.

Question: I would like to see examples of how you turn hard research into a piece of fiction in your workshop. And I would also like to say that I push your books on anyone, including husband, to get them out into the main readership.
DGabaldon: Oh, that’s a good suggestion! One example in Dragonfly...is the “hanged-men’s grease” scene {grin}. Thank you! They do seem to spread by word-of-mouth.

Question: If it makes you feel better, in Sacramento, your books have always been under regular fiction... not romance.
DGabaldon: Well, I find them all over the place, depending on whether someone in the bookstore has actually read them. If so, they tend to be in General Fiction--if not, they’ll be shelved under Romance (because they say HIS ROM on the spine--though the Voyager paperback says “FIC”! I regard this as progress {grin}. Sometimes I also find them under Science Fiction Fantasy, since there’s a strong cross-over readership. That’s where most of my male fans come from.

Question: I found them under general fiction in Denver too. Re: your workshop, I think writers who are trying historical writing for the first time get bogged down in detail - could you address that?
DGabaldon: Yeah, I call that the “Punch and Judy syndrome”--where the young Elizabethan hero wanders out of the bakeshop, sees a P and J show going on across the street, stands there watching it and taking in all the sights of the street and thinking deep thoughts about the Dyers’ Guild, and so forth and so on--and six pages later, nothing’s happened yet! There is a way to weave detail through events to prevent that, but it’s a little lengthy to go into here.

Question: What gave you the idea of time travel in did you know about the stones, are they real?
DGabaldon: There are hundreds of standing stone circles all over Northern Britain--I found that out in the course of the research. Once I’d decided Claire was a time-traveler (this was supposed to be a straight historical novel, but she wouldn’t shut up and talk like an 18th century person!) the stones seemed a logical method of transport.

Question: Diana thank you for being our guest tonight, I want to remind people that Voyager is out in paperback and that your other books are also still available in the stores.
DGabaldon: Many thanks for inviting me! I had a great time with y’all! {grin}