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'You can strip a novel down like a car'

3 March 2014

'The technical side of writing a novel is fascinating. You can strip a novel down like a car and see how it works. They are beautiful machines if they purr nicely. I like to write a book that is so utterly compelling that you want to read on, and in all my novels I try to build that motor energy in it. But it's very hard to write a complex, compelling plot, very hard. You realise that film is a very simple art form compared to the novel.'

William Boyd, author of Waiting for Sunrise in the Bookseller