"5 Questions" with Clay More!

Who influenced you most in your life?

My grandfather. He was a gardener, whisky distiller and storyteller. When I was a youngster he would tell me a yarn on demand. He could tell stories about Buffalo Bill, Scottish lairds, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the 1745 Uprising and the Jacobite cause. He taught me many things, including how to water dowse.

What do you think makes a good story?

A strong protagonist, an interesting plot with conflict along the way and a couple of twists to fool you.

Where does your inspiration come from?

From virtually anything. It can be a chance encounter, an interesting observation, a smell, a colour, a scene. As a writer my imagination scanner is permanently switched on. The normal things in life all have the potential to spark off a story. That may be a contemporary story, a western, a historical story of a tale for youngsters.

Do you use events from your own life?

I don’t reproduce them exactly, but I embellish them and move them around in a sort of ‘knight’s move’ manner. So instead of something happening to me, it will be one person twice removed, or instead of a dog doing something in my life it will be a cat, a parrot or a lizard. I take the essence and then shape-shift it.  I ask ‘what if” something happened at that point. It can be  a mundane thing or it can be something dramatic, like a man rushing in with a gun, or a ‘telegram’ coming with different news that will take me in a completely different direction.

How does someone get started on the writing journey???

By reading, reading, reading. Then start writing. Write for yourself to begin with, as you try to shape your style. Then start looking at short story markets and have a go. Tailor your story to the market, which means study what they want and deliver what they want. Don’t sit back then and wait to hear what they think, but start on the next. Never wait for a fallow period, just keep writing, exploring different markets until you find your niche. That’s what I do and I have a tally of 40 books now across 4 fiction genres and half a dozen non-fiction genres.