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Ian Weir doles out writing advice at the Afterword Reading Society wrap-up

Last night, book lovers gathered at Ben McNally Books in Toronto for the National Post’s inaugural Afterword Reading Society wrap-up. Brad Frenette, Afterword co-editor, hosted a Q&A with Ian Weir, whose novel Daniel O’Thunder (Douglas & McIntyre) has been discussed on the Post book blog for the past two months or so (and was one of Q&Q’s “Overlooked Books” of 2009). The novel has also been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award.

Weir, a successful playwright and screenwriter, spoke frequently of how his background influenced the writing process of his first novel, and offered up some writing advice.

“I find it really useful to think of myself as an actor playing the role of the character,” he said. “If I were an actor, what would I be doing with this moment? What would I be doing with this character? So often as a writer you stay outside the character and discover that you’ve written characters who make a certain intellectual sense to you, but don’t actually have life.”

Weir also said that he appreciated the creative freedom that comes with writing a novel – the usual budget constraints associated with writing for the screen or stage did not apply.

“That’s the wonderful thing about being a writer,” he said. “It costs just the same to set a story with a bazillion characters in the streets of London in Victorian England as it does to write a novel with one character in the streets of London in 2011.”