I'm a great fan of your work, particularly Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. I would love to know what is your starting point for a novel? Do you begin with research and then develop the plot, or does the story idea come first? You seem to have the perfect blend of a great story backed up with thorough knowledge, I'm trying to write a historical novel myself and would be grateful for any tips!

Lisa See Thank you for your kind words about Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. I'm so glad you enjoyed it! To answer your question, I don’t think one comes before the other. They’re both entwined. I'll use Snow Flower as an example. I knew I wanted to write something about the secret language. I went to a very remote part of China to see what I could see. As I was going there, I had an incredible meal where they brought in a live chicken, killed it, and then we cooked it in a hot pot. They made taro and caramelized sugar for dessert. This meal became the favorite special meal for Lily and Snow Flower.

I didn’t know that Snow Flower was going to marry a butcher until I sat on the porch of a house in a tiny village and learned that this was the home of a butcher. There was a big wok embedded in the porch where the butcher slaughtered the pig and then boiled the body to remove the skin—right outside the front door!

I didn’t know the overall form of the novel until I was leaving China. I had one night in a nice hotel room. I had my first hot shower in a long time and a meal that didn’t involve pig penis or pig’s blood. This voice came to me that was a bit of my grandmother, a bit of my great-aunt, and a bit of the 96-year-old woman I’d met in one of the villages. I got in bed and wrote the opening chapter. It involved an old woman filled with regrets looking back on her life. So the novel was written from her point of view as a kind of autobiography. The point I’m making is that these things could have happened in any order. One thing just builds upon another. You have to be open and receptive to what the universe brings you.

flag