AN INTERVIEW WITH DIANA GABALDON
Q: Where did you get the idea for a time travel novel?
A: I had meant Outlander to be a straight historical novel, but when I introduced Claire Beauchamp Randall (around the third day of writing—it was the scene where she meets Dougal and the others in the cottage), she wouldn’t cooperate. Dougal asked her who she was, and without my stopping to think who she should be, she drew herself up, stared belligerently at him, and said “Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp. And who the hell are you?” She promptly took over the story and began telling it herself, making smart-ass modern remarks about everything.
At this point I shrugged and said, “Fine. Nobody’s ever going to see this book, so it doesn’t matter what bizarre thing I do—go ahead and be modern, and I’ll figure out how you got there later.” So the time travel was entirely Claire’s fault.
Q: Why did you choose Scotland during the Jacobite period as the setting for your books?
A: Well, like almost everything else about these books, it was an accident. I was looking for a time in which to set a historical novel, because I thought that would be the easiest kind of book to write for practice. While pondering, I happened to see a rerun of an ancient Doctor Who episode on PBS—one in which the Doctor had a young Scottish sidekick, picked up in 1745. The sidekick was a cute little guy, about seventeen, named Jamie MacCrimmon, and he looked rather nice in his kilt.
I was sitting in church the next day thinking about it, and thought, Well, you’ve got to start somewhere, and it doesn’t really matter where, since no one’s ever going to see this—so why not? Scotland, eighteenth century. And that is where I started—no outline, no characters, no plot—just a place and time.
Q: Have you ever been to Scotland?
A: I had never been there when I wrote Outlander, and did that book entirely from library research (since at the time, I thought the book was purely for practice, I hardly thought I could tell my husband I had to go to Scotland to do research). I did take part of the advance money from the sale of Outlander and go to Scotland for two weeks, though, while working on Dragonfly. It was (luckily!) just as I’d been imagining it. I’ve been back several times since, for book tours and the like, and would go back like a shot, at the slightest opportunity.
Q: Why is Outlander written in the first person point of view?
A: My initial impulse is to say, “Why on earth shouldn’t it be?” However, I do get this question quite often at writers conferences, so I’ll try to go into a bit more detail.
I like to experiment and try new and interesting things in terms of structure and literary technique (not that writing in the first person is what you’d call madly adventurous). However, the answer is simply that a first person narrative was the easiest and most comfortable for me to use at the time, and since I was writing the book for practice, I saw no reason to make things complicated.
Now that I know more about writing, there are other good reasons to have done it, but that’s why I did it at the time; it felt natural to me. I think I may have felt most comfortable with this (aside from the minor fact that Claire Beauchamp Randall took over and began telling the story herself), because many of my favorite works of literature are first person narratives.
If you look at the classic novels of the English language, roughly half of them are written in the first person, from Moby-Dick to David Copperfield, Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island—even large chunks of the Bible are written in the first person!
Which is not to say that there are no drawbacks to using this technique, or that it suits everyone. But if it fits your style and your story, why on earth not?
Q: Are all the locations used in the books real?
A: Bear in mind that I had never been to Scotland when I wrote Outlander. When I finally did go, I found a stone circle very like the one I had described, at a place called Castlerigg. There is also a place near Inverness called the Clava Cairns, which has a stone circle, and another place called Tomnahurich, which is supposed to be a fairy’s hill, but I’ve never been there, so I don’t know how like Craigh na Dun it is. As for Lallybroch … well, I do repeatedly find things that really exist after I’ve written them, so I really wouldn’t be at all surprised.
Q: Are you Claire?
A: Well, no. Though of course, I’m all the characters; I have to be, after all. But if you are asking whether I based the character of Claire on myself, no, I didn’t.
Q: Who is the ghost in Outlander?
A: The ghost is Jamie—but as to exactly how his appearance fits into the story, All Will Be Explained—in the last book of the series.
Q: Where will the story end?
A: I think the Outlander books will end in about 1800, in Scotland. If this tells you anything, more power to you.
Q: Will the story have a happy ending?
A: Oh, yes, the last book will have a happy
ending, though I confidently expect it to leave the readers in
floods of tears, anyway.
Excerpted from The Outlandish Companion, copyright © 1999 by Diana Gabaldon