If you BREAK things down to goodies and baddies, the baddies are ALWAYS a bit more alluring in fiction, and that's true from a NARRATIVE POINT of view. But I wanted to write a novel about real life, and real life is a bit more nuanced than that.

In an AGE where TELEVISION is viewed as the best medium to 'tell stories,' NARRATIVE OFTEN stands in for SUBSTANCE on would-be prestige shows.

Of the individual poems, some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or READ together TAKE on the movement and ARCHITECTURE of a narrative.

One of the reasons why Gadafy's DICTATORSHIP has managed to REMAIN in power for so LONG is not just because it has shown itself to be able to EXACT a great deal of violence, both psychological and physical, on its people, but because it has been very successful at imposing a NARRATIVE, a story.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never GET a book published, I WOULD still WRITE. I enjoy the EXPERIENCE of getting thoughts and ideas and PLOTS and characters organised into this narrative framework.

Memory doesn't COME as a straight NARRATIVE. It comes in SMALL moments with all this WHITE space.

I just WANT to be a free WRITER. I think I am serving my COUNTRY and my PEOPLE by providing an independent narrative.

So much of literary SCI-FI is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a SOCIAL level. We'll create a WORLD for people and then later present a NARRATIVE in that world.

While we can all access articles and INFORMATION in so MANY places now - across blogs, in newspapers, on video - there is something very powerful about PUTTING it all together into an edited format in a single ISSUE that has a NARRATIVE stretching across the themes.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful WRITING, but one important step is to MOVE beyond imitation and discover what you can WRITE that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and STYLE.

I start with a mood or an idea that comes from a PERSONAL place EMOTIONALLY, and the NARRATIVE CONCEPTS come much later.

The narrative NEEDS to CHANGE. Asian-American actresses don't want to be the damsels in DISTRESS anymore. We don't want to be SAVED, especially by a white man.

'The Piano Lesson' is very sophisticated, EASILY the most adult or complex material I've attempted. It's the first FILM I've written that has a proper story, and it was a big struggle for me to write. It meant I had to ADMIT the POWER of NARRATIVE.