James Patterson: Cross purposes
The Patterson method
iVillage: What, if any, are your special rituals, what time of day do you write, and what does your working space consist of?
James Patterson: I write first thing in the morning - about 360 days a year. I have very good concentration so I can write anywhere. One of the good things about the tours is that I'm trapped in an aeroplane at least once a day. Aeroplanes are a great place for me to write. I have two work spaces, one in Florida and one in Westchester County, New York. The one in Westchester stares out at the Hudson area. The one in Florida stares out at the Intercoastal Waterway. You can tell that I like the water.
iVillage: How extensive are your character sketches?
James Patterson: I don't get extensive and I don't work with a character sketch. I tell a story and the only thing that the reader gets to know about the character is what's revealed in the story. Just like life, we don't get a long biography about most people that we meet. We learn things over time.
iVillage: What kind of research do you do to 'get into the minds' of your characters? You've written about some pretty scary people.
James Patterson: I did some research at one point when I was writing a non-fiction book. The research involved asking a lot of people about what they thought about, fantasised about, etc. I was amazed at the violent fantasies so many people had, and that gave me the licence to sort of create the villains that I come up with.
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