Iggulden: Too few hours, too many stories to be told
Teacher-turned-author believes characters take precedence over plot
Dubai: Conn Iggulden, the award-winning author of The Dangerous Book for Boys, told aspiring writers at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature that "part of the process is to be rejected".
The former teacher — who is also well known for the Emperor books, a series of novels about the life of Julius Caesar — explained that you get very little feedback from publishers when trying to get your first big break in the industry.
He said: "I have seen so many rejection letters containing various degrees of unhelpful advice such as ‘keep trying'. If a piece of my work has been rejected 20 times, that is when I know to put it in a brown, paper parcel, store it in the attic and start again.
"Every aspiring writer has to be a reader first. People care about people and characters are the core of every story. For me, it is characters over plot every time."
Iggulden's most recent work, the Conquerer series, is based on the life of Mongol warlords Genghis and Kublai Khan.
In 2007, Wolf of the Plains, the first novel in the series, and Dangerous Book for Boys, topped both the UK fiction and non-fiction charts simultaneously; an unprecedented feat for any author.
Iggulden attributes the lives of Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan as the reason why he writes historical fiction. He said: "It is a real inspiration to think that one life over a 60-year period can change the world forever.
"I do admit, however, that with historical fiction you do sometimes have to make things up. I never start with a blank page; I am filling in the blanks of history. I have also found through writing historical fiction that I can forgive many sins if a life is interesting enough.
"I have been quite lucky in that Gates of Rome, the first book in the Emperor series, was released at the same time Gladiator came out at the cinema".
Non-fiction offering
Iggulden ventured into the world of non-fiction in 2007 with the publication of The Dangerous Book for Boys — a compendium of useful and arcane information on everything from conkers to how to make potassium aluminium sulphate crystals — that he co-wrote with his brother Hal.
Iggulden certainly has a lot to keep him occupied. In his own words: "There are just too many stories to be told in the world - and too few hours in a day."
