The Outlandish Companion

by Diana Gabaldon

  There aren’t any UK audiobooks available as yet, I’m afraid.

  In addition to the commercial audiotapes, there are two noncommercial recorded versions of the books, produced for print-handicapped readers in the United States. I’ve been a volunteer at Recording for the Blind for the last seventeen years, and as a special treat, they allowed me to read Outlander and Dragonfly—normally, I read scientific, medical, and computer texts for them. All books available through RFB are provided free of charge to qualified borrowers, and are read in their entirety. (Perhaps they’ll let me read Voyager or Drums, too, once I’ve finished the eighth edition of Biology of Microorganisms.)

  I’m told (I haven’t heard them) that all the books are also available from the Library of Congress’s Talking Books program, also in unabridged form.

  Q: How long does it take you to write a book?

  A: It took me eighteen months to finish Outlander, about two years each for Dragonfly in Amber and Voyager, and roughly two and a half years for Drums of Autumn. The books got longer, and slightly (ha) more complicated; also, I spent more than four months on the road, doing book tours and promotional appearances for Voyager, which tends to cut into the writing time.23 I’m extremely slow and snaillike, and I rewrite and edit as I go, word by word, sentence by sentence… then go back and change the words again. I average maybe two to three pages a day, except at the very end of the book. At this point, when I know what I’m doing, and where everything goes, I will be writing ten to fifteen pages a day—and sleeping very little.

  Q: What kind of research do you do for your books? How do you know when you’ve done enough research? How long do you research before you begin writing?

  A: I know a lot of people do all their research and then begin to write, but that wouldn’t work for me—since I never know what’s going to happen, I wouldn’t know where to stop!24 So I don’t—I read and research during all the time I’m writing, and I begin writing immediately.

  It’s the writing that’s important in a book. In terms of research, I often don’t know what I need to know until I find it.25 If something turns out to be wrong, I can change it. If I come to a spot where I really must know something specific before writing it—then I can go and look it up, or I can skip to a different place in the story and leave that spot for later. But nothing counts except words on the page.

  I have about two hundred books that belong to the university library (every so often they want one back, which is a traumatic experience), and I also buy books like salted peanuts. I carry a research book around in the car, to read at stoplights or at kids’ flute lessons, and I read research material while I work out on an exercise bike or treadmill. Sometimes I do have something specific to look up—like how to extract a tooth, or how many slaves were on the average sugar plantation in North

  Carolina in 1767, or how much a black bear weighs, but it really doesn’t take time to discover a discrete fact—it’s the browsing and finding fascinating items like hanged-men’s grease (that’s historically true, by the way—it was one of the perks of an eighteenth century hangman) that take time. Fortunately, it’s also fun.

  At one point, I recall coming across a mention of a specific book that seemed, from its title, likely to be important in terms of the research for Voyager. The university library didn’t have it, and I didn’t have time to wait for them to obtain it through interlibrary loan. I called around, and finally located two copies of the book, in a bookstore in New York City. By coincidence, the bookstore was located on the first floor of the building in which my publisher’s offices were located. Which is how it happened that my (extremely obliging and forbearant) editor found herself attempting to keep a straight face while asking the bookstore clerk for two copies of Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition.26

  Q: How did you get the Scottish accent right? I am a Scot with a passion for Scottish history, and having heard that you are not Scottish, was frankly expecting the worst. I was pleasantly surprised!

  A: Thank you—I’m pleased to hear it! I “got” the Scottish accents from quite a few sources, but the main bases were Scottish novels (written by Scots, I mean) and Scottish folk song recordings. Especially in live recordings, groups (like the Corries, for example) will banter with the audience, and you can hear them talk, as well as pick up idiom and vocabulary from the songs themselves.

  The “accent” isn’t purely an accent, of course—it’s my approximation of Scots, which is a real dialect of English. It’s not the same thing as Gaelic, which is a completely separate language. Scots is English, but has quite a number of specific words and idioms not found in standard English, and also has its own peculiarly idiosyncratic sentence structures.

  Q: Your books are so complex! Do you use an outline?

  A: No, I don’t use an outline. Of course, I also don’t write in a straight line; I write in lots of little pieces and then glue them together like a jigsaw puzzle. I’ll work forward and back, backward and forward, until a scene is finished—then hop somewhere else and write something different. I don’t even have chapters, until just before I print the completed manuscript to send to my editor; breaking the text into chapters and titling them is just about the last thing I do to a book.27

  And yes, now and then I’ll have scenes or fragments that either don’t fit or are redundant or extraneous (I’m sure no one thinks I ever edit or cut anything, but I really do. The next-to-next-to-the-last thing I do to a manuscript is a process called “slash and burn”). In most cases, though, those scenes can be recycled into the next book—one of the benefits of writing a series. For example, the brief scene involving Mayer Rothschild, the traveling numismatist, was originally written for Dragonfly. It wasn’t that it didn’t fit well there—but it wasn’t necessary to that story, so I removed it. And lo and behold, it tied in beautifully with the clue of the coins in Voyager, where I used it in almost the original version, making only small adjustments for the sake of the plot.

  Then there are versions of things that simply don’t work—I rewrote the front half of the framing story for Dragonfly seven times before I was happy with it—keeping whatever small pieces seemed to work from each iteration.

  All writers are different in their approaches to writing, but for me, it’s a very organic sort of process, though with its own internal logic—something like growing crystals in the basement.

  Q: Do your readers give you ideas?

  A: Well, in all honesty, not often. Or rather, they don’t give me specific ideas, though often enough, a conversation will trigger a train of thought that eventually results in something—though it may not be at all what the original suggester had in mind! I generally know the shape of the story, if not the specifics, and I know the characters in such a way that I can say that yes they would do this, no they wouldn’t do that, under any circumstances. The only cases I can recall where a suggestion resulted in a specific scene were from a couple of my LitForum (CompuServe) friends—both people I’ve known for years, who’ve watched the development of the books and characters from the earliest days.

  For example, one woman asked me—half-kiddingly—what I thought Jamie would say, think, or do if he came forward in time and saw his daughter in a bikini. Now, there’s no way he can travel forward in time, but the question did spark a train of thought that led to that conversation by moonlight in Voyager, and Claire’s letter to her daughter.

  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 thing
s 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!28

  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?

  The framing story of Dragonfly is written partly in Claire’s first person voice, partly in the third person voice of Roger Wakefield. And, if you look at the first half of Voyager, you’ll see that it’s done in a “braided” technique, telling Jamie’s story in third person in a linear chronology, Claire’s story in first person backward, in flashback, and using the sections in Roger’s voice as the turning points that trigger the other two voices.

  Drums, in turn, uses four main narrative voices: Claire, Jamie, Roger, and Brianna.30 Still, Claire’s voice is by far the most comfortable for me to use.

  Q: What have been the most difficult sections for you to write?

  A: Difficult? Goodness, all of them. Well, not really, but writing is hard work, you know, even though a great deal of fun. As for emotional difficulty, which is what I suspect you mean—Claire’s farewell letter to Bree, the rape scene in Outlander, the farewell scene in Dragonfly in Amber, the “Away in a Manger” scene in Drums, and a few others that don’t come immediately to mind. The ones you’d expect, in other words.

  Q: Are all the locations used in the books real?

  A: I suppose that depends a bit on what you mean by “real.” They’re all certainly real to me. However, places like Inverness, Loch Ness, and Fort William are real in the map sense as well, as are Paris, Fontainebleau, Cap-Haïtien, etc. If you mean the stone circle at Craigh na Dun…

  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,31 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: How do you develop your characters? Do you keep charts or index cards to keep track of them?

  A: I don’t keep charts of characters, notes, outlines, anything. I don’t write down anything but the text of the book, in part because if I write something down, I forget it.

  In the later books, I do occasionally have to count back to see what month of what year it is when a given scene takes place, so I’ll know what the weather should be like, but that’s about as far as it goes. I don’t forget the characters, because I can “see” them. You wouldn’t forget what your spouse looks like, or what s/he likes for breakfast, would you? (See “Characters” in Part Two for a fuller description of character development.)

  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.

  (See “Characters” for a fuller explanation.)

  Q: We were trying to figure out the “rules” for the Minister’s Cat. Any light you could shed would be helpful.

  A: The Minister’s Cat is just a simple word game, with no real overall “winner.” Each player takes a turn for each letter of the alphabet, trying to pick an adjective that will either baffle or simply amuse his opponent; the person who picks the “best” adjective (one his opponent doesn’t know, or just one that’s more entertaining) is the winner of that round.

  The Minister’s Cat is an adipose cat.

  The Minister’s Cat is an adhesive cat.

  Both good, but “adhesive” might be better, since the thought of a sticky cat is funnier than the image of a fat cat.

  The Minister’s cat is a bad cat.

  The Minister’s cat is a bandkeramik cat.

  “Bandkeramik” is a term used to describe a type of Neolithic pottery, marked with a banded design, i.e., this is a striped cat.) “Bandkeramik” probably wins this round.

  The game can vary from the simple to the complex, and is often used to teach vocabulary. I happened on it in a bookstore in Inverness, where I found two small books: The Minister’s Cat, which showed several alternatives per letter, with amusing illustrations, and Cat A’Mhinister, a Gaelic version, which was presented with the suggestion that the game was an effective way of learning Gaelic (Gaidhlig) vocabulary.

  Roger and Brianna are, of course, using the game to communicate indirectly with each other, as well as to pass the time on their car trip.

  Q: Several of us read and reread the books, discussing them and trying to figure out why Claire and Jamie did what they did or reacted the way they did. We all have one question, though: Why was it so important to Claire to take back Frank’s wedding ring at the end of Drums? None of us would have taken it back! Can you explain what your thinking was on this point? Even given Claire’s history with Frank, her love for Jamie was so great, why would she feel the need to have any ring other than his?

  A: I’m tempted to say that this is one of those things that you either see or you don’t see—but I’ll try to explain. Yes, Claire has history with Frank—a lot of history, and very mixed, in terms of joy and pain. He was her first love, her first husband, and when she married him, she did so with the full intention of being married to him for life. She is, after all, a very loyal and honest person. For her to have “left” him and chosen to stay with Jamie was an act of betrayal, and she knows it. Frank did nothing wrong; his only “crime” was not to be Jamie. You figure it’s fine to forswear your vows and run off with somebody else, just because they’re more attractive than the person you married? Claire doesn’t.

  Granted, the circumstances were extremely pressing, and she had overwhelming reasons—emotional as well as physical—to do what she did, but it was betrayal, and the knowledge of it nags at her now and then through the two early books (remember her dreaming of Frank and the miniature portraits?). Her feelings of guilt and her loyalty to Frank are what cause her to press Jamie not to kill Jack Randall, in order to save Frank’s life.

  Later, when she goes back, pregnant and emotionally shattered, it’s Frank who picks up the pieces and glues their life back together. He accepts Brianna fully as his own—which is not something that every man could do; he supports Claire in her decision to become a doctor, appreciating (even as he envies) her sense of destiny. This is pretty much the admirable behavior of an honorable man, and Claire both knows and appreciates it.

  Now, in terms of their personal and sexual relationship… she abandoned him, and came back only by necessity, carrying the child of a man with whom she obviously remains in love. You figure this was easy for Frank to accept? He’s a man with a lot of compassion—but he’s very human. He makes repeated efforts at their marriage—and so does Claire—but the simmering rage at her betrayal is still there, underneath. Since he can’t or won’t admit the truth of her story, they can never discuss it fully, never resolve the situation; Jamie Fraser is always the ghost that haunts their marriage. Small wonder if Frank takes lovers now and then—as either revenge, or simply as refuge.

  Okay. So this is a difficult, complex relationship. The difficulties and guilts don’t mean that there is nothing of value between them. The love they once had for each other is still there, augmented and supported by their united feelings for Briann
a, diminished and eroded by the memory of their betrayals of each other—but still a pillar, standing like a desert rock, twisted and shaped by wind and rain.

  If Claire were capable of simply walking away from this sort of history and feeling, abandoning a huge piece of her life and identity, just because she was now in a different place… well, she wouldn’t be capable of loving Jamie in the whole-hearted way that she does. She wouldn’t be a whole person.

  As it is, she’s now relieved of the guilt of her flawed relationship with Frank, and free to treasure the memory of its good moments. Jamie, being the whole-hearted person he is, is aware of this, and wants her to know that he’s able to accept the knowledge of what she shared with another man—the one thing Frank couldn’t do. This has something to do with the nature of love and the concept of obligation as part of love. While Roger is contemplating the issue explicitly “Love? Obligation? How the hell could you have love without obligation?” he wondered), Jamie and Claire are living it implicitly.

  For her to refuse Frank’s ring, and essentially reject all he was, to deny the value of thirty years of a complex but valuable relationship—well, that would be both dishonest and petty. And neither Claire nor Jamie is small in mind or heart.

  Q: I’m confused by Frank’s letter at the end of Drums—the one Roger tells Jamie about. Did Frank know that Jamie survived, and keep the knowledge from Claire? That’s awful!

  A: Well, maybe so and maybe no, as Jamie himself is given to saying. That is, it seems clear that at some point Frank did find out enough about Jamie to at least suspect a) that Claire’s story was true, and b) that Jamie had survived Culloden. However, we don’t know when Frank found this out, or how convinced he was.