Jubilee Books: Your latest book is 'Gameboy' published by Barrington Stoke and is about a computer game. Do you play computer games yourself and if so what is your favourite?
Alan Durant: I don't really play computer games. My son plays a lot of and the idea for the book came about because he was really interested in Gameboy and I used to watch him and wonder what the fascination was with it. I Could see he was really into it and whenever I went into schools everyone seemed really keen on Gameboys. I thought it would make good subject matter for reluctant readers so I went and bought a Gameboy Advance and got a game, Battle Of The Planet Of The Apes, and played it. I just tried to find out what the thrill of it is, before I write a story I like to feel like I know what I'm talking about. It was quite addictive.

Did the idea of actually being in a game come from children you spoke to?
It has been done before, but it's that idea that you play a game and become so obsessed with it that you feel like you are actually part of the game and that's something I wanted to explore.

This is, it should be pointed out, a book for reluctant readers. What is the process of writing a book for reluctant readers like and how different is it from writing any other kind of book?
The book is published by Barrington Stoke who are an Edinburgh based publisher that only publish books for reluctant readers or readers who have specific reading difficulties. They have books for different age ranges and every book is tested by a bank of readers, about 20 for each book.

They read the manuscript and mark off specific vocabulary they find difficult, words they find hard to read. For instance, children with reading difficulties find adverbs really hard to read so you have to try and rephrase them. Instead of saying 'he said mysteriously' you would say 'he said with an air of mystery', that seems to make it easier to read. Also some words that begin with an a are quite difficult, I think because the readers are not sure how to pronounce the a.

There's quite a lot of stuff you don't know about when you start off as a writer. What I do is write a story and try to keep it simple in terms of sentence construction, thinking about the vocabulary I use. Another thing the readers don't find very easy is figurative language, they read very literally so they find that hard.

Subject matter is really important. One thing that puts reluctant readers off is the subject matter. This is certainly why when I set out to write a book I think subject matter is really important: it might be football, a thriller or, in this case, Gameboy. If I'm writing a book for a reader who has problems with reading and perhaps because of that is turned off books, the best way to hook them in is to take an experience that they really like and try to bring the subject matter into the book and show that reading can be fun.

You've written across the age ranges and across genres. Do you write one book at a time or do you have several projects on the go?
I usually work on a lot of books at any one time, it can be up to ten. I write a lot of different kinds of books and a lot of different age ranges. I couldn't write two novels at the same time, that would be too distracting and it takes up too much emotional energy.

Although I might work on ten books at any one time I might be working on the initial idea for one and the twentieth redraft of another, a few books for younger readers and some picture books. I also find that if I get stuck on one book a good way of unsticking myself is to go to a different kind of book, so if I'm writing a novel I might go to a picture book and usually that works.

I like working on lots of different projects and I think I'm a very practical writer. I started writing books for myself which were teenage books because that came from my own experience. Since then I've written books really for my own children, I began writing picture books for my them when they were small and as they got older I wrote books for primary school, infant school, junior school and secondary school. It probably helps me a lot that I write things I observe, that children like, I try out ideas on them and they give me ideas.

You also do a number of school visits. How does that help or influence your writing?
I think school visits are important. I do get ideas from going into schools quite often but I think I probably get more ideas from my own children and their friends because I'm with them so much of the time. School visits help a lot in testing out ideas, you get an idea of what works and what doesn't work and why it works as well.

Sometimes it's very difficult to know instinctively what age range a story is for and that can be something that holds things up. You have an idea that you think is a picture book that becomes a bit more complex and when you try it out on children you get a better idea where it's natural slot is.

What are children like as reviewers?
Children are generally quite polite actually. With my own children they will nearly always say that they like something but that doesn't really matter. What does matter is observing how they react so I can tell if something they are supposed to laugh at is actually funny by their reaction. I think they've become a bit more critical now, when I was reading my son 'Gameboy' he came up with some quite good criticism and he suggested areas where there was too much action and maybe not enough about the characters reaction to the action. This is actually something I'm always banging on about to kids, that plot is fine but what is really interesting about any story is the characters. In schools sometimes I often get letters or comments where children will say things like 'I really liked your story but I hated this bit' or they'll say 'I loved this story but I thought it was so boring'.

You also work at Walker books as a senior copywriter, how do you balance that work with your writing?
I started off working five days a week when I was writing my early books which was really difficult. Then I went down to four days a week and for the last year I've been doing three days a week so it's more evenly spread now. The job here as a copywriter basically means I write blurbs for books. I used to do all the books here but now there's another copywriter who shares the work, and I also write for catalogues and adverts. What I like about it is that it's very different from writing fiction but it's still writing and it's a very interesting discipline. I've never found it too conflicting and I think the two work quite well side by side, it's a bit more difficult now because the writing has taken over in many ways, I'm always working on a lot of books. Also events like the school visits are, in a way, another job as well.

Do you think your work as a copywriter affects the way you write book?
I feel like I'm quite commercial, I have a strong idea of what I think will work and I suppose from working within marketing I can see areas that I think sound like a sound commercial idea. You can't always tell, some of the football books I've written haven't done as well as I've expected and a lot of it is to do with marketing, how much marketing is behind it. With 'Gameboy' I know that's a very commercial book, it's got the right subject matter and when I've tried it out in schools it receives the best reaction I've had to any of my books. If I've got a very difficult class I always use that because I know it gets them straight away.

What authors have influenced you?
A lot of the books I read as a child are an influence as a writer, I used to read a lot of football books by Michael Hardcastle, The Famous Five books and I loved the C.S. Lewis Narnia stories.

I do still read some children's books, I have to read quite a few for work now but I tend mostly to read adult books. I sometimes read to my children but I also find that you can get too influenced by other children's writers.

Do you have any other hobbies or interests?
Football obviously, I play a bit and I go to watch my son play, a bit of badminton, table tennis and reading.

What are you working on at the moment?
I've got a lot of ideas kicking around, early ideas for picture books and for a possible series. I'm about to start a novel for an older age range, for teenagers which will be a medieval thriller which should come out next year.

Interview conducted with Joseph Pike May 2003
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