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Getting Started

Holes seems to be as much about a place as about the characters. Is that your feeling?

Yes. While every other story I'd written had begun with the characters, to me this story has always been about a place — Camp Green Lake. The story began with the place, and the characters and the plot grew out of it.

Where did you get the idea for Holes?

No, I didn't live next door to a juvenile correction facility. Actually, I never start with a full idea of what I'm going to write. I usually just start with a piece of a character and then see what develops. In this case, I didn't start with a character; I started writing about Camp Green Lake and it developed from there.... When I started writing Holes, I had no idea what I was writing, but it was sort of a reaction to the heat.... And I just sort of put all those elements together, not really knowing what was going to happen. And as I wrote, the story slowly emerged.

Even the complicated, twisted plot of the many-years-ago curse?

Right, and somewhere along the line, I got the idea that Stanley's family was cursed. And I am sure when I got the idea, I knew that Stanley was going to end up doing something to break the curse.