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Writing Holes

How long did it take you to write Holes?

It occurs to me now that Stanley was sentenced to Camp Green Lake for 18 months, which was exactly how long it took me to write Holes. I arbitrarily chose the length of his sentence early on. Maybe on some unconscious level, I knew how long it would take.

 

Did you find the characters taking on a life of their own as you were writing?

It happens every once in a while when you're writing that certain characters seem to leap off the page and take over the book, and that's what happened with the story of Kate and Sam. I had expected to make Kissin' Kate a complete villain, but when I started writing about her I ended up making her someone else entirely; it surprised me.

 

What was the hardest part of writing Holes?

People often ask me how I managed to tie everything together at the end, but that wasn't the hard part. I knew how everything was going to fit together. The hard part was laying out the strands throughout the story, telling the story of Kate Barlow and of Elya Yelnats and Elya's son, without it getting in the way of Stanley's story.