Diana on OUTLANDER, Jamie, and Wentworth

Check out Diana Gabaldon's latest blog post, which is a VERY interesting analysis of the structure of OUTLANDER, and why it was necessary to put Jamie through such an intense physical and emotional ordeal at Wentworth.

I found this post utterly fascinating <g>, and would really encourage the rest of you to take the time to go and read it.

Diana's post actually originated on Compuserve, in a very interesting discussion about the craft of writing the ending to a novel. She's made other comments in that thread that will be of interest to OUTLANDER fans. For example:

1) Diana's thoughts on story arcs, trilogies, and whether there will be a book 9:

Given that I have only the vaguest idea as yet what happens in Book Eight (other than that if ECHO is a four-pointed caltrop, B8 is an octopus), it seems premature to think there's a Book Nine--but looking back at the overall shape as I've laid it out here...well, there might be.

We certainly hope so! <crossing fingers> A "trilogy of trilogies" would be just wonderful, and very satisfying to those of us (like me) who like to see symmetry in the books.

2) How readers would react to the Claire/Lord John subplot in ECHO:

I was, for instance, dead sure what the general reaction would be to the Claire/Lord John encounter in ECHO <g>. I.e., even though I figured some folk would be fine with it (or even delighted), and others would be emphatically Not Fine with it--they were _all_ gonna scream.

Indeed we did! There have been several thousand posts on Compuserve (no, I'm not exaggerating!) on this subject alone, just in the 15 months since the book came out. <g>

As I told Diana a few days after I read ECHO myself for the first time, "screaming and hopping up and down" is exactly the reaction you'd expect to see when somebody steps on a caltrop. Those things are PAINFUL! <g>

Very interesting stuff!