First pages are impossible… so we’re hearing from authors about how they got them right.
In this episode, Nathaniel Ian Miller discusses the first pages of his debut novel, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, and how his discoveries about the character’s inner life allowed him to go back to his book’s beginning again and offer readers a fuller, more nuanced sense of Sven. We also discuss the power of distance in a reminiscent narrator, what writers might borrow from memoir in terms of voice and complexity, and how world building can be a very physical experience more than anything else.
Miller's first pages can be found here (click the link beneath the book description).
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Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.
The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.
Nathaniel Ian Miller’s debut novel, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, a #1 Indie Next Pick published in 2021 by Little, Brown & Co., was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and has been translated into multiple languages. He has written for newspapers in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Montana, and Colorado, for which he received multiple Associated Press Awards. He is also a former resident in the Arctic Circle Expeditionary Program. He lives with his family on a farm in Vermont.
Passages: Nathaniel Ian Miller on The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven