52 PROFILEGREGG DUNNETT
FOR THE LOVE…
FROM BOARDS TO BOURNEMOUTH
GREGG
AUTHOR
PROFILE
DUNNETT
INTERVIEW: WSUK
PICS: GREGG DUNNETT
HAVING MADE THE SUCCESSFUL TRANSITION FROM GONZO WINDSURFING MAG
JOURNALIST (HIS DESCRIPTION NOT OURS) TO APPLAUDED NOVELIST GREGG DUNNETT
IS JUST ABOUT SET TO DROP HIS FOURTH WORK OF FICTION. If you’ve had opportunity
to read any of his previous books then you’ll note the ‘surfy’ theme running through
all. That and dark undertones. We caught up with the self-styled surf noir author to
find out more.
Firstly congrats on ‘The Things you find in Rockpools’, in
our opinion your best novel to date. How do you come
up with your plot lines and topics?
Thank you! I enjoyed writing that one too. Strange how easy
it was to write from the perspective of an incredibly geeky
11-year-old, almost like I had experienced it personally…
I don’t know if it’s the right way, but I’ve plotted all my novels
in the same way. I start with an idea that interests me. So
with my first book, The Wave at Hanging Rock, it was: What if
a group of surfers over-developed the whole localism thing.
How far might they go? What would the impact be? And then
you work out other things around this idea, to make it
plausible. In this case it really had to have been teenagers,
because they needed an element of immaturity. And they
had to be isolated in some way. And they had to do
something (they beat a visiting surfer to death with rocks).
So already you’ve got half the story. Then it’s just a case of
uk
WIND
SURFING
filling in the missing pieces as you go and trying to bring the
story to a logical, satisfying conclusion.
There’re quite menacing dark undertones running
through your novels. Is this set to continue, or maybe
even become darker still?
To be honest it wasn’t always quite so dark. My first serious
attempt to write was a story about an ageing surf
photographer at the time of the changeover from film to
digital cameras. I wrote 120,000 words of it, that’s like a
book and a half. But I later realised there was no plot. There
were no murders, no mysteries. Nothing really happened. I
learnt from the experience that thriller novels are about
murder, or deceit, or menace, otherwise it’s like reading
about someone getting up and going surfing, and having a
few beers and going to bed again (which is pretty much what
that first book was like). So yes, the darkness is definitely set
to continue.