Authors

The Perfect Time To Start Writing – Andrew Warren

Filmcourage

Published

January 23, 2022

Andrew Warren, Author: I always feel like you should start writing when you feel you’re not quite ready. I think that’s the time to start because I think if you keep researching and researching and researching you’re holding off on the real work because that’s not the real work.

Film Courage: How do you keep an underlying sense of danger and tension in every scene?

Andrew: I think a lot of that is part of the setting. Understanding the location lets you describe it in a mysterious, dangerous way. I think if you have a feeling for the location where, is it a seedy area? Is it a high crime area? Is it a rich, wealthy area? What things are either likely to happen to you there or what might be surprising to happen to you there depending on the direction you want the scene to go. But I think for me a lot of that comes down to knowing the location and really getting a feel for it. I know that might sound weird because it’s not directly related but that’s usually what I go to first. It’s like what is the mood of this area? Then how can I sort of color that mood to be a little bit more dangerous?

Film Courage: You say that this character Thomas Caine is a chameleon in some sense, he can really blend in. How is he operating when walking through a bad part of town, whereas he’s walking through a business center where there’s professionals with nice leather shoes?

Andrew: Most of the stories actually tend to take place in more seedier locations so I think he’s probably more at home in more dangerous areas. Usually if he’s in an area that’s more upscale, he just acts like a tourist. He acts like a clueless tourist because he knows that’s the most likely scenario for why someone like him might be there. But I don’t know? In terms of making the audience feel like something can happen, you need to have a sense of the locale. In book three that’s set in Sudan that’s a war-torn region and so I really tried to play up the the condition of the buildings and there’s armed soldiers walking around everywhere and everyone’s on edge and you see…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

BIO:

Andrew Warren is the international best-selling author of the Thomas Caine thriller series. Andrew also writes the space fantasy series Tales of Talon under the pen name of A.A. Warren. Andrew was born in New Jersey, and studied film and English at the University of Miami. He has over a decade of experience in the television and motion picture industry, where he has worked as a post production supervisor, story producer, and writer. He currently lives in Southern California.