Narrative threads: How to write a Booker-shortlisted novel, by Marlon James, Douglas Stuart, Elizabeth Strout and more

A trip to the Scottish islands, a psychological experiment, a chance encounter in a drugstore… the finalists for this year’s Booker prize reveal their inspirations

Douglas Stuart John of John

Who knows where a novel really comes from? I spend years gathering loose threads and then, when I feel like the cloth will hold, I start to weave them into a narrative. I suppose I began internalising John of John back in 1994, the year I went to college and chose to become a weaver myself.

But it was in 2019, in the anxious period waiting for Shuggie Bain to be published, that I really found the thread for John of John. I decided I would go to the Western Isles.