Diana Gabaldon writes:
Back in the day—March of 1988, to be exact—I decided to write a novel...
So, fine. Historical novel. Where should I set this? (I have no formal background in history; I’d have to look everything up anyway, so the time and place didn’t really matter.)
I was casting about for an appealing time and place—American Civil War, Italian Renaissance, medieval Poland….? And while in this malleable frame of mind, I happened to see a Dr. Who rerun on PBS.
This was a really old re-run; one of the Patrick Troughton episodes (for those with a taste for trivia, it was “War Games”). And one of the Doctor’s companions in this episode was a young Scotsman from 1745. Maybe 18 or 19…and he appeared in his kilt.
“Hm,” I said. “That’s fetching.”
Well, so. I found myself still thinking about this the next day—in church—and said to myself, “You want to write a book; it doesn’t matter where you set it; the important thing to pick a place and get started. OK, fine—Scotland, eighteenth century.”
So that’s where I started. Knowing nothing about Scotland or the eighteenth century, and having no plot, no outline, and no characters—nothing save the rather vague images conjured up by thought of a man in a kilt. (Very powerful and compelling image, that.)
Now, despite the Dr. Who connection, the book actually began as a perfectly straightforward historical novel. The time-travel came in later, when I thought it would be interesting to have an Englishwoman to play off all these kilted Scotsmen, and she refused to shut up and talk like an 18th century person. She just kept making smart-ass modern remarks about everything she saw—and she also took over and started telling the story.
Read more at Diana Gabaldon's official site, of how she got to meet Frazer Hines:
http://66.147.244.179/~dianagab/
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