In an interview for World Rowing in August 2013, Brown stated:
"I write pretty much everything as if it were a scene in a movie. That is, I look at the subject
I'm about to write about as if I were looking at it through the viewfinder of a camera. So if I
am describing a race scene for instance, I make sure I completely understand what's in front
of me - feeling the wind, hearing the crowd, seeing the smallest details in the scene in their
totality. I want to make sure that I'm not missing anything important before I start to write."
"The race scenes were probably the easiest to write. Once I had read every press
account and looked at the boys' own accounts and figured out what the weather
was like and what the spectators were doing and all those kinds of specific details,
the race scenes almost wrote themselves. You get to the point where you have so
much detail about the race packed into your head that it just has to come out and
it flows across the page with its own urgency, more or less matching the urgency of
the guys doing the rowing. Race scenes are immensely fun to write, actually. It's
a huge release of pent up energy."
"I spent about a week in Berlin. Enough to get a good look at the key venues -
Olympic stadium and the race course at Grunau and the village of Kopenick
where the boys lived - so that I was comfortable describing them in detail."
"I have to say that one very notable trend in my emails is the very large number of
men who say that they shed tears as they read the book. That frankly surprised me
and I've been trying to figure it out. I think it has something to do with the intensity
of the male bonding experience that is at the heart of the book."
Come join the discussion on April 6th at 10 AM.