There are many aspiring authors out there who want to write like Diana Gabaldon did for the “Outlander” series. The celebrity writer has now shared a video exhibiting how she thinks while writing a book.

Gabaldon has posted a new video (see below) that shows her coming up with a sentence. The brief clip shows the author's brainstorming process. It begins with a single idea and slowly develops into a full sentence.

The author starts on “cold day,” a term she uses to describe a day when she has no idea what to write. She picks up a Sotheby’s catalogue and sees a beautiful crystal goblet with thistles on the sides. It strikes her as a nice object she may use in her scene.

One of the things Gabaldon pays attention to is where the light is coming from. In her mind, the author sees the light come in from the right and fall on the crystal goblet. She notices that this is “low light,” so it must be mid-afternoon. However, she can’t use the generic word “low-light” in the sentence because it doesn’t evoke an image in the mind of the reader.

After playing with a few words about low light, the author realises that this is the light of a winter afternoon, and it has a blue tinge to it. So instead of “The late light of winter afternoon,” the sentence is changed to “The cold blue light.”

Gabaldon can sense that the room in her mind is cold, but there must be a fire in the room because she can feel that her feet are warm. She can also see the light fall on the polished wooden surface. The light on the tabletop is amber due to the whisky in the goblet.

In the end, the sentence she comes up with is: “The cold blue light of a late winter afternoon fell through the crystal goblet onto the polished wood of the tabletop, casting a pool of amber light.”

Credit: Diana Gabaldon/Facebook

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