Daniel Martin Serrano has been premiered in the novel with a pitch black title, Insomnia. But this Madrilenian already has a long history as series scriptwriter television among which are Central Hospital, Velvet, Scythe, El Príncipe, Betrayal y High seas. In addition, he is a professor of Television Script at the Madrid Film School. In this interview He tells us about his novel and much more. I greatly appreciate the kindness and time that he has dedicated to me.
Daniel Martín Serrano - Interview
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: So cold, rhythm and technique of a script or rhythm and technique of a novel? Or why choose?
DANIEL MARTÍN SERRANO: In the end it's all about telling a story. The techniques are different, yes, but what makes the most difference a script for a novel is the way of working. Writing scripts is a team effort in which several people participate and you have the opinion of producers, networks and platforms, so many of the decisions are made together. Before a novel, I am the only one who makes these decisions, I am the one who decides what happens and how it happens. And in contrast to the way of working on a script, sometimes the freedom that the novel gives me is appreciated.
But I don't have a preference for the script or the novel, or at least it's hard for me to choose one or the other. In most occasions it is the story you want to tell that decides how it wants to be told, if in the form of a script, a novel, a story and even a play.
- AL: With a long career as a screenwriter, you are now making your debut in pure and simple literature with a novel in pitch black, Insomnia. Why and what do we find in it?
DMS: As in almost every profession one is proposing new challenges and writing this novel for me was. After years writing scripts and having started some novels I decided that I should finish one, show me that he was capable to do so. That was my first motivation. Having been able to publish it already far exceeds my first expectations.
En Insomnia the reader will find a black novel, very dark, with two plots, one counted in the past and otra in the present. In the first, the protagonist, Thomas Abad, is an inspector of police in charge of finding the murderer of various women. As the case progresses you will discover that his brother is somehow involved. Trying to protect you will end up losing your job.
In the present part, Tomás works nights as security guard from the cemetery and there, harassed by someone hiding in the shadows, he realizes that the case is not yet closed.
Insomnia is a novel with a plot that is hooking more and more and that does not give respite to the reader. Has a very good atmosphere, a leading character of those who get into your soul and, it is wrong for me to say it, but it is very well written. Now it will be the readers who have to judge it.
- AL: Going back in time, do you remember the first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
DMS: My first readings, like those of many of my generation, were the books from the B collection.Steam bow, The Five, Jules Verne, Agatha Christie...
As for the first thing I wrote I do not have a clear memory, I know that at school when you had to do some writing used to stand out. Little by little, yes I began to write a story and thus I was creating some kind of need that led me to write more and more. Pessoa said that writing for him was his way of being alone and I quite agree with that statement.
- AL: That book that touched your soul was ...
DMS: Many. I couldn't choose one. Those books in which I am aware of the work of the writer behind them have marked me. I could name you The Hive, from Cela, Soft is the nightby Fitzgerald, The city and the Dogs, by Vargas Llosa, The cry of the owl, by Highsmtih, Nefando by Mónica Ojeda, most of Marías's novels ...
- AL: And that favorite writer of reference or inspiration? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
DMS: Maybe it's Javier Marías the writer who can say the most that influences me. I began to read to him at that age when it began to be clear that I wanted to dedicate myself to writing. His style, his way of telling is something that I have very much in mind. But there are many others: Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez, Lobo Antunes, Richard Ford, Patricia highsmith, Joyce carol oates, Sofi Oksanen, Martin Gaite, Dostoievski, Person...
- AL: What literary character would you have liked to meet and create?
DMS: A novel that I usually reread a lot is The Great Gatsby and he is one of the characters that I like the most in literature. All of Fitzgerald's work is full of characters with many layers that you discover in each new reading. And Gatsby is one of my favorite characters.
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
DMS: I don't have any very notable mania when it comes to writing. What I can say is that I am quite conscientious, I write and rewrite a lot until I am satisfied with the result. I am not a fast writer, I think and meditate a lot about the steps to take both in a novel and in a script because I am convinced that good work pays good results.
And the profession of writing is still a job and, as such, I try to write every day, I have my schedule, I am not one of those who are carried away by inspiration, it lasts too little. As well I like to have several projects in hand at the same timeSo when I get stuck with one, I can pick up another and keep moving forward. It is the best way to overcome the blockages, to let the stories rest for a while.
Y at the time of reading maybe the only hobby I can have is that i need silence, nothing to distract me.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
DMS: I usually write en casa, but from time to time I like to change going to a coffee shopa library. That change of scenery, so to speak, It helps me to air out and not having the routine feeling of always working in the same place. It is true that the pandemic has changed this habit for me, but I hope at some point to be able to resume it.
- AL: More literary genres that appeal to you?
DMS: The fact that my first novel is of a crime or crime genre does not mean that it is my favorite genre, in fact, I am not a great reader of crime fiction. Actually what I like, although it seems a truism, are the good books. And what is a good book for me? The one who when you finish reading it you know that it will accompany you all your life, the one in which I realize that behind there is a good writer and I see the work that the novel has, that makes me think, that leaves me feeling. And a good book is also one that produces a certain envy in me, healthy envy, for not knowing if one day I will be able to write something like that.
- AL: Your current reading? And can you tell us what you are writing?
WMD: The readings accumulate, I buy more than I have time to read. I tend to be late for news so right now I'm reading Berta Island, by Javier Marías, and I have many others on the table waiting for their turn.
And as for what I'm writing, right now I'm working on a series that I still can't tell much about but that will see the light next year and tried to shape what i would like it to be my second novel. A change of register, a more intimate and personal novel that talks about love, not a love novel, but a novel about love and how we perceive or live it throughout the years, from adolescence to what we call middle age.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is for as many authors as there are or want to publish?
WMD: Complicated. I think there is a kind of urgency for wanting to publish that sometimes prevails over something more important than it is want to write. Any book, be it a novel, an essay or any other genre, requires a time of work, a lot of writing and rewriting and it gives me the feeling that they are published and, above all, novels that are not sufficiently worked are published.
The objective for those who write is to publish, of course, but a writer must be very demanding with himself, not just anything is useful to be published no matter how much one wants it, you have to minimize the ego to the maximum when writing. Another negative point to as much as it is published right now is seeing how very good novels go unnoticed and others that are not so brilliant are successful. Sometimes the promotion on social networks works more than the quality of the novel itself. Hopefully this changes.
- AL: Would you have imagined a script for the vital moment we are living in? Can you stick with something positive or useful for future stories?
DMS: There have always been stories of apocalyptic type that, with this covid, is the closest we have been to them. It is true that living it in the first person is different, but if I had to stay with something positive, it is with the capacity for mental endurance that we have all learned to develop. It is true that at times it seems that one has reached the limit of isolation, boredom and not seeing the end of this nightmare. But I think that, in general terms, who else who least has known how to deal with it in the best possible way.