Life of Pi

Martel gathered research as uncensored fragments: single words, small facts, stray scenes. Over two and a half years he read on animal behavior, zoo biology, survival at sea, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, producing about 400 pages of notes.

Some notes were quotes from books, others one word, like bamboozle, which he heard an Indian speaker use and saved for a character. He logged facts such as the Pacific's turtles being ridleys and greens, and wrote scenes down fast as they came. "I quickly write them down in a very uncensored way."

How I Write▶ 1:45

He cut his notes into scenes and filed them in ordered envelopes. He printed the 400 pages, cut them up with scissors, taped fragments together and filed them in labeled envelopes running from the novel's first scene to its last. When writing he opens an envelope, lays the snippets around his computer and combines them, so he never starts from a blank page.

Life of Pi began with the envelope marked author's note. Each envelope is labeled with roughly what is in it and where it belongs, and he discards, expands and moves pieces as he writes. "I printed it up, took scissors and literally cut it up."

How I Write▶ 1:59

Fixing the ending first let the middle scenes move freely. Before writing the first sentence he knew Life of Pi would have 100 chapters and that chapter 100 would be an excerpt from an investigator's report on the sinking ship.

With the destination set, order mattered little in places: in the Pacific it hardly matters when Pi sees a whale or a ship, so those envelopes moved around. He compares it to a planned trip with a fixed Michelin reservation where the rest can still unfold, and says endings come easier to him than beginnings.

How I Write▶ 3:17

Pi is an ordinary boy placed in extraordinary circumstances. Martel prefers an ordinary person facing a shipwreck to a strange character facing banal events, because readers see themselves as normal and the extraordinary stands out against that.

He treats the character as a vessel, like a trusted driver while the reader looks at the road. Pi, like the monkey and donkey of Beatrice and Virgil, just wants three meals a day and to be loved.

How I Write▶ 56:11

The novel never describes Pi's appearance, only his thoughts and feelings. Life of Pi is full of thinking about the divine and emotion but contains no portrait of Pi, because mentioning a nose or a scar turns it into a caricature in the reader's mind.

Martel ties this to leaving gaps the reader fills, which he sees as what makes a book a co-creation. "Words are much better at thinking and emotions."

How I Write▶ 57:33

Martel never liked Life of Pi's first line and moved on anyway. He found the opening, about the story being born when he was hungry, clunky and not distinctive, but because the whole book was mapped he kept going.

He says an opening has no checklist and only has to work in the context of the whole book. The novel became his best-known despite it. "I couldn't think any better and I just moved on."

How I Write▶ 20:43

His editor vetoed a layout trick that only showed off. Martel wanted the dialogue between two blind men in lifeboats to float around the page and drift closer as the boats did. His editor called it clever showing off and annoying, and after resisting he agreed, so the dialogue went flush left.

He still experiments, judging each trick by whether the text comes alive to him as its first reader. "Then I realized, oh no, wait a second. Yeah, you're right."

How I Write▶ 36:56