AUTHOR and sometimes funeral director Scot Gardner describes himself as a “professional liar”.
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Imparting his words of wisdom at St Patrick’s College on Wednesday, Gardner inspired students to use detail to pull the reader into the story.
“I’m a professional liar. You need to lie to tell some sort of truth about being human,” he said.
But, he said, it was most important to be honest and aware of the details.
“In that story about climbing the pine trees, if I wrote that but forgot to include the smell of the trees, it’d be like writing about footy and forgetting the ball. The details are important,” he said.
Gardner has written 13 books for teenagers and children, and talks to students about finding their own stories.
He sees social media as a risk to expression “unless they’re writing about food”, because he fears it could replace the face-to-face yarn-spinning that helped him become an author.
Gardner, who wrote The Legend of Kevin the Plumber and the recently-released The Dead I Know, spoke to the school’s top year 10 and 11 English students.