Story by Aiden Plumbe
Cover Photo by Ryan Low
Scot Gardner is an Australian realistic fiction author who began his writing career in the early 2000s. He is known for his novels that explore adolescent experiences and portray coming of age stories. He depicts themes of identity, mental health and belonging. Through his novels, Scot writes in a voice that is accessible and authentic to young adults. He combines rich emotional depth with dark humour in realistic settings.
Scot didn’t have his sights set on being an author straight away, going through different careers before finding his feet as a writer. In Year 11, he pursued an apprenticeship in gardening as well as being a counsellor and youth worker in later years. His first novel, One Dead Seagull, was published in 2001 which started his career as a writer. Since then, he has written more than twenty books, including his most popular – The Dead I Know. He is in the process of writing an adult novel.
Scot’s books often include well-developed and thought-out characters. His LitFest presentation with a Year 8 History class looked at the fundamentals of storytelling – characters, plot and setting. He believes these are essential and all contribute to the story, influencing each other and intertwining with each other. He uses the metaphor of a flower to depict this, commenting on its relationship with nature and how it takes and gives. He then delved into creating a character, talking about how writing has specific rules and one of those is to always consider your audience and who you are writing for. Depending on this factor, the very way that you write your story and the language you use changes. He again compares this to the natural world, depicting a plant called the Fly Orchid which adopts a striking resemblance to an insect. This tricks male digger wasps into going to the plant where they believe they are mating and pollinate the plant in the process. In this scenario, Scot illustrates the importance of knowing who your desired audience is and how it is vital in writing.
As a realist fiction writer, Scot also highlighted the importance of having your character feel grounded in the real world – someone that could truly exist. To emphasise this, he conducted an activity with the class to name characters on the board based on their instincts. Additionally, he depicts a useful tactic when creating characters which is to make a memory hook for them. This is something that will make the reader remember who your character is when they put down the book.