Gradual Interview
(answers from November 2009, as of Jan 11 2026, 11:33:23 PM)
www.StephenRDonaldson.com
© 2004 by Stephen R.Donaldson

Michael from Santa Fe

You've stated many times, in many forums, that you write for love.  You fall in love with your stories/characters and have to tell their tale.  You also said that the ideas for the Last Chronicles came to you with the Second.  So, when White Gold Wielder ended, you knew there was more story to tell but did not.  You went on to other stories.  You've sorta answered this before, about not being ready to tell this last tale, that you knew it would be a hard one to do and that you needed more time to prepare to do it.  I also think you have mentioned being afraid to tackle it.  My question is:  was that hard, the waiting (Tom Petty seems to think it is :))?  Was it hard to leave Covenant dead and Linden broken-hearted at his death at the ending of White Gold Wielder when you knew there was more to tell of their story?  Coming back to my first point, about loving your characters, was it hard to leave them where you left them?  Or has it all worked out pretty much how you wanted, working on Mordant's Need, the Man Who books, the GAP books, short story collections first?  Hope this question makes sense, I'm not sure it really does to me, but hey, your the smart one and if anyone can understand what I'm trying to ask it would be you.

To be honest:  no, it wasn't hard to postpone starting "The Last Chronicles".  It sure didn't feel like *waiting*.  One reason?  I had plenty of other things I really wanted to do.  Putting Covenant/Linden aside for mumblemumble years gave me opportunities I would never have had otherwise.  In addition, I was not dissatisfied with where I left the story at the end of "The Second Chronicles".  As with the ending of the first trilogy, I was at a perfectly good stopping-point, and I never felt that the world (or I) would somehow be made less if I never completed my Grand Design.

But another reason--as I've said before--is that the prospect of TLC scared the s*it out of me.  It looked like it was going to be too hard for me.  It *has* been too hard for me.  And it certainly isn't going to stop being too hard now.  I didn't come back to Covenant because I got tired of "waiting".  (Maybe *it* got tired of waiting:  *I* didn't. <sigh>)  I came back to Covenant almost literally out of desperation.

(11/02/2009)

Anthony

RE: TC Chronicles

Because your stories are told from several characters' POV, when you are actually writing the manuscript, do you write (or edit or revise) all the chapters from Covenant's POV at one time; then go back and write the chapters from the other characters' POV? (Or some similar process?)

I would think this would help a writer maintain the pacing and narrative style and other factors in order to be consistent, despite alternating chapter POVs.

I think I've discussed this elsewhere.  I write all of my stories in the same sequence that I want my readers to experience them.  I couldn't write them any other way, if for no other reason than because my reader and I need to know what character X has done/is doing in order to fully appreciate what character Y is feeling or doing.  Doubtless other writers find other approaches more congenial.  If so, I say, Good for them.  I wouldn't recommend my own way of working to anyone else.  After all, every conceivable narrative technique has both strengths and weaknesses.  In one way or another, we all have to pick the specific tools that happen to suit what we're trying to accomplish--and then we have to accept the weaknesses that those strengths imply.

(11/02/2009)

Mike

A while back I read the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and really enjoyed them. Thanks for the decent, Non-Tolkien-imitator fantasy. 

However, as much as I enjoyed the First Chronicles (I LOVED Lord Mhoram's Victory), I found the ending somewhat disappointing. I was basically screaming at Covenant (and through him, you) "You still don't get it! We don't need any blasted holding to the eye of the paradox- you need to stop fighting and let him kill you!" I don't really remember why; I just know that the decision to stop fighting Despite, and instead letting it ravage you, seemed to me the obvious solution to the paradox of White Gold. And now, having recently discovered the Second Chronicles and read those, I laughed out loud that Covenant had finally discovered the solution I recommended for him so long ago. 

My question is basically this: What changed, in your mind, to warrant the vastly different solutions to the endings of the first and second Chronicles? Was it based on something you're learned since then, or simply because of the plot, or something else? 

Thanks for taking the time to answer fan questions like this!

I think of your question in very different terms.  What would be the point of writing "The Second Chronicles" if I didn't have a vastly different ending in mind?  What would be the point of writing "The Last Chronicles" if I didn't have yet another vastly different ending in mind?  If we can't all learn and grow and think new things, what's the point of living?

In any case, the sequence of endings that I have in mind is both psychologically and spiritually appropriate to my intentions.

(11/02/2009)

Robert A. DeFrank

Just out of curiosity, what would the title of Covenant's first book have been?

Also, any idea what the story would have been about?

Sorry.  Your guess is as good as mine.  I only--all together now--invent what I need.

(11/03/2009)

CA

Where does the Demondim-makers' magic come from? Insequent magic, for that matter? I mean these questions kinda rhetorically, for I've come up with a thought about this, not for you to confirm or deny the actuality of, but maybe just the possibility...

Okay, so say when the Land's Earth was formed, all the magic therein was either Earthpower or a corruption by the Despiser thereof. This doesn't leave immediate room for un-Lawful energies distinct from Despite. Redeemed evil energy would just be Earthpower, and the two are too antithetical to be fused. Wild magic is out of the picture, too, although "engraven in every rock and stone." So...?

Well, Jeremiah comes from somewhere besides the Land and has his own kind of power therein. There is nothing to what you've written up until now (that I remember) that precludes people from having participated in the world of the Land prior to Covenant's advent. Unless I'm missing some explanation for where the Lost Deep/Insequent magic comes from already on offer from you, or some less esoteric possibility at any rate, could it have originated with someone else from outside the Land's Earth?

Just to make my question even more complex, is it possible that there are other worlds besides the given reality of Covenant and Linden and the uncertain reality of the Land (in your writing)?

From my point of view, the answer to your basic question is so simple that it renders your related questions moot.  Here's how I look at it.  In our world, every conceivable form of energy is ultimately derived from the sun.  What with all the transformations that take place between the furnace of the sun and life on our planet, energy here takes wildly different forms, some mutually exclusive or even antithetical.  Yet the source remains the same.  So I apply the same principle to the various manifestations of magic within "The Chronicles".  Even wild magic is arguably an expression of Earthpower:  dramatically transformed, sure, and accessible only to certain individuals using certain instruments, but nonetheless drawing on the same source as every other form of magic.  And I see no reason to think that the knowledge(s) of the Insequent, or the lore of the Viles and their descendants, or Jeremiah's abilities aren't all transformations of the same fundamental energy.

Of course, this is only *my* interpretation.  The text (or so it seems to me) tolerates other interpretations.  But I'm going to stick with the one that makes sense to me.

(11/07/2009)

Shawn Speakman

Hi Stephen,

Since you just answered a question about your editing timeline for "Against All Things Ending," I am curious if you have any news to share about the book's cover, what or who might be on the cover, if John Jude Palencar will be back for it, etc.?

Thank you for the amount of time you devote to the GI!

Best,
Shawn Speakman
http://www.suvudu.com

"News," as I've mentioned on other occasions, is posted in the "news" section of this site.  If I have anything concrete to reveal, I reveal it.  Sadly, it often seems to me that I'm the last person who hears about it when my publishers make a decision of some kind.  For example, the fact that a publication date for AATE is posted on amazon.co.uk is information that only came to me through what Dave Barry used to call "an alert reader":  I didn't hear about it from my publisher (who in fact denies that it's true).

(11/07/2009)

jerry mcfarland

Ok. Time for the opening salvo of THE question:

IF you turn in the finished manuscript of AATE by the end of 2009, what date do you figure the release date to be? Expected has been around Fall of 2010, earlier hopefully?

It's too early for anything more than speculation.  But I don't have any present reason to believe that AATE won't be published in October 2010.  My US editor hasn't commented yet, but my UK editor is tentatively planning on October sometime.

(I probably shouldn't reveal things like this; but both of my editors were willing to publish the book in the version they saw this past summer.  However, I insisted on another [much needed] rewrite.)

(11/11/2009)

Michael from Santa Fe

There's been a lot of discussion on the GI about the titles of the volumes in the Chronicles.  However, I don't remember you ever being asked if the title for the series itself: "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" was your idea or was something Lester or someone else came up with.  When you were writing the First Chronicles, did you call them that, the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, or was that something added later for publication?

Strange.  I can't remember.  Because "The Chronicles of Narnia" were such a formative influence in my childhood, "Chronicles" may very well have been my idea.  But it may also have been Lester del Rey's.  The only way to know for sure at this point is to look at the original manuscripts--which I don't have because they're all stored at the Kent State University Libraries Special Collections.  (Do I need to add that PCs didn't exist in those days, so the first six "Covenant" books were all written on a typewriter?)

(11/11/2009)

Tim Staddon

Hi from the UK!

Best start by saying thank you, thank you, thank you. I was given "The Real Story" aged 14 by a very religious and anti-sweary godparent, as a Christmas present, because he thought it'd be a "nice" story about space ships. I still haven't had the heart to tell him that you're not quite in the same genre as Victor Appleton II. 

In the event that The GAP does get adapted, how much editorial control would you demand and if there was one big change that you'd concede to, to make it work on the small screen, what would it be? 

Honestly - if it were me I'd subject anyone suggesting any major plot rewrite, cutting the Earth stuff out, or "toning it down a notch" to a summer booking at Ease n Sleaze, complete with hankie and knife.

Which reminds me: Did Darrin Scroyle REALLY slouch naked in the captain's chair while scratching himself and talking like Bill Shatner, or did my imagination just run off on a gloriously anti-Trek tangent? 

Thanks again,

Tim Staddon

The option contract for the GAP books defines my role as a "consultant" rather specifically.  (Keep in mind that an option is FAR removed from an actual movie.  Hollywood buys something like 100 options for every 1 movie that actually gets made.)  But you misunderstand my relationship with the project.  In this case, the woman who bought the option "demanded" my complete involvement:  she wanted me at her beck and call 24/7.  I countered by refusing to have any involvement at all.  (What?  Me?  Work with a committee?  Are you out of your mind?  <rueful smile>).  So after a year of bickering back and forth, we settled on something approximately like this:  I've agreed (very reluctantly) to submit to four hours of phone consultations during the "option phase" of the project.  If the project goes into actual production, I've agreed to provide an additional four hours of consultation per movie (the producer wants to tell the story in three movies).

(btw, "consultation" does not imply "control".  No matter what I say, I can pretty much count on being ignored.)

Well, so far I've done 90 minutes of consultation, and the process is already driving me mad.  The questions I'm asked to answer are entirely brain-dead.  Indeed, they seem to be the questions of a person who hasn't even glanced at the text.  (E.g. Why are zone implants illegal?  Why doesn't everybody have one?)  This, in my personal opinion, is a Bad Omen.

So why did I agree to any of this in the first place?  Well, frankly, I can use the money.  But here's the real issue:  even a crap movie gives a major boost to book sales (which is what I really care about).

As for Darrin:  he is as he appears in the text.  His "authority" is personal, it doesn't depend on rank, insignia, or uniforms; so he can wear whatever suits him.

(11/11/2009)

Mark

Hi Stephen,

As you are probably aware, with the start of Fall we in the U.S. are "allowed" to say goodbye to the big blockbuster movies of Summer and say hello to Oscar-contending prestige flicks.  Do booksellers follow a similar calendar?  We all hear about frothy Summer beach novels.  So is there a season for "serious" books?  And more particularly, is this we we have to wait until FALL of 2010 for AATE??  If it helps, you can tell your publishers that I'd buy it whenever it's released.

I don't know much about this aspect of publishing.  There is, as you say, a season for "beach novels".  Similarly there's a season for "coffee-table" books (xmas because such things tend to be expensive):  large format books full of pictures (art, architecture, that sort of thing) that you put out on your coffee table to show your guests how sophisticated you are.  <rueful grin>  And I know (because they've said so) that my publishers want to release my books in time to catch the pre-xmas wave of gift-buying.  But I don't pay enough attention to be aware of other publishing "seasons".

However, none of this has much to do with the publishing schedule for AATE.  Editing, copyediting, proofreading, advertising, producing, and releasing books all take TIME.  A year between D&A and publication is the general rule of thumb--although each installment of "The Last Chronicles" has been released more quickly than that.  (Only *6* months for "Runes"--which just about killed me, what with all the copyediting, proofreading, and autographing for both the US and the UK.)

(11/12/2009)

Ossie

This question has been hidden since it is listed in the following categories:

Spoilers - Fatal Revenant

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(11/12/2009)

Don

Dear Mr. Donaldson

I believe I have read all your published work, and have enjoyed it all, especially Thomas Covenant.  I have read that you were most proud of the Gap series (at least before the Last Chronicles), but I must say that I found it difficult to read books where everyone was Covenant.

Anyway, I have a question if you find it interesting:

You have said repeatedly that you read slowly and that limits what you read.  Do you re-read books?  If so, do you ever find that you shy away from proceeding when you are approaching particularly painful sections?  I must admit that I stopped rereading The Illearth War for a month or two because I couldn't face the forced march and all that followed.  (And now I'm having a hard time getting back to 1984 because I know what is coming).

(Well, *that's* a perspective on the GAP books that I've never encountered before.  What, EVERYONE?  Hashi Lebwohl?  Cleatus Fane?  Nick Succorso?)

Yes, I do re-read books, especially when I need to remind myself that writing is worth the effort.  But I don't "shy away from...particularly painful" or intense sections.  Instead I find that I'm inclined to pause (e.g. until the next day) when I'm in the middle of those sections, so that I can a) savor them, and b) pick up the intensity quickly when I resume reading.  An obscure form of masochism, no doubt; but my own.

(11/12/2009)

Bob DeFfrank

Sorry if you've been asked this before, but I couldn't find it in older GI archives.

It seemed to me that both the Creator and the Despiser have to reach an agreement when a person from our world is summomed into the Land for a purpose. When Covenant and Linden are summoned to the Land, I took it to be that the Creator chose both of them, but Lord Foul had to approve the choice. Then they see who each of the mortals end up serving.

Which leaves me wondering about Jeremiah, Roger and Joan and Hile Troy. Could anyone really be summoned into the Land by accident? Were any of them chosen by the Despiser, and did the Creator have to approve?

Or am I completely barking up the wrong tree?

Needless to say, if it's a spoiler keep mum.

"Reach an agreement"?  I sincerely doubt it.  In fact, I can't imagine it.  How would they do that?  LF is trapped inside the Arch:  the Creator is "trapped" outside it.  How would they communicate?  And if they could, why would they?

On the other hand, I hope it's obvious that LF and the Creator don't both "pick" the same people by accident or coincidence.  (This is just one more of the paradoxes in which I take such delight.)  Ultimately they both pick Covenant and Linden for the same reason:  *potential*.  Covenant has it in him to be LF's perfect tool.  As does Linden.  And perhaps Jeremiah.  In the moral universe of "The Chronicles," the potential for damnation is indistinguishable from the potential for redemption.

In contrast, Hile Troy is as close as this story comes to an actual accident.  But LF could take Joan and Roger because they had already--in effect--chosen his side.  Similarly (within the context of the first trilogy) Mhoram and then Foamfollower and Triock could summon Covenant because he had already chosen *their* side.  (Elena's power to summon Covenant in TIW is more ambiguous.)

Am I muddying the waters here?  Probably.  But keep in mind that Joan, Roger, and even Hile Troy don't have the power to set LF free:  Covenant and Linden do.

(11/12/2009)

Alison

Hi!  I don't really have a question, but I noticed that you entertain people on this forum with answers and discussions, and so I thought I'd make a comment on your Thomas Covenant series in hopes that you'd respond or at least read it.

First, I'd like to say that I was originally completely enthralled with the idea of a martyred/afflicted hero because I have some incapacities of my own and can directly relate to feeling outcast, since my disabilities preclude me from military service and I am now a disabled veteran.  Regardless of the cause, it still feels like ostracism.

Second, I'd like to say that I wish you had chosen a disease without a cure and with a modern day stigma attached to it like AIDS.  I think that this would've been much more effective (even if it's a bit taboo).  At first, I ignored my curiousity about leprosy. Since it is not common in the U.S., I was unfamiliar with it and preferred to maintain my naivety in order to potentiate my feelings about Covenant.  Unfortunately, nursing school defeated my attempts and revealed that leprosy is immediately curable and does not recur. 

I just wanted to express my disappointment.  Now I'm debating buying the second book in the series or switching to your Runes of the Earth series.  Right now, I'm leaning toward the latter.  (I haven't gotten to the end yet because I read about 200 pages/week in nursing school.)

~Alison

For your sake, I hope that you won't tackle "The Last Chronicles" before reading the previous "Covenant" books.  "The Runes of the Earth" will make SO much more sense if you know the background.  And for my sake, I need to point out the historical fact that the first six "Covenant" books were written in the late 70s and early 80s.  Back then, a) no one had ever heard of AIDS, and b) leprosy *was* incurable.  (If memory serves, research done in the late 80s lead to a cure in the 90s, not before.)  In fact, in those days, leprosy came with at least a couple of millennia of stigma attached.  And the symptoms were/are ideally suited to my purposes.

(11/12/2009)

Michael from Santa Fe

You've said many times that you only create what you need, as far as any back story you may reference in your books.  But I don't know if you've touched on how detailed you must make it, for yourself, to use it.  For example, in Lord Foul's Bane you mention the Elohim and the Sandgorgons.  They don't show up until the Second Chronicles, which at the time you wrote Lord Foul's Bane you didn't even know you were going to write.  So, when you wrote about them in LFB, did you have any ideas at all about them, other than just a name a few details you mention in the text?  Did you have in your mind what a Sandgorgon looked like, so when it came to the Second Chronicles you decided, "hey, I can use those cool desert creatures with the battering ram heads I thought of in the First Chronicles?"  Or did you, in writing the Second, have to figure out exactly what you meant by a "Sandgorgon"?

I find that my writing life works out better if I "only create what [I] need," and if I create *only* what I need.  The Elohim and Sandgorgons in LFB are perfect examples.  At the time, all I created were the names--and a hint or two of context (e.g. the word "faery," or a reference to the Great Desert).  Nothing else.  So when I decided to write "The Second Chronicles," I was free to "mine" the first trilogy for whatever nuggets I could find, and then forge those nuggets into whatever I needed.

But "The Second Chronicles" has caused problems because from time to time I created more than the absolute minimum required by the story.  I did this because I *thought* I knew the story for "The Last Chronicles," and I *thought* I was preparing for my eventual intentions.  Well, I *did* know the story--in broad terms.  But I neglected to foresee the possibility (the likelihood?) that in the 20+ intervening years I would come up with *better* ideas for details and back story than the ones I (unnecessarily) wrote into "The Second Chronicles".  As a result, the "mining" and "forging" operations in "The Last Chronicles" have been far more arduous than they would have been if I had exercised the same restraint in the second trilogy that I did in the first.

<sigh>

(11/16/2009)

Charles W. Adams

In a recent answer you stated... "And in my case they both agree that AATE needs very little editing. (I disagree.)"

I'm reading this as you feel it needs more than very little, not less.  If my assumption is wrong, the question is irrelevant.

Did you submit AATE feeling this way?  If so, was the choice to submit the draft driven by date rather than quality?

Or is this more of a result of you being your own worst critic?

Two things.  1) Everything that I do in writing and submitting a manuscript is a process.  There are steps in sequence, and I can't go on to the next step until I complete the present one.  And 2) I know from long experience that I need feedback during these various processes.  I need readers to look at what I've done and tell me what they see:  I need a reader's perspective to activate my inner editor.  And I need that several times as I take my (many) steps.  Among other reasons, I find that solving one set of problems often lays bare another, more subtle set of problems.  But I also need to work sequentially.  If solving a problem on page 823 makes me (or one of my readers) aware of a previously-unnoticed problem on page 347, I don't go back to fix it right then:  I wait until my next time through the manuscript.

So.  I write the first draft as well as I can.  Then, based on the invaluable comments of my personal readers, I do my first rewrite, solving as many problems as I can--and taking copious notes on the problems that have been noticed out of sequence.  Then I send the book to my agent and editors, in part to reassure them that I actually am working (and working on schedule), and in part to get additional feedback to supplement the hard work of my personal readers.  Then I do my second rewrite, hoping this time to solve every problem of which I'm aware (or capable of being aware).

Well, as it happens, both my agent and my editors are seriously overworked.  What they do for me is necessarily fragmented--and sometimes superficial.  They simply don't have time to notice, or comment on, every problem they're capable of seeing.  So, even if I didn't have a stack of notes, and even if my agent and editors liked the first rewrite as is, and even if my personal readers had no additional feedback to offer, I would still insist on doing a second rewrite, just on general principles.  However, in the specific case of AATE, I *did* have a substantial stack of notes, and my personal readers had significantly more comments than my agent and editors.  Hence my comment on this site.

(11/17/2009)

Robert K Murnick

Please pardon if you've addressed this - I thought you had, but I can't find it.  Back when you created Glimmermere, did you (consciously) have Tolkien's "Mirror of Galadriel" (as an inspiration) in mind?

I read LOTR at least a couple of times before I started on "The Chronicles," so I can't very well pretend that I wasn't influenced.  But there is no *conscious* connection between Glimmermere and the Mirror of Galadriel.  They are, after all, very different, both in what they are and in what they do.

(11/21/2009)

Bugley

Is Anele going to become a forestal? And would you consider ceding the staff of Law to Stave instead of Liand? It would be interesting to see a haruchai use theurgy. 

I think it's been pretty well established that the Haruchai don't use theurgy.  In fact, they want to avoid using weapons of any kind (although they do react appropriately when circumstances warrent it).  I'm sure Stave could hold the Staff for Linden and keep it safe.  But use it?  The whole idea feels wrong to me.

(11/26/2009)

You recently attended a 3 day event out in San Jose.  I went out on their website and scanned  through the years and I don't think any of your books had even been nominated for an award????  Can you explain that?  Are the judges like movie reviewers who only like movies that are so esoteric and/eccentric.

As it happens, I have been nominated for the World Fantasy Award three times, once for the first "Covenant" trilogy, once for my second short story collection, "Reave the Just and Other Tales," and once for "The Runes of the Earth."  For "Reave the Just and Other Tales," I was a co-winner with Charles de Lint.  So I have actually won a World Fantasy Award.

Mumblemumble years ago, I had a turn being a judge for the World Fantasy Awards.  I learned then that the conditions of the judging do in fact favor "esoteric and/or eccentric" works over popular, convincing, or outstanding ones--but only in the category of Best Novel.  The conditions of the judging do not impose the same bias where shorter works are concerned.  What "conditions"? you ask.  Over-work, mainly.  When I was a judge, I had nearly 100 novels to consider, and less than three months in which to consider them.  Sheer exhaustion gave unexpected discoveries precedence over more obvious forms of quality.

(11/26/2009)