Bob Benoit: What with the increasing popularity of ebooks and audio formats - two questions: 1) Do you listen to audiobooks yourself - including your own (perhaps in preparation for writing the next book?) Stephen King said that when he sat down to write the final two Dark Tower books (after a long absence) he read and then listened to the first five books in order to re-familiarize himself with the details of the story, and that he found the audio format invaluable because he couldn't "skim" the could with the printed version. 2) Do you consider (or have you changed how you consider) the speech patterns (e.g. accents, fast/slow speech, "clipped sentences", etc.) of your characters knowing that they will almost certainly be narrated in audio format? Or do you rely on your descriptions to allow the readers to form their own "images" of the dialogue? I ask because I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and was recently listened to a book which had characters with many different accents, but didn't recognize the "descriptions" of these accents in the text itself, which lead me to believe that either the narrator made them up on his own, or perhaps through some collaboration with the author. Do you discuss your books with Scott Brick before he begins recording? (OK, three questions.) Thanks again for your time.
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I know that things like ebooks and audio formats are probably the wave of the future. But I just can't get into them. Maybe I'm too old. And maybe (where audio books are concerned) I prefer/need to rely on my own internal voice. So: 1) No, I don't listen to audio books, even my own. 2) Naturally, therefore, I don't "tailor" my prose for people who are going to read--or hear--it aloud. I control every aspect of timing that I'm *able* to control for the eye rather than for the ear (keeping in mind that my eye is my window to my internal ear). 3) I certainly don't discuss Scott Brick's work with him. We communicate before he does a reading so that he can emulate my pronunciation of "special" words (mostly names; some unique terminology). After that, I let him do his thing. After all, he let's me do mine. <grin> (09/05/2009) |
Anonymous: I figured it out.
Lord Foul is Mr. Burns from the Simpsons. Put a cloak on Mr. Burns and tell me hes not...
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Well, if you think of Lord Foul as a comic (i.e. funny and ridiculous) character.... (09/05/2009) |
Mike S.: Hello Mr. Donaldson. I have a question on the topic of "Unbelief" in your TC series.
I think it's fairly obvious to anyone who's read your books how Unbelief is the cornerstone of Thomas Covenant and his interaction with the land. However, two other aspects of unbelief have become clearer as I've read (and re-read) your series over the years.
First is that TC's unbelief appears to fade over time, with him ultimately accepting the reality of The Land (and his responsibility to it and its denizens). However, would it be fairer to say that TC shifted his unbelief from the land to the "real world"?
Second, does not Mhoram exhibit a fair amount of unbelief as well? Or, more specifically, isn't the fundamental flaw of the New Lords (after the fall of Kevin) "unbelief"? I don't know how else to put it, other than they refuse to accept that the very thing that made Kevin's Lore so powerful was the same thing that cause his destruction (i.e. the power of passionate commitment). They refused to believe that it was necessary to accept PERSONAL, human emotion and passion as necessary to the use of Kevin's Lore - and were subsequently stunted in their attempts to recapture his lore.
I could also go on with other examples (Linden's unbelief when confronted with the existence of The Land and Lord Foul, the unbelief of the Masters for the value and importance of Earthpower, etc..).
Sorry for the long post, but it seems that there is more than a few currents of 'unbelief" running through this series.
Thank you for your excellent work, and I look forward to the next installment.
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Thank you for your observations. *I* certainly believe that "unbelief" is a "cornerstone," not just to the first trilogy but to the whole "Chronicles". You've pointed out some of ways in which this is true. But I wouldn't say that Covenant shifts his own "unbelief" from the Land to the "real world": after all, he lives a life of pretty thorough commitment in the real world during the ten years between the first trilogy and the second. Nor would I say that his "unbelief" fades over time. From my perspective, his "unbelief" *modulates*, which is not at all the same thing: he gradually redefines his issues until they are less and less about "reality" and more and more about--for lack of a better term--"importance". This matters to me because it shifts the emphasis from "what makes a thing real" to "what makes a thing meaningful": a shift which moves us out of the realm of religious dogma and into the realm of spiritual inquiry. And in practical terms, "importance" is an easier way to understand the shift that takes place in Mhoram's relationship with the lore and attitudes he inherited, or the shift that inspires the Masters to deny access to Earthpower (which they know is real). If you accept the idea of "modulation" that underlies my thinking, you'll be able to find more and more examples of the "cornerstone" of the first trilogy manifesting itself in the later Chronicles. (09/06/2009) |
Philip (Ireland): Dear Mr Donaldson,
First of all belated thanks for your kind response to a previous question of mine (May 2007 from phealy20@eircom.net). I had thought that the appearance of Jermiah as displayed in Chapter 1 (posted online) was a spolier - I now know it wasn't!
I have read a number of posts where you have discussed authors who you admired or were influenced by. Bronte, Conrad and Peake spring to mind. As a part of your general reading or your formal education have you had much interest in medieval, rather than modern, tales or mythologies? If so do they come from any particular part of the world?
I know that Anglo-Saxon texts are studied (and occasionally enjoyed) in many English Literature courses. Over the last few years I have studied medieval Welsh and Irish literature – and although the tales do not evoke the lyric responses that a modern novel might – they still contain the stuff of fantasy: monsters, heroes and time-travel (!) for example.
On another note, I recall reading in a post of yours that if a book is bought in a bookshop it may take a while for the record to be used for generating a bestseller list, whereas if it is purchased online the information is readily available and the chance of the book appearing on a bestseller list is greater. I really enjoy walking around bookshops and normally prefer to make my purchases in them, but I would be more than happy to order the next Covenant novel online if it meant increased exposure, sales, and revenue for one of my favourite authors. If this is the case then I recommend that you strongly advertise this on your website site rather than just having an option to purchase displayed.
I enjoy your work very much and am looking forward to the continuation of the series.
Yours faithfully,
Philip Healy
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Strangely, I have no particular interest in medieval (or pre-medieval) tales and mythologies. They strike me as the "raw ore" of human consciousness, and I'm much more interested in the metals that can be forged from those basic materials. Or, putting the same thing another way: whenever I read those old tales and mythologies, they feel like stories I already know: they're so deeply embedded in how human beings think that I've already learned them by studying more recent literatures. For that reason, I'm more interested in the specific use that a particular writer makes of the raw ores than I am in the ores themselves. As for generating bestseller lists: these days, electronic means make it easy for individual stores to report their sales to the people who compile bestseller lists. So "where" you buy a book now has little or no effect on whether or not that book appears on a bestseller list. What really matters is "when" you buy it: bestseller lists measure the speed of sales rather than the total quantity of sales. (09/06/2009) |
Earl Jones: I just finished /Fatal Revenant/ and popped in here looking for information on the "to be continued" aspect (which I have found, thank you, and will let drop with the mere observation that you'd *BETTER* finish this . . . _two_ more books . . . grumble). Finding this forum, though:
You've presented the Covenant books as regarding two separate worlds - the internal one of The Land, and the external one more similar to our 'real' world. In the first series, the element of Unbelief played a key role, with the very existence of The Land as anything more than an extended hallucination in question. (While the introduction of Hile Troy undermined this, it was far from conclusive, as Hile played no part in Covenant's life outside The Land.)
That element of Unbelief has become unsustainable; not only is the world of The Land broader and deeper, but it has now become a shared experience extending interactions between several individuals from the 'outside' world. Further, there is interaction - not only do the 'outsiders' play key roles in The Land, but those within The Land (most notably Lord Foul) reach out to affect even some in the 'outside' world who are never drawn to The Land.
At present, you seem to have set up the focus characters as having made a one-way trip. Do you contemplate resolving the impact of The Land on the outside world, regardless of whether any major characters ever return there? Certainly you'll have your hands full just tying things up within The Land, but . . .
I also find myself wondering (though I haven't gone back and researched it) about the timing of the rise of Lord Foul within The Land vis-a-vis the advent of Covenant's leprosy outside it. You have mentioned a possible Christian trinity parallel, but it strikes me you may have more of a Hindu model: Creator, Destroyer, and Preserver - which are sometimes regarded as three separate aspects of the same supreme entity. Not that I'm expecting a substantive response to this - I expect it might give too much away.
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I don't want to spend my remaining years arguing about "unbelief" (or answering Creator questions <rueful smile>). But I can't accept your assertion that the issue of "unbelief" has "become unsustainable"; so I have no answer for the questions that derive from your position. This is a predictable reaction on my part. If I accept the notion that "That element of Unbelief has become unsustainable," then I can only conclude that the underlying message of "The Second (and subsequent) Chronicles" is that the first trilogy was founded on a lie. (Unless, of course, "unbelief" is defined so narrowly that it only pertains to Covenant's personal confusion. But such a narrow definition was never my intention.) As I tried to explain (again?) in a fairly recent answer, my view of Covenant's "unbelief"--and of its meaning for the story as a whole--is that it modulates from a rather simplistic question of brute reality to a more profound question of moral substance. To that claim I would add that the whole "story arc" of the entire project is (both by nature and by intention) linear. A leads to B leads to C. B doesn't change the meaning of A: A enables the meaning of B. And so on. Therefore to examine the substance of the first trilogy from the perspective of, say, "Fatal Revenant" automatically encourages a fallacy. To that I would add that it has always been my intention in these stories to dig deeper into my characters (and therefore to dig deeper into the Land, if for no other reason than because the Land is the stage on which my characters act out their dramas). Hence the "one-way trip" aspect you mentioned. Turning the narrative back toward "the outside world" would require me to turn away from the particular quests of my characters--as well as from my own quest in writing about them. As for "the timing of the rise of Lord Foul within The Land vis-a-vis the advent of Covenant's leprosy outside it," the numbers don't seem to add up. If a day in Covenant's "real" life is a year in the Land, surely we have to conclude that "the advent of Covenant's leprosy" is more recent than "the rise of Lord Foul". More than that I'm not inclined to say. Nor am I inclined to get mired in more Creator questions. At least not today.... (09/11/2009) |
Ossie: Thanks again for this amazing forum. I hope that now the draft of AATE is with the editors, you have a little more breathing space, at least for a while, but somehow I suspect that is not the case.....
Peter Jackson, director etc of the Lord Of The Rings films, has said that you never really "finish" making a movie, you just run out of time (to make any more improvements, add additional exposition, make this CG beastie look better, etc etc). Does this apply to your writing? Ignoring the I-have-to-eat-in-the-meantime issue, do you think the time frame you have "agreed" with the publishers is ultimately a good or a bad thing? Given the choice, would you prefer unlimited time to basically present the final story once you felt it was done, or does it help to have a deadline? (You have already said you would prefer to present in one volume, but I mean in the context of the Peter Jackson comment).
Thank you again
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Where to begin? I know what Jackson means ("you never really "finish" making a movie, you just run out of time"), but I don't have quite the same problem. For me, books never seem to "finish" (never give any sense of closure) because the post-writing chores feel endless (copy-editing, proofreading, etc.--all of which have parallels in film-making, but in film-making things like, say, editing, or synchronizing the music, are far more creative than the chores in book publishing). But I don't "run out of time" the way Jackson describes because I've learned to demand MUCH more generous deadlines from my publishers than I actually need. (Put another way, the deadlines I impose on myself are always more stringent than the ones I allow my publishers to impose.) For me, external deadlines kill creativity. I can't write *at all* if I'm in danger of missing a deadline. It's probably fair to say that my publishers would have been willing to pay twice as much for "The Last Chronicles" if I had agreed to produce a book a year. Three years between books makes them feel like they have to re-invent the wheel every time I turn in a manuscript. But I've learned--at considerable personal cost--that I can't work that way. In my own defense, I want to point out that if I lived by my publishers' current deadlines rather than my own, these books would be published every FOUR years, not every three. My contract gives me three years from D&A of the previous book to *submission* (not D&A) of the next book. By that standard, I wouldn't submit AATE for editorial consideration until mid-January, 2010--which would in turn make publication in 2010 physically impossible. But I submitted AATE in mid-June, seven months early. As a result, the prospects for publication in the fall of 2010 are good. In a perfect world (unlimited time, no need for money), I would have liked to write the entire "Last Chronicles" before publishing any of it. That would have been my best defense against problems of internal consistency--AND once the books began to appear, my readers wouldn't have to wait so long for the next installment. Alas, we--or at least I--don't live in a perfect world. (09/20/2009) |
Steve M.: I recall an interview with the late great Isaac Asimov and his response to a question about inspiration. Of course I am paraphrasing because it was so long ago but he said that a lot of writers make a big issue of inspiration and how they go for years without writing anything because they couldn’t find “inspiration”. Asimov responded with something to the effect, that he never had any problem with inspiration. “Pay me the money and I can write. No problem.” I am curious what your take is on that statement and how you find your inspiration. It seemed to be easy for Asimov. What about you?
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Everyone is different. Naturally different writers find inspiration in different places. I know a brilliant writer who can only write when the need for money becomes urgent (or perhaps I should say, who can only swallow self-doubt long enough to let a book be published when the need for money becomes urgent). I know writers who can only write if they've already been paid and now have to meet deadlines. I've heard of writers who can only write if they have to overcome certain kinds of obstacles (incessant distraction in one case; a compelling need to be somewhere else in another). I know writers whose primary "inspiration" for writing is the hope that what they write will be made into a movie. In fact, Asimov *did* make it sound "easy". But there was a tongue-in-cheek quality to many of his public statements (and writings about writing), so maybe we shouldn't take the "easy" part too seriously. (09/20/2009) |
Lee Whipple: Stephen,
How important to your creativity is a deadline? While the story may exist in concept from beginning to end does having a deadline to meet committing it to written form help convert it from thought to a tangible book?
How often is the first draft unready to be seen by anyone accept an editor or trusted friend?
Is the first draft really nothing but a lump of clay waiting to be shaped into the final story and writing the first draft mixing the earth and water to create the clay?
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I think I answered a question about deadlines recently. For me, they are creativity-killers. But "Is the first draft really nothing but a lump of clay...?" Absolutely not. The first draft IS the final story. Plot changes after the first draft are so rare as to be virtually nonexistent for me. No, what changes is, first and foremost, the dialogue (how the characters present themselves to each other), second, the interior descriptions (how I present the characters to the reader), third, the amount of repetition (because I write so slowly, I tend to repeat myself more often [much more often?] than the reader needs), and last, the flow and accuracy of the individual sentences. My agent has often commented that I do "invisible" rewrites. In part, this is because he's read maybe 75 books since the last time he saw mine, so he doesn't remember the previous version in any detail. But it's also because the "final story" doesn't change at all: it simply becomes more effective as I rewrite it. (09/26/2009) |
Anthony: How many books did you read while writing this latest TC novel? Is the answer a good average for your process? Higher? Lower?
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As I've said before, I'm a very slow reader. I suppose I may average 15 books a year (not counting the 10 or so that I start and then can't stand reading). Whether or not I'm writing myself has no effect on how much reading I do. (09/26/2009) |
Scott Adams: First I love your books (All of them), I just wanted to ask you if I got your intention in Forbidden Knowledge when Nick is raping (or whatever) Morn on the main deck. I read that he was doing it in front of the crew to show his power or dominance over Morn, but I felt like he was humiliating himself as much or more than Morn. Is that a valid sense of your text? You don't write it that way but I was just curious. Thank you for your wonderful books.
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Nick doesn't realize it, of course. But you're quite right. It's pretty generally true that you (I don't mean you personally) can't dehumanize someone else without simultaneously dehumanizing yourself. Nick *thinks* he's engaged in a display of personal power. In fact, he's displaying his own emotional poverty. (09/26/2009) |