Babel Clash

The thing about writing tie-in fiction, for me, is how easy it is. Like I said in my answers to Morgan, I’ve already fallen in love with that world and those characters. They are real people to me (okay, remember now how I said I was nuts?) so that when I’m writing a Star Wars novel or a Stargate novel I feel like I’m just eavesdropping on their lives and recording what’s happening. It took me a long time to have the same kind of faith in my own characters and worlds that I feel for those invented by other great writers. And the first character I really fell for like that, the one I created who absolutely took on a life of his own, is Asher.  Even while I was flailing around all over the place in the early drafts, too inexperienced to really have any kind of clue as to what the hell I was doing, not quite getting a handle on the other characters, Asher was always there. Fully-formed, three-dimensional, and smacking me over the head to get the story told already.

The reason I think writers and actors share a kink in the brain is because when we’re writing a story, it’s like we’re actually putting on a one-person show. When I write a novel I become all of the people in the story. Like an actor I try to get inside their skins, their minds, and create their lives the way they’re living and feeling and thinking them. It’s easier to do with tie-in work because the external example is there to study and absorb. When you’re the one creating the performance, it’s a bit more intimidating.

I was pretty nervous about returning to Asher and his world. Since writing the first two Kingmaker, Kingbreaker books I’ve written another seven novels, with a really wide variety of characters and settings. When it came to time to start work on The Prodigal Mage I started to panic, thinking that I wouldn’t get the voices back, I wouldn’t get them back, Asher and Dathne and Pellen and Darran. But it was so amazingly weird. I sat down, I started writing, Asher opened his mouth and it was on for young and old. He was back, bigger and bolder and brasher than ever. And it felt like I’d caught up with an old friend, after a long time away. A bit older, a bit wiser, but still Asher.

I wonder if that’s how Johnny Depp’s going to feel when he goes back to Captain Jack Sparrow?

At the end of the day it’s all about falling in love, I think. Whether it’s my world or a world I’m playing in that someone else dreamed up, if I’m in love with it and the people who live there, it’ll definitely come alive.

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