Terry Brooks on the Writing Life Sandy Auden discusses writing, life and fantasy fiction with legendary

Shannara creator, Terry Brooks. You just never know when the next story idea will strike. In Terry Brook's case, with numerous Shannara, Magic Kingdom and Word and Void books under his belt, he has enough experience to spot the patterns: the ideas for one series will often sneak up on him while he's working on a completely different one. Take his linked fantasy trilogies, The Voyage of Jerle Shannara and The High Druid of Shannara, featuring Grianne Ohmsford, for example... "I'd been working on The Word and The Void books and the Star Wars novel when the Ilse Witch first materialised in my head," says Brooks. "I was thinking about Shannara's Walker Boh, the failed Druid. He had gone into the Druids' sleep, but there still had to be some resolution to his tenure. "I also wanted to write about a different kind of Ohmsford. I didn't want to come back and do another brother-sister, brother-brother, good young Ohmsford fighting the good fight. I wanted to do something different. It had been suggested to me by various editors that I should do a bad Ohmsford. And I thought, well, gee, a bad Ohmsford doesnt sound like a real good idea. "But one day I was listening to American TV... we have a whole lot of fallen politico's in the US, who find God or Jesus and suddenly they're saved. We're supposed to think that they're good people then. It all got me thinking about this whole issue of redemption and what it meant. Slowly, this became the subtext for the new series and gave me the impetus for Grianne Ohmsford; who was the Ilse Witch and, in fact, a very bad person. She'd been brainwashed into becoming who and what she was, but even though she had done some very bad things, she was going to have a some stab at finding redemption. Now, how was that going to happen? I decided it would be in two phases. In the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara series, she would discover the truth about herself, throw off the shackles of her betrayer and do him in. Then in the second half, High Druid Of Shannara, she would be elevated to a position of great trust and responsibility, but she would find that she couldn't be accepted or forgiven and she would have to come to terms with all this." Brooks' latest book, Jarka Ruus, opens that second phase of the story, and it illustrates the lack of forgiveness as the Third Druid Council banish Grianne Ohmsford to another dimension because they can't forget what she did as the Ilse Witch. A fine example of the past-influencing-the-future theme that you'll find in several of Brooks' novels. "I think we're informed by where we came from, who our families were and what our genetics are," he says. "Everything that goes into who we become, influences what we will become as well. It's a theme that was present in William Faulkner's work. I was a big William Faulkner reader and wrote my senior thesis as an English Major at University on Faulkner's work. I'm intrigued by the theme because we see it recurring over and over again in the real world and that makes it something attractive to use. "The past also has a tendency to restrict us. It is possible to escape it and find ways to shake free but most people don't. Maybe that's because, at heart, we are inertia-afflicted beings and we tend to go for the easy route, which is often the route of no movement. People tend to stay in a given life, however bad it is, rather than change it. Simply because the unknown is scarier than the known, even though the known may be terrible.

"I'm most certainly a victim of that myself. I lived in the same town for forty two years, one of the biggest mistakes I can imagine. I didn't go anywhere else when I had the opportunity and really I had the urgency to do so as a writer; you need to move around and experience the world and be motivated. It's criminal to stay in the same place and not move. For some kinds of writers it works, if you're only writing, say, a small town literary fiction or closet mystery. But for writers of fantasy with an epic scope, where a large canvas is part of the story telling and an awareness of the larger world is important, you shouldn't do that. "I move around all the time now, I love it! I love to travel, see different parts of the world, and I live in several different places, rather than just one. It's the backlash from living forty two years in the same town." Another theme you'll find in a Brooks book is the issue of doing the 'right thing'. "It's about taking responsibility for your own behaviour," he says. "The single, biggest problem people have in the world is making the hard choices to behave in the right fashion. It seems like the easiest thing in the world but the situations where we fail are the ones that are not so clear. It's a case of choosing which hurt you will inflict, which piece of damage you will allow to happen." Theoretically we make better, more informed decisions as we grow into adults. Brooks enjoys exploring the rite-of-passage theme, enjoys examining how we grow away from childhood. "I usually have a young Ohmsford who's the protagonist. It's a pattern I established early on in the Shannara series because I wanted a kind of Everyman character, someone who would be something of a cipher, something of us as readers; coming to grips with life's difficulties for the first time, making some hard decisions, toughing it out when you really just want to go home and hide under the covers. I like that well enough that I've stayed with it. "There is some variation from book to book, different ages, maturity, gender. But there's also always an older character or two who is world weary and coming to terms with their own lives in one way or another. And then there's the characters of the Druids, who have seen it all and done it all. They're more representative of political leaders who have a tremendous amount of power and knowledge and they have to decide how to use it, when to use it and how much they're going to reveal. Sometimes they behave in wonderful ways, but at other times, they seem incredibly foolish. There's all three of those present to some degree in all of the books." Something else that can usually be found in a Brooks book are cliff-hangers. "I grew up in the era of serial television," he reminisces, "where they had the thirteen week shows and everything ended in a cliff hanger. You couldn't wait for the next instalment and I liked that. You'll see it in my work, even from chapter to chapter. I'll leave someone in dire peril and move to some other chapter and then I'll come back. "However, you shouldn't do too much of that. Readers get impatient with you if you leave them hanging for too long and too often, so you have to be somewhat judicious about it. Cliffhangers also mean that you have to commit to finishing your series in a timely fashion and not go away to do something else. This has got a few writers in some serious, serious trouble with the readership. Stephen King is a good example of this, with his Dark Tower series, and David Eddings did it too. I do think that once you make a commitment to do a set of books and you are going to do cliffhangers then you need to have a balance in the way you do it. You need to commit yourself to doing the series as quickly as possible; which for me means one book a year for three years and out the door."

Clearly then, a lot of thought and effort goes into all aspects of Brooks' writing. So does he hesitate endlessly when deciding who to bump off in his stories? "I'm never afraid to kill anybody off!" he replies. "The first rule of writing is don't become so attached to any character that, if the story requires it, you couldn't finish them off. That might sound really obvious but quite frankly it's a problem for a lot of writers because they get so attached to their characters, or they make the character so central to everything, that they can't kill them off. With these kind of stories, the reader should never know which way you're going, not entirely. They may be pretty sure you're not going to knock off an Ohmsford for example, but they never know for sure about anyone else. Every so often you have a character that's done everything you can do with them, you've told their story, they fulfilled their purpose, they have to go away. So you have two choices: either you phase them out of the story at the end of the book and you dont go back them, or you off them! Depending on what you want for dramatic effect and how you want the reader to feel about that character at the end, you make your choice accordingly. "The Druids pretty much come to a bad end, but that's because they're almost always at the centre of things and there's no escape for them, they're kind of committed to what's going to happen. Some of the others, if they're warriors like Garat Jax, then they are born to die. There's no escaping their fate, it's only a question of what it's going mean in the larger context of the story telling. I dont always know at the start who's going to make to the end of the book, I only know for certain which characters are not." After all the outlining, all the planning, all the hard thinking, you'd expect the words to just flow onto the page, wouldn't you? "That'll be the day, I tell you!" Brooks laughs. "Writing doesn't work like that! Some days you're good, some days you're not so good. Some days you're inspired and the writing comes easily. Other days it's like pulling teeth and you get two pages down, which you don't think are very good. But what you learn after a while is that, if you're any good at this professionally, the stuff you write on the bad days and the stuff you write on the good days is pretty much the same. It's not that different, it's just easier sometimes. On the good days, you get inspired with your ideas and your concepts on where things ought to go and that's always worth making extra notes on. "The bad days are the ones I can't remember afterwards. For Jarka Ruus, I don't remember any one instance where I was particularly blocked. I'm sure there were days when I threw down the notes and stalked out of the room in disgust, or took time off, thinking that's it, I'm not writing any more for a few days. I'm sure that, many times, I didn't like what I was doing and had to go back and start it again. It was the wrong voice, the wrong approach, the wrong something-or-other. "The trick is actually recognising when it isn't the right thing really. It's not so much the doing it, it's the recognition that you've made a mistake in some way. If you find yourself writing something and you're thinking, 'God this is boring, if I was the reader would I really read this or would I skip ahead?' Sometimes, you have to get it out of there. Then you go back and find a way to bridge that gap. It's all about pacing, and pacing is hard. It's very difficult to know how your reader is going to respond but ebb and flow in a book is extremely important. So going back to that business about the cliff hangers, to get to the cliff hangers you have to have a build-up. That means you need a valley to get to a peak. Finding the proper way to do that while keeping the story moving along at a reasonable clip is what good story telling is all about." Good storytelling is a craft though, and in Brooks' second recent UK release, Sometimes The Magic Works: Lessons From A Writing Life, the reader gets to discover how Brooks achieved his high standard of yarn-spinning, as well as hearing some personal anecdotes about how he has developed as a writer.

"I've been asked lots and lots of questions over the years," he says. "Sometimes I'd answer them but sometimes I couldn't answer fully, which prompted me to look at developing more comprehensive answers to these questions that everybody asks; like 'here did you get your ideas'? Or 'how did you get published'? Then I was reading a series of articles in the New York Times newspaper. Writers of all sorts would take any subject and just write about it. I like those, because I enjoy hearing about how writers do what they do and how they think about things. I'm fascinated by it, and I tend to read all the books on writing. "I thought I bet I could write one of these articles. I checked into it and I found yeah, you can, you can sell it to them, along with the rights. Well I wasn't going to do that, it's stupid. Why would I give them the rights? So I decided to try it anyway. I wrote one about getting published with Lester Del Rey - how there was all this behind the scenes stuff going on that I didn't know anything about at the time, how I found out about it later and how that made me feel. Then once I'd got that one down, I thought let me try another one. First thing you know, I realised I had six or eight of those articles and I could do a book of them! I didn't have craft in it then, just anecdotes. So I included craft and at the same time, gave it a conversational tone and feel the kind of conversation you'd have if you sat down and chatted for a couple of hours across a table with someone." The final product is an informative, entertaining read. An impressive achievement given his previous non-fiction experience. "Other than a few short articles, this is the only piece of nonfiction I've written," Brooks says. "It's very personal so it was considerably easier than I thought it would be. I didn't struggle with this the way I struggle with fiction because I'm telling things I'd told many times before, I was just fleshing them out in a more comprehensive form. The trick was to find a balance between the craft and the examples. I didn't want it to get too didactic, I didn't want it to get too boring. I wanted to fuse it with the personal side of my own experience because that was what attracted me to the other writing books I'd read. I thought that was the best side of Stephen King's On Writing book. "Lessons also made me stop and really think. Especially about where I get my ideas from - that's a hard question. I had to stop and mull it over for a while, then rework it and rethink it because it's not something writers spend a lot of time determining." Following the anecdotes and the origins of ideas chapters in Lessons, you'll find sections with abundant guidelines about how to write a good story. "A lot of the craft chapters came out of asking myself 'What do I really think?' There's so much I could have said that it had to have some sort of context. A lot of the writing process is large diagrams and complex thought processes, but that doesn't help anyone. So I examined my thoughts about character or voice, looked at the things I would never do. What if someone asked me what should they know about being a writer, what would I tell them that would help? And helping them was the main thing. What they need to understand is what happens preferably in twenty five words or less. So there was a lot of condensing and a lot of focusing on this very specific thing that I believed to be true. "This is also the first time I've analysed my own processes in such a comprehensive form. I've given a lot of lectures over the years, key note addresses about plotting and outlining because that's the most important part of what I do, and for that I can give you an hour right now. It's a part of who I am. But some of the other things in Lessons were ones I'd never spent much time with, or spoken on in any great depth, so I had to give those a lot more time and thought."

Some of the topics that took more time were very close to Brooks' heart. "At times, I felt quite emotionally naked," he says. "Especially with the Tolkein stuff. I got raked over the coals in the first few years of my being an author because of my closeness to Tolkein's work. I knew how close it was and I knew what kind of debt I owed to Tolkein. So what did that mean to me? Should I go off and shut myself in a closet and never come out again because I'd written a book that was so close to Lord of the Rings? And I thought, no, I'm just going to tell the truth about how I evolved as a writer: from that closeness, to a separate and distinct voice. I wanted to say why Tolkein and I are so different, really, which we are. "I also think that many writers owe Tolkien a debt for what he did. People spend so much time saying Lord of the Rings is wonderful, what a great book, but they don't really know why it's so important. I felt that was an important thing to explore but it was hard to do. I thought well, I'll get attacked for this now, and they'll say, 'what do you know'?" Overall though, Sometimes The Magic Works lit the touch paper of Brooks' enthusiasm. "It wasn't a struggle, it was a labour of love and I enjoyed writing this book. Everything I wrote about was revelatory and interesting and I got real excited about it. That's important when you're writing something on spec with no real sense of whether it'll find a home or not, because I didn't care, really didn't. I thought, I've done a good job here, I'm happy I wrote it. If nobody but the kids read it then that'll be ok. Fortunately, I've been vindicated. A lot of people have purchased the book and many have come up to me after reading it to say how much it's meant to them. And that feels good!" For more information about the author, see the Terry Brooks website. You can find a review of Jarka Ruus and Sometimes The Magic Works: Lessons From A Writing Life in the reviews section here at The Alien Online.

What was the guidebook, The World of Shannara, able to tell the readers that the series wasn't? The series has a long history and several characters and settingsis it hard to keep all the facts straight and not contradict anything you have written before? Brooks: Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm glad that someone did that Shannara companionI can go back and find the answers [laughs]. It was somewhat nebulous before. The older I get, the tougher it gets for me to remember anything. God knows I go to all these events with the young kids who have the books memorized and they say, "So what do you mean when you did so-and-so?" and I think "Did I do that?" [Laughs.] I don't have any memory of it. It was a companion book to the series. it was conceived by Del Reythey wanted to do it. I said, "GreatI don't want to write itget someone else to do it, I'm not interested." I've never been interested in peripheral stuff of any kind. I'm only interested in the books. So they hired Teresa Patterson, a fan of the work, and she did a terrific job of researching everything, I spent several days with her and David Cherry [the artist for the book] both, talking about the way the [Shannara's] world works. And Teresa would say, "What do you mean by" "What was your intention," "What do you think happened?" and in a lot of incidents I said, "Beats me. What do you think?" And she would go back and write it. They did a really great job with it. A lot of the book is Teresa's invention and her interpretation of what she thinks are the connections and what would happen and so forth, and all of it is David's visuals. All I did was edit and oversee the whole thing, then fill in the blanks it was not a project I was enamored of undertaking.

In the first three Shannara novels, the books were more separate stories with recurring characters. The following five were more of a continuing series. Was this a shift in direction or something you planned? Brooks: The first three Shannara novels were written while I was still practicing law. Each took a number of years to write. Sword took six or seven all together, Elfstones took almost three. That was after a misstep on what was going to be the second book, so there was a five-year gap between book one and book two. The next one, Wishsong, took another two or three years to writethere were big gaps of time in there, when I wasn't a full-time writer. After I wrote Magic Kingdom and quit being a lawyer and became a full-time writer, I began to look at the writing in a different way. I still wanted to do the epic fantasy stories in conjunction with Shannara. When I sat down to work out Heritage, which turned out to be a four-book set, I envisioned it as a trilogy. I'm always looking to do something different, as before I used single books with one Shannara character and in the last book two, I decided I was going to write about a whole family and follow them through a set of books that would have a continuing storyline, that would have smaller storylines that would wrap up within. It was quite ambitious, but something different. When I began to map Heritage out, it became clear that it would have to be four books. That's what it ended up being. Then I was sick of Shannara again, which happens periodicallythen I went off with Magic Kingdom for a couple of years. Then I was going to do The Word & Void series, but my editor said, "No, we need you to do another Shannara book first." And that is when I decided to respond to all the requests from fans for answers to what happened before the Sword in various ways; that is, where First King came from, which is a separate story altogether. Now I'm back doing a whole different thing. I'm writing two trilogies that piggy-back off each other. The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara is a set of three books, and 20 years after that you'll get into a new setwhich will use some of the themes and storylines started in the first one and a couple of the characters. I don't like writing about the same characters over and over again. To me, it's more interesting to change the characters, but at the same time also to change the format, so that's what I have been pretty much doing.

What is your favorite book in the Shannara series? Brooks: I don't think I can answer that question, and the reason I couldn't is because each of them means something different for me. Obviously, Sword was a breakthrough bookyou have to say that was important to me; that is the book that really made my career. But Elfstones was a tremendous accomplishment, because I came back out of the ashes of a book that was thrown away to write that book. It was an extremely strong book. You can go on from there and talk about each of the other onesit's really hard to choose.

The answer I usually give, which is probably true, is my favorite book is the one I'm writing right now. To me, it's the process that matters. I really love the writing process. It's what intrigues me, it's what keeps me fascinated and going. When the book is done, it's doneit doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to the readers.

Of all your books, which ones would you like to be made into a movie? Which are some of your favorite fantasy films over the years? Brooks: Running with the Demonthat one would be the most adaptable into movie-making. I think the Shannara books would be extraordinarily hard to adapt. It might happen. It certainly would be difficult with Sword, because it's such a nebulous concept. My favorite fantasy films? Well, The Lord of the Ringsit is certainly right up there. I thought that was a terrific achievement. I'm very fond of The Princess Bride and Field of Dreams. When I look at fantasy I look at a much broader spectrum than most writers donot just the epic fantasies.

In fantasy, it is better to have limits on the power of magic. Do you agree or disagree with that? Brooks: I agree. I'm a huge advocate that less is more. I use magic sparingly. I use creatures of all kinds sparingly. Because I don't think that's the thing that engages the reader. What I think engages them is characterization and storytelling and a sense of atmosphere. You know how they've been talking about the movie Signs lately? And they've been comparing it to [Alfred] Hitchcock. What is so great about Hitchcock and his filmmaking is that he never showed you a whole lot of anything, he just suggested the presence of it. It was the suspense that made his movies so great. You were always on the edge waiting for the next thing to happen, you never really saw anything, maybe once or twice something overt happened and you weren't exactly sure. I think there's a lot to be said about that in your storytelling, too. You want to be careful of not overdoing it. You don't want to get into a place where magic is solving all your problems. That's poor storytelling. Not only should magic be used sparingly, but it should have deep significance when you do it. I can't read fantasy where magic is commonplace and thrown out there at the drop of a hat. I'm supposed to accept it's how it is in that world. I think, oh well, who cares? I don't care. I want to know about the people. The magic on the people when they use it. Those are the things that interest me. It's like presidents. Presidents go into office one person and come out another. What happens to them? They have all this power, and they use it, and it changes them in different ways. We've seen it time and time again. These corporate CEOs, did they grow up little bastards? [Laughs.] They turned into greedy little bastards when they were in office, when they were in their positions of power with these corporations when they thought they could do anything. That's what's intriguing to me.

What can we expect from Terry Brooks in 2003? Brooks: The same thing you can expect in 2004 and 2005 [laughs], which is another Shannara book. I have three more in this next trilogy that is coming up. September of each year there will be a new book which will complete the current Shannara cycle, and I will be going off and doing something else. That is what's happening on the fantasy fiction front. I'm also writing a novella for The Legends of Fantasy which will be published sometime in 2003. That will include contributions by people like Neil Gaiman, George R.R. Martin and a whole bunch of people. I'm also publishing a book called Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life. It's a small book on what I learned about being a writer from the past 25 years. Things that happened to me, what they taught me about and about the craft of writing and what I think is important for writers to know. What they need to do and that kind of stuff. That's coming out in March of 2003.

Last questiondo you consider fantasy authors such as Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, Neil Gaiman, Charles de Lint, Mickey Zucker Reichert and J.K. Rowling as your contemporaries or competition? Brooks: I have no competition [laughs]. I don't look at writing as competitive, but as more of an embracing experience for the people involved in it. I don't think we compete against each other actually. It's not like potential readers say, "I have $25.00, which of these authors am I going to spend my money on?" [Laughs.] They go buy that book and that's their book for the year. The fact is, they will buy as many books as we can put out, if they like our work. The problem is, we can't write fast enough. I don't believe in awards and recognition for work done. I think as a writer, you have an obligation to be the best that you can. I don't think you should be rewarded for doing your job. I don't think we should be choosing one writer over another. I think we all do the best job that we can. We all work hard. It shouldn't be set up as artificial competition. We all have people whose work we particularly admire, and we all have work that we particularly detest [laughs]. That's just the nature of the beast.

An Interview - September 2002 DRIN

Del Rey Interview September 2002 by Terry Brooks A conversation with Terry Brooks, author of The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara: Morgawr DEL REY: It's been twenty-five years--and almost as many bestsellers--since you began writing about Shannara and the Four Lands. How has your conception of your fantasy world and its inhabitants evolved over that time? TERRY BROOKS: The worlds and themes have grown much larger than I initially envisioned them, but that speaks to the nature of writing epic fantasy and series' in general. The more you write, the more you learn about what you want to write. Each book tells me something new about the worlds and their people. Each one suggests a new way to go if I want to write another--and I almost always do. I didn't really think I would still be writing Shannara after all this time, but I'm grateful that it has worked out that way. DR: Speaking of your twenty-fifth anniversary, Del Rey is publishing a 25th anniversary special edition of the original Shannara trilogy, which must be quite gratifying. The initial runaway success of those books must have come as a pleasant surprise. Why do you think readers have responded so well to your work over the years? What is it that sets a Terry Brooks fantasy apart from all the others on the bookshelves? TB: Is this where I am supposed to say, "Brilliant writing?" I don't know that I am the best judge of my work. I think I'm a pretty good storyteller, and that's the heart and soul of the sort of writing I do. I think it has helped me to remember that magic in and of itself should be used sparingly. Less is more, in my work. I like to keep focused on what I know to be true about people and their problems. I like my central character to always be the little guy fighting just to keep his or her head above water, trying to do the right thing. I think readers identify with this. DR: In your newest novel, The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara: Morgawr, you bring the Jerle Shannara trilogy to a close. I imagine that finishing up a long writing project like this one must be an emotional experience. Is it hard to let go of the story and characters? Do you start on something new right away, or do you give yourself a vacation from writing? TB: I'm in somewhat of a different situation than normal with this series of books. The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara is actually the first of two inter-connected trilogies. The period between the end of the first trilogy and beginning of the second is only twenty years, and they both share some of the same themes and characters, so I'm not actually able to let go of either story or characters just yet. Not all of them, at least. I'm already about three-quarters of the way through the next book, which is the first of the new trilogy. I don't take vacations from writing; I take short breaks. DR: So then how far ahead do you plot the stories recorded in your books? Do you know, for example, what the next installment of the Shannara saga will be . . . and can you tell us anything about it? TB: I tend to plot the story arc--the overview--before I start a series. But I don't worry about all the details. As much as I can envision and develop the characters, I do. I like to have a firm sense of who they are before writing. But writing each book always tells me what the next book needs to be. So I try to be open to the possibilities while writing, even though I also work from an outline. As for the next Shannara book, I can't tell you much without giving things away from Morgawr. DR: And exactly who--or what--is the Morgawr? Is he, or was he once, human?

TB: The Morgawr is a warlock, but not much is known about him at the time he enters the story. There is a rumor that he was brother to the witch sisters Morag and Mallenroh, who were destroyed in The Elfstones of Shannara. He was probably human once, but he has evolved into something closer to a Mwellret now. DR: The wizardly figures known as Druids play a central role in the Shannara series, from Allanon in the original trilogy to Walker Boh in the current one. Allanon had his dark side, his moments of spiritual doubt and suffering, but his successor Druids seem to be even more conflicted and tormented. Are their burdens that much greater? Or have the Druids declined in power or wisdom since the days of Allanon? TB: Good question. What do you think? Here are the possibilities. One, they have declined in power, are not as strong. Two, it is a matter of personality. Walker isn't as strong as Allanon was. Third, the job has gotten tougher. You pick. I will tell you this: we are moving towards the formation of a new Druid Council, and that will change everything for the Druids and the Four Lands. DR: Then what is the source of evil in the Four Lands . . . and does it use a different magic than that of the Druids? I've often thought that Druid magic has more in common with the dark magic of such characters as the Ilse Witch and the Morgawr than it does with the magic of the Elfstones or the Sword of Shannara itself. TB: Let me address the second half of your question, something I have a reasonable chance of answering in fifty thousand words or less. Magic is neither good nor bad, like science in our world. But it can be either, depending on the uses to which it is put. So, what I am saying is that magic reflects the character of the person who wields it, much of the time. You could make a reasonable argument that Druid magic often seems like dark magic, since the Druids who wield it do so with dark purpose. DR: This leads me to another question about magic in Morgawr. How does the wishsong magic shared by Grianne and Bek Ohmsford work? Do they each have the same power? TB: The wishsong doesn't work the same way for anyone, like all magic, because its nature and effectiveness depends on the character of the user. It responds initially to the strength of the bloodline, since it is derivative of the Elfstone magic. But once past that hurdle, it depends on who wields it and how conflicted or settled that person is. In that respect, it differs from science, which is more reliable and predictable. That reflects my own belief that we don't know how we will behave in stressful situations, how effective or reasonable or quick thinking we will be. DR: Let's talk more about your characters. Truls Rohk, the half-human shape-shifter who becomes Bek Ohmsford's protector and friend, is a fascinating character. He is an outcast, rejected by humans and shape-shifters. His essence partakes of both species yet belongs fully to neither. You seem to have a special affection for such characters; in fact, now that I think about it, almost all of your major characters are outcasts in some way. TB: Well, I think it is how many of us see ourselves, deep down inside. We are outcasts, different than anyone else. This is truer when we are teenagers than when we get older, but that feeling is a part of who we are. We're essentially alone in our thoughts, acts, beliefs, and so forth, but always trying to find common ground with others. I enjoy watching the way characters achieve this, fighting to reach that common ground, to fit in, to become a part of something.

DR: I want to take a moment to touch on your other two series...First, the Landover series. Will you be writing anything more about the magic kingdom of Landover? TB: At one point, I didn't think so. I thought I might have written all I wanted to about Ben Holiday and Landover. Now I'm not so sure. My editor called the other day and said he had an idea for the series. That should please all those readers who keep asking for another book, and frankly, it pleases me, too, since I haven't been able to give them one. DR: And the Word & Void series? The Rocky Mountain News selected your two novels from this series, Running With the Demon and A Knight of the Word, as two of the best fantasy novels of the twentieth century. They also happen to be favorites of mine. Have you given any thought to continuing the story of the battle between Word and Void? TB: This series, as opposed to Magic Kingdom, has a future. I do intend to write at least another three books. I won't be able to do that until I've completed the next Shannara trilogy, which means another couple of years. Since that's a ways off, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about where Word & Void needs to go. But I have to, before I can write anything. I have some thoughts about what should happen, but nothing set down yet. I expect to start the series somewhere other than where it left off. DR: Has the huge success of The Fellowship of the Ring movie sparked any interest from Hollywood in bringing The Sword of Shannara to the big screen? TB: There is always interest. There is never money. I live in hope. DR: The tour for your last book, Antrax, was curtailed as a result of the tragic events of last September. As a fantasy writer, how have the events of 9/11 and its aftermath influenced your work and your thinking about the nature of fantasy and its relationship to the real world? How has that relationship changed . . . or has it? TB: I don't think I can answer this question yet. It takes time in most cases for events to suggest to fiction writers what needs to be written about them. So I am mulling it all over, because I always ask myself the same question: What does this have to say about the human condition, and how can I write about it? We'll see. DR: I hear you're working on a memoir of sorts now; what can you tell us about it? TB: In March 2003 Del Rey will publish my book Sometimes the Magic Works. It's subtitled Lessons from a Writing Life, and that pretty much says it all. It's a combination memoir/writing advice book. In it, I write about how I became a professional writer and the valuable lessons I learned along the way about the craft. There are stories about how I got published, how Lester del Rey taught me about publishing, and how I was chosen to write Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace. But I also write about how my grandson Hunter taught me that I really don't know as much as I thought. It's a little book, but I think readers will have a good time with it. DR: Okay, last question: the first two volumes in The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy, Ilse Witch and Antrax, earned some of the best reviews of your career. In what ways are you a better writer now than when you started? What's the most important thing you've learned about the craft of writing in your career, and how did you learn it?

TB: I think I am a better writer now than I was twenty-five years ago, although not necessarily a better storyteller. There is a difference. Writing is a craft, and I think I am a better craftsman now than I was then. I've learned how to write professionally, and I don't struggle with the process like I once did. The most important thing I've learned about the craft is to do the best you can to prepare for the actual writing, but to understand going in that the writing will inform you in unexpected ways. Until you actually do the writing, you can't know everything that is going to happen.