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| The Official | Diana Wynne Jones | Website |
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Those burning questions ... |
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These are Diana's answers to some of the questions which were asked between March and late July 2001. The main topics on this page are: writing; fanfiction; Fire and Hemlock; Howl's Moving Castle; Harry Potter; Dark Lord of Derkholm, and The Tough Guide. There are more separate pages of answers: Page 2 covers: a film of Howl's Moving Castle; Time of the Ghost; multiverses; The Master; men; The True State of Affairs; The Ogre Downstairs. Page 3 has some of the Chrestomanci questions including: Millie; a female Chrestomanci, and Diana's inspiration for the series. Page 4 is more Chrestomanci questions, and Page 5 contains all the wonderful miscellaneous and general questions, such as Diana's favourite of her books.
On Writing
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From Elly
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I'm glad you're still here and off to see the world, and if I had anything to do with this it makes me gladder still. About agents, do you write for adults, or children, or both? My agent only really handles children's writing, but if you let me know what you write, I could ask her to recommend you someone. |
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From Bob
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply Generally I just sit down and write, with a sketchy outline in my mind - which outline seldom survives as soon as the book gets going. Most of the preparation takes place in my head and I very seldom commit plans to paper. But there are exceptions. For instance, long before I wrote FIRE AND HEMLOCK - like six years - I was writing shorter and longer pieces that didn't seem to add up, except that I knew they would in the end. Most of these ended up as Polly's Tan Coul inventions. Three or four other books have started like this. It seems to depend on the book. |
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From Bonnie
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| Diana's Reply The best way to start a book is the way you want to do it. Start with the bit that grabs you. But descriptions do make for a slow start. I suggest you write your description, if that is the way you want to start, and then go back over it and reduce it to two sentences at the most. There is a lot of this going back to it in writing. You never get away with writing a thing just once. And remember that people, and what they think and do, are the things that move a story along. Concentrate on your people. |
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From B Bishop
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| Diana's Reply I start writing in the most comfortable chair I can find in the sitting room, in everybody's way. For the second draft I move to my study, which is very small and crowded with: one cat, trying to walk on my keyboard, about sixty pictures, hundreds of books, stacks of paper there's nowhere to put, two chairs, in hopes the cat will sit in the other one (she does in the end), and dozens of dragon-things because I love dragons. Oh, and the red stool I balance my coffee on. I have a red carpet, a red window-blind, a red cuboard, a red filing cabinet and a blue table. |
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From Joni Harbottle
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I see and sympathise with your problem. I suspect you may be one of those writers who do brilliantly best when telling the story from INSIDE a character, and you really wouldn't want to change that (everyone has their own way of doing it and you really oughtn't to change the way you ARE). It puts you in there with Dostoevsky, the Brontes and other great writers. But I see you'd also want to learn all the skills there are. I can tell you that I learnt to write at an outside angle by reading and rereading Jane Austen - and from Dickens, too, a bit. I'd recommend you to study Austen. It is a skill one can only learn, not be taught. |
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From Hannah
Other Comments
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Diana's Reply
Yes, POWER OF THREE is going to be republished later this year. I have done the proofs and have been discussing the illustrations, so I know it is really on the way. Writing fantasy - well, first don't ever even try to write something you are not violently interested in, and then start as near to the interesting part as you can. It helps if you can visualise (and hear and smell and touch in your mind) the most peculiar scene in your story, first, before you start writing; and then consider it and try to follow logically the reasons for its happening like that. The logic will lead you to the fantasy. This will be in places you never expected. |
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From Erica
Other Comments
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Diana's Reply
The fact is, everyone has their own way of writing, which they're happiest with. If you are happy describing, then do it. But I will say this on your teacher's behalf: descriptions tend to pass your reader by so that they don't remember them. Usually the best way to fix a person's appearance in your reader's mind is to SEE (and hear and even smell) the person to yourself so clearly that it will all come over to your reader without you having to decribe any of it. But PDJames, the detective story writer, evidently agrees with you. She likes to describe everyone in detail when they first appear - and she is, after all, a good and a famous writer. Perhaps you should mention this to your teacher. |
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From Jack Fotheringham
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I'm sorry, I don't have a scanner, so I can't send you a signature. It was very difficult to get into writing. I was two years younger than you when I realised that was what I wanted to do, but I had to wait another 30 years until I had a book published. |
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From Karen Schwab
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| Diana's Reply Well, I do like my characters to behave as ordinary people would - to the extent that I usually put in an actual, real person just to keep the rest honest - and as you point out, most people spend very little (if any) of their time thinking about Right and Truth and Justice (or only if their teacher seems to have been picking on them). And life for the most part is a mass of small ordinary acts, which, if you are lucky, does add up to something greater. |
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From Emily Manley
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply The first book I ever finished writing was when I was about your age and it took most of a year. People at your stage of life never get enough time. These days I usually do a book in four to six months - but this is only usually. Some books took up to ten years. And I can't promise another Chrestomanci book, because I don't work by planning. I have to wait for a book to come up and hit me. If that one turns out to be a Chrestomanci book, then a lot of people will be happy, me included. |
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From Sarah R. Cattell
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply You asked a difficult question there. Sometimes a book will spring into my head in the middle of one afternoon and I will be writing away at it for the next six months, without any previous preparation at all. CHARMED LIFE was like this. But other books have a long, hard passage and can take up to ten years of thinking and refiguring. The odd thing is that no one knows which kind is which unless I tell them. |
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From Richard Starfield
Other Comments
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Diana's Reply Anyone can be an author, of course, but it takes determination, because you have to teach yourself how to do it. Nobody else can really do it for you. It took me ten years, but I am slow to learn. I've just heard that DEEP SECRET is out of print in the British edition. get a bookshop to order you an American paperback. Yes, I agree. Time travel/crossworld travel may well be happening to us now, but they are not letting us know. There are quite a number of good sf books about this - nice one by Robert Silverberg for starters. And several by Andre Norton. DROWNED AMMET and CART AND CWIDDER overlap. CART AND CWIDDER happens in the early summer - the same gale is mentioned in each - but DROWNED AMMET starts years earlier and goes on into the autumn following the closing of Flennpass. Tanaqui is indeed Cennoreth. |
Fanfiction
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From Michela Ecks
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| Diana's Reply My attitude to all information is that, once it is out in the public domain, then it is there for anyone to use. By all means post what information you want, where you want, but DO make sure it's accurate. Chinese Whispers sort of things can happen so easily. In answer to your other questions: 1. If I objected to fan fiction (or any other kind) derived from my stories, I'd be going mad by now. For instance, Neil Gaiman tells me - as if I needed telling - that he derived AMERICAN GODS from my EIGHT DAYS OF LUKE. I was pretty pleased. 2. I just say 'Feel free'. it would happen even if i didn't. 3. Heavens! Do some people use lawyers for this? The creeps get in everywhere. 4. Terry Pratchett, as always, speaks sound sense. 5. My opinion varies with the quality of what is written. Some is OUCH!!! Some is 'I wish I had thought of that!' |
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From Anna Beyer
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I have no objection at all to people writing and posting fanfiction based on my books. Once a book is published, it is for everyone to do what they want with. I simply can't see why anyone would want fanfiction withdrawn. Must have been some special case there. Interesting question, how big an event would have to be to split a world. The large events like battles and meteor strikes are obvious, but after that you are into chaos theory. I've been fascinated by this ever since I read Asimov and his notion of the minimum necessary change. One of his is the simple shifting of a shortly-to-be-needed cannister to a shelf where it won't be found - rather on the lines of 'For want of a nail the battle was lost...' You can think of all sorts of these. But there could be others - like butterflies in Brazil - or a tree root growing across a certain path - or a piece of paper accidentally shredded - or someone's baby crying all night so they were not their best the next day - or.. Well, I'm sure you can go on. Usually I find it easier to deal with the larger events, like Napoleon winning the battle of Waterloo (which he damn near did), causing all the aristocrats swanning around in Belgium to flee to India, thus making the world of curry and treacle pudding that Chrestomanci remarks on. |
Fire and Hemlock
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From Marie Denley
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| Diana's Reply How nice that you were trained by John. Ok, answers: 1. Like most things in FIRE AND HEMLOCK 'Tan' has a double source. It is partly the Welsh word for fire, but it is also an adaptation of the medieval 'Dan' as in 'Dan Chaucer'. 2. 'Coul' does probably reflect Finn Mac Cool, but it also is 'cool!' in the way kids use it. I think there are other origins in there, but I'm not sure what. 3. The other names of the quartet are indeed out of my head, but I usually find there is some good reason for names, like reflecting 'Hannibal' and 'audacity'. 'Thare' defeats me too, though. 4. the Obah Cypt first occurred to me in a totally different piece of writing which will probably always remain as a five-finger exercise, though it gave certain things to the stories the quartet wrote. 'Obah' is an adaptation of 'Obeah', the West Indian form of (black, quite often) magic. 'Cypt' is a sort of anagram of 'ptyx' which seems to be a sort of holy vessel or container in use on Christian altars. So the whole thing means 'a container for dark magic'. 5. Yes, but 'Hunsdon House' is also a very formal country dance. |
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From Rachel
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply The reference to pigs in ARCHER'S GOON is to Dillian and her disappearing house. Dillian farms the police and police are often (particularly in America, but here too sometimes) called pigs. 'Leroy' means 'the King' and Laurel and Morton are, in some sense, queen and king of faerie. Laurel has 'Lorelei' in there, but laurel also symbolises triumph and long (or even everlasting) life. It's only one of the names she takes over the centuries. Sebastian was the saint who was shot full of arrows. If you look at things from his point of view, he had a lot to bear. 'Morton' is a name that glances at 'mort' - death. Yes, the others at the funeral are mostly immortal too. One of them is Robin Goodfellow - ie Puck. I hope the sensible adults don't kick you as they step over. |
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From Libby
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| Diana's Reply There are gateways all over, to go backwards through your message. The Tough Guide certainly IS available in the US. Ask a bookstore to order you a copy from Daw Books. The Chrestomanci was the same one in all the books - except for THE LIVES OF CHRISTOPHER CHANT, where that was Gabriel de Witt. And I can't tell you what I'll be writing next because I don't know myself usually until I start. And no, it was no coincidence about the things coming true in FIRE AND HEMLOCK. I was hoping to lay the jinx by this, but no chance. They still happen at me. |
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From jenni
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| Diana's Reply Laurel is the dreaded (and loved) immortal goddess who likes to carry off young men. She doesn't die. She has to take someone else's life to keep on living. The other people disappeared at the end when the car knocked over the rose bushes because they were immortals too and they were, for the moment, defeated. The fire and hemlock picture is the the thing called an Obah Cypt which was really a spell to enslave Mr Lynn's soul. Polly's charm was only a weak little opal. Strong magic can suck a thing like that dry in seconds. |
Howl's Moving Castle / Castle in the Air
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From Mashael Zaidi
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I am IMPRESSED. You typed the whole book? You must know it almost as well as I do - in fact I know you do because you realise that Morgan would grow up with Sophie's faults as well as Howl's. I think Lettie's baby was a girl, wasn't it? When the book does get written I think some of the other kids in it will be the children of the two fat nieces and Dalzel. But I don't know more than that yet. |
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From Angela Nguyen
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I think all you need to know is either in the book or on the website. |
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From Katie
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I keep wanting to do another book about Howl, but it so far won't come to me. |
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From Margaret
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply Yes, I would like to do another book about the moving castle, but, even though I know a lot of things that would be in it, the book has not yet shown itself ready to be written. It's something I keep in mind though. (I may say I have tried to do this book five times, and it still isn't ready). |
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From Aifric Ní Ruairc
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I would really love to write another book about Sophie and Howl, but it doesn't happen that easily. I would love to have Morgan in it when he is older and also the kids of the two fat nieces (who I know were born with tiny useless wings and rather long teeth) but books don't come to me because I plan them. They happen at me, and so far a new book about Sophie and Howl hasn't happened. |
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From Aaron Casto
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I made the story of HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE because I visited a school where a boy of almost exactly your age asked me if I'd ever written a book about a moving castle. That turned out to be the spark that set the book going. |
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From Hong
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply You'll have to join a very long line to get a Howl of your own, unless you happen to run into him before the rest of us! The line now stretches all the way round the world. Yes, I do like incorporating fairy tales into my books - and not usually twisting them, more adapting them to the present day - because they are the kind of tale that says more about life and people than any other. And, as I have written to other people on this page, nothing seems to make a new book about Howl and the others GO anywhere yet, although I have made several tries. Books will never be forced. |
On Harry Potter
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From Elizabeth Brown
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply Yes, I was a little upset, because that amount of borrowing merits some kind of acknowledgement at least. I just don't know how deliberate the plagiarism was. And I got very tired of scandal-seeking pressmen asking what my feelings were. I usually gave them a smoooth answer about how good it was for the genre and was always pleased when they said 'You're no fun!' and went away. |
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From nadine
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| Diana's Reply Thank you. I enjoyed the Harry Potter books, but I did find some parts of them strangely familiar. |
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From Alisha
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply My books were published 25 - 20 years before the Harry Potter books. My guess is that JK Rowling read them when she was your age. I think she must have liked them. |
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From Emmanuel
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| Diana's Reply Thank you. I had heard about Nancy Stouffer actually. The fact that she was not Rowling's only source adds to my feeling that she sopped up these things unconsciously when she was young. Did you know - this is something similar - that Beatrix Potter lived as a child near a big London cemetary where the graves are, to this day, labelled Peter Rabbett and Jeremiah Fisher, both people who died before BP was born? What I mean is that things stick in your head when you're young and you don't always know where you got them from. |
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From Sara Krasner
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply 'Competition' isn't really a problem to most writers. Most of the time you're delighted that someone has liked your books enough to do something similar - for instance the current best-selling fantasy in America was inspired by my book EIGHT DAYS OF LUKE and the writer sent it to me before it was published to see what I thought. And I told him FANTASTIC! And look at it this way: most books are only several hundred pages long and people can't keep rereading them too often, so they will naturally then want to read another book quite like it. So nobody loses. |
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From Lisa Jo Rudy
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply Best wishes for your YA novels. And, yes, I don't think I can be the only writer of YA fantasy who gets irritated that most adults seem to think Rowling invented the genre. You do wonder what all these ignorant people were reading when they were young. |
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From Shaun
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply Well, actually, I'd always rather read a book by someone else. I know too well what's coming next in my own books. This problem, unfortunately, arises with the Harry Potter books too. I hope I never end up on a desert island with only the choice you gave me! |
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From Cody Kinker
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I do write the answers myself. No one else knows what the answers should be. When you ask about a sequel to WITCH WEEK, do you mean something that isn't the other books about the enchanter Chrestomanci? The problem with WITCH WEEK is that by the end of that book the world that it happens in is destroyed, melted back into our own world, and it would be hard to do a sequel from here. |
Dark Lord of Derkholm / Year of the Griffin / Tough Guide
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From Paul Andinach
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply 'Derk' is pronounced 'urk'. I think it is that world's form of Derek, but I wanted it to be like a knife-name, like Blade. And, well, Chesney COULD be pronounced to rhyme with Disney - I certainly had that in mind. But don't tell any lawyers. Thank you for enjoying my books. You have no idea how encouraging it is when someone tells me that. |
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From Liz
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| Diana's Reply There will be more books about Derkholm because I have sworn so to my sister, but I'm afraid I won't be able to start on one until next year at least. |
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From moira
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| Diana's Reply yes, I swear, I have sworn, I love writing about griffins. |
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From Rose
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply I am not sure when I will do the sequel to YEAR OF THE GRIFFIN. I am still thinking about what will be in it. |
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From Hannah
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply My sister feels the same way as you do about YEAR OF THE GRIFFIN and has made me swear a solemn oath that I will write more about griffins in Derk's world. So, you see I have to write it eventually. I am as sorry as you are that it isn't NOW. I have been terribly busy these last two years with other things, and then I was ill, so nothing has been written at all lately. Do not despair though. I love writing about Kit and Elda and almost can't wait. Best of luck in your AS-levels. |
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From Justin
Other Comments
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| Diana's Reply The map of Europe upside down in the TOUGH GUIDE was the idea of my agent's daughter (who is also my goddaughter) when she was about 14. We thought it was brilliant of her. Then my agent and I had a wonderful day's fun filling in names, a lot of them, as you realised, normal names backwards, and some just made up, like The Scrots. But my agent said one of the things that always annoyed and amused her was the way one or two names on the maps were always names of improbably ordinary towns - like Nuneaton. So we put in Nuneaton, though it could easily have been Bognor Regis or Hartlepool or Devizes. I hope Harper will keep the books in print. But you never know with publishers. At the moment they are reissuing most of them, so I hope your bookshop will be able to get hold of them. The ordering of books is ridiculously difficult. I have had a book on order from the States for four months now and there's still no sign of it. |
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