Katharine – Mythic Scribes Test Site

Writing Historical Fantasy – Interview with Ian Tregillis

Ian Tregillis is the author of the Milkweed Triptych trilogy, and is a contributor to George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards series. His latest book is Something More Than Night, a noir urban fantasy detective story of fallen angels and nightclub stigmatics.

He joins us to answer questions on writing both historical fantasy and alternate history.

Your work is described as either historical fantasy or alternate history. For readers who aren’t familiar with the differences between the two, could you explain how your work gains these descriptions?

I imagine that people who know me, or my background, must feel confused when they hear me described as a writer of historically influenced novels. It surprises me, too, though I understand why it happens.

Playing with Story Structure – Interview with Steven Brust

by Katharine

Steven Brust is the author of twenty-six novels so far, with his most popular following the assassin Vlad Taltos (starting with the novel Jhereg). His most recent novel, The Incrementalists, is a collaboration with author Skyler White.

Steven is also a member of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, a group of writers who value 19th-century values of storytelling. He joins us to discuss something he loves to do, playing with structure.

Speaking generally, where do your ideas start – a plot or structure idea, a character, a question you want answered – or does it change with each novel?

It changes with each novel. With Hawk, it was plot structure. With Athyra, it was a single image I couldn’t get out of my head. Sometimes it’s a particular scene that grabs me, so I need to write to it, then follow up the consequences. My favorite is when I get a sentence that makes me go, “That’d be a great first sentence for a book. I wonder what the book is about?”

Writing Secondary Characters – Interview with Scott Lynch

by Katharine

Winner of the Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award and 2007 World Fantasy Award finalist, Scott Lynch is the author of the Gentleman Bastard Sequence, several short stories and an online serial, Queen of the Iron Sands.

He has a strong following who call themselves ‘priests of the crooked author’ and many others, too, have been eagerly awaiting his next book, The Republic of Thieves, which will be out in October 2013.

We can safely say that your novels have a balance of in-depth main and secondary, then background characters, all receiving their due page (screen) time. When planning (or writing/editing), how do you get that balance humming?

The magic, I think, lies in the editing process… first I tend to ensure that I simply have the necessary secondary characters in place to serve their story functions.