I really wanted to! Of course, we always see ourselves differently from other people see us. In so many fantasy novels we have the big scary monsters who show up and kill people and disappear into the wilderness, but the question is: How do they see themselves? Do they have the capacity to change?
Since the book has come out, one of the most gratifying and interesting things for me has been seeing the reactions of people who grew up with them. Christian Holub. Save FB Tweet More. Eragon Book. Credit: Knopf Books for Young Readers. There are some technical writing challenges in the last book and, of course, there's the sheer size of the novel. It's bigger than any of the previous books…which are substantial! Inheritance is well over pages longer than the last book so that in and of itself was a challenge, just getting through that many pages and that many words.
Keith - Was it easier writing when the story was known only to you, or later, when the public were coming up with their own ideas? Some parts of the series were easier to write in the first book, and some parts have been easier in later books.
It's always a give and take. You get better at one aspect of writing and then sometimes as a result of that improvement of your skill, another aspect of the writing will become harder. Just as an example, if you become more skilled with wordplay, you may attempt more wordplay, more complicated wordplay, and then your writing actually gets harder as a result.
So, yes, there were some parts of Eragon that were much easier to write, just because I didn't have a lot of awareness of how to edit or what other people might think of my writing or anything like that. And then, conversely, there were parts of Eragon that were very difficult to write because I didn't have the technical skills to accomplish what I really wanted to accomplish and that's something I could now look at and say, oh, I could do that easily. Keith - How do you write?
A little everyday or big chunks every so often? I view writing as a job and so I sit down every day and work a certain amount every day whether or not I feel like it though if I am actually sick I will take time off.
If you want to be a professional writer then you need to write consistently. Inspiration strikes about once every blue moon which, for me, is once every two and a half to three months, which is when I'll get really and truly inspired about something. That's not to say I don't love what I'm working on on a day-to-day basis, but I mean that sort of white hot fever of intensity of creation that sometimes strikes.
That doesn't occur all the time so you need to be able to work even when that's not driving you forward. A book is not a sprint, it's a marathon. Well, some books are a sprint. Some smaller books you can blow through in a fairly fast period of time.
But, for the most part, books are marathons, especially books of the length that I write. So you have to prepare yourself mentally and physically to get through however many months of work it's going to take and that requires being disciplined and accepting that even if you don't feel like you're getting a lot of work done day to day, as long as you get something done then at the end of a year or two years you're going to have a lot of work finally piled up.
I have a whole bunch of stories I'd like to tackle next. Some are sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, thriller, horror…You name it, I'd like to try it. Science fiction is going to be my next writing adventure but I can't say completely for certain yet, just because I need to survive the upcoming book tour which is going to take a couple of months and once that's finished I'll take a nice long breath and rest for a few months and then I'll choose one of the stories I'd like to write next and dive into it.
Hannah — how did you come up with the characters' names and where did you get the idea for the story? The idea for the story began with me reading all sorts of other fantasy and falling in love with the genre, and then I read one book in particular, called Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville and it's a young adult book about a young boy in this world who goes into this beat-up old curiosity shop and he finds this stone that he ends up buying and the stone hatches a dragon.
I loved that idea so much of a young boy finding a dragon egg that I started asking myself all sorts of questions — who might find a dragon egg out in the middle of nowhere, how did the dragon egg get there, who else might be looking for the dragon egg, and just by asking myself questions like that I was able to develop the world, the story, the characters.
As far as naming the characters? The names have all come from many different places. Some are invented using the rules of my invented languages, some are wordplay such as Saphira being a play on Sapphire or Eragon being Dragon with the first letter changed. And then others are historical names, I use a certain amount of old English, Germanic names for some of the humans, stuff like that and some of them are just little hidden in-jokes as well, which gives me a little bit of amusement when I'm writing.
You know, no one has caught all of them! I've mentioned a few of them in interviews but no one has caught all of them but maybe one day I'll write a little article or something for the fans and talk about all of those. I think my favourite character is either Angela the Herbalist, who is based on my sister Angela, or the dragon Saphira.
I think her relationship with Eragon is really the heart of the series. I'm very fond of her character so I think any of the scenes with her or from her point of view rank at the top of my list in terms of favourite parts of the series. I'm always going to be fond of Eragon, just because it is the first book of the series and the first book that I wrote.
But I think that the last book I wrote is usually my favourite book, just because I continually try to improve myself as a writer and push myself as a writer and I like to think that I am improving and so I definitely think that Inheritance is the best book of the series and it's certainly my favourite one at the moment. Why are humans different colours? I think dragons are different colours because, one, it would be kind of boring if they were all the same colour and, two, because the dragons want to be different colours.
In my world, the dragons get to do what the dragons want to do and so no one's going to tell a dragon it can't be purple or pink or rainbow coloured so I think it's just because the dragons want to be different colours. Molly — if you could have a dragon, what colour would it be and why? It would definitely be blue but I'm partially colour blind and so the blue I'm thinking of is probably actually purple. But that, to me, is my favourite colour and that's why Saphira is blue as well.
Catherine - do you make up all the characters before you start a book or do you add characters as you go along? I do both. Some of my characters I invented before I started writing the series. Except for his Eragon books, Christopher Paolini has also announced that he is writing his first science-fiction novel to be titled To Sleep in a Sea of Stars and published September Currently, Christopher Paolini lives in Paradise Valley with his family, where he works on his next — probably not Eragon-related — next book.
Eragon, the son of Brom and Selena, is a year-old farm boy growing up on his uncles farm, who comes across a strange stone in the mountains while traversing the Spire. Saphira and Eragon leave to escape, and they hide in the forest. As such, Eragon became the first dragon rider in a years. Later, he was trained by Brom and Oromis. He became a highly skilled swordsman and a magician, he became the champion of the Varden and their cause, who opposed the rule of King Galbatorix and his Empire.
A compelling and action-filled adventure … a galloping good example of its genre Daily Telegraph. A portrayal of true affection between boy and dragon … Paolini writes like someone gripped by his own story Guardian.
An authentic work of great talent. I found myself dreaming about it at night, and reaching for it as soon as I woke. Liz Rosenberg. Will appeal to the legions of readers who have been captivated by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. School Library Journal. Sadly disappointed in this author.
0コメント