Archives for 2008

Seattle Signing Transcript

Thank you so much for coming out tonight and wasn’t that just so amazing?  

I’m pretty bummed this is probably the last time in my life I get to be on stage at a rock concert and it’s hard to let that go.  But it has been such an amazing experience to get to work with Justin and sit back there and listen to all of this every other night or so.  It’s been fantastic. I’m just really glad you all could hear that. It’s amazing stuff. I picked some questions that you guys had filled out for the show and hopefully I picked the right ones to answer your burning questions about Breaking Dawn. Although I picked one from The Host.  

Q: Besides Midnight Sun and continuing The Host Series, what else are you thinking of writing about? 

A: First of all obviously I need to work on Midnight Sun and get that finished.  And I don’t know if I will get back to vampires or even The Host, which has kinda been calling to me lately. There are a lot of other characters that are just dying for their chance.  It’s kinda a funny place inside my head.  There’s a lot of people there and they are always jockeying for time and so there’s a couple of stories I’m really excited about right now.  So I think the next thing will probably be a ghost story.  

Q:  (from Lindsey)  You said that Twilight originally had a more defined ending what would that be?

A: Originally when Twilight was just going to be one book and I wasn’t thinking about sequels, Bella and Edward got engaged at the end of Twilight and were headed off toward their happily ever after and then I kept writing epilogues very long epilogues  and I realized gosh I’m not ready to be done with these characters but where do I go from here?  And that’s why I wrote the original sequel that I call Forever Dawn.  It sorta starts where Eclipse ended and then I thought there’s a lot of time skipped over here.  Bella’s senior year, there is so much that I had just said eh with one thing and another…..So I went back and delved more deeply into high school and I’m really glad I did because I had a tremendous time writing Eclipse.  That’s where Twilight originally ended.  

Q: (from Rebecca)  Could you please explain all the symbolism in the four covers?

A: Twilight which is about the idea of choice.  You have an offer in that cover.  Are you going to choose to take that apple.  Apples have a lot of history so there’s a good chance that it’s poisoned, just going off the mythology.  So that made a really interesting idea.  Is Bella going to find out about this other world or is she happier the way she is?  Of course we know what she chose. Then we have New Moon, a very lovely ruffled tulip that means nothing at all.  This was before I got to veto covers, so that one someone in the company thought that was a really cool color scheme.   And I was like okay well whatever.  Then we have Eclipse, which I did get to have a say in.  And this is sort of a physical example of what happens when you try to break away from your old life and you don’t do it clean cut.  It gets messy.  There are strings you can’t break.  Bella trying to break away from her life it got pretty messy for awhile there, so this was my visual representation of that.   And then we have Breaking Dawn which I did have a say in and this is exactly what I wanted.  And I was really happy with the way it turned out.  There are two reasons for this cover in one sense it is the cover for the entire series.  Because we have Bella starting out as the weakest player on the board and then she progresses to where she becomes the most powerful player on the board.  And she’s really the one that affects the ending of the story.  Also it’s specific to Breaking Dawn because I knew the end was going to be a mental game and what game represents a mental game more than chess?  So I wanted to foreshadow the end.  

Q: (from Janessa)  In the beginning of each book you but a quote, what was your favorite quote so far?  

A:   I really liked doing Fire and Ice because it’s one of my favorite poems.  I was really pleased at how nicely that tied in. And I really enjoyed quoting Orson Scott Card in the last one because all these other authors are dead and gone and here we have someone in the modern day who is writing with such insight that he can do these profound one sentence statements that just blow me away so I was really excited to quote him.

Q:  (from Caitlin)  Do you think of things as you write them or do you have them all planned out ahead of time?

A:  I’ve noticed a lot of people that come out to my signings, like 99% are interested in writing in some capacity.  I think those are the kind of people that come to signings, they want to know more about it.  so I like to pull a few questions about writing.  I am still pretty new to the process.  I’ve only been doing this for five years.  With Twilight, there was no plan.  It was completely a mess.  I just wrote to see what would happen.  After that I did have to use outlines.  But I don’t stick to them very often.  I think my favorite outline is for The Host.  In the end it was at least 75 pages long single spaced.  It actually included portions of dialogue  and then I was changing it as things went.  Things that were in the outline melted away and others came in which happens a lot when you have strong characters they don’t follow the rules, or the outline.  So I’m still playing with that.  I like to do really long detailed outlines that I then refuse to follow.  That’s sorta my system right now.  

Q: (from Nichole)  How would you encourage other writers? 

A:  I think that my life should be an encouragement to other writers.  I did not plan to have a writing career.  I was terrified at the thought of trying to get published because of the rejection that was sure to come.  And look what’s happened.  This is amazing.  I’m in this room with 2000 people who are excited about my books.  And I get to hang out with a rock star backstage.  So if that doesn’t encourage you, i don’t know what will. 

Q:  When is Midnight Sun going to be published?

A:  I want you all to know that this may not happen right away.   I have for the past three years been under deadlines.  It’s been rough.  So I’m planning on taking my time and writing when the spirit strikes.  Now that could mean it won’t take very long at all.  I wrote Twilight very quickly but I don’t want to make any promises.  So I can’t give you exact dates on this but when I have a workable rough draft I will have a sense of how long because the editing process is fairly standard and I will be able to let you know when that is going to be.  

Q:  Now a question about The Host. (Stephenie gives a thumbs up and grins adorably)  In The Host when Kyle goes after Jodi, why did he not feel the hatred and resentment to Sunny that Jared felt towards Wanda?  

A:  The reason is because he knew Wanda and even though he reacted pretty negatively toward her himself, it let him view Sunny in a whole different perspective.  And so he wasn’t able to have that negative reaction.  Once you’ve been hanging out around a Soul it’s hard to see them in the same way.  

Q: (from Jan) What kind of Ferrari does Bella drive?

A:  Such an easy answer because really can you drive anything other than an F 430?  Is there another Ferrari?  Because I’m not aware of one.  Oh and it’s red.

Q: If the werewolves stay werewolves for as long as there is danger will Jake remain a werewolf forever? 

A:  That’s not exactly how it works.  The vampires being around triggers the change but after that as long as they phase into a werewolf fairly frequently, I don’t know a couple times a month…They have to stop phasing completely for the aging to pick up again so Jacob’s pretty much good to go.  

Q:  Why did you decide not to have a bloodbath at the end of Breaking Dawn, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad everyone lived but there was so much built up for the Volturi confrontation.

A:  This was something that I always knew was going to be this way.  And I did try to put a few clues into the manuscript.  The mention of The Merchant of Venice was deliberate to foreshadow a battle of the minds more than a physical battle.  I am not a person, I don’t think I have it in me to write the Hamlet ending where like everything is bodies and there is one guy you don’t know standing there giving a monologue about how tragic it all was.  That is so not me.  And I knew if the fight really got started that there were not going to be very many people left standing on either side and I wanted a win, I wanted a clear cut win and this was the way to do it.

Q:  How were Jane and Alec special in their human lives to warrant such superbly powerful vampire talents?  

A:  So Alec and Jane are really for all intents and purposes in the Twilight universe would be considered witches when they were human.  If you made Jane angry with you, even as a small child, bad things happened.  Aro was aware of the twins and he was very interested in acquiring them.  So imagine his disapproval when their village burned them at the stake. He interrupted that and village was no more and being burned at the stake part sort focused all their talents.  Alec became all about no pain, that’s where he was focusing.  Whereas Jane wanted to inflict that pain on others.  So that’s really how their talents developed. But they were talented before, when they were human.  

Q:  Out of all of Carlisle’s nomadic vampire friends, which one is your favorite?

A:  Clearly  I have a soft spot for Garrett right?  I really had fun bringing in the vampire world with all the range that is there  I really like Siobhan too.  She’s pretty cool.  And then the Romanians I just love.  They are creepy in such a fascinating way.  

Q: (from Jessica)  Where you sad when you made Bella a vampire and do you/did you miss her human qualities.  

A:  One of the interesting things about writing Bella as a vampire was that she really did lose some of her relatablity for me because at every point up until that point in the story I would say I could step into this story right here and I could do everything she could do which made it really fun.  You felt like you could be a part of the book because you knew, I could do what Bella does, I could trip.  So I could relate to her she wasn’t this super exotic person with magic powers, she was just Bella.  And I liked that.  I did know she was going to be a  vampire, all along I knew that by the way.  All these people were like are you ever going to make her a vampire and I wanted say um YEAH.  So I knew she was going to be a vampire and I wanted to experience that.  I wanted to get a sense of what that felt like.  But at the same time in writing it I couldn’t step into the story any more because I couldn’t do that.  And that made it a little harder.  So I was kinda sad to see her lose that relatablity.   Because she was a new and exciting Bella but she wasn’t a Bella I could be  and it was a little bit sad for me but I wanted to her to have that ending.  So I was happy for her but we just weren’t as close as we had been before.  It was a little weird.  

Q:  Why did you chose to end this series after the fourth book?  

A:  I knew this wasn’t going to be the same story once Bella was a vampire and it wasn’t going to be the same experience so after her story was resolved in that way, I feel like it’s told there are series that can go on forever and ever but I feel like it would be really unnatural to prolong Bella’s story that way and I didn’t want to ruin the story arc.  When the story goes the right direction for me, it’s very visual and I can see the shape of it every story has a different shape and as a whole, these four books this was the right shape for them.  So it was the right place to end and it doesn’t mean that I am done but there are a whole lot of stories in my head, but this story has just reached it’s natural conclusion and I don’t want to ruin that.