Scott Westerfeld is possibly best known as the author of the hugely successful Uglies series, but he has also written another YA series, the Midnighters, three stand alone YA novels and five science fiction books for adults. And, of course, Leviathan, the first of yet another series. He’s a Texan by birth, but spent his childhood living on both sides of the US. Maybe that goes some way to explaining why he and his Australian writer wife, Justine Larbalestier, are ‘bisummeral’: splitting the year between New York and Sydney summers.
In this interview in London (it’s sort of en route between his two bases), he talks to Jeannette Towey about Leviathan, working with an illustrator in particular, and teenagers.
Leviathan is a very different sort of book. Where did the idea come from?
The success of Uglies gave me a huge opportunity. It meant I could do what I wanted. So I made a list of stuff that I liked. I spent a lot of time in my parent’s attic going through boxes of old boys’ adventure stories. And of course, there was the technology. I write about that a lot. I think people spend a lot of time with tools; often tools define how people turn out, what they are. So if you play with technology, you play with people.
And what about the illustrations?
I wanted the book to feel like it came from a different time and place. When I’d written about sixteen thousand words, I realised it needed illustrations. I did some research, looking for the sort of illustrator that I thought could produce the look and feel I wanted, and I found Keith Thompson. His background isn’t illustration: he worked previously in video game and movie design, focussing on creatures. He has a perfectionist sort of attitude and does loads of research. For example, when he started, he studied Punch magazines from the 1910s so that he could recapture the period look.
How do you work together?
Working with an illustrator is very different to working alone. Writers can hedge a bit about what something looks like but an illustrator needs precision. Keith needs to know exactly how big something is, its shape, how it works, everything. He’s actually produced these amazing colour drawings of the Leviathan, for example, with cut-aways showing all the major rooms, and everything. It’s great for me when I’m writing a scene because I can see exactly how it will play out. We’re hoping to publish these drawings in a large ‘field guide’ sort of book to go with the series.
What about the mechanics of working together? What comes first text or illustration?
Generally I write a couple of chapters, Keith produces sketches, and I rewrite. All sorts of considerations come into play when you have illustrations. Keith might ask me to remove a character from a scene because the drawing composition just won’t work with that extra character. You also have to be careful about things like not having too many night time scenes, one after the other, or too many indoor ones. We try to get variety into the illustrations, alternating big scenes with detailed ones, things like that.
The next book in the series, Behemoth, is out in the autumn. What can you tell us about it? Does the egg hatch?
Oh yes. The egg hatches and just in time!
The Ottoman Empire appears in Behemoth and that’s really interesting because although the Ottoman Empire is a Clanker power it’s also embedded in another aesthetic which is more organic. So what you end up with are mechanised animals, like the huge mechanical elephant walkers that the Emperor uses. History starts to diverge in Behemoth too. In Leviathan I kept pretty true to history, but events in Behemoth take the First World War in a different direction
There’s a lot of dystopian fiction around for teens at the moment. Do you think that’s anything to do with the aftermath of 9/11 and war on terror.
Possibly. It’s a bit like the ash cloud. We suddenly discovered that technology that we’d taken for granted didn’t work anymore. 9/11 had that effect too. Then you could fly but no-one wanted to. So you had to find another way to travel. Cell phones didn’t work for a while either.
And the psychological impact?
I’m not so sure. It seems to me that modern teens have any number of apocalypses on offer: 9/11, H1N1, Aids, global warming, etc. That’s the difference between modern teens and those growing up in the 70s, say, where the only thing to worry about was the Cold War. There’s pleasure to be had out of apocalypses though: figuring out if you’d survive and how. Plus there’s no more homework to do, no grown-ups nagging you, freedom! So I think dystopia means escapism. And I think teens need that. They get a bad press but I think they’re pretty impressive. I don’t think we’ve figured out what it means to be a teen, even when teenage starts and ends. If they go round in groups we think they’re threatening. We don’t really treat them as human at all at times. And yet they come through it all. When you think about it, that’s really amazing.
Leviathan is supposed to be aimed at a younger audience than your previous work. Did it feel different writing it?
I don’t really think about age ranges when I’m writing and I’m not at all sure that Leviathan is for a younger age range any way. What I do know is that it gets read by reluctant readers and also teens with a younger reading age. I think that’s because of the illustrations. History teachers like it too. I think alternate history is quite popular with teachers. And a lot of military liked Leviathan. I got a lot of fan email from guys with military email addresses. That’s how I know.
You travel a lot. How does that affect your writing?
I try to write about 3-4 hours a day wherever I am. I create rituals to help me. So I try to write at the same time each day and I have a particular chair, one in New York and one in Sydney. Plus, of course, travel is good for writing. It raises questions, makes you think.
Did you travel for research for the Leviathan series?
Absolutely. I took a big tour of Austria, Germany and Italy. I even got to go up in a Zepellin in Germany. That was an amazing experience. They fly low and slowly. So you get to see all the detail in the landscape and because the engines are so far away from the gondola, they’re very quiet. I took loads of photos. In fact I started to feel like I’d become glued to the camera while I was up in that thing. It was a fantastic experience.
And finally, what comes after Behemoth?
The next in the series: Goliath.
Thank you, Scott Westerfeld, for talking to WriteAway and for sharing your wonderful photos and illustrations on your ipad.
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