Let’s flip the conceptual pancake a little bit in terms of collaboration, and let’s think about the idea of you coming up with the concept, you creating the world, and then turning that over to other people to write short stories about.
Right. Yeah, I’ve considered that. I know that Eric Flint has had a lot of success with that, and created an entire community based around—what’s it, the…1632? Is that the name? It’s a number, so [?]—it’s his big alternate history line where the community has essentially created a short story magazine based in this world almost without his involvement—he’s of course been involved, but it’s [?], and it’s fascinating how the fans have jumped into this world and really created something where it’s essentially sanctioned fanfic by Eric, which becomes canon because they all work together and create this story together. It’s very interesting. I’ve considered doing that with novel ideas—and you see this happening sometimes with writers—I’ve got, now with the Wheel of Time that takes so much of my dedication and time—and, you know, rightly so; I want these books to be fantasticvI can’t work on all the side projects I used to, which is a little bit sad to me, so I’ve considered getting some authors that I know and respect who are wanting to break in, writing out a 20,000-word outline and saying, “Okay, take this and make it 90,000 words; let’s see what it turns into. I’ve considered doing that; I don’t know if I’ll ever actually do it, but I’ve considered seeing what that would do.
Well, it does have its roots in the old pulp publishing model, where the editor would assign a story concept or a character to a writer, and also, in the 60s there was a gentleman by the name of—and he’s somebody I’ve been researching lately, so he’s on my mind as I say this—his name was Lyle Kenyon Engel, and he was a gentleman who gave John Jakes one of his major breaks, and James Reasoner, who was a huge Western author—some of their breaks, and several other very well-known authors of mysteries and genre fiction—their breaks—but he was, in essence, a “book packager”. He would come up with the concept; he would pitch the publisher, and say “We’re going to create a series of books based around this central character. I will have my writers write it, but this is basically what you’re going to get.” You know, “Can we put you down for,” you know, “this series of eight books, and then we’ll go from there.” You know, and then he would hire the writers to write for that. Being as you’re, you know, in the Wheel of Time now, you know…tremendous opportunity…
Mmhmm.
The drawbacks are that you’re working in somebody else’s wheelhouse.
Yep.
But is that really a drawback?
Well, for this particular project, no. But it’s very specific. There are a couple of things going on here. First of all, I read Eye of the World in 1990 in paperback when it first came out and have been reading these books as they came out ever since. I read them through numerous times. One of my favorite authors of all time, if not my favorite author, is Robert Jordan. And so, the chance on the fanboy side…heh. To be perfectly honest, to work on this, to take this master who’s inspired me, and then be part of it, is incredible.
I can hear the glee from here.
Yeah. It’s amazing. I don’t know that I would have said yes to anyone else, because of some of the limitations. Now, another limitation that I don’t have to deal with in this that you do have to in other shared worlds is…Harriet, the editor and wife of Robert Jordan, handed me the project and essentially gave me carte blanche , said “Okay, this is your project now. You write this project as you feel you need to write it. Here are the notes.” You know, “Don’t throw out anything from the notes unless you’ve got a really good reason, but you’re in charge.” I’m not just the writer; I’m the project manager and the story developer and all these things wrapped up in one, which is what you’re not if you’re writing for something like Star Wars . You are one of many; you have to be micro-managed quite a bit, as I understand, when you’re writing for one of these type of properties.
[Something about Wikipedia]
Yeah. I don’t have to do that. Now I do have to make sure I’m being consistent with the world and things, but I’ve got lots of continuity experts in-house who can help me to make sure that that happens, but really, I’ve got creative control. The final say is with Harriet, but I’ve got a lot of creative power. And I’m using that to actually not use it very often. Whenever Robert Jordan has something in the notes, I’m using what he said—I’m not taking this and trying to make it my own—but it is incredibly liberating to work on a project like this and also have, at the same time, this creative control. So that’s another aspect of it.
Now, the big limitation is, it doesn’t belong to me—which is fine, for this project—but that’s the thing you have to get into. Like, when that “book packager” is pitching a series of books, he’s gonna own that story from the copyright, which makes me very wary as a writer. The other great thing about being an author as opposed to being in film, or being in television, or even being in music a lot of times is that you, as the writer, own the whole thing. You generally don’t sign away characters, worlds, setting, or anything—it’s all yours. You have complete control over your story. A publisher like Tor buys the rights generally to publish it in English in North America. That’s what they do. They get to package it how they want, they have control over the art and things like that, but the words are mine, and I retain control. The copyright is mine, which is fantastically different than if you’re working in the video game industry, for instance. If you’re working for a company and you come up with this brilliant, wonderful story, and you’ve developed it, and you work on it, and you have this amazing video game come out, the company then owns rights to all that, and can do whatever they want with it. The same thing generally with comic books—not always, but a lot of the time—and, you know, what you get instead is a regular paycheck, which for an artist is a pretty nice thing, but you trade off on that creative control, and creative ownership. And in novels you still have that creative ownership. It’s the only major entertainment medium where the creator retains ownership so wholly.
And so, that’s the biggest thing that worries me about collaborations and things like that is, you know, who has ownership? This is the last, so-to-speak, line of defense in that. Some other industry executives’ minds when they find out… If something gets really big like Harry Potter, Scholastic or Bloomsbury doesn’t own that; J. K. Rowling does. And by the corporate-think, that’s really ridiculous; they shouldn’t be allowing that to happen. But for the artist, it’s what’s best for the series, I think, and the story, and it allows the artist to be in control. So, yeah. That’s the big line of defense, and we are very, very wary in science fiction and fantasy in particular, about letting any sort of contract language slip in which would infringe on that.
One of the challenges of the translation of Terry Goodkind’s novels to the television is the fact that, here you have of these long epic novels that advance, in Terry’s case, a particular philosophic position, and you end up with a pretty good [?]—I’m not disparaging the show; I actually really like Legend of the Seeker —but it’s very different to watch that kind of slapsticky, samurai-y moment in the middle of Terry Goodkind’s story. So I know exactly what you’re saying; I think it’s a perfect example.
And just think if they’d been able to do Wizard’s First Rule as a complete, one-season epic arc, rather than having to worry about slapstick and things like this.
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