Scott Westerfeld

This week I failed to make a Book Challenge video, which is really lame of me because I had a lot of bookish things to talk about. You may be able to tell from the title of this post that one of those things is Scott Westerfeld, whom I saw last Thursday at Copperfield's, which is my local bookstore. The other things may come to you in future posts.

If you do watch my Book Challenge videos, not only are you wonderful for putting up with my inarticulate babbling and awkwardness, but you know that I am reading the Leviathan trilogy and have been impressed with its illustrations. You can check out a few of the illustrations here.  Let's be honest, though, you should really just read the trilogy so that you can see all of it. Though I'm about 100 pages from finishing the last book in the trilogy, Goliath, I highly recommend it. It is extremely clever and action-packed (really, there's hardly a moment without action in the whole trilogy), plus the characters are awesome. 

Anyway, like I said, I love the illustrations of these books, so I was thrilled to have the chance to hear Scott talk about why these books are illustrated and the process they underwent. Now, I've waited a week to write this and I have a notoriously bad memory, so I must apologize if my memory fails me in any way. Scott asked us to think back to when we were kids and handed our first book without illustrations to which we responded, "Where are the pictures?" and  the reply was, "Use your imagination." Well, Scott says this is bull, which I would have to agree with. Up through the the first few decades of the 20th century, all novels were illustrated, whether for children or adults. Illustrations were extremely influential. For example, Sherlock Holmes was drawn with a hat which became his trademark, when, in fact, the hat was never mentioned in the text. According to Scott (I've never read any Sherlock Holmes), the style of hat actually goes against Sherlock's character, but because of the power of illustration, that is what he became known for. In some cases during this period, illustrations were more important than text. There were many books, such as War of the Worlds, whose illustrators were written in a bigger font than the authors on the cover. Text was often made for the illustrations as opposed to the other way around. Once the invention of the camera came about, illustrations began to die out.

Scott decided that he wanted his novels to appear like one that may have been produced in 1914 (when they are set), so he worked with illustrator Keith Thomson. It started with Scott writing a few chapters then sending them to Keith who would illustrate and send them to Scott who would tell him what he wanted tweaked and changed. After awhile, though, Keith got to a point where he had illustrated everything Scott had sent him, but he wanted to keep going. Scott told him to go ahead and just draw some things and it got to the point where he was changing and adding scenes in his books to include the things that Keith had drawn. They were both really enjoying themselves and took it all to unnecessary levels of detail. Scott would make rudimentary models and send pictures to Keith who came back with full-color artwork that fit exactly what Scott wanted. They worked together to create a detailed cross-section of the Leviathan, creating sections of the airship that Scott loved so much that he re-worked them into the text. A lot more was created than could fit into the books, so The Manual of Aeronotics will be released next year, consisting of mostly art (that I believe he said would be in color) and short descriptions.

To wrap up his talk, he showed us a bunch of amazing fan art and people doing cosplay. Scott has some seriously talented fans. There was a specific reason he did this, though. He was proving his point that illustrations do not hinder imagination, they simply guide it. Personally, I would love to see the revival of the illustrated novel.

During the Q&A time, of course he was asked if he ever suffers from Writer's Block. He said that he doesn't really have that problem because he writes at the same time everyday, not allowing himself to do anything else during that time. He said that when given a choice between staring at the wall and writing, writing is probably going to come out. The consistency of time helps his mind and body to know that it is time to write. During his daily writing time, Scott also goes back and edits everything from the last four days, so that by the time the first draft is done, everything has already been edited four times. I will definitely be keeping these habits in mind.

Scott is hilarious and a really talented guy. I got to briefly meet him and have my copy of Goliath signed. Despite the fact that I was at the back of the line and he had done a lot of signing at that point, he was extremely nice to me and endured my awkwardness. I will definitely be seeing him again if he comes back to my town, and I will absolutely be reading the rest of his novels.