Jonathan Stroud
Photograph by Rolf Marriott
All well and good, but so what? I mean, he looked about twelve years old. Wide-eyed, hollow-cheeked. There's not that much satisfaction to be had from scaring the pants off a scrawny kid.
So I floated and waited, hoping he wasn't going to take too long to get round to the dismissing spell. To keep myself occupied I made blue flames lick up around the inner edges of the pentacle, as if they were seeking a way to get out and nab him. All hokum, of course. I'd already checked and the seal was drawn well enough. No spelling mistakes anywhere, unfortunately."
The Amulet of Samarkand (Doubleday, 2003) p. 4
The Amulet of Samarkand is a cracking story told in an engaging dual narration. Was your choce of narrator instinctive or a consciously worked out decision?My initial idea was to create a world in which magicians were bad, or a least corrupt. I wanted to reverse the normal situation where the humans are the heroes and the other-wordly beings, the djinn or demons, are bad. I thought that the figure that the reader would identify with most closely would be Bartimaeus the djinni. I wrote the first four chapters very quickly, pretty much as they are in the finished book. I found that Bartimaeus’ voice emerged fully formed. It was a very exciting and unusual experience for me to have the voice come so easily. I liked his subjective voice, which had a lightness of touch. Some times Bartimaeus is pompous, sometimes he undercuts himself and at other times he undercuts the magicians and their pomposity. So it’s a very playful voice. But I quickly became aware that if the whole book was written in this voice the reader would end up bludgeoned by it because it’s quite a rich brew. So I decided to switch from Bartimaeus narration to another perspective. I did toy with the idea of having Nathaniel’s personal perspective but that didn’t seem to work as well. I needed a break from the subjective voice –a detached, objective perspective, an omniscient narrative voice that could follow Nathaniel, give a comment on what he was thinking but provide insight into the context to show the harshness of his upbringing. I think the narration encourages the reader to feel more sympathetic towards Nathaniel than if they were in his mind. I quickly realised that the dual narration was an effective juxtaposition. I think having the two voices helps the reader towards a richer response.
Occasionally the first person narration moves into the third person...........Yes, when Bartimaeus becomes an animal he often refers to himself in the third person. His voice is great because he’s protean in form; he can change into a smoke or a gargoyle but his voice remains the same though there are different perspectives in that voice.
" I have access to seven planes, all co-existent. They overlap each other like layers on a crushed Vienetta. Seven planes is sufficient for anybody. Those who operate on more are just showing off."
The Amulet of Samarkand (Doubleday, 2003) p. 10
The use of footnotes to extend Bartimaeus' explanations was inspired and hugely entertaining. Can you tell us something about the idea?I really enjoyed writing the footnotes. I use them where Bartimaeus is introducing a new situation. At the beginning of course everything is new so you get lots of long footnotes, but as the momentum builds up its less easy to create effective footnotes so there are probably fewer of them. But there are always footnotes in a Bartimaeus chapter and sometimes I’ll hit a hotspot where I’m in a footnotey mood and I’ll have about six or seven in three or four pages.
I wondered whether people would read them. Sometimes they appear when there’s quite a lot of dialogue and to stop and read them would slow the reading down. But at other times, where there’s a weighty paragraph with a long description, the reader might be relieved to have a break, to have a quick joke to lighten the mood. I like the footnotes because they give the reader choices; whether to read on so as not to disrupt the flow of the story, pause to read the footnotes, or go back at the end of a chapter and read them.
The story begins with a disrupted chronology as the reader is drawn into Nathaniel's world. Did you start with a linear chronology which you then reordered, or is the finished book written in the same order that ideas came to you?That’s an interesting question. To a certain extent it wasn’t a linear process for me. When I wrote the first sequence, the episode about the theft of the amulet, I had no idea what the story was, what the amulet did, or why Nathaniel was stealing it. I had to go back to work out where Nathaniel had come from and where he and Bartimaeus were both going. I wrote a further fifty pages introducing Nathaniel’s upbringing and integrating it with more of the Bartimaeus narration. When I’d written about sixty pages I had to stop because I realised I was losing sight of what I was doing. I had to start again and go through the process of discovering what the amulet was, what it could do, and how Nathaniel had come to be in this situation with Simon Lovelace. Then I created a linear structure, which still involved lots of chronological switching in that first section. After that first section the story is in chronological order again.
There was actually a third element to the book when I was writing it, focusing on the girl Kitty who appears briefly twice in the book. Originally she was going to appear as a third main strand and I was going to switch between three perspectives, but it became quite unwieldy and long. To include her separate back story was too much. So I had to sideline Kitty in Book One and I’m wrestling with that problem in Book Two instead, where she comes into her own.
"For half the night I continued my frantic, fugitive dance across London. The sphere were out in even greater numbers than I feared (evidently more than one magician had summoned them) and appeared above me at regular intervals. To keep safe I had to keep moving, and even then I was nearly caught twice. Once I flew around an office block and nearly collided with a sphere coming the other way; another came upon me as, overcome with exhaustion, I huddled in a birch tree in Green Park. On both occasions I managed to escape before reinforcements arrived.
Before long I was on my last wings. The constant drag of supporting my physical form was wearing me down and using up precious energy. So I decided to adopt a different plan - to find a place where the Amulet's pulse would be drowned out by other magical emissions. It was time to mingle with the Many-headed Multitude, the Great Unwashed: in other words, with people. I was that desperate.
I flew back to the centre of the city. Even at this late hour, the tourists in Trafalgar Square still flowed around the base of Nelson's Column in a gaudy tide, buying cut-price charms from the official vending booths wedged between the lions. A cacophony of magical pulses rose up from the square. It was as good a place as anywhere to hide."
The Amulet of Samarkand (Doubleday, 2003) pp. 37-8
The Amulet of Samarkand is set in present day London. It is both familiar and unfamilar to the reader. Coud you tell us something about your views on settings for fantasy fiction?The context is really important in a book like the Amulet because the characters and the action are quite light, so the historical context gives it some weight. When I was writing the synopsis, I worked out all of the different civilisations that Bartimaues would have already been involved in, roughly when they were and how those civilisations declined and fell. There’s an interesting linearity stretching back in time that I can bring into play in the current narrative. I did a few simple diagrams starting with Gligamesh, moving on to Ancient Egypt then Prague and the Holy Roman Empire. It was fun to have that scheme going on and it will come out more in the second book.
A major theme in the book is about power, freedom and control; at one point Bartimaeus says, "freedom is an illusion it always comes at a price”. Do any of the characters have more than an illusory freedom?No, not really to start with. Essentially there are three components, the magicians, the commoners and the demons and everyone is in some kind of bond to someone else. Magicians have the power but as you see right at the beginning they are ruled by fear of the demons. If they make one mistake, then they are in trouble The magicians are always looking sideways at each other and stabbing each other in the back. It’s a paranoid situation; there’s no trust anywhere. In Book Three we might see a working out of a new kind of structure; we’ll have to see.
Against the odds Bartimaeus and Nathaniel begin to develop a friendship. It's a poigninat moment when Bartimaeus offers to make a fire for Nathaniel - if he will only give the command.........
There is some ambiguity about Bartimaeus' character; there are times when we question his view of events...........Yes, as the strands come together they move in rapid succession from one viewpoint to the other and at the end they almost overlap. Bartimaeus says I wasn’t panicking and then it switches to Nathaniel’s narrative and Bartimaeus is described as fly buzzing around in a panic. It’s not a big point but the reader is aware that what Bartimaeus is telling them may not be wholly correct. I think by and large he’s reliable though.
Naming is important in the book both thematically and with regard to choosing apposite names for characters.It’s a key idea actually. I studied folk and fairy tales at university and the naming theme is important in traditional stories. Through the creative process of writing this new narrative you can see those themes filter through. Going right back to the mists of time, the bible tells how Adam was given the power to name things and by doing so he is given power over them. I was thinking about this the other day: when I’m walking around the countryside, I’m not very good at identifying the name of trees; I just don’t know what they are. Ideally, in order to feel that I am fully partaking of my beautiful walk, I want to name them. I feel that real sense of lack. If I could name them all I would feel that I owned the countryside on a different level.
I can’t remember where I got the names of the characters from. Both Bartimaeus and Nathaniel just came to me on the first day when I was writing the first couple of chapters. Others like Lovelace I had to play around with. My agent pointed out that Lovelace could be pronounced loveless. Names are great when they work. It’s a shorthand into the character; you don’t need to do much more if you have the right name.
In what ways is writing a trilogy different from writing a novel?It’s a matter of scale. The basic principles are the same. You have the same problems of structure and character development and how you mingle the flow of the writing with plodding, conscious, structure development. I pretty much always start by writing something to get into the flow and then I step back to piece together a structure. I’m sure different writers do it in different ways.
Writing the second book has presented different challenges. When you are writing a trilogy I think you have to decide whether the second book will be similar or different to the first. You can have the same characters and a sense of familiarity in the setting, but if it’s a rehash of the first book then you’ll become quite jaded. So I want the second book to be quite different tone. I prefer to keep trying new things because that’s how I keep myself interested.
The final book is potentially the most difficult because then you have to bring everything together, to make it into a proper three act narrative. But even in The Amulet of Samarkand there are three distinct sections. And The Last Siege is divided into different days, with different themes being played out in each section. Structurally I think it’s important otherwise you can go off at different tangents. With the second book I have plenty of action going on and I’m having to work out how to pin it down, to keep it regulated. I have to be quite rigorous about that.
How did you become a writer? Did you have a mentor who encouraged you?I had a succession of very good English teachers. A great teacher called Mr Bowie when I was about ten who encouraged my writing. At secondary school I had teachers who got me interested in the critical side of English Literature. At sixteen, when I was reading Macbeth, I realised how mind expanding good literature can be. Later, at university, I was mainly involved with criticism rather than being encouraged to write myself but I wrote a couple of plays which were put on. After I left university, I got a job by chance with Walker Books. I guess that’s when the die was cast. They encouraged me to do in house writing and eventually gave me some books on my own. I would write some puzzle books and then edit other people’s writing. That continued for about ten years. The editing was really useful because it meant I became much better at reading and editing my own stuff.
When I was younger my creativity manifested itself in a different way, I used to make lots of games, board games, card games and role play games I had a friend who was involved in making games and we would compete with each other to see who could come up with the best ideas it was a different kind of product but I suspect it was the same impulse.
What sorts of things did you enjoy reading when you were younger?A hotpotch of reading interests but I’ve always been interested in fantasy. That was the genre that I used to enjoy when I was between 10 and 15. And in all of the books that I’ve written the characters operate through fantasy essentially. But I don’t read a lot of adult fantasy now. I used to enjoy Raymond Chandler but I think the detecting element was less interesting than the style. Chandler uses a distinctive first person narrator noted for quips and one liners but the stories have an underlying seriousness of purpose. There’s the reference to an Arthurian style hero (Marlow/Malory) a knight errant who goes out into the wilderness searching for truth. He is quite pure although the world around him is corrupt. It’s a very attractive image and there’s a real moral heart to the books. I also read Diana Wynne Jones and Sherlock Holmes. These days I don’t read much modern fiction. I tend to read classics, I particularly enjoy good style. I’ve read a lot of Evelyn Waugh in recent years. I don’t like his world view at all but his style is really good. I think that’s quite healthy for me.
What advice do you have for aspiring writers?Keep writing and keep experimenting try to write as much as possible. Buried Fire, my first book evolved from a half page description of a dragon that I wrote on a typewriter about six months earlier, which I had kept in a pile of half ideas, poetry, plays, bits of description and short stories that weren’t really going anywhere. I still keep all of my jottings and the first two books came from things that I’d tried, left and picked up later. I think this is especially important when you’re starting out and trying to find your voice. Keep things, scribble notes, jot own ideas; if you don’t’ you’ll wake the next morning and everything will be forgotten.
Jonathan Strouds' Books
