Episode 148: Making Magic in Fiction (with Garth Nix)
/Amanda’s childhood dreams come true as we’re joined by award-winning author Garth Nix. We learn how Nix creates magical worlds, hear his top tips on writing, throw some shade at Tolkien, and chat about his new novel Angel Mage. Remember: The answers are within us.
This week, Amanda recommends the Reluctant Royals series by Alyssa Cole.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about death and religious institutions.
Guest
- Garth Nix is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Old Kingdom series and the new novel Angel Mage.
Sponsors
- Gender Free World is an all-gender clothing company with diverse sizing options and inclusive design. Use code spirits10 to get 10% off your purchase at genderfreeworld.com
- Within the Wires, a unique and immersive fiction show that tells stories using found audio from an alternate 20th century. Find them on any podcast app or withinthewires.com.
- Doordash is a fast, convenient food delivery app. Get $5 off your first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code Spirits at checkout.
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Transcript
Amanda: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
Julia: And I'm Julia.
Amanda: And this is Episode 148, wait for it. I know you read the title already, but Jesus Christ. Making Magic in Fiction with Garth Nix.
Julia: Are you okay?
Amanda: No, Julia. My pulse is still 10% higher than it should be because in this very room in the Multitudio, I talked to fucking Garth Nix on Skype.
Julia: You did.
Amanda: It was so good.
Julia: You did do that.
Amanda: You were there too. Sorry. I didn't mean to minimize you, but I just-
Julia: I was there. I made the drinks.
Amanda: My palms were sweating. Tell me again what we were drinking. Maybe I'll have one right after this to calm my nerves.
Julia: So, I made you a stout float with the good vegan ice cream because I know your tummy does not like the lactose.
Amanda: No. My tummy is delicate.
Julia: But I thought since this is a childhood dream of yours, Amanda, I would make something that was reminiscent over your childhood.
Amanda: Well, I greatly appreciate that and adding booze to situations I remember fondly from childhood is pretty much the definition of adulthood for me.
Julia: Yeah. I mean, what's the point of being an adult if you can't relive your childhood a little bit?
Amanda: I don't know.
Julia: Nothing.
Amanda: Do you know who I bet makes amazing floats?
Julia: I bet it's our new patrons.
Amanda: It's our new patrons, James, B.M. Me Up Scotty, Amazing, Consatina, Stoneman, Freida, Millie, Alex, Abby, Caitlyn, Sadie, and Aim.
Julia: Hey, there's a lot of you today.
Amanda: There's a lot of you and you all have wonderful names. You are joining the ranks of our supporting producer-level patrons, Philip, Eeyore, Megan, Skyla, Samantha, Sammy, Josie, Neal, Jessica, and Phil Fresh. And our legend-level patrons, Audra, Chris, Mark, Cody, Mr. Folk, Sarah, Sandra, and Jack Murray.
Julia: Everyone deserves an ice cream float. All the names you just said, ice cream floats of our hearts.
Amanda: Oh, that's wonderful.
Julia: They would be the scoop of ice cream on top of a very good porter.
Amanda: It's so delicious. I love that so much, and speaking of nostalgia, my recommendation for you this week, Julia, is some books that remind me of The Princess Diaries and wonderful escapist movies and novels that I read as a teen, but they're for adults, and they're like rom coms. They're a little bit sexier than a YA novel can get, but this is the Reluctant Royals series by Alyssa Cole.
Julia: Was this the one you were reading at my house the other day?
Amanda: I was.
Julia: Oh my God. Excellent.
Amanda: I was live blogging the book to Julia as I was like, he's a prince. She doesn't know it. Oh my God. Is he going to tell her? It's just absolutely delightful. The writing is lovely. The characters are from a variety of racial backgrounds and national backgrounds. So, it's really nice to see people navigating just their lives, and romance, and being happy, and being flawed, regular people. Like in the one I just finished, the second book in the series, the main character is coming to terms with adult ADHD diagnosis and how that revises her past for her, and helps her feel better about the way she is, and playing to her strengths. So, it's absolutely lovely. I got all the ebooks for my library super quickly, so Reluctant Royals series.
Julia: Yeah. At one point, Amanda gasped out loud and was like, no, he's pretending to be a waiter, and he's bad at it. I'm like, oh, fantastic. I love it.
Amanda: Yeah. It's extremely good, and hopefully I will be finishing the series by next week at our Boston show.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: I'm so excited.
Julia: I'm also very excited. We're going up literally right after my birthday, and it's going to be a really fun trip.
Amanda: And we're very happy to announce that we're also going to be participating in Sound Education, which is an educational audio conference happening that same week. We have our friend Helen Zaltzman, who is doing her show The Allusionist the night before ours, and we are going to be giving a workshop on how to market your show and grow your audience that morning of October 10th at Harvard.
Julia: Oh, you know, casual.
Amanda: It's fine. They rejected me when I was 18, changed the course of my life, and now I get to teach about podcasting there.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: That's exciting.
Julia: Who's to say you would have been able to do that if you had gone to Harvard?
Amanda: I really don't think I would have, Julia, because I would have just continued on a life path that I never questioned for myself.
Julia: Yep. I'm glad you questioned things for yourself because otherwise we wouldn't be making podcasts together anymore.
Amanda: Me too. That is very true. So please, if you are in Boston, or New England, or want to visit, join us next week. You can get tickets at Multitude.productions/live. They are going fast. Get your tickets now. We're super stoked, and I'm also just excited for October. I have been so nervous and excited to air this Garth Nix interview because I am frankly shocked that his publicist was like, you guys seem legit. Sure. Let's do an interview. So, thank you very much to Harper Collins. That was great, but we also have so many good episodes coming out this October.
Julia: We do.
Amanda: It's also a five Wednesday month, so there are five episodes of Spirits coming out this month. I cannot wait. We have a very spooky hometowns that we've talked about before. We have a very cool and new style of episode to premiere at the end of the month, and the roundup, gosh darn. It's really good, y'all.
Julia: Yeah. It's going to be a lot of fun.
Amanda: And if you want to put your money where your heart is, and you would like to support us on Patreon, it's a wonderful month to join. You're going to get these great episodes. You're going to get the great drink cards that Julia makes for every single ep, the behind the scenes director's notes for each episodes with links, and videos, and songs, and all kinds of great stuff. That's at Patreon.com/SpiritsPodcast.
Julia: Come join us today. Come have October fun with us.
Amanda: It's wonderful, and we also put in a couple new Patron goals. So, if we have some new folks joining us within October, we'll have a very exciting video coming out for folks to enjoy.
Julia: You get to see our faces and also hear our voices. It's a weird experience for podcasters.
Amanda: It super is. I don't want to keep you any longer.
Julia: No.
Amanda: So, without further ado, please enjoy this episode 148, Making Magic in Fiction with Garth motherfucking Nix.
I am beyond excited to welcome to the show Garth Nix, an author I have been reading for a long time, someone whose work, I think, is some stuff that makes me so interested in mythology, and magic, and folklore, and reasons that we do the show today. So, Garth, welcome.
Garth: Thank you. I am very pleased to be here.
Julia: Yes. I know from just our Twitter presence, and our Facebook presence that a lot of our listeners are a big fan of your work, so it's an absolute pleasure to get to talk to you today.
Garth: Great.
Amanda: I know that Sabriel was my entrance into your catalog of work. What proportion of questions that you get asked are about the Old Kingdom series?
Garth: It does vary depending upon the audience, of course, but certainly Sabriel would still be my most popular book, somewhat rivaled by Mister Monday, the first book in the Keys to the Kingdom series. But I suppose just by virtue of time as well, I mean, Sabriel first came out in 1995, in Australia in 1996, and the United States. So, it is generally the one people are going to ask questions, it's going to be most likely about the Old Kingdom series.
Amanda: Well I hope you're not too sick of talking about it, if you'll permit me, I have just one question. Okay.
Garth: Not at all, I'm always very happy to... and I should also say that probably the most popular question I get asked is how to pronounce Sabriel, and I actually always say you can pronounce it however you like, and I flip-flop myself sometimes between Sahbriel and Sabriel. So there is no wrong way to say my character names.
Amanda: I love that. That's very generous of you. I know, it does seem to vary whether folks listen to audiobooks or Reddit, and they sort of default to whatever their particular pronunciation is. My question about the Old Kingdom series is around the way that magic is so closely associated with sound, and I'm just reading FAQs and articles and things, I know you've talked a little bit about that being one of the first, I guess places that plot in that world started to come to you. And here on the show we talk all the time about ways that, not just story, but world building is established in folklore and in mythology. So, can you say a little bit about your choice to make sound such an integral part of power and magic and lore in that universe and sort of what attracted you to it in the first place?
Garth: It's an interesting question because it wasn't a supremely intellectual decision. It was more a matter of instinct to a degree, I think as is often the case with story-telling or with my story-telling, I often don't really understand how I work it out. But casting my mind back, I was led to the use of the bells, the seven bells that Sabriel and the Abhorsens who put the dead down used and that also evil necromancers used. Because I was looking at folklore and legend for how different societies have believed you deal with the dead coming back, and ghosts, and spirits, and so on. And there's many different ways people have believed you can protect yourself from the dead or from unseen things, and so on. And also how to get rid of them, but of course, one of them is the rite of exorcism by bell, book or candle. And I was looking at that and thinking, well, books, fantasy is full of magic books and mine are too. I love books, and I was happy to have magic books.
But I didn't want to just have another iteration of spell books and having a magic book that you look up things to get rid of the dead and so on. And I thought about candles, but candles are kind of hard to use dramatically. I'm not seeing Sabriel would be trying to light a candle as the dead are approaching.
Julia: You light them. It's windy.
Garth: Yeah, where is my lighter, here's my lighter gone, I've lost my matches. I actually think you could use candles, but they're not as intrinsically interesting and dramatic as bells. And around about that time, I had not been aware that bells in churches, normally will often have names, the bells are even baptized sometimes. And I was reading Dorothy Sayers' detective story The Nine Tailors in which bells feature very prominently, and the bells are all named in this village church. That all just came together for me, named bells. And I think bells seem magical anyway, and music of course is magical. I'm actually not very musical, all the rest of my family is and luckily my wife and children are. So I always have this deep-seated feeling that music is magical, anyway. So it seemed just instinctual to use the bells as the basis of that magic, and music and sound as the foundation for the magic that's used in those books or one of the kinds of magic in those books.
Amanda: Absolutely, and I'm sure you read a ton about other cultures, other forms of magic and belief. Do you remember sort of like some first stories that you read, or the first belief you became conscious of people or other societies having?
Garth: Well, I've always read very widely, I was very lucky that my parents are enormous readers, and our house was full of books. And I grew up in Canberra, the federal capital of Australia, which when I was growing up was really a very small city, but it had an overlay of a much more sophisticated one because it was the federal capital including a very good library system. And there was a particular children's library in between my home and school, which was tremendous and so every afternoon I would get new books and take my old books back, just walking to and from school. And I think a lot of my early awareness of mythology and different cultures and beliefs and also how they'd been used by other authors came from children's books, from children's fantasy in particular because those authors were using those myths and reimagining them and that would include people like Helen Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, Lloyd Alexander, there's a huge raft of them. They're very formative.
I mean, you can probably analyze most of my books if you're an archeological literary theorist, and you could work out what I read as a child, and not just fantasy, but historical novels, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Henry Treece, people like that, all kinds of books. And I think that's what set me down that path initially, and was really, I think quite a bit later that I started to read non-fiction and look at books that were nonfiction about myths, and religion, and beliefs more so than the novels. But certainly my first encounter with myth and legend, was all via story, all via children's novels, essentially.
Amanda: I love the idea of literary anthropology as the thing.
Garth: Yeah. Forensic scientists studying where those influences come from.
Julia: I love that, that's great.
Amanda: Yeah, that is always how I describe the whole sort of like opening situation in the Lirael where I'm like, yeah, she's kind of like a warrior. Like forensic investigative librarian.
Garth: She is, yes.
Amanda: And I'm so fascinated, and I love that image of the library, not as a kind of sedentary and quiet and dusty place where you have to really dig for adventure but somewhere where you carry a sword and a dagger because danger might find you. And knowledge is inherently something that is fraught with danger.
Garth: And a clockwork mouse to send for help, because it's very likely that you might encounter things that sword and a dagger will not be enough to cope with. And you will need the assistance of many other armed librarians.
Julia: Can't handle on your own.
Garth: Absolutely.
Amanda: Yeah, and there is also this sense that the transmission and care of knowledge is something that's bigger than the individual. To me, that's always what kind of stands out about Lirael's profession, which I love so much. And I think that maybe my favorite book in the series, but it sort of varies. But this whole through line of the transmission of knowledge and people needing to uncover knowledge of themselves for themselves that others failed to give them, like obviously Sabriel with the Book of the Dead, had all the training that she kind of could, and yet, there's so much that she sort of has to experience on her own. Is that mostly plot reasons why people don't have the access to knowledge that they really need or is there something about discovering knowledge for yourself, and needing to find it from place other than books that really interests you?
Garth: That's a good question. I think it probably reflects my desire for my stories to feel real, and that's certainly very much a feature of that real world that you can be trained in something, and you can have the book learning, which is invaluable. But you also need the practical knowledge as well, and it is very hard to actually have all the information you need at any given time for anything. Even in our current era where you can look things up, and you can watch a YouTube video on how to do something, and so on, it still doesn't really compare to being trained properly. And also doing it yourself, and the difficulty of finding out the correct information, and I guess that's something that's very prevalent now. It wasn't so much when I was writing those books, is actually finding the correct information is an issue these days, of course, because there's so much available. But it might not be accurate.
Amanda: Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about Angel Mage, your newest book?
Garth: Sure. Angel Mage comes out in October, and it's the story... it's set in alternate 17th century Europe, very much influenced by Alexander Duma and The Three Musketeers, and also by my favorite film versions of The Three Musketeers, which are the Richard Lester films directed films from the early 70s, which starred Oliver Reed, and Michael York, and Raquel Welch, and Frank Finley and so on. And Charlton Heston as Cardinal Richelieu. But what I've done is I've taken an alternate 17th century, Europe, so it's a one of equal gender opportunities, so there are women musketeers and women cardinals, and so on, as well as the men. And I've also introduced magic because I seem to constitutionally be unable to write anything that doesn't have some kind of magic in it. The Fantastical always-
Julia: It's in your contracts at this point.
Garth: Well, it seems to be in my nature, the fantastical things just creep in even when I set out to write completely realistic contemporary stories, it seems to always be a feature. And in Angel Mage, as suggested by the title, the magic is actually done by summoning angels by means of creating icons, which can be painted or engraved or carved. And they're connected with an angel and vested with the power of that Angel, and then that Angel can be summoned. But the angels can only do certain things, they have a scope, which gives them the ability to do a particular kind of magic or work in particular area, some of them are very, very limited, they can only do one small thing.
There's an angel, for example, that can just send a sort of frisson of pleasant expectation to someone, which you normally do between lovers, for example, to say that a nice gift is coming. So that's a very small power to the angels of the higher orders some of them who can do practically anything, but it does take a cost from the summoner, it ages and wearies them, so you have to think carefully about summoning angels and what you're going to do. And the basic story is about a young woman called Lilieth who some hundred years before actually destroyed one kingdom by trying to do something with its principal Angel, its principal archangel, which went wrong. And it resulted in most of the people in the kingdom being killed, and the few who were left they were killed by something called the ash blood plague, which turn their blood to ash, and they either died, or they got transformed into monsters.
And so everyone knows that something terrible happened, but they don't know exactly what and Lilieth was presumed to have died pretty much when everyone else did, though she did actually escape with some of her followers, but disappeared shortly afterwards. But she didn't die, she actually just went into a long period of rest, and she's come back and is trying to do what she wanted to do again. She's trying to achieve a different result this time, and the book is mainly about her and her setting this plan in motion, and also the four characters that she needs to fulfill her plan. So there's Agnes, whose a woman Musketeer. The simian who's a doctor is a medical student basically, Onri who is the clerk for the cardinal... My mind is gone, pardon me I was up very late.
Julia: [crosstalk 00:20:36] friends, by the book.
Garth: Yeah, very late last night working on my new book, I'm a little slow. I'm actually finishing it off, I write the hopefully the last line. Of course, Doratea is the fourth. Pardon me, I shouldn't be doing podcast interviews after I go to bed at 03:30 a.m. in the morning, and it's 09:09 a.m. So my apologies-
Amanda: That's it, you're riding that high right now.
Garth: Well, I think it's a low.
Julia: And there's a very limited window of availability between Australia and New York, so yeah.
Garth: [crosstalk 00:21:14] to get a good time. And Doratea is an icon maker and mage herself, so she makes icons to summon angels and is also extremely adapted at summoning them. And it's an adventure story, it's a high fantasy. I think if you love the cloak and sword adventure of Duma, you like high fantasy with angelic magic, and you blend them all together, that's Angel Mage.
Amanda: Wow, I love that.
Garth: I hope so.
Amanda: I have so many thoughts just on the world building and stuff like that, that's wonderful because so much of magic, especially magic in modern day culture is kind of portrayed as oh, make this deal with the devil, and you'll reap the rewards, but there will be side effects. And taking that and kind of twisting it and putting angels into the mix instead is such a wonderful kind of play on that trope. I really, really love that.
Garth: Oh, thank you, I think it's interesting and to be honest, I really love making up things like the angels names, and their scope, and what they do, and the effect of them, and so on. So all that's always very appealing to me, and I do also... You talk about they're doing a deal with the devil, and there's always some downside to that, of course.
One of the things that I like best about magic and fantasy is when there is a cost, there should always be a cost, it shouldn't just be like flicking a light switch where nothing will go wrong. Well, almost certainly nothing will go wrong. On a daily basis, you don't even think about it. Whereas I think magic is always much more interesting in stories if there is a potential cost, or there may be some future costs. I might actually just pause for a moment to get a glass of water.
Amanda: That is actually a great idea. Let's go grab a refill. Julie, our first sponsor this week is a company that I found on Instagram and was immediately like, Oh my God, you're for me. Thank you.
Julia: I love when you find companies on Instagram. It's one of my favorite things.
Amanda: I know if they're ads I feel kind of called out, but generally they're very good. Like the little bee backpack I have now it's amazing. But Gender Free World is a company that believes that the sort of gender binary that we're forced to confront every time we want to... I don't know, buy a piece of clothing is really restrictive. And there are so many more options that there should be, and they're making them. So they make shirts started four years ago with different body shapes. So there's like five different body shapes you can choose from depending on the ratio of your shoulders and chest and hips. Every person is different. It doesn't matter what your sex, or your gender is, like you want to find things that fit you properly, so being able not just to select your size, but also your shape is groundbreaking.
Julia: Yeah, it's really, really cool. I remember clicking through I was like, oh, no, that one, and getting to decide which size and shape fit me best, it was so cool.
Amanda: It's absolutely amazing, and they also recently developed like a truly neutral underwear. So regardless of what you have going on, you can have like a truly neutral underwear down there, which is great.
Julia: Yeah, that is so good. I'm so uncomfortable in most like women's underwear, so I usually go boy short all the time. So the fact that gender neutral underwear sounds so appealing.
Amanda: It is. I mean, their priorities are in the right place. A, they're also super freaking cute, the patterns I can't get over, all of their photo shoots, and their item photos have like people of different genders and presentations. And it just feels so welcoming and wonderful, they also are committed to slow fashion so they have a Facebook group for pre-loved items. So if you would prefer to get something that's used and not buy a new thing, or you want to make sure it has a life after you're done wearing it, then they have that option for you as well.
Julia: Oh, also all the shirts have the reverse buttons. So that sometimes when you have bigger boobs, you get that weird gap in between the buttons right where the boobs are?
Amanda: Sure do.
Julia: That doesn't happen with these shirts.
Amanda: Yeah, it's like a little hidden button to make sure that there's no gape.
Julia: I love it.
Amanda: It has been a real pleasure to work with Gender Free World and they're even offering 10% off to Spirits listeners with the code of spirits10@genderfreeworld.com.
Julia: Yeah, get 10% off your purchase at genderfreeworld.com using the code spirits10. Amanda, I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite podcasts right now.
Amanda: Oh please.
Julia: It is Within The Wire, so Within The Wires their new season is back they're in season four, it came out September 10th. Oh, boy, this is a good one. If you don't know Within The Wires, it is this unique and immersive fiction show that tells stories using found audio in an alternate 20th century. So for example, the first season is told via relaxation tapes and meditation tapes, and it is both calming and also creepy and horrifying.
Amanda: It's night veil is like signature special sauce.
Julia: Yeah. And so now season four is the story about a mother and a daughter as they attempt to lead an anti-government commune surviving on the fringes of society.
Amanda: Sane.
Julia: So it's told via tape recorded letters home to her daughter and sermons to the commune, and these episodes are probably like... I'm so engrossed in the world every time I listen to it, I love it. And the dichotomy between the sermons and the letters to her daughter are such fascinating things.
Amanda: And each season is like a standalone story, right? So people can enjoy season four and then also go back and enjoy the previous three.
Julia: Yeah, so every season kind of establishes more about the world, but you don't need to listen to one to understand four, for example.
Amanda: That's awesome, so folks have a strange preference for enjoying things that come out week by week and not waiting to binge it all like I do and have with fan fiction for years, you can find Within The Wires in any podcasting app of your choice or at withinthewires.com.
Julia: Yes, I highly recommend it. It is genuinely one of my favorite audio fiction shows out there.
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Amanda: Thank you so much. And now let's get back to the show. And I was just thinking to myself, it must be quite jarring to press for a book, when you likely finish it what like years ago, you must be sort of so firmly in the next project right now mentally.
Garth: Well, it's always the way. It is always... but you're right. It is difficult and I've been very immersed in finishing this new book, particularly the last few weeks, but it is always the case, so you think I'll be used to it by now after many, many years.
Julia: Yeah. And with such a prolific career?
Garth: Well, I've been writing a long time my first book, The Ragwitch, which came out in 1991, and if you just keep doing it, it does tend to add up.
Julia: That does help.
Garth: Yes. Well, it's actually the secret really, just keep doing it.
Julia: There you go. I hope to keep that in mind for the future.
Amanda: That does seem to be the common thread through a lot of like write really, but also creative advice. That's definitely for sure.
Garth: Yeah. Well, I mean, I always say that the answer to any writing career problem is to write another book. Now whether you've had great success or great failure the answer is always write another book.
Amanda: Speaking of which, whichever process this most recent book or Angel Mage, do you have like a systematized way that you do research, do you kind of just read a lot. And some stuff sticks, I asked particularly because there's so many examples of iconography, either just depicting, or actually making kind of instantiating some part of a god or a force, with objects. And I'm curious if any of them sort of inspired or stood out to you, as you were researching?
Garth: Sure. It's an unusual case, Angel Mage is a relatively unusual case, because I did have to do quite a lot of what I'd call active research, because I'm always reading nonfiction. I'm always going down little rabbit holes after small, small bits of information, particularly, history and cultural beliefs, and so on. And you never know when it might come in handy, that just sort of gathers, and I call upon... So I'm always doing that kind of passive research, was reading everything, and it also includes natural history, as well as biography and history and sometimes technical things like not even reading. I mean, I talked about watching YouTube videos learning how to do things. For Angel Mage, in particular, I did look into icon making, and there's sort of classical icon making of Byzantium, and also the Russian icon makers and so on.
And I did watch YouTube videos on how to make gesso, and how people paint icons, and so on. And I also looked at and read about carving techniques and how different materials are etched. I mean, some of that I knew already, I mean, I had the benefit of my mother as an artist, she's a paper maker. So I grew up with her in her studio, where she was making paper from different kinds of fibers, different grasses, and also different linen and cotton, and so on. And then that paper being used for printmaking, and so including etching of liner cuts, and all that sort of things. And lots of her friends, of course, were also artists and so I saw their studios, including silversmiths, and painters.
And so I absorb some of that background, anyway, which I called upon in Angel Mage though, I don't actually really use very much of it in the sense I'm not describing very much of it. There are some sections about where icons are made, but I don't delve into it in great length. But I think you do need to know about it, in order to be able to write about it, again to make it feel real, because the book itself, and I've said this before, and for many years, I thought it was a highly original way to describe fantasy. In that the actual book is the tip of the iceberg. It's the 10%, it's visible, but you have to feel like the other 90% is there, you have to sense that there is all... that world exists far beyond what's in the book. It's all lurking beneath the surface.
And of course, writers like Tolkien famously actually did work out everything below the surface. He did write all the history and invent the languages and so on, which is one method. I don't do that, although I try and create the illusion that is all there. I've been saying that for years thinking it was highly original, and then at some point, I was reading a book about Hemingway. And Hemingway said all novels should be like an iceberg. Then I said, oh, damn, he beat me to it.
Julia: Wow, classic Hemingway,
Amanda: He always does.
Garth: Yeah, someone always does. Someone always does. That's true.
Julia: It's usually Hemingway, though.
Garth: That's right, Hemingway, you've done it again.
Amanda: I feel like one of the ways that I get a real sense of death and continuity, in your worlds are often like oral storytelling. There are lots of examples of like knowledge transmitted orally of children's rhymes, which I think are inherently a little bit creepy and catchy, which is very cool, are there any other kind of devices that you use to sort of lens like continuity, depth, and the illusion of depth to your worlds?
Garth: Well, I think the key to that creation of illusion is actually in small details, which would include things like the children's rhyme. So they're small details that connect too much bigger ones, but you don't reveal the bigger ones, you only have the small details. And you only need a few small details for the reader to generally supply the rest, in terms of whether they're imagining how a room looks, or how a person looks, or they imagine a whole sequence of mythology, which might not in fact be what you're thinking, but they'll get the sense of it, they'll feel the depth of it. So I think if you have those little threads that are visible, which they can tug on, they feel connected. And readers feel the connection without needing to know what it's too, if that makes sense.
So I think if you can seed it with enough small details, then the reader's imagination supplies the rest. But of course, all those small details have to work with each other and feel as if they belong, you can't just arbitrarily sprinkle lots of little ideas through the story, it does actually have to all feel connected. And of course, I do also have to work out at least some of what they connect to, in my head. Whether I ever write it down or not, I have to have more of what it's connected to than what I put in the book, though I don't need all of it. Unlike Tolkien, I don't need to work out 3,000 years of history and actually write it.
Julia: [crosstalk 00:35:46] make some aliens in your universes.
Garth: Well, no, because I'd much rather write a book, I'd much rather write a story. And I wish to be honest, I find that the summary really in there is fascinating. But I wish Tolkien had written another novel, I wish he'd just written more stories. All the fragments, the book of last tales, and so on, that I find most interesting, the most interesting parts of those books are always the fragments of actual narrative, not of history. To me, even though I love history as well, I just would have liked more story.
Julia: So I really love this because it reminds me of a lot of early religions in the idea that the only people who really know all the details are the priests and the practitioners and stuff like that. And the layman kind of understands the base level, they understand the little details, but not like all the really intricate details and ritual and stuff like that. So I feel like that's a lot of world building is kind of like early religion, I don't know if that's a stretch or not, but I'm going to stick to it.
Garth: I don't think it's a stretch though, of course, a lot of that is about controlling people. Keeping information to yourself, speaking a language, which the ordinary people don't speak for your-
Julia: Latin.
Garth: Yes, exactly for your rituals, and so on, is often about keeping information secret for purposes of control, though they may not even seem that to themselves, of course, but often that's how it works out. I think with fantasy, of course, you can make it that the information is not available, because it's too dangerous. And it can literally be too dangerous that if you can say this sentence, it will make your head explode, or you'll summon things best left unsummoned, and so on. There're all kinds of interesting things you can do with that.
Amanda: But sometimes the old wisdom is wrong, and the hero uncovers something that everyone just sort of accepts. And in fact, it needed to be changed or uncovered.
Garth: Yeah, which is a great story though, I'm thinking status quo, which needs to be up ended or things have gone wrong, and the river has left its proper course, and needs to be brought back. All those things that makes for great stories.
Julia: I think that's where you see the difference between normal fantasy, and then fantasy horror is that difference between whether or not the thing is going to blow your head up, or if it's going to unless power that someone's trying to take from you.
Garth: Well, there's sort of borders between fantasy, dark fantasy, and horror are always so interesting where things fall. My very first book, The Ragwitch, which is a children's novel, and to me, was really my attempt to... I wanted to write a kind of harder edge Narnia book because I always thought it would be much more terrifying to suddenly end up somewhere like Narnia than it is in those books.
Julia: Narnia is very scary.
Amanda: It is.
Garth: As much as I love them, I think the children ought to have been more scared, and The Ragwitch was my attempt to write that sort of book, but it was considered and reviewed actually as horror by a number of people, which I could not understand at all except that in retrospect, I realized that because one of the child characters actually spends most of the book inside the mind of the antagonist, the actual Ragwitch, that is actually a horror trope in a sense she's-
Julia: That will do it.
Garth: Yeah, she's sharing the viewpoint and experience of the horrendous villain. But I still think it's kind of just a harder edged Narnia and still a children's book, but it certainly had horror elements, and I do write... Also with the Old Kingdom books, of course, death, the dead coming back these are certainly dark fantasy elements, and there are tinges of horror. I think the primary difference for me between fantasy, even dark fantasy and horror is that horror often is not hopeful. You don't actually have... everyone will die at the end, without hope or go mad. There's not necessarily any redemption or hope for the future. But then, of course, there are horror stories that do have that, so it's kind of like, where does that border lie?
Amanda: Do you think mythology is inherently hopeful? [crosstalk 00:40:25] Charlie Rose question.
Julia: Yeah, it was a good question.
Garth: That's a good question. No, because I think it can be harmful as well. I think mythology is always attractive, and it can be useful in terms of working out things in a contemporary life and ideas and so on. But I mean, a mythology that's dangerous, or that enables people to position themselves as being for example, superior to others is dangerous. I mean, when mythology becomes a religion, I think often it can be dangerous depending on how it's deployed and utilized, particularly when you get the mythology of mythology is the only one that's true, and everything else is lies, and false, and should be destroyed. I mean, so there's that aspect of it as well. But it's certainly very valuable for stories, and I think one of the most useful things for a fantasy writer with mythology, is that it's all particularly well known mythologies are deeply implanted, and sort of programmed into our minds in the West, in particular, and in other cultures and societies they have their deeply implanted mythologies as well.
So when you write a story that connects to those myths, there's already an automatic resonance, you can use them to make people feel a certain way or have certain expectations, which you can then play on one way or another. So it's incredibly helpful for writers to have that depth of mythology. And people don't even know why they respond to it, because they may have completely forgotten the actual details of a story, which they encounter when they were a young, a fairy story, or fable, or a legend, but they were still exposed to it. It's still there inside them, and now they write new story with which a pull on those strings, will have an effect upon them. Even if they don't recognize it.
Amanda: Yeah, there are really no stories in isolation. What was that on your mind as you were raising children and reading stories to them? Do you have a critical view on them or did you try to select them really carefully, or just say I don't know, you guys are going to learn about stuff somewhere?
Garth: Well, my boys are teenagers now they're 15 and 17, and we've always... My wife is a publisher, the house is full of books, we've always encouraged them just read, and I think that's the best way with children. I mean, reading to them is very important, obviously, and even in just the very basic sense of developing the literacy skills that you'd need as a survival skill, reading to babies and children has been proved time and time over to be one of the most effective tools in equipping them with the skills that they'll need of reading and writing. But once they were reading on their own, we've just tried to supply them with books. I mean, as they've got older, suggesting books to them tends to work less well. But if we leave them lying around, hopefully, they'll pick them up, and certainly we do both do that, we both try and make books look interesting to them without actually saying you should read X. Because if we do that, it almost certainly won't happen at this point.
Amanda: Yeah, some reverse psychology there that might be necessary.
Garth: But they do, they pick things up, and of course, are quite influenced by what others are reading, and by what they see, my younger son has just finished reading or has read as much of the Game of Thrones books, as George is finished after watching the series. So there's that influence as well.
Amanda: Sure, definitely. I remember I finished the first Song of Ice and Fire and then close the book and immediately turned back to the first page because only by the end of it had I learned everybody's names. So we think in that way, watching the series might have been very useful.
Garth: Well, interestingly, Edward said that he was glad that he read the books after the series because he likes the books very much. And he likes the series very much, but he might have liked the series less if he'd read the books first, which I thought was very, very mature. I'd read them when they first came out, so I had entirely forgotten most of the details by the time the TV series came along. But I still enjoyed the watched experience as well as the reading one.
Amanda: Do you have a sort of thesis on adaptations of books? This is not something I planned on asking, but I think it's really interesting, whether through your own experience, or just reading things that have been gotten turned into movies, television, graphic novels.
Garth: It's a very complex area. I trained as a screenwriter-
Amanda: But that is a stance though, it's a stance to say like, listen, it varies per thing, and sometimes they're going to be faithful and sometimes they're not.
Garth: Well, faithfulness is not always a virtue as well. I mean, I think the most important thing is always to be true to the spirit, not necessarily the letter. How that's done varies enormously, but it's a very hard thing to do. There're so many different inputs, and I have relatively recently, we adapted Sabriel. I mean, it was set up with Amazon Studios a couple of years ago, and I wrote the pilot with a very old friend of mine, Felicity Peckard, who is a very experienced screenwriter. So I had that direct experience of adapting and years before that, I also wrote a feature film screenplay of Sabriel, I worked with another screenwriter briefly. So I have gone through that a few times, even though none of them have yet to be made, as is often the way with that world.
So I think keeping true to the spirit of it is the most important part. And that's the nature of the story, the tone of the story. It's knowing what to keep and what to lose. Probably, I think, the thing I find most difficult with adaptations it's not when things are taken away or plot elements are conflated together or characters are merged in all these things, which often need to be done. The thing that's most likely to make it not work is when the screenwriters invent things, which are not in the original material, and put them in, and those invented, things just do not match up with what is already there. I mean, they might actually be brilliant sequences by themselves. But they actually don't fit the rest of the material that they actually don't fit the story.
And probably, I mean, a prime example of that in which when I saw it I could not believe that they'd done it was Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptation, where Saruman's death is he falls out of the tower of Orthanc, and he lands on a sort of spiky wheel, which goes around with him stuck on it, which is just so entirely at odds with the whole nature of the book, the character, absolutely everything... I'm sure they had fun doing it, and it looks great for a strange horror film that has nothing to do with the Lord of the Rings, but it's completed odds with who that character is. I mean, he essentially is an angel from the outermost West as is Gandalf, being of immense power, and in the books, his death has poignancy and meaning because there's a sort of final betrayal of a slave, essentially.
And his nature is also revealed in that this mist leaves his body, and he's blown away by the wind. He's not just some old guy who falls out of a tower onto the spiky wheel, so I think that sort of invention, which throws you out of the story and is at odds with the rest of the stories is a very tricky part.
Julia: You know what that reminds me so much of my issues with the final Harry Potter film, and the way that they handled Voldemort because it's completely opposite of the Lord of the Rings explanation. Where Voldemort supposed to be this character that fears mortal death more than anything, and so when he dies in the books, he dies in a very mortal way. And meanwhile, in the movie, they gave him kind of this weird, magical death that did not fit like his exponential fears.
Garth: Yeah, it's the temptation of the visual, which is understandable, it's hard to show it on the screen. So it looks cool, but it often overpowers the storytelling. And unfortunately, I think you see that in the hobbit as well, that's where it's really the pendulum is swung way, way, way off the story.
Amanda: We talked a bunch about iconic heroes from Frodo, to Harry to all the others that we touched on, Sabriel I think being one of mine. And I know when I first learned about the construction, the concept of the hero's journey, I was like, 14, and my mind was blown. I was like, oh my God, it's the theory that explains everything. And I wonder, as someone who writes, often about heroes and their journeys, if you have either something that you try to hit on, or if that's less relevant to you, or something you try to avoid or introducing your own sort of hero narratives. Anything in there interesting to answer?
Garth: Sure. Well, it is a very interesting question. I think the hero's journey, the Christopher Vogler book and all those things, the faces of the hero, they're all attempts to make something systematic, I guess, an attempt to refine something, which is not necessarily all that refundable down to something, which can be replicated. And most of the time, it doesn't work, because you can take all those elements, you can look at all the different points of the hero's journey as defined by various people. And there are so many books about the hero's journey now, and analyzing how those stories work, and you could try and follow that. You wouldn't necessarily end up with something that anyone wanted to read because there are always elements of the unknown around it. I think they're very interesting. I mean, I find them interesting too though I didn't read about them until quite a lot later.
But I actually think if you wanted to write a fantasy novel, for example, sure read those books. But I wouldn't use them as a map to what you want to do yourself because that kind of mechanical approach really works well. I think it often doesn't work, what I would do instead is actually read lots and lots and lots of the best works of fantasy of the last 50 years. So the recent ones, and further back, and also read re-tellings of the myths and legends, and look back to the great classic works of literature. I would read the Iliad and the Odyssey, read The Norsaga, all that kind of stuff. Because the more you read very widely, and just as fantasy, I would read all kinds of novels because you'll be equipping your story instinct where your instinct will provide what you need to do in a book, how you need to tell a story.
And it won't be because you have mechanistically worked out that on page 60, this has to happen on page 70 this has to happen, and so on. Because readers, I think can nearly always detect that, they can feel that. And if it's been done mechanically, it feels clumsy, it often doesn't work. Whereas if it's been done by your storytelling instinct, you might write a book where someone can look at it, and they can measure it against the hero's journey and yes, this exactly fits all the things are meant to happen in the hero's journey, but the author has no knowledge of the hero's journey and has never even thought about it. But they've just instinctively written a book that hits those points. And I think that applies to a lot of things. And even screenwriting, where it's much more structurally important how its put together, how it's built.
I still think instinct is actually a better guide, often, than the intellectual knowledge that they sort of need to be married together. But if you have very, very strong instinct, and then you equip yourself intellectually as well, then you've got all the tools you need, but you do need both. And I would fall down the side of training your story instinct by reading stories, is actually the most important thing to do, and also practice it as well. So the more you write, of course, the more likely that you'll be able to create stories that people would really want to read.
Julia: Totally.
Garth: I hope that makes sense?
Julia: No, it does. I have a question. But I feel like you just answered it. So I'm going to ask it just in case there was another aspect you wanted to touch on. I know a lot of our listeners are creators in their own right. Is there any advice that you would give our listeners who maybe are trying to create their own system of magic for their own creative endeavors? Any advice you would give them in just starting the process?
Garth: Sure. Again, I would probably approach it not as creating a system of magic, if that makes sense. I would look at as you're writing the story, what do you need for the story. And I don't think you'd need to know how the magic works at the beginning, you don't need to have that system worked out. I actually had almost no idea of how anything worked in Sabriel when I started it. And I worked out the magic as I went along which required some going backwards as well and some revision, of course. But that's the nature of the game.
But having said that, I think possibly the most important writing advice is that there is no one way to do this. There is no one way to write a book or to work out the magic you need in your story or to create a system of magic. Maybe for you, it will work better to sit down and invent an entire apparatus of magic before you have any idea of the story. That's that's perfectly fine. But again, that's not the only way, so how you as an individual writer, works it out I think it's good to experiment. So just try writing a story without knowing how the magic works and just see what happens. And maybe try inventing a system of magic and then working out a story that you're going to use it in, and maybe your natural, strong point... maybe your natural strength will be somewhere in the middle, or you'll find that it lies totally in the pre-planning area.
There's so many different ways to write stories, and you often hear novelists like me talk about how they do it or sometimes they'll even say this is how you write a book as if it's the only way, but it's not. And so I always think probably the most important writing advice is the advice to take all the writing advice with a pinch of salt and try things out. If you hear someone talking about how they do something, and you think, oh, that sounds good, give it a go. But if it doesn't work for you, that doesn't mean that you can't write a book, or you can't write a story. It just means well, that's not how you're going to do it maybe it's some other way. So yeah, in terms of magic systems in particular, I would try writing a story where you don't know how the magic works. You just know you're going to have some and then see what comes up as you're writing.
And I would also if you already have a magic system, and you've been working on it, I would perhaps say okay, we'll get it to a certain point where you got all about it. Now you basically know how it works, maybe leave it and start writing the story and deploy that that magic system and mix it up, try everything in between.
Julia: Beautiful, I love that. Thank you.
Amanda: It sounds like often the answers are within us. And that's a really wonderful note to end on.
Garth: Well, I like to joke that the answer to every publishing question and writing question is, it depends. It's a universal answer to everything. It depends.
Amanda: That's definitely the central thesis of our show as well.
Garth: Good. Excellent.
Amanda: Garth, thank you so much for coming on to Spirits and chatting with us. It's such an honor, and we cannot wait to dive into your new works.
Garth: Thank you very much. It's been wonderful to talk to you and I apologize for the interruptions, but thank you very much.
Julia: No, it was all good.
Amanda: Not at all, and remember, listeners-
Julia: Stay creepy.
Amanda: Stay cool.