TitleTales

Interview: Scott Westerfeld

Scott Westerfeld is the author of books for young adults, including Peeps, The Last Days and the Midnighters trilogy. He was born in Texas in 1963, is married to the Hugo-nominated writer Justine Larbalestier, and splits his time between New York and Sydney. Extras is the fourth in the bestselling Uglies series. Leviathan is his newest release.

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BWI: Leviathan contains adventure, romance, technological innovations and musings on society, like many of your other books. It is your first book set in the past, though, even if it is a re-imagined past where an airship is composed of an ecosystem’s worth of beasties. Can you explain the steampunk genre to our readers, and tell us why you chose to write Leviathan in this style?

SW: Steampunk is basically techno-nostalgia. It’s a yearning for a time when machines were understandable in a physical and visceral way, like a steam engine or a hot air balloon, rather than working invisibly like a computer, which is (often literally) a black box. Steampunk envisions a world where the steam-driven machines of the late 19th century just got bigger and more complex and fantastical, and the waistcoats and frocks all stayed exactly as fabulous.

Leviathan is about World War I, which was a period in which technology was pretty weird already. Planes had three wings, tanks looked like rolling boiler rooms, and no one really knew what all these new machines would evolve into. So I thought that steampunk (and the Victorian bio-punk I’ve added in) would be a way to highlight the wackiness of that period.

BWI: In the afterword, you take the time to explain to readers less familiar with the start of World War I which incidents in the book really happened, which we think is a great thing to do, by the way. Are there specific ways that you research the factual base for your writings?

SW: When introducing an alternate world, it’s always nice to keep something familiar in the foreground. In Leviathan, I’m sticking very strictly to the timeline of the Great War, those famous days in July and August when Europe went to pieces. I’ve studied a lot about the war itself, of course, but I’ve been reading family histories of the period (like the Wittgenstein’s) as models for Alek’s upbringing. The social details of that period are different from our own in some very revealing ways. For example, young men were considered irresponsible and flighty back then. So they often pretended to be older, using canes and growing heavy beards, simply so they’d get more respect. That’s practically the opposite of our world.

BWI: The beasties are really neat. How did you come up with them? Do you foresee any consequences for the Leviathan world from this kind of ‘mucking about’ in nature? How do you feel about bioengineered creatures and food sources in our current world?

SW: Chimeras have always been a part of mythology and magic, and really current-day bioengineering is nothing more than making chimera: mixing genomes from different creatures. Of course, the changes made by present-day genetic manipulation are relatively subtle. But I wanted a more steampunk aesthetic, where you can see that a creature is a mix between a tiger and a wolf, or hear that this lizard is part parrot. So the beasties wind up very fantastical, almost mythological, especially in Keith Thompson’s wonderful illustrations.

As for consequences, they’ve already appeared in the world of Leviathan. The existence of the invented beasties is the reason for the war. There’s even a group of anti-beastie agitators, called the Monkey Luddites, who protest that their society is based on these unnatural abominations.

BWI: Alek, the would-be heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Derwyn, a girl disguised as a boy in order to fly with the British Air Service, make the story even more interesting because they are such different characters. Which one is more fun to write about? How do you create the personalities of your characters?

SW: It’s more fun writing Deryn, because her tomboy Scots dialect is more exhilarating than Alek’s somewhat stiff upper-class manner. Language differences are my favorite way to distinguish characters, though, so I wanted a commoner and an aristocrat. As for inventing them, both characters come out of their situation. Deryn has to hide who she is (a girl) in order to function in a man’s world, and Alek feels responsible for the war, because his own family tragedy is what set the entire continent on fire. Those kinds of fears and anxieties are strong enough to build a character from the inside out.

BWI: Why did you decide to make Leviathan an illustrated work, and what, besides his amazing artwork, made you choose Keith Thompson to illustrate the book? Has Keith’s art influenced the way you describe events in Leviathan or the rest of the trilogy?

SW: Keith’s portfolio had both fantastical machines and creatures in it, so he was an obvious fit. Also, he’s recaptured the book’s era of illustration perfectly, while making it accessible to younger readers. I call the style he’s created for the book “Victorian manga.” He started by reading through Punch magazine for all of 1914, and using a lot of their drawing and framing techniques. So Leviathan really looks like an object from the world you’re reading about, which is exactly what I wanted.

Many artists only start work after the text of a book is done, but I’m handing the words over to Keith every few chapters. As we’ve worked together more, I’ve even had Keith go ahead of me sometimes, creating a machine or animal that I then write into the story. I’ll say, “Something’s going to chase them in a few chapters, so draw something fast,” and cut him loose.

BWI: Why did you decide to tell this story as a trilogy? Do you plan out a series before you start writing, or do you start one project and realize the story is going to continue?

SW: It was always a trilogy. In fact, it’s a trilogy + 1, with an added, large format, all-color book with a more in-depth view of the world. Sort of like The Field Guide for the Spiderwick Chronicles.

BWI: Your wife, Justine Larbalestier, is also an acclaimed author of young adult books. Do you collaborate at all, such as editing the first draft of each other’s novels?

SW: Our family tradition is to read aloud to each other every few chapters or so, so we’re involved even earlier than a first draft. It’s great to have another person follow your story as you write it. And, of course, hearing your work aloud is always useful. I think the biggest influence is that we challenge each other to make riskier choices. Sometimes as a writer you want to play it safe, but if you have a reader right next to you begging for the more exciting option, you’re more likely to give it a try.

BWI: You have a lot of interaction with your fans at conventions, on your blog and through Twitter. Could you share any fan comments that have been particularly meaningful to you?

SW: One of the great things about writing YA these days is that your fans use the Internet to create communities of readers. It happens on my blog and Twitter feed, and on readers’ blogs and forums. The fans reinforce one another’s excitement about the books, which is always gratifying to see. And, as any parent knows, when you make an activity more social, teenagers will want to do it more.

My favorite feedback is always from fans who’ve been helped by my book, or changed in some way. A couple of girls who read Uglies said that it motivated them to cut off their hair and give it to Locks of Love, which makes human-hair wigs for cancer patients. At the same time, they’re saying that their appearance isn’t as important to them anymore, and helping someone else feel better about their own. Those two letters were really sweet.

BWI: By the end of Leviathan, we were all very invested in the stories of Alek, Deryn and their world, to say the least. Can you tell us when to expect the second book in the trilogy, and please, please, please give us some hints about what happens next?

SW: In the second book, His Majesty’s Airship Leviathan heads for the Ottoman Empire, which hasn’t entered the war yet. So Deryn and Alek get to experience an entirely new culture at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and Keith gets to explore a new and wonderful visual style. Spoiler Hint: Students of the Great War will realize that events in the Ottoman Empire in late 1914 were very important to the outcome of the war, so this is Alek and Deryn’s chance to start changing the course of history.

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