Q: What was (is) the hardest aspect of building a fantasy world for you?

A: Making the magic consistent. I love reading fantasy novels, but frankly, in a great many of them I simply have to overlook the holes in the logic of the magic. It takes superb writing and strong characters to carry me over those bumps.

An example: At the very end of the third Lord of the Rings movie, with the terrible mission accomplished, an enormous eagle shows up to carry Frodo and Samwise to safety. Whaaa??? Where were you eleven minutes ago, when we were in far more desperate need of winged transport!?? NO reasonable explanation for why the eagle appears when it does.

It was very important to me that the magic in the Wing & Claw trilogy be logical and consistent. That meant limiting the magic to a very specific set of conditions: There are a few plants with magical capabilities that can only be released when they’re made into concoctions by skilled apothecaries. I believe that this kind of consistency is much fairer to the story and the readers!

Q: What do you feel is different for you, particularly, as a writer about creating a fantasy novel rather than writing a realistic or historical novel?

A: For me, writing fantasy is quite *similar* to historical fiction. With both, the world building is very important because the setting is unfamiliar to the reader: In fantasy, a world that never existed; in historical fiction, a world that no longer exists. You have to spend time and space on the page dealing with the setting. With contemporary realism, you can use a kind of shorthand because of assumptions you share with the reader. For example, if I write “kitchen” in a contemporary novel, I can be reasonably sure that my readers will picture something close to what I have in mind, or close enough, anyway. For both historical fiction and fantasy, I have to describe the kitchen in more detail—I can’t rely on those shared assumptions.

Q: Did you read fantasy novels before you wrote your book? If so, what’s your favorite fantasy novel and why?

I didn’t read fantasy specifically before writing Forest of Wonders; it’s just a natural part of all the reading I do. I have an awful lot of favorites. A short list:

The Bartimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud

Dogsbody, by Diana Wynne-Jones

Prophecy, by Ellen Oh

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin

The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge

Q: Is there a character in one of your fantasy novels that you wish you could invite over for dinner? What would you talk about?

A: Well, of course, I’d love to have Echo the bat visit—even knowing that the conversation would be rather limited. Sometimes that’s exactly what I need!

Thank you, Linda Sue, for sharing your thoughts and your book recommendations. I encourage you to read Linda Sue’s new Wing & Claw series, The Long Walk to Water, Keeping Score, and so many others. (She writes terrific picture books, too.) Learn more about Linda Sue Park on her website.

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Grayling’s Song is available from Clarion Books and your favorite bookseller. This story about Grayling’s quest to save her mother is a selection of the Junior Library Guild.

Q: What was (is) the hardest aspect of building a fantasy world for you?

A: On the whole, it’s American writers who build a fantasy world; the British ones (including me) tend instead to bring fantasy into the real world.  Maybe it’s because we grew up in time-haunted islands full of mysterious reminders of 3,000 years of ancestors; if you visit Stonehenge in the middle of the night, as I once did, you can believe almost anything could happen there. The hard thing—but also the most fun—is to make your reader believe that the real world can also contain magic.

Q: What do you feel is different for you, particularly, as a writer about creating a fantasy novel rather than writing a realistic or historical novel?

A: I seem to be incapable of writing a realistic novel. I began life as a newspaper reporter, and I’ve written biographies and other non-fiction books, but whenever I write fiction, my imagination gives me fantasy—even in books set in the historical past, like King of Shadows and Victory. The only exception was Dawn of Fear, a book about World War 2,  but that wasn’t truly fiction because it was almost totally autobiographical.

Q: Did you read fantasy novels before you wrote your books? If so, what’s your favorite fantasy novel and why?

A: I was born a loooong time ago, so I grew up reading myth and legend and folktale rather than fantasy novels, and I don’t have a favorite. But I remember E. Nesbit’s books, like The Phoenix and the Carpet, and two fantasies by the English poet John Masefield, called The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights. I read Tolkien when I was at university; he lectured to us on Beowulf, and after a lovely shout of the poem’s first two lines in Anglo-Saxon, he mumbled. C.S.Lewis gave lectures too (on Renaissance literature) and was much easier to hear, because he boomed. I read his adult science fiction novels, but not the Narnia books.

Q: Is there a character in one of your fantasy novels that you wish you could invite over for dinner? What would you talk about?

A: Since you have to think yourself inside the head of every character you invent, you know most of them as well as you know yourself. The only exception for me is Merriman Lyon, in the Dark is Rising sequence: he’s mysterious, remote, perhaps unknowable. But I’d never have the courage to invite him to dinner.

Thank you, Susan, for sharing your experiences and insight. I encourage you to read all of Susan Cooper’s books, including The Dark is Rising Sequence and Green Boy, as well as the others she mentions. Learn more about Susan Cooper on her website.

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Grayling’s Song is available on June 7th from Clarion Books and your favorite bookseller. The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books said “The language gives the book the atmospheric flavor of historical fiction, and the land itself is wild and mysterious, exactly the type of place where magic could happen, children could wander around trying to fix the world, and tiny mice could shapeshift into mighty protectors if fed the right potion.”