EM: Welcome back to The Cobblestone Café. This week we have a very special guest with us: Mr. Patrick Rothfuss, author of the widely acclaimed The Name of the Wind. Thanks for joining us today!

Patrick: Heya. Thanks for having me.

EM: So, Patrick, The Name of the Wind has been receiving rave reviews across the board, and now I hear it's been nominated for a Quill Award! (I'm sure that's because I happen to love the book, my opinion being so highly influential and all. You can thank me later...)

Patrick: [laughter]

EM: Yeah, so anyway, congratulations on the nomination!

Patrick: Thanks much. It's still a little surreal to me. Since I don't get out much I actually hadn't heard of the Quill Award until I was nominated. Then I went online and saw some of the video clips. It's a pretty swank deal. Red carpet and reporters and everything. I don't know how well I'm going to fit into that sort of scene....

EM: So the fame and fortune haven't started to change your lifestyle yet? No red carpets?

Patrick: Oh lord. Young writers would be so disillusioned if they saw my lifestyle. It's not very Rockstar at all. The thing is, people assume that as soon as your book gets published, you get rich. But it's not really the case. Even if you're really lucky like me and you get a lot of attention, that doesn't mean you're suddenly rolling in cash.

The other day my agent called and said, "Good news! We sold the translation rights in Italy!" I said, "Cool." Then I hung up the phone, went downstairs, and picked all the quarters out of my change jar so I could go buy a gallon of milk.

EM: Don't tell me you're still eating ramen noodles—

Patrick: Damn. Would you believe I've actually eaten ramen for the last three days? Good guess.

I don't mean to paint a grim picture here. I spent many long years as a student, so I'm used to this lifestyle. I like ramen, so it's not like I'm going through any great hardships. Eventually though I hope to move up the food chain a little. Talk to me again in a year. I'll probably still be eating ramen, but maybe I'll be doing it out of a solid gold bowl....

EM: [laughing] Sounds like there's a bit of a time lag between selling a book and making money from it, but of course writing the two thousand printed pages of the trilogy took even longer. I understand the entire process of writing and selling all three books took about nine years?

Patrick: It took me seven years just to finish the first solid draft of the Trilogy, then another seven years to edit, sell and re-edit it into it's current shape.

EM: Wow! I'm sure you've seen your writing change a lot in that time.

Patrick: Well, I've always been good at putting words together. I don't know how much better I've gotten at that. But I've certainly gotten better at plotting and structuring a novel. Storytelling stuff.

EM: I like what you said about that on BookLoons:

There's so much more to a good novel than exciting characters, clever language, and a unique world. Interweaving different plot arcs and character motivations is very tricky, and it's easy to confuse or disappoint the reader. Those are the pieces of the craft that it took me years to learn.

What things have you done in particular to expand your horizons in these areas, or has it mostly been a matter of practice, practice, practice?

Patrick: A lot of what I've done is simply to think more in terms of plot than I used to. And yes, practice certainly helps too. But it's not just practice....

Do you know how to fix a tire?

EM: I wasn't aware they could reproduce... Oh! You mean like patch it? Well, that depends on the tire. I'm pretty decent with a bicycle tire, but I take my car tires to the shop. Now, I could probably replace a car tire if I really had to, but I don't know much about fixing one. Why do you ask?

Patrick: Can you change a tire, I mean.

EM: Oh. Yeah, sure. If I had a jack. And a lug wrench. And a spare tire. And if I hadn't been riding around on the rims long enough to trash them. Not my favorite way to spend an hour, but I could do it.

Patrick: Okay. How did you learn how to change a tire?

EM: My dad taught me when I bought my first car.

Patrick: Makes sense. You wouldn't need to know before that, right? Now, would you say that you're good at changing a tire? Are you an accomplished tire-changer?

EM: I don't suppose so.

Patrick: That's what I'm talking about. There are certain aspects of the craft of novel writing that you don't even become aware of until you're working on it. Plotting is one of those. Just like changing a tire, you don't really need to worry about being able to do it until you have a car of your own.

But changing the tire in your driveway some afternoon only gives you a rough idea of what you need to do. It's entirely different when you blow a tire on the highway. When that happens you look at the smoking, shredded mass of rubber and you realize that if you don't fix this, it isn't getting done. Maybe you did ride on the rim for a while and it's trashed. Maybe the lug nuts are rusted tight. On the shoulder of the road with the cars blowing past you, that's when you really learn the craft of changing the tire.

The same thing is true with writing. It isn't until things go wrong and you have to fix them that you really start learning the tricks of the trade. Sure people can help you, give advice. But what you take away from being helped isn't the same. If you call a tow truck you end up with a new tire, you haven't developed your skills in the same way. Ditto for writing.

EM: The world you've created for the Kingkiller Chronicle is truly magnificent. I'm overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of thought you must have put into the University, the Edema Ruh, the city of Tarbean, the artistic circles of Imre, the systems of magic—sympathy, sygaldry... You've clearly based your work on a wide variety of studies, far beyond anything taught in a traditional English department.

If you were the head of a creative writing department, and the Dean of the College asked you to draw up the course requirements for a brand new interdisciplinary major called "Fantasy World Building," what core requirements and/or electives would you include, and why?

Patrick: I can tell you what the first requirement would be: three credits of Basic Critical Thinking. This is usually taught as a philosophy class at most universities, but in my opinion it should be required for every college student.

For the overall class requirements, I'd like it to be open-ended. Students would be allowed to choose from a large pool of classes ranging from anthropology, sociology, religious studies, various hard sciences, histories, as well as the "fine" arts. (What are the other arts, crude arts? Rough arts?)

The thing is, not every well-created world needs to focus on the same things. For example, you notice how money is never an issue in Tolkien's books? Nobody ever pays for anything. That's not a flaw in his worldbuilding, it's a choice.

On the other hand, in McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books, the economy is a big piece of the world. It's important to the story. But there's no religion in Pern? For a world where religion is one of the key elements, you want to go to Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books.

Here is the key: you need to build a world that's appropriate for the story you're trying to tell. Or, conversely, you need to realize that the world you build will shape your story. It's a bit of the old mirror-and-the-lamp issue.

What else.... At least 9 credits of classes with a non-western emphasis. Too much fantasy falls into the generic faux-medieval time period.

EM: Besides your own work, what other books and/or authors would you recommend people read as examples of truly magnificent worldbuilding, and what is it about each that "makes the cut"?

Patrick: It's not really an issue of Good and Bad worldbuilding. A lot of it comes down to a matter of taste. You want gritty futuristic realism? Then you should go to Neuromancer or Psion. Dystopian future: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Dystopian future with fantasy and action: Never Deal With a Dragon. Gritty, mythic Dark Ages fantasy: In the Eye of Heaven.

In terms of authors. It's hard to go wrong with Orson Scott Card for worldbuilding. He's written a lot of great stories set in a lot of great worlds, all of them different.

You know how some Hollywood stars always play a version of themselves? Like Nicholson, or Walken, or Schwarzenegger? I think some authors are like that. Their stories always bear the undeniable stamp of THEM. This isn't always a bad thing, especially if you like their style. Personally, I like Walken.

But then there are actors who are so good at acting that you never really notice them. The REAL actors. Like Edward Norton and Johnny Depp. When you watch them, they're not playing the character, they are the character.

That's kind of how I think of Orson Scott Card. I just looked up a list of his books and found myself thinking, "Oh yeah, Treason. I love that book. Songmaster. I forgot he wrote that one too. Lovelock. Hart's Hope. Homecoming." All different, all brilliant, all his.

EM: Oh, Homecoming is one of my favorites—

Uh oh. My producer's telling me we're just about out of time. We're going to have to wrap this up for the moment, but tune in next week folks, for the conclusion of our interview with Patrick Rothfuss!

Three... two... one... and.... we're clear. Great show, people!

EM: Thanks, Pat. That was terrific! See you next week?

Patrick: I'll be here with bells on. Figuratively.

(Part II of the interview is available here.)