Question: What do we have to look forward to in the Dresden Files?
Assuming that the series is successful enough that my publishers want to continue it, look for more of the same. Harry is pathologically unable to ignore people in trouble and he seems to be just as stubborn about looking the other way when something bad is happening. By the end of the third book in the series, he’s already wading into hot water, and I don’t really see how he’s going to avoid getting in deeper and deeper as the stories progress.
My current plan gets Harry more deeply involved in the supernatural world in general, puts him onto the trail of his parents’ past and the mysterious circumstances surrounding their deaths, makes him about a million new enemies, a hatful of new allies, and calls for him to never have a car that runs too well, a romance that moves too smoothly or rent that gets paid on time. :)
The series does have a definite beginning, middle, and end as I look at it right now. I’ve got loose sketches for about twenty Dresden novels, with a nice big fat epic trilogy to capstone the series, but a great many things could affect how it turns out. I’ll have to play it by ear, but I hope that the adventures of Harry Dresden and company are just beginning, and that the stories will be around for a long, long time.
Source: WizardsHarry.com - Interview with Jim Butcher
Date: April 6, 2001 (?) (Earliest Archive Date)
Question: Have you finished anything new recently?
Most recently, I finished a more mainstream fantasy novel, called "Shepherdboy’s Fury." It’s set on a fantasy world and features a much larger cast of characters than the Dresden books get to use. It has not, at the time I write this, been sold, but I have good hope that it may get picked up before the year is out.
I get to do some fun stuff in that novel that isn’t in the same venue as the Dresden books. Kings, treacherous advisors, spys, farmers, soldiers, killers, madmen, murder, deception, sorcery, lust, love, faith, despair, fantastic beasts, clashing armies, inhuman allies, mortal enemies--
Oh. Hmm. Maybe it isn’t all that different. :)
Source: WizardsHarry.com - Interview with Jim Butcher
Date: April 6, 2001 (?) (Earliest Archive Date)
Most recently, I finished a more mainstream fantasy novel, called "Shepherdboy’s Fury." It’s set on a fantasy world and features a much larger cast of characters than the Dresden books get to use. It has not, at the time I write this, been sold, but I have good hope that it may get picked up before the year is out.
I get to do some fun stuff in that novel that isn’t in the same venue as the Dresden books. Kings, treacherous advisors, spys, farmers, soldiers, killers, madmen, murder, deception, sorcery, lust, love, faith, despair, fantastic beasts, clashing armies, inhuman allies, mortal enemies--
Oh. Hmm. Maybe it isn’t all that different. :)
Source: WizardsHarry.com - Interview with Jim Butcher
Date: April 6, 2001 (?) (Earliest Archive Date)
Question: What is the best part of having your first book published?
That’s hard to say. When I got my first actual copy of the book, actually held it in my hands, I sat down on the floor and started crying. It took me more than eight years of constant effort (and rejection) to get that far, and when I’d finally done it, I hardly knew how to handle it. Nothing had really prepared me for actual success--I had handling rejection down to an art, but this was way new.
After the initial shock was over, I think the best part of having the book published is that I can keep a copy right next to my computer. Then when I need to look up a detail that hasn’t stuck in my head, like what colors Harry’s car is, I can just grab it and find out. :)
The second best part is a small degree of confidence that the stuff I’m producing now will actually get published (and read). :) Believe me, it’s much easier to sit down at the keyboard and plunk away at a story when I’m really tired if I am fairly sure I’ll actually see a degree of success from it. That added security (tiny though it may be) has really helped me out
Source: WizardsHarry.com - Interview with Jim Butcher
Date: April 6, 2001 (?) (Earliest Archive Date)
That’s hard to say. When I got my first actual copy of the book, actually held it in my hands, I sat down on the floor and started crying. It took me more than eight years of constant effort (and rejection) to get that far, and when I’d finally done it, I hardly knew how to handle it. Nothing had really prepared me for actual success--I had handling rejection down to an art, but this was way new.
After the initial shock was over, I think the best part of having the book published is that I can keep a copy right next to my computer. Then when I need to look up a detail that hasn’t stuck in my head, like what colors Harry’s car is, I can just grab it and find out. :)
The second best part is a small degree of confidence that the stuff I’m producing now will actually get published (and read). :) Believe me, it’s much easier to sit down at the keyboard and plunk away at a story when I’m really tired if I am fairly sure I’ll actually see a degree of success from it. That added security (tiny though it may be) has really helped me out
Source: WizardsHarry.com - Interview with Jim Butcher
Date: April 6, 2001 (?) (Earliest Archive Date)
Question: What made you become interested in writing?
Repeating ‘may I help you’ about a zillion times was a part of the equation. :) But mostly, it was just something that I had more or less always done in one sense or another. I had been a voracious reader of science fiction and fantasy since about the first grade, when my sisters got me boxed sets of The Lord of The Rings and The Adventures of Han Solo. The first movie I can clearly remember seeing was Star Wars (also a sister-assisted venture). For most of my life, if I wasn’t watching science fiction, or reading it, I was drawing pictures with that omnipresent Death Star half-circle in the bottom right hand corner or writing stories.
I remember that I felt frustrated at not being able to find that ‘perfect’ story--you know what I’m talking about. That story that absolutely rings true in every sense as you read it, that makes you laugh and cry and when its over leaves this glowy, satisfied feeling resounding inside you. Nowadays, I have the feeling that everyone’s perfect story is a bit different, but in the effort to find mine, I eventually wrote my first novel when I was nineteen.
It wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was terrible. But I tried to hang in there and upon getting involved with the Professional Writing program at OU, I wrote my second novel in an effort to make the perfect story.
It wasn’t, either. In fact, it was even worse. Ditto the third novel. The fourth was at least a little bit better, but it still wasn’t good, much less The Perfect Story.
The fifth novel I wrote, though, all the stuff my teacher had been teaching me seemed to fall together. The book was then called "The Dresden Chronicles, Book One: Semiautomagic." After a fairly light round of editing, it became "The Dresden Files, Book One: Storm Front."
(For the record, I still haven’t gotten the Perfect Story written. But maybe it will be the next one. Or the one after that. Or the one after that. Or...)
Source: WizardsHarry.com - Interview with Jim Butcher
Date: April 6, 2001 (?) (Earliest Archive Date)
Note: Earliest version of this story that I know of.
Repeating ‘may I help you’ about a zillion times was a part of the equation. :) But mostly, it was just something that I had more or less always done in one sense or another. I had been a voracious reader of science fiction and fantasy since about the first grade, when my sisters got me boxed sets of The Lord of The Rings and The Adventures of Han Solo. The first movie I can clearly remember seeing was Star Wars (also a sister-assisted venture). For most of my life, if I wasn’t watching science fiction, or reading it, I was drawing pictures with that omnipresent Death Star half-circle in the bottom right hand corner or writing stories.
I remember that I felt frustrated at not being able to find that ‘perfect’ story--you know what I’m talking about. That story that absolutely rings true in every sense as you read it, that makes you laugh and cry and when its over leaves this glowy, satisfied feeling resounding inside you. Nowadays, I have the feeling that everyone’s perfect story is a bit different, but in the effort to find mine, I eventually wrote my first novel when I was nineteen.
It wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was terrible. But I tried to hang in there and upon getting involved with the Professional Writing program at OU, I wrote my second novel in an effort to make the perfect story.
It wasn’t, either. In fact, it was even worse. Ditto the third novel. The fourth was at least a little bit better, but it still wasn’t good, much less The Perfect Story.
The fifth novel I wrote, though, all the stuff my teacher had been teaching me seemed to fall together. The book was then called "The Dresden Chronicles, Book One: Semiautomagic." After a fairly light round of editing, it became "The Dresden Files, Book One: Storm Front."
(For the record, I still haven’t gotten the Perfect Story written. But maybe it will be the next one. Or the one after that. Or the one after that. Or...)
Source: WizardsHarry.com - Interview with Jim Butcher
Date: April 6, 2001 (?) (Earliest Archive Date)
Note: Earliest version of this story that I know of.
Question: How do you come up with the characters for your books?
Callous as it sounds, mostly it depends on what I need them to do in the story. :) I hear a lot of talk about plot-driven books versus character-driven books, but my own impression on the subject leans more towards the idea that plot and character cannot be usefully separated from one another. But from the aspect of a writer who has a deadline and who needs to be able to plan and reliably produce a reasonably good story, I tend to make things easy on myself whenever I can. I figure out what I need a character to do in my story, and then I build a character who would do it.
I needed someone to provide both threat, motivation, and distraction for Harry in Storm Front, for example, and got two characters who could do those jobs. John Marcone got to show up as the negative criminal element in the story, the human face of lawlessness and crime. Karrin Murphy is his opposite number, representative of the law, society, and order.
Neither one of them seems to do much for Harry that doesn’t make his day worse and worse, nine times out of ten, but no one’s perfect. :)
Bob the Skull came about in the same way. In fact, he’s something of an in-joke for the writers in the program at OU. Debbie Chester, my writing teacher, often warned us about producing an old and worn-out trope for our stories, called ‘talking heads’. Talking heads are characters with no real purpose in the story other than to show up and explain something so that the reader can get what’s going on. I knew that I was going to need a character who could explain things about magic to Harry (and through him to the reader) so that the magic ‘rules’ would hold together and make sense. So just to be a smart-alec to my teacher, I made a literal ‘talking head’ for Harry, who gets to serve as an adviser, a information source and an annoyance--I can’t plan a character, these days, without figuring out how it’s going to drive Harry nuts.
Source: WizardsHarry.com - Interview with Jim Butcher
Date: April 6, 2001 (?) (Earliest Archive Date)
Callous as it sounds, mostly it depends on what I need them to do in the story. :) I hear a lot of talk about plot-driven books versus character-driven books, but my own impression on the subject leans more towards the idea that plot and character cannot be usefully separated from one another. But from the aspect of a writer who has a deadline and who needs to be able to plan and reliably produce a reasonably good story, I tend to make things easy on myself whenever I can. I figure out what I need a character to do in my story, and then I build a character who would do it.
I needed someone to provide both threat, motivation, and distraction for Harry in Storm Front, for example, and got two characters who could do those jobs. John Marcone got to show up as the negative criminal element in the story, the human face of lawlessness and crime. Karrin Murphy is his opposite number, representative of the law, society, and order.
Neither one of them seems to do much for Harry that doesn’t make his day worse and worse, nine times out of ten, but no one’s perfect. :)
Bob the Skull came about in the same way. In fact, he’s something of an in-joke for the writers in the program at OU. Debbie Chester, my writing teacher, often warned us about producing an old and worn-out trope for our stories, called ‘talking heads’. Talking heads are characters with no real purpose in the story other than to show up and explain something so that the reader can get what’s going on. I knew that I was going to need a character who could explain things about magic to Harry (and through him to the reader) so that the magic ‘rules’ would hold together and make sense. So just to be a smart-alec to my teacher, I made a literal ‘talking head’ for Harry, who gets to serve as an adviser, a information source and an annoyance--I can’t plan a character, these days, without figuring out how it’s going to drive Harry nuts.
Source: WizardsHarry.com - Interview with Jim Butcher
Date: April 6, 2001 (?) (Earliest Archive Date)
Question: You recently stated that you had originally planned on writing Proven Guilty before Dead Beat. What do you think you would've had Molly doing during Dead Beat, if that had happened?
Molly would have been doing basically what Ramirez was doing. It would have been her on the back of a dinosaur, and so on. Getting into trouble. The kind of assistance she lended would have looked a lot different, and a lot black magic-ier. But that would have basically been her job, if we'd done it that way.
But, as it was, my editor called me and said, "What's the next story gonna be?"
"Oh! It's gonna be all about Molly and, you know, she's gonna be getting into this, and Harry's gonna be picking her up as an apprentice."
And she's like, "You know Jim, you might wanna think, for this next book, you might wanna make your story a bit... bigger, a bit broader, a bit more solid."
I'm like, "Are you saying I'm going to hardback!?"
She said, "I didn't say that... But maybe you should think about it just in case it happens."
And I'm like, "Oh, okay. So. Um. T-Rex."
Source: Dragon Con 2014 - An Hour with Jim Butcher Panel (Timestamp: 7m12s)
Date: August 29, 2014
Molly would have been doing basically what Ramirez was doing. It would have been her on the back of a dinosaur, and so on. Getting into trouble. The kind of assistance she lended would have looked a lot different, and a lot black magic-ier. But that would have basically been her job, if we'd done it that way.
But, as it was, my editor called me and said, "What's the next story gonna be?"
"Oh! It's gonna be all about Molly and, you know, she's gonna be getting into this, and Harry's gonna be picking her up as an apprentice."
And she's like, "You know Jim, you might wanna think, for this next book, you might wanna make your story a bit... bigger, a bit broader, a bit more solid."
I'm like, "Are you saying I'm going to hardback!?"
She said, "I didn't say that... But maybe you should think about it just in case it happens."
And I'm like, "Oh, okay. So. Um. T-Rex."
Source: Dragon Con 2014 - An Hour with Jim Butcher Panel (Timestamp: 7m12s)
Date: August 29, 2014
Question: When you have a thing happen and then everything explodes after, so can you go into how you structure that? Is that something that just came out naturally or is that a process that you follow, like, "Oh, things are getting boring. I'm gonna drop a house on somebody.
When you're writing the book, one of the things you have to plan for is, you gotta think of the book like a roller coaster. And the first two-thirds of the book are the ride up the hill, where it's going kachunk kachunk kachunk. And you've gotta do some things to keep it interesting, you know like, on the roller coaster where you gotta have the sign that says, "this roller coaster is, you know, dangerous and still under construction" and stuff like that. You know, to keep you entertained on the way up the hill. When you hit that big middle point, there's usually a big flashy middle point in the books. And then after that, everything kinda goes crazy, and that's point where you get to, where you start down the hill. And the rest of the roller coaster is a lot faster. And really, when you're on a roller coaster, it takes about half the time of the ride going up the hill. But that's not the part you remember, the part you remember is that exciting swirly bit after. So that's what really writing a story is about. You've got to set it up going up the hill, and then you've gotta have the exciting swirly bit after.
The other metaphor I use, it's like setting up dominos. It takes forever to set them up, and then it seems like it goes really, really fast when you finally knock them over and get to see the chain of events that you've established. The important thing is just, as you're writing the story, you've got to be thinking about the swirly bit at the end, so you've got to have in mind, "This is how I want the drama to play out. This is how I want the cool action scene to happen. This is how I want the lightsaber to come into the story." So that you get it set up.
But it's holy, it's a rightsaber.
Source: Dragon Con 2014 - An Hour with Jim Butcher Panel (Timestamp: 4m49s)
Date: August 29, 2014
Note: transcribed this whole damn thing just for a pun
When you're writing the book, one of the things you have to plan for is, you gotta think of the book like a roller coaster. And the first two-thirds of the book are the ride up the hill, where it's going kachunk kachunk kachunk. And you've gotta do some things to keep it interesting, you know like, on the roller coaster where you gotta have the sign that says, "this roller coaster is, you know, dangerous and still under construction" and stuff like that. You know, to keep you entertained on the way up the hill. When you hit that big middle point, there's usually a big flashy middle point in the books. And then after that, everything kinda goes crazy, and that's point where you get to, where you start down the hill. And the rest of the roller coaster is a lot faster. And really, when you're on a roller coaster, it takes about half the time of the ride going up the hill. But that's not the part you remember, the part you remember is that exciting swirly bit after. So that's what really writing a story is about. You've got to set it up going up the hill, and then you've gotta have the exciting swirly bit after.
The other metaphor I use, it's like setting up dominos. It takes forever to set them up, and then it seems like it goes really, really fast when you finally knock them over and get to see the chain of events that you've established. The important thing is just, as you're writing the story, you've got to be thinking about the swirly bit at the end, so you've got to have in mind, "This is how I want the drama to play out. This is how I want the cool action scene to happen. This is how I want the lightsaber to come into the story." So that you get it set up.
But it's holy, it's a rightsaber.
Source: Dragon Con 2014 - An Hour with Jim Butcher Panel (Timestamp: 4m49s)
Date: August 29, 2014
Note: transcribed this whole damn thing just for a pun
Question: In Cold Days, when Molly becomes part of the Fae, I was wondering why Dresden, because he had been around the Faerie Queens and he was trained as the Knight and in the earlier books and becomes ???, so is it just because he's a guy...?
It's because he's a boy. Of course not, if you're a boy. Just, he has a penis. I wish it was complicated and cool and I could tell you that, but no. I'm not very complicated.
Source: Dragon Con 2014 - An Hour with Jim Butcher Panel (Timestamp: 4m4s)
Date: August 29, 2014
It's because he's a boy. Of course not, if you're a boy. Just, he has a penis. I wish it was complicated and cool and I could tell you that, but no. I'm not very complicated.
Source: Dragon Con 2014 - An Hour with Jim Butcher Panel (Timestamp: 4m4s)
Date: August 29, 2014
Question: Is there a character, either from another book series or maybe a movie or television show that you feels as though Harry would really enjoy hanging out with.
Let me think. The question is, would they enjoy hanging out with... 'Cause, he's just a--Are you kidding? I wouldn't want to hang out with Harry Dresden. John Taylor could do it. John Taylor could definitely ???. They could compare coats. But yeah, I mean, Harry's just got that, that havoc radius around him that I wouldn't want to be in. You know, so, if I was at the table with him, I'd constantly be going... (Butcher mimes slowly shifting his chair away), "Don't take it personal, man."
I mean, you'd get along with him fine. He'd be a good guy to have [at a barbecue]. You could play Cards Against Humanity with him or something.
Source: Dragon Con 2014 - An Hour with Jim Butcher Panel (Timestamp: 2m23s)
Date: August 29, 2014
Let me think. The question is, would they enjoy hanging out with... 'Cause, he's just a--Are you kidding? I wouldn't want to hang out with Harry Dresden. John Taylor could do it. John Taylor could definitely ???. They could compare coats. But yeah, I mean, Harry's just got that, that havoc radius around him that I wouldn't want to be in. You know, so, if I was at the table with him, I'd constantly be going... (Butcher mimes slowly shifting his chair away), "Don't take it personal, man."
I mean, you'd get along with him fine. He'd be a good guy to have [at a barbecue]. You could play Cards Against Humanity with him or something.
Source: Dragon Con 2014 - An Hour with Jim Butcher Panel (Timestamp: 2m23s)
Date: August 29, 2014
Question: Is there something that happened in an earlier book in the series, that you kind of wish now that you hadn't done? Something that you kind of set in place.
No. I think all things considered, I feel like I'd be a little bit ungrateful at this point if I said, "Oh, the early series was just so messed up!" Because it seems to have worked out. The only thing I regret is that people have to start reading the series with the book that I knew the least about writing a good book when I wrote it. It's okay, you won't hurt my feelings by acknowledging that there was a learning curve there, going on in the early series. I wrote that when I was 26 and knew very little about the actual art of writing a good story. And now it's a much different process for me.
Source: Dragon Con 2014 - An Hour with Jim Butcher Panel (Timestamp: 1m18s)
Date: August 29, 2014
No. I think all things considered, I feel like I'd be a little bit ungrateful at this point if I said, "Oh, the early series was just so messed up!" Because it seems to have worked out. The only thing I regret is that people have to start reading the series with the book that I knew the least about writing a good book when I wrote it. It's okay, you won't hurt my feelings by acknowledging that there was a learning curve there, going on in the early series. I wrote that when I was 26 and knew very little about the actual art of writing a good story. And now it's a much different process for me.
Source: Dragon Con 2014 - An Hour with Jim Butcher Panel (Timestamp: 1m18s)
Date: August 29, 2014
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