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Perhaps it was selling his first story at the ago of just fourteen that gave Terry Pratchett his understanding of young people and their tastes. He happily ignores the marketing gulf that is supposed to exist between children's and adult fiction - and that, it could be argued, is a big reason for the success of his Discworld novels. Aimed at adults, they manage to appeal to all ages.
Although Discworld novels have sold over four million in the UK alone, they are still difficult to categorise. Are they humour...or are they fantasy?
'Bit of each really,' answers Terry. 'But it all depends on how you judge genres. If you set a novel in the Arizona of 1855 it will not necessarily be a western; it might be a romance. But you can set a book in Newcastle of 1993 and it could indeed by a western. A western is not just defined by scenery and hardware; it is more a matter of ethos and appeal.
'Much the same principle applies to humour. Humour is like a colour. Before you apply a colour, you must have something that you want coloured. Humour cannot be thing that just makes you go "ha ha" and sets you off looking for the next laugh line. Humour has to be something you apply to what you are writing. And if I am writing fantasy, then it is therefore fantasy with humour, not humour with humour.'
Right now (on 4 November, to be exact) Corgi and Terry are celebrating ten years of the Discworld - and celebrations include the paperback edition of Terry's latest report from the Discworld: Lords and Ladies. 'Right in the centre of Lords and Ladies, I have my three witches,' says Terry. 'What they do is to make a single character with three facets: Granny Weatherwax is someone who has chosen a certain path through life, and sticks to it no matter what; Nanny Ogg has a much more mollifying "kiss it better and have a whisky" approach; and Margret is a kind of ex-hippy with so many hang ups that, even when things are going right, she gets it all wrong. Put them together and they immediately start arguing, and it is a lot of fun to work on the interplay between them.'
They are also natural vehicles for humour. Take Margret for example: in Lords and Ladies she marries and so gets to be queen of Ankh-Morpork. So she practises all the things that queens do, and we get this passage early in the book:
She had spent the whole morning trying to learn to do tapestry, because Millie assured her that's what queens did, and the sampler with its message 'God bless this hosue' was even now lying forlornly on her chair.
There is, of course, nothing terribly funny about mis-spelling house, but in the context of Lords and Ladies, it becomes funny because of the character of Margret and the situation in which she finds herself. 'It is the way people behave, what they do, that tells you about them. If you tell me that there is a man of, say fifty, and he keeps his money in a purse - then I can tell you a lot about him; I can almost tell you what kind of cat he will drive. If you tell me about an old lady who drives a Morris 1000, then right away I will have a good idea of her character; there would be no need for a great wadge of description. There is no need to write: "Such-and-such a character had a hear of gold - but..." Instead, just show him doing something that this kind of character would do. And if what he does is funny or amusing, then fine. That is adding the colour of humour. But if all you are writing is gags, then the humour will probably fail. What I prefer to write is what I would call a British style of humour, a humour that sidles up to you.
'I also think it is important to remember that dialogue may well tell you something about the character, and therefore it furthers the plot in that way. But dialogue should not be used simply as a vehicle to explain the plot. I see quite a lot of manuscripts from people who write to me asking my opinion, and there is a great deal of dialogue would summarise as: "Yonder lies the palace of my father the king - who as you well know..." and in comes lots of background. It is the kind of infodump technique. The dialogue is used to dump in a lot of background information that the writer has not been sufficiently skilled enough to put across any other way.
'But it is characters that dominate. And that is a point I always make to would-be writers: get your characters together and let them talk to each other. I do this whenever I am stuck, and often my characters will tell me something I didn't know.'
[Jamas's note: I am aware that there are a large number of errors in this article, in plot details, and Magrat's name, but they were there in the article, so they're here as well.]
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