The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide

SM: A person you walked by in the airport once that just — you know, you saw a look in their eye, and you started spinning a story about what was going on in that person‘s head.

SH: And, of course, a story isn‘t just one idea. The more you write, the more you‘re drawing on a million different pieces of things. That‘s why it takes so long to write a story, because I start out with an idea… but the more I write, I realize it‘s just the kernel — because I‘m adding more and more depth and intrigue. And along with the characters, it builds to a whole universe.

SM: It really does. I was trying to describe this recently, about how you have this universe of possibilities. And every time you pick one thing for your story — like Bella is brunette — all her blond and redheaded possibilities disappear. And then, when you pick the kind of car somebody drives, there are a million other vehicles, makes, and models that suddenly die.

And as you narrow it down, you‘re just taking pieces of it and destroying whole worlds that could have been. It‘s a very interesting process.

SH: I‘ve got chills.

On Eclipse

SH: So when you were writing Eclipse, Twilight hadn‘t come out yet.

SM: Twilight was not yet in stores. I had finished the rough draft of Eclipse. I still had a lot of editing to do, but it stayed pretty much in its present form.

SH: Was Twilight successful immediately?

SM: Yes — more so than I thought it would be. I mean, nothing, obviously, to what‘s going on right now. But when I was out on tour, it did, for one week, hop onto the New York Times list — which, for me, was like the epitome of everything. It was like: For the rest of my life, I get to say I?m a New York Times bestselling novelist.

SH: [Laughs] Right.

SM: So, for that one week, it felt like that was it — that was all I ever needed. [Laughs] So it started out really well. Booksellers were really great about getting the word out and hand selling it — which is awesome. Before New Moon came out, I had a couple of events with like a hundred people — and they were all excited and ready for what was coming next. That was really, really gratifying.

I had also started to get that people-didn‘t-like-Jacob vibe, which really took me by surprise.

SH: So at what point did you have to start balancing the success and the pressures from the outside while you were still writing?

SM: I think the first real pressure was with New Moon, when the advance reading copies came out. New Moon had those two spoilers. Edward leaves, Jacob‘s a werewolf. Once you know that, most of the suspense is gone from the book. Whether you figure it out or not, it‘s still huge. So those two things ruin any possibility of suspense in the story, pretty much. Then a review written by someone who had an advance reading copy was put online and it gave away every plot point of the whole book six months before the book came out.

That was the first time, I think, my publisher started to realize the power of the Internet with this particular series. Because it just started this huge outpouring of letters and people were so upset. Has this really happened? Why did this person tell us this? Can we read the book now?

Is it out? What‘s going on?

So I felt pressure then — but the book was already written. And then, with Eclipse, it started to feel like a lot of people had their specific ideas about what should happen. That was the first time I was really conscious that people were writing the story differently in their heads. I had also started to get that people-didn‘t-like-Jacob vibe, which really took me by surprise. I think it‘s because they weren‘t hearing his first- person the way I was. So then they got to, later.

SH: I don‘t know if you felt this way… but I never thought I would write from the point of view of a boy. Maybe because I read a lot of books where men wrote from a woman‘s point of view, and I found them unrealistic characters.

SM: Yes, yes!

SH: Especially, you know, books written in the last century. But I was like: That is such crap! A woman wouldn‘t think that — wouldn‘t do that — and it bothered me. So I thought I would never write from the point of view of a boy.

But then I met a character — almost exactly the same way you did. With Goose Girl there was a minor character named Razo. And then the book after that, Enna Burning, he was in it again — a minor character. And so by the time I got to the third book in the series, and I started to write from his point of view, I‘d already known him for two books. And I was thinking: I?m not writing this from the point of view of a boy; I?m just writing this person that I know. And the gender wasn‘t an issue. Was it sort of like that with Jacob?

SM: Yeah. You know, I felt a little presumptuous when I started working on writing Twilight from Edward‘s perspective, because I‘m not a boy. But Edward was so much a part of the story, and such a strong voice, that it didn‘t seem to matter. So I‘d kinda gotten that out of my system by the time I decided that I needed to write from Jacob‘s point of view. But, again — I wasn‘t writing a boy, I was writing Jacob. It was not like a universal male thing.

I do think that I have a sense of boys, because I have three brothers; I have three sons; I have a husband and my father and my father-in-law. I‘ve seen a lot of teenage boys in action, and they‘re actually very fascinating, hilarious, and heartbreaking creatures. I mean, they can beat the crap out of each other, and then be laughing with their arms around each other with black eyes five minutes later. I do think that I‘ve observed enough to be able to get the outside right, and that I knew Jacob enough that I could get the inside right.

Either one could have been the one that was wrong for her, and either one could have been the one that was right.

SH: I love the Jacob chapters in Breaking Dawn. But I need to go back to Eclipse.

You‘ve talked about Wuthering Heights influencing Eclipse.