The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide (7 page)

SH:
So you knew, even before
Twilight
was published, that in your world a vampire and a human would have a baby?

SM:
Oh yeah. I’ve got it all worked out in my head. My scientific reasoning works for me, but for people who don’t buy into it, I can only agree. It’s true. Vampires cannot have babies… because vampires aren’t real. [Laughs] And vampires can’t have babies with humans, because humans can’t actually copulate with vampires—because vampires are not real. [SH laughs] It’s a
fantasy
.

SH:
Right. And yet people believe those characters, and the possibility of those vampires is real enough that they have to say: Wait—those aren’t the rules.

SM:
It’s flattering in a way, that this is so real to them that they feel like there are things that can’t happen in this fantasy.

SH:
Now I have a nerd-girl question. Does Nessie’s bite do anything? Did it do anything to Bella, when Nessie bit her?

SM:
Nessie is not venomous.

SH:
You did say in the book that Nessie wasn’t venomous. I mean, it’s just about food. [Laughs] Extreme nursing. [Laughs] But I guess when Bella did so well with the transition, as the new vampire, I was thinking:
I wonder if Nessie’s bite did that for her
.

SM:
[Laughs] I hadn’t even thought of that. No, Bella’s transition was unique among new vampires, in that she knew what
was coming. None of the other Cullens had any warning. It was just, all of a sudden, this overwhelming need to drink blood—just without any kind of readying. You know how sometimes you have to brace yourself for something? Bella was braced—she was ready. And it wasn’t like it was easier for her than it was for them. She’d just already made up her mind that that’s the whole key to everything. She’s the only person in the entire history of the Twilight universe who chose beforehand to be a “vegetarian” vampire.

SH:
I liked that Jasper had a hard time with that. His personal struggle was that it wasn’t inevitable.

SM:
You know, when you’re really used to giving in to instant gratification, that makes it harder not to. If you’ve never given in, it’s easier to keep it that way.

SH:
I remember when you were writing
Breaking Dawn
, you told me that this story made you happy. What is it about this story that made you happy?

SM:
Well, it goes back to what we were talking about before, about Edward. And it’s an interesting thing to me, how I worry about my characters like they’re real people. Like how after I wrote
Eclipse
—even though I knew exactly what was going to happen in
Breaking Dawn
—until I actually got to the part where Jacob sees Renesmee for the first time, and his life comes together for him, I worried about him all the time.

And Edward, this whole time, has had a lot of happiness—and, yet, he’s not trusting any of it to last. He’s feeling like he’s doomed, and there’s no abating it—that something bad is going to happen to him because of who he is. And now I could finally watch that change and watch him come to accept happiness—even more than Bella does. Because Bella sees the end coming and sort of loses hope, but he never does.

After he accepts that he can have happiness, he just clings to it. And I really enjoyed that, and I enjoyed writing the end. I had to write all four books to get to those last two pages. Just to have Bella and Edward really be able to understand each other—that made it worth writing four books.

SH:
And he really makes the journey—even though vampires, as you’ve said, are frozen sort of in that moment when they first become vampires. But he changes so much in
Breaking Dawn
, and so quickly in becoming a father. What was it like to take him through that journey, as well?

SM:
You know, all that really changes is his outlook—which, of course, changed everything. But who he is, what he loves, how he does things—it all stays the same. He did get a lot of things that he hadn’t even let himself think about wanting, though. I mean, getting to have this daughter that he had never envisioned—that he never could have conceived of—was this unbelievable thing for him, you know. And he accepts it pretty quickly. But the bigger wonder for him is Bella being happy. He thought he was going to ruin her life, and he made her happy. And that really was everything for him.

SH:
So when you were writing, you’d have a literary classic that helps inspire your books. With
Breaking Dawn
you said it was
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, and you couldn’t say the second one.

SM:
Merchant of Venice
—which I do say in the story. You know… [SH gasps] It’s the book Alice pulls a page from to leave her message for Bella.

SH:
I wondered about that.

SM:
And, you know, originally it was
Jane Eyre
that Alice tore a page from. But
Jane Eyre
had nothing to do with the story. It just got in there because Jane Eyre was one of my best friends growing up. She was a really big part of my life. [Laughs] That’s why it was in there, because that book was such a big part of my growing-up experience and the way I view the world.

Because, actually, I do think there’s a Bella–
Jane Eyre
relationship. Jane Eyre’s a stoic. She does what she thinks is right, and she takes it—and she doesn’t mouth off about it. You know, in her head, maybe, she suffers, but she never lets that cross her lips. And I do think that there’s some of that stoicism—not in the same way, but there’s a little bit of that—in Bella.

The real story that I felt tied to was
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, where, in this lovely fantasy, the heartbreak of people not loving the right people—which happens all the time—is made right in this glittery instant of fairy dust. I love that book—and that’s the part I love about it. I enjoyed the character of Bottom in the play, but that’s not what I read it for. I read it for the magic.

That really is sort of where the imprinting idea came from, which existed in
Forever Dawn
(the original sequel to
Twilight
). And I introduced it earlier, so that it would be something
already explained, and I wouldn’t have to go into it later. It was about the magic of setting things right—which doesn’t happen in the real world, which is absolutely fantasy. But if we can’t have things made right in fantasy, then where do we get them made right?

So here’s where
The Merchant of Venice
comes in. The third book of
Breaking Dawn
—which is a full half of the novel—was a lot longer than I thought it would end up being. And the whole time I had to have tension building to the final confrontation… but I wanted to give the clue that this was not going to be a physical confrontation. This was a mental confrontation—and if one person loses, everybody dies.

SH:
Yeah.

SM:
There’s no way to win this one with a physical fight. Everyone’s going to lose if that happens. So it’s a mental battle to survive, and it’s all about figuring out the right way to word something. Figuring out the right proof to introduce at exactly the right time, so that you can force someone into conceding—just trapping them in their own words.

SH:
Because in
The Merchant of Venice
, Portia stayed with her beloved by being clever.

SM:
Exactly. And just with her cleverness and by using the right words, she’s averting bloodshed and murder from legally happening right in front of her and ruining her life.

SH:
When
The Merchant of Venice
came up in the story, I immediately started going through my mind: What’s the story of
The Merchant of Venice
? What does it mean to this book?

SM:
And in the end of
The Merchant of Venice
, all the lovers get their happy ending. That’s one of the reasons I like it. [Laughs]

SH:
The Merchant of Venice
and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
—I like that.

SM:
Can you tell I like the lighter side of Shakespeare? I mean, I like the tragedies, too, and
Romeo and Juliet
is probably my favorite. Which is probably very immature of me, but that’s the one that always gets me, and I think that’s part of who I am. [Laughs] That’s why my books are the way they are—because those are the stories that come alive for me.

SH:
It works so well in
New Moon
. I did also identify with
New Moon
, though, because there’s something a little Rochestery about Edward for me.

SM:
Yeah.

SH:
And then Edward leaves—and in
Jane Eyre
, Jane is the one who leaves.

SM:
Yeah.

SH:
And she’s with St. John, but you know Jane and Mr. Rochester need to be together. And you don’t know: Are they going to be together? And then there’s that little bit of the mystical—when she hears him call her name. And she returns to him, and she saves him. And I love that in
New Moon
, too. I never get tired of it.

SM:
I have never thought of it in that context, and there is so much that works with that comparison. I mean, I’m going to have to think about this some more later. Because, wow—there is a lot. I have never written a book where I said: “This one has a
Jane Eyre
emphasis.” But I think you’re absolutely right.

You know, isn’t it funny how books influence us? They become a part of who you are. I mean, how much of my childhood that I remember has actually happened to me, and how much of it is the events that were in
Anne of Green
Gables
? You know, I’m not really sure, because reading was so much of who I was. And those stories were every bit as real—and much more exciting—than the day-to-day boringness that was my life.

But Jane Eyre was this person that I felt like I knew. I think that there’s a lot of Mr. Rochester in Edward, and I think there’s a lot of Jane in Edward. Because he would take himself away from a situation that’s not right, just like she does! And then she’s like Bella, coming home at the end. But, my goodness, how close that is. I thank you, Shannon Hale. You have enlightened me.

SH:
[Laughs] Well, you’re welcome.

SM:
You know, I think… maybe readers who aren’t writers might look at something like that—using inspiration from other books—as kind of a form of plagiarism. But, actually, the more you get into writing, I think you realize that there is no new story.

SH:
Every story has been told, so you’re just telling it in a new way. One big reason why it’s so important to be well read when you’re writing is because when you write, you can dialogue with everything else that’s ever been written. The more you read, the more you get to converse with all these other great works. And that makes them more exciting.

SM:
Right. I really do believe that, you know, there are no new
stories—except maybe Scott Westerfeld. [Laughs] He’s, like, the one person who always makes me think:
No one has ever done exactly that before!
[Laughs] But, you know, every story has a basis in all the stories of your life.

SH:
I think the most common question any writer gets is: Where do you get your ideas from? And that’s the impossible question to answer, because, like you said, they come from…