In fact, one of the things I hope will be fun about Shadowmarch will be the message board on the site, and people expressing opinions.
(It's even more necessary with multi-volume novels, since by the time you're finishing the story your earlier bits are already in print, and hence difficult to edit. . . .) I plan to be much more reader-influenced with Shadowmarch than I have ever been with my paper fiction, in part because even at the beginning of a multi-volume novel I've planned much of the story, including a good working idea of the ending. TW: Oh, yeah, I not only think I'll be coerced, I look forward to it. Do you anticipate any problems with this? What if readers want you to focus on a character you're not as interested in developing, for example? Is there a chance that your artistic decisions will be coerced by the whims of the public? If I'd published it only as part of a print collection, I doubt I'd ever have known how people felt about that story. I've experienced a lot of that with my own site, and the novel I'm currently working on was primarily motivated by how much readers loved the particular story that became the seed of it. MM: That sounds fascinating - I really like the idea of creating a cultural connection with your readers. (Perhaps this is why I started writing multi-volume books.)Īnd if it makes enough money that I can keep doing it for a while, that will be okay too! . . . The only problem with novel-writing, my first love, is that by the time people are discussing something, they're usually done with it. I suppose that what I also hope for (and part of the reason I want to do something episodic) is that it will achieve something like the cultural connection of good TV, where the audience is sharing an ongoing story.
I hope readers will be wondering about what happens next, what the characters should or shouldn't do, what's really going on with this or that plot, and that they'll be talking about it on the message board, sending me angry or happy emails, etc. Since I don't know what's going to happen myself, I hope to bring that excitement to the project. What I hope it becomes overall is a living, thriving story that grows in regular, frequent installments. We plan to plow a regular proportion of any profits back into upgrading the site. What we aim to have over the long run is a very versatile site with lots of stuff available - tons of art by lots of different people (including fans, I hope), some animation, music, perhaps some 3-D renderings of the locations (so you could actually tour the castle that is at the heart of the story) and anything else we can think of that seems cool and works in the online format. It's all new - I'm creating the world and characters now. We'll also have a message board, announcements, behind-the-scenes stuff about both the project itself and the world in which the story takes place. The story, after all, is what it's about. Tad Williams (TW): What it will look like in the beginning is a nice text-based site with illustrations available (although not incorporated into the text, which would slow downloading for those who want to read offline). What will it look like? What do you hope it will become? Mary Anne Mohanraj (MM): Tad, why don't we start with you just telling us about this story. He's here today to tell us more about this exciting project.
TAD WILLIAMS OTHERLAND ART SERIAL
He's about to take his writing to a new place - onto the Internet! His new project is called Shadowmarch - an episodic serial story, presented on the web. Tad Williams is the world-renowned author of such epic fantasies as the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, Tailchaser's Song, the Otherland series, etc.
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