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Interview - Brandon Mull
Brandon Mull is the New York Times best-selling author of the Fablehaven series and of The Candy Shop War. Brandon always wanted to be a writer. He daydreamed throughout his youth with hopes that someday he would become an author.
After graduating from BYU, Brandon began shopping his first novel around and had no luck. But thanks to a little publishing house called Shadow Mountain, his talent was recognized. He was asked to come up with a new idea which ended up being Fablehaven.
The Fablehaven series is now number three on the New York Times best-selling series list, right behind Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series and Erin Hunter's Warrior Cat series. Both of his book series are becoming feature films.
This talented writer is definitely on his way up, and LLH was fortunate enough to recently sit down with Brandon and get to know him and his work better.
So how did you come up with the idea for Fablehaven?
I use to live in Connecticut, and sometimes I would daydream: what if there were weird creatures out in the woods around my house (because my house was surrounded by trees)? And somewhere down the road, that thought developed into: that'd be cool if there was an organized place like a Yellowstone or a wildlife park except it was for magical creatures.
So the first idea for Fablehaven was the setting. And once I had the setting, once I had this premise of, "Let's say there were hidden wildlife refuges for creatures in our real world," I thought what kind of creatures would live there? What rules would keep them from devouring each other? Who might want to harm or exploit these creatures? Who might want to help these creatures? Who would be interested in discovering this preserve? And those types of questions led me into evolving and completing the story.
These books aren't just for kids; they cross-over to adults are well. How do you feel about that?
My goal is to write and leave it accessible to kids with the hope that both parents and kids can read it, and no one goes braindead, and they can all talk about it — that kind of thing.
Was Fablehaven the first book you wrote?
I have written one other novel before I wrote Fablehaven, and that has never been published — well, not yet.
When did you begin to write seriously?
I have always, always been a massive daydreamer. When I got bored, I would make up stories in my head. It's just how I am wired. It's what I do — kind of non-stop.
Probably as a teen, I started getting serious about the idea of writing. I thought, "Man if I have these great ideas and stories in my head, I need to figure out how to write two sentences down." Because for a long time, it was just like a playground in my mind, and I didn't think tons and tons about sharing them with others. But as a teenager, I thought if I could learn to write a really good scene, then eventually I could learn to write a really good novel.
So I began practicing writing short stories. And then when I graduated from college, I went to BYU. I started getting serious, and I tried to publish a novel. When I punched out my first novel, I shopped it around for three years, and all I heard was no. And finally I landed at this place called Shadow Mountain where they liked what I wrote, even though what I had written didn't totally fit what they were looking for. They asked if I had any more of them in me, and I had a lot of them in me. And the next thing I wrote for them was Fablehaven, which they loved and published.
And from there, things just started to snowball because Shadow Mountain gave it a pretty hard national push and did some good grass roots marketing, and then Simon and Schuster got involved in paperback. And now the movie rights have sold to this guy named Avi Arad who produced Spiderman and Ironman and all that stuff. And it just keeps snowballing and finding a wider and wider audience. And with the debut of book three, Fablehaven was number three on the New York Times best-selling series list. It was very exciting. It is the highest we have even been on the list. It was Twilight, The Warrior Cat series and then us. It was kind of a cool feeling.
How long did it take you to write your first Fablehaven novel?
The first novel took me five months. I was working a full-time day job and had one kid at the time. So I had to be dad and support the family. So I was working a full-time day job and writing the book on the side, writing on nights and weekends, sort of like a hobby, knowing that writing might just always be my hobby and never my career.
Now it takes me three or four months to write a novel if I am working on it full-time. It took me, like, eight months to write the second Fablehaven because I was still working a day job, and that one was a little more complicated. If I am not touring and doing ten-hour days, I can punch it out in three to four months, but that is just a draft; there are still some re-writes and stuff.
Did you approaching writing the last Fablehaven book in the same way you wrote the first two, or was it different?
I think I learn with the writing of each book. So yeah, I keep learning as I complete a novel each time. I learn new things to pay attention to at the onset. In general, it's trying to learn how to break that story down into the right scenes, and where to start each scene, and where to stop each scene. And gradually, I get better and better at that.
Did any of the characters surprise you while writing? Who talks to you the most?
I kind of have an idea of where I want each story to go, and I have daydreamed about each story for a long time before I write it. So I kind of have an idea about what it is going to be, but I always, always am surprised by things I discover along the way as I flush things out with details and break it down into scenes.
I think a story is at its best when the characters come to life, and I feel like they are carrying the story. When I feel like I have come to know them in a way that they are just little performers that I am giving a voice to.
I guess the easiest one for me to get inside his head is Seth. Because he is like my brother (well, he has certain elements of my brother and certain elements of me), and so it is fun to get inside his head because it's a familiar place, kinda. Like, I like to joke the way he jokes. I am not as daring and reckless as he is; that's where my little brother comes into play. There are lots of little Seths out there in the world: bad judgment but without bad intentions.
You mentioned that your brother is kind of like Seth. Are there any other characters taken from real life?
The character Summer is kind of my sister Summer. She's not exactly that sister, but she definitely inspired her. So much so that I gave that character her name — with her blessing, of course.
Your books seem to be aimed at young adults and children. Is that the market you intended, or did it just happen that way when it got to the publishers?
It kind of is the market I intended. The first thing that Shadow Mountain saw of mine was for kind of an older audience. And they specifically wanted me to write something that was young adult. So Fablehaven was deliberately young adult. I had had the concept of a wildlife refuge for magical creatures for a long time, and I always knew that concept fit a young adult audience more then the full-on adult fantasy. I think it was mainly because the story fit the category, and same with Candy Shop War, it just fit a YA audience.
Check out Part 2 in the next edition!
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