Max Brooks: Guy has to think and then talk through everything, and Summer is a do-er. The Mountain was a lot easier because I could have the back and forth of real conversation!Īlex: Yeah, you have a whole new character! Can you describe Summer? She is very different to Guy. I must have done ten rewrites because the character was initially a Robinson Crusoe, and I wrote my first draft in the voice of Daniel Defoe, which is very dry and boring! (Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe in 1719!) I had to figure out a way of writing someone alone on an island with their thoughts, and so I invented Guy's animal friends – all the conversations with Moo are basically his thoughts projected onto this cow. But writing The Island was actually a lot tougher than The Mountain. Max Brooks: You know, I imagined there’d be a sequel as I wrote it, because I figured that learning how to live with yourself is just the first part of growth. ![]() I went to high school with Sean Astin and Jack Black, so having us all here is a class reunion.Īlex: What a class that must have been! Was it difficult to write a sequel to The Island? Max Brooks: Yes! Sean Astin reads The Mountain audiobook (check out his tweet about recording it!). ![]() I’m very dyslexic, so to get back into the language and tone, and to reintroduce me to the character, I listened to the audiobook of The Island over and over again to get me back into how Guy sounds and how he thinks.Īlex: Oh, Jack Black read the audiobook, didn’t he? The challenge was that I’d never written a sequel before. Max Brooks: I always knew that in the next book the character has to leave the island, because growth couldn’t come from being in a comfort zone. But I had to first ask about what in the Overworld Guy is thinking when he decides to set out on his boat at the start of the book.Īlex: Why did he have to leave the island? It was nice there! I talked with Max about how he found a great story in the clash of Guy and Summer’s personalities, and why that story is important in our pandemic-ridden times.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |