Laini Taylor opens up about the Daughter of Smoke and Bone movie, her advice for new writers, and what Hogwarts houses her characters would be sorted into.

We sat down with Taylor during her recent visit to Australia to promote Dreams of Gods and Monsters, the third book in her trilogy, which was released earlier this year. As we had already spoken to Taylor about the final book, we used this opportunity to ask her about some different topics.

Related: Laini Taylor discusses Dreams of Gods and Monsters with Hypable

Hypable: Can you give us an update on the Daughter of Smoke and Bone movie? There are some new screenwriters attached, who did The Fault in Our Stars?

Laini Taylor: They did a draft, and I have just done another draft after theirs, which the studio has now. So fingers crossed. There’s been difficulties, it’s just really different. It’s interesting for me, having had the opportunity to re-conceive the story, to tell the same story in a different way. There’s so many layers that are too complex exposition to try and put in a movie. If a version of this screenplay does get made, I feel like it’ll still feel like the same story, but there will obviously be a lot of differences, just things that you can’t fit into an hour and a half movie.

Hypable: Can you talk about any of those changes in particular?

LT: No, I better not. I’m not sure what will happen with the script or where it will go from here. It’s just simplification I guess. I don’t think it would feel very different – it was fun, it was fun to do it. I think if I had tried to do it two years ago it would have been harder. The more I see the process of adaptation, the more I’m able to see the film as its own thing, and what to take from the book to create something new, versus trying to jam the whole book into the film.

Hypable: Thinking more as an author than a screenwriter then, what is the one thing a film would have to do for you to be happy with it?

LT: I don’t know, it’s all so new to me. I know it will be visually beautiful. I just hope that the emotional arc will be preserved, that’s the main thing. You can take a lot of liberties with the story as long as that core emotional arc is intact.

Hypable: You were attached to executive produce, is that still happening?

LT: Yes. Well, I don’t know what that really means.

Hypable: It seems to depend on the person.

LT: Right.

Hypable: Is there anything in particular that you are interested in being involved with?

LT: I don’t know. As far as the story, that is something I have something to contribute to, but when they get into the real film making, casting, and all of that, I won’t be heavily involved in that. That will be up to the director and the producer and the studio.

Hypable: And there’s a trend for YA authors to make a cameo in their films. Can we expect one from you?

LT: Yeah, I did see Veronica Roth in Divergent.

Hypable: And Cassandra Clare did one..

LT: Did she?

Hypable: Yeah, in one of the party scenes.

LT: Oh, I didn’t catch her!

Hypable: And there was a Twilight one as well.

LT: I certainly wouldn’t be against it. Somebody had mentioned at one point that Clementine, my daughter, could be a baby chimaera, and she is really keen on that idea so I would rather have her do a cameo than me.

Hypable: The third book in the trilogy left the world open for there to be more story. Is that something you are thinking about?

LT: Yeah, you know, I knew when I set out to write Dreams of Gods and Monsters where I wanted to take Karou and Akiva, and how I wanted to leave them. But as far as what would be going on in the overall story, I knew I wanted it to be bigger than just Jael, and I didn’t know exactly what that would be. But it all came about in the course of writing the book, and it ended up leaving a big open door for more story.

I certainly can see writing that book, but I’m not sure when. It would need to grow in my mind for a little while. And there’s a lot of other little stories and side stories, there’s a million stories that could be told in that world and I imagine I will go back to it at some point.

Hypable: So you need some time away?

LT: I do need time away. But my next couple of books will definitely – at least two, probably three books – will be unrelated. But it’s possible.

Hypable: You mentioned the emotional arc of the story, and what I liked so much about Daughter of Smoke and Bone was this idea of Romeo and Juliet and the “what if”. Are there any other similar stories you have your eye on?

LT: Yes. But I can’t say what they are! My husband [illustrator Jim Di Bartolo] and I are working – well, I wrote an issue of a comic book that’s an adaptation of a story that we both really like. It would be an ongoing comic book series and he’s sort of playing with the art in the midst of doing other projects that he is working on. Hopefully we’ll get to do that.

And even after that, most of the adaptations I have in my mind would be for comic books, which would be really fun for me to do that on the side. So yes, I have a few things. One is another Shakespeare, but I won’t say which, and the other is unrelated to Shakespeare.

Hypable: That’s keeping it broad. In terms of a graphic novel for this series, would you consider doing that together? Is that a little too close to home?

LT: I would love if there was a graphic novel, or a comic, or a manga adaptation, but I don’t think Jim would do it. He is more interested in doing original properties, but I would love it if we could freeze time and he could do it. I do hope that happens, it would be really fun.

On page 2: Taylor shares her one essential piece of advice for aspiring writers

Hypable: I read that you always knew that you wanted to be a writer. Can you talk about how that developed from being an aspiration into a reality?

LT: It took a long time. I’ve always, always wanted to be a writer, and believed I would be, and had faith that it would work out even when, for years, I wasn’t actually making myself do any writing. It’s sort of funny how I believed that I would come back to it, and had faith that I really was a writer, even though I didn’t write. It was back in my early 30s – I had dabbled, but I had really stopped to do art instead, because I had not been having fun writing, I hadn’t found my voice.

Then in my early 30s it gradually started dawning on me that if I was going to do it, I would have to at some point actually start doing it. It had to become more painful not to do it than to do it, and I hit that point. I started going to writers conferences, and just started learning how to be strict with myself and overcome the creative issues. Over the course of a few years I finally focused, and chose one of my ideas, and finished it, and wrote a novel.

Hypable: So for you it was more about putting in some kind of structure for yourself?

LT: Yeah, it was really hard for me, as it is for many people. I love to revise, and first drafts are really hard, so I didn’t really have any strategies for coping with that. I slowly started developing them over the course of that first novel. Like, “I’m going to do it, other people do it, I can do it too.” And then trying different things – anything except staring at a blank screen. I gradually cobbled together some strategies that I am still refining and still changing. It’s not that it’s easy now, but I have a lot of things I can try if it gets hard.

Hypable: You have more of a process now. Were there any particular writers from those conferences who were especially influential or helpful?

LT: What I was specifically going to was the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) annual conference in Los Angeles. The one I remember being the most critical in helping me frame and finish my first novel, which was a middle-grade book, was an author named Dan Greenburg who writes even younger than that, middle-grade series. I wasn’t really familiar with him as a writer, but his workshop was just so good in giving you a way to think about your process in a helpful way, and make it better.

I think a lot of people when they go to writers conferences, they want to know how to get published, they’re not worried about craft so much. They’re like, “who can I meet,” whereas I realised the true value was in workshops were you learn how to make your book better, and that the publishing pieces all fall into place when you’ve got a good book, so that’s what you need to focus on. It’s the craft of writing. So I did.

I think actually hearing writers speaking about craft ended up being the most valuable thing, but I did meet my agent there at that same conference, over the course of several years going to it. And every editor that I’ve ended up working with I heard speak at that same conference, so I knew what books they were looking for and what they were like. I knew who I wanted to send the manuscripts to.

Hypable: So your specific advice for people who share your dream of being a writer would be, “just do it”?

LT: Just do it! Learn to finish things, that’s really important. If you can go to conferences, it really makes it feel like a real career. In the early days, not being around other writers, it didn’t feel like a real job, it felt like a fantasy. But when you go to a conference, you’re surrounded by people who are making a living, and editors who are actually looking for books, and it was really inspiring. You just want to be that person that breaks through. And also, you meet your soul mates – your kindred spirits – and get a writers group together. Learning to finish things, and learning to revise, and learning to write a good book.

Hypable: That might be easier said than done. As you mentioned, you have your graphic novel with your husband, and some new book ideas – what is next for you?

LT: I have a young adult book that I’m writing that’s very different. It’s science fiction with a historical setting in 1960s New York City. I can’t really talk more about it, it’s too early. I can never talk about books in any detail when it’s this early. I freak myself out, so that’s it. Then also, there’s an adult book I’d like to write – or I have been off and on writing. That will be my next book after this one.

Hypable: How far into the process are you for the historical young adult?

LT: I’ve been playing with it for a while. I sold it in the spring. I’ve been doing a lot of research, and doing that early development writing, trying to figure out who the characters are. I’ve sort of started, over the years, to think of those early days as generating raw material, rather than “this is chapter one.” Where I start writing never ends up being the beginning of the book – it’s chapter 11, or even later. So just trying to start getting a feel for it, I’ve been doing that for a while, and doing research.

Hypable: I was curious when I was reading Daughter of Smoke and Bone, does your research ever culminate as “oh, I need to go to Prague and spend a lot of time there”?

LT: No. I had been to Prague years before I decided to use it as a setting, but I wasn’t able to justify going back. And then I hadn’t been to Morocco, I went after. I haven’t actually chosen a setting and then gone there, but the adult book, after having gone to Mexico last winter – I already knew what the book was going to be, but I decided to set part of it at least in this house I stayed in. So that was cool, but again, it was the result of having gone. I definitely can imagine wanting to go somewhere and then setting a book there.

Hypable: Oh, I know authors who have done that.

LT: I think it’s a great reason!

Hypable: Do your characters ever surprise you?

LT: Yes. It didn’t used to happen. This trilogy has ben an education in that for me. I used to hold on so tight and be so carefully planned that nothing surprised me, because I was in control. Then Daughter of Smoke and Bone came – I had begun very consciously to do free writing exercises, and I had cofounded an online writing community in 2006 to do more free writing. I was really trying to loosen up, and have more fun, and generate ideas, and all those things I knew I needed to do as a writer. Over the course of that I was writing stories that I had so much fun doing, and that became my book Lips Touch, as well as other stories.

Then I sat down just to have a day of fun writing, and Karou and Brimstone appeared. Some of those ideas, like the teeth, came from other free writing exercises. So it was really the culmination of purposeful free writing and trying to get into that. That was the first time I had characters that really just appeared and started guiding the story. It was so great, it was so fun, so now I am always trying to make that happen. Trying to get in a place where the characters do come alive and direct the story, and I’m trying to get out of the way and let it happen.

On page 3: What Hogwarts houses does Laini Taylor sort her characters into?

Hypable: That’s really interesting. I wondered when I read this series, if, because it is so complexly developed, it would start the other way, with the world coming first and then that inspiring the characters.

LT: Yeah, it so didn’t. I used to always do my world building up front. I would happily spend weeks and weeks, because then I didn’t have to do the hard part, which was the storytelling. I never let myself do that with this. I would wait until I needed to know something and then I would decide what I needed to know. I didn’t even know, it was always question driven.

From that first day, Brimstone had a wishbone around his neck that she wasn’t allowed to touch, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t know what he did with the teeth. I had questions, and I tried to answer them, and it started to come into focus. I didn’t know what was on the other side of his locked door. So then I followed all those questions.

In Days of Blood and Starlight, a new character is introduced towards the end. I knew her as a queen of another culture and I knew she would become important in Dreams, but I didn’t make myself decide what she would be like until she appeared in a scene. Because you can decide, a character is going to be like this and come up with a list of adjectives, but it’s so much better to start writing a scene and give them something to do and interact with. That’s one of the most memorable moments of writing Dreams of Gods and Monsters, just writing her a scene and seeing what happens.

Hypable: You don’t make decisions about characters until they are at a point when they need to do something.

LT: Well there are things I know, there are story beats that I know. But if I try to decide everything upfront, I think there’s a limit to what your imagination could do on any given day. So over the course of a year and a half of writing a book, if I tried to decide everything that was going to happen in January, that’s cutting off everything I might create in February, March, April. I leave it, it’s a problem for another day until I can fully sink my brain into it.

Hypable: So how does that affect your view of the characters outside of the narrative? Because there seems to be two very set points of view, which I think of as the J.K. Rowling view, where you can ask her any question about any character, and she can tell you exactly what they are doing after the series. Then there’s the John Green point of view, which says the book is finished, and anything after that is up to the reader. Where do you fall on that spectrum?

LT: I’m more in the John Green I guess. I didn’t know that he had said that. But I think it’s more interesting to leave it to the reader to decide. I had a reader ask me sort of angrily why I ended Dreams of Gods and Monsters where I did, why didn’t I let it go on for another hour. “What exactly are Karou and Akiva doing?” Well, first of all, it’s a YA book. But it’s not even a question of that. I think you feel it instinctively and intuitively, where is the ending. After a certain point, it feels gratuitous, it feels anti-climactic, you’ve already finished.

And as a reader, I’ll often want to see that next scene, but I can imagine it. It’s more interesting that way, and as a writer, it’s self-indulgent, I guess, to keep going after you’ve done what you set out to do, just because you want to see the characters kiss again or whatever. You need to know where to end it. For me, it’s always a matter of instinct, like this feels like the end of the story. Obviously it keeps going, but I can’t.

Hypable: Do you feel like that self-indulgence extends if you were to answer a reader if they asked you what did happen after the book ended?

LT: Yeah I would never – well, I don’t know. I have a sense of things, but even if I did think I knew, I wouldn’t tell. There is a little bit of a clue, and hints in the epilogue of Dreams of Gods and Monsters of what they go on to do, so I think we know. Maybe I’ll tell that story, but I don’t think I’d tell it through Karou and Akiva’s point of view – I don’t think, maybe I would. Never say never. I wouldn’t attempt to tell it because I am a writer. Things develop for me in words on a screen, not, you know-

Hypable: In a conversation.

LT: Yeah.

Hypable: Okay, a few quick questions to finish. We have one from twitter:

LT: That was one of the hardest parts. I could imagine what an individual person’s response would be, but I felt a little out of my depth trying to figure out what the political and military response would be, because I don’t know. What would the world leaders do if that happened? I didn’t really want to focus on that too much anyway, I just wanted it to try and seem plausible, like maybe this is what they would do. But I guess I’m always just trying to figure out what would really happen.

I don’t know that I always get it right, but that’s what I’m trying to figure out. It was really important to me to view that experience through a human’s eyes, so that’s where the character of Eliza came from initially. Initially she was just a human viewpoint character through which to witness the arrival. I had a sense that she should have a larger role than that, but I didn’t know what that would be, and then it really look on a life of its own.

Hypable: If you could have any wish, what would it be?

LT: Any wish? Well, I guess it would be that I, and all of my loved ones, would live 500 years at least.

Hypable: What about a fun one, if everything was taken care of.

LT: Everyone’s healthy? Flying.

Hypable: Flying or wings?

LT: Oh, wings.

Hypable: Basically the best cosplay you could ever have.

LT: I know, right?

Hypable: And I read that you’re a big Harry Potter fan, well, who isn’t? I thought, we should sort some of your characters into Hogwarts houses.

LT: Well let’s see. I think Karou is pretty obviously a Gryffindor. Zuzana, I don’t know. She could maybe be Slytherin, or Gryffindor. She’s like Harry, she could go either way. Who else? Mik’s maybe a Hufflepuff. Akiva is a Gryffindor, I think.

Hypable: Brimstone?

LT: Ravenclaw.

Hypable: Not Slytherin? Why Ravenclaw?

LT: Because he’s a scholar. He’s not evil!

Hypable: Slytherins aren’t all evil!

LT: Kind of.

Hypable: No way.

LT: Oh, you’re a Slytherin! Cunning, then. No, I think he’s Ravenclaw.

Hypable: And what are you?

LT: Gryffindor.