What Noise Does Yellow Make?
Superstar author Terry Pratchett talks to Anne Gay

'Why do I write? That makes as much sense to me as "What noise does yellow make?" says Terry Pratchett. He's one of the best-selling British authors in any genre, with multi-million sales to his credit. He's also the creator of Discworld, now up to twenty-three volumes of it with spin-offs like the hit TV animated series, Wyrd Sisters and a host of merchandise. He even has fans composing music for Discworld, much to his surprise.

'I started writing when I was thirteen,' says Pratchett. 'I don't know why, and I can't imagine not writing. I like writing,' says the man who has been spotted tapping away on a lap-top between spoonsful of soup in a restaurant. 'These days I'd finish the soup... But I do like writing. I'm making notes all the time. I can't explain the pleasure I get from writing. I suppose I just get a kick out of hearing that people enjoy it.

A word not read is a word not worth writing. As for my writing environment, I have a fairly plain room, good view of the computer screen - that's about it, really. Sometimes I listen to music, other times I just welcome the white noises of the computer's cooling-fans. 'Deadlines tend to be tight but also of my own making. If I had two years to write one book it'd sprawl badly. I'm not sure how long it takes me to write a book, but the process of getting it down on paper takes anything up to six months. I write for the fabulous creature: the general reader. There may be a slightly different spin to my style when I'm writing titles that are going to be marketed as "for children". My target audience is me, aged about fifteen. Mind you, I was a bookish kid.'

It seems to work. His children's series Truckers was also a hit with a TV series of its own. 'I might start with an idea, a character or a situation. The general outline is planned in my head, but the details evolve. Quite often there are gaps, but I generally know that by the time I get to those gaps I'll know how to cross them. And serendipity plays a part. About a third of the way through the first draft a book I take time off and write a blurb of one hundred words or less, so that I get to grips with the point of the book. Never mind the plot, in other words, but "What is the book about?"' And the books are about satire. The follies of dogma, prejudice, gung-ho nationalism, stereotyping. Ideas alone, though, don't make a novel. He says, 'Next, the characters are vitally important. Get them right, and you're not working alone.'

As authors become more famous, it often happens that editors hesitate to make changes to a manuscript. I asked Terry if this had ever happened to him. He said, 'You're right. I think there is a terrible tendency to an editor to think, "This doesn't seem right but perhaps he means it". We've got various checks and balances in place to prevent this, including a fairly strict and very well informed beta-test reader. I hope they work. My editor and I nearly went to the mat over a scene in Carpe Jugulum, but it was good exercise.'

Another form of exercise is the book-tour. It is not unknown for the police to be informed of Pratchett's impending arrival at a book-shop, since queues to see him can stretch along pavements in busy city-centres, even, on occasions, blocking the traffic. Terry says, 'Going on tour makes me feel like a tomcat who's strayed into a veterinarian's convention. I think I probably do them for the same reason musicians go out on tour: sure, you can do a lot of stuff in the studio but sooner or later you have to take the show on the road. The difference is there's no sex, no drugs and in the car last time the only tape we had was called No More Bloody Abba! Writing is a co-operative activity. The reader is part of the process. But tours are getting harder, I must admit. People don't only expect me to be funny all the time. Worse, they sometimes assume I am being funny. I say, "Good evening," and they laugh... As for whether I laugh at my own jokes, I don't. But I smile quietly if I think I've come up with one that really works.'

Carpe Jugulum is the twenty-third in Pratchett's astoundingly successful Discworld series. It concerns a band of modern vampires trying to take over the sleepy backwater kingdom of Lancre. Lancre, as Pratchett fans know, just happens to be where his three Witches live. 'These days,' Terry says, 'fans usually want more Witches books.

The reason I like writing about Granny Weatherwax is that she's so twisted up. All her power comes from denial and refusal - she'd just love to let rip, but she won't because that wouldn't be Right. She's wicked by instinct but good by choice. I don't want to give away too much about Carpe Jugulum ... but you could argue that she's so frightened about what she could be that she's always testing herself, just to check. As for Agnes Nitt and her alter-ego, Perdita, being in two minds, it's probably the case with everyone, isn't it?

Everyone watches themselves, criticises themselves, feels guilty about things. It's simply that Agnes had given this "inner voice" a name and, because this is after all the Discworld, the name has developed a personality.'

Why call the book Carpe Jugulum? It means "go for the throat" in Pratchett's inimitable style of Latin. 'By "inimitable" you mean with lots of dog-Latin and bad grammar, right?' says Terry. 'I don't think Latin's relevant, particularly, but it's useful to anyone interested in words in general. My education, which initially took place in Beaconsfield Public Library, was enjoyable. School was not. It was just a machine for forcing us through examinations.'

Apart from the fangs, Pratchett's vampires are a family such as you might meet anywhere: parents who want things done their way and children who answer back. Says Terry, 'It was simply my reflecting on the fact that, if vampires live for a very long time and have children, there is going to be a certain amount of generational friction.

Especially when you're treated as a children because you're not 180 yet. Imagine a society in which all your ancestors are still alive...'

After the vampires comes a priest: Mightily-Praiseworthy-Are-Ye-Who- Exalteth-Om. In Jingo there's a policeman called Visit-The-Ungodly-With- Explanatory-Pamphlets. 'I've been accused of cynicism,' Terry says. 'I suggest "realistic" rather than "cynical". I'm an atheist, at least to the extent that I don't believe in the objective existence of any big beards in the sky. That is a religious position, by the way.

By Carpe Jugulum, the Church of Om has schism'd so much that practically every priest is trying to come to terms with Om in his own way -- which is where the thinking has to start.'

On Discworld, Fate and the Absurd co-exist. Does Pratchett think the same is true of real life? 'Good heavens, yes!' he exclaims. 'But there's free will too. At bottom I'm an optimist in the long term. Why? Search me. I'm just naturally optimistic, I guess.' Pratchett's fabulous success might have something to do with it. He's come a long way since he was a press officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board. But that's just my thought. He goes on, 'It would be nice to think that some of what I write would help to make the world a better place, but increasingly books do not make much of a difference to the world. Because I write fantasy, people ask me what I'd do if I had a magic wand. Sorry, it's a law of the universe: there are no magic wands, anywhere.'

Jingo, the paperback released to coincide with the hardback of Carpe Jugulum,is a welcome return to the antics of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, a police-force that even Stalker of the Yard would scarcely recognise. 'If I identify with anyone in this book,' says Pratchett, 'it has to be Vimes, the Watch commander. He's fairly straight, fairly strict, dogged rather than bright, trying to make sense of a world that's always wrong-footing him. He worries all the time. Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, might worry, but it's not so easy to see it happening.'

Pratchett himself might not have to worry about running a country, but there are toys, bookends, t.v., cartoons, music, radio shows and picture-books as well as his own work. I ask him what it feels like to be an industry. 'A little worrying, sometimes. It's mostly small scale stuff, at least by the standards of Star Wars and Teletubbies, but I get nervous when I realise that there's quite a few people making at least part of their living out of Discworld. It's all commercial - at least, I hope for the sake of the people doing it that it is - but it's not commercialised. Discworld is still, basically, the books. And I have a lot of control and involvement. I got one serious approach from someone wanting to organise product placement in the books, of what, we shall never know. And we've turned down two theme park approaches.

'It doesn't keep me awake at nights, though. I have as much social life as I want and I probably see more of my family than the average nine-to-fiver.

'People ask me if I'm scared I'll run out of ideas for books, but books don't work like that. Fans .. oh, lor' ... send me emails saying things like, "Hey, here's an idea. Do a book about the Discworld Olympics, right?" That's not an idea. That's just a hook. There's scores of hooks. The ideas are what happens when you start thinking hard, and doing aimless research, and wondering about the world. As for Discworld, the potential is not as great as you might think. Every new book crystallises Discworld even more. There's more history, more geography. Things that have happened affect things that happen next. I know where new stories are, but I don't see Discworld as endless.'

But the number of imitators might be. Pratchett says cheerfully, 'Comic fantasy of one sort of another had been around for a long time. I didn't invent it any more that Douglas Adams invented comic science fiction. I didn't set out to do anything apart from write a book that I hoped people would enjoy! As for other writers, well, we're all doing different things. It may be, though, that when Discworld was seen to be successful, it became a little easier to get comic fantasy published. I don't know. I'm certainly not going to say that anyone's imitating me.'

Pratchett has a number of new projects in mind. 'I might write about the City Watch but I have no urge to write mainstream detective fiction though I do like the work of guys like Carl Hiassen. In the fullness of time, perhaps, I might write some more science fiction. There's a book I've had half-written for years. I sometimes reread my own books. Now and then I have the urge to go back and rewrite them, but it's not a realistic intention, even though I did update. The reason I went back over TCP was that, well, it was started when I was seventeen and it showed. I didn't think it fair to fans to allow it to be re-issued untouched - I thought the gap in originality and quality was, frankly, too great.

'I'm often asked how writing has changed me. I think the answer has to be that it's made me richer. It's hard to spot anything else from the inside.

'As for ambitions, I think the only ambition I had was to make a living out of writing. I never thought I'd get to number one, which happened with Sourcery and has mostly happened ever since. It's all been a bit of a surprise. This year they gave me the OBE. Do you think I was expecting that? And I've never had any particular ambitions within the sf/fantasy community, which is just as well. These days, when the mail arrives and the phone rings, I just hope I'm going to make it through to teatime.'

So if he does survive 'til tea-time, what does Terry Pratchett do to relax? 'Write.' He grins. 'Oddly enough, it works.'

©Anne Gay 1999