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[Q&A] Patrick Rothfuss Chat Thread


Ran

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Well, this is a first for us!

On August 6th (this Saturday), Westeros.org is going to have its first ever author chat, with none other than a favorite writer of the Lit forum: Patrick Rothfuss, author of "The Kingkiller Chronicles", The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear.

How this works is that Patrick will be dropping by at 4PM (Eastern) on Saturday for a couple of hours, at which time this thread will be open. You can fire away with questions, and Patrick will post his responses. Please be considerate of the fact that it does take time to answer the questions, so try not to flood a hundred questions as soon as the topic opens.

One ground rule, at Pat's request: no spoilers, neither for Patrick's books or for GRRM's.

This topic will open 10 minutes before 4 PM, to allow some initial questions to trickle in to give Pat something to work with.

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Hi Pat,

A great fan of your work! I'm really curious to know if there is going to be a second trilogy that continues Kvothe's story in the "present", after Chronicler has been given the story of how Kvote ends up being an innkeeper. If so, can you tell us something about it?

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Just to start it off.... Boy, you guys are fast!

A question often posed to writers is what was the genesis of their work. When do you feel that your stories of Kvothe started? From your site, it seems you started in college -- was there some triggering image or event, some other work you read, that led you to start on the long road to writing The Kingkiller Chronicles?

Also, another question: when you're writing, are you in a fully analytical mode as you're putting words on the pages, or are you being engaged emotionally as you're writing it? I've heard some fans mention scenes where they've cried in your books, and I wonder if the act of creation means that you're necessarily more emotionally distant from the work than a reader might be.

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What's it like living with such a godly beard?

On the constructive side of things, how much has the overarching plot changed since your first drafts? I know you've added Ambrose and Auri (among others) - have these characters changed the main story, or are they independent from it?

Love the books and blog :)

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Pat,

Has there been any serious talk about a Name of the Wind movie?

(btw I absolutely adore your books)

There's been movie talk for years. Since before the first book was officially published, actually.

But even though some of it has been with important and/or powerful hollywood people, it's all just talk. Until someone signs a contract and give you a sack full of money, it's just talk.

Part of the real problem is that my books aren't movie-shaped. They don't fall into a convenient three-act structure. They don't follow the standard plot-subplot flow of things (like the old episodes of star trek). That makes it hard for movie producers to look at my books and say, "Yeah, let's do it!"

Instead, a lot of them seem to read the books and then say, "Boy, these are good, but I don't know how we could turn them into a movie..."

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Hi Pat,

A great fan of your work! I'm really curious to know if there is going to be a second trilogy that continues Kvothe's story in the "present", after Chronicler has been given the story of how Kvote ends up being an innkeeper. If so, can you tell us something about it?

It's a fair question, but it would fall firmly under the heading of "Spoiler."

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Another one...

I find it strange that no artificer has yet managed to create a steam engine. Given how well they seem to understand physics, and the kind of stuff that gets made at the Fishery, you'd think a steam engine wouldn't be beyond their abilities. Any particular reason this hasn't happened?

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Hello Pat!

As probably everyone who posts here says, I'm a great fan of your work and I had a couple questions for you.

Firstly, when you built your world (The Corners of Civilization), did you first sketch a map and then derive all the different locations where the story will take place or was it the other way around, e.g. you first wrote the story and then proceeded to putting them on a map?

Secondly, if you had the opportunity to change something in one of the two books, what would you change?

Finally, a more personal question: what is the worst piece of literature you ever read?

Seeing your post below, edited to keep 1 question

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Just to start it off.... Boy, you guys are fast!

A question often posed to writers is what was the genesis of their work. When do you feel that your stories of Kvothe started? From your site, it seems you started in college -- was there some triggering image or event, some other work you read, that led you to start on the long road to writing The Kingkiller Chronicles?

Also, another question: when you're writing, are you in a fully analytical mode as you're putting words on the pages, or are you being engaged emotionally as you're writing it? I've heard some fans mention scenes where they've cried in your books, and I wonder if the act of creation means that you're necessarily more emotionally distant from the work than a reader might be.

Hmmm.... Let's have a new rule. One question per post. Otherwise people will post big lists of questions, and my responses will have to get long and unwieldy as a result.

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Just to start it off.... Boy, you guys are fast!

A question often posed to writers is what was the genesis of their work. When do you feel that your stories of Kvothe started? From your site, it seems you started in college -- was there some triggering image or event, some other work you read, that led you to start on the long road to writing The Kingkiller Chronicles?

I've answered this one in a bunch of other interviews. Maybe as many as a dozen times....

Can anyone find a link to one of those interviews and post it up here? I'm not trying to dodge the question, but a link would provide a much more polished and cohesive answer than I'd be able to type up on the fly here.... And it will leave me time to answer other people's questions....

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Hello Pat!

As probably everyone who posts here says, I'm a great fan of your work and I had a couple questions for you.

Firstly, when you built your world (The Corners of Civilization), did you first sketch a map and then derive all the different locations where the story will take place or was it the other way around, e.g. you first wrote the story and then proceeded to putting them on a map?

Secondly, if you had the opportunity to change something in one of the two books, what would you change?

Finally, a more personal question: what is the worst piece of literature you ever read?

Seeing your post below, edited to keep 1 question

Heh. Thanks for trimming it down to one question. The other ones were good though. Post them up in separate posts and I'll take a crack at them, too.

I actually started with the map. Partly because I'm a bit of a map geek. And I'm a gamer from way back. I felt like I needed to know the world before I started putting people into it. If I was going to have Kvothe living in a city, I needed to know where that city was, how it worked, and what surrounding landscape was like....

I didn't develop the whole world, of course. It grew as I told the story. But I made a bunch of it up front. It gave me a place to start....

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