Christopher Paolini Author Signing
WWW #90 Meeting Your Idols: Writing & Storyboarding with Christopher Paolini
This week’s article is going to be a little bit of a story time piece! Last month I had the incredible opportunity to meet the author of the Inheritance Cycle, Christopher Paolini. I’ve always heard the advice, “Never meet your heroes,” but I think I’ve had some wickedly amazing luck and I am happy to say meeting Paolini was an amazing experience. I want to share why he is such an impactful writer to me, what the experience was like, and the advice he shared.
Let’s dive in!
Reading Eragon; Fantasy & Writing
When I was a kid in second grade, I had a big obsession. There was a series I had discovered and read over and over again from second through fifth grade. That was J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. I read those books so many times, I once had a tally of rereading The Sorcerer’s Stone over twenty-two times and my favorite, The Order of the Phoenix, over thirty times.
When I graduated into middle school (junior high), I had been lectured to put my books down (for years) and try something new. With a new school came a new library and as I entered the sixth grade, I saw the sapphire-blue cover of Eragon sitting cover-side-out on the middle school library’s shelves.
Can you guess my next obsession? Reading Eragon, a story about a boy who finds a mysterious stone-turned-dragon-egg in the woods became not only a story I wanted to enjoy, but something I wished I could write. That was the book that turned me into a writer at the young age of twelve. And many cringey dragon stories later, I told everyone I knew I was going to be a writer.
Who knew this would come true many years later? Now, as a fulltime writer celebrating my writing business of five-years, I got to meet the same author who inspired me so long ago, and tell him my story.
Christopher Paolini Author Event
But enough about me! That’s not what you are here for! Let’s talk about Paolini. Paolini was traveling on a book tour to promote his newest work in the world of Eragon, Murtagh, the newly re-released limited edition. It was an in-person event, speech, Q&A, and signing. As an author who has been doing events like this for over twenty years, he had the entire room captivated with jokes, lively stories, and tales about his characters, work, and exciting new updates coming our way. There are many stories I want to share here but there is a gem of advice to take from this meeting.
How Does Paolini Plan His Books?
“From book one to now, has your writing process changed or evolved as you’ve continued working on each book?”
This is the question I was able to ask Paolini. As a writer and editor, how writers outline and plan their work is essential. And one of the best ways to learn what process might work for you is to see how other authors accomplish this process!
“Has my writing process changed over the years? I do a lot more prep work. The only reason I could write Eragon back in the day is that I did do a lot of prep work but then I got out of the habit of that while writing the series because I had the series mostly planned.
“That got me into trouble with To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. I thought I was hot stuff doing what I was doing, and I didn’t need to do all the planning soooo... I jumped into it and wrote 300,000 words of a meandering story. So, I cannot plot and write at the same time I must plot first. I also put a ton of prep work into the world building for Fractalverse, which is my sci-fi side of things. And the nice thing is that now that work is done, it is faster and easier to tell stories in that world. But yes, a lot of prep work but then the writing itself and my day to day is really similar. It is nine to five for me. I put those hours in. The biggest change has to be having kids. I still am figuring out how to manage my day to day with that.” --Christopher Paolini
Conclusion
If you could meet any author and ask them anything, what would it be? Learning from other authors, reading books to become a better writer, and analyzing your process are three incredible ways to improve your writing technique. I am always one to preach the use of outlines, planning, and storyboarding but know there are many roads to take when writing a book.