"Our Own Deep Natures": An Interview with Bryan Wigmore

Its a great pleasure getting to interview your favourite authors, so the release of Bryan Wigmore's The Empyreus Proof was the idea excuse to drag him in for another chat. This is what I got out of him....

PL: Congratulations on TEP [The Empyreus Proof]! Now, that's an interesting title, not least because I'm a child and find the initial reusage funny. Why did you pick that title, and what does it hint at about the book?

BW: Wow, that's setting the bar pretty high for difficulty! This is going back a while, but I think the title just popped into my head, and I liked it. What rationale (if any) was going on in my subconscious before that happened, I can't say without benefit of an expensive course of hypnosis. I latched onto the fact that it shared two initials with TGP [The Goddess Project] (and the "r" after the P as well) which I found pleasing, and I liked that it hinted at the possible uncovering of an important mystery set up in TGP. The Empyreum is a major player in the events of that book, and reference is made to the question of its ruler's divinity, with one of the monks of Highcloud calling him "that gibbering head", and so on. I think those are things I would have picked up as a reader of TGP, and what I would be interested in having answered in its sequel. The nature of the "divine" is a major thread throughout the series.

PL: Well you're an old hand at this now, I figure I can fire the difficult ones first now. But lets go easy. What particular aspects of the nature of the divine would you say you're most intrigued by?

BW: Ah, that's easier. I'd say the meeting-place between the genuine spiritual/supernatural and human influence/interference, and what it tells us both about our own deep natures, and our ability to warp reality with our own egos and insecurities. Or something.

PL: Well, that definitely makes sense having read the book. Do you ever feel nervous, handling big themes like these? Worry that people will start ranting about how offensive it is, or that you won't do the subject justice?

BW: Actually, the thought that anyone might rant about its being offensive never occurred to me until you mentioned it! I guess I just assumed that the kind of people who might be offended were unlikely to read it. As for not doing the theme justice, I suppose I do worry that I might miss a particularly fruitful avenue of exploration that would have benefitted the story, but that's from me wanting to write the best fantasy, not to impart my "wisdom" (which in any case is so vague, it would make the worst lesson ever).

PL: Speaking of writing the best fantasy - did writing TEP differ from writing TGP at all?

BW: Yes, it was more difficult! With TGP, I quickly got some idea of the overall shape of the story. With TEP, I knew where they started and where they would end up, but apart from the nature of one new character, pretty much everything was a blur -- and sometimes stayed a blur until I was right on top of it. Several times I had to wait for inspiration as to how characters would credibly get out of the horrendously tricky situations I'd put them in. In at least one instance, I realised there was no credible way out, and that the character would just have to suffer the consequences of their earlier actions, and the rest of the story then had to be re-planned (to the extent that it was planned at all) to take account of it.

Another difference was knowing how much to resolve some of the mysteries. In TGP, the choice between what would be resolved and what left open felt quite obvious, but in TEP it was much less so, and one major revelation caused some fretting over whether it best fitted this book or the next. (It ended up in TEP, a decision I'm now very happy with.)

PL: Do you think the extra difficulty was partially due to the added weight of being second in a series, with all the accumulated plot threads? Or just one of those things?

BW: It was like starting a novel where every character has a really complex backstory that you can't change. Well, I could have changed it -- this was before TGP was published, so I could have gone back and altered what had happened in that -- but I didn't want to. I liked the accumulated plot threads, but they did cause some difficulties I didn't foresee at the outset. It seems strange to me now, for example, that most of Orc's story wasn't clear at the beginning, and crept up on me as I went on. And that caused problems because I thought the direction his story took might make him a much less sympathetic character, which I felt would be risky. So there was some pauses while I debated whether to resist the path events seemed to be taking, and then (almost always) decided to go with it.

The cover

PL: I think there's a really hard line there for an author to follow in terms of having characters perform actions that are natural and human, and always remaining sympathetic - and the success with which you've done so is one of my favourite things about your books to date. Is there any particular knack to that?

Also, which of your characters has your favourite arc in TEP?

BW: Probably it's just to treat them as real people rather than game counters, and not have them do something just because the plot demands it, no matter how strong the apparent need. I think if you can understand the reasons why a character does something, then you can sympathise with them even if you think what they've done is harmful. And if you as an author can sympathise with them, there's a much better chance readers will (though that isn't a given, as I've found).

My favourite arc in this book has to be Orc's, and it's perhaps no coincidence that several major turning-points in his story were completely unplanned, and one unexpected reversal shook up the whole of the rest of the book (and the series, though in the end it fitted very well with my original scheme). Hana's runs it a close second, though I'm sure many people will think I've been a complete bastard to her. But then, if she will go messing with powers above her level ...

PL: And - at the risk of mild spoilers - what arcs are you looking forwards to going into the next book?

BW: Geist's, for sure. He's perhaps the central character in the third book. We find out what his great decades-long plan is, and see him put it into practice, in all its moral complexity and with all its inevitable fallout. But everyone will have a significant storyline: Cass's is another I'm looking forward to writing.

PL: What about themes? Are there any themes you're particularly looking forwards to developing - or maybe even introducing?

BW: I'm looking forward to getting deeper into the theme that's been there since the beginning, but has perhaps not quite fully emerged so far, which is the tension between what some think of as being the Apollonian vs Dionysian modes, or (broadly) definition vs dissolution. In the books, these are most clearly represented by the the two serpents, Saeraf and Chthonis, and then by Gevurah and the Goddess. (These divisions have been there since the start, but as their own thing rather than as aspects of that overarching dichotomy.) One of the questions the story raises is, are we better off for these two aspects being kept so far apart (and for us aligning ourselves so firmly with the Apollonian, as the Empyreum has), or has it been harmful?

Then there's the theme of identity, which was so strong in TGP. The next two books explore whether a strong sense of self, an aspect of Saeraf, is actually a good thing, and whether an absence is really a weakness.

PL: Which of your characters do you think has the biggest struggle with identity? And are there any books where you particularly like the way they handle identity?

There was a sad lack of Otter talk in this interview, so here's an artist's depiction of a spirit guide at work

BW: The one with the biggest struggle with identity has to be Tashi. His role in life, his home, his faith, his body, the very nature of his physical substance, who his friends are -- the poor lad can't be sure of anything most of the time. And that's appropriate, because he probably has more conception of the identity -- the Self -- than the others, being grounded as he is in a religion that holds it as almost more important that anything else.

Orc and Hana are the other two that have major problems with identity, but certainly in Hana's case, that's less of a struggle as she's not so aware of what's going on in terms of its loss.

Two books by David Mitchell spring to mind -- Number9Dream, in which a Japanese teenager searches for his father and thus his place in the world, and the central section of Ghostwritten, about a wandering spirit who can't remember who he is, and (in a brilliant, very moving passage) finds out.

If I'm allowed non-books, the story whose identity issues I love most has to be the JRPG Final Fantasy VII. It is astonishing and very satisfying, and if not for the tedious random battles, I'd probably play through it every year.

PL: Of course games count. Do you think there's anything you learned about storytelling from games?

BW: Ideal mini-climax = cut-scene plus boss fight.

I haven't interpretted that literally in mine -- there isn't a lot of combat -- but games do seem often to know how to build up and release tension, with the dramatic developments (the cut scene) building it up and then action (the boss fight) releasing it.

And there have been examples of storyline developments in games that have left me gob-smacked and wanting to emulate their effects, which have influenced my writing even if they haven't led to me absorbing particular "rules" or techniques. One in FFVII involved a photograph revealing a previously unsuspected truth -- which might even have influenced the inclusion of a photograph in TEP -- and there was a reversal in the PS2 game Summoner which was brilliantly audacious, in which it turned out that the heroic quest you'd been undertaking was in fact aiding the forces of evil. (I won't say whether that influenced any aspect of my series!)

PL: What's your favourite mini-climax in each book so far? The moment you think will really get readers most?

BW: My personal favourite in TGP is at the end of the Great Ziggurat chapter, ch26. After all the excitement of the dive, things seem to have calmed down, when the Empyreal warship Archon, forgotten about for the past four chapters, suddenly appears and begins causing chaos. So we have action/tension (the almost fatal dive), then the release, then the very quick ramping up again from a perhaps unexpected source.

In TEP, it has to be the end of chapter 30, "Reunion". I'm very happy with how the tension builds up throughout the few chapters before that, to the point where it can only be satisfactorily discharged by something terrible happening to someone. (For a long time, perhaps months, I wasn't actually sure who that would be, out of the several candidates.)

I've noticed that in both those chapters, the viewpoint switches back and forth. I think in the TEP chapter it's the first chapter where that happens at all, and in the TGP one it probably happens more than in any other.

Thanks to Bryan for his time and answers! The Empyreus Proof is out now from Snow Books and you should buy it - check back soon for a review explaining why (not that you need to read it, just trust me here)