I didn’t think Fantasy was my genre of books, and then I was introduced to The Bone Series. It’s the type of book that pulls you into its universe with a force so strong you can barely come up for air. Needless to say I was thrilled to meet Samantha Shannon and get to understand the thinking behind the worlds she creates.
When you’re writing fantasy, you’re creating an entire new world – things that don’t exist. How do you approach the process of world-building in your novels? Do you start with the setting, the characters, or the overarching plot?
It’s usually a concept. With The Bone Season it was two concepts. I was studying at Oxford at the time and I always envisioned Oxford being a very intimidating, dark place. It’s often written about as a wonderful magical place and there is a degree of magic in studying there; but I always felt like I was a bit out of place there. I wasn’t privately educated, I felt like I came from a different background to the other students, so I felt isolated and alone while I was there. I ended up envisioning this city as the home to these supernatural giants – I do not know where the idea came to me, I just have a very vivid imagination. Then separately, I’ve lived in London my whole life and I did an internship in a district called Seven Dials. In Seven Dials there are alot of shops selling crystal balls and tarot cards and offering palm reading- it’s quite an esoteric area. I realised I’d never read a fantasy novel that involved divination and clairvoyance and made them into a magic season and I thought that could be really fun. I probably could have written two separate ideas but I just ended up gelling them up into one novel; and from that collision of ideas The Bone Novel came.
I started with those two concepts and the character of Paige came into my head pretty quickly. I remember hearing her voice for the very first time. Before I’d always written in third person, and suddenly, I had this voice in my head saying “I like to imagine there were more of us in the beginning” – which is the first line of the book. I was really surprised because I had never written with the “I” voice, but I knew a lot about her. I knew she had a really strong Irish accent so I knew she would be Irish and it all started from there.
Is the character of Paige Mahoney inspired by how you felt at Oxford – she never feels like she fits in?
A little, yes. I had to really think about what perspective would make the most sense when I was telling The Bone Season because it is only one perspective, unlike my other books which are told by multiple people. I knew the person I chose to be the protagonist was going to be the most important decision about the entire series. I thought it would be interesting if she was both an outsider and an insider. So she comes from Ireland, a country that has been colonised by England; but she’s also an insider in London. She’s a high ranking criminal in the underworld and she has made herself a part of the city. I thought that would be the most interesting perspective for me; because she knows alot about Scion and she remembers a world outside of that; whereas a lot of other characters don’t have that experience at all. I thought it would be interesting to explore the colonial relationship between England and Ireland throughout history. I’ve always wanted to discuss that through my work, I have Irish ancestors on my Father’s side who immigrated to England during the famine and I have always wanted to connect with that experience and explore it in some way.
Bone Season has a bit of true history in it, with a lot of fiction – how do you combine that and how do you choose what history to include and what to rewrite?
When I pitched The Bone Season to my agent, the first thing he asked was why I set it in 2059. I said it was because it was 200 years after 1859 and I knew I was going to write an alternate history of this world, but there would have to be a point at which our timeline diverges from The Bone Season timeline and I decided to pick a real event for that so that it felt grounded in reality. I picked The Carrington Event which was an enormous solar storm with incredible power – it was like lighting up the sky in the middle of the night so that people thought it was morning, it could be seen throughout a lot of the world, it was a very intense event. I thought I would reinvent that in the magical sense, so rather than being a solar storm, it is the moment that the Rephs come to Earth. And from then I’ve always tried to ground the book in real history. I introduced Jack the Ripper into it, and Edward the Seventh. There were various figures that were still alive in the era of The Bone Seasons – Paige is listening to music on the gramophone and all those songs are real, sung by real artists. I like having that real world connection, it does help ground the fantasy. I love that readers can go to a lot of these places in real life and know a lot of the history. Readers can place themselves inside the story.
How did you develop the intricate magic systems in your books? How do you balance originality with clarity for the reader?
I wanted to create a magic system using clairvoyance, so there had to be a spirit world that all the characters connected to in different ways. I wrote down every type of spirit connection in folklore and history that I could think of – anything from tarot reading to mediums to speaking in tongues. I had to find a way to organise these so I made a list and tried to find similarities between them. Oftentimes there’s a type of clairvoyant who uses physical objects like tarot cards, mirrors or ice. Then there’s people who use plants, like burning sage. All of those I categorised until I had the Seven Orders of Clairvoyance which is the basis of my magic system. It’s also fun going outside the world of Scion in the fifth book in the series because you realise that is not the only way people have been categorising them.
How has your writing evolved from the original Bone Season to the revision? Are there specific skills or insights you’ve gained over the years?
I revised the book because I was really young when I wrote the first book. I was only nineteen and then twenty when I got the book deal and twenty one when it was published. I was editing it alongside doing my degree and there was a lot of media interest in me because of my age. I was doing a lot of interviews and press – things I wasn’t prepared for and it caused me a lot of anxiety because I was very shy and introverted. I didn’t know how public being an author can be. It can be very private when you’re writing but then there is a lot of promotion and marketing – and I wasn’t used to that. I felt that because of the pressure, I couldn’t focus on the edits in the way that they deserved. Whenever I would read back on The Bone Season I would feel exacerbated that I hadn’t developed things enough. There are a lot of very interesting character dynamics in The Bone Seasons – the relationship between Warden and Paige is so fraught at that point. I kept thinking why didn’t you add this scene or make this joke. When the tenth anniversary came around, my publisher wanted to put new covers on them, and I asked them if I could do some edits on them. It’s very unusual in the industry – you generally don’t edit a book that has already been published. The book is like a time capsule that captures who you were at that time in your life. But I explained that I love The Bone Seasons so much and have been working on it for ten years, and I have always been frustrated that the weakest instalment was the first one and that is the one that introduces people to the series. You don’t want that to form a barrier to someone getting into the series. I ended up rewriting it with a few different focuses. One of them was that I wanted to make the world building more accessible. When I was younger, I didn’t really know how to elegantly convey the rules of my world, so my first chapter was really dense and there was so much information to take in. It was an info dump – Paige telling you everything about the world but not in a way that is immediately relevant to the plot, so I wanted to smooth that out and introduce the reader to concepts more slowly as it is very layered. I wanted to make Paige’s journey more intentional, I wanted her imprisonment in Oxford to end up being what releases her from Jaxon’s hold on her. I hadn’t hit all those notes in the first draft, I didn’t feel like the connection between her imprisonment and being free of Jaxon was clear enough. I feel like my feminism has come on some more since ten years ago. In the original there were some problematic elements in the relationship between Acturus and Paige – sometimes he would grab her chin in a way at the time I felt was romantic, but I’ve since revised my views on that. So I tried to make their relationship more tentative and gentle in the beginning.
It’s the same story, just done with more experience.
What’s the best piece of critique you’ve ever received?
As authors we don’t actively seek out critique. I remember reading reviews and next to each other were two reviews – one said the book was too fast, and the other said the book was too slow. Everyone has such vastly different opinions on books and it is so subjective that I think it’s not always helpful for authors to seek out critique. In the end you need to be true to your own voice. I have seen criticism I’ve agreed with like people being too overwhelmed by the world building in chapter one of The Bone Seasons which I took into my revision of it.
How long does it take you to write a book?
A bone season novel takes 6 months to draft. The Priory of the Orange Tree takes about three years – from the first word to when they go to the printer. But those are large complex books, 800 pages.
What does your typical writing routine look like, and how do you maintain creative momentum when working on long-term projects?
I’m lucky I get to do it as a full time job. I always need to have a walk in the morning – that seems to kickstart my creativity for the day, I normally have a coffee. I do emails in the morning – there’s a lot of admin as an author. Then I do a combination of writing and thinking for the rest of the day. Thinking is a large part of it, you have to dwell on your plot and how each event connects to the next one. It’s not usually hammering out word after word over hours like an Engen, there’s pausing to think and maybe half an hour of solid writing.
As I get nearer a deadline it gets more and more intense. I’m more of a natural night owl, I do my better writing at night. I listen to music – always instrumental music. I listen to a lot of film school because it’s designed to evoke specific atmospheres and emotions and you can have them playing battle scenes.
Are there any other genres you want to step into?
Yes, I’m writing a novel on Greek mythology which is going to be about the Goddess Iris – it will still be fantasy to some degree, but mixed more with history. I would like to write some historical fiction, although I worry I would go so far down the research hole I would never emerge, because I am such a perfectionist I would want to nail every detail. There’s a great movement at the moment to uncover women’s stories in history and writing novels focused on historical women and returning them to their rightful place in history and I would like to be a part of that.
What advice would you give aspiring authors?
I’ve always felt advice is a little bit difficult because every writer is so unique but one of the things I would say is “don’t take too much advice”. There is so much writing advice out there and I’ve found it too prescriptive. I once saw an author who said you have to write 1000 words a day to be an author and I really strongly disagree with that. There are so many reasons you may not be able to write 1000 words a day and I think it’s not fair to set those expectations. I have migraines and have suffered other chronic illnesses that have made it difficult for me to write everyday, but I’ve still published six novels but I do it at my own pace. Even saying you have to write every day can be too prescriptive for some people. I think you should figure out a routine that works for you. Only take advice if you find it useful. If you feel a piece of advice makes you feel bad or less of a writer you don’t have to take it. There’s no rule book, everything is guidelines. I am an example of someone who has not written everyday but still has managed to make a career out of being an author.
