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Good Omens, The Facts

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 4:22 pm
by bleachededen
Good Omens, The Facts
(or, at least, the lies that have been hallowed by time)

Re: Good Omens, The Facts

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 4:23 pm
by johnson1010
What?

Re: Good Omens, The Facts

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 4:47 pm
by bleachededen
It's an interview with Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman about how they collaborated and created the book. It's included in my edition of the book, so I thought I'd list it as a thread since members may want to talk about it. I did the same with the authors' discussions about each other, just in case anyone wants to discuss what's mentioned there.

Didn't mean to confuse you.

Re: Good Omens, The Facts

Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2010 11:26 am
by The Ritzy
I lent out my copy of Good Omens, so I don't have it on me to double check but I believe in my copy was an interview and they told of how they collaborated on the book. I thought it was rather interesting the way that most of their collaboration was through the mail or over the phone.

Re: Good Omens, The Facts

Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2010 1:39 pm
by bleachededen
Yes, I believe you're correct, and it was very interesting. They also discuss how they can't remember now whether or not it was a 60/40 split or 50/50 or what, since they made sure that both of them wrote from the point of view of every character, to make sure they were really collaborating. It's fascinating, when you think about it, especially when you look at how well the book flows and how even it feels. Often in a collaboration one part feels more like one author than another, or the book seems to be divided into halves, but the collaboration here is so seamless that you wouldn't be able to pick out which author wrote which part unless you were told. Another very good example of why I love this book. :)

Re: Good Omens, The Facts

Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2010 6:02 pm
by Robert Tulip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens#Authorship
Authorship
Gaiman and Pratchett had known each other since 1985 and it was their own idea, not that of their publisher, to collaborate on a novel.

Neil Gaiman has said: "We were both living in England when we wrote it. At an educated guess, although neither of us ever counted, Terry probably wrote around 60,000 "raw" and I wrote 45,000 "raw" words of Good Omens, with, on the whole, Terry taking more of the plot with Adam and the Them in, and me doing more of the stuff that was slightly more tangential to the story, except that broke down pretty quickly and when we got towards the end we swapped characters so that we'd both written everyone by the time it was done, but then we also rewrote and footnoted each others bits as we went along, and rolled up our sleeves to take the first draft to the second (quite a lot of words), and, by the end of it, neither of us was entirely certain who had written what. It was indeed plotted in long daily phone calls, and we would post floppy disks (and this was back in 1988 when floppy disks really were pretty darn floppy) back and forth.

Terry Pratchett has said: "I think this is an honest account of the process of writing Good Omens. It was fairly easy to keep track of because of the way we sent discs to one another, and because I was Keeper of the Official Master Copy I can say that I wrote a bit over two thirds of Good Omens. However, we were on the phone to each other every day, at least once. If you have an idea during a brainstorming session with another guy, whose idea is it? One guy goes and writes 2,000 words after thirty minutes on the phone, what exactly is the process that's happening? I did most of the physical writing because:
I had to. Neil had to keep Sandman going – I could take time off from the DW;
One person has to be overall editor, and do all the stitching and filling and slicing and, as I've said before, it was me by agreement – if it had been a graphic novel, it would have been Neil taking the chair for exactly the same reasons it was me for a novel;
I'm a selfish bastard and tried to write ahead to get to the good bits before Neil.
Initially, I did most of Adam and the Them and Neil did most of the Four Horsemen, and everything else kind of got done by whoever – by the end, large sections were being done by a composite creature called Terryandneil, whoever was actually hitting the keys. By agreement, I am allowed to say that Agnes Nutter, her life and death, was completely and utterly mine. And Neil proudly claims responsibility for the maggots. Neil's had a major influence on the opening scenes, me on the ending. In the end, it was this book done by two guys, who shared the money equally and did it for fun and wouldn't do it again for a big clock."

Re: Good Omens, The Facts

Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2010 6:48 pm
by bleachededen
Thanks, Robert!

I think I posted some of that or at least links to that in one/both of the bio threads. Thanks for bringing it here, though. :)