The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide Read Online Free PDF

that this is actually a rational way to be. [Laughs]
    SH: I know, I know. Not that anybody who chooses to write books for a living is actually
rational
…

On Endings  and  Inevitability

     
And so the endings, to me, are always inevitable. You get to a point where there’s no other way it can go.
     
    SH: I think that, with certain kinds of stories, if you preplan a happy ending, it feels so false. I have had a couple stories like that, where I decided:
This is not going to be the happy ending people are going to want, but we’re just going to have to live with it.
And then a character swoops in or something happens to change the problem and take it out of my hands. I think that kind of ending can feel more real and satisfying. You can’t force it, though.
    SM: No. Usually, the endings become impossible to avoid, because of whatever is growing in the story. There’s nothing you can do after it’s set in motion—it just keeps going.
    Sometimes I don’t see something changing at first. It’s like… say, when you change direction by one degree, and you end up on a completely different continent, even though you turned just the slightest bit. Things like that’ll happen that change the course. But by the time you get to the end, there’s no… there’s no more leeway for changes.
    And so the endings, to me, are always inevitable. You get to a point where there’s no other way it can go. If I tried to do something different, I think it would feel really unnatural. But I rarely try. [Laughs] It’s like: Let’s just let this be what it is.
This is the way the story goes.
It gets complicated because, as the author, I see the first-person perspective from more than one person’s perspective.
     
    SH: Now, with
New Moon
, there was a way that it could have ended that was very different. And what changed the course of those events was happenstance.
    SM: It wasn’t altogether happenstance—whether you’re referring to the paper cut or the cliff-jump or what have you. With the characters being who they are, it’s only a matter of time before Bella bleeds near Jasper, and then the outcome is inevitable. It’s only a matter of time before Bella finds a way to express her need for adrenaline in a way that nearly kills her, and it’s pretty good odds that Jacob will be somewhere close to Bella at that time, clouding up Alice’s visions.
    It gets complicated because, as the author, I see the first-person perspective from more than one person’s perspective. I started writing Bella in the beginning, but there are several voices that are first-person perspective for me while I’m writing. So I know everything that’s going on with those people. Sometimes it’s hard for me to write from Bella’s perspective only, because Bella can only know certain things. And so much of that story was first-person-perspective Edward for me.
    I knew it was going to be a problem if Edward took off. [Laughs] I mean, even though
Twilight
had not come out yet, I was aware enough at this point that this is not the way you write a romance. You don’t take the main character away—you don’t take the guy away. [SH laughs] But because of who he is, he had to leave—and because of the weakness that he has, he was going to come back. It was his strength that got him away, and it was the weakness that brought him back. It was a defeat, in a way, for him—but, at the same time, it was this triumph he wasn’t expecting. Because he didn’t see it going the way it does in the end.
    He’s such a pessimist—oh my gosh, Edward’s a pessimist.And one of the fun things about
Breaking Dawn
for me was working through that with him, till he finally becomes an optimist. That’s one of the biggest changes in
Breaking Dawn
, that Edward becomes an optimist. So many things have lined up in his favor that he can no longer deny the fact that some good will happen to him in his life. [Laughs]
    And so for me,
New Moon
was all about what Edward had to