He was speaking at the Everyman Theatre, which was full.
The talk followed the format of others I've been to, where an interviewer has a conversation with Terry and then there is a Q&A session with the audience. The interview was about 45 minutes and the Q&A only 20, they ran out of time long before the audience ran out of questions.
The interviewer (I'm afraid I didn't catch her name) started by quoting some statistics about numbers of books sold, languages translated into, which Terry gently corrected upwards. I think she said 33 million copies sold - "No, 45 million" (Terry looked at his watch) "might be 46 by now".
She began by asking him about Thud, and the degree to which it was based on the real world. Terry said he was aware that events in the book do seem to mirror real world events, but pointed out it was written before 7/11. He doesn't want to "put the wallpaper of Discworld over the brick wall of the real world", but he said every book ever written is about the real world, even when it's about aliens in a distant galaxy - people are always people even when they're trolls and dwarves. One big difference was that Thud could have a happy ending "because unlike the real world, the Discworld has a good author". It's not a completely happy ending though, just one from which a good ending may finally come "because these things take time".
He said he drew on his own experience as a parent for the Sam/Sam Jnr scenes, which he said would be recognised by anyone who'd ever suffered from Lego leg (apparently walking on Lego that's been left on the carpet is agonising). It was his publisher who suggested he actually write Where's My Cow, but she envisaged it being exactly as described in Thud. Terry wanted it to be about Vimes reading WMC because that's very clever and self-referential "and might get me on the South Bank Show".
The interviewer read out a list of things he satirises in Thud and asked if he was cynical. "I have a cynical brain", he replied. But he doesn't plan to put these things in, they just turn up as he's writing. For instance when the binge-drinking bit suddenly appeared he realised he was going to have a lot of fun writing the next couple of pages.
The interviewer quoted several people who think that Terry's work is under-rated because it is comic fantasy, and asked him what he thought the difference was between his books and great literature. "Quality", he replied solemnly. But he doesn't think it's sensible to think about whether or not what you're writing is great literature, whilst you're writing it. He's sure Dickens didn't. He's not sure how best to classify what it is he writes, though it's definitely fantasy (the trolls and wizards etc give it away).
The interview asked if very English references (e.g. satire of British Rail) is difficult to translate into other languages and cultures. He said the good translators can usually find something in the local culture it can be mapped onto. He mentioned he learned recently (at the world SF con) that there are two translations of LotR into French, one which simply translates Tolkien into French word-for-word and one written as if Tolkien had been French. The second is much more readable. The culture most difficult to translate Discworld into is American.
At one point he talked about the secret of his books being to treat fantasy ideas seriously, thinking them through and working out the implications. He gave as an example the fact that the Goddess Freya is supposed to have a sled drawn by 200 cats. He could see the audience was already working out for itself the comic potential of that if it was really tried. "Even if you had 200 people holding each cat and pointing it in the right direction, as soon as they all let go it would be bedlam". People had tried to argue that as Freya was a goddess ... "Just one goddess against 200 cats? No contest".
The interviewer asked about his daughter, who he said was writing a horror novel which is very good, in fact he wants to pinch the plot. She phoned him up to ask what arsenic smelt like, and he explained that it didn't smell but cyanide did, and filled her in on the details of various poisons. After she rang off he decided that was what parenting is all about - "Want to know how to murder someone? Phone up your old dad".
The interviewer then asked him about Going Postal, quoting a review which said it was about redemption. He agreed it was, and surprised me by saying Moist is a bit autobiographical. A man spuriously acquires a reputation for being nice, then doesn't have the nerve to go back to being nasty under the constant gaze of his admirers. He then discovers doing the right thing has its own rewards, especially when using criminal skills for a worthy end. He said Vetinari's story of the angel was important: "You only get one chance to turn your life around".
The interviewer then turned to his children's novels, and he talked a bit about the Tiffany books amd Amazing Maurice. The Wee Free Men are great fun to write. They're not really Scotch, just Scot-ish. Real Scots apparently love them. Their language is a mixture of Gaelic, Glaswegian slang and gibberish. The interviewer thought he'd toned down the "rather blue" language they used in Carpe Jugulum for the children's books but he said not much. "It's amazing what you can get away with in Glaswegian".
Asked what the difference was between writing for children and adults he said "For one you deal with serious themes like love, death etc. Then there's adult books, where you can be more trivial". He said children take books more seriously than adults, and you don't need to talk down to them.
Merchandising: There wasn't the scale of merchandising for DW that there is for something which has movie spinoffs, so he can keep control and ensure everything is canonical. [A later question from the audience was what was the silliest merchandising suggestion ever put to him. "Poppadoms", he said, without hesitation].
The interviewer asked about his school days, particularly about a story he wrote when he was 13 which was published but which his headmaster disapproved of. "He didn't like the moral tone" (apparently the story was about Satan, deprived of customers because everyone was being saved and going to heaven, turning Hell into a theme park). This headmaster disapproved of everything, however. Terry said an old battered copy of Encyclopedia Britannica had been thrown out and he and his friends had found it by the bins, rescued it and taken home several volumes each. The headmaster had seen them from the window and complained at assembly next day about boys "stealing" the books. Terry remarked that today a headmaster would be thankful he had pupils who actually wanted to read!
The first question from the audience was how did he avoid letting Vetinari take over the books he's in, as he's such a marvellous strong character. He said he rationed strong characters like Vetinari and Death, Vimes was the only one he just gave his head. Vetinari was like how people thought Machiavelli had been, but wasn't really. He's often been asked whether he would write about the life of the young Vetinari, but was so far resisting doing so.
There was a question about how he writes animal characters. He said he makes them recognisably animals, but can then make them do magical things and explore the results. He has 6 cats, so people assume he likes them "but when you have cats they own you and that's all there is to it - liking doesn't come into it". In the Tiffany book he's currently writing Tiffany mischeiviously gives Granny Weatherwax a white kitten which irritates her and acquires the name You ("You! Stop doing that!"). This started as just texture but becomes an important plot point when You meets Greebo ...
The last question was about where he got names for his characters from, and he said from the phone book. They're mostly real names, which he collects, though sometimes he makes some up by putting names and words together. He talked about names having baggage, so you could indicate a lot about a character with their name. Earlier he said the same was true of ordinary words, it had taken a long time for him to realise that there were very few real synonyms in English, all words had specific baggage attached which you could use as shorthand.
That's all I can remember.
Edited to correct a few typos.
Almost feel like I was there.
That's going to be good, I can't wait to read that book. Could someone tell me what Poppadoms are?
