Meeting Father Rahl: An Interview with Terry Goodkind

By David Craddock

David Craddock: In past interviews, you've said that you felt “driven to write” Wizard's First Rule. When did you know that Wizard's First Rule was but the first in a series?

Terry Goodkind: I'm a born storyteller. My earliest memories are of telling myself stories. I lived with the characters from the stories in my head. When I was little I remember playing in the backyard, writing and directing plays for the other kids in the neighborhood. Just some simple kidnaping storylines or whatever. So I've always told myself stories. When I say I was "driven to write," it's not as if I felt overcome with the need to write Wizard's First Rule; I've always wanted to write.

When I started thinking about Wizard's First Rule, I eventually felt that the time had come to write it down on paper. Until then, I never wrote stories down. I have dyslexia, so written words have always been something that have given me difficulty, so I never bothered with them. I was perfectly content to keep the stories in my head and tell them to myself, and to this day that's exactly what I do: I tell myself the stories. Now I write them down, of course, but it's always been my dream to write novels, so when I decided it was time, I had this character in my head—Kahlan. I was finishing building our home in Maine, so I decided that was the time, and I was thinking about Kahlan during the entire time I finished the house, so after that, I started writing.

DC: It's good to hear that. I'm attempting to publish several novels myself, and while I spent plenty of time thinking about them, about the characters and what they'd experience, I didn't know that I was ready to write until I heard an internal alarm clock begin to beep.

TG: I think that's critical. I get letters from people all the time saying, "I'm 13 years old and I want to write a book and get it published. What's the secret? What do I do?" You can't explain to people that they're just not intellectually prepared to write a novel. A novel is a thing of incredible complexity. Human beings are genetically evolved to understand the most subtle clues from other human beings. The most fascinating thing in the world to us is other people, and because we are so hyper-connected to the way other people behave, and to the body language [signals] they give off, the meaning in their words that are different from what they may be saying, and their moods all those kinds of things make writing about human beings the most difficult thing in the world.

As a consequence, these young people think that novels are a collection of explosions, creatures, and magical elements. They don't understand that that's not what they're writing about. They're not intellectually equipped to write at that age. Likewise, somebody who's 18, early 20s, they think, “Okay, now I'm going to write a book.” They consequently submit it all the time, and it's continually rejected because it isn't good enough. It's the same thing as the 13 year old writing a book: it isn't good enough, and they don't understand that yet. When you get to be 20 you think you're grown up, but you're not. Your brain doesn't even stop developing until you're 24, 25, something like that. The intellectual aspects critical to worthwhile novels don't develop in a person that young.

If I would have tried to write a novel when I was 20 years old, it would have been a failure, just like all the other 20 year olds who can't get published. It takes a certain amount of living, and that doesn't mean traveling the world, going to war torn areas, and all that kind of stuff; it means watching how other people move, talk, think, and behave. You need to build up a reservoir of experience watching the sun go down so that when it comes time to write a romantic sunset scene, you know how to make that scene different with words as opposed to, say, an ominous sunset scene. The sun is going down in both scenes, but to pick the words for each scene that a human being will understand, and pick up on clues that signify that this is ominous, or romantic—those things take living, they take experience.

I wasn't ready to start writing until I was 45. When I wrote Wizard's First Rule, I was ready. That doesn't mean that everybody has to be 45. My point is that you have to be able to draw on a well of life experience, and someone who's 13, who's 18, they just don't have that experience. When someone says to me, “I want to write a book but I just can't figure out how to get it down on paper. What do I do?” it makes me want to pull my hair out. If you don't know what to do, then you're not a writer. By default, if you're asking me what to do, you can't do it. I didn't ask anybody what to do…I was simply driven to do it. A writer is a born writer: they're born to do it, they have this internal drive, and they're hungering to tell a story to themselves. That's what makes a true writer: a person who's burning to tell themselves this story.

From the very beginning and still to this day, I just love telling myself stories. I knew what the conclusion to the series [would be] from the very beginning. There are things, startling things that happen in Confessor that I've kept to myself for over a decade; I haven't told anybody: my agent, my editor, my wife—no one. Being a storyteller, the most fun is to tell someone a story, and I don't want to spoil it by giving away the punch line. I've kept incredible secrets of what's happened in the series to myself. When I write them, that's when they happen.

I just always wanted to do it, and I decided that I needed to get started. It's like when you decide you need to clean the house. [laughs] There's no one moment where it hits you; you just know you need to clean the house and at some point you just know you need to get started. In my mind, it was a continuing process that was ongoing. The actual sitting down and writing the story was no different than any other stage of preparing the story than any other stage of my life.

DC: Do you have a process you undergo when you prepare to write? For example, some authors have said that when they're not writing, they like to do a lot of reading.

TG: Everybody is unique. From what I have been able to gather in terms of how other writers function, I don't operate anything like them. I can't even remember the last time I read a novel. I rarely read novels, partially because I have dyslexia; it takes me a long time to read. I'm a very slow reader, and I like to pay attention to words. Every word has a meaning, and I detest people who skim because they miss the essence of what the writer is saying, they miss all the little clues that give the characters their humanity.

With Confessor, people are already saying, “Hey, I bought the book last night and I'm already done with it!” Well, no, you're not. You flipped the pages, you didn't read it. In Confessor, I deliberately wrote certain things that are going to be missed by people who skim. For example, the wizard's rule: if you skim that book, you're going to miss it. I did that on purpose, because it just ticks me off when people say, "I read the book in three minutes, it was great!" They didn't read the book.

Every word that I write is critical. I will sometimes spend half a day on one paragraph because I'm trying to get the exact right words that convey the exact, proper connotations of what the human beings are thinking, doing, whatever. Every single word I consciously intend to be there; they're not accidental. To skim and just kind of hit a few words in every paragraph, you miss all the work that I put in to make those characters humans. So when I read, I read the same way: pay attention to all the words so you understand what the writer intended. Yes, for me it's partially the dyslexia, but I also want to pay close attention.

I remember when I was in a high school creative writing class. The problem I had in school with reading was, they made you read fast. They timed you. Then you had to take a test on the highlights of what happened, and I hated that because it didn't get the essence of what the writer was talking about. You got the facts, but you didn't get the humanity. The creative writing teacher I had at the time opened my eyes to the possibility that I could be a writer. She said, “I don't care how long it takes you to read this, I want to know what you think about what the author had to say.” That's always been my attitude: when I read, I pay attention to what the author is saying, and that means reading the book, not skimming it.

I don't have time to read a lot of books because writing is just such a long process for me; like I said, it might take me half a day to get a paragraph done properly. I'm writing 15 hours a day, seven days a week, so I don't have time to read other material. Also, I don't read other novels because I don't like to be distracted by how other authors do things. I find it a huge negative to read other novels; it puts things in your head of how they described things, of how they created a story, how they worked a theme, all of those things. I want my work to be totally original. I read nonfiction things because I always want to learn something new.

Some people want to write in boxers, some people want to write in a tuxedo. I don't think it makes any difference. It's their drive to write that makes them a writer.

DC: What was it like to write Confessor, knowing that it was the last book in the Sword of Truth series?

TG: I didn't have time for any emotions because the schedule was so incredibly tight. I just didn't have time to ponder anything, I only had time to be in the world, in the book with the characters, writing their story. Confessor is a book that I've been waiting over a decade to write. I simply had to get it done. My publisher gave me a schedule for the book that was well outside my comfort zone, so I was writing Confessor on the ragged edge. I wrote the last 80 pages in one sitting, total stream of consciousness. I never re-read it, I just sent it off to the publisher. What you read in Confessor, the last 80 pages of the book, is what came up on my computer in one sitting, no editing, nothing. That's a decade worth of planning and just writing it out. It's raw Goodkind [laughs].

DC: Now that the Sword of Truth has concluded, where do you see your work taking you? Perhaps more adventures in the Sword of Truth universe, or something entirely new…?

TG: When you finish Confessor, you'll understand better what I'm saying, but the Sword of Truth series is, in essence, a prelude to what comes next. It's a prologue to all the things in my head. There are stories that branch out from this point into all sorts of directions. There are many things I would like to write. I would like to write more about this universe that I've created; it's fun being there every day. On the other hand, I get incredibly frustrated by the realities of the marketplace when you're labeled as a fantasy writer; it's very debilitating for your career, because everything you do is judged on that scale.

I'm not writing about fantasy. And you recognize that! You recognize that I'm dealing with larger issues and the things that are central to all people. I want to write to an audience that includes all people, and fantasy limits that due to its mechanics: the mechanics of where it's placed in bookstores; the mechanics of the covers; the mechanics of the word 'fantasy' on a book; all of those things [make it more difficult to] reach a broader audience. I would like to write contemporary novels. The stories I'm telling are not fantasy-driven, they're character-driven, and the characters I want to write about could be set in any world. I'd like to address a broader audience.

However, I also like writing about this universe, the Sword of Truth, and I may write many more books [within it].

DC: You've often said that your books serve as the missing link between our world and the world of myth. What exactly do you mean?

TG: Until you read Confessor, you won't know what I'm talking about in terms of that statement. Stories are something that have always been instrumental to human beings. When cavemen sat around a fire, I'm sure they told stories. Stories have always been the way people have passed their knowledge and their culture on to other people. It's the way they describe their understanding of their world and their existence. Stories are central to the human experience, and help us understand how we fit into the world.

At the same time, a story is a representation of the author's values. When you share those values, when you have the same values as the author, you're reading a story and seeing your values which may be difficult to understand in daily life because they take place over such a long range. When a reader sees those values realized in a story, it energizes him into believing in himself and understanding that yes, he can be the best person he can be, he can achieve goals and overcome difficulties. The reader sees someone else do those things in a story and it gives him hope, courage, the strength to struggle on.

There are parts of stories, the parts that contain myth, that have always fascinated me. How did myth get into the storytelling tradition? The Sword of Truth series is my explanation of one way that myth became part of our world. When you read Confessor, you will understand where myth came from. It's a mind-blowing concept, and I just think it's the coolest thing ever. I don't know if anyone has ever done anything like this before. When you read Confessor, you understand the larger meaning of what I've been doing. Like I said, I never tell anybody what I'm up to, I just keep working and telling myself stories.

There are things that have happened throughout the series that have all been working toward the final book, the conclusion of Confessor. It's kind of like foreshadowing: you don't realize it until later, but those things are all there for a reason. When you get to Confessor, all of those elements that have been in the back of your mind all the way are suddenly brought to the forefront, that Confessor is the keystone of this entire series. And you see the series in an entirely new light. All the books that you liked before, you realize the part they played in a large context, not just in Richard's life and in his struggle with the Imperial Order, but his whole world, and our whole world, and how they fit together. I just think it's the coolest thing ever. It's a jaw-dropping experience to see what happens, and I think it's something that is really going to be a delight for readers.

In that way, I guess I can understand why people skim, because some stories are so exciting, you just have to know what happens next, you just can't wait to know and you have to go as fast as you can because you want to know what happens. I think Confessor is a book that people will want to go back and read again, because after they've satisfied their overwhelming, all-consuming, burning ambition to know the outcome, they'll want to go back and re-experience all of the details. It's a really fun ride.

DC: One aspect of your series that was given center stage in Confessor was the game of Ja'La. What was your inspiration in the creation of this brutal sport?

TG: Well, that's a very difficult question because of the word inspiration. That's not the way I write. I write from broad concepts and I think up a story to fit the concept that I'm trying to illustrate. For example, if you want to illustrate the concept of individual liberty, it's too broad of a concept to just say, "Freedom is good, slavery is bad." That has no emotional impact. You need to tell a story that gets that emotion across. That's what Faith of the Fallen was. It was a story derived to illustrate that broad theme, so what I'm doing is illustrating a broad theme.

Ja'La was a very conscious, deliberate goal on my part to get across certain things about the characters. I wanted to illustrate how, in a society that is repressive and mindless, and values mediocrity above all else, and values no one excelling, an enforced equality where no one is allowed to be better than anyone else, where no one is allowed to do their best—I wanted to illustrate how people find outlets for their desire for excellence. Ja'La is that outlet for people, to see someone rise up and do better. It's done in a controlled context within that society so that it gives a release that diverts people's attention from their own life, from their own desire to rise up and do better. It's like a pressure release valve on a pressure cooker that keeps the society from exploding.

At the same time, within that game, the emperor [Jagang] has his own ego invested, and the interplay in all of those things is what I wanted to show. When someone comes along who isn't going to play by the rules, who's going to lay down the law even though he's a prisoner and not allowed to have his own freedom—the freedom comes through in the way he behaves. I wanted to show that even in that kind of situation, an individual can accomplish something on their own even though they're restricted in many ways. The Ja'La games served a lot of different purposes.

DC: Does Ja'La reflect any personal views you have of sports in general?

TG: Human beings are driven to succeed. Sports are, in a sense, a very simplified story of overcoming obstacles to achieve a goal. For example, young people need to be able to practice life, they need to be able to practice challenges and accomplishing things, and how to overcome difficulties. In a hunting society, they might have been taught how to shoot a bow and arrow, and they learn to hunt by those activities. Sitting around campfires and passing on stories about great hunts was a way of passing on experience.

In the society we have now, stories help by being part of that function. Because of the deterioration in modern literature, as well as things like TV and movies, those values are relegated to a bin. The destruction of values leaves young people no outlet for how to learn about life, to learn about overcoming challenges. As a consequence, they turn away from reading because it doesn't fulfill that basic human need. They turn to things like video games. In video games, you create your own story. You're the young hunter, or maybe you're going on a quest, and you're overcoming obstacles and difficulties in order to achieve success.

Society has stripped away so much of the challenge of life. Everybody's got forced self-worth, and you can't hand people self-worth; self-worth is earned. In stories, and in movies, in school, in TV, you're handed self-worth. They teach that as a human being, it's your right to have self-worth. As a consequence, people don't know what it's like to achieve self-worth, so they turn to things like video games to learn the accomplishment of overcoming difficulty and succeeding. Games are the same kind of thing. Watching games allow you to participate in sharing the mental challenge of, what's the next play, how are we going to get by these guys to score a point?

It's all part of life. It's about learning to strategize, learning to analyze, to figure out and perceive the plan, a cause and effect. So much of all of those things are taken away in life, so people turn to sports. It's just like the Old World in the Sword of Truth series. There's no way for people to experience those things except through sports. In societies that are stripped of values, they turn to things like sports because it's the only place where they can see values exercised, even if those values are simplistic.

DC: The cover art for most of your novels is extraordinary. How did you come to work with Keith Parkinson?

TG: I got Keith Parkinson because I was so disgusted, angry, and infuriated with the original cover of Wizard's First Rule that I almost quit writing for public consumption. I was livid. The cover on Wizard's First Rule did not represent in any way what I was writing about. It represented a juvenile, immature vision that reflected nothing about the book. It was complete deception by the publisher, trying to fool people into thinking that I was writing for adolescent males. I was absolutely livid, and I just about tore up my contract and said, “That's it, I'm not writing any more books.” My editor said, “If you don't like this, then who do you like?” I said, “Keith Parkinson.”

Keith did the cover of Stone of Tears, but he couldn't do the cover of Blood of the Fold, so we were back to the idiotic covers. After that, Keith did all the covers. Throughout the series, my goal has been to steer the covers away from traditional fantasy covers because I'm not writing fantasy. I'm accidentally published by a fantasy publisher so I get thrown in with that genre, but my books are no more fantasy than a detective novel is a "gun book.” What makes me nuts about the fantasy genre is that, unlike any other genre, people become obsessed and focused on irrelevant things. For example, in a detective novel, if a detective has a Snub Nose 38, no one asks him questions like “Can we know more about the Snub Nose 38?” or “Have you ever thought of doing some kind of special story just about the Snub Nose 38?” It's a distraction.

To me, fantasy is no more important than the romance, the intrigue, the political maneuvering, historical fiction elements all the other kinds of things in other books. I like those elements, and I enjoy writing them, but they're just elements in telling a human story. I don't believe fantasy is valid unless it's used to illustrate other important themes. Magic in and of itself is no more interesting than a rock laying on the side of the road.

The cover of fantasy art tends to illustrate those themes of those authors who are writing those kinds of books. I'm not one of them, and I don't want to be seen as one of them. From the beginning, my goal has been to steer the cover art away from those representational images. Keith became a really good friend, and he would do covers before I even wrote the books. I was describing to him what a cover needed to look like, and then as an artist, I could convey to him very accurately what I wanted him to paint. He and I got along very well and had a great time designing covers. My goal was to pull out of Keith something more noble than the typical red dragon.

For example, with Faith of the Fallen, I need[ed him] to paint a painting that illustrated the nobility of the human spirit. He said, “Oh, gee, don't give me anything too hard, Terry!” [laughs] My goal has always been to write above that kind of representational art. Even with covers like Temple of the Winds where you see a guy [on the cover] holding a sword; that, to me, is a really cool piece of art, I love it but as a cover, I don't like it, because it turns off vast amounts of readers. You automatically disqualify the book for consideration by much of the public. And these are people who love these types of books, but the art doesn't convey to them that they like it.

I've gotten most of my readers by word of mouth. My typical reader, probably 80-90 percent of my readers, don't read fantasy. I'm the only “fantasy” author they read, otherwise for them it's general fiction. They recognize that the books aren't fantasy books, they're books about people, they're character driven. My goal has always been to change the cover art in a way that represents the spirit of what the book is about. With Chainfire, Phantom, and Confessor, those are the first books that are truly my vision of what I want the covers to be. I've finally achieved the kind of covers that I want, that give you a hint of the mystery, romance, intrigue, and even a little bit of the fantasy elements in the book, but at the same time, it illustrates how the books are meant for all people, for all people who just like stories.

After Temple of the Winds, I got contractual cover control. Keith and I designed the Chainfire template of how those [three] books look. When you see Chainfire, Phantom, and Confessor, you're seeing my pure vision, unadulterated by what anyone else thinks it should be. Keith and I designed everything down to the smallest detail.

DC: As popular as your books are, you've never won any awards, though you have been nominated several times. How does that make you feel? I get the feeling that you don’t even care about awards.

TG: This is the first time I’ve ever heard that I’ve been nominated for any award. I don’t know what I’ve been nominated for, I’m...I’m completely unaware! I’ve heard of the Hugo Award...I don’t know any other kinds. I could care less about awards. My award is a reader opening their wallet and giving up their hard-earned money to read my stories, and more than that, giving up their time. As I said, time is mankind’s greatest value. It’s the only thing you really have. When a reader gives up a part of their life to allow me to tell them a story, they’re giving me something precious. That’s my award. Doing my best to satisfy myself, and ultimately my readers—that’s the only award I care about.

DC: What are your thoughts on Sam Raimi converting Wizard’s First Rule into a television series?

TG: Sam Raimi is a person who believes in heroes. His Spider-Man movies are obviously about a heroic person who’s rising up to challenges. Sam was instrumental in making that movie about a real person. He understood that [Spider-Man] is about a real individual who had to rise to challenges and be heroic. He strongly believes in the sacredness in heroes for all of us, for kids and adults alike. That’s something that really drew him to Wizard’s First Rule: he loves the characters; he loves the heroic aspects of [the story]. The reason he wants it done for TV is because he says that if he were to do it as a two hour movie, it would ruin the story. He has so much respect for the story that the last thing in the world he wants to do is ruin it; he wants to do a television format.

Right now he’s working on who [the audience] it’s going to be for and what format will it take, whether it’s going to be an hour [per week] miniseries. He’s in the early planning stages, and he wants me to be intimately involved in all aspects of it—more involved than I have time to be! He’s told me he wants this to be true to my vision, because if I love it, my fans will love it, and if my readers love it, the general audience will love it. He thinks my involvement [in the project] is integral to its success, and he wants me to be there for every stage of it—and I plan to be.

He’s just one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to work with him. He’s the first person whom I’ve encountered that I had enough respect for, and who I thought could do the job, that really excited me.

DC: Did your surgery in 2006 affect your writing?

TG: The short answer is: no. I had a defect in a major artery that supplies blood to my heart, and it would have killed me within a couple of weeks. They had to bypass that defect, which was like a kink in a garden hose. They used an artery from my chest, and it was successful. They said I have no heart disease or anything like that, and in fact the surgeon said it was a pleasure to operate on someone who was healthy for a change. [laughs] It was just one of those things that, had I not been as healthy as I was, it would have killed me. The defect was in what they call the widow artery. It’s the artery that, when you have a heart attack, you can’t be recovered, so I was fortunate in that they were able to fix it in time. Having open heart surgery was no fun, but all it did was reinforce everything that I believe.

My wife is the most important thing to me, and she was my guardian angel. I knew she was right there standing over me, watching over things, and so I knew that I could be put to sleep and she would take care of everything, and would be there for me. When you open your eyes and the people you love are there to smile at you and say “Hi,” that’s what matters. The other stuff is all fun, but the important things are the values I write about. It didn’t change my values, it just proved to me that those simple things such as the people around you who you care about, and who care about you—that’s all that really matters. That’s the joy of life.

DC: It’s such a rare and beautiful thing to have that, to have a real connection with another human being

TG: Yeah, and that’s one of the things that’s been so important to me throughout the whole series: to write about a caring relationship in which the people are very real. They’re realistic about each other, how they can get angry at each other over something, but it doesn’t mean they don’t love one another. Even when they’re angry, they maintain their respect. They may be angry at the situation, at what someone did, but they don’t hate the other person. Love is still the basis of their relationship. I wanted to show how beautiful connection can be.

There are so many people that think, “I’ll be with this person for a while, and if we don’t like each other, we’ll part,” and they mistake momentary pleasure for human joy. In so doing, they make a trade in which they end up being the loser. They sacrifice a part of their life that they’ll never get back for an experience that is ultimately not worthwhile.

This interview originally appeared online at Fantasy Book Critic on December 10, 2007 . It is reprinted here with kind permission. Due to length and space constraints, it has been split into two parts for Prometheus, and will conclude in the next issue of Prometheus. In the second part of the interview Goodkind talks at length about the influence of Ayn Rand and Objectivism on his books and life.