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  • “I am endlessly enchanted by this world”An interview with Cornelia Funke
  • Björn Sundmark

What are you working on right now?

I have just finished a first draft of a new adventure of the Dragon Rider characters, a book that I wrote more than fifteen years ago. I have often been asked “when is there a sequel?” but there isn’t automatically a sequel. There are some books that should not have a sequel. With Dragon Rider, I tried once or twice but ended up feeling “this isn’t ready.”

Did you feel that it was a stand-alone book?

No, that was the interesting thing. I have always felt that there should be more, but every time, I felt that I was repeating myself and that it wasn’t there yet. Then I started working on a book where artists were providing their impressions of different characters and places in Dragonrider, and that was very inspiring. I became greedy to come back to that world. Meeting those artists working on Dragonrider I wanted to do it myself again.

So, these illustrations by other artists inspired you, but you have also started illustrating more and in the pre-writing of your new novels. In what way is this different from how you worked before?

I was shocked by the difference. I was used to doing illustrations afterwards. Already in Mirrorworld I worked very intensively with picture materials, so I had my walls covered with paintings and illustrations and photographs from archives. Images trigger things. I would look at faces of people long dead, and I would ask “who are you?” and make that person into a new character.

You used to write on computers, but now…

Yes, now I write by hand. I write a first draft by hand on the right side, and I sketch my characters on the left side. Then I do notes and changes. I get closer to my characters by drawing them. Now I have all of these notebooks. Before, I wrote the [End Page 68] text and then did the illustrations, but now I do it this way. So now I have all these notebooks. With complex books like the Mirrorworld-books, I make ten to fifteen drafts.

It seems very physical.

Yes, it’s very physical. When you show it to young authors or book people in general, you notice how much we all yearn for this—for the tactile, for the touch. I also glue things into my notebooks, photos etc.

Does this way of working affect the actual language, the way of structuring? What happens?

When I did it the first time, I was surprised by the quality of the first draft. When you do it by hand, it is more like playing. On the computer, you get the strange feeling that what you see is finished print already, almost done. It fools us. This way it is more playful, but you trust yourself more because you have no pressure that it must be final. It sometimes becomes more original, and… yes, free. So now my first advice to young authors is “write by hand”!

What you say about visualization and storytelling reminds me of what C. S. Lewis said once about the genesis of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “it started with an image of a faun standing in snow by a lamppost.”

Very many of my stories start with images, too, but at that point I don’t understand them yet. It is often hard to draw them. They are more like moving pictures. It’s about place and about tasting and touching the world. You want that to be so real that you can sense it. To feel the story on your skin, that is what you want.

Can you say something about how you work with setting?

I think of setting as one of my characters. When I wrote Thief Lord, Venice is an important character in that book, just like the children. Or, when I wrote Inkheart, I could not have written that without living for three months in Liguria and without Liguria becoming a character.

Speaking of Thief Lord, you have written...

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