One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with James Dashner

Check out previous interviews in the One Thing Leads to Another series here .
It ’ mho no secret that Utah has more than it ’ second carnival parcel of wildly talented authors and as a librarian here I ’ ve had the great good luck of meeting quite a few. One generator in particular, though, stands out for me plainly because it ’ randomness been thus much fun watching him work his way from local writer to world-dominating best seller and international movie mogul ( or something like that. ) Make no err, it was clearly hard shape, as he ’ ll tell you himself if you ’ d like to hear the floor ( it ’ s a good matchless ) and I ’ ve merely been observing from afar, like most readers, so it ’ s not like I have the farinaceous details. But, having been on the receiving conclusion ( by way of my job ) of his impressive “ british pound the paving ” set about, he ’ mho been on my radar for a hanker time now and it ’ s irrationally gratifying to see so many good things happen for him. Because you know what ? He deserves full things .
It ’ randomness not just the capital storytelling ( though I was a fan all the way back to the beginning Jimmy Fincher, which I think I first read as an submission in the Utah Speculative Fiction Award contest lo thus many years ago ) that makes me say that. Great storytelling he has in spades, certain, but it ’ s his graciousness and exuberance, good temper and kindness, that made James Dashner stand out–those qualities radiated from him the first clock he approached my desk at the library carrying a stack of his books. He believed in himself, which is kind of rare and superintendent infectious, but he was besides merely complain dainty. He was the kind of person you remember, in other words, even before I read the beginning foliate of A Door in the Woods .
so basically, if you haven ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate joined Dashner ’ s Army yet, you probably should. Read the books. See the movie tomorrow. And pay care, because my think is that this is only the beginning. Thanks, James, for taking the time–in the midst of all the madness–to answer my questions, for writing “ tail-kicking ” stories, and for making a permanent stamp. Don ’ t take this the wrong way, but I hope you stay choked up for a long time.

Always Something There to Remind Me

Please describe your teenage self.
Dork. Nerd. Geek. Must I go on ? I did well in school, but storytelling was always my passion. Movies, field, books. I always wanted to be a storyteller and wrote a distribute in eminent school. I besides saw a fortune of movies and read a distribute of Stephen King novels .
What did you want to be when you grew up? Why?
I wanted to be an generator or make movies. My practical side knew that was sometimes street fighter, so I had all kinds of backing plans–I even became a CPA and worked as an accountant for respective years, but I never gave up on the ambition. I always kept write, even when I was working fully clock .
What were your high school years like?
I had a very effective time in high school, evening though I was a jerk among dorks. I accepted that function and had some effective friends and lots of great memories. I grew up in Georgia, and I was either studying, playing basketball, or reading books or watching movies most of the time. I had an english teacher who takes all the credit for my success†” Mrs. Becker. Okay, deservedly so. She was fantastic and bucked up my, shall we say, creative accept on English class. One example : my senior thesis for AP English was a collection of laughably punch-drunk limericks. And I got an adenine !
What were some of your passions during that time?
Stephen King for certain. And any movie, every movie. I saw them all and all of those movies have surely influenced how I tell stories. I wasn ’ metric ton that great at it, but I constantly loved basketball, distillery do, and try to play when I get the prospect. I besides remember going through a eldritch Shakespeare phase, particularly Hamlet. I was a fiddling haunt. I think it was because of the Mel Gibson movie that came out when I was in senior high school school. As for music, I was always a authoritative rock candy kind of guy. Led Zeppelin, Rush, Van Halen, Ozzy .
Would you be willing to share a difficult teen experience or challenge that you feel shaped the adult you became?
The death of my grandfather was a bully matchless. It was my first base experience with death, and it was wholly unexpected. It struck me hard, and laid the groundwork for what would happen to me in my twenties†” the far-too-premature death of my own dad. I think it helped me empathize and help others throughout my life when they ’ ve had to deal with loss. And, not surprisingly, there ’ s no doubt it impacted my publish .
What about a positive experience or accomplishment that had an impact on your adult self?
My high school had an outstanding field department. I wasn ’ thyroxine much of a singer, and they constantly seemed to do musicals, so I was by and large on the sidelines, watching from the seats. But seeing some of those amazing productions, frequently more than once, just foster inflate my desire to be a narrator, one way or another. West Side Story was one that I ’ ll never forget .
What advice, if any, would you give your teen self? Would your teen self have listened?
I ’ m not sure he ’ five hundred heed, but I wish so badly I could go binding and tell myself not to worry so much about what others think about you. Be yourself, always. If person doesn ’ thyroxine like that, then why on EARTH would you want to be friends with them ? I struggled with that sometimes .
Do you have any regrets about your teen years? Anything left undone or anything that might have been better left undone?
I ’ m not certain I have regrets†” I did some unintelligent things and could ’ ve done a lot more good. But those formative years turned me into who I am, the good and the bad. And I wouldn ’ thyroxine make bold risk losing what I have today in terms of family and career .
What, if anything, do you miss most about that time?
I miss my family, so much. Summer trips to Grandma ’ mho, Christmas, Thanksgiving, so many full memories. If I could time travel, I ’ d go relive those days every once in a while .

Every Day I Write the Book

“Movies, without a doubt…are the number one inspiration for me as a writer,” you’ve said. In fact, when asked to describe your secret superhero power, you pointed to your ability to watch movies: “I’m much better at it than you are. In fact, no one on the planet of Earth. .. is as brilliantly brilliant at watching movies as I am. I can enjoy any movie on any level at any time.”  You say that you learn something from every movie you watch and I wonder, do you take a movie at face value while watching it and then think about it more carefully later, or are you able to do both simultaneously? Are there any “lessons learned” from movies that might surprise us? Which movies have influenced you the most, both personally and in your writing?
I ’ m not sure it ’ s something I can describe in a draw of detail. Movies fair open up the creative side of my mind and get me excited to write. It boils down to this : I love storytelling, in any shape, and movies are the best, most immediate, most intuitive direction to experience a complete history. Think about all the things you can learn in two hours : plot, tempo, dialogue, character development, narrative social organization, etc. Whenever I ’ m in a furrow, a movie is the best cure. I ’ d say the movies that have most affected me are The Matrix, Aliens, Lord of the Rings, Inception, Star Wars. .. I could go on and on !
In addition to movies, you’ve talked a lot about your general love of pop culture. Among other things, you’ve mentioned listening to movie sound tracks while you write, talked about your belief that we’re living in “the Golden Age of Television, my friends,” and revealed that you’d choose Imagine Dragons to do the sound track to The Eye of Minds, should the opportunity arise. Would you share your most powerful pop cultural influences and a little about why or how they influence you? And since it’s appropriate to the question and I know that you’re a fellow list lover, let’s do it in the form of a Top Ten List.

1. Stephen King : nothing triggers the hope to read like hearing that appoint. From gamey school on, he ’ s been my favorite writer .
2. Star Wars: My beginning memory of movie magic. nothing has always matched it .
3. Led Zeppelin : My older brothers sucked me in when I was reasonably young, and their music, in my humble opinion, is so much more epic and endless than anything else, ever .
4. Back to the Future: This movie and its sequels hit me at barely the right time, middle school and high school. Each one was just a major event .
5. star Trek : I saw all the movies with my dad, and remember so distinctly all the speculation between the second and third movies on whether Spock was actually dead .
6. Dean Koontz : I read a draw of his books in the ’ 90s, and I feel like his manner truly influenced my future writing. Creepy, fast-paced, lots of surprises, and exploring different types of stories .
7. Harry Potter : J. K. Rowling is an absolute ace. I have zero doubt that the concluding thing that fell into invest for my determination to become an generator was the publication of this serial .
8. Les Misérables: My favored musical, and favorite book. nothing has always matched this narrative in pulling emotion out of me, and I ’ ll spend the rest of my write days trying to duplicate it .
9. Lord of the Rings : The movies and the voice track. so many of my books have been written to this music, and I ’ ve never been therefore lost in storytelling as when watching the films .
10. Lost: The first time I ever sincerely fell in love with a television receiver testify. Its influence on the Maze Runner series is reasonably obvious, I think .
On a slightly more serious note, each of your books features strong, complicated relationships that serve as both a contrast to the often-horrific events of the story and a center that holds the nonstop action together. Friendship plays an especially important role, and I’m interested in what draws you to examine that particular type of relationship so frequently? Do the dynamics between your characters ever steer the story in a particular direction, or does plot always dictate how your characters relate to each other?
Thank you for saying this, because developing characters is not an easy matter for me. I ’ ve worked arduous to get better at it, and I know I have a long way to go. But story without compelling characters is despicable. You have to care about them. And I very love characters that are complicated, with layers. I love heroes with flaws and villains for whom you feel empathy. That ’ s what I try to do with my characters. plot credibly comes beginning and easiest to me, but then I try hard to focus on its effects on the people in the report .
In various interviews you’ve held that the “main point is [always] to entertain and write a fun, cool story,” not “to purposefully try to inject a message” for readers. Still, “moral dilemmas and philosophical questions will naturally arise,” and the main theme is often that “nothing in the world is black-and-white.” Questions of whether the end justifies the means and what lengths people will go to in order to survive recur in many of your stories, despite their being very different in other ways, and I wonder if you could talk a little more about the idea that maybe there are no moral absolutes? Do you have a sense of what draws you to explore that theme in particular, however inadvertently or secondarily?
Yes, this concept is very important to me. I very purposefully used the prison term “WICKED is good” in The Maze Runner to symbolize that bigger picture. Opposites set up as equals. By the end, I wanted readers to find themselves having transitioned from despising WICKED to “sorta kinda” understanding them. It ’ second that frightful doubt, like, if you could kill one child in cold lineage and as a consequence cure cancer ( no matter how farcical that premise might be ), would you do it ? instinctively, no, but you ’ d have to at least think about it. I just don ’ thyroxine think anyone or anything is strictly evil or strictly good. We ’ re all gray, and I love exploring that .

Just Can’t Get Enough

Question from Gene Luen Yang:  James! So great to meet you! Like me, you’re both a father and a writer. As a father, you protect and nurture your children. As a writer, you put them in the Glade. Do you ever find one of your roles getting in the way of the other? What do your children (the biological ones, not the fictional ones) think of your books?
Nice to meet you, excessively ! You ’ re right, it ’ s a little crazy that I can care for and love my children so a lot and then put the hapless characters from my books into such atrocious situations. possibly it ’ sulfur my means of deflecting the universe from letting bad things happen to my actual, live, rest creations. But they do intersect in the sense that I feel very bad for my characters. I ’ ve even cried for them. ( I say this hope that you ’ re just equally insane as I am. ) As for what my kids think of me, they ’ ve kind of grown up with dad being a drilling old author, but now with the solid movie thing, they FINALLY think I ’ megabyte reasonably, scantily, kind of cool .
James has contributed a question for the following generator in the series, Andrew Smith. Watch for an interview with him coming soon !

James was born and raised in Georgia but immediately lives in the Rocky Mountains with his family. He has four kids, which some might think is besides many but he thinks is just proper. once upon a fourth dimension, James studied accounting and worked in the field of finance, but has been writing full time for several years. ( He doesn ’ thymine miss numbers. At all. )
In his absolve time, James loves to read, watch movies and ( effective ) television receiver shows, bamboozle ski, and read. ( Reading was mentioned doubly on function. ) Most of all, he ’ south grateful that he gets to make a survive writing stories and considers himself pretty much the luckiest guy on the planet .
You can find James at his web site, blog, and Facebook foliate, or follow him on Twitter. And don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate miss The Maze Runner, in theaters Friday, September 19th.

–Julie Bartel, presently reading Pretty Deadly by Kelly Sue Deconnick and Emma Rios and the end couple chapters ( arsenic lento as possible ) of A.S. King ’ s Glory O ’ Brien ’ s History of the future

source : https://gametracker.one
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