Writing, Illustrating and the Collaborative Process
Q. Tony, in general, when you are writing and illustrating a book, do you do preliminary drawings first as a prelude to writing or do you do the writing first?A. "For Spiderwick, and my own books, it is a little of both. It can start with very loose, simple doodles of characters or scenes that come to mind. From there, I begin writing about them and slowly building a story to go along. It’s quite an organic process to me."
"Spiderwick actually started as a field guide that I made when I was 12-13 years-old. Inspired from playing lots of Dungeons & Dragons and watching films of the day like The Dark Crystal, I set out to make a scientific minded John James Audubon-esque guide to dragons and trolls and stuff."
Q. Tony and Holly, when you worked together on
The Spiderwick Chronicles, how did you approach the illustrations – before, during, or after the writing?
A. TD: "Often I would send Hol the character sketches to make sure we were both happy with how the characters and settings looked. Sometimes, I would just sketch an idea of a scene, with just the slightest notion of what the text could be, and Holly could take it and weave it into her script. It was really neat. There is a good example of that in book 4, The Ironwood Tree, when Jared meets a cave creature called a knocker."
"Sometimes the story evolves and details change through the editing process. If the art has already been completed, then I will go back to the illustration and alter it to match the text directly. This is usually done on the computer."
Q. Did one of you write plot outlines and the other flesh them out? If not, how did your collaboration work?
A. TD: "In general, an author and illustrator work separate from one another. Usually the author pens the story, and the editor will pass the manuscript onto the illustrator to create the art afterwards. Sometimes the two never meet."
"For Spiderwick, I had already been developing the creature designs for Arthur’s Field Guide by the time Holly got on board. Since I had written and illustrated several picture books prior to Spiderwick, and Holly had written her first teen novel, we thought that a middle-grade chapter book would be a happy medium for us to combine our storytelling talents."
"So we would plot the stories out together, where I would doodle out some ideas for characters, creatures, etc. Then, Hol would go off and write the books while I began sketching, and we would offer input to each other along the way. This team effort is quite unusual to how most books are done nowadays, but we thought it was the best approach."
A. HB: "The process changed as we got more comfortable sharing with one another — I would send Tony rougher versions of the books and he would send me earlier sketches. We also got more comfortable being really honest with the other person. By the time we got to Book Four, we got to the point where I could send him a rough draft of the book, he could send me a piece of art for a scene that wasn’t in it (the knocker scene that Tony mentioned earlier), I could write that scene, then he could refine the artwork based on the new scene. That was the moment when I think we realized that we’d hit our stride. Now I send him quite rough and skeletal books so that he can give me feedback at an early enough stage for me to really move stuff around."
"People sometimes ask if it was difficult or if we disagreed on things. We did, but one of the most interesting things about disagreeing is that it forced us to articulate the reasons why we wanted things one way or the other. And through the process of talking, we always figured out a third solution that was much better than either of our original ideas."
Q. Did you do an outline of the entire series before you wrote the first book? If not, what did you do?
A. HB: "We did a rough outline of the entire series, but as with every outline I’ve ever done, it changed significantly over the course of writing the books. There are things that never made it in, but then there are so many scenes that grew organically out of what happened before and I couldn’t have anticipated. Sometimes, to make a better book, you have to discard plans and head into unexpected territory."
The Spiderwick Chronicles Movie and DVD Set
Q. So many movie versions of children’s books are nothing like the books, but that’s not the case with The Spiderwick Chronicles. How did you manage that?A. HB: "I think part of it is that we were lucky to be in the hands of great people, like Mark Waters, who kept us involved throughout the process. We got to see all of the scripts and to give notes on them. We understood things would change, but I think our experience collaborating with one another helped us to be able to collaborate with an even larger group of people. My main concerns were that the faeries were the capricious and dangerous creatures from folklore and that the characters were true to themselves. I am delighted that the film did so much more than that. I really love it."
A. TD: "Well, there were lots of meetings with producers, and with studio folks and, of course, with our wonderful director, Mark Waters."
"What I impressed upon them was that we understood that they were going to have to make changes to our plot – especially if they are adapting 5 books into one 90 minute, 3-act structure. But what I wanted them to retain was the spirit of the books, both thematically in the text, and in the visuals. I think the filmmakers understood that and ran with it. You have to have a little faith; after all, this was an exceptional team who have created some wonderful films. When they realized we didn’t want them to create a direct facsimile of the books, they listened a little more to our ideas on how to make a good movie."
Q. Tony, did you have anything to do with the movie artwork or is it simply the moviemakers’ interpretation of your original book illustrations? It’s very effective.
