by Chris Colfer
EZMIA THE ENCHANTRESS
There’s an evil enchantress inside all of us, especially when we’re heartbroken. I mean, who wouldn’t want to imprison the souls of their exes and display them inside jars across their mantel? No? Yeah, me neither…
As many people know, I started my career as an actor on a popular television show. It was an incredibly rewarding experience, but boy, I certainly learned where the phrase It’s lonely at the top comes from. Jealousy ran thicker than water, and it was almost impossible to find someone trustworthy (the fact that I looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy also didn’t help my love life). The heartbreak Ezmia experienced as a prolific fairy in the Fairy Kingdom is based on my own experiences of pursuing a personal life in the public eye.
Instead of becoming bitter and jaded from your own heartbreak, I highly recommend writing about a character who imprisons souls in jars and covers kingdoms in thornbush. It was the exact therapy I needed.
GENERAL JACQUES DU MARQUIS
There are thousands of incredible people in the entertainment industry, but it shouldn’t shock anyone to know that there are some bad apples, too. General Marquis was inspired by a number of people I’ve encountered who are so addicted to notoriety, power, and money they’ve lost the ability to enjoy life. They’re driven not by ambition but by something they’re deeply ashamed of and desperate to hide. To them, success is the ultimate shield rather than an achievement. These are crippling and tragic qualities to have, but they’re the perfect traits for a literary villain.
THE MASKED MAN/LLOYD BAILEY
It was three AM on a Sunday in November 2012 and I was finishing up chapter twenty-nine of The Enchantress Returns. I was writing about Charlotte and Dr. Bob’s wedding at the Charming Palace when a little voice popped into my mind and said, The twins’ father should come back from the dead and interrupt the vows. I was so tempted by the idea that it paralyzed me; I stared at my computer screen for over an hour as I considered adding the twist. Ultimately, I hadn’t decided whether or not I was going to even write a third Land of Stories book yet. I couldn’t leave readers with such a traumatic cliffhanger if I wasn’t certain there would be a sequel to follow it. So I promised myself I would make John Bailey’s resurrection the ending of the third book if I continued the series.
In retrospect, it was a good decision. When the twins were separated at the end of book two, I received thousands of letters from distraught schoolchildren who couldn’t handle the separation. I can’t imagine how my readers would have reacted if the first Land of Stories cliffhanger involved the twins’ father coming back to life—however misleading it was. In preparation for the wonderfully terrible hook, I started brainstorming the best way to present it in the story. I always knew it would end up being the twins’ evil uncle, but I still needed to figure out the smartest way to introduce him.
One of my favorite unsolved mysteries is the story about the man in the iron mask, who was thought to be the brother of King Louis XIV of France (and the rightful heir to the French throne). The story had supplied me with hours of speculation over the years, and I knew the imagery would be a wonderful addition to the Land of Stories.
MORINA
When I started writing the Land of Stories in elementary school, I had intended for the Evil Queen and the Enchantress to team up in the plot of The Wishing Spell. At the time, I hadn’t come up with the Evil Queen’s backstory, or her history with the Enchantress, so they were simply two villains with the same priority: destroy the fairy-tale world!
I hadn’t decided to call her the Enchantress or Ezmia until much later, so she was simply known as the thirteenth fairy (as the character is known in the Brothers Grimm version of “Sleeping Beauty”). The image of the thirteenth fairy was very different from what the Enchantress became—instead of hair that floated like fire in slow motion above her head and extra-long eyelashes, the character originally had horns on the sides of her face and wore a dress made of crow feathers. Looking back, I can see this was no doubt inspired by Disney’s Maleficent, so I changed the character’s look and her name to Ezmia. However, I came across my sketches of the thirteenth fairy while I was outlining Beyond the Kingdoms and was urged to include her somewhere in the series.
When you’re writing book four of a series that you never intended to be longer than one book, you start looking for plot points to elaborate. Since everyone who reads the series falls in love with Froggy, I decided to tell the story about the witch who turned him into a frog. The cursed Charming prince’s story is about self-acceptance, so I knew the witch had to relate to that somehow. At the time, I was filming Glee at Paramount Studios and drove past a plastic surgeon’s office on my way to work—and the idea of Morina the beauty witch came to me. I loved the idea of a villain who altered her own appearance and the appearance of others with magic potions made from the youth of kidnapped children—so deliciously evil! Morina’s shop is inspired by a beauty clinic in Los Angeles where I had a facial once, and those three customers we meet in Beyond the Kingdoms (the brunette, the redhead, and the blonde) are based on three women I saw at the clinic getting Botox injections.
IN CONCLUSION
It’s amazing what you learn about yourself when you’re an author. Writing about the heroes of the Land of Stories has taught me what a hero truly is, and that affects my day-to-day choices. On the other hand, writing about the villains in the Land of Stories has taught me that I’m only three mistakes away from becoming one and how to prevent it.
I’m always asked, “What inspires you to write?” Well, after writing “Secrets from the Land of Stories,” I’d say there’s nothing that doesn’t inspire me. If you have aspirations of becoming a writer, I think it’s extremely important to keep your eyes open at all times. You never know when the hero or villain of your next story is going to pass you on the street.
BEHIND the SCENES: the ART of the LAND of STORIES
Chris’s drawing from
childhood that started it all!
I drew this picture when I was in either the second or third grade at Mickey Cox Elementary School in Clovis, California. I remember I didn’t have enough time to finish it in class, so I took it home and completed it over the weekend. At the time, I was really into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so I gave Goldilocks sai swords—but other than that, you can see very few changes have been made from the original plot I thought up as a child. This picture has always been on display wherever I’ve lived. Today it hangs in my office next to some of my favorite fan art from Land of Stories readers.
Brandon Dorman’s initial cover sketch for The Wishing Spell.
The revised sketch for The Wishing Spell.
The final sketch.
The final cover!
The map of the Land of Stories that Chris created as a teenager.
Brandon’s sketch of the first Land of Stories map.
The gatefold maps in The Wishing Spell (top) and The Enchantress Returns (bottom).
Can you spot the differences?
A few of Chris’s chapter-header sketches for The Wishing Spell.
Brandon’s final art.
Starting with book two, Chris supplied a cover sketch for Brandon to use as a guide. Here is Chris’s sketch for The Enchantress Returns.
Brandon’s final art!
Chris’s cover sketch for A Grimm Warning.
Brandon’s final art.
Chris’s cover sketch for Beyond the Kingdoms.
Brandon’s final art.
Chris’s sketches and notes for the gatefold in Beyond the Kingdoms.
Brandon’s final gatefold art.
Chris’s cover sketch for An Author’s Odyssey.
Brandon’s final art.
Chris’s cover sketch for Worlds Collide.
Brandon’s final art.
More of Chris’s character sketches!
FAN ART
Alena P.
Alyssa M., Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania
Alyssa M., Columbus, Oh
io
Angela L., West Babylon, New York
Brooke L., Valley Village, California
Carter M., Indianapolis, Indiana
Chloe W., Louisville, Kentucky
Claire P., Dublin, California
Collin M., Oceanport, New Jersey
Denise H., Renton, Washington
Diana D., Rensselaer, New York
Holly S., Everett, Washington
Jennifer C., San Francisco, California
Jessica G., New York, New York
Lacey R., Victoria, Texas
Lennox G., Valley Village, California
Priya B., Poulsbo, Washington
Tasia G., Valencia, California
Taylor G., Tucson, Arizona
Zoë N., Atlanta, Georgia
Breanna B., Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania
Jillian R., Fort Collins, Colorado
Savanna H., Rye, New York
Colin L., Seattle, Washington
from CHRIS’S DESK
During my senior year of high school, as a final for my Speech and Debate/Forensics class, we were assigned to teach an original lesson to our classmates. My lesson was “The Importance of Fairy Tales,” and I basically gave the same lecture that Mrs. Peters gives her students in chapter one of The Wishing Spell. As you can see, I transformed the classroom into the Land of Stories using butcher paper and lots and lots of duct tape. (This was not a requirement, but I’ve always been an overachiever.)
Even as a kindergartner, I had a thing for Mother Goose. I grew up near Fresno, California, and we were lucky enough to have a fairy-tale theme park called Storyland in the area. The park was a huge inspiration for the series and made the fairy-tale world seem so tangible to me.
I was seven years old when I started writing about the Bailey twins, and one of the most difficult parts was naming their adventures. Storyland was obviously taken, so after weeks of agonizing consideration, I decided to name Alex and Conner’s escapades the Land of Stories. And the rest is history.…
Originally, Beyond the Kingdoms, An Author’s Odyssey, and Worlds Collide were going to be one big book called The Land of Stories: The Battle for Happily Ever After. These are my notes outlining the gargantuan plot. Shortly afterward, I realized there was just too much story for one book and decided to split it into three separate installments. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
This is my very first draft of the last paragraph of the series. It was one of the most important paragraphs I’ve ever had to write and took me over three hours to finalize.
It was a goal of mine to make each Land of Stories book roughly the same length. The best way I kept track of length was by recording each chapter’s word count. Usually, the way the series is formatted, a thousand words equal five pages. It was a pretty tedious exercise and almost always required a calculator.
These are my notes outlining all the battle sequences in New York City toward the end of Worlds Collide. I wanted to incorporate as many famous landmarks as possible and took three different trips to the Big Apple to help me narrow down my list. To date, I have never written anything more action-packed than the final chapters of Worlds Collide. By the time I was finished, I was more exhausted than the characters who were actually in the battle.
Sometimes great character quotes will hit me before I even know where I’m going to put them in the book. I knew Red and Froggy were going to get married in Worlds Collide after they defeated Morina, and I knew I wanted Red to say something ridiculous about it, but it took me a few days to figure out what. Then one night, Red’s voice popped into my head and said, “I can’t think of a better place to get married than on the ashes of your ex-girlfriend.” It was so perfectly Red that I had to get up and walk away from my desk.
This was a very early outline for the beginning of Worlds Collide. As you can see, the original order was very different from what made it into the book. I think making outlines is important, but I always stray from them once I start writing. Sometimes chapters feel completely different after you finish them and you decide in the moment that another part of the story should follow them.
There are hundreds and hundreds of characters in the Land of Stories, and although they’re all crucial to the series, I’m guilty of forgetting one or two from time to time. These are lists I made after writing An Author’s Odyssey of all the characters whose arcs I had to tie up in Worlds Collide and all the different dimensions they’re from. Even with all these listed, I’m sure some Book Huggers out there will spot a few names missing and let me know about it.
One of the greatest privileges of writing the Land of Stories was getting to travel the world for research. From the fields of Central Park in New York City to the halls of Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, I’ve covered a lot of ground in hopes of authentically describing all the locations in the series. Many of the thoughts and emotions the characters feel while exploring the various landmarks were the exact feelings I had while experiencing them.
The gravesite of the Brothers Grimm in Berlin, Germany. I was pleasantly surprised by all the flowers and notes of gratitude people still leave today.
A spectacular view of Neuschwanstein Castle from the Marienbrücke (Queen Mary’s Bridge) in Schwangau, Germany. Seeing the castle with my own eyes convinced me that the fairy-tale world isn’t as far away as we think.
The South Bank Lion watching over the River Thames in London, England. Whenever I’m in London, no matter how busy I am, I always make time to visit the statue so he doesn’t worry about me.
An impressive stairwell in the New York Public Library’s main branch. I feel slightly guilty for blowing up the library in Worlds Collide.
The One World Observatory at One World Trade Center in New York City. I tried to get on the roof to research the finale of Worlds Collide, but this was as close as I could get.
CHRIS’S TOP TEN TIPS for WRITERS (Which He’s STILL Learning)
1
START!
As obvious as it sounds, the most common problem I hear from aspiring writers is the difficulty in starting a writing project. I completely understand their hesitation; writing is a much bigger commitment than people realize. Similar to when you adopt a pet, if you don’t give your idea the proper attention, affection, and nourishment, it might run away and die. Before you begin, make sure you’re in the right headspace, find a peaceful environment, and give yourself plenty of time to work.
With that said, sometimes people romanticize what writing is, and their expectations prevent them from starting. Prior to the Land of Stories, whenever I visualized the act of writing, I always imagined J. K. Rowling putting quill to paper in a remote castle overlooking a spacious Scottish estate. Currently as I write this, I am in my Star Wars/Marvel–themed guest room, dressed in Grumpy Cat pajamas, and looking at dozens of half-empty Diet Coke cans scattered across my desk. While it’s important to be relaxed, if you’re waiting for the perfect moment and the perfect place to appear before you begin writing, you’ll probably be waiting a very long time.
2
WORD VOMIT
Writers tend to be perfectionists. We expect every sentence to flow perfectly from our minds to the page with little or no correction needed, but nothing is going to sound perfect the first time you write it—that’s why God invented rough drafts. You’ll do yourself a favor if you allow imperfection in the beginning stages. For example, I came back to this paragraph seven different times before I was happy enough to move on.
At first, just spit everything out that you want to say—don’t worry if it sounds pretty or if it’s even legible. Once you have the basic idea of what you’re working toward, go back and edit it until you’re content.