Paul Stewart (writer) - Collaboration With Chris Riddell

Collaboration With Chris Riddell

Paul Stewart first met Chris Riddell in 1993, through having children at the same school. Chris was looking for someone to write texts that he could illustrate. Paul had already had a number of books published. Their first collaborative work were the Rabbit and Hedgehog books (published 1998-2003 by Andersen Press). The inspiration for The Edge Chronicles came from a map Chris Riddell drew of an imaginary world in 1994 and then challenged Paul to write about it. The first book in the sequence, Beyond the Deepwoods, was commissioned by Transworld Publishers (now part of the Random House Group) on the basis of the map and the first four chapters. The book then took three years to write as Paul and Chris worked out both the plot and how best to work together. Originally commissioned as a single book, Paul and Chris hoped that it might become a trilogy. The series has now extended to ten books, three trilogies and a concluding novel, The Immortals, which was published in 2009.

When writing together, Paul and Chris work on the development of plots and characters together, sometimes starting from a bit of writing, sometimes from an illustration on one of Chris’s sketchbooks. They have long conversations over many days, during which the novels emerge. They don’t always agree and the debates can become quite heated but they have remained good friends. Following these discussions, Paul normally writes a first draft, which Chris will edit or rewrite before Paul produces a final draft.

As well as The Edge Chronicles, Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell have also collaborated on a trilogy of shorter adventures, Freelance; a quartet of younger books, The Far Flung Adventures, the first of which, Fergus Crane, won the Nestle Smarties Gold Prize in 2004; The Blobheads series (2000–2004); Muddle Earth (2003), and a further quartet, Barnaby Grimes (2007–2009). Their latest novel, Wyrmweald, was published by Doubleday Children’s Books in April 2010.