Wowhead Interview with Christie Golden: Writing Sylvanas, the Challenges and Process

This week the latest World of Warcraft novel, Sylvanas, by Christie Golden was released. We had the opportunity to ask Golden a few questions about the book and her process, and she was gracious enough to grant us expert insight into the challenge of writing such a complex character.

Interview: Christie GoldenWowhead: Sylvanas must be a daunting character to write, and in this book we see her go from an Elf child to the Sylvanas as we know her today. I think you did a wonderful job at keeping her voice consistent despite these changes — not only throughout the book, but when compared to glimpses of her we've seen in previous books, such as War Crimes and Before the Storm.

You have been writing Sylvanas for a long, long time, and we've seen her story take many twists and turns. I know Blizzard gives you certain instructions when writing any character or story — have these instructions for Sylvanas changed notably over time at all?CG: It's not so much that I receive instructions on how to write a character than that I'm briefed on the goal of the story. If I have to take a character on a journey from point A to point Z, it does help me if Blizzard has some ideas of what they want to see along the way.

Usually I'm approached with the main concept and some key things they want to see. We'll go back and forth until we have an outline we're all happy with and then I start the first draft. Because I am deeply familiar with so many of the characters, I sometimes discover new things in the actual writing process that I think we may want to chase that weren't necessarily in the outline.

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