Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
-star Rating Rate It!  Login/Join 
Member
Posted
who wrote the majority of Good Omens? Neil or Terry? I thought the book was hillarious, especially the footnotes, but couldn't tell who was writing what.
 
Posts: 17 | Location: PA | Registered: November 10, 2005Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Member
Picture of Jester
Posted Hide Post
Terry did the parts about Adam and the Them and Neil did the parts of The Four Horsemen.
But Terry did more of the physical writing
but in te end it was a book done by two guys who did it for the fun.

From a interview with Pratchett.
quote:
"Neil and I had known each other since early 1985. Doing it was our idea, not a publisher's deal."

"I think this is an honest account of the process of writing Good Omens. It was fairly easy to keep track of because of the way we sent discs to one another, and because I was Keeper of the Official Master Copy I can say that I wrote a bit over two thirds of Good Omens. However, we were on the phone to each other every day, at least once. If you have an idea during a brainstorming session with another guy, whose idea is it? One guy goes and writes 2,000 words after thirty minutes on the phone, what exactly is the process that's happening?

I did most of the physical writing because:

1) I had to. Neil had to keep Sandman going -- I could take time off from the DW;


2) One person has to be overall editor, and do all the stitching and filling and slicing and, as I've said before, it was me by agreement -- if it had been a graphic novel, it would have been Neil taking the chair for exactly the same reasons it was me for a novel;


3) I'm a selfish bastard and tried to write ahead to get to the good bits before Neil.


Initially, I did most of Adam and the Them and Neil did most of the Four Horsemen, and everything else kind of got done by whoever -- by the end, large sections were being done by a composite creature called Terryandneil, whoever was actually hitting the keys. By agreement, I am allowed to say that Agnes Nutter, her life and death, was completely and utterly mine. And Neil proudly claims responsibility for the maggots. Neil's had a major influence on the opening scenes, me on the ending. In the end, it was this book done by two guys, who shared the money equally and did it for fun and wouldn't do it again for a big clock."

"Yes, the maggot reversal was by me, with a gun to Neil's head (although he understood the reasons, it's just that he likes maggots). There couldn't be blood on Adam's hands, even blood spilled by third parties. No-one should die because he was alive."


---------------------------------
The king is dead, long live the king.

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.


To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly that is what each of us is here for.
----------------------------------
 
Posts: 349 | Location: Wandering the amusement park of nightmares | Registered: April 16, 2005Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Administrator
Member
Picture of Smaug
Posted Hide Post
cool interview with terry about the writing of good omens, written when it was still being written....here


~
I prefer to live in a country that's small, and old, and where no one would ever have the NERVE to wear a cape in public, whether they could leap tall buildings in a single bound or not.

when's spring due?.
 
Posts: 14599 | Location: England | Registered: June 21, 2001Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Misused handkerchief mender
Member
Picture of Capt. Crash
Posted Hide Post
I think it's in Walking with the Dream King, but Neil is talking about the writing of Good Omens and said something to the effect that they both wrote about 90% of the book. I'll look it up when I'm at my parents house next and get back to it.


**********************************************
"You guys are nuts" Homer Jay Simpson

Head of the Department of Theoretical and Advanced Methods of Procrastination and Overseer of Laziness Studies at the UUP
 
Posts: 3539 | Location: Bottom of a bottle of Mt. Dew | Registered: March 29, 2005Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Psittacula servus
Member
Picture of parrotslave
Posted Hide Post
New Year's resolutions of the demon Crowley and the angelic Aziraphale


---------
She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.
~ Mark Twain

Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind. Have you eaten enough ice cream?
 
Posts: 1119 | Location: island of misfit toys | Registered: January 31, 2005Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Only sounds like Keith Flint
Member
Picture of Eldi
Posted Hide Post
quote:



that was funny, now to go and google myself.


----begin sig here----
Tha Myspace.
 
Posts: 1743 | Location: LA... sort of. | Registered: April 20, 2005Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Miss Kitty Fantastico
Member
Picture of Maeve
Posted Hide Post
thanks parrotslave!

I love Good Omens, I think it's hilarious. but I think the one running joke throughout- that all tapes left in a car for a fortnight turn into Best of Queen tapes- doesn't apply much anymore. Not that the tapes didn't morph, but does anyone really use cassettes anymore? I have a cassette adaptor thingy, but I use it for my ipod.





I would have thought the end of the world is everyone's responsibility, wouldn't you? ~Death in Thief of Time


Minister of Kraftwerk in the Realm of U & P, Order of the Pineapple with frond for advancement in Nap studies.
 
Posts: 15359 | Location: under tangled yarn | Registered: August 09, 2005Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Psittacula servus
Member
Picture of parrotslave
Posted Hide Post
Locus Online has reprinted this interview from 15 years ago in anticipation of Good Omen's rerelease.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: parrotslave,


---------
She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.
~ Mark Twain

Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind. Have you eaten enough ice cream?
 
Posts: 1119 | Location: island of misfit toys | Registered: January 31, 2005Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Member
Posted Hide Post
Totally evil of HarperCollins releasing it with two different covers.
 
Posts: 132 | Location: Australia | Registered: December 02, 2002Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Member
Posted Hide Post
quote:
Aziraphale's Resolution #4: I will try to be nicer to the customers. They want to buy books; I want to sell them. It can't be that hard. (Memo to self: Regular opening hours? Mark prices on books?) would be a great resolution for Bernard in Black Books, but where would the fun in that be.
 
Posts: 132 | Location: Australia | Registered: December 02, 2002Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Member
Posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Eldi:
quote:



that was funny, now to go and google myself.
Tried to google myself but I don't exist.
Your search - " my name " - did not match any documents.
 
Posts: 132 | Location: Australia | Registered: December 02, 2002Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Psittacula servus
Member
Picture of parrotslave
Posted Hide Post
I can't decide between the white cover and the black cover. May have to get one of each.

neilgaiman.net lets you order which cover you prefer.

Smile


---------
She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.
~ Mark Twain

Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind. Have you eaten enough ice cream?
 
Posts: 1119 | Location: island of misfit toys | Registered: January 31, 2005Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
Rogue Tomato
Member
Picture of Yepa [Holdingpillow]
Posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Capt. Crash:
I think it's in Walking with the Dream King, but Neil is talking about the writing of Good Omens and said something to the effect that they both wrote about 90% of the book. I'll look it up when I'm at my parents house next and get back to it.


The book is called Hanging out with the Dream King (after the lyrics by Tori Amos), and Neil says this (p. 9, paperback ed.):

'People arguing about and discussing Good Omens tend to pick the wrong thing to argue and discuss, which is who wrote what and how much of us wrote which. Which tends to miss the point. The answer is of course that I wrote - and not a lot of people know this - ninety percent of Good Omens. But the trouble is that Terry wrote the other ninety percent.' (there's alot more, but I'm not going to bother writing that now, so check out the book, it's worth the money).

On page 8 he also says that there was alot of sending things back and forth. One of them could write a little bit, and send it to the other, and the other would say this works, that doesnt, and why don't I put my own line in here, because that would be soooo funny.


_______________________

You should be fencing, and I should be banging coconuts!

"No more! The Earth's a burrito! We're done!"
-The Snazz-

Trying to take over the world, one nude cook at the time
 
Posts: 6145 | Location: Vikingland | Registered: March 20, 2006Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete MessageReport This Post
 Previous Topic | Next Topic powered by eve community  
 


© YourCopy 2001