Christopher Paolini

But in my mind, it doesn't matter which side of the spectrum you start on.

If you're being honest about your work, the plot will influence the characters, and the characters will influence the plot.

And in the case of speculative fiction, the world plays just as important of a role.

And I also find it a very enjoyable part of the process, creating those imaginary elements.

And I think that's true for a lot of the other authors in the genre that I know.

We all are engineers and dreamers and speculators of the highest order.

And speculative fiction gives us that opportunity to do that and to tell interesting stories.

because they're one of the oldest mythological creatures, and because traditionally, dragons represent something more than you find with most mythical creatures.

In almost every culture, dragons are linked to both the creation of the world

and the destruction of the world.

And in many cases, also the health of the land itself.

If the land is suffering, maybe there's an evil dragon who's spreading pestilence and war and that sort of thing.

If the land is prospering, maybe again it's caused by a dragon or it's because a dragon was removed and now the land is healthy.

You don't really find that level of weight with most mythical creatures.

Unicorns, for example, are certainly interesting and

not usually linked to the creation of the universe itself.

So on top of that, of course, we have dinosaurs.

And those are the closest things I think we have to actual real dragons.

And that ends up linking the two in people's minds.

I know as a young kid, I always sort of conflated dinosaurs and dragons.