Robin Hobb on Sword & Laser (possible spoilers Farseer & Tawny Man)

[Farseer]

Here are some other bits and pieces of what Robin has had to say regarding Fool's bit part which soon became a pivotal part, finella.

This one from the Shades of Sentience site after last year's SupaNova which I attended in Brisbane (which I have likely linked in the Interview thread):

Q. At Brisbane Supanova you were asked about the Fool, and you said in your original draft he only had one line. Can you tell us more about how he came to be such a pivotal and unique character and the moment that you realised everything he could be?

Bit by bit, the Fool invaded the story until he had all but conquered it. He was not the only character to assume a greater role in the tale than I had foreseen, but he was the only one who stepped up to command a pivotal role. I can’t really tell how this came about as it happened in small pieces at first, and then in bigger and bigger segments until finally he was in almost every scene. He became a trigger character, one who launched events and swayed the outcome.

This one from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist from back in 2009:

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist - In one of our previous interviews, you mentioned that you're never fully satisfied with any of your books, that there is always the idea of the book you attempted to write versus the book that you actually managed to create. Looking back, give us an example of something that didn't quite work out the way you envisioned it. Given the chance, is there anything you would change in any of your novels?

Robin - It’s hard to put my finger on a definite example, and even harder to share an example without creating a major spoiler for the book. It’s more like a feeling for the kind of book I intend to write. And by the end of it, it always feels different that what I had initially expected. Sometimes a character plays less of a role than I expected. Or more. The Fool in the Farseer books was intended at first to be a bit player, one that didn’t necessarily appear after the first book. So that would be the most obvious example I could state. In the first outlines of the book, Verity was a much less sympathetic character; so that would be another one.

And this one from the old Andromeda Spaceways site in 2008:

ASIM: The ambiguity of the Fool is a fascinating part of all the books set in the realm of the Elderlings. What made you draw the Fool in such a way?

RH: I think you'd have to ask him.
He was the most unruly character I've ever dealt with. He showed up as a single sentence in the outline, muscled his way into the book, messed up the plot, revealed things I didn't know about some of my characters while keeping all his secrets to himself, and then rode off into the sunset.
I don't know if I'll ever write anyone like him again. Sometimes, I don't know if I'd want to! Wherever he came from, I was glad to know him. That doesn't mean it was easy to live with him for a decade of my life.
Readers often ask me questions about the Fool. For the most part, I don't know the answers. I have suspicions, and I do know things about him that never made it into the books, but for most of the questions they ask me, the answer is, "I don't know. He never talked about that with me." He was and remains a very private sort of character.