Different things have gone into each of those decisions. When I was writing The Thief, I was really interested in the conventions that drive a first-person narrative. So often in the first-person narrative the hero wakes up and reflects on her life, then looks in the mirror. Of course it's artificial, but because it's conventional, we accept it without thinking. In The Thief I was more interested in the superficial thoughts of the narrator through the course of events in the story. I wanted to see how strong people's sense of conventions are, and the answer is: really really really strong. I feel that I gave away things over and over and over again, and the power of people's conventions were so strong that they were surprised at the end.
...What we expect from a narrative drives what we see in a narrative. Going back to the example of the first-person narrator recounting the story of her life in the first 10 pages--on the one hand, I know authors work hard to seamlessly integrate those things into their story; on the other hand, I know that readers, whether they're 12 or 25, will accept that set-up as natural even though it's artificial. It's artificial, but in a way that we accept--in the same way that a red octagonal sign means we stop, and we don't even think about it. There are rules in storytelling that we know, but we don't know that we know them. We can be played very easily by other people manipulating those rules.
...When Barbara Barstow asked me for another book, I started to think about exactly what would happen in Gen's future, and I quickly realized that I could produce a whole series of books with him getting into trouble and triumphing, and getting into trouble and triumphing, and getting into trouble and triumphing, and that would ultimately be very unsatisfying for me and for readers. The next significant thing in Gen's story was him getting into trouble and not getting out of it. The interesting thing is what happens when he gets caught. So I had to think for awhile about what would happen that wouldn't be fatal, and wouldn't be "Gen gets out of it again." Losing his hand is a compromise position. It didn't come out of nowhere. Probably the biggest influence on that story is The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff, about a boy who has his whole life planned, and in a catastrophic moment of heroism he shatters his femur and cannot be a soldier anymore. What do you do with the whole rest of your life when your plans have been changed?
- Megan Whalen Turner, from here
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