The Shannara Chronicles Author Terry Brooks Is Confident He Won't Have to Apologize for TV Series

It's taken more than 30 years for Terry Brooks' bestselling fantasy series The Shannara Chronicles to make it to TV. The fact that the multi-book fantasy tale has been adapted for television, and on MTV at that, has had many fans worried what the new interpretation of the beloved series will be like.

Like Game of Thrones' George R.R. Martin, Brooks also serves as an executive producer on the series, which premiered last week. But Brooks, who also adapted Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menaceand Hookinto novel form, is no stranger to transforming a beloved piece of work into a new medium.

The author talked to TVGuide.com about his direct involvement with the show, why MTV was the right home and how readers should embrace the impending changes.

How much involvement did you have with this show?

Terry Brooks: I was given the right to read, critique, comment on all of the scripts, which is what I really wanted -- not so much to say "You should change this" or "You could do it better this way." I was there to say that "If you do this, you might run into a problem down the road" or "Readers will be upset because they're used to this and maybe we can find another way to do it that would observe it." It was sort of to avoid the bumps and the pitfalls that might occur if we just tried to trample all over the readers, which is our core group, of course.

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Were there certain things that you were adamant needed to stay and other things that you were more flexible about changing?

Brooks: I understand adaptation because I've done it the other way. I've taken movies and made them into books. I know you have to have some space. George Lucas taught me how important it was to give the person who is doing the adaptation their head. He said, "If you want to change the story, change it. Just don't ruin it. Don't change the basic story." I understood that and that's what I basically told [executive producers Al Gough and Miles Millar]. Keep the main characters the way they are. Let's not get clever here and do something that's immediately going to be a red flag for everyone who has ever read the books. Keep the basic plot in tact. All of the interior monologues gotta go away, I understand that, so find other ways. New characters are fine. New plotlines are fine.

[Episode 1] had that brilliant opening. In the book, it opens slowly in, we kind of ease into it. They opened the show with that incredible race, which was exciting and it got people involved immediately and there was drama right off the bat. That was exactly the right way to open it. That's so good. They did that in many places as the story went on. After a while, you just say, "I don't have to worry about this anymore."

What is it about MTV that made you feel OK putting it on that network?

Brooks: It's become more and more evident that much of the best work in film is being done in television. A story like elf stones or the whole canon needs to sprawl all over the place. For that, a movie is too small. You needed something that would allow you to do episodes, seasons. You can really get into it and make use of all the material.

[Gough and Millar] went through a listing of what MTV was committed to, what they were going to do for the show, how strongly they felt about making it their premiere effort for whenever they got the thing done. I liked the passion that I felt from that discussion. It came from the writers. It came from Dan Farah, the producer, and to some extent when I talked to the MTV people as well. It wouldn't be like HBO where I'd be in competition with Game of Thrones or some other network where I'd be with The Walking Dead or something like that.

At what point did you really grasp the large scope of this show and how big they were going with the visuals?

Brooks: I was on set for about 10 days. During that time period we got to watch them film many opening scenes in that first episode, including the race up and down the hill where Jonathan [Liebsman, director] ran those people up and down the hill 20 or 30 times, over and over and over. I saw the sets for the first time and the sets were massive. There were 600 people working on this thing and huge warehouse size places. I knew then it was going to be much larger than I had envisioned even in my wildest dreams. When I saw that first episode I thought, "Oh my God. They've done it. This is just so good." The CGI effects weren't even in and already I knew it was going to be terrific.

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What has changed the most from the book to the series?

Brooks: They had to drop a lot of the battle scenes because it's way too expensive to try and get all of those battle scenes. We wanted to make it tight and good with the three central characters and all the peripheral things that were going on. All of that might be disappointing to some readers. I don't think that anything essential is missing. I told everyone online ad nauseum after the whole thing came out for the first time, I said to them, "Look, I promise you we're not going to mess it up. It's going to be done right and I'm not going to have to apologize for this later." And then I said, "Oh my God, I don't have to apologize for this later." I really feel like now, at the end of this thing, after seeing all the episodes and watched the filming and [having] met everybody, that I don't have anything to apologize for. I don't think it could have been done better than how it was done.

What do you think a new, modern audience will get out of this story that you wrote 30 years ago?

Brooks: I was taught, as a young writer by my first editor, that your first job in writing a book is to tell a good story. If you don't tell a good story then nothing else matters. Brilliant characters, wonderful ideas, great settings are all for nothing if you don't tell a good story. So you have to approach it with that being your principle goal. I want them to feel like you are part of the story. I want them to feel like they know these characters and care about them. I want them to take away a feeling that they had a satisfactory story with a satisfactory ending and that they have not wasted their time and money on seeing it.

What are you most excited about people to see in Season 1 of the ShannaraChronicles?

Brooks: The production value, the scope of what's been happening here. For me, it was like watching a movie. It never felt like television. Admittedly, I've been seeing it on a big screen but still, it feels like a movie. It feels like everything that was put into it was put in with as much effort as possible. Because of the nature of the storytelling, because it is a fantasy, it felt necessary that the readers and the viewers feel transported into this world, which is an alien world but somehow familiar for them.

The Shannara Chronicles airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on MTV.