Editing Terry Pratchett (section)

===Style and themes===
Pratchett's earliest ''Discworld'' novels were written largely to parody classic sword-and-sorcery fiction (and occasionally science fiction);<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N59OCI6iSA8C&pg=PA1|title=He Do the Time Police in Different Voices|last=Langford|first=David|date=1 January 2003|publisher=Wildside Press LLC|isbn=9781592240586|pages=16|language=en}}</ref> as the series progressed, Pratchett dispensed with parody almost entirely, and the ''Discworld'' series evolved into straightforward (though still comedic) satire.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_t9LDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA138|title=Terry Pratchett's Narrative Worlds: From Giant Turtles to Small Gods|last=Rana|first=Marion|date=12 February 2018|publisher=Springer|isbn=9783319672984|pages=138 ff|language=en}}</ref>

Pratchett had a tendency to avoid using chapters, arguing in a [[IndieBound|Book Sense]] interview that "life does not happen in regular chapters, nor do movies, and [[Homer]] did not write in chapters", adding "I'm blessed if I know what function they serve in books for adults".<ref name="indiebound">{{cite web|publisher=[[IndieBound]] |first=Gavin J.|last=Grant|url=http://www.indiebound.org/author-interviews/pratchettterry|title=Terry Pratchett|date=n.d.| access-date =18 December 2008}}</ref> However, there were exceptions; ''[[Going Postal]]'' and ''[[Making Money]]'' and several of his books for younger readers are divided into chapters.<ref name="words from master">{{cite web|publisher=Terry Pratchett, The L-Space Web|url=http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/words-from-the-master.html|title=Words from the Master|date=n.d.|access-date=16 December 2007}}</ref> Pratchett said that he used chapters in the young adult novels because "[his] editor screams until [he] does", but otherwise felt that they were an unnecessary "stopping point" that got in the way of the narrative.{{Citation needed|date=September 2022}}

Characters, place names, and titles in Pratchett's books often contain puns, allusions and cultural references.<ref>{{cite web|publisher=William T. Abbott|url=http://www.lspace.org/books/analysis/bill-abbott.html|title=White Knowledge and the Cauldron of Story: The Use of Allusion in Terry Pratchett's Discworld|date=May 2002|access-date=7 June 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|publisher=David Bapst|url=http://www.lspace.org/books/analysis/david-bapst.html|title=The Literary Evolution of Terry Pratchett|date=1 June 2002|access-date=7 June 2007}}</ref> Some characters are parodies of well-known characters: for example, Pratchett's character [[Cohen the Barbarian]], also called Ghengiz Cohen, is a parody of [[Conan the Barbarian]] and [[Genghis Khan]], and his character Leonard of Quirm is a parody of [[Leonardo da Vinci]].{{sfn|Cabell|2011|p=40}}{{sfn|Pyykkonen|Washington|2008|pp=7-8}}

Another feature of his writing is the use of dialogue in small capitals, without quotation marks, for utterances by the character Death.

Pratchett was an [[only child]], and his characters are often without siblings. Pratchett explained, "In fiction only children are the interesting ones."<ref>{{cite news |last=Robertson |first=David |date=7 August 2005 |title=Parenting: Only need not mean lonely |url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/parenting-only-need-not-mean-lonely-96bkf39cvfr |access-date=8 June 2007 |newspaper=Times Online |location=London}}</ref>

''Discworld'' novels often included a modern innovation and its introduction to the world's [[medieval]] setting, such as a public police force (''[[Guards! Guards!]]''), guns (''[[Men at Arms]]''), cinema (''[[Moving Pictures (novel)|Moving Pictures]]''), investigative journalism (''[[The Truth (novel)|The Truth]]''), the postage stamp (''[[Going Postal]]''), modern banking (''[[Making Money]]''), and the steam engine (''[[Raising Steam]]''). The "clacks", the tower-to-tower [[semaphore line|semaphore system]] that sprang up in later novels, is a mechanical optical telegraph (as created by the [[Claude Chappe|Chappe brothers]] and employed during the [[French Revolution]]) before wired electric telegraph chains, with all the change and turmoil that such an advancement implies. The resulting social upheaval driven by these changes serves as the setting for the main story.