Edward Cullen
While trying to choose a name for the dashing ‘veggie' vampire, author Stephenie Meyer was looking for something traditional and romantic.
Edward was a perfect choice as it belongs to two great literary romantic heroes, Mr Rochester in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Mr Ferrars in Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility.
Isabella Swan
After Stephenie had finished writing about Bella's journey, she felt she loved her much like a daughter.
So when the time came to name her lead character, what could have been more fitting than the name she'd saved for a daughter of her own, Isabella?
The Volturi
‘Volturi' is the Latin word for vulture, a predatory bird that feeds on decaying flesh. The name is a perfect match for the sinister and high-powered Volturi Coven who, unlike the Cullens, feed on human blood, as well as overseeing the vampire world from their base in Volterra, Italy.
The Cullen Coven
Made up of Carlisle and Esme Cullen and their five adopted children, the Cullen Coven bear a spooky resemblance to Stephenie's own family.
Brought up in Arizona with five siblings, Stephenie has admitted that she was taunted and called ‘ghost' by schoolmates because of her pale skin.
Perhaps the tight-knit, pale and yet strikingly beautiful Cullen family were Stephenie's way of answering back to those kids, and Bella, the pale girl from Arizona, a reflection of herself.
Why werewolves imprint
When a werewolf imprints on their soulmate, the two are eternally connected through love and a desire to protect each other.
Stephenie has explained that her inspiration for this concept came from the behaviour of ducklings. A new-born duckling very quickly develops a powerful instinctive bond towards the first moving object it sees, which in most cases is their mother.
Edward's sparkle
Stephenie was inspired to write Twilight after dreaming of a man who was ‘fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire'.
This was an unusual idea as in previous tales, vampires were destroyed by sunlight, not illuminated by it! Stephenie decided that sparkling skin could be used as a means for the vampires to lure in human prey.
As well as this she has explained that sparkling vampire skin cells are ‘hard and reflective like crystal' and therefore unbreakable and protective.
