Pop!

On November 14, 2011, writeforfun wrote, …I’ve already read your extremely helpful section in Writing Magic about developing characters and I’ve filled out a character questionnaire for each of my characters, but they still seem sort of flat and Mary-Sue like, especially compared to the ones in my last book. I think part of my problem may be that they don’t have lots of quirks and faults, despite my efforts to think up some and apply them. Any ideas on how to make these characters pop?

Despite the troubles I’ve been having with Beloved Elodie, which I’ve written a little about here, a bright spot has been the secondary characters. The key has been getting inside their heads, and each head is different. Let’s take Mistress Sirka, for example. She’s a barber who’s secretly in love with Brunka Dror. Brunkas are people who pledge themselves to helping others and to never marrying and who drink a magic potion that sharpens all their senses. Sirka has done something extreme in pursuit of her love, and that’s the key to her: she’s impulsive, feels everything very strongly, takes risks, and doesn’t care what people think of her. She’s not one of the POV characters, so we get to know her through her dialogue and through Elodie, the POV character in the scenes Sirka is in. Whenever it’s time for Sirka to talk I mentally run through her qualities and decide what such a person would say. I think about what gestures she’d make. She has this amazing smile, the kind of smile you might wear when you’re merrily riding a roller coaster.

So that’s one approach. When you’re writing dialogue, consider who the speaker is. Keep his personality in mind. When would he chime in? When would he keep mum? If he’s silent, have your narrator notice and speculate why. Sometimes you may need your dialogue to carry exposition. Certain things must be said and it doesn’t matter who says them, so there may be patches where the speaker can be identified only by attribution, by Nadia said or Ondine said. But mostly your dialogue should reflect the nature of the speaker.

I haven’t given Sirka any speech mannerisms, but I have given them to other characters. Master Tuomo often ends his sentences with, “I tell you.” He makes pronouncements. He’s just a tad angry, and he’s sure he’s right on every subject. Master Albin, a theatrical personality, often speaks as if he were the narrator of the play of his life. So there’s another suggestion: dream up speech mannerisms for some of your characters, not all. All is too many. And don’t use them every time the character opens his mouth. Now and then is enough.

Most chapters in Beloved Elodie are from Elodie’s POV, but a big minority are in the voice either of the dragon Masteress Meenore or of the ogre Count Jonty Um. And when they’re from Jonty Um’s POV, well, he’s a shape-shifter, so when he’s shifted his chapter would be in the POV of whatever animal he is. Meenore, Jonty Um and his shape-shifts, and Elodie all have quite different voices. This question came up in the comments on last week’s post, about identifying the narrator of a chapter without having to refer to the chapter heading. I hope the reader will be able to figure out to whom the chapter belongs from the voice. I hope reading a single paragraph will reveal all, although I do identify the narrator under the chapter heading. Meenore uses the biggest words I can think of, and I rely a lot on my thesaurus when I write in ITs voice. Jonty Um uses short sentences and simple vocabulary with the expressions “Fee fi” or “Fo fum” sprinkled here and there. The thoughts of the animals are as simple as I can get. Elodie is the least distinctive voice, she’s the Everyman of the story. Each narrator focuses on what he or she or IT would most naturally notice.

Which leads to another suggestion, an early prompt: If a character is refusing to emerge, write a chapter from his POV. Afterwards, consider what you learned. What caught his eye, his ear, his nose? What was different from the way the chapter would have unfolded from your chosen POV character? Then write it again in the POV you’ve been using but incorporating the insights you’ve gained.

Here’s another early prompt to make characters “pop.” Think of a few of the most complicated people you know. Start a new story and put one of them in, under an assumed name, in a different body and changed circumstances, the circumstances of your story, but herself nonetheless. See if someone else you know can go in as well. These characters are likely to “pop.” Their complexity, which you know well, will influence their actions, decisions, speech.

Or you can mix and match, a quality from this person, a fault from that one, a virtue from another.

Or choose a fictional character you feel you know well. In my mind, although I never told my editor, the ogre Jonty Um in A Tale of Two Castles is sort of Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. He’s eleven feet tall and inarticulate, but he seems stern and haughty while he’s really kind and decent. The secret Darcy helped me get Jonty Um.

Think of how real people make an impression on us, through their clothing, their hair style, their mannerisms, the choices they make when they present themselves to the world. Many physical attributes are given to us – height, beauty or plainness, eye color, hair (curly, straight, thick, thin) – but we adapt them uniquely to ourselves. I took the train to New York City this morning. A woman sat next to me and went to sleep, but she didn’t relax into sleep, didn’t slump, didn’t lose her grip on her magazine. Her feet were planted neatly side by side. When I woke her because I had to get by her to exit, she didn’t jump. She segued smoothly from sleep to wakefulness. In fact she might be anything but, but my impression was of a gentle, conforming, pleasant, somewhat predictable person. Her clothing added to the impression. She was dressed for business, nothing flashy, muted colors, small earrings, low-heeled shoes. She was a miracle of ordinariness.

You’re writers. You probably already watch people. If you don’t already, take notes. If you’re among strangers, draw conclusions from the superficial (not a good character trait in life, but fine for fiction). If you’re with family, friends, or schoolmates, imagine what a stranger would make of them – and of you! Keep your discoveries in mind when you write.

There are prompts sprinkled in above, but here are a few more:

∙ Take my miracle of ordinariness and make something happen on the train that reveals her. It can be something big, like a terrorist attack, or little, like a loud cell phone talker. Is her mild persona camouflage and she’s really extraordinarily brave or angry? Or is she just as she appears?

∙ Keep going with the train event. Develop the other characters. A delay in public transportation is a catalyst for people to get to know each other and to rub against one another.

∙ So is a jury. If you’ve never been a juror, draw on movies and books. A bunch of strangers are thrown together to evaluate a situation and make ethical choices. Your courtroom drama can be contemporary or fantastic or historical, a murder trial or a trial about the treatment of unicorns. Write it.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Villainy

On November 2, 2011, Rina wrote, I need motivations for my villains, you see. If anyone has any good motivations for villains…?

This is a perfect companion question for last week’s post about backstories. Motivation can be backstory, or front story. Let’s put front story up front and take it first.

Here’s an example:Training in alien communication at the Starship Academy begins with a placement exam, part of which is a chess game. First-year student Anthea intuits the meaning behind the game and intentionally loses to her opponent, Bennett, whose triumph twists into rage when she’s assigned to a higher study group than he is. Thereafter, he’s her enemy, the villain of the story.

Lots of front-story events can motivate a villain. Chuck can inadvertently witness something that no one was supposed to see. He can accidentally say the wrong thing. He can be new in town and just be his adorable, outgoing self, which may threaten Dava, the reigning popular kid.

Going back to Starship Academy, now we know Bennett’s motivation: anger at Anthea for divining what he failed to understand, and fury at himself for being used by her. But we don’t know why he responds with rage. Instead, he could concede with good grace. He could even admire Anthea and ask her to explain how she understood the test when he hadn’t. The writer can provide backstory. We can learn that Bennett’s father, who was constantly passed over for promotion, called almost everyone else a loser. Or his mother used to beat him whenever he brought home less than an A on his report card, or, for you homeschoolers, whenever she found fault with one of his projects.

The writer can put this information in, and the knowledge may enrich the story or may make interesting reading, but it doesn’t precisely explain Bennett; we all respond uniquely to our histories and our circumstances.

Motivation doesn’t always matter. Think of Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes stories. He’s simply bad to the core. There’s a chilling moment in the wonderful old movie, The List of Adrian Messenger, when Kirk Douglas says, “Evil is.”

The motivation can be lost in history. Think of feuding clans. The parties may not even remember the reason they hate each other, but the hatred is carried forward from generation to generation until something breaks the cycle.

Power is a frequent villain motivator. Villainy itself requires a degree of power. The villain doesn’t float in the river of time; he puts his oar in. Real-life historical villains, many of them, are motivated by power.

Indifference can be a motivator. The villain wants what he wants and doesn’t care who’s hurt.

Prejudice can be your villain’s goad to action. Inga hates everyone in the Yunnu tribe. When a young Yunnu boy enters the village she behaves despicably toward him.

Lack of empathy, even solipsism (look it up, if you don’t know – it’s a great word) can cause a villain to act as he does. Georgio doesn’t necessarily mean to do ill, but he doesn’t believe that Helena will feel unhappy if he kidnaps her. He just wants the ransom.

As important as motivation, in my opinion, is consistency. Bennett is going to be a certain kind of villain. He’s gotten into Starship Academy so he’s smart. Is he patient or impatient? Does he enlist henchpeople who do his villainy for him, or does he work alone? Does he pretend to be Anthea’s friend to get under her guard? Whatever you decide, he should always be that. Moriarty will always be subtle and clever. Hattie in Ella Enchanted, not so much, and Olive, never. The ogres in Ella are sneaky and crafty; in The Two Princesses of Bamarre they’re brutish and doltish.

Complexity in a villain is nice but not necessary. The decision may rest on how close or how distant he is. In the Sherlock Holmes stories again, he’s distant. In the Starship Academy example he’s close, and the reader will probably need to know him well, so he should be well-rounded. You may want to give him a good quality or two. The pirate Smee in Peter Pan is lovable, at least partly due to his spectacles. Captain Hook is lovable too, I think, even though he kills without mercy. Maybe it’s because he’s pathetic. After all, his ambition is to kill a little boy. And he has good manners.

What good quality might you give your villain? I’ve known a few baddies (not many). One was very generous, and another had a great sense of humor; the others had no redeeming qualities that I could discover.

An element to consider may be the power relationship between the villain and hero. Anthea and Bennett and Chuck and Dava are equals, but Edwina could be Fred’s horrible boss. Or Fred could be the horrible one, undermining everything that Edwina is trying to accomplish. A powerful villain can exercise his villainy out in the open, not always, but often. An underling villain has to be sneaky. The need for subterfuge can be part of Fred’s motivation.

We look for motivation in a villain, but I’m not sure we do in a hero. Anthea does her best in the chess test. Her goal is to show her skill in nonverbal communication; she isn’t out to defeat Bennett, even though he sees it that way. We don’t generally ask, however, why the good character is good. Interesting.

Sometimes the villain motivates the hero and shapes her actions. Edwina, as the good boss, has to learn how to succeed in spite of Fred. She has to become the kind of supervisor who knows how to deal with subtle insubordination. She can become better or worse because of Fred.

And sometimes the hero shapes the villain. Peter Pan is unchanged by Hook, but Hook is profoundly affected by the sort of enemy Peter is. He becomes a tragic figure (in a lighthearted way) because of Peter.

Here are three prompts:

∙ Anthea’s mentor, who sets her course through the academy, assigns her to use Bennett’s enmity. For training purposes, he’s her alien, and she has to manipulate him through understanding. Write the story.

∙ Bennett’s mentor sets him up for repeated failure. His task is self-understanding. He’ll never succeed with an alien until he understands himself. Write his story.

∙ June’s cousin Kyle comes to live with her family for the summer. Kyle is a year older than June, bigger, and a bully. June, however, has inner resources. Decide what they are. Write what they do to set each other off. Tell the story of their summer.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Backstory story

On October 31, 2011, writeforfun wrote, …how do you know where to put those important backstories, the ones that are pivotal to a character? Is there any way to know, or do you just put it where it seems “right”?
There are lots of ways and places and times to work in a backstory, and I think where it seems right is a good guide.

You can do it in dialogue. For example, Elizabeth and Pamela are sleeping over at Marianne’s house. They’re in their pajamas in Marianne’s room. They’ve been friends since they were in kindergarten. Pamela starts a conversation about the first time she was in this bedroom. Others chime in with their early memories. These reveal their backstories.

Or Elizabeth, Pamela and Marianne are marching against the umbertis, enormous intelligent crabs that have invaded their homeland. The soldiers have a long way to go, and they pass the time talking about memories of home, their backstories.

Or you can do the same in thought. Pamela is the POV character. At the sleepover she thinks about her friendship with the two girls. She’s felt close to Marianne since the beginning, but her relationship with Elizabeth has had ups and downs. She can obsess over details of their run-ins. Or she can think about her own home, where she’s never invited the others to sleep over. Or, on the march against the umbertis she can think about her fellow soldiers or she can think about her mother’s teachings on warfare.

Or in narration. An omniscient narrator can chronicle the sleepover or the foot soldiers’ advance. The narrator can directly provide background for each girl.

The danger with backstory, which I suspect writeforfun is worrying about, is interrupting the flow of the story. For backstory to work, in most cases anyway, the front story needs to be underway. The reader has to care about the character with the backstory and the ongoing action of the story. Again in most cases, backstory will fit best in, say, the first third of the novel. Much later than that the reader is likely to have come to his own conclusions and backstory may just annoy. And at the end of a book backstory may feel too convenient, like a deus ex machina arrived to save the day or at least to explain it.

Let’s take the case of the umbertis. The reader has watched with Marianne as a crab’s purple pincer cruelly pinches her little brother Patrick and pulls him away. Another crab’s beady metallic eyes scan Marianne’s family’s living room, where she is crouched in horror behind a couch. Patrick’s screams are heard from the hallway. This is not the time for backstory about how much Marianne loves her brother or how much he annoys her. Unless–

Unless this interrupted action is going to be a motif in the story. Whenever things get exciting, the narrator switches to something else, which could be backstory. The reader groans while smiling, knowing that the main storyline will continue later. This is a way of creating distance and making the reader aware that he’s reading, reading the work of a very clever author. I’ve enjoyed books like this. I think the crime novelists Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake (high school and above) have written this kind of thing, although I can’t think of a particular title.

However, in this sort of story, even if it’s really well done, sometimes I will gnash my teeth and thumb ahead to where the action resumes. Then, after I’ve read the continuing crab drama, I may be reluctant to go back to the intervening pages. If I don’t, I may lose the thread of the story and I may abandon the book entirely. So there’s a risk. In general, quiet moments are best for backstory.

When I wrote the early drafts of Fairest, writing in omniscient third-person POV (I switched to first person later), I put in backstory for Queen Ivi. I included several scenes between her and Skulni, the creature in the mirror, and one between her, her mother, and her brother (who didn’t make the final cut). The scenes and backstory explained Ivi’s behavior. But third person didn’t work and most of the backstory had to go. I miss these scenes. They deepened Ivi’s character for me. But they weren’t necessary, and they gunked up the story. The reader accepts Ivi without the explanations.

What I’m saying is, consider if you need the backstory at all. You may need it for yourself, to understand why your character behaves as she does and to figure out what she’ll do in future situations, but the reader may not. Take the sleepover example. Let’s say Elizabeth makes fun of Marianne’s pajamas, which are cotton with a print of climbing vines that Elizabeth calls poison ivy. And Elizabeth keeps complaining that she isn’t going to be able to sleep because of Pamela’s snoring. I don’t think the reader needs to know that Elizabeth’s mother is hypercritical and her father is uninvolved in family life. The reader takes Elizabeth as he finds her. He’ll also be watching Elizabeth’s and Pamela’s response to her. If they treat her with understanding he’s going to suspect they understand her or that she has virtues he hasn’t experienced yet.

I’ve been watching the HBO series Girls, which is definitely without a doubt for adults. One of the girls, I don’t have the names down yet, the one with the British accent, is so far unfailingly unkind to her friends. I can’t figure out why they like her, and no amount of backstory would condone her bad behavior for me.

And lets go back to Elizabeth and her judgmental mother and disengaged father. Well, plenty of people have terrible parents and they rise above them. The moral is: Be judicious with your backstories. You can put them in (you may need to) in early drafts but try your story without them as you revise.

If the backstory is important and you’re sure you don’t want to cut it, consider telling it in forward time. Start the tale at an earlier moment. In Fairest again, I could have begun the book with Aza’s arrival at Ontio castle and slipped her earlier life in through flashbacks and thoughts and dialogue, but that would have been tricky and it might have given the book a jumpy quality I didn’t want. Same thing has happened to me with other books. I start somewhere and then I move the beginning back and back and back. You can too.

Here are four prompts:

∙ Write from the POV of the umberti crab who kidnapped Marianne’s brother and work in the backstory of these intelligent creatures. Do they come from outer space or are they mutations of ordinary crabs? Why do they hate humans?

∙ Invent a backstory for each of the sleepover girls. Telling the sleepover in the voice of an omniscient narrator, insert each backstory through thoughts, narration, and dialogue. Cause an argument among the three and have the backstory come into play.

∙ In the crab story, invent a backstory for Pamela and include it in the marching scene. After the army reaches the crabs, Pamela and a crab face off in hand-to-claw combat. Have Pamela’s backstory influence her fighting.

∙ Ina is a writer. Whenever she meets people she makes up their backstories. Her boyfriend brings her to dinner at his parents’ house. She’s meeting his family for the first time, and she engages in her pastime. Write the scene and make the imagined backstories get her into trouble.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Tensing

First off, welliewalks’ comment last week about setting a goal to get something published before the next school year gave me an idea: how nice if you would post your publishing triumphs here so we can all bask in the reflected glory. Please do!

Now for the post. On October 20, 2011, Charlotte wrote, I’ve been thinking lately about tense, as in past or present. I’ve read some fantastic stuff in the present tense (read: THE HUNGER GAMES and other less fantastic things) and I’ve been wondering what everyone thinks about which tense a story should be written in, and how to decide.
I reckon it depends on the needs of your tale, like POV does, but I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts, especially on choosing which to use….

Going quickly through my bookshelf I notice that young adult novels in a contemporary setting are more often written in present tense than books for younger children, which seem generally to be in the past tense. This isn’t a scientific survey, just my impression. Not sure why this may be. Maybe present tense seems more immediate and real, less storybook-like. I haven’t done any sort of survey of novels for adults, so I don’t know.

Historical novels on my bookshelf are written in the past tense, except for my historical fantasy, Ever. I chose present because the survival of Kezi, one of my POV characters, is in doubt, and I felt that past tense would suggest to readers that she’s okay at the end. I used present tense for a short story, too, in that case because my main character has a decision to make, and I felt that past tense would suggest one choice or another. I wanted the reader right there with her as she chooses. Aside from those two instances, however, I’ve stuck with past tense. I don’t think Ella Enchanted or most of my fantasies would have succeeded in present tense.

Susan Cooper’s novel Victory alternates between a modern narrator and a nineteenth century one. The current-day chapters are written in the present tense, the historical ones in the past tense. I suppose they both could have been in one or the other, but this way works beautifully – and it’s a terrific book.

So, yes, the decision depends on the needs of your story. You can ask yourself if you want to create a storybook atmosphere or if you want the grittier reality of present tense. You can also see if you gravitate one way or the other and then decide whether you want to go with your own flow or if you want to write against it.

I suppose I have a bias, which you may or may not agree with. Sometimes you won’t have a strong reason to choose one tense over another. In those cases I’m prejudiced in favor of past tense, which I think is more flexible. You can achieve a noir reality using the past tense, as in, Mickey spat cigar juice into the gutter and muttered, “You do that again, I’ll knot your legs into a pretzel.” But it’s harder to get that timeless aura in, say a medieval fantasy, as in, Sir Grathnath turns to his liege lord and says, “I pledge my allegiance until the firmaments ripple and the seas grow trees.” Then he dons his armor and buckles on his trusty sword. Doesn’t sound right.

When I say I have a bias I mean as a writer, not as a reader. As a reader I’m fine with either tense. If I like the story, I’m just happy. As a writer, though, present tense seems like more of a DECISION. Past tense seems more like, for good or ill, choosing the common path.

Flashbacks are a little different in the different tenses. If you’re writing in present tense, you just have to switch to simple past. If you’re already in past tense you need past perfect, with the auxiliary verb had, as in, Nancy had seen this blue-headed boy before. It had been during school break in the fall when she and her father had gone to the shore for one of their long rambles. They picked up knobby skipping tortoise shells and smooth driftwood. Notice that after the first two hads I revert to simple past tense. That’s what all the writing books I’ve read tell me to do. Then, at the end of the flashback, you bring in the hads again once or twice to bracket the anecdote. The reason not to use them constantly is that all those hads draw attention to themselves and are an obstacle to the reader’s complete entry into the flashback. This little bit of complexity isn’t enough of a reason, in my opinion, to write in the present tense.

I’ve never read anything in the future tense. Has anyone out there?

Future tense, now that I’m thinking about it, lends an air of inevitability, as in, Cinderella will step into her pumpkin coach and set out for the first ball. She will smooth her satin skirts and stare at the grand houses scrolling by. Hmm.

I just called my editor to ask if she has a bias (I didn’t tell her mine). She doesn’t. She said the tense just needs to serve the story. I asked what kind of story is best served by which tense, and she thought that mystery and suspense stories sometimes benefit from present tense, allowing the reader to get inside the action. She also opined that present tense can be harder to pull off. She felt that flashbacks can be harder in present tense, the shift from present to past more jarring. She added that some authors try one, find it isn’t working, and shift to the other.

I called my agent, who had no preference either at first, then, after thinking a minute, said she might like present tense better. Then she became unsure again. Then we segued into great first lines, like, “Call me Ishmael,” the beginning of Moby Dick (which, I confess, I’ve never read), a present-tense, powerful start to a book written mostly in the past tense. So you can change it up even if you’re writing in the past tense.

When I read student work I sometimes see tense drift. The story is steaming along in past tense when it suddenly shifts to present and then veers back. This isn’t a big deal, just another thing to mop up in revision. When the story is finished, of course we want it to be consistent.

Here are three prompts:

∙ Rewrite the beginning few pages of one of your stories in the other tense, past if you’re using present, present if you’re using past. How do you feel about it? Which do you like better?

∙ Use my sentences above as a story starter. Change tenses if you like. Here they are again: Nancy had seen this blue-headed boy before. It had been during school break in the fall when she and her father had gone to the shore for one of their long rambles. They picked up knobby skipping tortoise shells and smooth driftwood.

∙ Try writing a story in future tense. I suspect you need either a very tragic ending or a very happy one for this, no bitter-sweet or you may get a let down. A sad Greek myth might work well, like the story of Oedipus.

Have fun, and save what you write!

In a word

On October 14, 2011, maybeawriter wrote, I have a problem with my stories. I like the ideas but the words never seem right. Please help!

I asked for clarification, and maybeawriter added, Well, it seems like they don’t flow right or seems like there is another word that might fit in better, but I can’t really think of any, like there could be a better word for just walking, or the feel of the water.

Word choice influences everything, but it especially affects voice, tone, and mood. I recently read M. T. Anderson’s young adult novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, which astonished me in the best possible way. Here’s a sentence early in the book: And so the answer to my perplexities, which must appear in all its clarity to those who look from above, was finally clear to me: that I too was the subject of a zoological experiment. Even earlier Mr. Anderson describes the house where Octavian lives as “gaunt,” such an imaginative and evocative adjective. The word choices perfectly represent my idea of 18th century expression. And, despite the elaborate sentences, Mr. Anderson tells a riveting story. When things get tough, Octavian becomes Observant. The term exactly expresses the character’s experience, and it breaks the reader’s heart, my heart anyway.

As I read I kept wishing I’d written the book. I couldn’t. I can write only what I can write although I can try to expand my style and my sentences. Reading a lot helps with that. While I was reading Octavian Nothing, I had to hold back from letting his sorts of sentences infiltrate my writing where they didn’t belong. The voices of other writers get inside us. When it’s no longer so fresh, in this case probably a few months from now, Mr. Anderson’s work will influence me subtly, appropriately.

Writing and reading poetry help me, too. I’m much more aware of consonant and vowel sounds than I used to be. In the sentence before this one, for example, I find the m’s in I’m much more and the ow’s in vowel sounds pleasing. I notice them as I write, and sometimes I shorten the distance between words to bring like sounds closer together. Other times I deliberately go against the harmony. You can do this without writing or reading poetry (although I’m a big fan of doing both). Here’s a prompt: Pick a paragraph (notice the alliteration; I could have written choose a paragraph) in a story you’re working on. Underline any alliteration and any repeat vowel sounds. I suspect you’ll find at least a few, because English is full of similar sounds. Look for substitutions you can make to increase the effect. Try them out. Does the paragraph read better?

Now go the other way. Substitute to move away from the similarities. Read the paragraph out loud and decide which you prefer and which goes more with the feeling of your story. There’s no right answer. The purpose is just to become more alert to sound and its subtle effects.

Maybeawriter, words are a pale reflection of experience. We can never precisely convey the feeling of water; not even Shakespeare could have. If we were writing for the man on the moon who has never felt rain, we couldn’t represent clearly enough the sensation of wetness. If he flew his spaceship into an ocean and swam out, then he might say, I get it now. Before I was just guessing. This suggests another prompt: Describe water for the man in the moon. You won’t succeed, but create a longing in him with your description, so that the distance between him and the nearest cloud becomes unbearable.

You can then go ahead and write a story about his visit to earth.

Some friends and I were just discussing the impossibility of describing the color red to someone blind from birth. We can talk about warm colors and cool colors and heat and power, blood, and even anger. We can describe the color wheel. A blind person will understand heat and blood and emotions and the idea of a color wheel, but he won’t experience red, I don’t think. In Fairest, I invented the color htun, and I describe it, but I’ve never seen it – wish I could. But I can come closer to picturing it than a blind person could because I already see colors.

What tools do we have to show our readers what they and the writer haven’t experienced? Writers of fantasy and sci fi and historical fiction voyage to places we’ve never been and never will go, and the glory in the writing is in creating something utterly new. We do it by moving from what we have experienced to what we haven’t. Suppose we’re describing charged mimo particles, which have the power to suck seeds out of the ground. In nature, the nature of this world, they appear only in huge colonies; you won’t encounter a single mimo on its own except in the laboratory. A colony will slide slowly down a slope, like fudge sauce over ice cream, all the while sparkling like a billion brown fireflies. If they’re important to your story, you can go further and tell the reader that Sal had a brush with them once. She was snoozing in a meadow on the west side of Chotig Mountain when a colony oozed out of an abandoned mine shaft and slithered down. She woke up when her pinky finger started tingling. Luckily she jumped to the right, out of its path. Her pinky was gone completely, leaving only a tiny blue scar, and that meadow will never bloom again. If you want more you can introduce a science teacher at Sal’s high school delivering a lecture about mimos.

None of us has encountered mimos, but we have seen dirt fields, scars, fireflies, and hot fudge descending on ice cream, and we know how tingling feels. Even if you’re home schooled, you’ve probably been lectured to, if only on television. We work toward the unknown from the familiar.

But when it comes to the familiar, like water, a perfectly acceptable choice is to zip by it quickly. Everybody knows the sensation of water, so it’s fine to say, the water was icy. But suppose this is a moment of heightened experience. Sal has been lost in the desert. She’s just reached an oasis and is drinking her first water in thirty-six hours. Or she’s covered in worm slime and is finally taking a shower. You want to describe either of these. Well, you might go for metaphor and call the water a surprise party, rebirth, birdsong. I’m choosing images that are somehow water-like. Water, even though it’s familiar, is often pleasantly shocking, like a surprise party. Rebirth is a common idea when it comes to water, which is essential for life. And birdsong is a fluid sound. I wouldn’t use a metaphor like The water was a shoe because it’s hard to imagine anything less like water than a shoe.

Going in a more practical direction, the best boon for word choice is a thesaurus. I often use www.thesaurus.com to take me beyond the words I usually use. Sometimes the synonyms I see persuade me to rephrase my whole sentence more pleasingly.

Now, on the blog I may make everything sound easy, and then, when we start writing, we struggle. So I’ll end with a sort-of quote, sort of because I don’t know where it comes from, but not from me, because I’m rarely so delightfully loose. The not-quite-a-quote goes something like, When my writing isn’t up to my standards, I lower my standards. Excellent advice if we’re going to slog all the way to the end.

Prompts are scattered through the post, but here’s one more: Invent a substance and incorporate it into a scene, using a new main character or a character in a story you’re working on.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Dragons and fairies and more, oh my!

On the evening of Friday, April 13th, I’ll be speaking in Longmont, Colorado. If you can make it, check out the details on the Appearances page of my website (click on the right). Hope to see you there!

On October 12, 2011, Elizabeth wrote, I’m working on a novella right now about dragons, Gail, and I was curious about your take on dealing with magical creatures, as my novella will have lots of them. Do you have any advice on how to deal with them? I’d be happy to hear what other people have to say, too! 😀

So please add your contributions to mine.

I love to introduce new magical creatures or dream up a fresh take on the ones we all know about: fairies, elves, dragons, gnomes, and so on.

The first consideration, before I let my imagination run wild, is the role this kind of creature is going to play in my story. It’s not very different from the approach I take when I dream up a human character. I ask myself what this character is going to have do and be. I suggest you ask yourself the same questions.

In The Two Princess of Bamarre, for example, the dragons are one of the species of monsters that plague Bamarre, so they can’t be good, and I wanted them to present yet another obstacle to the success of Addie’s quest. After I knew that, I considered what form their evil might take. And that’s the second question you can ask yourself. Evil, yes. But evil how?

Suppose I want my dragons to be allies of the tree-dwelling clan, Opkos, against the cave-dwelling termite people, the Ditnits. Lots of follow-up questions flow from this decision: How do the dragons help? Are these flying dragons? How smart are they? How do they communicate with their human friends? Through speech, ordinary speech, or in some other way? So here’s an early prompt: List ten more questions you can ask about the dragons in this scenario. Answer them. Write a scene involving first contact between a main character of the Opkos clan and a dragon who is going to be important in your story.

Once I start writing I may discover that I’ve imagined features for the creatures that don’t fit my plot as it develops, so I have to go back and revise, which is fine and necessary. This happened with the tiffens in Fairies and the Quest for Never Land. I got too elaborate, and some of the characteristics didn’t work, so I dropped them. In Beloved Elodie the same happened with the brunkas, which I hope you’ll read about some day.

At some point in the questions you’ve asked yourself you probably moved from plot demands to pure invention, another fun part. For this, I generally think about the usual portrayal of these creatures and ask myself how I can diverge while still keeping enough of the idea of a dragon so that my creature is recognizable. There’s a lot of leeway here. I think I could get away even with a dragon mouse, a scaly mouse with a long snout, and a flame no bigger than a match flame. In Ella Enchanted, where the dragon provides only a little richness, it’s a baby, tiny with a tiny flame.

Your dragons don’t have to be evil. Masteress Meenore in A Tale of Two Castles and Beloved Elodie isn’t exactly kindly, but IT is essentially good, very good. If yours aren’t evil either, the questions are pretty much the same: How do the dragons fit in my story? What are their attributes? How can I distinguish them from the run of dragons in other stories?

Unless you’re writing fan fiction, you should stay away from dragon representations you’ve encountered in contemporary books. Anne McCaffrey’s series springs to mind, also Ursula Le Guin Earthsea Cycle, and I’m sure there are more. If there are dragons in novels you’ve read, think about how you can make yours different. Let’s take my Masteress Meenore for example. IT is a detective dragon. You can write a detective dragon too, I think without stepping on my authorial toes, but then don’t also make IT stink of sulfur and refuse to reveal ITs gender and have gorgeous translucent wings.

I like a sense of wonder in fantasy. I achieve this in Meenore with ITs lovely wings, ITs smoke that changes color according to ITs emotional state, ITs facility at the game of knucklebones. So there’s another question: What is likely to astonish the reader in a good way?

Another consideration is the amount of power you give your creatures. This often comes up for me with fairies, who in traditional fairy tales have limitless power, which won’t work in most stories, because we don’t want the fairies swooping in and solving everything. Which leads to the question, How much power do your fairies or dragons have? How does their power work? For example, for fairies does the power reside in the magic wand? Or in spells? Or somehow inherent in the fairy? In my Disney Fairies books, the fairies’ power is limited to their talents. The water talent fairies, for example, control only water. The magic of all of them is enhanced by fairy dust; without the dust they’d hardly be magical at all.

Power for evil has to be limited too. If your dragon is evil and can destroy everything and is unstoppable, there is no story either. Your evil creature needs an Achilles heel.

You needn’t limit yourself to the standard roster of imaginary creations. You can go to mythology for other kinds of critters. And you can create your own. Again, think of your story and the kind of creature you may need.

Do you want to make it up entirely or combine creatures? A coyote and an eagle? A boa constrictor and a sphinx? If made up entirely, how big is it? How does it communicate? Does it communicate at all? Another prompt: Think of ten more questions you can ask about your new creation. Answer them.

Of course you don’t need to think of your story first. You can start with your creature and think of a story to go with him. If you’re taking this route, consider what his problems may be. The next step is likely to figure out how he might approach his problems. Then, as in any story about anybody, your job is to make trouble for him and keep him from achieving his goals easily. So that’s another prompt: Decide what your creature’s problem is or what he wants. List several possibilities. Pick one and start your story. Keep going.

One last prompt: Write a story about the winged steed Pegasus.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Filler doldrums

Our detour into my books is over, at least for now. Back to writing yours.

On October 14, 2011, Jenna Royal wrote, ...I have problems with filler scenes. They’re important for the flow of the story – I can’t have just conflict or it gets crazy, but the in-between is hard.

Then, on Feb 11, 2012, Brianna wrote, ….I’ve got a ton of ideas for big scenes that move the plot along, but obviously I can’t jump from some guy threatening them in their house to her being shoved in a locker at school to jumping off a cliff. The one thing I have trouble with is the things that go in between, the sort-of mundane things that we don’t think about but we have to make them interesting enough to keep the reader hooked.
….I never quite get how some authors can take normal school life and write an entire novel…

The key may be the over-arching problem of the story. Let’s take Brianna’s three action scenes: the threat, the locker lock-up, the cliff leap. Mila, who dropped out of high school three years earlier, who broke the principal’s arm but was never even charged, who lives in a shack on the edge of the sewage treatment plant, tells Nadia that she’d better not go home (okay, she’s supposed to be at home for the threat, but I forgot and only realized later) after school or she will live the rest of her life in an unpleasant altered state. That’s the threat.

The reader is told through Nadia’s thoughts that her little brother, Petey, is home with a fever along with his babysitter, Oona, who’s on break from college.

Now we have to get to the locker incarceration scene. In Chemistry class, which follows Mila’s threat, Nadia texts a warning to Oona but gets no response. Nadia is frantic with fear. Is someone or something in the house, or is the target Petey or Oona? Or Nadia’s parents? In class, Ms. Pashkin drones on about the Periodic Table. Nothing can happen until the bell, and there are three classes after Chemistry.

We have Nadia’s thoughts to keep us interested, because she’s so distressed. She’s looking around. She’s not supposed to go home, but maybe someone else can. Her friend Quentin is a martial arts master, and he would be happy to help. But should she send him into danger? What else can she do?

In the middle of everything, Randall, whom Nadia has had a crush on since fourth grade, sends her a note, asking if she wants to study with him after school. She can’t really enjoy this, and she just shrugs, which makes him turn bright red with embarrassment or anger. Nadia doesn’t, but the reader wonders if Randall is in league with Mila.

The rest of Chemistry passes in a blur. You can do this, make a scene just go by if there’s a reason, and in this case there is. Nadia is too freaked out to concentrate. In the hallway between classes she calls her dad but his cell goes to voice mail, and he doesn’t text. She calls his office and is told he hasn’t returned from lunch, which is odd because he brought a sandwich to work. Same with her mother. In Language Arts she texts home again and again gets no response. Mr. Handel, the Language Arts teacher, sees her repeatedly pulling out her phone, and he takes it away from her. In growing desperation, Nadia decides to sneak out at the end of this class and go home. She was warned against heading home after school; maybe during school doesn’t count.

But when she gets to the lobby Randall is there, ostensibly waiting for band practice to begin but really on guard to keep Nadia from skipping out. He’s the one who stuffs her in the locker and leaves.

The locker area is deserted this time of day, and Nadia doesn’t have a phone. She has to wait, and she fills this time by worrying and listening. She can also sing or even fall asleep as people sometimes do in times of high stress, low activity. A few paragraphs will do.

At the end of the school day kids come to their lockers, making so much noise that they fail to hear Nadia’s desperate pounding until only one student remains, who finds the school custodian to get her out. Then you need the scene with the principal who wants to know who stuck her in the locker. Probably this won’t be dull because we’re so worried, but if you want to pile on the excitement, you can have her name someone who didn’t do it.

Finally she starts for home, running along the edge of the cliff above the Salitachee River, where the spring rapids are in full flow. Not hard from here to imagine circumstances that force her to jump.

So, worry about the larger issue will help pull the reader through the slower scenes. And you can drop in smaller events that feed the worry and ramp up the tension, like when Mr. Handel takes the cell phone.

You may want to reread the first part of my post of October 12, 1211, for more ideas about ancillary scenes.

It’s sometimes a juggling act. Suppose in the example above that Randall is innocent, that he doesn’t put Nadia in the locker, that he’s just waking up to how appealing she is, and suppose you want to show the reader his charms, too. Also, suppose Nadia’s best friend is upset because her grandmother is very ill and she wants comfort. But with Nadia’s brother, his babysitter, and her parents in danger the reader may see this other stuff as distractions and may even skip pages to find out what’s going on with the house. You may want to introduce these less life-threatening issues before Nadia is threatened or after she gets through the cliff scene and finds out everyone is okay for the time being.

If you don’t have a larger issue, then the slow scenes will be particularly hard to write, and even the action ones may lack impact because the reader won’t know why she should care. I’ve written in other posts that a book doesn’t have to have major conflict, but it does need something that will draw the reader through. The pull could be Nadia herself, an extraordinary character whom the reader loves to love or loves to hate, and in every scene, the one with the threat and the one in Chemistry class, the reader wants to see what Nadia will do. Or the pull can be an amazing place that has an effect on whoever is there. In this instance the place could be a special school or Nadia’s house, which is special in some way.

The larger issue, if you have one, doesn’t need to be of thriller magnitude. Nadia’s big problem can be that her friends are all mad at her or that she feels useless or stupid. Readers who read only fantasy may not be satisfied, but many will. Some like only realistic fiction. Or this kind of trouble can be dropped into a fantasy setting. In Fairest, for example, the basic conflict is that Aza feels (with some reason) unattractive.

On to prompts:

∙ Here are three action scenes: Tess is in her bank when it’s robbed, and she recognizes one of the robbers; in her fencing class her instructor duels with her and she realizes he’s using a real sword with a lethal tip; she is followed through her local shopping mall by three strangers. Figure out an overarching problem and start the story, including the scenes that get her from one place to another.

∙ Here are three potentially dull scenes: Tess is home on a summer afternoon with her childhood friend Victoria; Tess is in the kitchen with her dad who is making lunch for the two of them; she’s straightening her room. Without a serious overarching problem write these three scenes and make them interesting.

∙ Keep going with Nadia’s story. Write the scenes that follow; don’t just summarize them as I did.

∙ Write the story from Randall’s point of view.

Have fun and save what you write!

Finale My Books

First off, the lovely reviews that Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It has gotten are now posted on the website. You can visit them, if you like, and rejoice with me!

I believe this is the final post about my books, at least until more questions accumulate. The first questions come from Elizabeth: Does A Tale of Two Castles take place in the same world as Ella Enchanted? And does Ever take place in the same world as Ella Enchanted? Basically, how are all the different countries in your books related to each other and which ones are?
Fairest and Ella Enchanted take place in the same world although not in the same kingdoms. Fairest is set in Ayortha and Ella in its neighbor Kyrria. The languages are different, but the exotic creatures (ogres, gnomes, elves, giants) and the fairies are the same. A Tale of Two Castles takes place in an entirely different world,in the kingdom of Lepai, likewise Beloved Elodie and any other books I may write about Elodie and the dragon Meenore. Ever unfolds in a fantasy version of ancient Mesopotamia and The Two Princesses of Bamarre in Bamarre of course. The fairies in the Disney Fairies books flit about in the Never Land of Peter Pan, which was created by James M. Barrie. My Princess Tales romp through the kingdom of Biddle.

I enjoy inventing worlds and especially making up fairy tale and mythical creatures. What can my ogres or my fairies be like this time? I wonder and start writing down possibilities. I think about the roles that the creatures are going to play in my story. For instance, I needed a detective in A Tale of Two Castles, so I gave the job to the dragon. Lately, my medieval fantasies incorporate facts about daily life during the period, but I’m not reliable – don’t count on me for a research paper!

And Caitlin Flowers wrote, ….I know that it took you nine years to get Ella Enchanted published, but what was it like writing the book? How did you think of all the languages? And how did you turn the classic story of Cinderella into something so new and exciting?

Thank you. To take the last question first, the newness comes from the curse, I think, which was merely a plot device to explain to myself Cinderella’s strange obedience and kindness to her horrible stepfamily. I didn’t understand or like her compliance or her unrelieved sweetness, so, after a couple of weeks of misery and writing in circles, I thought of a fairy’s gift, and then I had her. Ella’s magic book was another plot device to help me over the limitations of writing in first person. The book enabled me to drop hints about events Ella would otherwise have been ignorant of.

It took nine years to get anything published but not Ella, which I discussed last week. Much of the novel was written on the train, commuting home from my job in New York City. (On my morning commute, I slept.) Writing it wasn’t so different from writing any of my books. Some parts flew out of my fingers and others dripped out like little beads of sweat. If I remember correctly, the romantic parts with Char, like their letters or sliding down the stair rails, went smoothly, the languages, for example, not so much.

As for creating the languages, I wanted each one to sound different, so I gave the gnomes a lot of throat sounds and the giants those emotive noises. I made Ogrese soft and slithery, a sneaky tongue. Ayorthaian reminds me of Italian, in which most words ends in a vowel; in Ayorthaian they all begin and end with the same vowel. My teacher (I was taking a writing class) suggested that each should look different. Not all do, but Abdegi, the giants’ language, is interrupted often by whoops and hollers. In Ogrese all the double letters are capitalized, and Gnomic is capitalized and punctuated backwards. I kept a glossary. If a word appears twice it means the same thing in both places. I didn’t do much with grammar, though. My languages aren’t linguistically real, like, for example the tongue of the Na’vi in movie Avatar. My languages weren’t hard to write, just dull. But I’m glad I put them in. I think they make the book richer, and I love made-up languages when I read.

The last question goes with this from writeforfun ….how did you make up all the names in your books, like some of the ones for your fairies and the ones for the ogres and gnomes in Ella and Fairest? They are very original.
Some of them in Ella and Fairest derive from the languages. The human names in Fairest follow the Ayorthaian rule; they start with a vowel and end with the same vowel, like Aza and Ijori. Ivi’s name had to change from Ivy to Ivi when she came to Ayortha. The king’s name is Oscaro – take Oscar and add an o at the end. The ogre names are soft, while the gnome names are, to my ear, harsh. Gnomes themselves aren’t, but they are uncompromising, like their names.

Often I try for names that reflect something about the character, like the ogre in A Tale of Two Castles is Jonty Um, which comes from the French gentil homme, which means gentleman. But I don’t like to be obvious. I wouldn’t call a happy character Merry, for example. The young wizard in The Two Princesses of Bamarre is Rhys, which seemed like a mysterious name. For Beloved Elodie, I’m Googling German names.

Last question, this from Brianna: ….why was the ending of the Princesses of Bamarre so sad? (It was, in my opinion.) I think all of your other juvenile books have a relatively “happy” ending.

Spoiler alert! If you haven’t read Two Princesses and intend to, I suggest you jump to the prompts.

Yes, most of my other books end unambiguously happily, although there’s some bitter-sweet at the end of Ever. It’s funny; not everyone thinks the Two Princesses ending is sad. But some agree with you. I received a letter from a girl who had nightmares for months after reading it and wanted me to rewrite the book or write a sequel that fixed the ending.

Seemed to me that if Aza simply saved Meryl it would be too pat, too easy, disappointing. And if Meryl just died that would be just tragic and I hadn’t built up to a tragedy, and everything Aza had done would have come to nothing. So I found a middle way that satisfied me.

Last week the prompts were about fairies. Let’s try some with other creatures this time, a witch, two genies, a golden goose, a little gray man. Think about what these beings are usually like and see what you can come up with that’s different. Here goes:

• In “Aladdin” there are two genies, the lesser genie of the ring and the more powerful genie of the lamp. Write a story about them and how their world intersects with the story. I’d like to know how the lamp genie can make an enormous, ornate, splendid palace overnight and how it feels to do so.

• Donna Jo Napoli wrote Zel, a fascinating young adult retelling of “Rapunzel” that explains how the witch becomes the witch. If you haven’t read it, I recommend you do, but only after you try the prompt, which is to write the witch’s back story and explain why she’s trapped Rapunzel in the tower.

• My The Fairy’s Return is a version of “The Golden Goose.” In it I use the goose as a story prop, much as she’s used in the original fairy tale, and I substitute the fairy Ethelinda for the little gray man. Your challenge is to explain either the goose or the little old man or both. Reread the original fairy tale if you need to.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Even more my books

Thanks to Agnes last week who posted the link to The New York Times Sunday Book Review review of Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It, which came out yesterday. For those of you who missed it, here it is again: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/books/review/bookshelf-poetry.html?_r=1&ref=books. And for you poetry buffs, there was an amazing essay in The Atlantic online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/why-poetry-should-be-more-playful/254188/. I’m delighted to say the book has gotten a marvelous send-off!

Now for more questions from Charlotte. Here’s the first: Did you get annoying non-writers asking to read it (your manuscript) when it was so rough it wouldn’t have made any sense to anyone?
No. My non-writer friends were encouraging about my new and then not-so-new and then unending endeavor, but no one asked to read. I asked the children’s librarians at the main branch of the Brooklyn public library to look at my first effort. They did and were enthusiastic and set up a reading for children – who got bored and wandered away mid-reading. The librarians stuck around to the end, though. The book was never published, but it was lovely to have that little cheering section wishing me well.

And the second and third: Did anyone ever say something so mean (well-intentioned or not) that it still haunts your writing confidence today? Not a publisher, I mean (I remember you said in Writing Magic you got a terrible letter about Ella when you were starting out…), but a friend?

No one did. I did take a class in getting published that was taught by an editor, and she was discouraging to all her students, so I didn’t feel singled out. The terrible letter wasn’t for Ella, it was for a picture book manuscript called Sweet Fanopps about a kingdom that had forgotten how to sleep and had lost all the words associated with sleep. When sleep is rediscovered no one has language to go with it. Fanopps, of course, means dreams, and I invented other sleep-related words. Poodge was the one for sleep. In the course of the letter the editor misspelled Fanopps as Fanoops. Tut tut.

And more: What did it mean (monetarily and emotionally) to be “able to quit your day job”? Or is that too personal a question?

Not too personal. Money first. I quit seven months after Ella Enchanted came out and two months before it won the Newbery honor. I was fifty years old, and I had worked for New York State government for twenty-seven years. At fifty-five I would collect a small pension no matter what happened with my writing career, so I had a measure of security although I had five years to get through. My husband and I decided to risk it. My friend, the wonderful young adult author Joan Abelove, who was supporting herself as a technical writer, promised to teach me technical writing if I needed something to fall back on, which I still feel grateful for. But luckily the Newbery honor came along and my prospects improved and have stayed pretty darn good.

Now for emotional. My work with New York State government mostly had to do with welfare. By the end my job was administrative and I was in an unhappy patch. I was glad to leave. But I’m a social person, and I worried about the solitary life of a writer, so that’s when I started my workshop, and I continued to take a writing class and participate in a critique group. Naturally I was delighted to be able to devote myself to writing, but sometimes I missed feeling part of a shared enterprise, which is what my job gave me.

And: Do you still muse about characters whose books are written and over?

Sometimes I think about Ivi in Fairest. Because I wrote hundreds of pages that I tossed, I know much more about her than the reader does. For example, I wrote a scene in which she worries to her brother (cut) that she won’t be a good queen. And one in which we see Ivi’s mother’s mindless approval of Ivi no matter her deficiencies. I wrote scenes between her and Skulni in which she tries to win his approval and he toys with her.

And I wonder about the future happiness of Addie and Rhys from The Two Princesses of Bamarre. His life span is so much longer than hers. She’s going to get caught up in the drama of ruling and he in his wizardly studies. What will they share?

There’s also Irma Lee from Dave at Night, with her over-protective mother and the Great Depression on the way. Dave, who’s known nothing but poverty, will be okay. But Irma Lee? And I left Mike with tuberculosis. I don’t even know if he lives.

Then, on December 9, 2011, Melissa asked, …How come you never self-published Ella Enchanted since it was taking so long?

Ella Enchanted didn’t take that long, only a year or so, and it was rejected only once. It was the many other manuscripts that nobody wanted. All but one of them (Dave at Night) were picture books, and I would have had to find an illustrator. Also, self-publishing, although possible, wasn’t as available as it is now. Print-on-demand was in its infancy, I think. There were no online booksellers, so I would have had to try to get stores to carry my titles, an uphill battle. The opportunities in self-publishing are much improved today.

On October 5, 2011, Lizzy wrote, ….If you had started writing Ella Enchanted today instead of a couple years ago, how different would you think the story would turn out? Do you think that it would turn out as a totally different story, or would it stay around the same?

Hard to speculate. If I’d written all the other books first and was working on Ella now, it would certainly be a different book. I once heard the wonderful children’s book writer E. L. Konigsburg (author of the Newbery winning From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and many others) say in a speech that you can only write your first book once. She may have meant something else, but what I understood was that you have a wealth of ideas stored up from however many years of living and reading, and the riches come pouring out in a first book. After that, you have to work harder. I think I had two first novels: Ella Enchanted and Dave at Night, because each drew on different parts of my writing imagination. And two other books have felt utterly fresh, Writing Magic, because it was my first nonfiction venture, and the new book, Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It, because it’s entirely unlike anything else I’ve done. If I were writing Ella now and I’d delayed writing until now, well, I can’t guess what would come out. Who knows what I would have done in the intervening years.

More about my books next week, but, looking ahead, I think that will be the final post about them, at least for the time being.

Charlotte’s question about the future fate of some of my characters got me thinking about sequel possibilities, which led me to these prompts:

∙ J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan leaves Peter unresolved, and he’s kind of a tragic figure at the end. Write the rest of his story. You can give him a sad or happy ending, but make the outcome settled for him.

∙ What happens to Jack and Jill after the nursery rhyme? Jack’s skull is cracked, I think. Does he live? How badly injured is Jane? Are they modern protagonists? Or when else do they live and possibly die? Continue their tale.

∙ How does Pinocchio’s story go after he becomes a real boy? Write it!

Have fun, and save what you write!

More my books

News! Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It is getting a lovely short review in The New York Times Book Review this coming Sunday, March 11th. I’m so happy! It will be great for the book.

Last week I overlooked this question from Charlotte about the Fairies books: Can fairies die of old age, or just disbelief/hawks/drowning/etc.?

In my idea of it these fairies don’t age. If disbelief, hawks, drowning, and so forth don’t get them they can go on forever. The fairies in Ella Enchanted, on the other hand, do age, but slowly. I never had to imagine fairy death in Ella’s world but I guess they can die of old age, probably not of disease – they would be able to cure themselves with unicorn-hair soup or something else. The fairies in The Two Princesses of Bamarre are probably immortal and probably never seem to get older, since they’re whirls of light, although I can’t be sure because the problem didn’t come up so I didn’t have to decide.

Next question, this one from Elizabeth: ….how long did it take you to write Writing Magic? It seems like it wouldn’t have taken very long, because you have so much writing advice stored up, but you never know!

You’re right. Writing Magic grew out of my writing workshops. The narrative was sitting in my head and the exercises were in my workshop notes. When I wrote, it all came pouring out, took about six months, which is quick for me. The publication was delayed, however, because the people at HarperCollins felt they could launch the book more successfully if they paired it with my next novel, which was Fairest, and that was not quick! The dual publication allowed me to tour for both books, whereas HarperCollins generally tours me only for my novels. And Writing Magic has found lots of readers and writers – oh, joy!

As I’ve mentioned here before, my editor and I are thinking about a second writing book, this one based on the blog, which should go quickly too, as it will be more of an assembly job and deciding which blog posts are worthy and which aren’t.

Back to Charlotte, who had more questions:

I was going to ask which is your favourite, but I think you’ve already said it’s Dave at Night. What’s your second favourite?

There are contenders for second place: Writing Magic, Ever, Ella Enchanted, The Princess Tales, especially Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep and For Biddle’s Sake. The Princess Tales don’t come up often here, but I’m very proud of them because they’re funny, and I love humor and I laughed my way through writing them.

And: How do you start a book? Like, do you have a bunch of tentative ideas and when you finish one you start working on another? And when do you tell your publisher what you’re doing? (You said you have x amount of time to finish Beloved Elodie, right? So there’s contracty stuff already?)

After I finish a book I give myself a little break, a few weeks generally. When I finish Beloved Elodie I plan to start excavating the pile of I-no-longer-know-what on my desk and cleaning out the closet downstairs where the ruined boots of winters past have collected. If I’m going to do the writing book next that will be easy to jump into, but when I start my next novel, yes, I will look over my list of idea notes. I hope the novel will be a third Elodie book, so I’ll be hunting for an idea I can frame as a mystery. If I don’t see anything in my notes that appeals to me, I’ll let my mind wander and take notes on anything it brings back. I may read a mystery or two. Often I reread fairy tales in my home collection. As I go along I write more notes. The ideas that appeal to me generate more musing and more writing than the others. Eventually I find most of my speculation settling on one big idea. The next thing that happens is that a beginning swims up to me. And I’m off.

There’s no set time when I tell my editor what I’m doing. I don’t make a secret of it. The contracty stuff specifies only that the book has to be fantasy, and of course it has to be a novel for kids. Rosemary (my editor) doesn’t have to approve my idea. Naturally, if I tell her and she spots a problem I want to know about it. For example, at one point I was considering extending a short story I wrote several years ago into a novel. I told her and she said there was a glut of dystopian books. What I had in mind was more utopian than dys, but I couldn’t figure out where I wanted to take the story. If I had worked it out (or if I do in the future) I would have had another conversation with her. After I explained what I wanted to do, if she thought it was still dystopian I might have held off on the idea until the dystopian craze faded.

And: Which is the more agonizing first draft–Two Princesses of Bamarre or Beloved Elodie? Or another one?

There are three contenders, the two you named and Fairest. Fairest might have been the worst. I couldn’t get the POV right. I thought I wouldn’t be able to write from Aza’s perspective because she’d be in a coma, so I tried it from the gnome zhamM’s, Prince Ijori’s, and third-person omniscient, and I wrote about 300 pages in each before realizing it wasn’t working. Finally I figured out the coma and I was able to have Aza tell her own story. I was able to use some of the 900 pages, but I had to recast everything.

On the other hand, whatever book I’m working seems toughest because the struggle is uppermost in my consciousness. Past pain fades.

On the third hand (hah!), each of these miserable books had its own delights too. In Two Princesses I loved fooling the reader with the specters and I loved writing the epic poem fragments. In Fairest writing the songs was a joy. In Beloved Elodie my favorite part is switching POVs chapter by chapter and finding voices for the four different speakers. Masteress Meenore’s dry voice is the most fun to write. And figuring out the mystery is fascinating, plus there’s some reader fooling here too.

And: Before you published Ella, were you feeling a bit lost, like you might not ever get published? Did you get that “why am I wasting my time on this?” feeling? The one where everyone looks at you funny because you’re the only person you know who’s writing a book on top of everything else?

Yeah, at around the nine-year mark I did get discouraged and thought of quitting. I don’t know how much longer I would have kept going, but then I got lucky and Harper accepted Ella. It’s even harder to get published today, I believe, when no publishers I know of look at unsolicited work. And yet people break in all the time. There’s hope, but writing and publishing both call for reserves of patience.

More questions from Charlotte and others next week.

Here are three prompts:

• Fairies are absent from many fairy tales, like “Snow White” and “Rumpelstiltskin.” In some, however, they’re critical, like “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Toads and Diamonds.” Pick one of these tales with fairies and imagine a back story that causes the fairy or fairies to care about the plight of these particular humans. Invent your own species of fairies and write a back story scene or an entire novel in which the known fairy tale is only a small part of the action.

• Imagine that Cinderella’s stepsisters have their own fairy godmothers. Rewrite the fairy tale and get these new fairies involved. What happens to them and to Cinderella? Heck, you can give everyone a fairy godmother: the stepmother, Cinderella’s father, the prince.

• Speaking of beginnings, see what you can do with this (you can change any of it): Once upon a time a girl saw a dryad slip out of a tree. The tree was oak. The girl was eleven and her eleven-year-old beagle had just died.

Have fun, and save what you write!