a source for Gothic fantasy and related conversations, publishing information, writer resources, inspiration, news in children's and teen literature, and author outreach
More Than a Little Crazy: An Interview with Darren Shan by Penelope Przekop from Aberration Nation. Peek: "In the end, after it [Cirque du Freak] was turned down by 20 publishers, HarperCollins in the UK took a chance on it. It was published in January 2000 and started selling like hot cakes all around the world. By accident, I found myself in the position of a globally successful children's author, and I haven't looked back since!" Note: I watched "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant," a film adaptation of Cirque du Freak this past weekend, and highly recommended it. Don't miss the special features.
Enter to win a copy of Morpheus Road: The Light by by D. J. MacHale (Aladdin, 2010). To enter, email me (scroll and click envelope) with your name and snail/street mail address and type "Morpheus Road: The Light" in the subject line (Facebook, JacketFlap, MySpace, and Twitter readers are welcome to just privately message/comment me with the name in the header/post; I'll write you for contact information, if you win). Deadline: May 31. Publisher sponsored; U.S. entries only. See also the book trailer.
More Personally
Interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith by Naomi Canale from Dreams Can Be Reached. Peek: "I would likely relate most to Kieren Morales from Tantalize and the upcoming graphic novel Tantalize: Kieren's Story (Candlewick). He’s a serious reader with aspirations of being a writer and he excels academically. He’s also family oriented, loyal, and takes commitment very much to heart."
"Occasionally, a character will emerge who’s something of a composite of a number of folks I’ve known.
"Nora from Eternal is someone like that. She’s an older lady—the chef at the castle, nurturing, likes to treat trouble with a hot meal, and is always willing to listen. She’s a tribute of sorts to my grandmothers and aunties."
When I was a teen, you read a book, you reached the end. You put it down and started the next. The experience ended at "The End." But for today's teens, "The End" is just the beginning.
The DVD extras generation is looking for an entire multimedia experience when he or she delves into a book. They want the world the author created to live and breathe, and they want to become a part of it. And as an author, you can build an incredibly loyal fan base by taking steps offer that enhanced experience to them.
These days, when a tween or teen finishes a book they enjoy, the first thing they do is Google the author or series title. They're looking for author websites with cool downloads, fan sites with forums they can chat on, videos on YouTube to watch, Facebook pages they can "like," and secret inside information about what's coming up next. In short, they're looking to become a part of the world in any way they can.
Publishers have been slow to realize this, and a lot of initial multimedia/online content originated with the authors themselves, using their own budgets to enrich the reading experience. Now publishers are starting to catch on and will develop websites and videos for their top-selling authors. But mid-listers are still going to have to go it alone.
Don't worry--you don't have to spend a ton of money to create these multimedia extras. For example, while fancy book trailers can cost thousands of dollars to produce, a local college student might produce one at a big discount--or even free--just for the experience and exposure they get from being listed on your website. And don't think that free necessarily means inferior quality--I've seen fan videos with way more sophistication than some of the professional ones. Just make sure you supervise where they get their images and music from. They need to be royalty free to use or you might get in trouble down the road.
As an alternative, a simple webcam video with you chatting one-on-one with readers can be just as effective as a full on book trailer, if not more so. Mainly because this is what teens do themselves.
Look up "haul videos" on YouTube sometime to see what I mean. There are thousands of teens just sitting in front of their webcams, chatting about what they bought at the mall. They talk right into the camera and there's little, if any editing.
Since most newer laptops come with cameras already installed, this could be an easy, completely free way to promote yourself and your book. In these videos, you can talk about what's going on with the books. Give readers top secret advanced information or just chat about the plot of the next installment or even your life or writing process in general.
The key is to be natural and lighthearted and make the videos fun. (And not too long--three-to-five minutes is perfect.)
Other things that teens love? Widgets which can provide countdowns to your book release. Widgetbox.com has a free service or a pro service for $29.99 a year. You can also create (or have your webmaster create) AIM icons, Twitter Icons, Blog Avatars and wallpaper downloads--all with your book covers. In addition to allowing teens to become a part of your book's world and remember your series between releases, you're also getting free advertising to all their friends when they stick your book cover on their AIM or Facebook page.
One thing I did--which has been time consuming, but instrumental in pushing my series--was creating a fan club. On my website, www.bloodcovenvampires.com, I have a "Want to Join the Blood Coven?" page where kids can sign up to become Vampires in Training. The kits I send contain a welcome letter from the vampire master, Magnus, a plastic "Vampire in Training" card to stick in their wallets (like a credit card--so much cooler than paper and you can get them made overseas pretty cheap - like $200 for 2,000 cards). They also get a magnet (I have those designed for free at VistaPrint and just pay shipping) and an autograph sticker they can place in their book. And lastly, I include six bookmarks. One to keep and five to give out to potential vampires in training that they deem worthy of the coven. There's also a forum where they can role play with the other vampires in training or just chat about the books.
Overwhelmed yet? Well, don't be. You don't have to do everything yourself. The thing is, readers don't just want to hang out in your world, they want to contribute to it. Encourage them to create fan videos and put them up on YouTube. Or draw pictures and post them to DeviantArt. Since a lot of kids will do this on their own and not tell you, you should regularly search these sites for content based on your books. If you find some, write to the user and ask them if you can post it on your blog. You can guarantee they'll say "yes" and send all their friends to your website to check out their stuff.
This is something teachers and librarians can help out with too. Buy a cheap webcam or a netbook with webcam installed and have kids do their own "book haul" videos by speaking into the camera about their favorite books and why they like them. Then upload the videos to YouTube (free) and send a link to the authors they mention, asking if they would consider embedding the video on their blogs or Facebook pages. How cool would it be to see your students' videos featured on their favorite author's page?
And lastly authors--communicate with your readers. When they write to you, answer them. When they post on your Facebook page, reply. I know it can be overwhelming, but even a one-line answer can build a relationship with a reader that will last a lifetime. They want to feel valued, important, part of the world. And sending a quick reply will make their day. They'll tell their friends and family and that's the kind of advertisement that money can't buy.
Because at the end of the day, it's not what medium you provide the "DVD Extras" in--video, podcast, website, downloads--it's how those extras make your readers feel about the world you've built for them. Draw them in, make them feel a part of things and let them know they're valuable to you. Because let's face it, the world couldn't exist without them!
Anyway, I could go on and on, but the point is this. Building a successful teen series and cultivating lifelong fans depends on a well-written book, a good publisher/distribution, and a whole lot of luck. But you can tip the scales in your favor by taking simple steps to build an online world that compliments your series. Not only will it spur sales and keep the momentum going between books, but it'll bring you closer to your readers and you'll all have a lot of fun!
Mari Mancusi used to wish she could become a vampire back in high school. But she ended up in another blood sucking profession--journalism --instead. Today she works as a freelance TV producer and author of books for teens, including The Blood Coven Vampire series.
When not writing about creatures of the night, Mari enjoys traveling, cooking, goth clubbing, watching horror movies, and her favorite guilty pleasure--video games. A graduate of Boston University and a two time Emmy Award winner, she lives in Austin, Texas; with her husband Jacob and their dog Molly. You can find Mari online at www.marimancusi.com.
To enter, email me (scroll and click envelope) with your name and snail/street mail address and type "Morpheus Road: The Light" in the subject line (Facebook, JacketFlap, MySpace, and Twitter readers are welcome to just privately message/comment me with the name in the header/post; I'll write you for contact information, if you win). Deadline: May 31. Publisher sponsored; U.S. entries only.
More News
Interview with Author R.L. LaFevers by Leah Cypress from The Enchanted Inkpot. Peek: "In addition to researching the British Museum, I poured over antique street maps of London, pictures of buildings, studied the Edwardian period and its differences from the Victorian period, London street life, clothing, funeral customs."
Check out the book trailer for Sea by Heidi R. Kling (Putnam, June 2010).
More Personally
Inquiry 1: Cynthia Leitich Smith: an author interview by Erin Moulton from The Day Job: A Writer's Inquiry. Peek: "With love to the literature and logic of the law, it's perhaps not the most poetic or action-packet reading, and it was a treat to come home again to those [children's-YA] books." Note: Erin's debut novel, Maple T. Rittle and the Quest for a Miracle, will be released by Philomel in summer 2011, and it's utterly splendid.
Attention Austinites: look for signed stock of Tantalize at Barnes & Noble in Round Rock and at the Arboretum. Signed stock of Eternal (Candlewick, 2010) also is available at the Round Rock store. And, as always, you can find signed copies of my books at BookPeople downtown.
I'm thrilled to announce that Ming Doyle is in the process of illustrating the interior art for my upcoming graphic novel, Tantalize: Kieren's Story (Candlewick, Feb. 2011).
The graphic novel is set during the same time as the Tantalize prose novel (Candlewick, 2007, 2008), is told from the character Kieren Morales's point of view, and includes several new scenes.
My editor was kind enough to share with me Ming's early sketches, and wow! What a treat to see Quincie, Kieren, Brad, and Sanguini's: A Very Rare Restaurant brought to life. Ming absolutely "gets" the world and its players while bringing her own fresh energy and perspective.
According to her bio, Ming is originally from Boston, the daughter of an Irish American sailor and a Chinese Canadian librarian. She's a 2007 graduate of Cornell with a dual concentration in painting and drawing. She says, "I am currently working on art all night and every day. I would probably love an espresso."
Rescued from the gallows in 1850s London, young orphan (and thief) Mary Quinn is surprised to be offered a singular education, instruction in fine manners -- and an unusual vocation.
Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls is a cover for an all-female investigative unit called The Agency, and at seventeen, Mary is about to put her training to the test.
Assuming the guise of a lady’s companion, she must infiltrate a rich merchant’s home in hopes of tracing his missing cargo ships. But the household is full of dangerous deceptions, and there is no one to trust -- or is there?
Packed with action and suspense, banter and romance, and evoking the gritty backstreets of Victorian London, this breezy mystery debuts a daring young detective who lives by her wits while uncovering secrets -- including those of her own past.
Introducing an exciting new series! Steeped in Victorian atmosphere and intrigue, this diverting mystery trails a feisty heroine as she takes on a precarious secret assignment.
How did you approach the research process for your story? What resources did you turn to? What roadblocks did you run into? How did you overcome them? What was your greatest coup, and how did it inform your manuscript?
I’m supposed to be an expert on the Victorian era. But while researching my PhD thesis, I realized I didn't know much about daily life in the 1850s.
Take the Great Stink of 1858, for example. We know the bare facts: toilets flushed right into the Thames, and Londoners pumped the water straight back out for cooking and bathing. People thought the smell made you sick – not germs. And future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli fled the House of Commons one day with a handkerchief over his nose, so evil was the stench.
Juicy, right?
But vivid as they are, these facts don’t tell what it was like in individual houses; for people who lived and worked and walked around the city every day; for those who lived beside the river. This squelchy, sticky reality is the Victorian period you don’t read about in nineteenth-century novels or diaries, and that’s why I chose the Great Stink as the backdrop for Spy.
However, I didn’t want to write an entire novel about sewage; for one thing, it’s hard to identify with it as a character. And I also wondered what happened to smart, unconventional women in the period. If you weren't a good little girl, and you didn’t have a lot of money, what on earth happened to you?
Women’s choices were grim, even for the clever. You could be a governess (underpaid, powerless – look at Jane Eyre, and remember that’s a happily-ever-after story!). You could live with your rich relatives as a semi-servant (Jane Austen has a lot to say about that). You could try for a job as a clerk (and earn half what the man next to you did, for doing the same work – some things haven’t changed that much).
And to do any of these jobs, you had to be respectable, educated, and extremely long-suffering. Just thinking about it makes me want to scream.
So this is where I’ve gone my own way. If you’re curious about the nitty-gritty of Victorian domesticity, I highly recommend Judith Flanders’s The Victorian House (Harper Perennial, 2003), an absolutely gripping account of daily life in each room of a nineteenth-century home.
On germs and cholera epidemics, I love Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map (Penguin, 2006), which came out after I’d researched Spy, but devoured anyway.
But my "greatest coup" in writing Spy was leaping away from history and imagining a bold, alternative fate for a girl like Mary Quinn.
As a historical fiction writer, how did you capture the voices of the era? What resources did you turn to? Did you run into challenges translating the language of the era for today's young readers? What advice do you have for other authors along these lines?
Oh, I’m still proud of this one: I queried UK agents as a test of authenticity, and it wasn’t until my agent offered representation that she realized I wasn’t British!
Clearly, having spent most of my adult life reading English literature helped with this act of ventriloquism.
Also, living in England gave me a first-hand understanding of the rhythms of British speech, and how Byzantine their regional and social distinctions can be.
So I was confident about how English my narrator sounded. But there was the additional problem of transposing the language back in time 150 years.
In practice, this means preserving the cadence of an English sentence – swift, staccato, with emphasis in different places than an American one – while using appropriately nineteenth century vocabulary. At the same time, the meaning has to be clear.
I often tried to define things in context: you may not know what a hansom is, but if I tell you that a man hailed one, climbed in, and asked the driver to take him to Bedford Square, it becomes perfectly clear that it’s a taxi cab. My vocabulary came straight from the great Victorian novelists: Dickens, Eliot, the Brontës. But I disagree with them in one respect.
In most Victorian novels, people speak in perfect, grammatical sentences (unless they’re working-class characters, in which case their speech is often spelled out fo-net-ick-ly – a major pet peeve of mine. It’s patronizing.) Did educated people never use slang, or contractions, or run-on sentences? And did the poor struggle to speak in their mother tongue? I think not.
Instead, I’d argue that people in Victorian England spoke more vividly and casually than we think – more "you and me" than "thee and thou." And this is what I’ve tried to do in Spy.
Cynsational Notes
From Candlewick Press: "Y. S. Lee has a PhD in Victorian literature and culture and says her research inspired her to write A Spy in the House, 'a totally unrealistic, completely fictitious antidote to the fate that would otherwise swallow a girl like Mary Quinn.'" Y. S. Lee lives in Ontario, Canada."
"'I literally gasped,' Smith laughs. 'I’ve always read that: 'She gasped,' and I thought no one ever really does it. But, apparently, yes, if you make The New York Times best-selling list for the first time and you had no idea it was going to happen, you will gasp.'"
What were you like as a YA reader? Who were your favorite authors? What were your favorite titles?
I read anything and everything! I'm the youngest of three girls, so mostly I'd just rifle through my older sisters' bookshelves (this is probably why I got into romance novels at a very young age).
I remember spending many nights staying up late reading Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine. To this day, I credit them with making me a speed reader--I turned those pages so fast they were almost on fire.
What first inspired you to write for teens?
When I was still in high school I read an interview with a romance author who said she'd decided to write after finishing a book and thinking, I could do that.
As soon as I read those words, I thought the same thing: I could do that too.
For some reason, it just always stuck in my head that I'd write romance novels. It wasn't until 2006, when I really dedicated myself to writing, that I realized that I could write something other than romance, and that's when I realized that YA books were really exploding.
I remembered how much I adored reading as a teen, and it seemed like the most perfect fit! It sounds a bit lame, but until that point it had just never occurred to me that I could write for teens--I only needed a little nudge.
Could you tell us about your path to publication--any sprints or stumbles along the way?
I've been phenomenally lucky in my path to publication. A few months after starting in private practice as a lawyer, I realized that I didn't want to be doing that forever and I wondered what would have happened if I hadn't quit writing romance novels to go to law school.
I decided that I'd spend the next 10 years writing, revising, and submitting books (in addition to practicing law) and not allowing myself to quit when I hit stumbling blocks and rejections.
When NaNoWriMo came around in 2006, I knew I wanted to do it, but I had a collection of half-finished books and one of the rules of NaNo is that you have to start something new.
When my critique partner, Diana Peterfreund, read what I had so far, she encouraged me to keep going (and I knew she was being honest cause she’d been "meh" about an earlier project of mine--thank goodness!).
I ran into the usual stumbling blocks: fear that I'd mess up the story, not knowing what happened next, etc.
Once the first draft was finished, I spent a lot of time revising--as much time or more than I'd spent writing the book in the first place!
I wanted to know when it got rejected that I’d given the book my best shot--there was nothing more I could have done.
As beta readers were going through my drafts, I spent a lot of time researching agents. I still didn't think the book had a shot (in fact, I thought agents would laugh at my query letter with the word "zombie" in it,) and so one of the agents I queried was someone I didn't know as much about but who'd recently repped a zombie book (so at least I knew he wouldn’t laugh too hard at me!).
A few weeks after I sent my query, I signed with that agent--Jim McCarthy at Dystel & Goderich. After a few revisions, he sent the manuscript out on a Friday afternoon, received a pre-empt offer Monday morning, and I'd signed by the end of the day.
Total and absolute dream come true.
Congratulations on the success of The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Delacorte, 2009, 2010)! Could you tell us a little about the book?
The Forest of Hands and Teeth is about a girl, Mary, who grows up in a village surrounded by a forest full of zombies about 150 years after the zombie apocalypse.
Her village has been totally cut off from the world and told by the ruling Sisterhood that they're the last humans left.
But Mary's grown up with stories about the ocean (which most people in the village think is a myth), and she thinks it's a place that's safe from the undead.
She just has to decide if she’s willing to risk the Forest to find out if there’s still a world beyond the fences. There’s also romance.
What was your initial inspiration for the story?
Like a lot of books, there were several random inspirations.
Part of what I loved about the zombie books and movies was the idea of survival--how we cope with an event that totally devastates and alters our world.
Then one day I read an article about the overfishing of tuna, and I thought how odd it would be for future generations to grow up in a world without tuna when most of us today have cans of it stacked away in our pantry.
This made me think about what we lose over time--how something so common in our world could be lost to another.
What was the timeline between spark and publication, and what were the major events along the way?
I still have the email I sent to myself with that first line on Nov. 2, 2006. I finished the first draft that April and revised it through the summer.
In August 2007, my critique partner got tired of me waffling about sending out query letters so she sent one for me, spurring me into action. I signed with Jim around Sept. 20, 2007; and he sold the book Oct. 15 that year. Two days later, I had my first edit letter!
Much of the year is a blur of excitement and nerves--I really had no idea what to expect and what the timeline was for a book.
Definite high points included seeing the cover in February 2008, getting ARCs, going on a pre-publication tour and meeting George Romero (I got to sign a copy of my book to him, and he asked about movie rights! When I got home after meeting him, I had author copies sitting by my door--perfect timing!).
What were the challenges (literary, research, psychological, and logistical) in bringing it to life?
I'm not an outliner, so I definitely ran into challenges when I wasn't sure what should happen next in the book (I still face those challenges, but at least now I know I've figured it out in the past which gives me hope that I can do it again!).
One challenge I have whenever I write a book is the fear of closing off plots. I always think of a new book as an endless series of hallways with infinite doorways and each word you write and each plot point you decide, you're closing those doors.
It's sad to think of all the potential ideas that never make it.
What was it like being a debut author?
Amazing and terrifying and wonderful and every other emotion all combined together.
I was so lucky to be a part of a group of debut YA and middle grade authors called the 2009 Debutantes, and so we all went through the experience together, propping each other up, cheering each other on, sharing information and stories. Being with them really enriched the entire experience for me.
I go through these moments of thinking that having a book out is ordinary, and then sometimes I pinch myself and ask if this is all really real.
Congratulations on the release of The Dead-Tossed Waves (Delacorte, 2010)! Could you tell us about this novel?
The Dead-Tossed Waves is a companion to The Forest of Hands and Teeth and is told from the point of view of Mary's (the protagonist from the first book) daughter, Gabry.
Gabry grows up safe in a town by the ocean until one night, against her better judgment, she crosses the barrier to go hang out at an old amusement park with her friends (and the guy she has a crush on).
Being a book with zombies, things go terribly wrong, and she starts to realize that this safe little bubble she's lived in has really been a lie.
Now she has to decide if living a safe life is really living at all.
How was it different, craft-wise, writing your sophomore novel versus writing your first?
I'd actually never planned on writing a sequel--to me, The Forest of Hands and Teeth was a stand alone, but when my editor asked me if I would write more I jumped at the chance because I loved my protagonist and her world.
However, when I sat down to write more of her, I realized that I hadn’t set up any story arcs that would carry past the first book and this tripped me up.
Eventually I realized that Mary's story was pretty much finished, and I really wanted to write about a new character--someone who'd grown up in this town by the ocean.
But at the same time, I wanted to carry through some of the other threads and unanswered questions, so I figured the best solution was to have Mary still be a character, just not a major character.
Why spooky stories? Are you a spooky person?
What's funny to me is that I never thought of The Forest of Hands and Teeth and The Dead-Tossed Waves as being spooky stories! It was just the world my characters lived in, and I think I accepted it as much as they did.
In fact, I'm someone who is very easily scared--I still jump when I watch "Dawn of the Dead" (even though I’ve seen it a million times), and I still freak myself out at night when I'm home alone.
If you could go back in time and talk to your beginning-writer self, what would you tell her?
That it would work out and to relax a little. But at the same time, one of the things I loved about being a beginning writer is that I had all these amazing things to daydream about.
I remember after I sold my book thinking, what will I daydream about when I’m falling asleep at night now? And I realized that I had to find new dreams to focus on.
What can your readers look forward to next?
I just finished the third book in the series, The Dark and Hollow Places, which should come out in spring 2011.
For those who don't want to wait that long, I also have three short stories set in the same world coming out this year.
The first, "Hare Moon," is coming out in the Kiss Me Deadly anthology, edited by Trisha Telep (Running Press, July 2010) and is about Sister Tabitha when she was a teen.
The second, "Flotsam & Jetsam," is in The Living Dead 2 anthology edited by John Joseph Adams (Night Shade) and is about two boys on a life raft after the infection breaks out on their cruise ship.
Third is "Bougainvillea," coming out in the Zombies vs. Unicorns anthology edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (McElderry, Sept. 2010). My story is set about 15 years after the Return on the island of Curacao--I'm so excited about all three stories!
Cynsational Notes
This is the first stop on Carrie's blog tour! Here's the whole line-up:
Peek: "If the thought of coming up with questions feels daunting, no worries. I'll be happy to talk you through it. I'll forward the questions on to Cynthia and she'll send me back her answers."
Oh, my! Oh, wow! Oh...I'm greatly honored--and stunned--to share the news that Eternal (Candlewick) has just debuted at #5 on The New York Times Best Seller List!
Children's Best Sellers - Paperback, to be exact. The full list is available to subscribers online and will appear in Sunday's paper (March 14, 2010).
It's the first time that one of my books has made the list, and to be candid, I'm a little teary and profoundly grateful.
And absolutely wowed and thrilled and, okay, I had to have both my agent and editor assure me that it was really for real, but they both said "yes!" and so... Yowza!
Thanks so much to all of you who have supported this novel and my writing for all these years!
Big heaping thanks to my YA readers--it's a pleasure and honor to work for you! In fact, it's my dream come true!
Thanks to the booksellers--a million times over! I know it's tough on the front lines right now, and I appreciate you!
Thanks to the teachers and librarians for everything y'all do! I wouldn't never made it this far without your support, and I'm hopeful that our future will be just as sparkly!
It's quite possible that this post will set the exclamation-point record at Cynsations! Before signing off though, I want to take just one more moment to cheer and reflect.
And, with All The World by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee (Beach Lane) listed at #8 among picture books, this may be the first time that two Austin-based children's-YA authors have made it in the same week. Note: Liz is the Austinite!
[I'm unsure on the "first-time" here, as All the World and Jacqueline Kelly's Newbery Honor Book The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (Holt) were on the list at about the same time, but I'm not clear on whether they actually overlapped.]
And that's enough from me! Oh, wait! I have just one more thought...
Thanks to you, too, Zachary & Miranda! There's more of your story to come!
Lauren Kate is the first-time author of Fallen (Delacorte, 2009). From the promotional copy:
There's something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.
Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price's attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He's the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.
Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce--and goes out of his way to make that very clear--she can't let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret . . . even if it kills her.
Dangerously exciting and darkly romantic, Fallen is a page turning thriller and the ultimate love story.
Are you a plotter or a plunger? Do you outline first, write to explore, or engage some combination of the two? Then where do you go from there? What about this approach appeals to you? What advice do you have for beginning writers struggling with plot?
Is it possible to be both a plotter and a plunger? Or a plunger who’s working on plotting? And sometimes a plotter who’s dying to plunge? I have struggled with plot for my whole writing career, and I’m still looking for the perfect mix of meticulousness and mystery.
Character is easy for me. Dialogue? Bring it on. Descriptions sometimes have to be pulled out of me like teeth, but I’ll give ‘em up eventually.
But plot? Most of the time I don’t have a clue. I’m the writer who spent six years working on a love story between a teen girl and her uncle—whose plot still needs a major kick in the pants to come to any sort of resolution.
I’m also the writer who kicked out four pseudonymous novels in two years with fun but very straightforward plots. You could say I was looking for a middle ground.
The two novels I have published on my own are getting closer to that. The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove (Razorbill, 2009) and Fallen were both meticulously plotted out before I wrote them. Character descriptions, paragraph-long synopses for each chapter, “big” endings, the whole deal.
Both outlines (along with a few chapters) were shared with writer-friends, agents and/or editors at very early stages.
And because the stories were larger and more complicated than I’d first realized, I actually did revisions on the outlines. Way more plotting than I’d ever done before.
At the end of plotting, when I was ready to plunge, it was comforting to sit down every day and know I had to write a chapter where X happened, followed by Y, and then Z.
But sometimes, it was also uninspiring. Suddenly, Y bored me, and Z felt really predictable. But it was in the outline, which fit together like a puzzle! What to do?
Eventually, I realized there were days when I would have to loosen my leash from my outlines, to let the story adapt and change organically as I went along. This was a very good decision, one that took me too long to make.
Right now, I’m in the middle of revising Torment (Fallen’s sequel). And honestly, the experience writing the first book and the second book has been night and day. Maybe it’s because much of the structure and world-building (see below) is already in place from the first book. Maybe it’s because I know the characters better.
But I know part of it is because I’m constantly refining my plotter-to-plunger ratio: freeing myself to stray when inspiration strikes, returning to my outline when I want to feel more grounded.
As a paranormal writer, how did you go about building your world?
When I started writing Fallen, I wasn’t really aware that I was building a world. Looking back, I wonder how that was possible. Because world-building seems like Step One in how to write paranormal fiction, doesn’t it?
I used to work in YA publishing and got to edit many paranormal and fantasy authors. Working with them, I was always very conscious of the ways in which they built and experimented with their worlds.
I even enjoyed being a task-master if they broke the rules they’d set up. "But you said a wizard could only come back from the dead eleven times! This makes twelve." That kind of thing.
But when it came to writing my own story, Fallen really began with the character. I had Lucinda and I had her conflict: she was looking for an escape from her past and a connection to something that felt real. That was where Daniel came in—bringing with him the beginnings of what I guess is called “the world.”
Suddenly, angels, demons, millennium-old curses, scores of reincarnations, and dueling forces of good and evil were all battling for a piece of the action in my little romance story. So it—the world, I mean—had to get bigger. Yank us into the world of Sword and Cross, my agent demanded when I sent him the first few chapters. Make it oppressive and inescapable and all-encompassing.
Oppressive? I had never written paranormal fiction in my life, and suddenly I wondered: could I do it?
Writers talk frequently about the worlds of fantasy and paranormal fiction, but of course, every novel has a world. A world is really just a setting, isn’t it? A setting whose bricks and mortar are really just description and imagination.
Even though, technically, Long Island already existed, Fitzgerald still had to build the world in The Great Gatsby (1925), didn’t he? You could say it’s just description, but the kind of description that informs everything else in the book—the protagonist, the conflicts, the emotional arcs of every character—that’s when description becomes world-building.
Turns out, it’s much less scary to think about world-building as imaginative description. The biggest difference between writing the worlds of straightforward contemporary fiction and paranormal fiction is that you get to make up fun new rules and dialect. I can’t say where most of these terms or rules come from. They just pop out of my mind onto the screen of my computer, and then I spend the rest of the series working through (and sometimes paying the price for) that little bit of impulsiveness.
For example, at the end of Fallen, I made an offhanded reference to a truce that is to last for eighteen days. Didn’t think too much about it, kind of just made it up. I had no idea that that one line would dictate the entire structure of the sequel, Torment. But once it went to the printer and I sat down to plot out Torment, eighteen days was what I had to work with, so eighteen days it was!
I’m not complaining, but I’ve learned to keep a notebook with a list of rules and terms for when I forget what I’ve tossed into Luce’s world. And I love the fact that I have three more books to work though, to let the world grow bigger, denser, and more complicated over the course of the series.
As you can see, building the world of my books is something I’m still figuring out, but I’m learning how to make the most of it, and sometimes even to enjoy it.
Cynsational Notes
The New Voices Series is a celebration of debut authors of 2009. Note: interviews with the debut authors of 2010 are scheduled to begin soon.
One of the most exciting challenges I face when writing fantasy is world-building.
With a brand new book in a brand new world, the challenge is to figure the world out. What cultures exist, and how do they interact? How does magic work, and what are its limitations?
This is a fun stage, though the first book in a new world is normally a mess, because I spend a lot of time walking around, looking through a character’s eyes and going, “That’s cool. What do I do with it?”
In the Forests of the Night (Laurel Leaf, 2000) was the sixth or seventh book I wrote in Nyeusigrube. It took me that long to develop the world enough in my own mind to write a coherent story within it.
Once I, as the author, have a sense of the world, I need to figure out a way to communicate it to the reader without drowning them in info-dump that slows the plot.
Imagine writing a story about a girl who has ridden horses all her life, who goes to compete at professional horse-racing. There is probably no reason that anyone in that story is going to take the time to say, "A horse is a tall animal with four hooves. It’s thinner than a cow, with slender legs…" Everyone in the story knows what a horse is; they might think or talk about technical details ("Oh, I need to remember to get new shoes for that horse"), but they will not bother to describe the animal itself. That’s fine, because most people reading the story already know what a horse is.
In fantasy, however, a writer is often faced with a circumstance where the character is encountering something that is as familiar as a horse to him, but unfamiliar to the reader. This might include animals, or land features, or cultural norms, or something else entirely.
Either way, the challenge is to somehow communicate to the reader what this thing is, and that it is normal to the character, without the narrator taking the time to make an aside that interrupts the narrative flow and seems odd for the character himself.
The Kiesha’ra Series was especially challenging in this way; I often needed to clarify the world for my editor, so she could help me figure out how to explain to the reader.
Then, of course, there is the challenge of a well-developed world: Maintaining canon.
I sometimes have people say to me, “It’s fantasy. You can do whatever you want.”
Whatever has been established for the world needs to have consistency through stories, or a very good reason for changing.
In In the Forests of the Night, Risika says there are ghosts; in Token of Darkness (Delacorte, 2010), it is an important plot-point that Ryan le Coire says ghosts do not exist. Both books are canon.
In this case, the apparent contradiction is solved by a matter of semantics: Risika isn’t a witch, and she uses the term "ghost" in a different way than Ryan does. However, since no one in Token of Darkness knows Risika (Ryan certainly knows of her, but it is unlikely that they have met), and they certainly have no access to her interior narration, I needed to find a way as writer to acknowledge and clarify the apparent contradiction without Cooper stepping aside to say, “In Forests, Risika claims…”
Some people think writing fantasy is easier, because you can do “anything.” Maybe they are right, but writing fantasy for publication is harder.
In the real world, I can assume most people are familiar with basic facts of reality.
In fantasy, even the law of gravity sometimes needs to be clarified.
Token of Darkness Giveaway
Enter to win one of five copies of Token of Darkness (Delacorte, 2010)! To enter, email me (scroll and click envelope) with your name and snail/street mail address and type "Token of Darkness" in the subject line.
Facebook, JacketFlap, MySpace, and Twitter readers are welcome to just privately message me with the title in the header or comment on the interview post; I'll write you for contact information, if you win.
Deadline: midnight CST March 6. Note: U.S. entries only. Sponsored by Random House.
And in the comments section, you're invited to ask questions or share your thoughts for a chance to win a paperback copy of Eternal (Candlewick, 2010)(excerpt) and your choice of an Eternal T-shirt!
Eternal is a YA Gothic fantasy, with some humor and strong romantic elements, set in the same universe as Tantalize (2007, 2008). The two casts will crossover in Blessed (Feb. 2011). There's also a fourth (untitled) forthcoming prose novel in the series, and graphic novel adaptations of Tantalize (Feb. 2011) and Eternal are also in the works. The series is published Candlewick Press.
Enter to win Linger by Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic, 2010) and Matched by Ally Condie (Dutton, Nov. 2010) from P.J. Hoover at Roots in Myth. See more information on the giveaway. Deadline: June 16.
More Than a Little Crazy: An Interview with Darren Shan by Penelope Przekop from Aberration Nation. Peek: "In the end, after it [Cirque du Freak] was turned down by 20 publishers, HarperCollins in the UK took a chance on it. It was published in January 2000 and started selling like hot cakes all around the world. By accident, I found myself in the position of a globally successful children's author, and I haven't looked back since!" Note: I watched "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant," a film adaptation of Cirque du Freak this past weekend, and highly recommended it. Don't miss the special features.
Gothic Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, and Urban Fantasy for Tweens and Teens from Cynthia Leitich Smith Children's-YA Literature Resources. An annotated bibliography of spooky reads, plus links to related Cynsations author interviews, horror-writer resources, and much more! See also Suspense for Teens and Tweens.
