Brian M: Reimagining a Classic: Story Breeds Story

First off, reimagining a classic is not a habit you want to get into. Being known as a writer who cribs every plot and character he comes up with is not a good idea. Yet, sometimes there arises in a writer’s life the urge for a story do-over. E.g. “Romeo and Juliet” transformed into “West Side Story,” Austin’s Emma updated to “Clueless.” So, given Hemingway’s famous line, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” (no, he wasn’t quoting Owen Wilson’s character in “Midnight in Paris”) what better book to inspire imitation then the “one book.”

In my case, the urge to riff off Huck Finn Thirty Three Years Among Our Wild Indians by Col. Richard I. Dodge. In 1884, before Huck Finn was published (1885 in the U.S.) Twain read Dodge’s book and wrote about 1500 words in the book’s margins outlining a sequel to Huck Finn. Twain immediately wrote nine and half chapters, just beginning the story. To our knowledge, he never picked it up again. (Life published these chapters in 1969; two writers have attempted to blindly finish the story with the title, Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer Among the Indians.) began when I met a man who possesses a book once owned by Twain:

Twain’s marginalia notes have never been cataloged by scholars, so you can imagine my excitement given the prospect of seeing them. You can also imagine the reluctance of the owner of the Dodge book containing Twain’s notes, Robert Slotta, to show them to me. After all, I was merely a midlist YA author. I needed to bring something to the table.

So I did. I wrote a book proposal to Mr. Slotta in which: 1) the Dodge book with Twain’s notes in it becomes the McGuffin of a contemporary story in which the main character, Billy Allbright, is thrust into a journey that’s as adventure-filled as Huck’s trip down the Mississippi; and 2) the story echoes Twain’s distillation of Huck Finn: “...a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.” But that was merely my opening gambit.

I then proposed to Slotta that should this first book, Adventures of Billy Allbright, be published, we would strike a deal: he would show me the Twain notes in their entirety, and with Billy Allbright as a modern framing story, we would travel back in time to reveal the adventure Twain had planned for Huck, Tom, and Jim after they “light out for the Territory.” Slotta was agreeable and we drank to our lofty plan over some Mark Twain Bourbon.

Extensive research ensued, which you’d better love if you want to write something that’s true to the spirit, style, and intention of the writer/story you’ve chosen as your muse. I immersed myself in Twain biographies, multiple works of literary criticism, and threw myself into the sea of Twain’s writing, fiction and non-fiction, not the least of course, Huck Finn.

For me, research is a bipolar task. While part of the brain was pickling itself in all-things-Twain, my imagination was constantly letting ideas, character notions, plot twists, and turns of phrase pop from the source material. In this dialogue between Twain terra firma and a writer’s imagination, exciting things began to happen. Questions jumped out like, “Okay, if racism/slavery was the big issue Twain/Huck was grappling with back then, what could possibly be the modern equivalent?” My answer: homophobia. Then another question arose.

From the broad strokes Slotta had provided re Twain’s intentions in the Huck Finn sequel (that Huck and Tom abandon Christianity and convert to an Indian religion) I knew Twain wanted to tackle Christianity (which he certainly did many years later). So, how might I follow Twain’s lead and do the same? The answer caromed off the homophobia idea. My Huck/Billy would be shackled with the homophobia of Christian fundamentalism. And Billy’s journey (along a tarmac river) would be a story in which “...a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.”

While those were two thematic borrowings from Twain, borrowing can also come from tiny details (especially when you’re a research wacko like me). I’ll provide one example to illustrate how carried away reimagining can get. Whence the name “Billy Allbright?”

In the University of California Press edition of Huck Finn, which reinserted several passages Twain cut before the 1885 publication, there is a ghost story. It involves a raftsman haunted by a barrel floating down the river, following him. When the barrel catches up to him, the distraught man opens it and discovers a dead baby, his own, that he had murdered. The raftsman drowns himself holding the baby. The dead baby is named Charles William Allbright. The father’s name is Dick Allbright. Billy (Charles William) Allbright is my main character; his father, Richard Allbright. In my mind, Twain may have been haunted by the unfinished creation of a Huck Finn sequel, and by never finishing it he smothered it in its infancy.

The above three “parallels” (for lack of a better term) to Huck Finn/Twain were, of course, just the beginning. As the dance between the classic and a new story develops, you must choose what to hold close and what to fling away. And just as the Japanese are famous for “reverse engineering” the American auto business, the reimagining writer must reverse engineer the classic, take it apart, see what works, hurl parts around, and reassemble it into something both recognizable and new.

My proposal for Adventures of Billy Allbright eventually became the recently published YA novel, You Don’t Know About Me (the first five words of Huck Finn). As to a hoped for second book revealing Twain’s original intent for Huck, Tom, and Jim in the Territory, Slotta got cold feet and didn’t wish to share the notes. C’est la vie. For now.

However, I did manage to publish one book, and garnered a review from The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books that tells me I did my homework. Here are snippets from it.

Sometimes the remake gets it just right—not only adopting the plot and character arcs that made the first book great but also manipulating the style and sensibilities of the source text to refresh and renew our acquaintance with it, all while creating a story that stands alone on its merits. You Don’t Know about Me, Brian Meehl’s revision of Huckleberry Finn, is one of those. ... Meehl’s engagement with Twain is flawless in all of its layers and facets. ... Clearly, the book stands on its own merits as an exploration of one boy’s quest to understand the seemingly irreconcilable contradictions of his faith, his family, and his friendships, but it will also make young people better readers of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by helping them see the ironies and contradictions Twain explored in that book in comparison with present-day contexts.

If just one reader of my book is inspired to read Huck Finn, I would be thrilled to know that this reimaginer was “paying it backward.”

Varian:Writing Across Gender - Men Writing Female Protagonists

A few weeks ago, a current student of my MFA program asked for suggestions on how male authors approach writing female protagonists. I figured I’d share my response here, as it’s not a topic I’ve seen a lot of on the Internet.

But first, a disclaimer:

In most ways, I don’t think writing across gender is any different than writing across race, or age, or anything else. It’s our job to create a very specific character—not just a girl, but “an eighteen-year-old African-American girl living with her father in Columbia, SC who was encouraged to terminate her pregnancy at age 15 and is still dealing with the emotional repercussions of those actions.” It’s all about the specificity, and if that rings true, everything else will work itself out.

End disclaimer.

Here are some of the practical things that I do when writing from a female POV:

1) I get feedback from quite a few women beta readers. I try to capture as wide of a cross-section as possible--different ages, different cultural backgrounds, etc. I know that what’s realistic to a 15 year-old girl may ring untrue for a 35 year-old woman. However, if they both call BS on a twelve-year-old girl wearing stilettos, then I know I have a problem.

2) I write a lot of realistic YA fiction, so I read a lot of realistic YA fiction, especially written from the female POV, and especially written by women. I spend a lot of time evaluating the author’s use of language--exploring which words “sound” better in a girl POV. This is so, so, so true when dealing with body issues and sexual relationships. Some of my favorite books to reference include:

Before I Die by Jenny Downham
This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen
Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb
The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

3) I explore when things don’t ring true to me. I ask myself if I’m questioning something because (1) I don’t believe that a girl (or a boy) would act this way or if it’s because (2) I don’t WANT to believe that a character will act a certain way.

A slight distinction, but one that makes all the difference.

A lot of people have problems with the blow job scene in Looking for Alaska (I know I talk about LOA a lot, but Green did some really smart craft things in this novel). Some say that this scene doesn’t ring true—that a girl would know what to do in that situation, and that Pudge and Lara wouldn’t ask a friend for advice. However, I think some readers have problems in general with the proliferation of “one-sided” oral sex in YA literature (which I actually have issues with as well). We don’t want to like the scene, or the character, so we label the scene as not ringing true.

I find that responses like this are often the case when we say that a character’s too whiny or needy or mean. For a long time, I didn’t like The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson. I didn’t want to root for Gilly; she was too offensive--almost racist. But that didn’t make her an unbelievable character. Same with “Alice”, the protagonist from Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott. I didn’t believe it because I didn’t WANT to believe it. It made me too sad.I’m not saying that this happens often, but it does happen.

4) I also do as much research as possible. No, I can’t get pregnant, but I can take a pregnancy test. I can walk around in a pair of heels. And, I tie my own emotional baggage (for lack of a better word) to my character. Although my character and I may not share the same “physical” situation, I can use my own experiences to bring emotional truth to the novel. And while boys and girls sometimes act in different ways, I think their core wants--the need to be loved and respected; the need to protect themselves and others that they care about; and so on--are universal.

5) Maybe most importantly, I recognize that each reader will bring their specific backgrounds, experience, etc. to a novel. Something just may not ring true for them. And that’s okay--they have the right to disagree with me. But I hope that my readers are able to see “reasonable plausibility” in what I write. I want a reader to be able to say, “Okay, there’s no way I would have done that at sixteen, but I can see, given the circumstances, why this character did that.”

So, for those of you out there that write across gender, are there any suggestions I should consider adding to my list?

Marianna: Debut Year Continued - First Signing

In my post at the beginning of this (my debut) year, I mused that my entry to the world of published authors might require me to enter the world of therapy, too. I’m now picking up the story of my potential mental disintegration with last week’s major development – my first Official Author Event: signing galleys of my upcoming YA novel FROST at Book Expo America.

I was completely thrilled that HarperCollins asked me to sign at BEA. But being my first Official Author Event, it did inspire a bit of handwringing. I couldn’t help but see it as an entry exam to this new stage of life, a stage in which I will occasionally be expected to change out of my writing “clothes” (whatever random ensemble of fabric covers my body enough that I can answer the door for the UPS man) and interact with readers. Yikes!

Admittedly, as exams go, signing at BEA was kindergarten level: all I had to do was sit at a table and write my name a few times.

There were a couple of worrisome x-factors, though:

1. Would anyone bother to get a book signed by an author they’d never heard of, or would I be sitting alone at the table trying not to cry for 30 minutes?

2. If there were people in my line, would I be able to control my hand well enough to hold the Sharpie, and my mouth/tongue well enough to form coherent sentences if I needed to speak? My nervous system has been known to launch sneak attacks during events where attention is directed toward me. All of a sudden, my legs will go so wobbly I can barely stand, or I’ll unleash a moment of babble. So any physical malfunction seemed possible.

My modest goal for the day was to get through it without doing anything to make people think I’d sustained a serious head injury on the way to the Javits Center.

As the signing approached, the fear that I’d be weeping alone next to a pile of unwanted books disappeared pretty quickly. First, agent Sara, editor Kristin, publicist Alison, and marketer Olivia were there to support me. (My own personal entourage!) If worse came to worst, I figured they all could stand on line, multiple times, in identity-disguising outfits.

It became clear that such drastic measures wouldn’t be necessary almost an hour before the signing, when a blogger friend came up to me and said, “I’m seventh in your line!” and pointed to a bunch of people sitting on the floor. After a moment of confusion, I realized the people on the floor were waiting. For my signing. Almost an hour in advance, and they were already waiting to get a copy of my book!?!? (Thank you HarperCollins for the gorgeous cover!!)

By the time I took my seat at the table, there were enough people that I knew I’d be busy for the whole 30 minutes. Fear #1 was entirely unwarranted. Phew.

I uncapped the Sharpie. I figured out what page to sign on. I gave the line-wrangler the go ahead to send the first person up. And as I looked at ALL THOSE PEOPLE who wanted something from me, Fear #2 reared its ugly head. All they need is a signature and a smile, I reminded myself. You can do this. But when the first two people in line both mentioned how nervous I seemed, and I realized I was shaking and saw how chicken-scrawly and unfamiliar my writing in their books was, and all those people were looking at me, well…

I became concerned.

Until something unexpected happened. As I read people’s nametags and recognized some names, and didn’t recognize others but saw where they worked or blogged, something clicked. Here, in the flesh, were readers. These people were going to read my book! Suddenly, I didn’t want to sign quickly and send them on their way. I wanted to know who they were! I wanted to talk to them, to ask them questions, to get their blog addresses, to find out where their libraries were…

Because this thing – this whole publishing-a-book thing – it wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about these people who held FROST in their hands. To them, my novel might just have been one more to be shipped home. But to me, this transaction – handing over my book – felt much more important than that. After working on FROST for years, there’s a lot of me in the pages. Seeing those readers holding it… well, it made me feel connected to them in a way I hadn’t anticipated. So I didn’t just sign and smile. I tried to ask every person a question or two; not to fill the silence, but because I was genuinely interested in the answers.

Once I started interacting, the event wasn’t so much about me anymore. And – to my great surprise – I didn’t just survive, but actually enjoyed myself.

I did still have moments of nerves. My hand trembled slightly as I wrote, and I messed up on one reader’s name, right after telling her how pretty it was. (Sorry, Aryanna!) But the experience wildly surpassed anything I’d expected.

I’m sure that not all my author events will go as smoothly as this first one, but I’ll worry about those later. For now, I’m going to file away the therapists’ numbers I’ve been saving since my previous blog post. I won’t be using them. At least, not yet!

Megan: Publishing for Reluctant Readers

I had an English professor who used to say, “There are two types of people in the world, those who divide the world into two, and those who don’t.” Usually I tend to think that making either or distinctions doesn’t adequately capture a situation, but for the sake of this post, I’m going to succumb to the temptation. I am going to break teen readers into two camps: voracious and reluctant readers.

I think we all know voracious readers. Chances are many of the readers of this blog would consider themselves to be part of this camp. At the high school where I am a librarian, I am fortunate to have many voracious readers. They check out books ten at a time, and come back to me with full reviews, asking for more. These also tend to be students whose families will take them to Borders to buy books, so they have healthy home libraries as well.

Reluctant readers are trickier to define, and to serve. I took a great class with Jenine Lillian, and she presented it this way: if you ask a reluctant reader to make a list of his or her ten favorite things to do, reading isn’t on it. These are not poor readers, or poor students. Reading just isn’t at the top of their To Do list. Many of my students fall into this camp. They come to me not because they want a book, but because they have to have one for independent reading. Some tell me that they don’t like to read, but I can’t help but wonder if there were more books that they liked, would they like to read more?

What I’ve noticed is that there is a difference between what the voracious and reluctant readers choose to read. Most of my students want real life stories, be they gritty tales like those from Ellen Hopkins, more romantic Sarah Dessen-fare. I have boys who reminisce fondly about Holes --arguing with an English teacher about its literary merit -- but have yet to find a group of characters as relatable as the boys at Camp Green Lake. I have a student who has dutifully renewed An Abundance of Katherines at least four times, slowly making his way through it during our school’s SSR time. Another gives me updates on his progress through Fat Kid Rules the World. When these students read books, they want books about kids like them. Kids who play basketball or skateboard; kids who get crushes. Their life, only magnified: wittier, more intense, more real.

Of course there are many books that my reluctant readers enjoy, and I work very hard to match kids with books. When I succeed, the feeling is amazing. What I want is more, more, more. The word I hear through the author grapevine is that publishers want this kind of book, too, but say it won’t sell. And I guess to a certain extent that’s true. I mean, it only makes sense to meet the desires of the bibliophiles who will read -- and buy -- dozens of books each year, rather than the kid who keeps one book in his backpack for months on end. But here’s the other way of looking at it: If you build it, they will come. If more books are published appeal to reluctant readers, maybe those readers won’t be so reluctant.

In the end what a librarian hopes to build -- a lifelong reader -- will serve the publishing business well in the end. Because when a kid finds one book that speaks to them, they are more willing to try another.

Rob: It Was Easier The First Time

So, I wrote a book, and I loved it. I sent it to Sara, and she loved it. She sent it to editors and they loved it (some more than others) and it sold in a 3-book deal.

And we all lived happily ever after.

Until it came time to write Book 2. Man, this thing is killing me.

Writing sequels is hard. When you write the first book, you can do anything that you want. You can create any kind of characters with any kinds of flaws and arcs, and you can send the plot in any direction, in any setting. But when you write a sequel, you're locked in. While you still get some elements of discovery, there are an awful lot of places where you have to color inside the lines. Think of it like building a house: your first book lays the foundation and puts up the first floor. Your second book has to build on that: If your first floor is a 1000-square-foot bungalow, your second floor simply can't be a 3,000-square-foot Colonial. That would be a really ugly, structurally-unsound house. Instead, the second floor needs to be a continuation of the first--more or less in the same structural footprint, more or less in the same architectural style. It all has to make sense and look good as a whole.

But here's where the architecture analogy breaks down: if you're building the second floor and you want to make a major change that would require some adjustments to the first floor—you can do it. You can pay your contractor extra, and he'll grumble and knock down a few walls to accommodate your changing tastes. That can't happen with books. ARCs of Variant are already distributed. Readers have already seen it; reviews have been written. For all intents and purposes, Variant is written in stone.

Not that there's anything I really want to change, but there are a few details that, as I was writing it, I thought were minor. But now that I'm writing the sequel I realize that those things are REALLY important. For example, close to the end of a book, a major character suffers a significant injury. The injury was necessary to the plot and even to the characterization, but what wasn't necessary was how severe I made it. So now I'm writing the sequel and I have to really struggle with the consequences of this injury. I write fiction--I even write science fiction--but there's very little I can do to write my way out of dealing with this major injury. It's there, and I have to make it work.

Fortunately, most of the problems I'm having with the sequel are of that variety: dealing with inconvenient details. But the pitfalls of writing a sequel could be much worse. The first sequel I ever wrote—The Counterfeit, sequel to Wake Me When It's Over—I made a much bigger, rookie mistake. The first book had a good, solid character arc, but I hadn't even thought about that for the second—I'd only focused on the plot. (Because I'm a dummy.) So I had to invent a new character arc for the protagonist, and if I'm being honest, it was pretty contrived. Suddenly, he has new character flaws! Flaws you've never seen before!

Anyway, my editor emailed me yesterday to kick me in the butt and tell me it's time to finish the book. I'll be glad when it's done.

After that: happily ever after.

Brian Y: Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories

I don’t know if any part of writing confuses me more than structure. I struggle with it all the time. What’s the shape of my story? How do I get all that STUFF to fit together? There are so many freaking concerns in writing even a simple story. We writers are juggling character, plot, theme, language and a dozen other things with two inadequate hands and a bit of delusional grandeur. And then, on top of this, we have to somehow create a structure that houses all of our intentions and connivances and deviations, that provides just the right architecture for all that we want to put into our story. It’s hard. Really hard. Or so I thought until I saw this explanation sent to me by my good friend Varian who knows that Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite writer people. Thanks, Kurt, for putting it all in perspective.

Jenny: Voice: The Right Words

I belong to a writer’s workshop, and I can’t tell you how much it’s helped me. Every week, I get to sit and listen and learn as other scribblers share their work. Often, I marvel at the power of another writer’s voice. The writing just grabs me and won’t let go.

At other times…not so much.

Sometimes, a workshop read just flops. (Dare I admit, sometimes the read is my own?) The dialogue and prose come off like a series of ‘and then this happened…and then this happened…and then the ninjas bust into the room.’

Ugh.

Usually, this happens when the writing lacks voice. I know. I know what you’re thinking. You’ve heard agents and editors crow about voice and you’ve read every book and blog post about the ‘rules’ of writing a good book.

But voice isn’t really about rules. It’s not about passive verbs and misplaced modifiers and too many descriptive clauses. Voice is so much deeper.

Voice is about letting the characters interpret the action, instead of reporting the events of a story.

She stepped closer and he noticed her pleasant perfume.

Vs.

She moved closer, her scent was a feel good drug.

It’s about precisely choosing the words and phrases a character would use, instead of counting ‘to be’ verbs and axing adverbs.

The sound made Joe sick. His stomach knotted and trembled.

Vs.

The sound made him want to puke.

It’s about tightening the lens on all the moments that matter, instead of focusing on the pattern of the exquisite Persian rug in chapter three.

Joe stood in Matt’s garage and stared at the peeling, blue gray paint on the water stained walls.

Vs.

It would be too easy to steal Matt’s car.

It’s about capturing the protagonist’s stream of consciousness as he or she experiences obstacles, instead of cataloguing clichéd physical responses.

The surface was five feet away. His eyes widened with anxiety. He held his breath.

Vs.

Almost there. The surface and a lungful of air were just beyond his reach.

It’s about slipping under the skin of the character and vividly recording their observations—their unique worries, dreams, fears, and recollections—as the plot thickens, instead of shuffling from one scene to the next.

The older Joe got, the more calloused his heart became. Each year, he showed less and less emotion. The foster care system toughened him up.

Vs.

At nine, you stopped thinking the tooth fairy had just missed your house. Another year and it you didn’t even cry about stuff anymore. You could look forward to ten, and know once you reached the double digits, you’d stop giving a crap altogether.

It’s about choosing the right words for the story, the words that make the wizard, the bully, the prom queen or the ballerina undeniably real to the reader.

It’s about the words that feel true.