Erin: Origins / TAKEN

As TAKEN's release date approaches (just barely a month now!), I'm answering the So what's your book about? question more and more often. (Thank goodness for one line pitches.) The ever-popular follow-up question--How did you come up with that idea?--is a bit harder for me to address.

Some stories are born from what if scenarios, while others are sparked by dreams. Some are retellings or re-imaginings of existing literature. And then there are the stories that just seem to fall from the sky, directly into your lap.

TAKEN was one of those stories.

To be honest, the story didn't fall into my lap so much as TAKEN's protagonist, Gray, did. One moment I was revising a separate manuscript, and the next this boy was wandering around my head, fearing his eighteenth birthday for reasons I didn't understand. (Not yet, at least.)

I kept trying to ignore him. I was supposed to be revising. I had a huge list of edits and absolutely no time for distractions. Especially not from a boy who wasn't exactly nice. He wasn't downright mean either, but he was stubborn and impulsive and he kept storming around my head, glaring.

I plowed on with my WIP. He kept lurking. Impatient, relentless. When I paused long enough to listen to him, I realized his harsh edges were the product of a pretty grim situation. He had a huge heart beneath the hostility. He loved his older brother and felt like the lesser of two men beside him because his brother was everything he was not--patient, kind, accommodating. Worse still, it was his brother's eighteenth birthday.

How's that a bad thing? I'd asked Gray.

He told me no boy in his town made it a day beyond eighteen. They all vanished. Gone in a burst brilliant light. The Heist.

Why? was my next question.

He told me he didn't know. But he wanted to find out.

Suddenly, I wanted the same.

I tried to fight it. Really, I did. I viewed setting aside my nearly complete manuscript to mess around with something new--no matter how tempting and shiny--as procrastination.

Against my better judgment, I opened a new document. After writing a single chapter, I knew I was a goner. Gray's story was my new project. Revisions would have to wait.

With TAKEN, I was incredibly lucky to have Gray walk into my head so fully formed. His voice was crystal clear, and seeing as the novel is written in first person and I'm (shocker) not a boy, this was tremendously helpful in nailing his narration. Gray showed me everything he knew about his world and then I filled in all the pieces he wondered about. We worked to pull back the mysteries surrounding his town together.

I fear I'm starting to sound like a crazy person, referring to Gray as though he's real. But that's the thing about crafting a novel: writers can't help but end up in these intense, intimate relationships with their characters. By the end of a draft our fictional creations feel incredibly realized. We have conversations with them as though they are sitting beside us. We know their deepest fears and greatest dreams. Sometimes I feel like I know Gray better than I know myself. (Which makes zero sense. We are nothing alike.)

Still, I'm glad he started talking to me. I'm even more glad I listened to what he had to say.

Above all, I'm incredibly excited for you to meet him next month. I'd say he's excited as well, but it's not really true. He's got a lot on his plate at the moment. And, well, you'll see...

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.

Randy: Talking Myself Into Voice

When I'm revising a manuscript, I keep a separate file open for self-talk or process-talk. As you'll see in the excerpt below, what I tell myself is pretty fundamental stuff, and it’s more or less the same stuff I’ve been telling myself for over 20 years.

It doesn’t matter what I tell myself, because it’s just a way to trick the mind into being quiet so that I stop thinking about writing, and start writing.

It’s the opposite of talking a suicide down from the ledge.  It’s talking myself into taking the leap into silence and white space and the unknown.

Silence is where voice comes from. For me, finding the voice is what it’s all about.

***

Excerpts from Process-Talk Journal...

I am still not sure how or where to start this next draft. I don’t have the slightest idea. 

How do I take this mess of raw material and narrow it down to a continuous sequence of events, with a hook at the beginning and end of each chapter.

Go back through the draft, run every scene through Q and A. Investigate. Drill down. 

Interrogate every idea. First and second ideas will be clichés; go for the seventh or tenth idea.

Don’t avoid any dramatic confrontations.  

Look for a twist, always look for a twist.

Exaggerate first, tone it down later.

Keep asking: what can go wrong?

***

Don’t worry about transitions, you can plug those in later. Strip out the background explanations and just leave the action.

***

Keep it simple:

- What is happening
- What is going to happen

Maybe for once in your life, see if you can start at the end and work backwards.

***

Work with what’s in front of you. Work with what you have. Don’t worry about what’s NOT there; drill down into what’s there.

***


Stop racking your brain for the big plot idea.

Concentrate on who the characters are.

Character is action.

Character is story/situation.

Conflict creates character.

The more desire, the more conflict and character.

Give him a tangible goal. Preferably a goal you could take a photograph of.

***

Do you have to know who the characters are in order to know their situation?

Or do you start with a situation and see which characters grow out of it.

Who cares. A combo of both.

***

Quality through quantity.

Bring in as much material as you can. The more information and material, the better.

Then cut.

Then build it back up stronger.

Keep doing this process. That is your job.

***

You idiot. It’s all about the five senses, not ideas.

That is the great discovery.

Writing is about the five senses.
Concrete, specific details. Actions.
Focus on the particulars, the palpable textures.
I cannot say this too strongly: it’s about details.

***

Wait, it’s all about voice.

Voice

 comes from

silence.

Voice comes from going in deep and going wild.

***

white space

***

the less said the better

***

“The kings of the old time are dead;
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.” 

(Yeats)

***

Silence.

White space.

Now
you are going to take the plunge. Go in.

***


OK we’re going in.

Good bye for a while.

***

Randy Powell’s newest young-adult novel (his eighth) is SWISS MIST, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux