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Pretty Little Liars and Hit, Plot Echoes by lorieanngrover on PolyvoreAs I traveled the country for the
#hitwithgratitude project with author
Justina Chen, I met so many teens who told me my novel
Hit was similar to the TV series
Pretty Little Liars. The first couple of mentions I thought were a bit unusual, but as it kept happening, I needed to investigate.
A month or so back, I sat down in front of
Netflix and entered the world of Rosewood. What I discovered was an echoed plot strand, exactly as my readers described. The parallels between my
Sarah and Haddings with
Pretty Little Liars' Aria and Ezra were incredible. It was as if I watched the show and wrote my work. THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED!
So this is my blog post to set the story straight. I began the novel in 2005, after the
real Sarah was struck in a crosswalk in 2004. Originally a verse novel told in six viewpoints, the novel grew and changed for ten years. In 2009, I fictionalized and added Haddings. In 2014
Hit hit the stores. And now I can sit down and see the scenes play out on screen in
Pretty Little Liars. Even to the brother's participation at the climax. I won't say more to avoid spoilers. :) But, are you kidding me?
Sometimes creative ideas cross and birth at the same time. Stories are all ultimately echoes of each other. I've lost sales in the past, because another writer, at the same publishing house, with the same editor, had the same idea at the same moment. Yes, each story is told differently. Yes, each will present in a different light, theme, motive, and truth. But sometimes, wires cross, and the spark hits two people at the exact same moment.
I thought
If I Stay by Gayle Forman was
Hit's echo.
Pretty Little Liars rings even more loudly. One take-away is that there is a a story to tell. Look at us doing so, similarly and differently. Each can be appreciated; each will reach different people; each was developed independently. That alone is fascinating! Isn't it?
Enjoy!
"Hit by Lorie Ann Grover is a powerful book about tragedy and recovery which shows you both sides of the story, for better or worse." Hypable
The Lil’ Diva wanted to read this one so badly, the librarian sped up getting their copy into the system so that she could borrow it. Have any of you read it?
Just listen, Adam says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel.
I open my eyes wide now.
I sit up as much as I can.
And I listen.
Stay, he says.
Choices. Seventeen-year-old Mia is faced with some tough ones: Stay true to her first love—music—even if it means losing her boyfriend and leaving her family and friends behind?
Then one February morning Mia goes for a drive with her family, and in an instant, everything changes. Suddenly, all the choices are gone, except one. And it’s the only one that matters.
If I Stay is a heartachingly beautiful book about the power of love, the true meaning of family, and the choices we all make.
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Speak; Reprint edition (April 6, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 014241543X
ISBN-13: 978-0142415436
For interesting facts about the author, visit her website at http://gayleforman.com/
Generalized definitions of anything—or anyone—are provocative, sure. They get the readers' ire up. Which is to say they attract more readers. I am sure that Anthony Lane of
The New Yorker (a terrific if mostly acerbic reviewer) knows that YA fiction comes in many hues and forms and flavors, and that it is fed by many ideals and many wild imaginations, many time periods, many themes, and a full array of characters and landscapes.
But here, in Lane's review of the movie "If I Stay," based on the Gayle Forman novel, he issues a standardizing decree.
Young-adult fiction: what a peculiar product it is, sold and consumed as avidly as the misery memoir and the self-help book, and borrowing sneakily from both. One can see the gap in the market. What are literate kids meant to do with themselves, or with their itchy brains, as they wander the no man's land between Narnia and Philip Roth? The ideal protagonist of the genre is at once victimized and possessed of decisive power—someone like Mia, the heroine of Gayle Forman's "If I Stay," which has clung grimly to the Times best-seller list, on and off, for twenty weeks. And the ideal subject is death, or, as we should probably call it, the big sleepover.
Oh, the blogs/articles/talks that will erupt from this. Oh. Or? Perhaps we who write young adult fiction that is not part misery memoir and not self-help book, not, indeed, any single one thing, grow weary of the castigating, the easy sarcasm, the sneak and overt attacks?
Let others stomp their feet and say what they will. We've got work to do.
One of the big names right now is Gayle Forman. Her book, If I Stay, is big and gonna be a movie, too. So--I figured I ought to take a look at the book. I opened the preview at Amazon and read the first page. I stopped reading...
The book opens on the morning of a snowfall. Not a lot of snow, but enough that school is cancelled (p. 3):
"My little brother, Teddy, lets out a war whoop when Mom's AM radio announces the closures."
Really? Did Teddy run around the house going woo-woo-woo by patting his hand over his mouth as he said "woooo"?!
"War whoop" is one of those phrases that yank me out of the story an author is telling.
If you look up "war whoop" you'll see that it is defined as being specific to Native people, but you probably already knew that, right? That is, if you even noticed that phrase as you read it (assuming you read Forman's book).
It isn't an innocuous expression. Subtly it affirms stereotypes people carry around. You know what I'm talking about.. The idea that Native people were warlike, barbaric, and savage. Another phrase like that? "On the warpath."
The truth? Native people were fighting to defend our homelands and to protect our women and children. You know damn well that you'd fight, too, and you'd definitely be yelling.
Gayle Forman did not have to use "war whoop" to describe the exuberance her character felt. Nothing is lost if she'd just said "My little brother, Teddy, shouts with glee when Mom's AM radio announces the closures."
Given that her book is going to be on the big screen---what will we see when that scene is turned into a script? Goodness! I hope Teddy doesn't emerge from his bedroom in a headdress. If you're reading this, Gayle, maybe you can make sure THAT doesn't happen.
For now, I'm not getting her book, and this post will be added to AICL's "All you do is complain" page.
Though it's told from Adam's point of view, that's Mia on the cover, obvs. Here's Gayle to share the story of how this book's cover came to be:
"The image that kept coming to mind as I wrote was the Brooklyn Bridge. It plays a pivotal role in the story and for some reason it just stuck because it's so strong both from both a visual and literary standpoint.
I believe that Penguin did experiment with using the bridge initially but decided that it didn't work.
"The challenge for the US publication was marrying the US
If I Stay paperback cover--the eerily half-
dead-looking girl, right--with a new hardcover look. But I had to make it extra tricky because, unlike If I Stay, which is from Mia's perspective, Where She Went is in Adam's voice. So how to create a cover that seemed like a package with the paperback but was from a guy's perspective?
"We were obviously departing from the quieter US hardcover look, with the flower, tree and branches, which I loved but would not work at all in terms of a new book about a rock and roll guy, so I'm so glad we had the paperback cover to use as a jumping-off point.
"In the end, in sort of a duh, why didn't we think of it sooner epiphany, we all realized that the US cover had to have another Mia. Because even though the book is from Adam's POV, it's still about Mia. It's about where she went. So the covers are meant to be bookends. One horizontal, one vertical, one passive, one more active. There's no Brooklyn Bridge, and yet the covers are, in my opinion, such a perfect bridge..."
I don’t write book reviews — I’m not a fast reader — but when I find a book that I really love, I like to write it. Today’s book recommendation is for Gayle Forman‘s young adult novel If I Stay.
I discovered this book when Gayle was a speaker at the Teen Book Con in Houston last year. When I go to writers’ events, I try to support the industry by buying a few of the speakers’ books, and If I Stay was one of the novels I picked up that day.
The book’s premise intrigued me immediately: After being in a car accident with her parents and young brother, a teenager falls into a coma. But her spirit stands outside her body, and as she watches her family, friends, doctors and nurses try to keep her alive, she considers if it’s worth it.
You could say I’m drawn to the dark, and this book was no exception.
But what also touched me was the way Gayle talked about it. She said that when we’re writing, we shouldn’t worry about the market or whether a book will sell when we’re done. We should follow our heart and write the story we want to tell. That’s what she did with this novel, putting her whole heart into the writing, and that’s what made me want to read it.
If I Stay pulled me in from the first few pages, and I couldn’t put it down. I finished the book in less than a week, which is fast for me — the only time I get to read is while I’m brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed.
It’s a touching and beautifully written novel that has a lot of heart.
I highly recommend it.
What book did you read recently that you’d like to recommend?
Write On!
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 10/21/2010
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GQ 'Glee' photos under fire (The Parents Television Council takes issue with the risqué "Glee Gone Wild!" photo spread for sexualizing the twenty-something actresses who play high school-aged characters. Not sure we follow all of the logic there,... Read the rest of this post
Jill Corcoran blogged about
ways to activate your story recently, using Gayle Forman's novel,
If I Stay, as an example of a great beginning. She wrote:
Gayle does not start the book at the moment of the car crash. We first see the family together, we actually fall in love with the main character and her family so when the car crash happens, we are devastated along with the main character. Gayle starts the first line of the book with an intriguing sentence….a sentence that activates us to pay attention to this first meeting with the main character’s family. That foreshadows the doom and gloom to come:Everyone thinks it is because of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that’s true.
But the reason that sentence works, really works, is a tiny little piece left out of the quote. Here's how the novel really starts:
7:09 A.M.
Everyone thinks it was because of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that’s true.
Do you see it? It's there in big bold letters. The ticking clock.
Because that clock is there, we know to combine "it" with a timeline. We know something is going to happen soon. We know "it" is bad, because why bother with a clock that precise if it isn't a countdown of sorts. And we know it has to do with the snow. Sort of. So now, we're hooked. We have to know what "it" is, and why it wasn't completely to do with the snow. And we have an implied promise that it isn't going to take the author long to get there.
As readers, we haven't thought through any of this. It's simply there, in the back kitchen of our consciousness, if I may borrow the phrase from Kipling. And once it's there, it has a hold on us.
Even a reader who wouldn't normally read a book about bow-tie-wearing dads, or little brothers who let out war whoops, or mothers who work in travel agent's offices--who cares about all that stuff at the beginning of a book, right?--is going to be curious enough to read a little further. Sure enough, Forman delivers on the promise. At 8:17 a.m., a dad who isn't great at driving gets behind the wheel of a rusting buick and.... Well, we know we only have a few more pages.
Even after the accident, the clock doesn't stop. It continues until 7:16 the next morning, because Mia is trying to make her decision, and all along, all through the twists and turns and intricately woven scraps of memory and medical magic, that clock keeps us focused on the fact that something life-changing is going to happen. Soon. Soon. So you can't stop reading.
Building Suspense with a Ticking ClockHaving an actual Jack Bauer 24-style ticking clock only works if something momentous is going to happen:
- An event, accident, or necessary meeting
- A deadline given to prevent consequences
- An opportunity that can, but shouldn't, be missed
- Elapsed time from a precipitating event
The Clock
The clock is mainly a metaphor. You can use any structural device that forces the protagonist to compress events. It can be the time before a bomb explodes or the air runs out for a kidnapped girl, but it can also be driven by an opponent after the same goal: only one child can survive the Hunger Games, supplies are running out in the City of Ember....
By: Katie B.,
on 11/13/2009
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Inculcating a Love for Reading
The Wall Street Journal suggests children’s books that might help repel the armies of electronic distraction.
“Leave a Mark” online auction – If I Stay by Gayle Forman
The latest offering in the “Leave a Mark” auctions benefiting First Book is a marked-up copy of Gayle Forman’s If I Stay. Bids are accepted online through 11:59 PM ET on Sunday, November 15 – cast your bid today!
Unlikely Word Origins Defined In Anonyponymous
How many words do you know that are named after real people? These words, called eponyms, fill a new book called Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words. Read and listen to the review at NPR.org.
Q&A: ‘Literarian’ Dave Eggers talks about the writing life
Read the interview with Dave Eggers, best-known for his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, who will be honored November 18 at the National Book Awards.
Gift Books 2009, Part 1
Looking for great gift books for the holidays? Shelf Awareness shares book suggestions on topics including: secrets of mysterious lives, travel books for the adventurous and Obamamania.
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 9/14/2009
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Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the Brooklyn Book Festival where I had the pleasure of hearing YA authors Gayle Forman (If I Stay), Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls) and G. Neri (Surf Mules) talk about the challenging themes covered in their... Read the rest of this post
I'm going to try to do a service to this book because it is so good. Some of you may know that I haven't been able to stop crying while reading this book. I don't know if there are enough adjectives to describe this book. But I'll do the best I can.Mia is a seventeen year old cellist. She has a 7 year old brother and two parents who are the hippest, coolest parents a girl could want. Mia's
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I read it and loved it. Cried a little too. Loved the second book too but not quite as much. Can’t remember the title.
I read it and loved it and cried a lot. Silly me, I picked it up shortly after losing my mom, my oldest had gone away to college (we are a very close family) AND we travel through that pass all the time. Yep, I was a mess!!! My youngest and I just saw the movie. Even she cried (hadn’t read the book.) I started choking up during the opening credits. Too much emotion attached to the story. They did a great job with the movie adaptation, though.