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Today, the 18th of September 2014, is the day Scotland goes to the polls to decide whether to become and independent country or to stay within the United Kingdom and much of the world is looking on.
Living and working in Scotland it would be difficult to ignore what is going on all around me and it is too important. But this is not a blog about the Referendum, because votes are being cast as you read this, the decision is already being made and the outcome will be something we will all have to live, with whatever our own thoughts are.
Decisions are sometimes easy and at other times much more difficult so I wanted to look at the decisions we make as we write.
As I have said before, I am not a planner, so when I am starting to write a new book an idea pops into my head and I start to write about it, often with no idea what the story is or where it is going.
I need to try it out, run with it and see where it takes me. It is a very exciting stage.
When I started writing Dead Boy Talking I was on a train coming back from visiting a school and with a notebook open in front of me I was thinking about what my next YA novel would be.
The title DEAD BOY TALKING was the first thing I wrote down, followed by the first line...
'In 25 minutes I will be dead.'
I had a picture in my head of a boy sitting on a pavement bleeding from a knife wound and it was cold, but most of all he was alone.
I was wondering how desperate that would be, how scared I would be if it was me. I started to write but it was his voice I could hear.
The first page of the book hardly changed from the words I scribbled in my notebook that day...
'The knife slipped into my body a bright, sharp edge of death, a thief. It sliced easily through leather, skin and flesh. Hot, red blood coating it's blade, warming the icy metal with a precious searing heat.... '
I was imagining how it might feel to be stabbed, scared and all alone. But then I started wondering if the reader would be thinking that this was another book where the main character is dead before it starts. Almost without making a conscious decision, the boy's voice intruded on my thoughts again. I feel it is instinctive at this stage and I try not to over-think it.
'No, this is not some dead person talking from the grave. It's just me, Josh, You know me.
I'm not scared.
I'm not!
Who am I kidding?
It can't really be happening to me, can it?'
There - I knew his name now!
But I still knew very little about Josh or why he was in that situation and what had happened to him that led to this. Also one of the crucial things I didn't know was whether his statement about having 25 minutes to live was right or not. Would I have him alive or dead at the end of the book?
Many of the decisions are made as the story progresses and I get to know the characters better. If I know them well enough I know how they would act in any situation and as long as I am true to their character the reader will find it credible. But sometimes the decision is about whether the character will do something completely at odds with their normal behaviour.
That is a decision that often shows how multifaceted the character is. We are all complex human beings so if I decide he has to act contrary to his nature there has to be a strong driving force that leads him to do that, otherwise it will not be believable.
How often have you seen someone act in a way that surprises you? It just shows that we can never fully know another person but if they do act out of character there will be a reason behind it.
The decision about whether he would survive or not was a difficult one, it could go either way. Much the same as in ordinary life, we cannot know if someone will survive a knife wound. In the end I went with my gut feeling about what was right for the story but somewhere in the back of my mind is always the reader, so whatever the outcome there has to be, in my opinion, a sense of hope. They need to know that whatever happens, life will go on.
There were also other things to find out about Josh. What was his family like, who are his friends, what was the pivotal thing in his life that changed everything. In this case it was his older brother running away from home, and never coming back. Josh's life changed that day because everyone around him was focussed on his brother, and he felt lost and betrayed but there was nothing he could do about any of it.
Decisions are sometimes easy and at other times much more difficult so I wanted to look at the decisions we make as we write.
As I have said before, I am not a planner, so when I am starting to write a new book an idea pops into my head and I start to write about it, often with no idea what the story is or where it is going.
I need to try it out, run with it and see where it takes me. It is a very exciting stage.
When I started writing Dead Boy Talking I was on a train coming back from visiting a school and with a notebook open in front of me I was thinking about what my next YA novel would be. The title DEAD BOY TALKING was the first thing I wrote down, followed by the first line...
'In 25 minutes I will be dead.'
I had a picture in my head of a boy sitting on a pavement bleeding from a knife wound and it was cold, but most of all he was alone.
I was wondering how desperate that would be, how scared I would be if it was me. I started to write but it was his voice I could hear.
The first page of the book hardly changed from the words I scribbled in my notebook that day...
'The knife slipped into my body a bright, sharp edge of death, a thief. It sliced easily through leather, skin and flesh. Hot, red blood coating it's blade, warming the icy metal with a precious searing heat.... '
I was imagining how it might feel to be stabbed, scared and all alone. But then I started wondering if the reader would be thinking that this was another book where the main character is dead before it starts. Almost without making a conscious decision, the boy's voice intruded on my thoughts again. I feel it is instinctive at this stage and I try not to over-think it.'No, this is not some dead person talking from the grave. It's just me, Josh, You know me.
I'm not scared.
I'm not!
Who am I kidding?
It can't really be happening to me, can it?'
There - I knew his name now!
But I still knew very little about Josh or why he was in that situation and what had happened to him that led to this. Also one of the crucial things I didn't know was whether his statement about having 25 minutes to live was right or not. Would I have him alive or dead at the end of the book?
Many of the decisions are made as the story progresses and I get to know the characters better. If I know them well enough I know how they would act in any situation and as long as I am true to their character the reader will find it credible. But sometimes the decision is about whether the character will do something completely at odds with their normal behaviour.
That is a decision that often shows how multifaceted the character is. We are all complex human beings so if I decide he has to act contrary to his nature there has to be a strong driving force that leads him to do that, otherwise it will not be believable.
How often have you seen someone act in a way that surprises you? It just shows that we can never fully know another person but if they do act out of character there will be a reason behind it.
The decision about whether he would survive or not was a difficult one, it could go either way. Much the same as in ordinary life, we cannot know if someone will survive a knife wound. In the end I went with my gut feeling about what was right for the story but somewhere in the back of my mind is always the reader, so whatever the outcome there has to be, in my opinion, a sense of hope. They need to know that whatever happens, life will go on.
There were also other things to find out about Josh. What was his family like, who are his friends, what was the pivotal thing in his life that changed everything. In this case it was his older brother running away from home, and never coming back. Josh's life changed that day because everyone around him was focussed on his brother, and he felt lost and betrayed but there was nothing he could do about any of it.
A writer has to make many decisions as a story progresses but perhaps the most important are how it begins and how it ends.
If the beginning does not draw the reader in they might not bother reading on. I always feel that when you get to the end of a book you should feel satisfied, like having had a good meal, not too much or too little but a sense that you have come to the end of a journey.
What decisions are you most aware of when you start writing?
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Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook Writing For Children
She has written 10 Hamish McHaggis books illustrated by Sally J. Collins who also illustrated Linda's retelling of Greyfriars Bobby
Linda's latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me
Linda is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh
website: www.lindastrachan.com
blog: Bookwords
If the beginning does not draw the reader in they might not bother reading on. I always feel that when you get to the end of a book you should feel satisfied, like having had a good meal, not too much or too little but a sense that you have come to the end of a journey.
What decisions are you most aware of when you start writing?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook Writing For Children
She has written 10 Hamish McHaggis books illustrated by Sally J. Collins who also illustrated Linda's retelling of Greyfriars Bobby
Linda's latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me
Linda is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh
website: www.lindastrachan.com
blog: Bookwords
0 Comments on Yes, No, Maybe? Decisions are the stuff of life. as of 9/18/2014 2:16:00 AM
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There was also this very telling comment in the Guardian article, from a teacher : 'Before I Die is apparently about a teenager who does lots of things like have sex with various people because she knows she is about to die.'
Apparently? So she's prepared to condemn a book without having read it?
Great post Gillian and I agree completely about 'manhood'. Will now never be able to read it without imagining the little cape.
Hear, hear! We're both prone to a little violence :-) I find there's more hostility to injury and death. Maybe because we don't have to see the suffering of the victim for long. (Latest editorial comment - 'why don't they just kill him'?) That's going the sanitisation route, I feel - and we justify the violence we write by NOT sanitising. It has to have nasty consequences which we confront head on.
It is horrendous that people will condemn books without reading them. Keren's example is rather chilling.
So shall we deduce that this whole sorry state of affairs is down to one person who has now written a couple of dubious 'quotation' articles for the Guardian? Or is there more?
I'm too busy blogging about it to complain to the Guardian. is anyone actually complaining officially?
Maybe we don't need to get worked up. Maybe no one said any of these things?
And then we can go into detail with what does happen, or not, in Before I Die. Like, yes she did have sex with more than one person, but on the list was simply to have sex. (Teachers don't read books, much, so will need to guess at what apparently happens in lots of them.)
I find this astonishing. Before I Die is an exquisite book about humanity, heart-breaking and joyous, full of life in the shadow of death. Crossing the Line is an honest book about the devastating effects of violent crime - even the structure says 'this is a book about what happens when....' It must address the reasons why violence happens, and it does, with blunt honesty - anything less would be deceptive. It's like telling kids 'don't take drugs, they're bad for you'. The first question any astute kid will ask is 'why do people do it then' and you better be ready to answer because our kids aren't stupid.
It's all very well for people to take the moral high ground - meanwhile, in real life, our kids are having sex, drinking too much and brushing with violence ALL THE TIME. Wake up Guardian - writers aren't encouraging this - they are responding to it.
Something I find most amusing is that sex is more taboo than violence and murder. You can have blood and guts galore in a book for 10 year olds, but sex is off limits. That says a lot about what's wrong with us as a society, or as a species - I'm not sure which.
In my first book, I had cruelty to animals, domestic violence, child imprisonment and vivisection, and murder (well, nearly), and my agent didn't flinch. In my second book I have an oblique reference to abortion, and my agent got uneasy. As they say in the US, 'Go figure...'
Completely agree, Gillian. A very common topic of conversation in school libraries - why we can or can't have a certian book on our shelves. But it's most often because they're very understandably worried about "what parents will say" because parents so often do. And I guess whether a librarian can face dealing with that will depend on how supportive management are. I had a librarian saying she couldn't have Monday are Red "because of the swearing" - there's PISS OFF (nothing worse!) but she happened to have opened it at that page and she thought parents would complain. God. Better keep kids out of the playground then.
And the idea that a story that features knife-crime/drugs/sex/murder is therefore going to encourage those activities is so absurd and utterly depends on the story and context. Gah.
But it's true! Books have a pernicious effect!
For instance, I read Lord of the Flies recently, and next thing I knew, I'd abandoned my children on a desert island with a fat kid and a boys' choir.
Then I read Oliver Twist, and found myself inspired to entice orphans off the street and train them into a gang of pickpockets.
And then I read A Clockwork Orange, and was gripped with an irresistible desire to listen to some classical music.
And you don't want to know what happened after I read Watership Down...
I suspect Alison Waller may have been quoted out of context. She has also said, 'In a society that worries about its own infantilism there is a general atmosphere of uncertainty surrounding the concept of adolescence. These anxieties are crucial to understanding modern subjectivity and they result in extreme - often nostalgic - attempts to fix adolescence as a separate state' (Constructing Adolescence In Fantastic Realism).
Alison Waller has been quoted out of context. As has Anne Fine. And yes, it is much too much to ask teachers and librarians to read books before they comment, because something like 20,000 YA books are published every year. I figure if we have the right to write what we like (which we do), librarians or parents have the right to disapprove with whatever prejudice they can bother to dredge up. It won't necessarily make a blind bit of difference in terms of what their kids read in any case.
I do sometimes wish YA authors (and I'm not particularly singling you out, Gillian, promise) would direct their outrage at something slightly more socially useful than so called restrictions on what they/we write.
It's an open marketplace -- as long as you can find someone to publish and read your books, you can do and say whatever you like. Which is more than you can say for the vast number of countries in which extreme censorship is the standard.
It's reasonable to expect thazt they won't comment on one particular book if they haven't read it, surely? No one's expecting them to comment on or read 20,000, just to limit their opinions to things they've read.
>I'd abandoned my children on a desert island with a fat kid and a boys' choir. ... Then I read Oliver Twist, and found myself inspired to entice orphans off the street and train them into a gang of pickpockets.
John, you'd better hope that the CRB haven't worked out how to surf the internet yet, or it's no more school visits for you.
And Meg's right I suppose - we can write more or less what we like. We have that right, in this country, and we can always get around so-called restrictions by a few cunning disguises. 'Piss off!' is in Watership Down, incidentally - but no-one notices because a seagull says it.
"John, you'd better hope that the CRB haven't worked out how to surf the internet yet, or it's no more school visits for you."
EEEEK! Ed, it's satire, honest! I didn't really!
And, Kehaar! Yes! I remember being taken aback by that 'Piss off!' because, I think, it had never occurred to me before that you could put a 'rude word' in a book. I suppose I'd always imagined that 'they' would stop you.
It didn't turn me into a foul-mouthed little urchin, though.
First off, chaps, nothing in my post is about Anne Fine - she was mentioned in passing in a quote I used. That quote may well be out of context (or indeed misreported - nothing in the Guardian would surprise me now), but if it IS accurate, the context is rather beside the point. Alison Waller, if she (a) said and (b) means what is reported in this quote, is being unfair and pretty insulting.
Meg, I hope you noticed that I used the word 'denounce', not 'ban'. Everybody's shelf space is limited and everybody can choose what they put on it. What I have a right (indeed an obligation) to complain about is being accused of 'encouraging knife crime'. It's absurd, it's untrue, and it's based, presumably, on looking at a book cover. No teacher or librarian has a right to accuse me of that, any more than anyone would have a right to accuse you of encouraging incestuous underage sex. Seriously, do these people understand the meaning of fiction? And how are they defining it to children?
Besides, I can direct my anger and energies in many directions at once (I often do). It's like walking and chewing gum - not that hard. I must say I find it an odd argument that because there's censorship in other countries, we should be timidly grateful for whatever state of affairs exists here...
John, you shock me. You haven't started burrowing, have you? Overdoing the silflay?
Not yet, but I have lost the ability to count past four.
Gillian, well said that wummin. Fascinating what goes through your head. As for the wee cape...did you not know that we are issued with them at birth?
Good answer, G - I also felt that the main point of your indignation was being accused of encouraging knife crime just because your novel told a story in which it featured. I still haven't read C the L (on my pile ...) so I'm only ASUMMING (slap on wrist) but I'm assuming you didn't say your readers should go and knife people. If you did, you're a very bad person indeed.
I too can get indignant about many things simultaneously.
Out of interest I wonder how one WOULD glamorise knife crime in a work of fiction?
I suppose 'A Clockwork Orange' comes closest. But the weird thing is, no matter how much we sympathise with Alex, we still instinctively know that what he does is wrong.
I don't think anyone sensitive or empathic enough to get involved in a work of fiction would seriously start to think that knives were a Good Thing just because a sympathetic character uses them. We're capable of that doublethink, of liking the character while deploring them - the 'Magnificent Bastard' type. (Am I allowed to write that?).
Excellent post Gillian and I'm with Nick on this. I get the same weirdness in complaints from parents about the youth theatre I produce. We once wanted to feature a paedophile. Complaints, complaints. But when we turned the character into a murderer that was OK. ??? And then in 'Fur' my editor got very worried because my female lead's dad noticed that she wasn't a little girl any more when she was wearing her swimsuit - she thought he was having incestuous thoughts!!! But in 'Piper' my male lead set fire to someone and small children were enslaved - no problem! It's all bonkers!