Writing Process

More Thoughts

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Mar 22, 2019 in Children's Literature, MeToo, Politics, Race, Writing Process | 0 comments

I continue musing about the face of Blood Heir and A Place for Wolves, two YA novels on the verge of publication cancelled after online outrage. I offered up a few thoughts about this last week, but want to add some more.

In her discussion of morality clauses (also a hot button topic in publishing lately), Judith Shulevitz points out that writers of color and women and LBGTQ writers are most vulnerable to online outrage, most easily targeted and most viciously attacked. The same issue is at play here. It’s ironic and I don’t think it’s coincidental that the two most high-profile cases of books being withdrawn pre-publication involve two writers of color, one of them an immigrant, one of them gay. When we use the level of outrage to judge whether books should be released, I predict that women and minorities will see their books cancelled first. Supression always hits the most vulnerable the hardest.

You may ask, what about own voices–authors, especially those from marginalized communities, writing directly about their own experiences? Important. Vital. I am all for it. We need black people writing about the African American experience, we need gay people writing about growing up LBGTQ, we need immigrants writing about immigration. Please do so. I am so eager to read what you write. But please use own voices to open up the marketplace of ideas, not to shut it down.

And finally, as writers and as human being, we will blow it sometimes. I’m sorry about that, but we’re flawed and it’s inevitable. Blowing it does not necessarily mean that a book should be cancelled, because that negates the possibility of such a book being flawed but valuable. Can The Merchant of Venice be, perhaps, a work that is disturbing for its anti-Semitism and still interesting for its cry of universal humanity? Does Dorothy L. Sayer’s casual racism mean I can’t remain fascinated by her intimate, heartfelt longing for a companionate marriage of equals between a man and a woman? Isn’t Huckleberry Finn both a sharp, satiric look at the American experience and a tender examination of a cross-racial friendship and an uncomfortable expression of bone-deep racism? Can’t we are as readers be trusted–or even allowed–to see all the sides?

How to Make a Good Villain

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Mar 1, 2019 in Writing Process | 0 comments

In a certain way it was easier in Victorian times when all a villain needed was a monocle and a riding crop.

Villains have been on my mind. (Maybe it’s the news lately….) Not every book needs a villain, but when you do, they’re often the most fun part of the creative process. For me, anyway. Perhaps this is something I should discuss with my therapist.

You can have a straight-up villain who’s just nasty all through, and sometimes that’s all your story needs–somebody threatening, with very little complexity but enough mojo to keep your protagonist on his/her toes. (See Gideon Arnold of The Secrets of the Seven series or Alain of Dragon’s Egg.)

Sometimes, though, a story needs a subtler villain. A sneaky one. One of the creepiest things about these villains is that they get you to trust them. They’re nice. They’re plausible. They are, in fact, just what you wanted–a friend, a protector, an ally. Until they’re not. This is one of the best writer tricks to play with a villain–when the person the hero (and by extension, the reader) trusts most is the bad guy. (For example, Abby Arnold in The Secret of the Seven series or Robert Pooley in The Secret of the Rose. Yep, those titles are kind of giveaways, huh?)

Hint to readers: if somebody in the book is too perfect, too caring, too helpful, so much concerned with meeting the hero’s needs that they seem to have none of their own–watch out.

But the most fun, absolutely the most fun thing you can do with a villain is to turn him or her into the hero.

Like the king’s unacknowledged son who pulls his father’s kingdom down around his head (Medraud in The Dragon’s Son) or the trained and pitiless assassin whose mission goes awry (Kata in Deadly Flowers and Deadly Wish), it’s so much fun to get into the head of a villain. The trick here is to know that very few people are the villains of their own stories. You, as the writer, have to find the way that works. You have to make your villain/hero sympathetic by giving him or her a goal everybody can relate to. So Medraud wants his father to pay attention to him (who doesn’t?) and Kata wants to take something she’s very good at and become the best at it. Admirable, even.

If you can make that feeling vivid enough in your character’s head, the reader will follow him or her through the book, no matter what havoc he or she trails in his wake. Sympathy turns a villain into a hero. And it’s a lot of fun.

May Sarton

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Jan 11, 2019 in Writing Process | 0 comments

I appreciate May Sarton’s journals about living and writing on the coast of Maine. The personality that comes through in her entries is prickly, volatile, demanding of herself and others–not an easy friend or colleague, I suspect–but I love being allowed into another writer’s life through her words.

I have learned in these last years to forget the desk and everything on it as soon as I leave this room. The key to being centered seems to be for me to do each thing with absolute concentration, to garden as though that were the essential, then to write in the same way, to meet my friends, perfectly open to what they bring. And most of the time that is how it is.

-May Sarton, The House By the Sea

I like this statement as a goal–for writing, friendship, and life–in 2019. (Not for gardening, though, My father calls what I do “Darwin gardening”–toss something in a hole and see if it grows. Only the fittest survive.)

For the Holidays

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Dec 21, 2018 in Writing Process | 0 comments

This is my favorite Christmas card of the year. Books can do this too–at least I trust that is true. Sometimes writing can be a hard and lonely and anxious profession, and it’s easy to wonder if it’s worth it. If you know you’re not a genius, but a hard worker and a producer of stories that may touch a few but will not top the best-seller list–is it worth doing it, year after year?

I hope so. I hope adding good books (perhaps not brilliant books, but good ones) to the world is worthwhile, since reading takes us into another’s experience, pulls us out of our own anxious, hunched-over, cramped experiences and lets us breathe. Lets us look around to the horizons. Lets us say, “Look how much is out there.”

We’re here for that. For what is out there.