Tag: Flygirl

Posted in Uncategorized

My Next Big Thing

Posted on by beckylevine

Last week (two weeks ago?!), Carol Baldwin tagged me in a meme about current WIPs. It’s Saturday, with no work looming, so I thought I’d finally get around to playing! Thanks, Carol!

What is the working title of your book? I have absolutely no working title. I would love to have a working title. OFFER me your working titles! At this point, I refer to the book in my head as Caro’s Story, but believe me, that will never show up on a cover or title page. Titles either come to me in a flash, or I struggle and struggle and…yeah, struggle.

Where did the idea for the book come from? I was reading a book–wish I could remember which one–that talked about the 1913 suffrage march on Washington, D.C. It described about the moment when the predominately white Chicago delegation asked Ida B. Wells and one other black woman to walk separately from them, at the back of the march. Wells went away, then later stepped into the march with the Chicago group and walked right in the middle of them. I had a flash that I wanted to write about a young girl who was at that march and who took two steps to the side as she walked to make a space for Wells. I worked on that story for a while, but during the research process I felt in love with Chicago and a different hero who started showing herself to me, one who I couldn’t fit into the first story. The girl who was developing on my computer was someone who didn’t live in a world that would take her to that spot, that moment, in D.C. She had a different journey to tell, one of discovering Jane Addams and Hull House and of living under the cloud of her immigrant mother’s depression and having to carve out a life of strength for herself, in Chicago. I wrote a first draft that had an obvious, huge crevice in the late middle–between the character of Caro and the very different hero who, I still hope, has a place with Wells somewhere in my writing future. These days, though, Caro and I, while complete suffragists, are focusing our energies on the Chicago immigrant world of the 1910s.

One to two sentence synopsis of the book:  I’m even worse at these than titles. Time enough to torture myself when I get to submission!

What else about the book might peak the readers’ interest? My goal is for this story to have the  high-energy, fast-paced feel I get when I read about the Chicago of these years. Caro is a strong character, a girl looking hard for her purpose, her thing. She lives in a narrow, too-quiet world, and when she steps out of that space into the city, her heart beats faster and she feels she like can do anything. I’m hoping the contrast between the pressure to damp herself down and the drive she has to burst out of that pressure and do something will jump off the page and suck readers in. The other connection I hope to make is this: I think many teens know what it’s life to be controlled by an adult, even an adult who–frankly–can barely control their own life, who is the worst possible judge for what their child should be doing. I want to give Caro credit for knowing what is best for her and the strength to realize what she has to do to get that. I’m hoping that readers will respond to and identify with her path and the steps she takes to stride freely along it. Dreaming this is, for me, the easy part. Now I just have to translate the dream onto the actual page!

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I would very much like to find an agent who falls in love with my writing and feels strongly enough about it to represent it to publishers. I realize that the publishing industry is changing every second of every minute of every day, but this still feels like the right choice for me.

 How long did it take you to write the first draft of the story? Which first draft? Too long. It took me a whole draft to realize I’d been trying to fit two mismatched stories into one. Then I tried to write another first draft (and got pretty far along) without knowing my plot well enough. I don’t know what I was thinking–I know I need plot, but I got impatient and landed in the place where the Are-You-EVER-Going-to-Get-Published signs were flashing at me in neon, and I tried to rush past the process that works for me. I’ve been plotting for a while now, and it’s finally starting to come together. I will be starting the THIRD first draft by the end of this year or at the start of the next. I know what you’re thinking: “She must REALLY love this story.” And, yes, except for random moments of panicky frustration, I do.

What other books would you compare it to in this genre? I don’t really do comparisons–I think they’re a good way to get into a loop of worrying and feeling bad about yourself. BUT…I’ll share a few of the historical books for teens that I’m currently in love with, I would name Sherri L. Smith’s Flygirl, Diane Lee Wilson’s Black Storm Comin’, Joyce Moyer Hostetter’s Healing Water, Kathryn Fitzmaurice’s A Diamond in the Desert, and Kristin O’Donnell Tubb’s Selling Hope. I can’t and shouldn’t want to write like them, but if you told me that my name and book title (whatever that might be!) would someday show up in someone else’s list with these authors, you would make my day. My year.

What actors would you chose to play a movie rendition? Oh, I love doing this for other people’s books, but my own…I have a very clear image of Caro in my mind, but she doesn’t actually match any actresses that I know. If you took Natalie Portman, crossed her with Gina Torres and maybe a bit of Scarlett Johansson, then took, oh, 20-25 years off, you might start to get close.

I’m not going to tag any specific bloggers, but if you read this and want to carry the meme over to your blog, about your WIP, feel free to drop the link into the comments so we can all check it out!

Posted in Scenes

More Work on Understanding Scene Structure

Posted on by beckylevine

This week, I’m hoping to get through some chapters of Save the Cat. I just barely started on the structure section, where he shows the basic outline he uses and starts explaining both sections. So far, the things he says are making little bells chime in my plot brain, which is good. I managed to work up a thematic premise for my WIP, and–as he does in his examples–I found a way to show that in an early piece of dialogue.

Which of course, will almost certainly change. But still…

The other thing I’m doing is going back to my shelves and rereading some of the YA books that have really hit me, in the tightness of their prose, in the way they move seamlessly through time without feeling in all those details of time-actually-passing. In some of these, the story takes place over a longer period of time than just a few days, and yet the pacing moves quickly and effectively. The best way I can describe it is a lack of any unnecessary clutter.

So far, the books on my to-read-again/take-apart list are:

I’d love to hear any suggestions from you. (Despite the apparent slant of my starting list, the books don’t have to have the word “girl” in the title!) Remember, I’m looking for YA, in which the author keeps their focus really tight, with almost no padding between scenes, and yet manages to convey the passage of time without confusion. I want books in which the story thread is almost always at the forefront, not shadowed or taken over by transitions or background material. (I’m not at all saying that I haven’t read wonderful books that do use a slower lead-in to scene action or take more space for those transitions. It’s just that I’m trying to push myself to a new place, structurally, and I need to be looking at some good examples of stories in which that kind of structure is used.)

Thanks ahead of time for any recommendations you want to leave in the comments!

Posted in Historical Fiction, Voice

“Historical” Voice: Are We Letting it Go?

Posted on by beckylevine

I’m writing my historical YA in first person, present tense. I made a conscious choice to do this, way back when, because I am not fond of the dense, slow voice and pacing that can  be one of the markers of historical fiction. I hoped present tense might let me get to more immediacy in the writing. At the time, I hadn’t read any other YA historical written in present tense, so I told myself I was just experimenting, seeing how it all fell onto the page. But, really, I wanted to make it permanent, decisive.

And I was thrilled when, right after that, I read several YA historicals that used present tense. And worked.

Small dance of joy.

Still, it’s been a struggle. I find myself writing drafts where the language comes out stilted and formal, acres away from any way of thinking that a 16-year-old today would recognize and, I believe, pretty far away from how a 16-year-old in 1911 would think or speak. The language takes over, and the characters and action lose out–they’re given short-change by my attention. When I reread my scenes, it feels like stepping into a sticky mire, a hedge of brambles, and I’m trying to push  my way through and find the story.

So, as I work through the Maass workbook, I’m backing off from the language. I’m trying to get closer to Caro’s thinking, her way of viewing the world, and I’m letting myself write it in modern language. I’m even allowing slang to slip in, because I need to get in touch with her anger, her contempt, her determination and push–and I can’t quite get there when I’m stepping out of the sentence to find out how someone in 1912 would think “kick in the ass.” I know I’m going to have to change this, at least some of it, but I’m letting myself put that off for later. Until I know Caro.

I admit, I’m carrying a bit of hope through this process, hope that maybe I won’t have to change as much as I fear. Has anyone else noticed the lightning of prose, the shortening of sentences, the lessening of time-specific vocabulary in recent YA historicals? I just finished Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s Jefferson’s Sons, and while the events and circumstances and details left no doubt that the story took place in the past, I was never bogged down in language or pacing. Similarly, Sherri Smith’s Flygirl, Kristin O’Donnell Tubb’s Selling Hope, Kathryn Fitsmaurice’s A Diamond in the Desert, and Ruta Sepetys’ Between Shades of Gray all beautifully capture and evoke the power of a specific time in the past, without having their characters speak in a long-winded, formal structure, without making the reader lose sight of the story behind the language. And I know there are others that aren’t popping into my mind right at the moment.

Yes, I’m setting my standards high. 🙂

Is it just me and wishful thinking? Or, if you read historical YA, are you seeing the change, too? And what do you think of it?

Posted in YA Historical Fiction Challenge

YA Historical Fiction Challenge: Sherri L. Smith’s FLYGIRL

Posted on by beckylevine

Some books are so good, it’s actually hard to know where to come at them for a truly thoughtful, analytical review. Sherri L. Smith’s FLYGIRL is, for me, one of those books.

My basic review is…WOW.

Okay, I’ll give you a little bit more.

Ida Mae Jones wants to fly. She already does some, on the crop-duster plane that was her father’s before he died, the plane he taught her to fly in, the plane she plans to keep flying after she finds someone who will give her—as a woman—a pilot’s license. Then World War II breaks over the world, takes her brother as a soldier, and offers Ida Mae the chance to do her part and to fly. She may be able to join the WASP–the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots—if she’s willing to live a lie. A big one. She has to be willing to pass as white.

I have read three books in the last month which have characters who choose, for very specific, believable, and important reasons to “pass”—Flygirl, Diane Lee Wilson’s Black Storm Comin’ (see my review here), and Richard Peck’s The River Between Us. I don’ t know if this is a subject that’s becoming more “okay” to write about, or if it’s one of those reading coincidences that do happen. What I do know is that it’s an incredible world to read about, and all these writers handle it beautifully. Smith’s writing is easy and graceful, and yet she continually keeps up the tension by putting us right in the middle of the risks Ida Mae takes by hiding the truth. Risks to her safety, risks to her family, risks to her own self-identity–her core understanding of and belief in the person she knows herself to be.

The best fiction crosses barriers of experience and draws the reader into a world they know nothing about, then make them believe in and understand that world as well as they can without having lived it. Smith has done this. She shows us all the possible paths for Ida Mae; she shows us the choices Ida Mae faces and makes. WWII America carries a great burden of responsibility for having created situations and dangers that pushed people like Ida Mae to lie, and Smith makes that pointedly clear. BUT, at the same time, she has created a hero who, within that era, is also responsible for her own decisions and who recognizes this–a strong hero who is, yes, justifiably frightened and angry and confused, but who in no way plays out a passive role in her own story.

I love Ida Mae Jones. I want to put her in a plane and fly her into the future, even a future beyond today, where she doesn’t have to have this battle–internal and external. And I want to step back into the past with her and be the one person she can trust with the truth, someone who would support her and walk with her and go up in that second seat of the plane and let her fly me wherever she wanted.

One last word–this comes perilously close to a spoiler, but it’s not going to cross the lines. There are certain types of book endings that are seriously hard to pull off (and I’m not going to tell you what those are!). Many authors fail when they attempt this kind of ending, and I get very frustrated when I have to read them. Smith succeeds absolutely and brilliantly.

And, yes, you’ll have to read the book to see what I mean! 🙂