Tag: Kristin O’Donnell Tubb

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 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 Setting, World Building

Out of Setting Comes Action

Posted on by beckylevine

Tuesday night at the South Bay CWC, I heard Tanya Egan Gibson give a great talk about world building. Now, Tanya doesn’t write fantasy or science fiction. She doesn’t write historical. She writes, in her own words–satire.

Not a genre you necessarily think of as needing a whole lot of world building. But Tanya does. I’m guessing she would say that any genre demands world building.

Because when you build your story world, that world, in turn, steps in to impact, if not drive, what your characters will do.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately, as I do more research about 1910-1915, Chicago. (And, yes, I am SO going to read Kristin O’Donnell Tubb’s Selling Hope, set in 1910 Chicago–just as Hailey’s Comet comes through.) In my first draft, I did research as I wrote, but I was focusing on getting to the story, to Caro’s story, not worrying as much about filling in the world around her. And this was good, because I not only got to the story, I got to two stories, which–overwhelming as it felt at first–was the right discovery for me to make.

But I’ll tell you, it was frustrating to write without setting. I found myself giving Caro and her supporting cast the same tasks over and over. I had her reacting in situations where I didn’t know precisely what she was reacting to…or with, which pretty  much made her feel (at least to me) hyperbolically melodramatic. Yes, that much. I do like the bracket as an early-drafting tool, but by the time I wrote “The End,” I was pretty sick of typing it all over the place.

I can’t write another draft this way. For my sanity, a big piece of Draft 2 is going to be setting research. Or, yep, world building. I am going to populate my notes and my scenes with real furniture, real architecture, real food, real lifestyles. I’ve already started. And you know what?  As I research, as I find out details, I’m getting ideas for the actions my characters will take–things they can do in their world.

During her talk, Tanya said, “If you furnish the place, people can live in it. And they will live large.”

Tanya’s right.

I leave you with this scene from Shanghai Knights. Look at the setting. Look at the way Jackie Chan uses the setting. Yes, sure, he knows the moves he wants to make. He knows the comedy he’s going to weave into the fights. But he also knows that setting can create action, can set up opportunities for anything and everything to become a piece of his choreography. I can just see him–Okay, let’s see. Open market…chase scenes…dodge the carts…duck between people…oh, hey! Lemons! And umbrellas!

Posted in Critique Groups, Critiquing

I Can’t Believe I Read the Whole Thing: Supporting Each Other with Full-Manuscript Critiques

Posted on by beckylevine

A while ago, when I was asking for post ideas on Facebook, Kristin O”Donnell Tubb suggested I write about full-manuscript critiques. I was sure I’d talked about that somewhere, but I have hunted around on my blog and it’s not showing up. Maybe it was on the old blog?

Anyway, it’s definitely a topic worth discussing, I think, especially because I’m often surprised to talk to writers whose groups don’t do full reads, or who think they can’t even ask their group to do one for their project.

I think full-manuscript reads are critical.

Yes, they take time–don’t try to read a whole book in the usual two weeks you give to a chapter or three, and try to arrange things so you’re not getting hit with a ton of other submissions at the same time.  But the trade-off, the one that every member of the group will benefit from–is completely worth the juggling and the scheduling.

When you read an author’s full manuscript, you are giving them the gift of reading for continuity.  You’re watching  tension build (or not build) across the whole story and finding the specific places where that tension drops off. You will catch the moments when the hero or other character behave, well…out of character. You will be able to make suggestions for places the author can cut and trim, where the pacing slows down or rushes.

Yes, we can do all these things when we’re reading chapter by chapter, scene by scene. I don’t think, though, that we can do it as well. Obviously, you’re not going to sit down with the whole manuscript, when it’s handed to you, and not leave the couch until you’ve penned your notes on the last page. You will, however, read the book much more quickly than you can when you’re getting it piecemeal every couple of weeks. You will hold the story and the characters and the details closer to the surface of your brain, and–even when you’re not reading–you’ll be mulling and musing and coming up with ideas.

Does this mean that, when the author has finished the first draft, this is the time for her to hand the whole thing over and ask for the full-read. Nope. Not yet. I really think the full-read comes when the group has read through several drafts, in chunks, and the author has revised and revised (and revised…). When the author and the group feel like the book is getting close, really close, to that magical “done” that we can’t ever really define. That’s when the full-read happens.

Stock up on the right tea or coffee. Build up your stash of chocolate and buy a few more of your favorite pens. Get out the notepad. Then take the time and the thought to read through those 2-300 pages of story, with thought and care.

You’ll get it all back, when the pendulum swings back to your side of the critique table.