THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH – Becky Levine

This weekend, I’ve started writing out very basic scene cards, in prep for doing my own kind of Nano-Y first draft of a MG novel.

I say kind of, and I say Nano-Y, because I doubt I’m going to get where I want to go in a month of writing, at least not if the temp job I have continues at a mostly full-time pace. I know there are writers out there who manage, and maybe I will be able to some day, but I’m allowing myself some gentle space as this all falls under a big life-transition umbrella for me, too. I also say kind of, because I’ve never DONE NaNo, so I don’t actually know the process/guidelines. Instead, I’m basing the process on one I did a few years ago when I, yes, wrote a book in a week (150 pages of wonderful dreck in five days). I won’t be doing it in a week again, either. (For more information about the Book in a Week idea, see April Kihlstrom’s BIAW site. For more on NaNoWriMo, check out their main page.) And I’m starting by creating a very basic card in Scrivener for each scene.

Here’s the info I put on each scene card:

Protagonist’s Scene Goal: The ACTION they want to accomplish in this scene. The action part of it is important to me, because without reminding myself about it, I can easily end up in some nebulous sloshy place, a lot like when Milo stalls out in the Doldrums in The Phantom Tollbooth. Yes, character layers and theme are critical, but I’ve gotten so slogged down in those lately, in early drafts, that I’m trying to push them away for now. They’ll come out as I draft and they’ll deepen as I revise.
Obstacles: Some of these are from antagonists. (And I’m noting those specifically this time around. The last time I did this, I was really weak in the main antagonist’s story line and had to kluge it in. Which I think worked (no complaints about this in the rejections), but it was a lot of work. So I just want to keep the antagonist stuff further up front in my mind, even in this early dump. Other obstacles will come from the protagonist himself, some from his allies, and one or a few from the environment around him.
Response: The basics of what my hero does in reaction to the obstacles. This helps me make sure he fails, fails, fails for a while, the starts to gain strength and fight back with more power.
End Scene: The action/moment on which the scene ends. This was a huge help last time when I was trying to blast through from scene to scene, because it gave me a rolling momentum to keep going, keep going, keep going.

And that’s it. Just dipping back in to this method felt so good. I’ve gotten very bogged down in some mix of plotting and drafting in the last couple of years, at least on my longer projects. (Possibly one of the reasons I’ve fallen so in love with the picture book form.) Somehow this tangled mix of needing to just write and needing to know where I’m going was, I think, partially responsible for the historical YA ending up in a drawer for now. (The other responsible parts being the historical and the YA!) And then I’ve done a few false starts on the MG, which make me feel like the YA tangle is looming over me again.

So I want to do it differently. I want to step back to the process that worked so well for my last MG. While I’m not shooting for a whole first draft in a week this time, I am shooting for that same just keep ~~swimming~~ writing technique. The one where I don’t take a break at the end of a scene, but click on the next scene card and write more. The one where revision ideas about past scenes get scribbled on a sticky note and attached to the print out. The one where questions get tossed into Scrivener’s Notes section. The one where I use a LOT of brackets around phrases like [MAYBE A SAMURAI. MAYBE A MIME]. The one where I recognize and remember that THIS DRAFT IS AND SHOULD BE ABSOLUTE GARBAGE, and all the little changes I might even consider making will be totally irrelevant, because AT LEAST 99.99999999999994% of the words will disappear or change. Seriously, last time I did this, when I sat down to read through the first draft, I didn’t even get halfway through, because I realized almost instantly that I’d written my protagonist as an observer and given all the take-charge stuff to his sidekick. Who needed to stay a sidekick. So I started plotting and writing again, making sure I kept my hero active, active, active, and THAT became the so-much-better “first” draft I took through my critique group. And THAT flowed so much more smoothly and effectively, because the garbage came first.

I want that again.

So what does this all have to do with Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle? Well, mostly, she’s on my mind, because I was talking to a friend whose little girl has fallen in love with Amelia Bedelia, who for some reason makes me think of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Maybe because, in my world, as goofy as Amelia is, she has huge doses more of common sense than do the people for whom she works. Kind of like Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. And, today, I’m thinking of Mrs. PW because she had all those wonderful cures. Remember? “The Won’t-Pick-Up-Toys Cure.” “The Answer-Backer Cure.” “The Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Taker-Cure.”

I think I need an Unsticker-To-It Cure. Oh, I’ll stick to my story. I’ve proved that to myself, in a good way, on these picture book revisions, as well as in a not-so-good way on the YA. What I need to stick to is this process, the rapid pacing, and the pushing through all the distractions and doubts.

So, you know, if one of you could turn to your partner and say, “What are you going to do with this child?!” and then go off to work and totally abandon the other one, who would then call a friend and says, “What am I going to do with this child,” and could listen when the friend says, “Call Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. She can fix any child,” well, this child would be very appreciative. Meanwhile, she’ll keep writing.

This book. Wow. I’m not sure I’ve ever wished more to be able to describe the feeling that comes off the pages of a story, the sense, rather than the plot or the characters. Maybe I’m shooting for the voice, but that’s not much easier to explain or talk about than feeling.

I found Aaron Starmer’s The Only Ones by chance, browsing through the e-book pages at my library. I liked the cover, frankly. And it seemed like a middle-grade story, which I’m big into reading right now.

Seemed.

I try not to do the if you liked thing too much, or describe books by comparing them to others. BUT. While I was reading the opening chapters, other books kept popping into my mind. Not because The Only Ones is like any of them, or all of them in combination, or at all derivative of anything. Still, the titles that came to me were…The Phantom Tollbooth. The Little Prince. Lord of the Flies. And maybe the faintest hint of a picture book I read in my childhood, but that was published a couple of decades before I was born–Marie Hall Ets’ In the Forest.

I know, right?

(Okay, yes one other, more recent book, came to mind early on, but I’m not telling you that one here, because it would be a total spoiler. Which I didn’t realize until I finished the book myself. So no spoilers. If When you read the book, if you want to know the last title or share your guess either ask me for the info in a comment and make sure I can contact you, or send me a private message, and I’ll answer. But let’s not ruin it for the others.)

I’ve read a couple of blurbs of the book, and, frankly, I don’t like the way it’s being described. (Hey, you make me fall in love with your book, I’m going to claim partial ownership.) They all jump ahead, past the beginning, which, yes, sure, isn’t all fast-paced and zippity-doo-dah action. Maybe it feels a little old-fashioned, but only in that it doesn’t feel (here I go again) like any of the books I’ve read that were written in the past few years. Not old-fashioned as in slow, or dense, or starting the story up at cloud-level and waiting forever to come down to earth where the characters are. None of those. Maybe it’s just that Martin, the boy in the story, is very isolated, and the beginning is solely his story, so the voice feels at once very close to him and at the same time very distant from anything else.

Because my least favorite part of writing a “review” is doing the summary, I’ll just link you to the blurb on Starmer’s page. But if your go over and read that, know, please, that so much more happens before Martin finds Xibalba. SO MUCH MORE. And, IMVSHO (in my very strong honest opinion), all of it is critical to the story, to getting to know Martin and all his whys, to getting introduced to the machine so that it’s part of the world before you find out how important it is (and, again, why). In the beginning, for many pages…Martin. Is. Alone. And this matters. It really, really matters. Because Martin is going to change, IN BIG, BIG WAYS, throughout the story, and Starmer has taken the time, given us the time, to understand Martin before those changes.

The book certainly doesn’t start out light or cheerful, but it starts out–I guess I’d say–intact and whole. Martin lives in a world that is, if narrow, understandable. That doesn’t last. The world breaks, Martin breaks, and–oh,boy–the other kids break. So, yeah, sure, it’s middle-grade, but…there is violence. And there is loss. And none of it is tiptoed around or gentled or placed in softly padded bags for us. In the middle of all that reality is some pretty special science-fiction. Maybe. It might be magic. This book is at once more real and less real than anything I can (yet) imagine myself writing.

So far. Because, hoo-boy, if I could write like this…if I could create this solid a world and this powerful a set of happenings and characters this quirky and creative all with a VOICE and a FEEL…

Some day. This is why I write, why I keep at it. And this is so, so why I read.

Tag: THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH

Calling Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

THE ONLY ONES by Aaron Starmer