Jane Yolen's Blog, page 24

Interstitial Moment:

Turning an old, already-published short story into a novel has many built-in problems. An outsider might think that it should be an easy task. After all, the characters and plot are  established and handy. The tone/voice is there. Just deepen and write more words, right?

Wrong.

I have done a lot of what the sf world calls "fix-ups,"taking an existing short story and writing a novel from it/them. Believe me, it is a much tougher problem than that.

Among the novels I have written that have come from my short stories, include: The Young Merlin Trilogy (Passager, Hobby, Merlin), Cards of Grief, Sword of the Rightful King, Dragon's Boy, The Books of Great Alta (Sister Light/Sister Dark, White Jenna, though the third book–The One-Armed Queen was wholly new), The Pit Dragon Chronicles, and now Snow in Summer which I just turned in, and The Thirteenth Fey which I am working on and due at the beginning of June.

Here are just a few of the problems:

1. Plot. Yes, there is more plot in a novel, but that's not the least of it. A short story plot will usually only have one twist and sometimes a dynamite last line. But a novel is never so arc-simple. There have to be curlicues and dash-backs, and double dealings, false turns. A short story plot is a carousel ride. A novel is a maze.

2. Characters. In a short story less is more. Fewer characters. A novel often has a large cast. Or at least a larger cast than the short story, and more of those characters have to be fleshed out, given back-stories, voices, other small plots or arcs of their own.

3. A single line. A short story can turn on a dime. Yes, that can be a fairy coin, but remember they disappear with the dawn. A novel is going to have a slower and more developed denouement.

4. Flashbacks, flash forwards, interstitial stuff. Sometimes it works in the short story and not the novel or vice versa. The author has to learn to let go.

5. Voice. Much the same as #4. Sometimes an entirely new voice must be used for the novel version.

One has to consider the short story simply as a starting place. Everything is negotiable, everything is up for grabs. The story still lives in its own format. But the novel has to live, too, and it may become a very different animal because of it. Love them both but do not confuse or conflate them.

Here endeth the lesson for today. Selah.

October 1-6, 2010:

Book News:

Two nice rejections, a copy of the f&gs of The Day Tiger Rose Went Away, and 10,681 words on the new novel–The Thirteenth Fey which encompasses the first section of the book. (I think it's three sections.) Since I start my fall travel schedule with a bang this weekend, not sure how much I will get done before November.

Life Etc.:

Visited a member of the writing group who is quite ill along with to other members. We all supported one another. This same week heard about two other friends who died, and a third whose husband died in a freak mountain-climbing accident. Time of my life, I suppose. Always throws me back to David's death of course.

Heidi and I signed close to (or over) 50 books at the Conway Festival of the Hills.

Had tea with several friends.

Mostly I was head down and writing. That 10,000 plus words were all done in 6 days. And boy! are my wings tired. I think it's a solid start, but then every time I go back over it, I find more to do.

September 14-30, 2010:

Big catch up. I hope this will work on the resurrected Air.

Obviously I got home from Scotland, but it was nightmarish. On the front end,  I had booked a later flight–at noon instead of 7 a.m.–so Debby and I could have a leisurely start to the morning. But the Pope (yeah, that guy) decided to visit Scotland on the day I was leaving. So traffic to and fron the Edinburgh airport was going to be backed up and rerouted. So we ended up leaving at 7 a.m. anyway, which meant I was up at 4 to get everything finished, bed stripped etc.

Plane to Newark was easy, and then everything went pear-shaped.

There were tornadoes (yeah–those storms) in New York. And though I had a 9 o'clock in the evening one hour flight back to Hartford where Heidi was to pick me up, the plane was pushed back an hour. And at 10, though we'd been assured the plane was going, Heidi called me to say it was listed as canceled. I asked again and the guy checked his schedule and said, "Oh–it HAS been canceled." So at ten p.m. I scrambled–along with the other  v/i/c/t/e/m/s  er passengers of two other canceled flights to get in line for. . .we had no idea what. But I'd been up over 24 hours at this point.

Finally the line was so long, I dodged out of there, called my cousin Pam in Stamford, found a cab willing to take me there (can we say $200 boys and girls?) and spent the night. Took a train in the morning to Springfield.

Heidi picked me up, though traffic delayed her. We took a detour through Maddison's school. And home. Six hours sleep in 36 hours. It took me days to recover.

But some nice books stuff: a poem, "The Gospel of the Rope" coming out from Mythic Delirium, the editor of Snow in Summer has already read 1/3 of the revision and likes it. Some book money trickled in. A new Dino book (board book of opposites) accepted. A poem out in the latest Asimov's. Nice conversations begun with the editor of the Things To Say to a Dying Man poetry collection. Signing at the World Eye Bookstore went well. Editor Steve Meltzer likes a book proposal sent to him, though of course it has to get through committee. Editor Sharyn November liked a trilogy proposal sent to her, ditto. I had my first copies of Hush Little Horsie and How Do Dinosaurs Laugh Out Loud, two starred reviews for Switching on the Moon (added to the two for Elsie's Bird). Two phone interviews about my 300th book.

Some not nice news: one picture book and one short story turned down. Both have gone elsewhere. "Never let the grass grow underfoot" is a good unsold book motto to have.

Visited a very sick friend, did a touch-up for the voice-over narrative I'd taped before Scotland, had a small operation removing a fibroma from my upper gum. (Dr. Soft Hands was the perfect dental surgeon for the job, no pain and no bleeding).

Heidi and Maddison and I plus two friends raced into New York for Tony DiT's book launch of WONDLA. Had tea with my old elementary school chum, Marcel, catching up on sixty years in two hours. Must be a world's record.

Two writing group meetings, cousin Mal for an overnight visit and the Carle Museum visit, a flu shot, a birthday party for a friend, a q&a with poet laureate emeritus Rita Dove,  and an Illustrator's Guild pot luck later, and I think I'm back on track for this journal. More anon.

Apologies:

My laptop (where all my website information resided) died the almost True Death. When the geek squad resurrected it, all its settings were lost. Only now have I gotten back on with the help of my ever-patient webmaster who has gone bald in my service. (Thanks, Igor.)

Expect some updates soon.

With Apologies. . .

Sharp-eyed Marcel caught me in a mis-statement. (Who knew he reads my journal!)

I wrote that he said "Any landing you survive is a good one." But what he actually told me was "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing." And there is a difference. Nuance is everything. Thanks, Marcel. And a tug of the forelock to you.

September 8-12, 2010

One of the things I love about living part of the year in Scotland is how anonymous I am. I give few if any lectures, workshops, speeches, signings. I am known here as Mrs. Stemple. Oh sure, my close friends know I am a well-known writer in the States. But since very few of my books are in libraries, schools, or bookstores here, there is little call on my time. I write, read, play with my friends, and host a variety of tourists who come to visit.

So it was with a bit of trepidation that on...

September 6-7, 2010:

First, I know I wrote 1020 as the date on the previous journal entry. I just don't know quite how to correct that. So simply take it as a warning that authors without editors are typo-machines. They make us better than we are though, alas, not better than we should be.

Now as to books and writing, I wrote a not-wonderful poem about children, revised and reworked the Joey Dante's Trip to Heck proposal and sent it Bob Harris, my co-author. And received the first pictures for another book...

August 30-September 5, 1020:

The first thing this week taught me: though it has been four and a half years since my beloved David died, grieving is a process that will be part of me forever. Certain anniversaries still have power over me. September 2 would have been our 48th wedding anniversary.  Memories flood in, no longer tsunami strength, often not even a hurricane or Nor'easter. But still powerful enough to remind me that memory can release strong emotions.

And how is that a bad thing?  To be reminded of love is not ...

August 25-29, 2010:

I have been overwhelmed lately with invitations. All my Scottish friends realize I am leaving in two weeks, and suddenly the invites are coming in thick and fast. So think of me wining and dining my way across Fife. Or perhaps it's whining and dining as I obsess about the bustle of my return, not to mention the dreaded flights.

Why in this four days alone I have had: tea with Marianna and Pete at my house, a visit from Vanessa and kids to report on their first day of school (and more tea and b...

Interstitial Moment:

This from a speech I'm giving in Ireland in two weeks for SCBWI:

I seemed to have been absent from school the day plot was taught. So I will tell you in several sentences what I believe plot is all about. You may argue with me at will.

I believe there are two kinds of writers: the ones who carefully consider plot, who craft it with outlines and maps, with tending to the Gross National Product of the place of their story, and they know every thing ahead of time. And then there are the others...