Frederic’s Comments (group member since Jan 11, 2012)

Frederic’s comments from the Q&A with Frederic S. Durbin group.

Thanks for a great question! I believe that my writing is all ultimately traceable to three places experienced in childhood:

1. The Edges of the Yards and Fields: This might also be called "Hidden Outdoor Spaces." As a kid, I was fascinated with the borders of places. I was forever crawling into the bushes, exploring the hedgerows at the boundaries of our property. There were little paths inside them where animals (foxes? raccoons? opossums?) had pressed down the weeds with repeated passage, and I found that supremely alluring, like roads into Faerie. I loved the idea of the forests encroaching on the back of our property, that dim, cool, secret world beyond the sunlit field. And I was enchanted by the cornfields. The world of tall green stalks and whispery leaves existed only in the summertime, and you had to cross a physical ditch (left by tractor tires) to get into it. Finally, there was the realm of the treetops. I found you could also climb out of the everyday world. High up in the trees, there were places of emerald light and sunbeams, of squirrels and knotholes and birds, from which you couldn't see the ground very well. If you've ever read my story "The Place of Roots," you can see where tree-climbing experience led -- to a society of folk who live in the tops of vast trees, and for whom the distant ground is nothing but a vague myth.

2. Hidden Indoor Spaces: I loved playing in closets as a small child, particularly if the closets had shelves that I could climb up to. I'm guessing C.S. Lewis was the same way as a boy, since a wardrobe is an entrance to Narnia. I loved my grandma's basement, too. There were dusty shelves of jam jars and vegetable preserves, old seed packets, antiquated washtubs where I actually helped her do laundry . . . and she had a bomb shelter, too, built at the recommendation of President Kennedy. It was reached by a twice-turning hallway from the basement proper, and I thought it was the epitome of wondrous playhouses.

3. Mammoth Cave and all its kind: When I was 7 or 8, my parents took me to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. Forever after, our family vacation trips had to be structured around caves we could visit, because I was hooked on these hallowed halls beneath the ground -- places of unfathomable mystery, older than any structure of humankind, where possibility seemed to flow like the air currents.

I receive inspiration from natural places: caverns, forests, wilderness trails, rocky heights, rivers, waterfalls, canyons, sea coasts . . . the backyard at dusk, especially in the summer, when the fireflies drift and wink, and the trees stand in silhouette.

In fiction, these borders and secret realms are also my favorite places to go: in Tolkien's stories, the mines of Moria and the forest of Mirkwood; in other tales, the jungles, the lost cities, the subterranean kingdoms, the attics, the basements . . . all those places where stories whisper until they are found and heard.

They're all like children. There are things I love about all of them. I don't have a favorite. The most timeless of the bunch may be "The Gift." I'm very happy that I wrote it, and I'm grateful for how the complexity of it worked out. Some of the best emotional truth in any of my short pieces may be in "A Tale of Silences." Both "The Bone Man" and Dragonfly have, at different times when I've looked back at them, made me think, "Wow! Did I write that?!" and have made me feel very good. Some of my very best writing so far is in novels that aren't published yet, but hopefully will be before long. But again, I think I could find something I like best about everything I've written. I certainly love the Urrmsh and the Thunder Rake from The Star Shard, and Cymbril as a character. I think most things we produce when we've reached our adult stride (that is, gotten out of our apprenticeship) are of good quality with moments of inspiration, brilliance, or whatever you want to call it -- points at which the work transcends and shows a glimmer of what it would be like if it were perfect. I would recommend to any creative artist a story by J.R.R. Tolkien called "Leaf by Niggle." It's been published as part of The Tolkien Reader; that's probably the best way to find it. It's about dedication and being true to our craft and calling, and about the frustration we face in this life over imperfect execution and the obstacles thrown at us by limited time, by obligations, and by mortality. But the story suggests that what is imperfect and incomplete in this life has a perfect, fully-completed existence in the world to come.

So, no, I don't have a favorite among my stories and books. I have a great deal of sentimental attachment to Dragonfly, because that was my first work of published fiction as an adult. I'll never forget the ecstatic joy of hearing that Arkham House was going to publish it. That was the moment that confirmed I could be a professional writer.

As to the very last part of the question: no, I don't necessarily always feel that the project I'm working on is the greatest yet -- I LIKE it when I feel that way, of course! To use a pottery analogy: sometimes you're making a simple cup, and you know that, even though you've made ornate urns or fantastic vases before; you still pour your love and skill into that cup, so that it's the best cup it can be. I strive to do things better and better each time around, and when you get absorbed in the crafting, it's exciting.

You've probably heard the oft-quoted lines from Kipling's "In the Neolithic Age": "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, / "And every single one of them is right!" Yes, there are multiple ways of approaching the writing of fiction!

As for plot, some writers like to figure it all out in advance. J.K. Rowling and Christopher Paolini are two famous examples of writers who have gone on record describing their intricate plotting before ever setting down the first word of the story. Then there are writers like Stephen King, who let the plot grow by putting the characters into a situation and watching what they do. I'm much more toward the Stephen King end of the continuum, but I do like to have a very rough, general idea of what the plot might be before I start. This may amount to a page or two with a basic outline. It's a big, broad gist of a story, but with few particulars. More than outlining the plot carefully, I tend to jot notes over a long time about names, settings, situations, or maybe a quirky character on scraps of paper, and I keep them in the box with the manuscript. As I think about these elements, either when I'm writing or (often) when I'm walking, I'll gradually understand where they fit into the structure. In some stories, I've used such snippets that came to me years and years before, which is why I recommend that writers keep their writing materials in a safe place where they can always find everything again.

But yes, I'm discovering most of the little twists of the story as I go along. That's the only way for me to keep it real. If I try to hammer the plot out, it becomes a dead, cold thing. If I let the plot grow from the characters' efforts to solve their problems, it stays alive and genuine, and it keeps surprising me. I have to let a book tell its own story, because it knows that story better than I do.

Ha, ha! Dorothy, your question is a better answer than anything I might say! :-) As for me personally: no, I don't generally model characters on people I know (but that doesn't mean I never do that -- in Dragonfly, Clara is an awful lot like my own grandmother). I think that's because I'm not a very good student of people. I observe places a lot better than I observe people, and I'm not one of those writers who imagine backstories for people they encounter casually or see in public places. (I know writers who do that, and it's a great exercise, I think.) My most important advice -- and the only key I know about, if you can call it that -- is this: as the writer, you have to listen very carefully to what your characters say and notice very carefully what they want to do. You can't treat them like pawns you're moving around a chess board. You have to put yourself into them, perceive the world through their senses, and think like they would think in the situations they're faced with. (That's another way of saying "listen to them.") When characters on the page seem lifeless and unrealized, I think it's usually because the author has short-changed them; the author has ignored them. They're being used to fulfill that writer's agenda rather than allowed to live and breathe. If characters think and act and react fully -- if the writer spends the time and lets them live in the story -- then they are real to the reader, and the reader will care about them. That's why, in a way, writing is like acting. The writer is essentially pretending to be the characters in a story. It's a grand game of pretend. Imagining mostly involves developing a peculiar set of senses. You hear with ears that aren't really yours; you see things happening that are real -- in the world of your story. Most of the character development I do happens during the course of the story. I can't really know my characters until I get to know them by seeing what they do in a series of situations. It's just like how you get to know "real" people. I'm not the type of writer who makes detailed character sketches before starting to write. I'm not saying that method is wrong or that mine is any better. Mine is the method that works for me. (And I was delighted at a World Fantasy Convention to hear Garth Nix, the writer of The Abhorsen Trilogy among other things, say exactly the same thing -- so I'm in excellent company!)

I'm really excited to hear your critique!

Tricia wrote: "Oh, one more question: How much longer is the novel than the story? Not exactly a writing process question, but I just had to know."

This took some research, but I finally have an answer for you. At one point near the end of our revisions on the Cricket story (there was a lot of back-and-forth refining), the story weighed in at 23,992 words. I would guess that that's pretty close to the finalized version that appeared in the magazine (give or take a couple hundred). On a near-final draft I have of the book manuscript, it's 62,500 words. That means that from the story to the book, it grew by 38,508 words. That means that if you divide its volume into three, one third of it was the Cricket story, and two thirds of it are part of the novel alone.

In NaNoWriMo, they shoot for 50,000 words as being the line at which a story becomes a novel. Different places will give you different numbers on what constitutes a story, novelette, novella, or novel.

Dorothy wrote: "You and Tolkien in a canoe--that's quite a mind picture! That might be too much of a good thing. I rather think that you two would have such an interesting discussion that you would forget what pl..."

I'm afraid that's true: we'd go over Rauros Falls! And all the way down, we'd be aware of how awesome it was to be among all that falling water . . .

Tricia wrote: "How was your writing process different in writing The Star Shard the novel than when you begin with a blank page? Was there a difference for you having already figured out some of the story in the ..."

Maybe I shouldn't say it, because I'm providing fuel for critical critics, but it was HARD to write The Star Shard into a novel from an existing short story! Imagine that you have a pair of pants that fit your two-year-old son, and you then set out to make them into a pair of pants that will fit your husband. Yikes! You can do it, of course, with more material, with a lot of measuring, stitching, snipping, etc. -- but they were perfectly good pants to begin with. They fit the two-year-old just fine! There's a shape to a short story that is different from the shape of a novel. Maybe that's why it took me many, many rewrites before I found the new shape of it. The characters at one point got much older, and then they got back to their original ages. The second half of the book jumped much farther ahead in time in one draft, and then it came back. All in all, I'm not eager to convert another short story into a novel.

But don't get me wrong! I love The Star Shard, and I'm delighted with it now. It just had a very difficult adolescence! I am intensely curious to know what Cricket readers who knew the story in its first incarnation there will think if they re-read it as a book. Interestingly, they'll be bigger and older people than they were in 2008-2009. They will have grown up with the story. (I hope their interposing years were easier!)

I didn't answer your question, did I? What was the process? I had to try to find ways to explore the spaces-between. Here was a story with a solid (little) skeleton. It had to come out more or less the same (I tried having it come out differently, and it didn't work out) -- but a lot more had to happen in the novel than in the story. I introduced two interrelated subplots that aren't in the Cricket story. Oh, I can't say that it wasn't fun! Hard, but fun!

Place as character -- yes, I suppose that's one way of putting it! In Dragonfly, Harvest Moon (the subterranean Gothic town) does seem like the "main character," doesn't it? Like Middle-earth is the "main character" of The Lord of the Rings!

Dorothy wrote: "Interesting about the four types of writers! I have a tendency to think that all stories must begin with the characters. Thanks for enlightening us!"

I think that the characters have to be solid before the story is finished, definitely! The reader has to identify with the characters and care about them, or there's no book/story. But the characters aren't what comes first to every writer.

You've probably heard the story of how Tolkien began The Hobbit. It was late at night (he was a night owl, like me), and he was grading student papers. He came to a paper in which the student had left most of a page blank, and he was grateful to see that, as I usually am -- less to check, you know. Suddenly this line came to Tolkien, and he wrote it down, right on the student's page: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." That's the first line of The Hobbit, and the author then goes on to describe the hole in some detail before he describes the hobbit. So I would argue that it was the hole, not the hobbit, that first came to J.R.R.T. And when you read his works, he's obviously more excited about the lands as a whole -- the geography, the languages, the history, the culture -- than about developing any of the characters or exploring their feelings/growth/relationships. The characters are wonderful, but it's Middle-earth we remember and want to visit again, time after time, in our lives. So I would place Tolkien in my canoe, on my team -- does anyone care to argue that point? :-) J.R.R.T. was a writer of PLACE/SETTING! MILIEU!

I wonder whatever happened to that test paper! Did Tolkien erase or blot out the line before he returned it? Did the student save it?

You said it there!

I admire you for not looking the scene up! You obviously approached it faithfully as a closed-book test! You did amazingly well for having read the book long ago!

What Tricia has posted there is a link straight to the Dragonfly quiz, which makes it easier to find! Thanks, Tricia!

And, Tricia, you have the highest score so far of anyone!

Hi, Tricia! Just click on the icon for the book Dragonfly. On the page that comes up, scroll down. You'll find the quiz somewhere on that page! (It's sort of lower-right on my screen.) You have to click on it to see more than the first question. If you still can't find it, let me know! Thanks for looking it up!

Hi, Jason, and thank you for the kind words! Yes, certainly the chance to go into other worlds was the big draw reading held for me as a kid. So, let's see; if we're excluding the three authors I've already mentioned in this thread . . . There is a children's book called My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett, with enchanting illustrations by Ruth Chrisman Gannett. It's actually the beginning of a series, but I've only read the first book, which stands alone quite well. It takes you into the unexplored jungle of Wild Island, accessible only by a long sea voyage to the nearby island of Tangerina, then by hopping across a treacherous chain of ocean rocks. The book comes with a map, and the pictures make the jungle look like such a mysterious and exotic place; all that, combined with the boy's adventures in trying to reach and rescue a baby dragon, held me spellbound as a young reader, and it's been an influence on my writing ever since. For many of the same reasons, I've loved every incarnation of King Kong, though that's not really a book--but that wild, faraway island--now with the added dimension of prehistoric monsters and a gigantic, carefully-barred gate!
I loved Edgar Rice Burroughs' Caspak trilogy: The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot, and Out of Time's Abyss. Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes. Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, particularly for the Phantom's lair, descending in level after stygian level beneath the Paris Opera House. Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are took me to another wild, inviting world as a very young reader--and the charm of that book is that it shows you that such worlds are accessible right from your own room, that they can provide comfort and "escape" in our unhappy times. As I grew up, Peter S. Beagle in The Last Unicorn, Hope Mirrlees in Lud-in-the-Mist, Joss Whedon in his TV creation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Steven Millhauser in Enchanted Night and in his short fiction . . . I think all these are examples of master world-building--worlds that are internally consistent and superbly inviting. I'm sure I'm forgetting ten of my favorites for every one I've mentioned!

By the way, thanks for saying that my stories have an atmosphere and sense of place! If that's the case, I'm happy!

Dorothy wrote: "Your stories have such a sense of place, such an atmosphere. Maybe, for you, the setting is the first character to show up, the one who defines all the rest of the characters!"

Just tonight at our local writers' group, we were talking about how we think there are at least four types of writers, and in our group, we have writers who represent all four types:
1. writers of place (world-builders)
2. writers of character
3. writers of plot
4. writers of situation/idea
Those four aspects are "doorways" that lead the writer into the story. For me, it's the place that draws me in. For some, it's a character that shows up. For some, it's a plot to hang a story upon. For some, it's an intriguing situation to be explored. We all come in by different doors, but we all reach a fully-developed story. Very interesting stuff!

Dorothy wrote: "Do your stories generally begin with the setting? Or does a character ever come and tap you on the shoulder?"

Yes, my stories almost always begin with the setting, or with an idea that's closely tied to the setting. I can't think of any case in which a character has come and found me before the setting did. Once I'm working on a book or story, then sometimes characters show up out of nowhere. But in general, my imagination gravitates much more toward places than toward people. That's why character development is a lot harder for me than it is for many writers. I know writers who love thinking about what makes people tick. I've never been that way.

Dorothy wrote: "What is the genesis of The Star Shard? Did it begin with a mental image of Cymbril? Or with the Rake? (You mentioned that a sense of place is vital to your writing.) Or did the beginning ideas com..."

It was with the concept of the Thunder Rake. I had originally developed Thunder Rakes (smaller than the one appearing in The Star Shard) as vehicles used by the forces of evil in The Threshold of Twilight, the first novel-length manuscript I wrote as a student in high school and college. I envisioned many of them, wheeled "battleship"/troop carriers "rowed" over the plains by monstrous creatures manning the levers that turned the gears. I often recycle ideas from my earlier, unpublished works for use in later projects. I suppose the idea of the Thunder Rake goes all the way back to elementary school, when we read about Windwagon Smith and the (folkloric?) windwagons of the American frontier, wagons outfitted with sails. That's when my wheels started turning. And when you've got a great setting, there's usually a story hiding in there somewhere!

I'm amazed that you bring that up! I have a friend who reads the Farmer's Almanac, and she often informs me of the names of the full moons we're experiencing. She did indeed tell me about the Full Wolf Moon that we just saw! (It was bright and clear here!)

That concept of "spunk water" is fascinating!

As I was growing up, I remember the Foxfire Books in my parents' bookstore. If I'm not mistaken, they were a collection of folk beliefs, remedies, etc. -- I'd guess that they mentioned "spunk water"!

It sort of reminds me of that thing in Cold Mountain where you hang over backwards at the top of a well while someone holds your feet, and you can see the future reflected in the water.

Gabe wrote: "Well now, Fred... since Tolkien, Adams, and Lovecraft are your three greatest influences, can you find any SPECIFIC ways in which their writing or content have informed your own works?"

Well, certainly! Tolkien influenced my style a lot -- probably far too much in my earlier years, but I guess we all learn by modeling our heroes. From Tolkien, I gained a love of BIG story, a tale that goes on and on through many adventures. And then there's that inseparability of the setting (particularly the natural world) and the story. From Tolkien I got the idea that if you appreciate the wonder in things like trees, leaves, mossy hillsides, or even the way light falls over rocks and into ravines -- if you include that wonder and use it, you've gone a very long way toward building your world in a fantasy story. We see that for sure in Dragonfly. In my very first conversation with the illustrator, Jason Van Hollander, we talked about how Harvest Moon, the place, was the real "star" of the book. That aspect is like the one that draws people back again and again to The Lord of the Rings. They want to revisit Middle-earth. With Dragonfly, repeat readers, I believe, mostly want to go back and re-experience Harvest Moon.

From Adams, I also picked up some of that. In Watership Down, the first sentence and the last clause of the book are about what's happening in the world of nature -- the primroses are over, and then they're blooming. I think setting -- and particularly natural setting -- is a great doorway into the realm of the magical . . . or into story itself, because it also works with non-magical stories. I'm very much a writer of place, and I would say that my three earliest influences were, too, at least on one level. (They all brought a lot more to the table, too -- I'm not trying to limit them to place.)

Lovecraft: well, it's the atmosphere, isn't it? Again, in Dragonfly, Lovecraft's influence is apparent in the buildings and horrors of Harvest Moon. I think I even used the phrase "gambrel roofs" -- probably more than once!

Tolkien, Adams, and Lovecraft are perhaps the unlikeliest of trios to put together. But that strange combination runs deep through all my fiction. It's about old things, about words and their power, vanished worlds, forgotten peoples, often about darkness and horror, but there's also a warmth, a sense that things will be okay. Beauty isn't an element of Lovecraft stories, but it's there in Tolkien and Adams, and I'd like to think it's pretty important in my writing, too. I'm talking about the beauty of story and the way life works. It may hurt, it may take us through the worst horrors, but in the end, when you step back and look, life is a beautiful thing.

Does that answer the question?