The Anatomy of Curiosity
Brenna Yovanoff
“Ladylike” copyright © 2015 by Maggie Stiefvater
“Desert Canticle” copyright © 2015 by Tessa Gratton
“Drowning Variations” copyright © 2015 by Brenna Yovanoff
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The anatomy of curiosity / by Tessa Gratton, Maggie Stiefvater, Brenna Yovanoff.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4677-2398-5 (lb : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4677-8812-0 (eb pdf)
1. Fiction—Authorship. 2. Young adult fiction, American. 3. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) 4. Young adult fiction—Authorship. 5. American fiction—21st century. I. Gratton, Tessa, author. II. Stiefvater, Maggie, 1981– author. III. Yovanoff, Brenna, author.
PN3355.A67 2015
808.3—dc23
2014046862
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 – BP – 7/15/15
eISBN: 978-1-46778-812-0 (pdf)
eISBN: 978-1-46778-971-4 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-1-46778-970-7 (mobi)
to Andrew Karre
INTRODUCTION
There are two ways to read this book. You can read it merely as three pieces of fiction from three different authors, or you can read it as a book about three different approaches to writing fiction.
If it’s the first, you can skip this introduction. We’ll see you on the other side!
If it’s the second, read on. (We tried to be as spoiler-free as possible in our discussions of how and why we wrote these stories, but if you dread the slightest spoiler, we recommend you read the stories themselves before the commentary!)
Although this is a book on methods of writing fiction, it is not a book on the method of writing fiction. We—Tessa, Brenna, Maggie—are each professional novelists, but we approach writing in different ways. This book is meant to illuminate just three of the infinite ways to get to The End.
We meant for this book to answer the most common writing questions we are asked:
1) Where do you get your ideas?
2) Why do you pick one idea over another?
3) How do you go from idea to book?
4) How much do you plan before you begin?
5) Where do you start?
6) How do you come up with characters?
7) How do you write description?
8) How do you invent a new world?
9) How do you know when the draft is done?
10) How do you deal with writer’s block?
11) Do you revise while you write?
12) How do you know what to edit?
13) How do you deal with doubt?
We didn’t want to write a book that told writers our answers to these questions. We wanted to write a book that showed the answers to the questions. Instead of making the answers theoretical, we wanted a book that would demonstrate how we made our creative decisions, solved problems, and brought an idea from spark to bonfire.
In order to show our process, we each wrote a story for the book, keeping notes on the idea forming, character building, and world creation as we did. Then we critiqued each other’s stories—just as we do with our novels—and incorporated those revisions into our stories. We’re presenting all of that here as thoroughly as we can manage.
Because we’re three very different writers, with very different work methods and, equally importantly, very different priorities for what we want out of fiction, both the stories and the processes are strikingly different.
Maggie’s story, “Ladylike,” is a reflection of the place her stories begin and end: character.
Tessa’s story, “Desert Canticle,” shows how important world building is in both her process and end result.
Brenna’s story, “Drowning Variations,” demonstrates how her priority remains with the idea.
IDEAS
Brenna
I’m kind of like some hypothetical structure made entirely of ideas—like a tiny candy pig made of marzipan. Except shaped liked me. Made of ideas.
Maggie
When writers reply, “You can find ideas anywhere,” I reckon they really mean “prompt,” not “idea.” Anything can prompt a story. But ideas—viable ideas, ideas you can really run with for an extended piece of fiction—have to mean something to you personally. They’re a question that’s been resonating inside you, a fight with a friend you need to understand, a fairy tale you’ve loved since you were little. A story doesn’t need to contain all of you but it has to hold some of you, or it’s not going to be a very good story.
Tessa
Idea for me nearly always arrives in the form of world—ideas are what-if questions: What if roadside bombs were magical? What would that world look like? Wow, Viking culture and modern American warrior culture are so similar! What if Viking gods were real and founded the USA? What would that world look like?
I love world building and the process of exploring those kinds of questions in experimental ways so much that I could make any world idea viable if I chose to. So what makes me choose? The transformation of an idea from a world idea into an idea of change. The vehicle for that is always me creating a character who will/can directly affect and change that world. It sounds grandiose and epic, and it can be depending on the scope of the story, but it doesn’t have to be. The idea of change can be small and metaphorical, and it should be both internal to the character and reflected in external world changes.
I know I have moved on from a world idea to an actual, viable story idea when I can say, “Here is this world, and here is how this character will change it.”
CHARACTERS
Maggie
Characters are people. Real people have complex motivations for their actions—motivations that are neither good nor bad until shoved up against someone else’s motivations and actions. They have complex and contradictory hopes and fears. They have pimples and tics, words they always say and words they would never say. And these specific attributes must follow each other naturally—there’s no point saying a character always wears blue shoes and enjoys tennis unless the reader also understands how those facts are intrinsic to their personality and upbringing. A character plays a role in the story, yes, but the character should also be more than that role: a real person.
Tessa
Characters are born out of their specific world and circumstances. Characters must want something. What makes a character a hero or protagonist is that their needs and desires create the conflict that will drive the story. And they change by the end.
Brenna
If you ask Tessa and Maggie what a typical Brenna character looks like, they would probably say, “Weird, mis
anthropic weirdos who are dysfunctional and strange. Also, weird.” This is approximately true. My first-draft people are prickly and hard to like. Sometimes they swear a lot. They would not make good social workers or class presidents. Later, I take them apart in little revision-pieces, looking for something lovable. My goal is always figuring out how to make them into the truest, most interesting versions of themselves. Only, in a way that makes other people want to be in the same room with them.
WORLD
Tessa
The world is everything. Literally. It is the ground your character walks on, the air she breathes; it is her name and her parents’ names, religious beliefs, political situation, school system, how she buys cable TV, the Internet, architecture and plumbing and types of flowers, if the roads are made of asphalt or gravel or dirt or if there are no roads at all. World is dialect and dialogue; it’s race and creed and nationalism and ethnicity; and it is how all those things affect everything else. It is sexuality and gender and, more importantly, how different sexualities are treated or seen (or unseen); it is whether gender is recognized apart from biology and how. World is dancing and rules about dancing. It is magic or technology or science and the interaction between all these things. World is culture. World is nature versus nurture. World is do they teach history in school and what kind of history? World is do you have high school or do you have tutors or do only the elite read at all or does writing even exist?
World is everything. The trick for the writer is discovering and choosing which details, which pieces of the world, will communicate to readers as much as possible about the characters and the characters’ desires.
Maggie
I think of world building in painting terms. In real life, all details scream for attention, existing without priority. A painting can not only eliminate details but also shift colors, shapes, and sizes in impossible ways. A landscape can be painted all in blue, a mouse can be exaggerated in size, a man drawn impossibly thin or fat.
I begin every novel with an idea of what I want my book to look and feel like. When I revise, I go through every scene to make sure every description and setting reinforces it. It means that I omit—or cut—some details (like in the painting, when every color but blue hues is removed), exaggerate some details (like calling repeated attention to loud noises or claustrophobic landscape elements), and stylize still others (like only describing the people at a party who match the mood I desire). I’ll cut entire scenes in revision if they jar the overall mood I want.
Brenna
My favorite worlds are weird ones. I like pretty things and frilly dresses, and teeth and bones and science, and knowing all the little secrets about a place, and the cruelest, pointiest monsters. That’s a lot of stuff to figure out, and so my first foray into a story always means exploring, looking at all kinds of details in isolation. Early drafts involve a lot of wandering into various scenes and settings, looking into closets and random cupboards, then wandering out again.
INTRODUCTION
One of the questions I’m often asked by aspiring writers is “How do you make an idea into a novel?” I used to think it was a spreading, borderless question: How do I write a book? But I understand now that the question is asking about that nebulous time that exists after a compelling idea springs into your head but before you actually begin putting words on paper. Or possibly extends to even after you begin writing. Maybe all the way up to when you’ve put down a few tentative scratches and then realize that, at this rate, it will never be novel-length, and you might as well take up needlepoint or big-game hunting instead.
This was a state I lived in for much of my teen years. My head was full of ideas, partial stories, and sort-of characters, but they all turned clumsy or insubstantial when I tried to write them out. Often I’d throw out the ideas during that stage because I figured if I couldn’t figure out how to write it, it wasn’t a good enough idea. I know better now: any idea can be a good one—you’ll see Tessa and Brenna say that as well. But an idea isn’t enough. It’s the execution that you get gold stars for.
I know now that when I want to get an idea out of my head and onto paper, I have some questions to ask myself. Idea-to-novel is really a process of elimination. Every question I answer and every decision I make—the narrator’s age, the story’s location, the time of year—narrows down the possibilities. I figure out the story I want to tell by establishing the stories I don’t want to tell. Eventually I’ve ruled out everything, and the infinite possible versions of an idea become the one I’m putting on paper.
I’m going to try to show you that process for “Ladylike.” It’s a process that is pretty much defined by not making sense when it is written down, but I’m going to do my best. The thing to watch for is how important character is to me throughout. Even creative decisions that look, on the surface, as if they may be about other things are really character decisions once you dig down deep enough. My thinking goes like this: Idea! Character! Setting! World! Now back to character to clean up any drool!
Well, you’ll see.
The original concept of “Ladylike” was not specific or revelatory in any way: I simply thought it would be interesting to write a story about a caretaker hired to tend a genteel but deadly woman who hadn’t left her home in years.
At this point, the idea could have turned into any kind of story: a tragedy, horror, a sweet love story. The staggering weight of all those possibilities is what used to hold me in stasis for so long. How do you make an idea into a novel? (“I have no idea!” says PastMaggie. “Let’s run away!”)
Here’s another question writers ask me a lot: How much planning do you do before you begin writing? I do a lot of work before I allow myself to start, but I’m not certain I’d call it “planning.” A better term would probably be “ruling things out.”
The first thing I ruled out was vampires.
My first question: Why is the woman deadly? I needed someone who would eat people, and vampires ate people, right? Vampire was the first answer that came to mind. It was also the easy answer, so I threw it out. Chucking the answers anyone might give is a simple way of avoiding clichés or stereotypes. I want the most Maggie-specific answers in order to get to the story that only I can tell.
Here’s another thing about vampires. I love mythology, and using an existing, familiar myth can add wordless, efficient depth to your fiction. But the same familiarity means that the myth arrives with a lot of baggage that my story will have to either accept or refute. I considered all of the elements of the vampire myth I’d have to throw out or change before I got to the story I wanted and realized it was all of it. Same with fairy mythology—an aging fairy queen would be interesting, but not the story I wanted to tell. I quickly eliminated a list of existing mythology and realized all that was left was an unknown, invented magical creature. She would have only the magic rules that I wanted. My old lady would not be a lady at all, I decided: she would be merely an elegant creature in womanly form. Ladylike.
Geraldine.
There it was, her name. It sounded fussy and old and lovely, just what I wanted.
That left my other major character: the caretaker. Because I had Geraldine—genteel, polite Geraldine—in place, I knew that the caretaker had to act as a foil. Their character arcs would need to be complementary.
The more questions I answer about my fiction, the more decisions I make, the more my subconscious begins to shift into a higher gear in the background. For instance, as I shuffled through questions about this caretaker (Ada? Petra? Petra.), a small voice in my head said,
—Are you sure you meant “caretaker”?
No, I wasn’t sure. What are you trying to say, subconscious?
—Just that you know Petra’s a teen, and teens aren’t often caretakers, and is that really what you’re trying to tell a story about anyway?
Spit it out, subconscious.
—Possibly consider the word “companion” instead?
Of course. Of course I had meant co
mpanion. I didn’t need Geraldine to be frail, only lonesome. Good catch, subconscious.
—Anytime. Except when you’re tired, or when you try to write too much in one day, or when you ignore me for so long that you take a wrong turn in the manuscript and you head down ridiculous literary corridors without me.
Perhaps, I thought, Petra—the companion—could be a musician. Geraldine’s daughters could have heard her busking on the street and decided to pay her to entertain Geraldine for a few hours each week. Oh, yes, I thought, I love writing musicians!
But I always default to writing musicians, since I am one. Like “vampire,” it was an easy answer. Throw it out. I cast about for other possibilities, rejecting them each in turn. Too simple, too convoluted, too complicated when placed up against the already fidgety concept of a deadly old lady. Then I got a letter from a reader that was less about my books and more about her. She confessed that the tiniest of insults at school would make her blush furiously. She felt like a lump. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She was always messy. She was worse than invisible, because she was lumbering and awkward and going red every other minute.
Oh, hello, Petra, I thought.
A self-conscious, uncoordinated teen would contrast beautifully with my poised and deadly old lady. But then how had Petra had caught the eye of Geraldine’s family? Geraldine loved beautiful and elegant things, and Petra was now defined by being not beautiful or elegant. I brainstormed for options that would appeal to the rather old-fashioned Geraldine. There had to be some way for this awkward teen and this centuries-old creature to make a connection.
A few days after I’d discovered my Petra, I was typing an epigraph into the beginning of one of my other novels. As I misspelled the archaic language, backspaced, and tried again, I realized I was looking at the solution. Poetry was a language that would easily translate over generations.
Ah! Now I was nearly there. Time for setting and atmosphere and world questions. All of these would be easier, though, because I had already figured Geraldine and Petra out already. Recall how I said everything always came back to character. The more I knew about them, the more obvious the answers to every other question became, like doing the edge pieces on the puzzle first.
