Dear Ally, How Do You Write a Book Page 4
DEAR JENNIFER LYNN BARNES,
Second person POV is really, really rare, but you’ve used it! When? Why? How?
I almost always write in first person. That’s the point of view that feels natural to me, and I love giving readers the opportunity to live in the protagonist’s head and experience things as she experiences them. But when I sat down to write my Naturals series, I knew that I needed a second point of view to really tell the story. The series follows a secret FBI program that trains gifted teenagers to profile serial killers. My protagonist is a “natural” profiler—meaning that she has an innate understanding of how to take little details about a person and their behavior and figure out their big-picture personality, which she can then use to predict how that person will act in the future. I knew that I wanted to write first person from this character’s point of view, but I also wanted to give the reader the opportunity to do what the teens in the books are learning to do.
Get inside the heads of killers.
So, in addition to my protagonist’s point of view, I also wanted to write some sections in the killer’s point of view. That way, readers could try their hands at profiling the killer and figuring out who they were before the characters did. To start, I tried third person for the killer’s sections, but that felt awkward, because I didn’t want readers to know who the killer was or to explicitly give away anything about the killer’s identity—not their age, not their appearance, not their gender. I briefly considered writing the killer sections in first person, but that felt too intimate.
Ultimately, I decided to try writing the killer’s point of view in second person. So instead of saying “he picks up the knife” or “I pick up the knife,” the killer’s perspective would be written as “you pick up the knife.” From the moment I first tried the second-person perspective, I knew it was the right one! It allowed readers to be close to the killer, but since second person is such an unusual point of view to write in, it didn’t feel like I was normalizing what the killer was thinking. And as a bonus, I soon discovered that most things sound a lot creepier in second person.
Looking back, I think the second-person perspective worked in the Naturals books in a way that it wouldn’t have worked in any of my others for two reasons. The first is that the killer’s chapters are very short and occur infrequently throughout the book, so I’m not asking readers to spend too much time in a perspective that might sound very odd to them at first. The second reason that particular POV works is that I was able to explain my POV choice to the readers in the book itself. As my protagonist is being taught to profile, her FBI mentor instructs her to always profile using either the words I or you, rather than he or she, because the former bring you much closer to the killer. So when my protagonist thinks about a killer, she always mentally addresses that person as you, and then when readers get to actually see inside the killer’s head, the narrative refers to the killer in the same way.
Outside of this series, I’ve never used second person, but having used it once made me realize just how many options I have when it comes to point of view.
DEAR ELIOT SCHREFER,
How do you pick a POV?
I start with the plot, and then figure out which character is best for that story. Not which character will get through the narrative the easiest—but I’m not out to torture characters either. I come up with a character for whom the story line will be most resonant. In Endangered, for example, which is the story of a girl surviving wartime in the Democratic Republic of Congo with an orphan bonobo at her side, I chose a fourteen-year-old mixed-race girl because (a) the bonobos are matriarchal, so a female protagonist would be an interesting way to explore themes of female survival strategies among humans and apes, and (b) I wanted Sophie to feel like an insider at times, and other times like an outsider, and (c) because she’s old enough to be able to take care of a baby ape, whose needs are closer to a human child’s than a pet’s.
This is a really good—and really important—question! In fact, this is one of the first questions an author will ask themselves about any project. It’s one that I worry about a lot because no one—and I mean no one—wants to get halfway through a book and realize they’ve been using the wrong tense and they’re going to have to rewrite the whole thing!
So past versus present—what’s the difference and when do you use them?
For me, it’s about perspective. If a book is written in present tense, then the hero or heroine isn’t looking back on things after the fact. No, we—the reader—are seeing things happen as they happen, right through the main character’s eyes (if it’s written in first person or third person limited). We feel the slap of the rain on her face. We hear the thunder. We see the lightning. We are in the storm, and that can be incredibly powerful. Just like the characters, the narrator has no idea what comes next, and that adds an extra level of tension and conflict to a story.
But present tense can also be a little disorienting. Sometimes that’s what you’re going for. My Embassy Row series, for example, was present tense, and I can’t imagine it any other way because Grace was a heroine who didn’t know who to trust or how she was going to make it. The reader had to be with her—right in her head as things were happening—to really get what she was going through.
In contrast, my Gallagher Girls series was first person past tense. It was about a girl going to spy school, and each book was a “report” about what had happened that semester. By the time Cammie sat down to “write” her report, she’d already lived through the events of the book, and she’d had some time to think about things. To reflect. To consider.
To tease.
For example:
When the person telling the story already knows how the story turns out, you can drop hints about what’s to come. Which can be a powerful thing as well.
If I’d known how the day would end, I never would have gotten out of bed.
So how do you decide which to use? Well, when I’m starting a new book, I will often sit down and write the opening chapter a bunch of different ways. Present tense. Past tense. First person, third person, omniscient. I’ll write chapter 1 all the ways, and inevitably, there will be one way that just feels right for chapter 2, and that is usually the winner.
What’s the best writing advice you ever got?
Julie Murphy I’ve gotten three pieces of advice that have stuck with me:
1. Read as much as you can. It’s a free writing education.
2. The sooner you treat yourself like a professional, the sooner other people will, too. You’ve got to put in the work.
3. Writing advice isn’t one size fits all, and it’s perfectly okay to ignore advice that doesn’t work for you, even when it’s from your favorite authors.
That depends on the book!
If you’re writing a story about people and places and things you already know really well, then you may not have to do much research at all. Your life has been your research. Start writing!
But if you’re working on something taking place in a different time or place or featuring characters really different from you or information you don’t know super well, then there should be some research in your future.
SOMETIMES THAT RESEARCH WILL BE ABOUT PLACES: For example, if you have a scene in London, you need to make sure the cars are driving on the left side of the road and taxis are black, not yellow!
SOMETIMES THAT RESEARCH WILL BE ABOUT HISTORY: If you want to write about something that happened during World War II, then you might want to write about food rations and how telephone numbers had letters and numbers in them, and include the fact that a lot of cars didn’t have seat belts.
SOMETIMES THAT RESEARCH WILL BE ABOUT PEOPLE: If you’re attempting to write characters with different ethnic backgrounds, religions, sexual orientations, and/or abilities than you, then you should do as much research as possible.
Speak to people with those backgrounds. Read books written by people in those communities, both fiction and nonfiction. Wa
tch documentaries and read interviews, and, most of all, remember that people are people. No group on earth is completely homogeneous. Within every culture there’s going to be a huge range of interests and hobbies and beliefs. It’s your job to create characters that embrace and fit into a group without simply employing stereotypes or making vast generalizations.
SOMETIMES THAT RESEARCH WILL BE ABOUT GENRES: Even if you’re working on a fantasy novel—on something in a totally made-up land and featuring things that could never exist in this world—then you would be smart to research the canon of science fiction and fantasy stories that came before you.
Knowing the “rules” of the genre can be a big help in figuring out what you should (and shouldn’t) do. For example, if you want to write about unicorns, that’s great! But it will probably help to have a good idea of what other unicorn stories have looked like through the ages.
(And for the record, I’m a big believer that a person should never try to write in a genre until they’ve read at least twenty books from that genre.)
SOMETIMES THAT RESEARCH WILL BE ABOUT SKILLS OR TECHNICAL KNOW-HOW: People ask me all the time how I research my books. I think they’re envisioning clandestine meetings in deserted parking garages where people in trench coats tell me all about being a spy. Which … um … would be amazing! But the truth is I do a lot of research—right up until the point when the research starts getting in my way.
When I was writing the Gallagher Girls, I read a lot of declassified training manuals written for spies in World War II, and I watched a lot of documentaries featuring former government operatives. I gleaned a ton of useful information from the reference books produced by the International Spy Museum.
But at the end of the day, I was writing a story. I was never going to get things exactly right because, to my knowledge, there is no top secret boarding school for teenage girl spies. At some point, I just had to make stuff up.
And at some point, you will, too.
DEAR ALAN GRATZ,
Do you research before you write or as you go? Do you have any research advice that teens should know?
I research before I write. I write historical thrillers, and it usually takes me about a month of research before I’m ready to build my story. After I build a chapter-by-chapter outline, there are usually a couple of things I need to go back and do more research on. But once that’s done, I’m ready to write—and any more research I have to do along the way is usually pretty light!
This will, obviously, depend a lot on what you’re researching.
Nothing compares with visiting real places or talking to real people. If you’re working on a book set during World War II or the civil rights movement, then you should try to talk to some of the older people in your family or community. They might be able to tell you what the air smells like after a battle or how windy it was during the march from Selma to Montgomery—the kinds of details you won’t read in a book!
But while interviewing people and visiting places are great, they’re not always possible. Which is why, these days, most people’s first stop will be the internet. You want to know something, you google it, right? Well, that’s a great start! But there’s a lot of misinformation on the web, and if you’re going to spend months (or years) of your life working on a book, you want to make sure you’re working with the right information.
When I was working on Not If I Save You First, I knew that, in some ways, I was writing my most realistic book yet, and I wanted to make sure that real Alaskans could read my novel without wanting to scream about all the things I’d gotten wrong. That’s why I went to the best possible source: Alaskan librarians. They recommended some great books that helped me learn things like what berries are found in the Tongass National Forest, when they’re in season, and, most importantly, which ones are yummy and which ones are deadly.
I also trust research-based information from colleges, universities, or government agencies like the USDA and the National Park Service. In fact, when I was working on Not If I Save You First, I was really worried that if I set the book during a blizzard, then the bears would all be hibernating (and I really wanted the threat of a bear attack hanging over my characters’ heads!). So for a long time, I worried that I was going to have to choose between bears and snow. (What’s an author to do?)
But then I found the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s website, and I learned that bears hibernate when they run out of food. So if it’s an early snowstorm that follows an unusually warm fall, then it’s very possible there will still be berries and other food for bears, so the bears could very much be out and about when the storm hits. I was in luck.
Through the years, I’ve also gotten some great information by watching documentaries. For example, I remember one documentary about what it’s like to work in embassies all around the world. When it showed a horse-drawn carriage taking the new US ambassador to Japan to the palace to present his papers to the emperor, I knew I wanted a scene like that in my first Embassy Row novel, All Fall Down.
When I realized that a lot of spy movies employ former spies as consultants and they’re often interviewed on the “bonus content” on the DVDs of those movies, I hit the mother lode of great spy info. A ton of that made it into the Gallagher Girls books—including a full scene in Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy that is an exact replica of a training exercise that they run at the CIA’s covert training facility “The Farm.”
In short, the world is full of information. Read books and articles, listen to podcasts, and watch interviews and videos. It has never been easier to learn about things—quickly! Just be sure that you’re learning the right things from the right people and always consider the source. (They’re definitely not all created equal.)
You’ll want to weave that information into your stories, worlds, and characters as seamlessly as possible. Your novel shouldn’t read like a textbook, and you should never just cut and paste information into your book. For starters, that’s plagiarism. Plus, it’s not good writing.
Finally, I’ve read a lot of books where the author clearly did a ton of research on a subject and didn’t want to “waste” any of it, so it was all in there—whether it mattered or not. Whether it was boring or not.
So do as much research as you can; use it. Absorb it. But if it doesn’t blend seamlessly and efficiently onto the page, then it probably doesn’t belong on the page. And that’s okay. It still shaped your understanding of a subject, and that’s the most important thing.
DEAR ELIOT SCHREFER,
Do you research before you write or as you go? What are your favorite research tips/tricks?
I try to get all my research out of the way before I start. That always fails, of course—plenty will come up that I hadn’t predicted. The biggest enemy in writing a research-heavy book is the feeling of being snowed under by the material. The thing I have to avoid is having a teetering stack of books, Post-it notes sticking out, beside my computer. To prevent that, I note important passages in my research books, then type those quotes into their own document. I print that out and use it as my research bible. A forty-page printout is much easier to manage than a few dozen books.
While I’m writing, I try not to pause to research. I keep a legal pad around and jot down things I’ll eventually have to look up. Then, on a day when I’m uninspired to draft anything new, I might go back and do that additional research, then go back and edit in the changes. I’m always looking for tasks I can do even when I’m not in the mood to be writing.
I don’t know that any author ever feels 100 percent prepared to start a book. It’s always a little bit scary, like getting up on a really high diving board and looking down, except that if you jump off a high dive, you’re at least guaranteed of getting to the end. Gravity will take care of that much.
Maybe you’ll feel ready to start writing when you no longer have any big questions that are floating around in the back of your mind. Or maybe, like me, there are some questions that you can’t answer until you
start writing, and no amount of plotting or planning or research can get you there, so you might as well get the “wrong” version of the story on paper because that’s the only way to find the right version.
Maybe you’ll want to get started as soon as you find a piece of research that makes everything click together in your head. Or maybe you’ll want to keep on researching and outlining and talking about your book with friends because that’s a whole lot easier and more fun than actually sitting down day after day and laboring over something that might never be any good.
I spend a lot of time on airplanes, and I’ve gotten to where, when someone sits down beside me and asks what I do for a living, I never, ever tell them I’m a writer. Why? Because everyone—and I do mean everyone—has a book they’ve been wanting to write. And they will usually spend the duration of that flight telling me how amazing their idea is and that they’d do what I do if they just had the time.
These people all want to be writers. They all say that someday they’re going to be writers. But the act of starting a book is scary. And the actual process is long and painful and sometimes not even a little bit fun.
So these people keep talking about the book they’ll write someday.
My hope for you is that you’ll be someone who stops talking and starts writing.
So how do you do that?
—SET YOURSELF A DEADLINE. Maybe it’s that you want to start writing during National Novel Writing Month. Maybe you want to be finished by spring break or your birthday. Whatever you choose, even artificial structure can be helpful. The key is picking some kind of deadline and writing it down. And once you do that you can …
—HOLD YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLE. Maybe that means telling your BFF or librarian. Maybe it means getting a writing buddy and keeping each other honest. Maybe it just means telling your little sister you’ll give her twenty dollars if you’re still researching in two months. It doesn’t matter how you do it, it just matters that there’s something keeping you on track so that you …