Faculty Voices with Sherri L. Smith: Drowning in Research

Have you ever wondered how to go about building the world of an historical novel?  Well, let me show you how I do it!  I am currently writing a book set in 1940s Japan.  Toward that end, I am:

• learning basic Japanese;
• going to Japan;
• reading the 20th of 30 or 40 books on the period and culture, including wartime diaries;
• emailing strangers and asking them odd questions;
• outlining;
• day dreaming; and
• basically drowning in research.

This is what I do.  For every single book I write, I drown myself in the process.  It’s probably not healthy—I have next to no room in my head for my own day-to-day life when I’m in drowning mode—and it’s never won me a championship on Jeopardy.  But for the few bright moments of vision and revision, I become an idiot savant.  I become an expert.  

Granted, it’s a useless sort of expertise, unless you are a writer.  Like cramming for a test, as soon as the book is done, the knowledge will fade to make room for the next story.  Really, what good is it knowing what instruments use silk strings, or what blind men used to play in Edo period Japan, unless you are a writer (or a time traveling musician)?  I can’t actually play a string instrument (if you don’t count three Groupon lessons I took for cello… and I don’t).  My book doesn’t even take place during the Edo period.  Does it matter if I know the name of Japanese work pants, or the common crops of a mountain farming village circa 1937?

Hopefully, yes.  To my story, and to my readers.  (The pants are called monpe!)

I say “hopefully” because I don’t know how much of what I am learning will be used in the final book.  There is a lot of “read-and-discard” going on.  I scour the internet for reference books, checking out what I can from the library, and purchasing the more obscure titles.  It can be frustrating, like sifting for gold.  Sometimes you buy a 500-page book that turns out to only have a paragraph or two of interest.  And then, sometimes, you hit the motherlode.
Like the koto player writing her own book on the spirituality of Japanese instruments.  Or the sociology book about the region you are researching, tucked in the high shelves of a small used bookstore in Vermont.  Suddenly, vistas open up!  Volumes of information that make the warp and weft of great worldbuilding, and the intimate details that make the story ring true.  It’s this sort of gold strike that makes all of the digging worthwhile.  

While the work seems huge, I like to start small.  I like to use kids’ books—they give you the short version of your research, and often come with a handy list of cited sources.  Those are the adult books I turn to next.  From there, I develop my story, making a list of what I don’t know along the way.  And then I start asking question of myself, the story, and take that list to the library, the internet, looking for answers.  

I do my research before, during, and after a draft.  Every time I feel stuck, it usually means I need to do more research.

And remember, nothing you learn is wasted, even if you discard it for now.  Somewhere deep inside that sea of knowledge, you might find the seeds to your next story. 

  

Sherri L. Smith is the author of several award-winning young adult novels, including the 2009 California Book Awards Gold Medalist, Flygirl, the “cli-fi” adventure, Orleans and the middle grade historical fantasy, The Toymaker’s Apprentice.  Her books appear on multiple state lists and have been named Amelia Bloomer and American Library Association Best Books for Young People selections.  Sherri has worked in comic books, animation, construction, and most recently, a monster factory.  Currently, she teaches in the MFA Writing program at Goddard College and the Children’s Writing MFA program at Hamline University.  Her latest book is the YA noir mystery, Pasadena.  Learn more at www.sherrilsmith.com.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: Re-Vision Part 2

Before reading this post, be sure to check out part one to see where this poem started.

So I thought about the poem and in my own pagan way prayed about it and worked on (re-visioned)  the last third or so.

The Plane Doesn’t Crash But the Landing is So Rough

There’s a Lot of Screaming

Right next to the airport is a gentlemen’s

club where all the dancers wear Santa

hats.  I have a stiff drink, slip 20

to the topsy-turvy down girl on the pole,

then enter the freeway tentatively, like

a horse at the ocean.

Windows down, I hear John Coltrane

from the nearest Camaro and near

1st and Hill a congregation praying

from a rooftop.  

I’m not quite sure what to do with

my other life, the one that ended

on the tarmac where the ambulances

congregated.

It rides alongside me making mordant

jokes about the seatbelt.

Home at last, I park beside an electric

reindeer lying on its side and twitching.

Lighted windows.  On the shadowy

porch the smokers are changelings,

shape shifters.

We go inside together, that other life

and I.  My wife says, “Oh, there you

are.  I was starting to worry.”

Her other life looks at mine and bursts

into tears.

Ah ha.  Now the turn in the 4th stanza is a portent I can live with.  As is the new character, “my other life.”  Now there’s some accord between it, the fallen reindeer, and the shape shifting smokers. The tears in the last stanza seem more, as we say, earned.

I’m probably another draft or two away from being completely happy with it.  I’m not sure about mordant.  And there’s a chance that whole little stanza can go.  

We’ll  see.  A little more prayer, maybe some chardonnay, a good night’s sleep and anything is possible.


*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program. He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: Re-Vision Part 1

Prose comes from the Latin prosa = straightforward, “without the ornaments of verse.”  Oh, dear.  ‘Ornaments’ is an awful word.  Verse as Christmas tree, similes and metaphors dangling from the branches.   

Many of the poems I write are, as many have pointed out and not always kindly, “prosey.”  Meaning easy-going and fun to read.  And they can be straightforward because I want readers to come along with me but if I really wanted to be straightforward I’d write prose.   One of my disciplines is to reward my readers with something yummy every few lines  -- a turn of phrase, an unlikely word in a likely place.  Whatever it takes to keep someone’s eyes on the page.   

Sonnet is from the Italian sonetto:  little song.  I don’t write many straight up sonnets, but all my poems are little songs:  melodies, show tunes, arias, lullabies, hymns.

Here something I’ve been working on.   Is it an aria?  A hymn?  Or  -- shudder  --  just elevator music.

The Plane Doesn’t Crash But the Landing is So Rough

There’s a Lot of Screaming

Right next to the airport is a gentlemen’s

club  where all the dancers wear Santa

hats.  I have a stiff drink, slip 20

to the topsy-turvy down girl on the pole,

then enter the freeway tentatively,  like

a horse at the ocean.    

Windows down, I hear John Coltrane

from the nearest Camaro and near

1st and Hill somebody praying

from a rooftop.  

Home at last I park beside an electric

reindeer lying on its side and twitching.

Lighted windows.  On the shadowy

porch the smokers are changelings,

shapeshifters.

It’s California, winter, but something

is blooming.  Perfume and terror.

Coming in hot to LAX, the woman

beside me clawed at my jacket.

“Tell my husband I love him,” she

cried.  Taxing to the gate she blushed,

“That  thing before?  It’s not really

true.”    But she was excited still.  

Vibrant and giddy.  Glad to be alive.  

“I’ll never forget,” she said, “the first

time he kissed me.”

There are some things in this draft that kept me interested.   The long title pushes me into the poem, the simile in the second stanza was a pleasant surprise.  I’m okay with Coltrane, the electric reindeer, the smokers but then the little song slips off-key.  Where’d that woman come from?    The last thing this piece needs is another character, much less another one with conventionally sentimental feelings.  

Come back on Thursday to see how Ron revises his poem.


*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program. He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: Make Every Word Count

As some of you know, Chris Heppermann and I wrote a trilogy for young readers. Basically aimed at pre-teen girls featuring -- wait for it -- three pre-teen girls. Oh, and a witch. Backyard Witch, as a matter of fact. But don’t leave your seats while the blog is in motion. Afterwards, you may rush to Amazon.

Writing with Chris was fun; writing for younger kids was fun. I’d never done anything like that, but Chris knows the kid-business and is great at structure. I like to just sit around in my smarty pants and emit evenly-spaced bars of irony and jest. (And that’s me emitting, okay. Not my pants.)

Now she wants to work on something even shorter. For even younger readers. Sure, I’m game.

So we think of some characters and some problem-to-solve. Wendell as a bored, over- sheltered little bear and Goldy as the fearless daughter of avant-garde artists.

Chris told me what to do -- Punchy. Short sentences. Not much description since an illustrator will do that. Here’s my opening:

*    *     *

“Wendell, are you all right?”

Wendell looked into his empty bowl. “Almost finished, Ma.”

“But you’re all right.”

“I’m just on the patio.”

He made his spoon clink against the blue bowl so he could stay outdoors a little longer. So his mother would think he was occupied. And safe.

Not even twenty yards away, stood the woods. Tall trees making the usual dark canopy. A familiar path leading toward the sun-dappled clearing, then circling back toward his house. A path he walked every day with his parents while the porridge cooled. Every day. Day after day.

He could see other paths, dimmer ones. Where did they go? And who made them?

With a sigh, he carried his bowl indoors and put it on the sink.

“Such a good little bear,” said his mother patting him on the head. “Time for a nap now?”

“Mom, I just ate breakfast.”

*  *  *

And here’s Chris’s:

On the wall of Wendell’s bedroom was a map that showed all of the places he could never go:

Up north to the bridge. “You might fall off,” said Mama.

Down south to the lake. “You might fall in,” said Papa.

Out west to the cave. “Full of scorpions,” said Mama. 

Out east to the meadow. “Who knows what’s over there,” said Papa.

“I’ll be careful,” said Wendell.

“It’s time for breakfast,” said Mama.

“How am I supposed to be an explorer when I grow up if you never let me explore?” said Wendell on the way downstairs.

*    *    *

I looked at hers and thought, Oh, yeah. So that’s what you meant. Harder than it looks, but aren’t most new things? I’m not giving up. I’ll think haiku. Make every word count.

Stay tuned.


*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program. He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Faculty Voices with Marsha Qualey: The Big One - Conflict and Antagonists

We focused on plot this past residency. I welcomed this topic immersion because for the last several months I have been writing short stories after years of novel writing, and I have been hugely challenged by the need to pare down the scope of my storytelling. How much plot can a 5000 word story handle? How do I know what is essential? What should I spend time on?

The residency session I concocted and led (with gracious participation from very game students; thank you, all) was, frankly, quite self-serving as it was an exploration that’s relevant to my own writing questions.

In the session we first discussed the types of conflict in fiction as outlined by Victoria Lynn Schmidt in her book Story Structure Architect:

Relational Conflict 

This is the main character in conflict with another human

Social Conflict

The Main Character faces the group and the cultural/social/legal limits of that group--a religious organization and its laws, a secular institution and its laws, or maybe a book club and its expectations.

Situational Conflict

The main character is challenged by something that occurs or arises in the natural or human-made world, maybe tornadoes or fire or being lost in the woods or swimming among sharks.

Inner Conflict

The main character is challenged by the self—by habits or uncertainty or memories or any of the many physical or emotional elements of that person.

Paranormal Conflict 

The main character is challenged by technology, science, or the limits of what is possible: unleashing a new strain of bacteria, dealing with superpowers, ghosts.  

Cosmic Conflict 

The main character deals with fate, destiny, or God

Then we did a close reading of a few scenes from The Goose Girl, one of the residency’s common books and discussed what types of conflict were present in the scenes. Were the scenes loaded with too many types? How much is too much? What types of conflict might be best for what types of scene?

Types of conflict are nearly interchangeable with types of antagonists. I concluded the session by encouraging the writers to make their own conflict/antagonist list for each of their own stories. What are the specific conflicts or antagonists a protagonist might encounter? This is crucial world building. 

In her lecture “Bad Luck and Trouble: Antagonists in Fiction”, Laura Ruby told us that the most important antagonist “is the self.” Similar, one could say, to Schmidt’s “Inner Conflict.” I agree with Laura (who wouldn’t!) but my final caution to the residency students in my session was about this very important antagonist: Use this conflict sparingly in scenes. This is especially and most obviously true of action scenes, of course, but all scenes can bog down when they focus on inner turmoil. Once established, the inner conflict is part of the reader’s base knowledge and the writer need only—at most—quickly signal that inner struggle. Unless there is a change about to occur that will alter the plot trajectory, it might be a good idea to bury the self.


Marsha Qualey has been a faculty member in Hamline's MFAC program since it began. She is the author of several YA novels, one novel for adults, and several work-for-hire books for younger readers. For more information please visit her website.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: You Never Know

My friend Gerry Locklin turned me onto poetry in grad school at the University of Arizona. We were 22 and 23 respectively when he showed me a copy of an indie magazine named The Wormwood Review. I didn’t need drugs to open those doors of perception. The Wormwood Review did it for me. I was studying poetry (and how I hate to see the words study and poetry side by side. Can’t you just see students gritting their teeth and wondering what that freaking albatross stands for?) but none of the poems in Wormwood or Poetry Now or Aldebran Review needed lucubration; they were right there on the page waiting to be enjoyed.

And they were enjoyable: goofy and uncultivated and against-everything-one-should-be-against, they were little celebrations of another kind of life – not serious, not dogged, not sober, highbrow or grave. They looked liked they’d been fun to write and they were fun to read. Did any of these poets imagine their verse was immortal or enduring? No way. Although Wormwood lasted a long time, lots of the indie mags were as ephemeral as the poetry they published. Here today, gone – sometimes – today.

Still, a lot of us who started fifty or so years ago are still around, still writing, and often still not taking things seriously. But here’s the thing – writing fast as I do and in a sense tossing poems often leads to a lot of balmy but imprudent work. Poems that don’t jell and never will. Poems that more witless than witty. Poems that collapse under the strain of so much whimsy. But every now and then something very cool happens and a poem steps forward wearing its jester’s cap and bells and just kills. A little gift from the poetry gods.

Of course, after that I want another gift, so every morning I give my Ego ten bucks and send it off to watch a movie about itself, put my butt in the chair and do my best. Because – as the title up there says, you never know.

*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program. He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: Poetry as Prompt

There are times when I can’t/won’t write what I’m supposed to/what I’ve planned, but I want to put a few hundred words on paper. My promise to myself is this: write every day. And though I’ve broken promises to everyone (my first wife puts up her hand), I rarely break ones I’ve made to myself. 

“Oh, Ron, what do you do when you can’t write what you’d prefer to write?”

Funny you should ask. Can’t you guess? I turn to poetry.

But not as poetry. I don’t want to write poetry. I want to use (put your other hand up now, my bitter darling) poetry to get something off the ground, to energize me.

Here’s what I do: I Google Poetry Foundation and on the right side of the page troll through Browse Poems. Like window shopping. (Any anthology or book of poems would do. I just like the Poetry Foundation.) 

When I find a first line I like, I jot it down and make a short list. Here’s what I just came up with in five minutes –

                  1. A striped blouse in a clearing by Bazille.

                  2.  Watch the fire undress him.

                  3.  When love was a question mark, a message arrived.

                  4.  I’m still thinking about your porch light.

                  5.  The bear stopped dancing and unscrewed his head.

#4 is a likely keeper, and #2 interests me a lot. And I want to put blouse/striped blouse somewhere.

That’s plenty to get me started. Will this turn out well? Who knows. Will it be fun? Probably. I don’t need to think for myself when I have poets thinking for me, using language in a nostalgic and pedestrian way (#4) and/or making it punch me in the gut (#2).

Let’s say I’m drawn to #2. I know I’ll stick to short, staccato sentences probably in the form of commands. If I want to get anywhere with #1 I’ll look up Bazille and discover that he’s a painter (not so interesting) but is also a restaurant! So is the blouse on a waitress in a restaurant named Bazille? And is she serving something hot to the guest who complained about his dinner being cold, something so hot he’s on fire from head-to-toe?

What’s interesting is this - I rarely finish these exercises. Wound up by them, I’ll go right to the thing I’m working on. But lots of time the language in the poems’ first lines will either appear in the work-in-progress or at least, like iodine in water, color a whole page in a way I could never have predicted. 


*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program.  He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Scene It

This week author and MFAC faculty member Marsha Qualey* examines the importance that scene can play in her own upcoming projects.  Read on as she reflects on a few poignant excerpts from Sandra Scofield’s The Scene Book and how they have have informed her process.

I’ve got two writing projects going right now and for the first time that I can remember neither one is a new (conventional) novel. One of the projects involves revisiting a novel as I adapt it into a screenplay. The other is a possible graphic novel for young readers.

I am thinking a lot about scenes. Not that I didn’t before, but when writing my traditional novels it was always the connective tissue between scenes that consumed most of my attention and energy.

Sandra Scofield’s The Scene Book is rich in pithy reminders that help me keep to the task at hand. Here are a few that are bulletin-board worthy:

From “The Focal Point”
“[the focal point] is not the epiphany, that old standby moment when the sky opens and meaning shines down on the protagonist” (54).

(Huh. I once ended a scene exactly that way—with literal sunshine breaking through and the protagonist thinking, “Illumination.” Should I go back and see if there’s an actual focal point prior to the epiphany?)

From “Tension”
“Tension doesn’t have to be negative” (86).

(Scofield is writing about sex scenes here, but still, a good reminder)

From “Scene Openings”

“…the scene may be entirely fresh action, requiring a more fundamental orientation” (142). One way to provide this orientation, she later explains, is to “comment on character, setting, or event” (145).

(An editor once told me she hated scenes that opened with dialogue, and ever since I have been hesitant to do just that. Such is the power of our editors.)

From “Scene Activity and Character Response”

“A good scene lets us know the spatial relationship of people and things” (126).

(Hmm. Maybe that’s why my editor hated the dialogue-opened scenes—she’d seen too many that delayed grounding the reader in the physical setting.)

From my bulletin board to yours.

Marsha Qualey has been a faculty member in Hamline's MFAC program since it began. She is the author of several YA novels, one novel for adults, and several work-for-hire books for younger readers. For more information please visit her website.