What do you write?
Right now I’m focusing
on this project; it’s a young adult novel, because I think my primary goal is
to reach an audience that doesn’t read.
I know it sounds counterproductive but I want to create material that
will inspire people who are like I was when I was a teenager. I really didn’t read all that much and a lot
of my friends didn’t read that much, but there were these odd books here and
there we would pick up and say “this is actually really cool” and it sort of
inspired people to want to keep reading and look at other texts, and explore other
avenues in the literary world, but you have to start with that first
groundbreaking book.
So you’re trying to
write something that’s more accessible?
Right, and more so
than targeting people who already read writing to the fiction community, the
story that I want to tell is a focus for those young adults. Those mainly, I guess male, audience to try
and show them that books are really cool and a story that can appeal to
them.
So how do you make a
book more accessible, more transparent and manageable?
Whenever you’re going
to write for a particular genre, the best thing you can do is read books that
are already out there and published in that genre so you can get a sense of
what is being produced, what topics are being investigated, what language is being
used. There’s no gratuitous sex in my
book, there’s two fifteen year old boys trying to…you know…along with other
major themes, one layer is they are trying to get their rocks off. So I was wondering, how lewd can I get with
my language for a young adult novel because I’m not really sure. When I read stuff for adults there’s no real
boundary other than taste, but I was curious as to what I should do for a
fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old male audience, what I can get away with and
still be published. So I would pick up
books that were regarded as testing the waters of decency in terms of
young-adult. There’s one book that I
read called “Doing It” by a British author…You’ll read comments about how
disgusting filthy and lascivious this is, but at the same time you would read
comments about “Finally a book that speaks the language and speaks the way that
teenagers thinks.” So that was a real
important step as a writer, you need to understand your audience and what is
already out there to be said. That kind
of gave me some guidelines on how to write this. It’s a story based off of my experiences when
I was sixteen and went to England to work for a summer with a buddy of
mine. I already had that story and I
knew I wanted to share it to some degree.
It could go one of two ways, either a wiser adult reflecting on the
sixteen year old self during this unique opportunity, or I could do it with a
sense of urgency and have it in the perspective of the teenage character, and
that’s the way I wanted to do it. Then I
thought obviously in literature you have teenage narrators, but for the most
part the audience that will gravitate towards that is other teenagers, and I
realized that I should stick to the young-adult/teenage audience, and then I
decided that I do have some ideas and themes I would like to convey to a
younger audience.
I’m assuming you had
it planned out, if it’s from memory, did anything catch you off guard, was the
pen smarter than the writer?
Because I’m basing it
off of memory, the spine of this probably doesn’t change all that much. In my pre-writing stages I’ve drafted a
pretty straight forward arc of actions.
But what I do find is, when I move from action to action to action, the
major plot points, those are where things tend to change, where characters
develop more. As I said I approached
this with plot points, with main plot points.
When I leave America, when I return to America and England in between. It turned out to be quite interesting,
because I fictionalized these characters considerably, not to offend my
friend…some real shitty stuff happened, and it’s not protecting the innocent
but I don’t want to bring stuff up that would be painful for others so I’m
taking some very creative leaps and bounds to avoid that.
Do you have to make
your characters super-real, almost hyperbolize them, to make them more
accessible?
The first thing that I
like to do, when I have an idea of a book that I want to write, I think about
characters. That’s when I get detailed
with character sketches, I find out: who this person is, how do they react in
certain situations, what are their biggest fears? What are their pleasures in
life? To give me a basic understanding on who this character is. I think it’s necessary for authenticity to go
and pick up on attitudes and demeanors.
I use my students; they humanize qualities that I see in some of my
characters. I watch and see how they
speak and interact and they have these qualities I see in my one character and
it helps to develop them. So I guess I
externalize to a degree to come up with these characters, and I think it’s
extremely imperative that you sit down and really figure them out. The more you know your character, the more
you know how they’ll react to a situation.
It’s essential that you have a solid understanding of your characters,
and that you figure them out, before you write, and as you write get to know
them better.
It sounds stupid, but
start saying yes. Your friends invite
you to go on an impromptu road trip to West Virginia - say yes. Your friend wants to go to Target at two in
the morning - yes, go. You can only gain
so much experience cooped up in your house reading or watching television. Some of the coolest and most interesting
stories I've heard come from people who don't have advanced creative writing
degrees but from folks who go out and experience life. When you go out and work odd jobs, go to
parties, partake in day trips/weekend trips, and so on, you expose yourself to
any number of small anecdotes or large ideas you can incorporate into your
writing. Remember when your friends
went to visit that dude at University of Iowa while you stayed home? When they came back Sunday night, they had
annoying inside jokes and wild stories - well, they might have something to
develop into a piece of short fiction, or something to include in a novel. You never know unless you get out and say yes
to things (unless your friend offers you heroin or something. Say no to that). And yes, I should start heeding my own advice
a bit more. I spend too much time
grading and sitting in front of a computer.
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