There Are Places I Remember (Kill Your Darlings 6)

Hello, Writerly Friends. Happy Poetry Friday!

Did you read Writer's Almanac this week? Garrison Keillor attributed the phrase "murder your darlings" to British author Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. I always suspected Quiller-Couch was a Death Eater.

A sketch of Hogwarts Castle from
the Harry Potter Lexicon. Since we can't
have the Poetry Friday Party in a fictional
castle, let's head over to Katya's place,
Write. Sketch. Repeat.

We've been talking about the revision process, how hard it is to cut characters--and even full plot-lines--from a novel-in-progress.

What about setting? Can you imagine the Harry Potter books without Hogwarts? Gone with the Wind without Tara? Peter Rabbit without Mr. McGregor's garden?

Poor Peter has lost his blue jacket.

This week, I'm giving setting the Kill Your Darlings treatment.

If you dream about a house, some say, you are visiting the mansion of your soul. It's easy to become connected to place, because places hit all of our senses. Not just the Big Five: sight, sound smell, taste, and touch. In a setting, we also have thermoception (sense of heat and cold) and equilibrioception (sense of balance, or how we perceive gravity in a place).

Read more about senses beyond the Big Five here. (P.S. This won't be new information for those of you in the Sensory Processing world.)

All these senses working together, filling my brain and body with input -- this is why I love to travel. And it's why I love to visit settings -- or use a setting I'm very familiar with -- when I'm working on a book.

Settings can, however, become literary darlings.

When I began working on my middle grade novel-in-verse, my eldest had just finished fifth grade. During that last year at elementary school, I chaperoned a field trip to Mount Vernon, George Washington's home in Northern Virginia.

Mount Vernon circa 1800.

One thing I remembered about that day: the Washington mansion was filled with tour guides, but there was no one available to answer students' questions at the slave quarters.

The quarters were a sharp contrast to the Washington
mansion, with its giant feather beds.
From Travelblog.org.

This became a plot point in my novel. I sent my fifth grade characters to Mount Vernon. Like me, they were frustrated that they couldn't learn more about the slaves who labored at the Washingtons' plantation.

In the novel, when my characters returned from Mount Vernon, they did some research and learned about the Underground Railroad Experience Trail. This is a real, docent-led hike through the woods of Sandy Spring, Maryland. Experts believe the Quaker families in the area were part of the Underground Railroad network.

Near the end of my book, Miss Hill's fifth grade class planned and took a field trip to the trail, so they could learn more about the history of slavery.

I took my friend Michelle, my kids, her kids, and some extra kids to the trail one spring morning. (The guided hike is free, but you have to make a reservation).

A conductor at the Underground Railroad Experience Trail.

What an excellent program! I let the docent know about my novel. I wrote the experience trail into my book. The poem is in the voice of Norah Hassan, an immigrant from Jerusalem. I thought it was the perfect fit between character, setting, and plot.

Freedom Seeker: The Underground Railroad Experience Trail

By Norah Hassan

On the trail, we had a conductor who helped us escape.

The whole class followed her through a forest

where signs said, To be sold and let Three Slaves.

She called us Freedom Seekers.

My family came here for a better life,

even though we were not slaves.

We did not take much.

One bag of things from home for each person.

On the trail, trackers hid, hunting for slaves.

The conductor said, “You’d rather chance

going in those woods than staying at the plantation.”

I know what it’s like to give up my bed, my neighborhood.

When the conductor said people escaped

to keep their families together, I thought of Jaddi.

He is old. My mother says once he goes home,

he will not leave Jerusalem and visit us again.

On the trail, we pretended to follow the North Star,

moss growing on trees like a compass.

I was behind Katie, hopping across the stream,

pretending to hide our scent from dogs, when she fell.

I have never seen an arm break.

I have never seen the whiteness of bone.

Ashlie said, “That’s disgusting.”

She stepped over Katie as if she were a muddy stone.

Jason, Rennie and I helped Katie to the stream bank.

T. J. called 9-1-1 on his cell phone then found Miss Hill.

I thought, Slaves did not have 9-1-1.

Jason raised his hand and asked the conductor,

“If we really were escaping slaves,

would we have to leave Katie behind?”

I know what it means to leave someone behind.

I have been a freedom seeker.

However, when I overhauled the plot of my novel this summer, I realized both Mount Vernon and the Underground Railroad Experience Trail had to go.

Can I tell you how hard it was to cut a WHOLE SETTING, especially a cool one that people should know about, and where I did a boat load of research and took pages of notes?! It felt like murder most foul, my friends.

Can you imagine Hamlet set anywhere else but Elsinore Castle?
(Said to be based on Kronborg Castle in Denmark.)

This was killing a darling in its truest sense, because including the experience trail in the book had become my personal agenda. The book had different ideas. We were only momentarily at odds with one another, but the needs of the book won. They always do.

I leave you with a cover of the Beatles "In My Life." Have you ever had to cut a setting you loved from a novel? Tell us about it!

Elisabeth Dahl, Subplot Slasher (Kill Your Darlings 5) and a Giveaway

Happy Halloween, Writerly Friends!

Halloween is my favorite. I can't even refer to it as a "holiday" or "day" because it's just too epic. Dressing up! Candy! Running around the neighborhood in the dark, going from one friendly neighbor's door to another. Everything about Halloween is awesome.

Of course, there is the dark side to Halloween: ghosts (see yesterday's post for a true ghost story), a certain episode of Little House on the Prairie that still gives me nightmares, freaky slasher movies like Friday the 13th and The Shining.

There IS one time when it is acceptable to be a slasher.

If you are an author in the process of revising a novel, slash away. The pen IS your sword. Cut those red shirts to bits. Hack off that story-line. No knife or razor-sharp fingernail necessary. All you need is a pencil and your delete key.

I'm really excited to be sharing Halloween with Slasher Elisabeth Dahl. Elisabeth's middle grade novel GENIE WISHES came out earlier this year. She's guest blogging today, our first guest blogger of the KILL YOUR DARLINGS series!

Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win your own signed copy of GENIE WISHES. The contest will stay open until Sunday, 9 PM Eastern. (Contest for U.S. readers only.)

You can find Elisabeth Dahl at her website.

Elisabeth's going to tell us about cutting a full story-line from her novel in order to take it from draft to finished product.

The Final Form

In 2009, I wrote my first book-length manuscript. Called Genie Wishes: Girl Blogger, it followed a fifth-grade girl named Genie Haddock Kunkle through the second half of her fifth-grade year, beginning with her January election as class blogger.

On one hand, this was a school story, full of history lessons, cafeteria exchanges, and cringe-worthy “health” classes. But the manuscript also dealt with a family crisis. In the second half of the book, Genie’s father received word that Genie’s bipolar mother, who’d left the family several years earlier and moved to California, was off her meds and in trouble. Genie’s father flew west to help locate her and get her stabilized again.

That was the original story, at least. By the time the book was published, in April 2013, Genie Wishes had gained 16,000 words and about 20 line drawings. It had expanded to cover Genie’s whole fifth-grade year. But it had lost both a subtitle (Girl Blogger) and a subplot: the family crisis.

The editorial team at Abrams—and my eventual editor in particular—expressed some interest in the book but believed that the family crisis storyline wasn’t working. They felt that the strengths of the story lay elsewhere. Having worked as an editor myself, I knew that sometimes authors didn’t see a manuscript’s ideal final form as well as an editor could. Editing your own manuscript was like cutting your own hair: You could do it, but the results might be lopsided. But a good editor could guide you through the necessary edits, leaving behind a more perfect final form.

So I was willing to at least try it the editor’s way. But I was worried. I’d always thought of the novel as seriocomic, with the mother crisis responsible for much of the serio- aspect. I worried that removing the mother storyline might reduce the book to a frothy confection.

But in fact, once the mother storyline came out (in the final version, the mother has died many years earlier), attention could shift to the other, more subtly serious issues that the book raises. The question of what you do when a friend decides to dump you. The question of how you deal with teasing. The issue of growing up at a pace that feels right for you. These topics had been more important to me than the mother storyline all along.

I still think of the mother sometimes. I remember the line drawing of her eventual reunion with Genie once she was back on her meds and stabilized. Their smiles were big and lovely. They might have been right for a different book. But they didn’t belong in this one.

Elisabeth Dahl writes for adults and children from her home in Baltimore. Genie Wishes (Amulet Books/ABRAMS, April 2013) is her first book. Her writing for adults has appeared at NPR.org, TheRumpus.net, Little Patuxent Review, and elsewhere. On Twitter, she’s @ElisabethDahl, and on the Web, www.elisabethdahl.com. She’s also on Facebook.

Remember to leave a comment for a chance at an extra treat.

Happy haunting, from me and Tom B!

Run for your TARDIS!
I'm going as (classic) Dr. Who #4, Tom Baker...

but I'm doing it girl-style.

Poetry Pajama Friday: Kill Your Darlings 4

Hello, Writerly Friends.

It's Poetry Friday! Irene at Live Your Poem has invited us to sit on her virtual coach, hang out, and talk poetry today.

There's room for everyone at the Poetry Friday Party.
This couch at www.indulgy.com

Remember Jack Strong, from yesterday's book review, JACK STRONG TAKES A STAND? The kid was so over-scheduled, he staged a sit-in on his living room couch.

I know many educators and their students don't just suffer from over-scheduled "free time" after school. With requirements such as the Common Core, state mandated testing, and adequate yearly progress, the school day itself can feel like racing on a treadmill.

That's why everyone loves special school days so much.

One year, I was poet in residence at an elementary school where everyone, EVERYone could talk of nothing but the upcoming Holiday Meal. You know, that mouth-watering day in November when the cafeteria serves turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. Just thinking about Holiday Meal was bliss-inducing. Why? It was barely better than a Swanson's TV dinner. But Holiday Meal only came once a year. It was a delicious break from the usual pizza, bagel and yogurt, or beef tacos.

My most beloved Swanson meal had
a tiny chocolate cake. Mmmm.

When my children were in elementary school, one of their favorite annual events was Pajama Day. This day of coziness usually  happened on Read Across America Day. There were books, there were slippers. Lovies and stuffed tigers and tiny satin pillows were packed into backpacks for school. Children spent much of the day snuggled up on bean bag chairs reading. For FUN.

My son loved it so much that one time, when I was room mom at my daughter's pre-school, I staged a toddler version Pajama Day. That was pretty freaking cute and awesome.

Writerly Friends, I have a Kill Your Darlings problem that is not awesome at all.

I wrote a Pajama Day poem for my MG novel-in-verse, THE LAST FIFTH GRADE OF EMERSON ELEMENTARY. It is cute as all get-out. And I think it have to cut it.

I wrote "Pajama Day" for the manuscript's second iteration. I was trying a different concept -- a poetry *yearbook*-- by adding occasional poems to the Spoon River inspired manuscript. These covered the first day of school, Halloween, the Talent Show, Pajama Day, Valentine's Day.  

Except THE LAST FIFTH GRADE eventually developed beyond the yearbook concept to an actual novel, complete with narrative arc. (Miss Hill's wacky fifth grade class must unite to stop the evil Board of Ed from demolishing their beloved school.)

Is "Pajama Day" still earning its place in the novel? Does it move the story forward or help develop the characters? Before I kill this darling, I'd love to get your feedback.

Candy hearts pajama pants from Amazon.

Pajama Day

By Jason Chen and Katie McCain

Oh, how we long for

the most relaxing

school day of the year.

On Pajama Day

our backpacks don’t feel

like they have extra gravity

from two tons of books.

They are jammed

with pillows and stuffed animals.

We skid down the hall

like penguins slipping on ice

because giant fuzzy slippers

and floor wax

are a dangerous combo.

Sparkling snowflakes,

roller skating elephants

and candy hearts cover the legs

of our fuzzy fleece pants.

For indoor recess

we get out our pillows

and write poems on the floor

(everyone laughs

when Mark starts to snore).

We love Pajama Day

because we

Zzzzzz.

Read about Tarra, the roller skating elephant.

Pros:

• It's about Pajama Day, one of the best days of the school year!
• The poem provides a breather after a series of serious, winter is dull, and "I'm feeling down" poems.
• The details are so yummy, I can feel my fuzzy fleece PJs calling to me.
• The poem marks a subtle transition in the love-hate friendship between Jason and Katie.
• Beta readers say the poem has elements of both character's voices.

Cons:

• "Pajama Day" is the only poem in the novel written in two voices, so it doesn't quite fit.
• The poem doesn't move the main narrative forward.
• It may be a little TOO yummy.
• Pretty sure it's a darling.

What do you think, fellow writers? Please leave a comment with your advice.

There are more posts in the Kill Your Darlings craft series here:

• Word Nerd (Kill Your Darlings 1), in which spelling bee champ Shelly gets the ax.
• Book Phantoms (Kill Your Darlings 2), in which horse-obsessed Maddie gallops off into the distance
• Joe Gets Cut from the Team (Kill Your Darlings 3), self-explanatory

Next up in the Kill Your Darlings series, we have a guest blogger!

MG author Elisabeth Dahl (Genie Wishes) is stopping by next week. She cut a major storyline from her novel before it was published. Elisabeth will give us all the crafty dirt about killing her darling.