Tara Gilboy On Knowing What Your Characters Want... And Why

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today's guest for the WHAT is Tara Gilboy. Tara holds a master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, where she specialized in writing for children and young adults. She teaches creative writing for San Diego Continuing Education and lives in southern California with her husband, daughter, and dog, Biscuit. Unwritten is her first novel.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I actually have a couple origin points for this novel. I had written a different book for my MFA thesis, and I found an agent for it pretty quickly, so I really had my hopes up when it went out on submission, and then …. Nothing. It didn’t sell. This shook my confidence as a writer, and I was starting and stopping a lot of projects and feeling insecure about my writing. Finally I decided to write something just for fun, something that was just for me, that I never planned on showing anyone, as a way to make writing fun for myself again. Unwritten was my “just for fun” project.

At the same time, I kept having this recurring nightmare where some sort of supernatural entity was coming after me, and I had to pack up whatever I could fit into my car and run away forever. That dream was initially my starting point in the story; in the early drafts, the story opened with a stranger arriving in the middle of the night and telling Gracie and her mother that they have to flee. I think my original opening line was “The pounding shook the house,” as this stranger knocks on the door.

Later, as I continued working on the novel, I realized that in order for readers to feel invested in that moment, they needed to know more about Gracie first, so the scene got pushed back into what I think is now chapter four or five, and it eventually evolved into something completely different. But the origin of this story was me exploring who Gracie was running from and why, as well as giving myself permission to play around with these ideas without pressuring myself to write something with the end goal of publication in mind.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

Through A LOT of trial and error. I wrote the first draft of Unwritten in one year, and I spent two years revising it. I am not an outliner (at least not for my first draft), so I must have written hundreds of pages that I ultimately threw away. (I recently found some handwritten pages of a draft that I had forgotten I wrote!) I took some novel workshops with Sarah Aronson, who is an amazing teacher, and she really helped me streamline the plot, as did my writing buddy Jill, and my workshop group, the RCC, who I have been workshopping weekly with ever since we did our MFAs together at UBC.

One thing I learned as I was revising my plot structure was that when I begin to get off track, I need to return to my character’s basic goals and needs. What does my character WANT by the end of this book? What does my character NEED (internally) by the end of this book? If a plot point is not related to either of these two things, it’s likely it needs some tweaking or can be cut from the novel.

In early drafts, Gracie did not know from the beginning that she is a fairy tale character; she found out midway through the book. In that version, the story wasn’t strong enough to sustain the novel because she didn’t have strong desires and emotional wounds: things just kind of “happened” to her. In my final version, Gracie’s internal and external struggle is ALL about being a fairy tale character: it’s what drives the entire plot.

I’m also kind of addicted to reading craft books, so once I had written my first draft, I did a lot of outlining and shaping of the story using principles in books like Robert McKee’s Story, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Lisa Cron’s Story Genius (I saw her speak at an SCBWI conference, and it completely changed the way I approached my revision). I also did a lot of revising to make sure I had hit all the major plot points: inciting incident, midpoint, climax, etc.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

I don’t outline my first draft, so I don’t have a plot in place when I begin. The few times I’ve tried to outline a first draft, I kept trying to force my characters to do things that didn’t feel natural to them, and it led me to ultimately abandon the project. For me, I get to know my characters, my story, and my plot through the process of writing, of watching my characters in action, seeing how they act and react, and finding out what is important to them. Certainly my plot changes as I revise, but I expect that since I never have one firmly in place to begin with. I wish I were able to have a plot in mind before I begin. I have a feeling I would save a lot of time (and wasted pages!).

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

Story ideas come to me all the time – the hard part is choosing which ideas have the “legs” to be turned into fully-developed stories. And “legs” might not even be the right way to characterize it. What does not have legs for me might turn into a wonderful story for another writer if they see potential where I did not.

I keep a small notebook in my purse so that I can jot down ideas as they come to me. It’s amazing how surrounded we are by stories all the time. I recently started teaching a class called “Rediscover San Diego” for San Diego Continuing Education, and it’s become part of my job to go to different venues in the city and talk to people there, finding out more about the work they do. I have gotten to meet so many fascinating people: a man who opened a camel dairy (it’s a thing!), a teacher who created his own museum devoted to African history because he was frustrated so little of it was being taught in schools (his collection is amazing!), a husband and wife team who were given a recipe by a master French caramel maker and then traveled all over the French countryside studying caramel-making…. I think I collected a lifetime’s worth of story ideas from last semester alone.

I think as writers we tend to spend a lot of time alone, with our books and our laptops, but it’s so important to get out into the world and really be present in the moment and pay attention to the places and people around us. Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way talks about going on “artist dates” with ourselves, and I think that’s wonderful advice to help fill the creative well.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

This is always a tough thing for me, but I think I’ve gotten better at choosing over the years. I start and abandon stories all the time, usually about thirty pages or so into a project. I always do some freewriting and rough drafting when I have a story idea, playing around with different directions I might take it. I think for me, the determining factor of whether this kind of “playing around” is a project I will stick with is related to character goals.

I have spent SO much time over the years working on projects that went nowhere because my protagonist did not have:

• 1) A tangible goal (with real stakes) for her to pursue over the course of the novel and

• 2) some sort of emotional wound, something that she needed to resolve for herself by the end of the novel.

I need to know what my protagonist wants so desperately and why, and if I don’t have at least a sense of this by the time I’ve done some of this freewriting and rough drafting, then I usually decide that my idea is not strong enough to sustain an entire novel. At least those are the problems I have run into in the past. I’ve wasted a lot of time working on story ideas that I ultimately abandoned because in the end, I didn’t know what my protagonist wanted and why, and so the foundation of my idea was not strong enough to sustain a novel.

I have 8 cats (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I do have a writing buddy! Her name is Biscuit, and she is my little ten-pound Yorkie/Maltese mix. You used the word “or” when you asked if I found it distracting, and I would say “and” is more appropriate for me because she is my writing buddy, AND I find her distracting, but I don’t have much of a choice in the matter because she climbs into my lap every time I sit down to write.

Actually, though I don’t find her as distracting as I used to. I’ve gotten good at balancing both Biscuit and a notebook on my lap. When she was a puppy, that was another story…..

Wednesday WOLF - Nitpicker

I've got a collection of random information in my brain that makes me an awesome Trivial Pursuit partner, but is completely useless when it comes to real world application. Like say, job applications.

I thought I'd share some of this random crap with you in the form of another acronym-ific series. I give you - Word Origins from Left Field - that's right, the WOLF. Er... ignore the fact that the "from" doesn't fit.

If you follow my Twitter feed you'll know that I had lice last week. I don't anymore, but I did lose many, many hours of my life to... nitpicking. Which of course led me to this blog post.

If someone is accused of being a nitpicker, it's usually not meant in a kind way. Nitpicking means that you're searching for the smallest problems, the tiniest faults, in another person or object. This might mean that you get yelled at for not pre-rinsing the dishes, but there are positive elements to nitpickers as well. For example, you really want your copyeditor to be a nitpick because it's their job to notice that your main character didn't cross the space between herself and someone else before she slapped them.

Lice lay eggs that are called nits. They're sticky, and they don't come off your hair unless you have a specialized comb, or are willing to slide each one off each hair with your fingernails. Combs don't get everything and I'm a thorough girl, so as I sat in front of the mirror last week, holding each and every strand of my hair into the light, I realized I was, in fact, nitpicking, spending a great deal of time and directing intense, tedious attention to a single task.

So I looked it up. And yes, we get our modern use of the term from these lovely, sticky, itchy parasites.

S. Gonzales On The Emotional Roller Coaster of Being On Submission

If there's one thing that many aspiring writers have few clues about, it's the submission process. There are good reasons for that; authors aren't exactly encouraged to talk in detail about our own submission experiences, and - just like agent hunting - everyone's story is different. I managed to cobble together a few non-specific questions that some debut authors have agreed to answer (bless them). And so I bring you the submission interview series - Submission Hell - It's True. Yes, it's the SHIT.

Today's guest for the SHIT is S. Gonzales, author of Only Mostly Devastated and The Law of Inertia. Gonzales writes Young Adult contemporary books with twisty plots and a generous dose of romance, featuring witty but vulnerable characters.

How much did you know about the submission process before you were out on subs yourself?

I’m one of those people who researches *everything* before I make any moves, so I would say I knew a fair bit. If a blog post covering the submission process exists I have read it, bookmarked it, and memorized it. Actually, one of my favorite things to do as I went on submission was read and re-read the S.H.I.T series!

Did anything about the process surprise you?

I was mostly surprised by how vague things could feel at times. Most sub stories I read followed the formula of “agent gets email that editor liked the book, agent gets email that book is going to acquisitions on x date, author waits anxiously on x date for news." But for me, even in three sub rounds, I never heard once that I was going to acquisitions. Sometimes there would be vague hints from editors that we’d have more news shortly, several times the first time we heard of acquisitions / second reads / editorial meetings occurring at all was in the rejection email.

Did you research the editors you knew had your ms? Do you recommend doing that?

My agent refuses to let me know which specific editors have my manuscript (Boo! Hiss!), probably because she’s worried I’ll end up perched in a tee outside one of their houses. Which I feel is unfair, because I’ve only ever been caught doing that once, but I digress. The few times I did figure out the identity of an editor who had my submission (writers on sub can be mighty resourceful), I have to admit that it wasn’t that helpful for me. Maybe my agent knows more about my tendency towards anxiety and obsessing than I give her credit for. . .

What was the average amount of time it took to hear back from editors?

According to my trusty spreadsheet, most responses came in around the 4-7 week mark. The quickest response came back after a day, and the longest response took 29 weeks. Once, I went to acquisitions after 21 weeks of not hearing from the editor. It’s honestly so varied.

What do you think is the best way for an author out on submission to deal with the anxiety?

Find something else to obsess over. Set yourself a goal that doesn’t involve the book on submission, and work towards it! One useful goal might involve a WIP, which is advice I’m sure most writers have heard (because it’s great advice). For me, it helped to set an exercise goal, because it let me burn up a lot of nervous energy and helped me feel in control at a time where I had very little control. And it cancelled out multiple rejection pints of ice cream.

If you had any rejections, how did you deal with that emotionally? How did this kind of rejection compare to query rejections?

I have been on sub three times now—once with a book that didn’t sell, once with a book that sold after 8 months (The Law of Inertia, Amberjack Publishing), and once with a book that sold in a pre-empt super quickly (Only Mostly Devastated, Wednesday Books). So I’ve seen most of what sub has to offer! Honestly, I found sub rejections initially harder to deal with, because when querying I got over rejection by sending out a new query, and you don’t have that option on sub. But in saying that, after a while I stopped being so hyper-aware that I was on sub, and it got easier as time went on. Was I zen and accepting, or just numb to pain by then? I . . . am not sure.

Also, I think the hard truth is that once you have an agent, a part of you believes that you’ll sell. You hear the stories about agented authors who don’t sell, but for you, the main character in the story that is Your Life, that won’t be the case. You’ll be the exception. Then, when I wasn’t the exception, it was a real case of having to shift expectations and let go of a book that I loved, while also trying not to lose confidence in myself. Believing you’ll succeed but accepting that you might not is a tricky tightrope to cross.

If you got feedback on a rejection, how did you process it? How do you compare processing an editor’s feedback as compared to a beta reader’s?

One of the great things about sub rejections is most editors took time out of their day to give some constructive feedback on why they passed, which I was so grateful for! The important thing was to differentiate between the more subjective feedback and story issues. Feedback related to pacing, technique, stakes etc. I take pretty seriously. On the other hand, lots of editors would pass because they didn’t love a certain character, and the next day another editor would pass saying they adored that character but didn’t like one of the other characters. And in those cases, it was more of a “not for me” than constructive feedback.

I wouldn’t say I treated editor feedback differently to a beta reader. For both sources, I’d apply the rules: “Did more than one person say this?” “Do you see where they’re coming from?” and “Is this something you’re willing to change?” There aren’t many hills I’ll die on when it comes to content if I’m getting feedback that something isn’t working. I’ve made some huge, hard changes, but in hindsight it was always for the better.

When you got your YES! how did that feel? How did you find out – email, telephone, smoke signal?

For The Law of Inertia, there wasn’t a ‘yes’ moment, it was more of a series of moments that grew closer to a ‘yes’ until the ‘yes’ was established. But that’s so often the case in publishing - lots of small wins that snowball into something huge that you can only see in hindsight. I mostly just celebrated every few days through the whole process, floating around in an ecstatic bubble.

Only Mostly Devastated was more of a surprise! We were only newly on sub, so I was settling in for the long haul—I wasn’t even going to think about responses until we got closer to the four week mark when they’d usually start rolling in.

It was Valentine’s Day, and the night before, I’d read The Dangerous Art of Blending In in one sitting, so I was on the bus to work and messaging Angelo Surmelis, the author, telling him how much I loved his book. Then halfway through the conversation I got a call from Moe, my agent. She has never called without messaging me first, but I didn’t even have time to get my hopes up, because she opened the call with the fact that we had a pre-empt offer. Then I screamed on the bus for ages while the other passengers gave me alarmed looks out of the corners of their eyes. Once the call was finished I had to keep responding to Angelo—with shaking fingers—casually and with maximum chill, because I couldn’t say to him hey, hold that thought, I just got an offer on my latest book.

Did you have to wait a period of time before sharing your big news, because of details being ironed out? Was that difficult?

For The Law of Inertia it was a 2.5 month wait before sharing. I told a couple of close friends and went out for some celebratory dinners, but I was hanging out for that moment when I could finally announce on social media. It didn’t disappoint, either!

And for Only Mostly Devastated, luckily I didn’t have to wait long before sharing at all—it was only about two weeks between the offer and the Publisher’s Weekly announcement. That was nice, because I was still riding my own personal wave of excitement when I got to share it with the world.

Having experienced both, I would have to say it was more difficult to have to wait, because you don’t really know when to celebrate. Do you celebrate when you go to acquisitions? When you have a verbal offer? When you get the formal offer? When you accept the offer? When you sign the contract? When you announce on social media? All of them? (I’m a keen supporter of ‘all of them’, because celebrating is lots of fun!). But I’ve learned that this is the nature of publishing. There is no moment when you’re done. It’s just an ongoing rollercoaster of highs and lows that, let’s be honest, lots of us wouldn’t get off for anything.