Category: Publishing

Adaptations and What We Bring to Them

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I love adaptations of classic tales. Fairy tale adaptations like Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl, or takes on Shakespear ala Something Rotten by Alan Gratz always gets my attention. But what makes a good adaptation? On her blog today, Mary Kole looks at that exact issue and why an adaptation has to be its own story as well. I love this description of making an old story new:

“She didn’t just tinker with the original, she took the entire thing apart, repainted it, and put it back together her own way. An adaptation in today’s market takes nothing less.”

The adaptation in question is Marissa Meyer’s Cinder, which I haven’t read yet (I know, I know), but even from the description it sounds like a really fun, unique, compelling take on the Cinderella story. Another one I love is Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. Even that’s a little more on the “traditional” site (there are fairy godmothers and princes), but it takes the Cinderella story to the next level by giving Ella a physical and emotional journey.

It’s always good to ask yourself “Why does this story need to be told? And why does it need to be told this way?” But it’s especially important when dealing with adaptations. Shakespeare already told us about Hamlet. Why do we need another Hamlet story? And is your Hamlet story going to be different than Something Rotten or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead? It adds another layer of pressure onto the author, but it can lead to some rich and engaging new takes on old tales. I find it exciting to be told the same story from another point of view or with another layer added to it. Just make sure you’re still writing your own story.

Teen Girl Protagonists Lead Book Sales

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It’s a good time to write about teen girl protagonists–and not just in YA:

“To get to the million-dollar mark for debut fiction this year, it apparently helps to have a female teenage protagonist. In February, Riverhead bought 30-year-old Washington University writing professor Anton DiSclafani’s first novel called The Yonahlossee Riding Camp For Girls. The book is about a 16-year-old named Thea Atwell during the Great Depression who is sent to an equestrian boarding school in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. And just out in hardcover is The Age of Miracles by 32-year-old Karen Thompson Walker, who worked on the coming-of-age story for about an hour each morning before going to her editorial job at Simon and Schuster. That is, until she received a million-dollar advance from Random House.”

Coming-of-age stories have always been popular, but I wonder if this trend is part of YA becoming more accepted as a genre. The Katniss effect?

Link It Together

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On her blog, Erika Dreifus looks at linked story collections (several stories with similar characters/locations/themes/etc.). How can they be written and evaluated in comparison to novels or collections of separate short stories? She quotes Junot Diaz:

“I’ve always conceptualized linked collections as these wonderful Lagrange points between the story collection and the novel. In them there’s this weird bit of space—again not as much as in a novel, but more than a standard collection—from which wonderful stuff can be spun, stuff that neither the traditional novel nor the traditional story collection can generate. A fascinating patch of liminality that writers haven’t done quite enough with, in my opinion.”

YA and children’s literature has a limited amount of short stories in general, let alone linked short stories*. I wonder if a collection of linked short stories could work better than just a standard collection. Teen years are filled with so many facets and contradictions–maybe a series of linked stories could reflect that really well.

*Oddly enough, when I was a YA myself, I wrote a series of linked stories, even though I didn’t know that was what it was called at the time.

Being Grateful: Notes to a Young Author Self

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Love this post by YA author Ally Carter about all the things she wishes she could tell her younger, budding author self. It’s great advice for people at the beginning of their writing careers. One part I liked in particular:

“And the biggest piece of advice I can give you is this: take a sheet of paper and write down five things that would make you really, really happy in your career.  Then write down five things that would be “best case scenario” things.  And lastly write five “in your wildest dreams” things.

Keep that list.  Remember that list.  Because in this business the finish line is constantly moving.  One day you really just want an agent.  Then it’s a book deal.  Then it’s a bestseller.  Then it’s a movie.  Then it’s a castle next to JK Rowling’s.

In short, appreciate things as they’re happening, remember that once upon a time that thing was a dream of yours and that it’s still a dream for someone.  So be grateful every day.”

I think this is a great idea. Writing is full of disappointments and rejections, even for super-established authors. It’s easy to get caught up in thinking about the bestsellers and castles that seem just out of your reach. Until we all have castles next to Rowling’s, it’s good to remember all the awesome things happening now–even if it’s just that you finished a new draft or your critique partners said they loved the voice in your latest work.

Make sure to check out Ally’s full post for more great advice.

Links Galore

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Catching up on the webs:

Being an Author

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From Terence Blacker’s list of what it means to be an author:

  • You write a book, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. It turned out not to be the perfect work you once envisaged but, for better or worse, it has reached its destination. If you are lucky enough to be asked to talk about it months later when it is published, you will see it from the outside, almost as if it has been written by a stranger. Your mind is on what you are writing now.
  • You long to be part of what is described as “the literary establishment”, but you never will be. Other authors, swanning about smugly at a festival or a Royal Society of Literature reading, may cause a knot of rage and jealousy to form in your stomach, but they are worrying about being outside the establishment, too.
  • You are lucky. You are doing something which, for all its agonies and uncertainties, allows you to lead a fuller life than you would otherwise have had.

Rest of the list through the link; he hits on lots of the anxieties and joys in the writing process.

(via Neil Gaiman)