Real Magic: Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus

It is absolutely enchanting, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus.

The setting alone--Victorian Paris; London; Munich; New York; and Concord, Massachusetts--pops with color and costumes and caramel apples.

The characters are rich, mysterious, and the plot--a game gone bad between two old old magicians--is different, interesting.

It's a wonder of a read, one that will take you somewhere you've never been, one you'll be thinking about days after you've read (and re-read) the last line.

There, the magic does not end. The alchemy behind the book--Morgenstern's process--that is really something.

The story started as a completely different concept in 2005, morphing into its ultimate manifestation years and revisions later.

30 agents rejected the sweeping, lyrical manuscript that eventually landed Morgenstern six-figures and a movie deal.

The MC, Morgenstern claims, was invented last. How, I wonder? How was that possible? This Celia, she is integral, holds the circus in her very palm--the cover itself.

(While we're on design, you must check out the illustrations that separate the five parts. Hint: it's what you see on one of the Circus rides.)

Better than The Magicians? The next Harry Potter? Twilight rival?

Morgenstern laughs away comparisons.

And she should.

The Night Circus is its own story, a real-life unfolding of paper, of turning of gears.

Brushing off the Dust

A month or so ago, I pulled up the very first story I ever wrote, a simple little YA story that no one but my writing partner, Christy, has ever read.

At first, I thought it was incredibly primitive, as in "primate," as in, a monkey must have written the thing.

There was not much action, hardly any plot, underdeveloped characters with way too old vocabularies, too much "telling," a whiny MC.

I mean, compared to the political-dystopian-colonialist MS I just finished, this really was monkey business.

But also, the little story had some fun stuff: a vessel for telling the story that teens would really like, an uncommon but exciting setting, an MC with potential, an ending that I love.

Then, I started tinkering with it a bit--polishing up voice, working the setting, adding some dimension to the MC with dialogue. I made sure I answered the questions I asked at the beginning.

I started tinkering a lot--changing the direction of some plot points, making the MC more likeable/relateable, adding detail to the MC's motivation, the reasons for her action/reaction.

Now what I have is kind of a mess. But it's a better mess than it was when the monkey wrote it.

I'm going to tinker some more and see what comes of it, and be wide open to that whatever.

How about you? What are you working (or re-working) on?

Can It Be About Secondary Characters?

Several months ago, I was talking with one of my writing partners about how we both loved our secondary characters, far more than we liked our MCs.

What's with that?

Is it okay?

Well, I finally got around to watching "The Black Swan" last week while Man Down with a kidney infection, and I realized why I had put it off for so long: I am not a fan of Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman). Yes, I do respect her long hours at training for the part--the ballet she took, the weight she lost, the craft she honed. But, simply, I am not in love with her, and have never been, not even in "Where The Heart Is."

Instead of going into all the blab about why I'm not a Portman superfan, I'll tell you that I am head over heels for "Swan" secondary characters Mila Kunis (who had me at "Book of Eli") and the talented and gorgeous Frenchman Vincent Cassel, who can give one look that can win an Oscar. So for me, these two carried me through the movie. Them, and plot, and setting.

The other night, my little family went to see Bill Rauch's rendition of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" at the outdoor Shakespeare theater. It was magic: the sword fighting and swashbuckling and disco dance breakouts. The female lead sang way too high, though, and none of us could understand what she was saying (though she did have her some swanky kimono PJs), and the lead male was meh.

But the Pirate King! Aye, my friends! This lad was really something!

And Ruth, the nursemaid, was equally fantastic. And the rollicking Modern Major General? Unforgettable!

It probably shouldn't be so that a reader or movie watcher or play goer not like the MC. But it does seem to happen, and if it does, it's better to have some really amazing sidekicks to go with it.

When You're Stuck in Your Story...

...Go back to the beginning. Work on what you have done. Tighten up. Rearrange. Add plot. Add dialogue. Flush out secondary characters with depth and dimension. Make setting sing.

You will see where you have been. You will remember where you are going.

Even if it wasn't tacking a thousand words onto your end, you will feel like you have done something.

Instant Gratification: The Current Trend in Introduction

My kids and I were eight chapters into reading To Kill A Mockingbird (so we can see the OSF production of it this spring), when sixth-grade Daney groaned, "What is this book about, anyway? There is no plot, there is no conflict."

She was right.

Harper Lee took her sweet Southern time aquainting her readers with Scout's tiny life in Maycomb County: her admiration for her older brother, Jem; her relationships with summer visitor, Dill; the ladyfolk; the ghostly man-child, Boo Radley; her father.

We get the hot, dry dust, the simple-minded, struggling townspeople.

But it's not until page 85 when conflict rips us from the slow days of Scout's scounting about, and throws us into the political upheaval that becomes the essence of the book.

"This is like Dracula," Dominic (13) agreed. (He's reading the 500-word tome for his spring book report.) "It didn't get good until page 300, when stuff started happening."

"What did Bram Stoker write in the 300 pages of 'nothing?'" I'd asked.

"Setting," Dominic said. "And setting. And setting. He took a long time setting it up."

So right now, my kids are seeped in two worlds: in 1930s Alabama, and 19th Century Transylvania. And though they're finally capitivated, it cost a lot of hearing them complain in getting them here.

We writers could never do this today. We could never "waste" a third of our stories on establishing setting. The present trend is to drop blood, or mystery, or vengance, or some kind of conflict right on page one.

What does that mean?

What are we missing out on?

Variety?

So, I'm writing sci-fi, for a huge change, and I'm thinking about the differences between it and other genres.

For me, so far, it comes down to setting and word choice. Character doesn't seem to change much, and plot isn't enormously effected.

I'd love to hear what your thoughts on it all.

So I Finally Read THE HUNGER GAMES

Dave's brother, Michael, the dad to three teen girls, is an avid reader. Every time I've talked to him in the last year, he's asked if I've read The Hunger Games yet.

Then there's my 11-year old daughter, Daney, who's read the whole series -- twice. Not to mention the entire YA community who has devoured these books.

Why did it take me so long? First, I am always reading, always editing: student papers, college admissions essays, research, the San Francisco Chronicle, writing group fabulosity. When I do get to read for fun, and I definitely should do more of it, I tend to go for adult fiction. The next book on my nightstand is Lisa Genova's Left Neglected. So there's all that, plus, I don't love dystopian.

It took me a month to get through The Hunger Games, mostly because, though I was blown away by Suzanne Collins' brilliant, unique premise, I wasn't super invested in Katniss. She was not warm. Callous, even. Superior. And though I told myself this had to do with her survivor's spirit, I didn't care if she lived or died.

Several chapters in, however, I appreciated Collins' integration of huge themes: sociology, war, government control, the confines of poverty. Maslowe's hierarchy drove the characters' actions: safety, survival, food. There was more, too: fusing the Greek Olympic Games with America's obsession of reality TV. Our focus on appearance (the mention of plastic surgery, even), with a deeper theme of Shakespeare's self-sacrifice through poison. Love: Our human strength (and weakness). DNA manipulation.

For me, the book picked up speed in the end. I had bought into Katniss' winning The Games through her care of Rue, a genius complication to the plot.

While I'd hoped to see more dialogue, at least internally, I accepted the plotty narrative, and thought over and over toward the conclusion that Collins is a Big Thinker, that the editor was lucky to find this one-of-a-kind, multifaceted story.

Will I read the other books? Probably not. But I'm glad I (finally) got to this one, and can see how it was an enormous success.

Based on Book One, I asked my daughter: Does Katniss marry Peeta in the end, and together they take down the Games, then have a baby? To keep the depth and twists, Prim must die somewhere, so that Katniss has nothing to lose. And there has to be some revisitation to a song.

Daney giggled at me, which means that at least some of these happen. Where Collins must excel, then, is at the telling of how. I admire and envy her craft.

The Hardest Part?

I've been thinking a lot about voice lately. How to do it. How it varies, specifically. What makes each one special.

In one of my manuscripts, narrated by 16 year-old MC Kat, the voice is hollow. Sad. Kat's been bounced around from foster home to foster home and lands in The Middle of Nowhere, Oregon. Kat is sensitive, but strong. Young but growing wiser. Completely trustworthy. You could tell her anything and listen to her favorite band with her for hours.

In my other manuscript, Josh, a 17 year-old basketball blue chip from Sacramento, narrates the seedy side of sports. Josh is wise beyond his years, but is jaded and unreliable. It's not his fault, right? Because everyone has made him who he is. Because he has to survive his life somehow.

Two very different tales.

Two distinct voices.

Okay, I'm not a master of voice craft, for sure, but here's what I've come up with that might help you strengthen your MC's voice:

* Know your MC! I mean, really know them: their wants, hopes, and fears; when they're from and where they're going; their favorite shirt; what they drink and how they drink it; 20 adjectives that might describe them.

* Know the other characters. So the reader has no trouble understanding/believing why MC does and says the things she does.

* Know your audience: ages, interests, gender.

* Know how you want your story to "sound."

* Know setting. Does the MC stand out or fit in nicely? It's all part of the story.

* Stay in character with dialogue. Think word choice, sentence fluency, length, and structure.

* Think paragraph length and structure.

* Use flashbacks. What was significant in MC's past that relates to his/her story?

* Make the most of tone, cadence, punctuation. Match it all up with plot. Use other stylistic devices, too: rhythm, repetition, humor...

What else?

How do you define and use voice?

Last But Not Least

Setting is somehow the last thing I put into and polish up in my stories.

From the very beginning, I do have a definite idea about setting, but I don't add much of refine until plot and character are completely flushed out. I think the reason is that I have to know my character first. Then I can write her world as she sees it.

For example, in Drain, my MC (16 year-old Kat) tries to find a quiet place to sort out everything:

I walk away, back toward the church, unwrapping a Jolly Rancher and popping it into my mouth. Outside the gate, I hold the iron spears in both hands. The metal is cold and smooth.

The gate swings open widely when I push it, but the big wooden church doors don’t budge. It’s starting to rain harder, though. Water from my hair is dripping onto my eyelashes. So wandering around the outside of the church, I keep my eyes open for a crack or a crevice I can sink into for a while, at least until the downpour stops.

But after I’ve circled the building twice, I can’t find an opening. I can’t find anything, except some kind of a tomb outlined with seashells.

On my third walk around the church, a flight of steps catches my eye. It’s hidden by dense gardenias, and suffocated by ivy, and it heads down into a cellar or a basement or something. This is just the place, I’m sure of it.

Stepping lightly down the narrow steps, I find a door with an antique knob: tarnished brass, and bumpy, with a key hole underneath. When I twist it slowly, it turns. I crack the door and peek into the darkness. It’s a tiny room with a cement floor, and a big Gothic cross with blackened silver and spirals and vines leans upside-down in a corner.

Widening the door, I find a few chairs stacked on each other, and leather hymnals crammed into a book shelf with empty glass jars.

I sweep my hand along the wall, flicking on the light, a dim single bulb.

From way down here, I hear the tower bell ring five muffled rings.

I’ll give myself an hour.

Closing the door on myself in the little room, I slump against the wall, and I turn the cross right-side up, and I breathe in the leather from the hymnals, and I close my eyes.


This was all put in last. After the story was written.

The setting lends itself to Kat's loneliness, her inner conflict.

She's searching for an opening, literally and figuratively.

She's looking for a place of comfort.

In this scene, Kat is the only living thing among forgotten books and empty jars. And yet she feels at home here.

It is right here, right in this scene, where without even telling her audience, Kat makes a critical decision. Did you find it?

It's when Kat turns the cross right-side-up.

She makes a choice then to serve a greater purpose. She will sacrifice everything she's ever wanted for it.

So setting enriches plot and character, but it also strengthens tone.

This is a sad scene. But there aren't many modifiers or dialogue to show that. It's all in the time, weather, sound, surroundings.

After the Intro

Well, I'm 9,000 words into revising, now! I'm on page 25, which doesn't seem very far, but I'm happy about where the book is going.

I overhauled the whole beginning.

"Did the agent ask you to do that?" my husband asked.

"No," I told him. But I can't redo the end without changing the intro.

And it's better: stronger, with more layers and conflict, and character development. More wanting. More mystery.

I even changed how the character dresses. And how she talks. She is softer, more fragile, mistrusting.

There's so much to do. I remember Editor Nancy Lamb saying at a conference: "If it doesn't move the plot forward, it goes."

And as I use description, setting, I'm wondering how much of that moves the plot forward.

My book, DRAIN, is a literary paranormal. A WHAT? I know, right? A literary paranormal? The seeing element is minimal, though, to my character's conflict. It interferes with what she wants, and how to get (or keep) it.

I'm a skinny writer. Not at all skinny in the physiological sense, but skinny in that my manuscripts flush out around 52,000 words.

For this voice, I'm sticking with something hollow. It's often sad and empty, like wind through a tunnel.

But today, I go back to school. For two Critical Thinking classes. And there's a stack of manuscripts I need to give feedback on in the next couple of weeks. And there's kids and laundry. But I'll get it done, DRAIN. I totally see the end, and I'm super excited to get there.

The First Words

I'm thinking about introduction. How important those first few lines are. The very first words.

Because in revising, this is where the work starts. How it's set up.

Is there imagery? Action? Character? Conflict?

Last spring at the Western Washington SCBWI Conference, Delacorte editor Krista Marino plugged opening with description. With suspense. And with a third-person narrator in past tense.

On page 1 (of 1074) of his new novel Under the Dome, Stephen King nails all these: in an established setting, a plane crashes at the same time a woodchuck mysteriously explodes. It reminds me of The Grapes of Wrath--how the weather, the mountains, the roads are all significant; and the turtle metaphorically plods along. Even the format is Steinbeck-ian. And yet, something also really reminds me of "The Truman Show."

In crafting a strong intro.--compelling, descriptive--that establishes setting and character, I consulted a running list of kinds of first lines that my students and I are making: dialogue, imagery, sound, setting, foreshadowing, summary, anecdote, question, metaphor, action, conflict,.

In How to Write a Damn Good Novel, The Other (more veritable) James Frey suggests starting with either the character's status quo, or with the opposite of that, which then leads to the status quo.

One of my favorite sections in my Sunday San Francisco Chronicle is a 4" x 4" square called "Grabbers," the first lines of newly released novels. Last Sunday was one of my all time favorites--from The Serialist, by David Gordon--an intro about intros: "The first sentence of a novel is the most important, except for maybe the last, which can stay with you after you've shut the book, the way the echo of a closing door follows you down the hall."

Novel, no?

How does your book begin?