3.5 Steps to Successful Writing Collaboration!

Collaboration is a new thing for me even though technically I suppose I've borrowed plenty of times before from real life situations, people, and places. However, this time, writing A GIRL CALLED WOLF, I had a definite plan when I decided to write a novel based on the true life of someone I had met. I realize in hindsight that there are exactly 3.5 steps to successful collaboration.

Step 1

The first issue to grapple with was classification. Is a novel a legal document? Does the word novel mean everything is guaranteed fictitious? I doubt everything in a novel is fictitious. There are always those disclaimers saying "any resemblance is coincidental." 

Writers "borrow" all the time from real people, places, and events. Writers fictionalize the real, usually for the sake of telling a good story, sometimes to hide some unpleasant details. And whose autobiography doesn't include a fair amount of hyperbole or glossing over embarrassments? What is truth, after all? Moreover, is the true truth all that important to telling a compelling story?

Is there actually a big difference between "based on" and "inspired by"? We see that at the start of many films. Even though the film purports to be a version of a novel, we do not get quite the same story. The way around telling the same story is to label it as "based on" or inspired by." Based on is a declaration of connection to a work and sincere attempt to duplicate a prior source. Inspired by is, obviously, only a source of inspiration, thus only serving as a starting point for any version the author/producer wishes to tell, regardless of how close to the original it may be. 

In the case of A GIRL CALLED WOLF, I wanted to tell an essentially true story. At least to begin with that story. However, the vagaries of time being what they are, the story could not end other than in the future. And that, as most of us know, would certainly be fiction. A made-up ending to a true novel. Is there such a genre? A hybrid biographical novel with a fictional ending? 

When I had compiled enough information through social media and some Q&A via email about my heroine's life in Greenland and Canada, and decided her story had to be told, we discussed how it should end. If the story within the "true zone" is already inspiring, the conclusion must also be inspiring--heroic, even. That kind of climax is not too difficult given her adventures through the years which lead up to the present date. It would be quite natural to continue in the same direction and literally go out with a bang--or not [spoilers avoided]. So we settled on A Novel inspired by a true life.

Step 2

Then there was the theme. The message. An old writing professor of mine liked to repeat some famous writer's quip: "If you want to send a message, write a letter!" That's true enough as a writing axiom. Theme might be a better word than message. Don't most novels have a theme, a moral point, or feeling that the reader gets by the end? I seldom start a novel with a theme in mind, but the story tends to develop its own theme by the middle of the manuscript and from that moment I work to accentuate that theme. Our heroine had a rough start to her life and overcomes much along the way in remaking herself into the kind of person she believes will make a difference, not someone who is merely one of the crowd. So we elected to take the situation of her present day world and run with it.

Thus, we have a novel which is a retelling of a true life--birth, childhood, teenage years, youth and on into adulthood--as accurately as can be portrayed given the need for approval from the woman whose life serves as the model for the story. So let's call it 88.5% true--because any one of us is likely to sugar-coat some events and exaggerate others, mute certain details and play up others. Is any autobiography 100% true? Perhaps only to the author! So it is a novel overall, a fictionalized account based on a real person's story yet with a conclusion inspired by the present situation for both her and the world she lives in. I think we've hit the Trifecta! 

To create such a hybrid, I did a lot of interviewing with Anna Good, posing many questions and getting many answers. As a life story, we divided the years by location, placing them in chronological order rather than using flashbacks. I asked her to list 10 major things that happened at each location. I tried to flesh out ("showing" rather than "telling") the more important ones. I wrote as factually as possible, substituting RGW--really good words--when there were gaps in the timeline. I tried to make clear connections that I saw between actions and reactions. Then I sent drafts to Anna for her approval. Generally, she accepted anything I tried to do, only pointing out factual errors or occasionally guiding me in new directions. She seemed happy to let me tell her story in a dramatic way that was, according to her, better than she remembered. That's the supreme compliment to a ghostwriter, isn't it?

Step 3

I began by asking for answers to a lot of questions. We began by breaking down the story into locations. Then compiling details about incidents at each location. If you are working on a collaborative project like this, feel free to use my list of questions.

• For each location you lived, list ten things that happened.
• Who was involved in each incident?
• What caused it and what was the result?
• How did you feel about it?
• How did you feel about the result?
• What did you think about the incident with regard to your life in general?
• What ties to the past did the incident have and did you recognize that at the time or later?
• What did you do differently as a result of the incident?
• What caused you to change locations? Good reason or not good reason?
• How did you feel about the cause of changing locations?
• How did you feel after the change of location?
• What are 5 things that stand out in your mind about the location?
• Best thing and worst thing about the location?
• What sayings or big ideas do you remember hearing from each location?
• What did you gain at each location?
• What did you lose at each location?
• After you arrived at a new locations, did you ever wish to return to the previous? If so, why? 
• Describe a dream you had sometime at each location.
• Describe the major people you interacted with at each location.
• Describe the place where you lived (the building/room) at each location.
• Describe the food at a typical meal at each location.
• Describe something fun you experienced at each location.
• Describe something annoying or irritating that happened a lot at each location.
• In childhood locations, describe a time you got into trouble. How were you punished?
• In adult locations, describe an incident where you got into trouble. How was it delt with? Punishment?
• Describe the appearance and personality of the major people you interacted with at each location.
• Pets?  -for each location
• Hobbies? -for each location
• How did you travel around at each location? 
• Describe an incident with a travel-related problem.
• When living at each location, what did you want more than anything?
• When living at each location, what did you fear more than anything?
• What are some of the books you read? Which ones were important to you?

The village of Tasiilaq, east Greenland, on a nice summer day.

Anna Good, the model for this novel, had attempted to write it herself in the 2014 National Novel Writing Month competition but only got to about 5000 words, mostly about what she remembered of her earliest childhood. I used that in chapter 1, which helped us get started. Then I filled in as many incidents as possible. However, like any life, we tend to recall only the most significant events--good or bad. 

Keeping the novel manageable required us to limit the telling to those events which had significant impact on: 1) her reasons for moving to a new location, 2) her personal growth, 3) support for the theme of the book.

Therefore, chapter 1 has some flash-forwards, anticipating events to come. This is a result of melding Anna's original text with the text I prepared. It seemed to work, giving the reader a sense of where the story is leading without giving away any spoilers. It grows interest in the story. 

Step 3.5

The rest was careful manipulation of facts and sensory details. To back up my understanding of the locations, I did my own research on Greenland and the arctic. I also double-checked every detail with Anna. Mostly she let me write it out; then we quibbled over the details. We understood that I was not writing so much "her exact story" as a story of a girl similar to her who had these similar experiences. The deciding factor was the decision to use her real name(s; they changed at each location) thus forever linking this novel to her life.

The previous blog post describes more of this process.



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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

A Girl Called Wolf ...saves the world!

Ever since I was a little boy trying to write science-fiction stories, people have asked me where I get my ideas. It's a question most writers get. To me, the implication has always seemed to be that I'm either quite insane or I am cheating a little by borrowing real events. Both are partly true. Usually I develop a "what-if" scenario that intrigues me. Most of my books came about that way.

However, my latest book is a strange kind of collaboration. There truly are a lot of stories out in the world and if one merely pays attention one will hear them, read them, talk about them, and perhaps write them down so others can experience the amazing adventures of real people who walk through our lives. They say fact is stranger than fiction. Perhaps that's true. (Pardon the pun.) In this case, my new novel A GIRL CALLED WOLF is a hybrid of fact and fiction: telling the story of Anna Good up to the present day and then extending the story into the future--which may or may not turn out to be fiction.

Over the past two years I've interacted on social media with many people. They post bits about their lives, as we all do. Pictures, snippets of events, episodes that go well or as often go badly. I tend to hold back my personal life. Nobody's interested, or someone out there might be far too interested in me. Either way, it has been my tendency to sit back and observe. And I watched a mutual friend of an internet contact blossom from an introvert in real life to a confident social media maven eager to tell about her life.

Her username is Anna Good on Facebook and @Anna4Anybody on Twitter (how it came to be is in the book). Over the years, I have found her story compelling, heroic even. Her early life was definitely not what most children experience. I was intrigued. So I began a conversation that extended over the year, picking up all the key events, many of the details, becoming more and more intrigued and naturally absorbing Anna's way of thinking and speaking. It was a story I would want to read. 

Then I asked the fateful question: "Could I write your story?"

Ironically, Anna, a University of Manitoba student about to graduate with a degree in librarianship, is an avid reader. And she writes poetry. People told her she should write her story. She gave the National Novel Writing Competition a try in 2014, planning to write her autobiography, but couldn't make much progress telling her story herself. Not a problem: hire a writer to write it for you! On social media it is easy to become friends with writers.

Anna is an enthusiastic promoter of indie authors and was one of the more active fans of my 2014 vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, enjoying it enough to help promote it on social media. She also enjoyed my novel A BEAUTIFUL CHILL, which described my brief encounter with her half-sister. (Yes, there's a kind of connection, after all, although Anna and I have never met face to face.) So Anna trusted me to be able to tell her story.

We began with interviews by email and on social media, lots of Q&A. Some of the material was difficult to handle--that is, situations in life not always being pleasant. I began slowly, as usual, searching for the right voice, trying to make the narrative sound like her authentic voice while maintaining a readable style that suggests a native speaker of Greenlandic. Being a trained linguist helps. We had to work around her classes and exams, and her fight schedule as a boxer (had to take some liberties with her record) as well as her training schedule as a member of the Canadian Army reserve. These could be spoilers. It's not a spoiler that her favorite word is badass. Definitely a long way from living "on the ice."

Then I left for China, where when I wasn't teaching a class on American Business Writing, I was pounding the keys of my laptop. (See my account of that here.) NaNoWriMo be damned! I still wrote more than 50,000 words during the month of July. With each chapter written, I sent off drafts so Anna could check them for authenticity and she often sent back suggestions for changes. We negotiated a lot: the cold hard facts vs making a good story. As with any life story, we had to compress some events, merge others, take some shortcuts, to create a compelling story which follows her adventures without reading like a set of diary entries. Writing to create drama, that is, to tell a good story, not just writing that this happened and then that happened. And yet, the writing flowed almost effortlessly. It seemed one of the easiest novels I've ever written. Of course, I always had a muse and a plot-checker working with me!

During the final revisions, we worked to accentuate certain episodes, particular details, and cut others until we had a good finished story. With Anna's approval, we finally get to bring her story to the readers of the world. However, there is a twist. Up to the present day, the novel follows her life. Beyond the present day, what might happen? It is easy to speculate based on what has happened in her life and in the book. An exciting ending to an adventurous story? What to do? Any more teasing would take us into spoiler territory. Of course the ending is full fiction--it occurs in the future, after all.

We chose the following structure, using larger chapters which place the events both chronologically and by location:

Chapter 1 - The Dark
Chapter 2 - The Ice
Chapter 3 - The Village  (...that would be Tasiilaq, on the east coast of Greenland)
Chapter 4 - The Town    (...Nuuk, the capital of Greenland)
Chapter 5 - The City     (...Toronto, largest city of Canada)
Chapter 6 - The Province   (...Manitoba; Winnipeg is its capital)
Chapter 7 - The Nation    (...of course, that would be Canada)
Chapter 8 - The World

The cover art was created by Anna's half-sister, Iris Schaeffer, who is by necessity a character in the book. She says she is "all right" with how she is portrayed.

Back cover text:

Ice and snow are all 12 year old Anuka knows outside the hut in Greenland where she was born. When her mama dies, Anuka struggles to survive. The harsh winter forces her to finally journey across the frozen island to the village her mama always feared.

But the people of the village don’t know what to do with this girl. They try to educate and bring her into the modern world, but Anuka won't make it easy for them. She sees dangers at every turn and every day hears her fate echoing in her mama’s voice.

Her mama gave her that name for a reason. She is A GIRL CALLED WOLF who searches for the place where she belongs, a destination always just out of reach, on a path she will always make her own.

Kindle version available now. Paperback coming soon--as soon as Anna approves a proof copy! Knock-knock...ahem...waiting!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my story and I'm sticking with it!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How a Devious Muse Tricked Me!

It's like that common meme: so-and-so went to someplace and all I got was this t-shirt. This past summer I went to Beijing, China to teach a writing course at a university there and all I got was half a novel about an Inuit girl in Greenland. I felt deceived by my Muse. 

One would expect I'd be filled with some Chinese story and take the opportunity of being in China to write it out. That did happen to me when I lived in Japan; while there, I wrote a story set in Japan (that would be AIKO). And my vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN is set in Oklahoma City, where I now reside, as well as Utica, New York, where I previously resided. So I knew those locations well and could write about them with confidence. But does a writer need to be in a particular place to write effectively about that place?

In these days of easy access to the wealth of knowledge contained in a few massive servers spread around the world, probably not. Sure, one could absorb some of the ambiance of a place by being there, I suppose. I did that when I spent a few days in Iceland --but my novel A BEAUTIFUL CHILL, which used some Iceland locations, was mostly finished by then. Research used to take a lot of time and trouble for writers: trips to the library, interviews with experts, travel, and so on. Of course, that was always part of the fun of writing about an exotic location. You could also charge it on your tax report as business expense. 

But not now. The internet makes it too easy. You can check facts, see pictures of a place, read articles, peruse maps and even satellite images to save you from the costs of an air ticket and rental car, hotels and meals. For example, while writing my vampire novel, which culminates in Croatia (a place I have never visited), I simply went to Google maps, selected the satellite view, even turned the angle of the image as I liked, and I could see for myself that the landscape my protagonist was driving over was not mountainous but rather flat. Indeed, much of it was sectioned as farm land, not wild forest as I had hoped. Knowing the true terrain there made a big difference in plotting the final sequence of scenes.

The same is true of my newest novel A GIRL CALLED WOLF, which opens on the rugged east coast of Greenland. I have never been there, to be honest--although now that I've written about it and thoroughly ensconced myself in Greenlandiana, I definitely want to visit. Again, I made use of online maps to choose locations for filming--err, uh, mmm, you know, writing the story. Several websites, tourist-focused and other-focused provided a wealth of information, including photos of locations. I also got several print books via my old friend Mr. Amazon, explorer travelogues, history books, and reference books. For example, This Cold Heaven by Gretel Ehrlich, from which I read a chapter or so each night before going to sleep and which often caused me to have dreams of Greenland, some of which prompted me to rise early and start writing even before my first cup of coffee.

This is not to say that I simply threw a dart at a map of the world tacked up on the wall and decided to write a story about whatever place the dart happened to hit. No, I'm not that good, definitely not that masochistic --although it would probably make an interesting experiment. I did actually have a starting point. Spoiler: The story began on Facebook with a friend of a friend interacting with other friends and me noting the unfolding events and related information. After months of interaction, I started to get the sense that it all might make an interesting story--if only someone would actually write it.

The idea bugged me for almost a year--indeed, likely going back to the character of Alma in my vampire novel. The heroine of this new story seemed to have the same personality, at least as a point of departure for the story, a place for me to dive in. The next step was to decide how to lay out the story and where to begin to tell it. Plotting, I believe is what this is called. That part was a little easier because I could just follow her actual life events--just dramatize them.

For me, however, it is a far less scientific process. It is much more random; I have to feel it and when it feels right, I write. I wrote what I like to call "test writing" --especially necessary if the story is to be told in the protagonist's own voice. I had to get the voice down just so. I write until I believe I am "speaking" in his (A Dry Patch of Skin) or her (A Girl Called Wolf) authentic voice. For Stefan, that was a high-brow learned voice. For Anuka, it is a rough semi-literate voice. Then I got permission to tell her story. 

So there's this Inuit girl (Inuit is the proper name for the people sometimes called Eskimo) who is born "on the ice" rather than in a village or other small settlement. Her mother is a shaman, ostracized by the village, and one day a strange man washes up on the shore. The way nature works, soon a baby is born: our heroine! Like all legendary heroes and heroines, there must be an unusual birth and a harsh childhood that steels them for the adventures to come. So it is for our young protagonist. 

Once she becomes an orphan, she is eventually forced by hunger to enter the world of the village where people try hard to socialize her. It is an awkward proposition. Besides her resistance, she is tormented by some of the villagers, thus prompting the village leaders to send her to the orphanage in Nuuk, the capital. There, the Catholic Sisters attempt to teach her skills that will be useful for employment once she reaches the age of emancipation. Meanwhile, her teacher back in the village has located a relative of hers. Remember that man who washed ashore? Her father? Turns out he has another daughter back where he came from, a woman who has since moved to Canada, believing that he drowned rather than ended up in Greenland. Needless to say, things get complicated.

I have danced around a fistful of spoilers, but this is enough to give you the basic direction of the novel: a girl born of humble beginnings, forced to learn and grow and depend on herself, enters a world not of her choosing and adapts to it in fits and spurts until finally she realizes what she wants most is to be recognized for what she can achieve. In the end, she manages to save the world in classic legendary fashion. Using all she has learned and a lot of sheer guts. [Major spoilers avoided!] 

(Did I mention that the heroine in A BEAUTIFUL CHILL is the long-lost sister to our Inuit heroine? I guess that kind of crossover novelization would be some kind of spoiler but I doubt it will ruin the story for readers. Crossover novelization is a thing, isn't it?) 



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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Writing about Greenland while stuck in Beijing

So far this year, I have blogged about Korea, about a new novel set in Japan and Hawaii, and written about my month in Beijing, China to teach a university course. However, the oddest thing about my month in China was how much time I spent in my hotel room writing a new book set in Greenland.

How, you may ask, could I focus on Greenland while in Beijing? I was supposed to be sightseeing as long as I was there, right? I was supposed to enjoy all the Chinese things, right? My mind would be filled with Chinese this and Chinese that. There would be no way I could not be thinking of Chinese stories. Well, you'd be right, except...as my writer friends know, you write the story that wants to come out, no matter where you happen to be.

Of course, the idea came first. I had been intrigued by a story line I happened onto about a year ago. (More on this next time.) The more I learned, the more I felt it would make a good novel. I did some research because, you know, everyone knows about Greenland and the Inuit culture. I was not completely ignorant of it, however, since I consider myself a geography savant, perpetually obsessed with maps and the places they show. 

I started writing, as I usually do, with just a scene--a "test write"--something I thought might be a good place to begin the story. I chose to tell it in first-person, letting my heroine tell her story. I wrote for a while to get the voice down accurately. I had to hear her talking to me, in her natural way of speaking. Even choosing whether she says "yet" or "but" became important to creating her. As a semi-illiterate, her word list would be short yet she had to be expressive. After a few weeks I felt I knew her well enough to imitate her.

So when I finally learned my China trip was a go, I panicked. I feared losing momentum in my writing. I had about 10,000 words by that time but I was going slow, stopping to research the setting as I went. What do you call this part of an Inuit house? What is this garment called? But I had to go to China; I felt rather Nixonian. So I packed the book I was currently reading, This Cold Heaven by Gretel Ehrlich, a contemporary account (1990s) of a woman traveling in Greenland yet also providing generous portions from the travel journals of earlier Greenlandic explorers and residents, namely Knud Rasmussen and the American artist Rockwell Kent. It was truly evocative and spurred my writing. I also took a small book about arctic wildlife and my map of Greenland with me to Beijing.

Where the magic happens. See jacket over chair at so-called desk?

Settling in and getting my class going took up the first week. When the first weekend arrived, I did some sightseeing but the oppressively humid weather pushed me back into my air-conditioned hotel room. I had my laptop and I had a cobbled-together "soundtrack" for my book--music that evoked (at least for me) the cold arctic landscape in both its good and bad seasons. I forced myself to focus. I had to get back on track or loose the story for the next four weeks. I read what I had written from the beginning, editing as I went. By the time I reached the point where I had left off, I was back on track and charging ahead with the next scene. (*Fortunately or not, the limited internet access and non-bilingual TV programming in my hotel room further gave me little else for entertainment than the story I was writing.)

So almost every day I wrote a little or a lot. My teaching schedule was light and most of the sightseeing I could be doing was done on my two previous trips to Beijing. Cranking the A/C as cold as I dared (without freezing the system so it would not work) helped set the mood. The music played through my ear buds and I typed, my head filled with the movie I was watching unfold. 

Sweating at Beihei Park but thinking of ice and snow!

For the second week's days off, I planned major sightseeing, but then the rain came. Thursday through Sunday, rain. I pushed myself out on a darkly humid Saturday only to be accosted by art exhibit "hookers" (see previous blog), but the rest of the time I was writing in my hotel room, on my laptop, and no matter which housekeeper came to clean my room or try to extract me from my writing desk, I continued! My fingers were fingers of fury! 

In the third week, I was so filled with the story that I was awaking early to write what was in my dreams. Yes, I was there inside my story, standing on a mountain watching things play out. And I started typing bright and early, before I was fully awake. Bottles of iced coffee in my mini fridge fueled my writing! I did not stop for the breakfast buffet or the housekeeping intrusion. I typed while they made the bed, etc. and I didn't even hear them wish me a good day and close the door behind me. Yes, for two days straight, I got up early and wrote almost full out (restroom breaks allowed) for six hours each day. 

By the time I was boarding the plane to fly home, I had added 55,000 words to the manuscript. That's worthy of a NaNoWriMo award! Once back home, I did not let up. I still had a week before my own school would call for my presence so I kept my fingers to the keyboard. When I eventually finished it--when I arrived at the final scene and could type The End (FYI, I do not actually type that.)--I sat back quite satisfied. Then I launched into the first wave of revision, rechecking facts, researching, clarifying, adding details, correcting a typo here and there.

Just one of many images I used for inspiration.

And so that is how A GIRL CALLED WOLF came to be written mostly during a month in a hotel room in Beijing. It's all about setting the scene, creating the mood, and focusing on the world inside while ignoring the world outside your head. And occasionally going out to get something to eat. And teach a class in Business Writing American style...if I remember.


Next: What is A GIRL CALLED WOLF all about?


*Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Google, and YouTube were all blocked on the link my hotel used. My only links to the outside world were Yahoo email and LinkedIn. My one night at the airport Hilton before departing gave me those common links back but by then it was too late to make much use of them.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.