Posts from the ‘Kate Forsyth’ Category

Dec 1

Different Types Of Plot In Fiction, by Kate Forsyth

I’m sure you’ve all heard people say that there are only so many possible plots in the world. Some say there’s only three. Some say there’s only seven. For my own amusement and edification, I’ve collected them. Now I share them with you:

Only One Plot:

It is said that there is really only one plot – the resolution of a problem.

This rests on the basic plot structure described in the following, canonical sequence of events: Exposition – Rising Action – Climax – Falling Action - Denouement

Two Plots:

The novelist John Gardner used to say “There are only two stories: A man goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town.”

Three Plots:

In The Basic Patterns of Plot, William Foster-Harris, a professor at the University of Oklahoma contends that there are three basic patterns of plot:

Type A: happy ending

Type B: unhappy ending

Type C: ambiguous or inconclusive ending

Seven Plots:

In his book, The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker outlined a theory that there are seven key plots, which may be used in combination with others. This book is one of my own personal favourites, and I recommend it highly. In short, they are:

1) Overcoming the Monster – tale of conflict typically recounts the hero’s ordeals, an escape from death, and ends with a community or the world itself saved from evil.

2) Rags to Riches – Cinderella, The Ugly Duckling, David Copperfield, and other stories that tell of humble, downtrodden characters who manage to overcome all obstacles to rise in the world.

3) The Quest – a hero travels on a quest to save his world and secure some kind of priceless treasure.

4) Voyage and Return – The protagonist leaves normal experience to enter an alien world, returning after what often amounts to a thrilling escape. The Odyssey, Robinson Crusoe, and Alice in Wonderland are examples of this plot.

5) Comedy – confusion reigns until at last the hero and heroine are united in love.

6) Tragedy - the anti-hero spirals down deeper into darkness and despair, with all ending grimly

7) Rebirth - any story that pivots on the symbolic or actual death and rebirth of a character. Examples include Snow White, and Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov.

20 Plots:

The following come from 20 Master Plots by Ronald B Tobias:

Quest

Adventure

Pursuit

Rescue

Escape

Revenge

The Riddle

Rivalry

Underdog

Temptation

Metamorphosis

Transformation

Maturation

Love

Forbidden Love

Sacrifice

Discovery

Wretched Excess

Ascension

Descension.

36 Plots:

Finally, we have Georges Polti who wrote a book called The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations (translated by Lucille Ray). Although I find the following of interest, I think it’s a little too complicated and hard to remember.

Supplication – Persecutor, Suppliant, a Power in Authority

Deliverance – Unfortunates, Threatener, Rescuer

Revenge – Avenger, Criminal

Vengeance by Family upon Family – Avenging Kinsman, Guilty Kinsman, Relative

Pursuit – Fugitive from Punishment, Pursuer

Victim of Cruelty or Misfortune – Unfortunates, Master or Unlucky Person

Disaster – Vanquished Power, Victorious Power or Messenger

Revolt – Tyrant, Conspirator(s)

Daring Enterprise – Bold Leader, Goal, Adversary

Abduction – Abductor, Abducted, Guardian

Enigma – Interrogator, Seeker, Problem

Obtaining – Two or more Opposing Parties, Object, maybe an Arbitrator

Familial Hatred – Two Family Members who hate each other

Familial Rivalry – Preferred Kinsman, Rejected Kinsman, Object

Murderous Adultery – Two Adulterers, the Betrayed

Madness – Madman, Victim

Fatal Imprudence – Imprudent person, Victim or lost object

Involuntary Crimes of Love – Lover, Beloved, Revealer

Kinsman Kills Unrecognised Kinsman – Killer, Unrecognised Victim, Revealer

Self Sacrifice for an Ideal – Hero, Ideal, Person or Thing Sacrificed

Self Sacrifice for Kindred – Hero, Kinsman, Person or Thing Sacrificed

All Sacrificed for Passion – Lover, Object of Passion, Person or Thing Sacrificed

Sacrifice of Loved Ones – Hero, Beloved Victim, Need for Sacrifice

Rivalry Between Superior and Inferior – Superior, Inferior, Object

Adultery – Deceived Spouse, Two Adulterers

Crimes of Love – Lover, Beloved, theme of Dissolution

Discovery of Dishonour of a Loved One – Discoverer, Guilty One

Obstacles to Love – Two Lovers, Obstacle

An Enemy Loved – Beloved Enemy, Lover, Hater

Ambition – An Ambitious Person, Coveted Thing, Adversary

Conflict with a God – Mortal, Immortal

Mistaken Jealousy – Jealous One, Object of Jealousy, Supposed Accomplice, Author of Mistake

Faulty Judgement – Mistaken One, Victim of Mistake, Author of Mistake, Guilty Person

Remorse – Culprit, Victim, Interrogator

Recovery of a Lost One – Seeker, One Found

Loss of Loved Ones – Kinsman Slain, Kinsman Witness, Executioner

***

Kate Forsyth’s author website: www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate Forsyth’s bio page

***

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Oct 22

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Plot Structure In Novels (Part 2), by Kate Forsyth

When I am planning my novels, I think very carefully about when an event in the book happens. Each event must lead logically to the next event, building in pace and suspense until we reach the climax, the point of highest tension in the book. This is called rising action. At the point of climax, the problem of the book must be solved, the antagonist overcome and the crisis resolved.

I usually like to have three major ordeals, or turning points (sometimes called crises).

The first will indicate a change in gear, a quickening of pace, a movement from one place to another, or from one set of feelings to another. I call this the first turning point. It often involves moving through a doorway or gateway, or from one place to another.

The second is what I call ‘the dark night of the soul’, but is also sometimes called the Midpoint Reversal, or the second turning point. It usually is a key moment psychologically as well as physically. It is a moment when it seems all is lost. I like to position this as close to the middle of the book as possible, but that’s because I have an obsession with symmetry. Other writers place it much more loosely in the novel’s structure.

The third major ordeal is the climax of the book, the point at which the hero must triumph or fail.

Each of these three major ordeals or crises takes roughly a quarter of the book to develop and the ending takes the final quarter. This helps me to control pacing, and keep the different sections of the book balanced.

As I work toward the final climax of the book, I will shorten my chapter length, quicken pace, and reduce the number of chapters ending in resolution, so that the compulsion to read on becomes stronger. This helps builds suspense.

The idea behind rising action is that each scene is more intense, more dramatic, more interesting, more compelling, than the scene which came before. Of course, one can still have moments of rest and introspection after a scene of high intensity. They just tend to be shorter.

Another thing to realise is that the tension in each scene does not need to be supplied by gun battles and car chases. It can be a scene of emotional or psychological intensity – a key moment of revelation, for example.

Basically, all events in your story are leading toward the point of highest tension, which is the climax. This climactic scene is followed by falling action, and then the denouement or “unravelling”, a scene in which the triumph of the hero is celebrated, or the tragic hero’s fate is accepted, leading to new self-knowledge.

The combination of rising action, climax, and falling action creates a shape rather like an Isosceles triangle:

This is called a Freytag’s Triangle, named after Gustave Freytag, a German literary critic who analysed Aristotle’s Poetics and broke his theory of dramatic unity down into its different components. The above graph was made by Barbara F. McManus in her book Tools for Analysing Prose Fiction.

This is how I have redrawn this narrative arc for myself:

***

Kate Forsyth’s author website: www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate Forsyth’s bio page

***

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Sep 30

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Plot Structure In Novels, by Kate Forsyth

Whenever I teach writing, I always spend quite a lot of time talking about plot structure.

This is because I think that it is nearly always the reason why a novel fails. A book can have engaging characters; a fast-paced, action-packed plot; and a fascinating setting, but still not quite work. This is nearly always because it has a weak structure.

Think of the structure as the framework of your novel, the internal architecture. It is like a human skeleton – invisible to the eye, yet the thing that stops it collapsing into jelly. Like the skeleton, it is made up of small parts, each linked one to the other, each doing their job to keep your novel working at full strength. The structure of a novel should fall into logical divisions, usually called scenes, chapters and sections.

A scene is an incident or event in a novel in which the action takes place continuously in a single place or time. Each scene should follow on logically from each other in a cause-and-effect chain.

A chapter is a division of the novel into regular parts, usually comprising one major scene, but sometimes combining several scenes.

A section is a collection of chapters, bound together by the point of view of the primary protagonist, by the place or time in which the action is set, or thematically.

In children’s and young adult fiction, the structure is usually more simple and linear than in an adult book, but this is a rule that can be broken. For example, The Puzzle Ring begins long after the adventure has ended, foreshadowing what will come.

Chapters aren’t just arbitrary rest breaks in a book. They should be carefully planned to control pace, to advance the plot and to work with the reader’s natural reading rhythms.

I usually aim for a chapter length between 1,500-2,000 for a children’s book (aged 8+), 2,500-3,000 words for young adults (aged 12+), and 3,500-4,000 words for an adult’s book (aged 16+). However, there is no rule – a chapter can be can a single word as in Frank McCourt’s final chapter of Angela’s Ashes: ‘’Tis”

I usually maintain a single point of view in a chapter. Sometimes I will move from head to head, particularly in the final climactic scenes when numerous characters may all be working toward the final denouement.

I will usually finish a chapter either at a point of high tension, i.e. some kind of cliffhanger, or at a moment of resolution. I call the first a ‘peak’ scene and the second a ‘trough’ scene. Having peaks and troughs varies the pace and rhythm of the book, and allows moments of rest before cranking up the intensity again.

I try to make sure each point of resolution occurs after half an hour’s reading for a child, and an hour’s reading for a young adult or adult. This is so the reader can get off their bus and go to school or work, or turn off their light and go to bed. Most people read in this way. I know I do.

***

Kate Forsyth’s author website: www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate Forsyth’s bio page

***

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Sep 1

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My Writing Process For ‘The Wildkin’s Curse’, by Kate Forsyth

Writing a novel is a big undertaking. It takes about a year or more, usually, and lots of problems, both little and large, present themselves along the way.

I have learned to trust the process and to know I’ll receive help when I need it. Sometimes the way the answer comes to me is very mysterious and magical.

The best example is what happened to me one morning early in the writing of my teen fantasy novel, The Wildkin’s Curse.

I’ve described in an earlier post how the idea came to me with the image of a boy falling from an impossibly tall crystal tower and the fragment of a prophecy, ‘Next shall be the king-breaker, the king-maker, though broken himself he shall be.’

It’s not much to work with.

I began, as always, by asking myself questions. Who was the boy? Why did he fall from the crystal tower? Had he been climbing it? Trying to get inside? To rescue someone? Who? A girl? Why was she locked away?

Slowly I built up my cast of characters – Zed and his best friend Merry, children of the heroes of The Starthorn Tree; Rozalina, the wildkin princess kept imprisoned because she has the power to make wishes (and curses) comes true; and her cousin, Liliana, determined to rescue her and calling upon Zed and Merry to help.

Then I was stuck. I had absolutely no idea how my three heroes were to rescue the wildkin girl from that crystal tower.

I also had no thematic structure for the book.

I have never really liked fantasy books where the heroes just wander about having typical fantasy-style adventures (i.e. attack by monster in lake, misadventure while eating stew in roadside inn) until, at last, they battle for whatever it is they are trying to get. I have always believed a story is like a sword – it must have a point.

So I always build my story very carefully, with each adventure or encounter having some kind of importance in the over-arching themes and symbolism of the story.

In The Gypsy Crown, Emilia and Luka must search for, and find, a talisman in each book in order to try and fix a broken charm bracelet. Each charm has some kind of meaning, linked thematically to the lesson the children must learn, and the cost that must be paid, before they can win the charm. For example, in ‘The Silver Horse’, Emilia must give up her beloved mare Alida to another Gypsy clan in return for them giving her their lucky horse charm.

Similarly, in The Wildkin’s Curse, I wanted each obstacle my characters overcame to have some kind of symbolic significance as well as a practical function in propelling along the plot. I had been puzzling over this particular problem for some time, but had not yet worked out a solution.

I could not sleep one night for worrying about this problem. I got up in the early hush of the dawn and went walking, something I do often when I am puzzling over a problem. It was a pale, misty dawn, and the harbour shone silver where the sun was rising. I strode along, thinking, ‘how can they rescue Rozalina? How?’

Suddenly a raven took to the air, right in front of me, its wings so close I felt them brush past my face.

A black feather dropped at my feet.

I bent and picked up the feather.

A feather, I thought. Perhaps they have a cloak of feathers… perhaps it is damaged… it’s missing seven feathers… each one from a different bird… a raven, symbol of death and wisdom… they could find that feather at the end of a tragic battle scene… an eagle, symbol of power and royalty… perhaps they must climb a dangerous cliff to find it… a nightingale, symbol of true love… a tender romantic scene late in the book… when my hero and heroine kiss for the first time… I walked faster and faster and faster, my mind leaping from one idea to another. By the time I got home I had my entire novel fully plotted out. I sat down and worked feverishly, writing it all down in my notebook.

I had my method of rescue, I had my thematic structure. All because a raven dropped a feather at my feet.

***

Kate Forsyth’s author website: www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate Forsyth’s bio page

***

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Aug 2

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Writing Prophecies In Fantasy Novels, by Kate Forsyth

I happen to love prophecies in a fantasy novel. I know lots of people hate them because they find them clichéd and contrived. I cannot help it. I really love them, both to read and to write. I agree that many prophecies weaken a story, undermining the element of surprise. I agree they are often poorly written. I agree there’s often no real need for them, apart to add a sense of inflated importance to it all: ‘Stop the cuckoo’s cry, else you shall all die!” However, sometimes a prophecy just seems necessary.

I have lots of prophecies in my teen fantasy novel, The Starthorn Tree. One of my key characters is a boy called Durrik who has the habit of blurting out prophecies at the very worst moment. He hears them only in fragments and is compelled to utter them at once, even though he may displease his listeners to the point they might want him dead.

‘Cursed is the son of light!’ he shouts in his dreams. ‘Cursed the tower shining bright.’

Most of these prophecies I had planned, and written carefully with the help of a rhyming dictionary and my old poetry textbook full of terms like iambic pentameter and trochee and anapest.

However, there is one prophecy in the book I did not plan in advance, and write carefully, making sure the rhythm and rhyme was as it should be.

This prophecy came to me… well, like a prophecy.

Uncalled for, unplanned, unwanted.

It came to me in a kind of lucid dreaming late one night, when I was up and feeding my newborn son. I had been working on The Starthorn Tree for about a year, and had always thought of it as a stand-alone novel. However, that night, as I sat in the darkness, feeding my baby and listening to the wind and the rain howling about my house, it came to me that there should be three books set in this magical world I had invented, not just one. The heroes of the second book would be the children of the heroes of The Starthorn Tree, and the heroes of the third book would be their grandchildren. Three generations, three adventures, three books.

I caught up my notebook and pen, and scribbled down a string of words or images that came very vividly to my mind’s eye.

‘Three times a babe shall be born,’ I wrote, then a rough estimation of the words ‘between star-crowned and iron-bound’ (I polished this up later.) Then I wrote: ‘First, the sower of seeds, the soothsayer, though lame he must travel far.’

That first child was clearly Durrik, my lame boy who can hear the future. So far, so good.

But then I wrote, hardly knowing where the words came from:

‘Next shall be the king-breaker, the king-maker, though broken himself he shall be.’

In my mind’s eye I saw a boy falling from an impossibly high crystal tower, falling through clouds, falling down to smash into the sea crawling so far below. The scene was as vivid as a snippet of a film, and I had no idea where it came from.

But more words were beating insistently at my mind’s ear, determined to be told. I scribbled down a few more lines in my notebook, virtually word perfect for how they appeared in the novel:

‘Last, the smallest and greatest –
In him the blood of wise and wild,
Farseeing ones and starseeing ones.
Though he must be lost before he can find
Though, before he sees, he must be blind,
If he can find and if he can see
The true king of all he shall be.’

In my mind’s eye, I had a vision of a boy – small and thin – stumbling through a swamp, his eyes bandaged. A lame girl led him by the hand. That was it – a couple of fragmented images and a prophecy I didn’t understand myself. Yet out of that came two more novels, The Wildkin’s Curse and The Starkin Crown, and my stand-alone fantasy novel became a trilogy.

***

Kate Forsyth’s author website: www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate Forsyth’s bio page

***

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Jun 22

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Creating Life-like Stories For Novels, by Kate Forsyth

A writer must learn to watch, listen and learn from life, in order to create the illusion of life in their work.

Go out with your notebook and pen to explore and experience. Catch a bus or a train, sit in the park or in a café, wander the streets or go to an art gallery, a museum, a skateboard park or anywhere that catches your fancy. Watch. Listen. Jot snatches of dialogue. Write quick word sketches of people:

- how they sit

- how they eat

- how they dress

- how they behave when in company, and

- how they behave when alone.

Begin to develop stories around them. Wonder about their lives. Imagine motivations for their behaviour. Why do they talk, move, think and act as they do? Feel free to let your imagination run wild.

Quick character sketches like these can be a great way to amuse yourself while bored waiting in a doctor’s surgery or for a ferry.

Over time you’ll build up pages of them that you can use when actually writing a novel. Train yourself to be observant and notice nervous mannerisms or interesting tics – do they always wear red shoes? How do they like to eat their eggs?

Obviously a character sketch like this only reveals personality by externals, but it’s amazing how much we can infer just from those visual clues.

The great strength of a novel, of course, is that we have dialogue, action and interior monologue to help us delineate characters as well as their visual appearance.

The more you try and get inside people’s heads, and imagine what they think and feel, the easier it becomes.

I always begin a novel by thinking about my characters, and what role they play in the story. In general, most novels contain a cast of characters whose roles can be summarized as following:

- the hero (or protagonist)

- the villain (or antagonist)

- the romantic interest (or two – I do like a love triangle!)

- the companion or sidekick

- the mentor

- the circle of friends and allies

- henchmen (the villain’s circle of friends and allies)

- complications

- clowns

- animal friends

- secret friends and hidden enemies

- the sacrifice

Of course, sometimes one character will take on more than one role. Often the buddy will also be the clown, for example, or he may act as the sacrifice. The animal friend can actually be a robot, a coconut with a face drawn on it or a rag doll. The romantic interest may prove to be a hidden enemy, or the villain may end up being a secret friend.

I assemble my cast of characters – I give them names and faces, and then I begin to daydream them into life. I wonder about:

- their motives

- their key character traits (impulsive and quick-tempered, or slow to anger but slow to forgive?)

- their great strengths

- their great weaknesses

- what sort of clothes do they wear

- what kind of food they like

- how do they move – are they quick and agile, or slow and clumsy?

- how they speak (dialogue is extremely important when delineating character).

Often strengths and weaknesses are different points on a spectrum of the same character trait, for example a generous-hearted person who thinks the best of everyone may sometimes not be a good judge of character.

Then I always begin to wonder about the two great driving forces of any personality:

- what do they FEAR most

- what do they DESIRE most?

I also consider:

- how will they grow and change throughout the story?

- what lessons do they need to learn?

The other thing that is also really important to remember is that the character’s outer journey must always be reflected by the inner journey They must learn something with each ordeal faced and each obstacle overcome. The true narrative arc of any story is the protagonist’s growth towards self-realisation and wisdom.

***

Kate Forsyth’s author website: www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate Forsyth’s bio page

***

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May 31

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On Character Development For Novelists, by Kate Forsyth

Why is it that some books you read linger in your heart and mind for the rest of your life, while you have trouble remembering much about another book only a few days later?

It is because some books have characters that seem to leap off the page, vivid and alive. These characters have a story to tell that moves and challenges you, making your pulse hurry and your throat thicken, making you turn the pages faster and faster because you so desperately want to know what happens next.

How do we, as writers, create characters who sing and dance and leap? How do we tell a story that makes someone we have never meet sigh, laugh out loud and weep?

To me, character and plot are the most important cogs in the well-oiled machine that is a working story. It is also where many writers fail.

Let’s start with character, the mainspring of any story’s mechanics.

Character building is, I think, one of the trickiest parts of writing a novel, and the one factor that can transform a mediocre book into a marvellous one. Usually our favourite books are the ones in which we wish the main character was our friend.

When writing about the books of Edith Nesbit, Noel Streatfield invented what she called the ‘bus test’: ‘One way of gauging the aliveness of a family in a children’s book is to ask yourself “Would I know them if they sat opposite me in a bus?”’

I think this is a test for all characters in all books - could you, for example, recognise Jo March and her sisters? Would you recognise Harry Potter or Miss Havisham? What about Sherlock Holmes? Scarlett O’Hara? Peter Pan?

Sometimes characters just appear in your imagination with a strong voice all of their own.

Sometimes you need to build them painstakingly from the ground up and wait for them to come to life.

I often find it takes about the first quarter of the first draft (around 20,000 words) for my characters to really begin to move and talk naturally. So don’t worry if you find it takes you a while to really connect - this is quite normal.

William Faulkner said: ‘It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands upon his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.’

Character 101

First, let’s consider what exactly a ‘character’ is.

Characters are the people who populate your story.

Characterisation: the process by which a writer makes those characters seem real to the reader.

Protagonist: the hero or heroine; the primary character or point of view with whom the reader connects and empathises

Antagonist: the character or force that stands directly opposed to the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of the story.

Foil: character whose behaviour and values provides a contrast to the protagonist in order to highlight their personalities i.e. weak to strong, quiet to talkative

Antihero: protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of a hero. He may weak and ineffectual; or greedy and cruel. It is much harder to build empathy for an anti-hero.

Static character: does not change throughout the work and the reader’s knowledge of that character does not grow.

Dynamic character: undergoes some kind of change because of the action in the plot. Usually the protagonist of a story is a dynamic character and their growth towards self-realisation and wisdom is the true narrative arc.

Flat character: embodies one or two qualities or traits that can be readily described in a brief summary. Can sometimes be:

Stock character: embodies stereotypes such as the ‘dumb blonde’ or ‘the cruel stepmother’ and so forth.

Round characters: more complex than flat or stock characters, and often display the inconsistencies and internal conflicts found in most real people. They can grow and change and ‘surprise convincingly’.

Showing and Telling: Authors have two major methods of presenting characters: showing and telling. Usually authors use a combination of both.

Showing: allows the author to present a character talking and acting, and lets the reader infer what kind of person the character is.

Telling: the author describes and evaluates the character for the reader.

Characters can be convincing, whether they are presented by showing or by telling, as long as their actions are motivated.

Character Tags: everyone has certain individual mannerisms such as chewing their nails, sitting with one foot on top of the other, playing with their hair, etc. Try to find one or two that will help define each character i.e. a nervous girl who chews her bottom lip, a confident man who stands too close. A character tag can evoke the personality of a character far more powerfully than whole paragraphs of explanation. However, be careful not to overuse them.

***

Kate Forsyth’s author website: www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate Forsyth’s bio page

***

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Writing Teen Novels
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May 1

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Developing Characters For My Teen Novels, by Kate Forsyth

One of the most mysterious aspects of a writer’s craft is building characters. I get asked all the time how I do it.

I usually try and explain that I don’t so much invent the characters in the book as discover them. It’s a process of getting to know them. I usually begin with ‘seeing’ them in my mind’s eye. More often than not I see them very clearly right away but sometimes their face and form may be a little shadowy. If so, I just keep on looking and wondering and imagining until I see them clearly.

Emilia and Luka, the 13 year old protagonists of The Gypsy Crown came dancing and singing and laughing into my imagination as if they had always existed.

The face of Hannah, the heroine of The Puzzle Ring was also very vivid in my mind’s eye right from the very beginning.

I’ve had to spend a little bit more time with other characters. This will only usually take me a day or two though. I have a very visual imagination and so for some reason I find this a very easy and intuitive process.

Once I begin to see them clearly I give them a name. Finding the right name might take weeks. I’ll pore over baby name books and Google keywords like ‘medieval Welsh girl’s names’. I write up lists of names and their meanings and play with them to see how they fit.

One of the first inspirations for Luka and Emilia, the protagonists of The Gypsy Crown, came from my desire to write a book that both my son Ben and my niece Emily could read. They were cousins, three weeks apart in age, and loved to invent games inspired by the books they read. So I made Luka and Emilia cousins as close as twins as well, and turned Emily’s name into the gypsy-like name of Emilia. But there was not much I could do with Ben - it was resolutely un-gypsy-like. So I borrowed the name of the son of one of my favourite Australian fantasy writers, Kim Wilkins. Her son’s name is Luca - I simply changed the spelling of it a little. I then went on and named many of the minor characters after the children of Australian fantasy writers. Readers in the know can play a game of spot the name.

Hannah in The Puzzle Ring was Anna for a while - I knew I needed a palindromic name but Anna didn’t seem quite right, while Hannah definitely was. It took me ages to find the name of the boy who becomes her best friend. At last I settled on Donovan which means ‘dark prince’.

Once my characters are named, I begin to write character sketches for them. I think about when their birthdays might be, what their childhoods might have been like, what they want out of life, what they fear the most and so on. I think about their greatest strengths and weaknesses. Are they hot-tempered, impulsive, pig-headed or shy? What do they like to eat, wear and read? I gradually begin to know them as people. I’ll begin to write my story, listening all the time for their voices. The writing is much easier once I know how they sound. Sometimes I feel as if the book nearly writes itself.

***

Kate Forsyth’s author website: www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate Forsyth’s bio page

***

United States (and beyond)

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Writing Teen Novels
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Mar 24

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Developing The Story For My Novel ‘The Puzzle Ring’, by Kate Forsyth

One idea is not enough to begin writing a novel. I usually find you need three which seem to have some kind of electrical charge between them.

I got the first idea for my book The Puzzle Ring while flicking through a jewellery catalogue while waiting in a doctor’s surgery. At the back of the magazine was a brief article about the first ever puzzle ring. The story went something like:

‘Long ago, there lived an Arabian king who was madly in love with his young and beautiful wife, and tormented by jealousy she might be unfaithful to him. He challenged the court jeweller to make a wedding ring that would show if the ring was ever taken off his wife’s finger. After many attempts, the jeweller invented a ring that would fall apart into separate loops if removed from the finger, and could only be put back together again if you knew the secret of the puzzle. Of course, the wife did take the ring off one day… and was promptly killed by her enraged husband.’

I thought at once, in an idle sort of a way, what a great thematic device this would be for a quest story… a desperate search for a puzzle ring that had fallen apart. When I got home, I wrote down a few simple words in my ideas book – ‘Quest for a broken puzzle ring’ – which eventually became a novel of 100,000 words.

I would continue to wonder about it in idle moments. Who would be searching for a puzzle ring? Why?

Questions lead to wondering, which lead to imagining, which lead to story.

One day, sometime later, I was browsing in a second-hand bookstore and discovered an old book called The Book of Curses. When I sat down to look through it, the page fell open, of its own volition, at a chapter about the famous Scottish curse ‘The Seaforth Doom’. This is a very chilling and creepy story about a warlock called Kenneth the Enchanter who was burnt to death in the 16th century by a jealous and vengeful woman, Isabella Mackenzie, the Countess of Seaforth.

Kenneth had a magical fairy stone, or hag-stone, and the countess had asked him to look through his hag-stone and tell him what her husband was doing. Kenneth had laughed, and then told her “Fear not for your Lord. He is safe and sound, well and hearty, merry and happy”.

Angrily she demanded to know why he had laughed and, when he would not tell her, threatened him with a terrible death. At last he confessed he had seen her husband on his knees before another woman, kissing her hand.

The countess was so furious that she ordered Kenneth to be thrust headfirst into a barrel of boiling tar. As he was led out to his execution, the warlock lifted his hag-stone to his eye and cast a terrible curse on the Mackenzies of Seaforth.

My own family heritage is Scottish; my grandmother’s grandmother was called Ellen Mackenzie. And so this famous curse seemed almost as if it was directed against my own family. And I thought to myself, what would you do if you found out your family was cursed? Wouldn’t you set out to break the curse? But how?

Perhaps, I thought, you’d need to find and fix a broken puzzle ring…

And so I got the first two ideas for my novel The Puzzle Ring.

The next idea came fast on the heels of the second idea. Because my own family was Scottish, and I’d been inspired by a famous Scottish curse, I decided to set the story in Scotland.

A modern-day girl called Hannah discovers her family is cursed, and so persuades her mother to visit their ancestral home in Scotland in the hope of breaking the curse. Once in the Highlands of Scotland, she makes friends with three local kids … and they soon discover the only way to break the curse was to travel back in time to the dangerous days of Mary, Queen of Scots…

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Kate Forsyth’s author website: www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate Forsyth’s bio page

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United States (and beyond)

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Writing Teen Novels
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Feb 14

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Writing My Novel ‘The Gypsy Crown’, by Kate Forsyth

The idea for The Gypsy Crown came out of the blue like a lightning bolt. This is how it happened.

When I was a little girl, I used to go and visit my Great-Aunt Bobby, an elderly and rather eccentric lady who always gave us tea out of fine bone china cups with violets on them. She had an old charm bracelet, passed down through the family for generations, and I used to like to look at all the charms and hear the stories behind them. Some of the charms were very old. The oldest of all was nothing but a small brown pebble, smooth from years of being rubbed for luck. It had been picked up from the banks of the River Thames by my great-great-great-great-grandmother, before she left England to travel the long and dangerous journey to Australia. I loved to hear this story, and wanted a charm bracelet of my own, one in which each charm had a story behind it.

Many years later, my great-aunt died and the charm bracelet was inherited by my mother. I remember having lunch with her, and she showed me the beautiful old bracelet, heavy with charms, and I remembered how much I had loved it as a little girl.

Then I thought to myself, imagine if a bracelet like this was broken and someone had to go on a quest to find all the lost charms. What an amazing quest story it would make.

Each charm could have some kind of meaning … each could be won only after some kind of adventure, the overcoming of obstacles, the payment of some kind of cost …

All the hairs rose on my arms. I felt a jolt of electricity run down my spine. It was a good idea, I knew it at once.

But who and where and when and why?

These are the key questions I always ask myself when a story idea comes to me. Sometimes it takes a long time to answer those questions. But in the case of The Gypsy Crown, the solution came to me at once, in a flash.

I had always wanted to be a Gypsy, ever since my grandmother had told me – perhaps jokingly – that there was Gypsy blood in our family. As a girl, I used to pretend to be a Gypsy all the time. I’d dress in a long, layered skirt in all different fabrics and a white embroidered blouse with puffed sleeves, and put on lots of gold bangles, and imagine I was travelling the roads of the world, barefoot and fancy-free . Sometimes on the weekend, in summer, my mother used to let my sister and brother and me light a campfire in our back garden and we’d camp out under the stars and cook sausages on sticks. I pretended I could play the violin so people could not help but dance, and that I had a pet monkey that caused all kinds of mischief.

I remembered this childhood fascination of mine, in what felt like less than a second after thinking of writing a story about a quest for a charm bracelet. Gypsies used to believe in charms and talismans, I thought. Surely they wore charm bracelets?

In my mind’s eye, I saw at once two Romany children – a boy and a girl – with flashing dark eyes and black curly hair, dressed in ragged, bright, old-fashioned clothes. The girl was laughing and dancing and clapping her hands, tattered skirts swirling about her dirty bare feet. The boy was playing a violin, a tiny monkey passing around her hat for coins. A grumpy old dancing bear danced too, a ring through her nose. From the shadows, a man with a sword watched, meaning them harm …

I wrote the first book, or section, of The Gypsy Crown in only three weeks, the fastest I’ve ever written a book. It just seemed to leap from my fingers.

(In Australia, The Gypsy Crown is the first in a series of 6 books. In the UK & the US and other territories, the series was published in a condensed version as one single book).

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Kate Forsyth’s author website: www.kateforsyth.com.au

Kate Forsyth’s bio page

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United States (and beyond)