Tag: writing (Page 4 of 14)

Facts in Fiction with THE GREAT CT CAPER Author Laura A. Woollett

February 16, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

Have you read chapter 4 of The Great CT Caper yet? If not, you’ll certainly want to after getting an inside look at how chapter 4 author Laura A. Woollett conducted her research for the Caper. Welcome, Laura!

Facts In Fiction

by Laura A. Woollett

I’ve been thinking a lot about how facts figure into the writing of fiction. If your fictional story is set in a real place or has real people in it, how much creative license do you have?

Research is a crucial element to creating historical fiction. The reader must feel as if he or she is IN that time and place. That means getting details such as clothing, cuisine, and architecture correct for the time period. But what about realistic fiction that takes place in the current time period? What about in a story like The Great CT Caper, which is a fictional mystery set in a real location that young readers can visit for themselves?

My first book, Big Top Burning: The True Story of an Arsonist, a Missing Girl, and The Greatest Show On Earth (Chicago Review Press, June 2015) is nonfiction. Every detail was meticulously researched through primary source documents. I’m accustomed to gathering facts and presenting them in an engaging story format. As I wrote my chapter for The Great CT Caper, I wondered how close I had to stick to the facts of the real-life setting.

I began thinking about this project by taking a trip Gillette’s castle. It was a beautiful, sunny September day, and flowers were still blooming. The Connecticut River rushed by far below the castle’s teeth-like walls. Inside, I passed through a secret passage and leaned over the balcony to look down on the great hall. I touched the walls covered in a woven hemp-like material and counted the Gillette_Castle many carved wooden doors, each one unique. Fiction feels its most real when the sensory details are just right. Since our story would take place at this real location, it felt important for me to experience what Li-Ming and Thomas would first hand.

Including details from the castle was important, but I did not want my chapter to sound like a report, so stuffed with facts it would appear I were teaching kids about the castle rather than telling a story that happened to take place there. I had to pretend the castle wasn’t a real place at all, but an imagined one, and like in any well-written fiction, I would only include details that gave the essence of the setting and furthered Gillettes_Bedroom the plot. If the detail was not important to the scene, I cut it, even if it were true. Somewhere in Chapter 4, I took a bit of artistic license. Can you tell where?

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, writers want their scenes, their characters, and their stories to ring true. Here are my goals for any writing project:

Do your due diligence.

Go online and research reputable sites that have information on the time and place where your story is set. Better still, go to a library and ask a librarian. Best case, if you’re using a real setting you don’t know much about, visit. Take notes and pictures. Talk to the experts or people living there.

Be true to the time and place.

This means no anachronisms. If trolley cars had stopped running through Hartford during the time of your story, you cannot have your characters riding on them. Get the clothing right, the types of food, the music people listened to, and the world events that shaped their lives.

Do your best.

In the past, I’ve wrung my stomach into knots worrying that I’ve messed up some factual detail. And in my experience, if I’m feeling this way, it means I’ve definitely done #1 and 2, so it’s time to let that worry go.

About the Author:

Laura A. Woollett has a Master’s degree in Children’s Literature from Simmons College and is a full-time writer and editor of literacy curriculum for children in kindergarten through grade 12. Her first book for middle-grade readers, Big Top Burning: The True Story of an Arsonist, a Missing Girl, and The Greatest Show On Earth, a nonfiction account of the 1944 Hartford circus fire, will be published by Chicago Review Press in June 2015. Laura is the author of Chapter 4 of The Great Connecticut Caper, a middle-grade serialized whodunit published online through the CT Center for the Book, January–June 2015.

Confessions of an Author: Creative Gap

January 26, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

I’ve had some wonderful event and workshop opportunities come up for this year (more details to come on those!). With preparations for those in full swing, plus a couple of sick kiddos, a crazy blizzard on the way, and my regular writing and editing duties (Does anyone else snicker when they see the word “duty”? …No, just my infantile mind.), I’m dipping into the archives for today’s post. Stay safe all of you who are in the path of the storm!

Confession #7: The creative gap that exists between what an author imagines in her head and what ends up on the paper inevitably leads to a certain level of failure.

As a writer, I have certain images, ideas, nuances, themes, characters (and any number of other things) in my head when I create a piece of writing. It’s not that I necessarily have a set agenda–this is especially true when drafting and the story and characters are still taking shape–it’s more that I have a clear vision for a piece. I wouldn’t call it a message (because who wants to read a message-heavy piece of writing)…for a lack of a better way to describe it, let’s call it a creative vision.

Inevitably, the words I use to try and achieve my creative vision never quite live up to what I see in my imagination. This has nothing to with my ability as a writer; it’s more a failure of the medium of the written word. Writers have to rely on words to paint a physical and emotional landscape for a reader. We create not only worlds and characters, but ideas and feelings that need to come alive through words because a reader can’t see into a writer’s head.

Even now, trying to explain this creative gap is a frustratingly futile attempt. The words you read here are not exactly what is going on in my head. There is a creative gap between my brain and what you’re reading.

English users even try to steal words from other languages to help overcome the creative gap. A word like “umami”, taken from the Japanese, is roughly a pleasant savory taste (tomatoes are said to possess this quality), but really it’s a taste or sensation that can’t really be expressed in our language.

Then there are words that are so complex and subject to a person’s individual experiences and emotions. Success. Peace. Love. A writer can use these words, but has no control over how a reader will interpret it. Words are simply an inadequate form of communication sometimes.

And this creative gap isn’t unique to writers; it crosses all types of creative media. Films, though more visual, lack in different areas than books. When watching a film, a viewer can’t be in a character’s head and hear his/her direct thoughts (except for the occasional voice over). Artists can paint or draw what they see in their head, but there is no commentary to go with it. A person looking at a painting has to draw his/her own emotional context out of it.

So what’s a writer or creative person to do? Give up because our creative vision will never be fulfilled. Create a failure and despair over it. Nope! We accept that the creative gap exists and use all the tools we possess to convey our creative vision to the best of our ability.

Because something magical happens when our (inadequate) words are read. The creative gap works in reverse. Readers brings their own creative visions to the writer’s words. And they fill the gap, not as the writer would have filled it, but with their own imaginations.

In the end, the creative gap does not create a failure, but a piece of work that is unique to each individual who consumes it. A work that is full of images, ideas, nuances, themes, characters (and any number of things) the creator never could have imagined. And that is certainly a wonderful exchange.

Stripping My Emotional Self in Writing

December 4, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

I’m the kind of person who holds her emotions really close to her chest. I hate crying in front of people, even the ones I’m closest to, and have always, as far back as I can remember, felt this way. I don’t like openly showing many strong emotions often feel embarrassed when I do, and sometimes even feel embarrassed for other people when they are showing strong emotions (though they themselves probably aren’t feeling that way…they are simply reveling in whatever they are feeling).

It’s not that I don’t have strong emotions. In fact, it’s just the opposite; I have strong emotions, it’s just hard for me to show them. When I’m upset about something or hurt, it most often comes across as anger…because for some reason my brain thinks it’s okay to show anger if I have to show something.

Psychoanalysis aside (not really interested in analyzing myself, especially not here on a public website…yikes!), being this kind of person makes it hard for me to open up my emotional self in my writing. One of my goals this year was to push my writing to show deeper levels of emotions, and that included all forms of my writing: blogging, the journals I keep for the boys, my novels, everything.

I really stripped down and got real here on the blog with my post “How Does a Mother’s Love Grow?” back in February. I was going through a really tough time as a mother and shared some real and not necessarily flattering feelings. Frankly, that was a terrifying moment when I hit Publish on that post. But it got a lot of hits and so many wonderful comments. Though when I think about people reading that post, it kind of makes me nauseated.

My WIP is a really gritty novel, a thriller about a girl with a dark past (much of which she can’t remember) and who isn’t sure if she deserves a chance to remake herself. She isn’t even sure if that’s possible and wonders if she’s just an evil person at the core. Not that her feelings are my own per se, but the idea is to push and explore those very deep emotions and draw them out. Whatever they may be.

So I think I’ve begun to chip away at that goal. And I think it’s bringing my writing to a whole new level. Because it’s those deep emotions that resonate with readers, it’s what they connect to and remember from a story. Ultimately that’s the kind of stuff I want to write, even if it kind of makes me cringe a little on the inside. It also makes me glow on the inside, too. One of the many dichotomies of my life!

I guess the next step in this process of mining my emotions would be to allow myself to express them to a fuller extent. Not only would that aid in my writing, but it would probably be healthy for me and my relationships (not that any of that is bad, but those could always be better, right?).

So where have you pushed yourself and your writing this year and where are you taking those things in the next year?

Feeling Like Mary Poppins in My New Office

December 1, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. As you probably noticed, I took last week off from blogging, and from writing too, which was kind of a bummer because I had an awesomely productive writing week prior to Thanksgiving. Getting back on track this week, though, and thought I’d give you an update on the office attic space.

It has been coming along nicely (a bit slowly as well, but that’s life, I suppose) and I’ve been enjoying my new writing space. In fact, I’m there right now writing this blog post. The Prince is on his baby play mat behind me, and The Boy is outside playing with his grandma. I even have tea and leftover pumpkin pie to enjoy (devour!). All in all a pretty good deal.

The office isn’t finished finished…there are still boxes that need to be put away, storage units that need to be built, molding to be finished, a few doors to be installed, and we need to figure out where exactly we’re going to put my ficus tree, which I bought when I was 9 years old and has grown considerably larger since then. But it’s turning out to be a very functional space even with all the clutter.

My view isn’t the prettiest, but it kind of makes me feel like a suburban Mary Poppins. No chimney sweeps and certainly not as picturesque as London at twilight, but it’s mine and I love it all the same.

One of these days when the room is organized and clean (which may never happen with the kiddos playing up here), I’ll post some good before, during, and after photos. In the meantime, I’ll keep writing my WIP in my WIP of an office. 🙂

Confession of an Author: Prolific Writers

November 10, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Confession #9: I hate prolific writers.

Yes, I’m using the word “hate,” a word–you guessed it–I hate (it’s so unimaginative and really when you think about it, rather vague). It seems every other author I’ve ever heard of is a faster writer. Yeah, I know, it’s not a good idea to compare yourself to other writers and their processes or successes because to each his own and everything, but, man, I wish I could just write faster…and that I hadn’t heard of all these other writers who have a million books coming out all the time.

Seriously, my writer friends seem to have books releasing every day. I know about all their new books because I’m constantly hosting them here on this blog and reading their amazing stories. They post about their huge word counts (I’m happy to get a couple hundred words in a day, and I don’t even write every day…not even close to every day) and they do NaNoWriMo and write, write, write. And I love these writer friends of mine, but I hate them too. Why? Because they are so prolific and I am, well, not.

And I know what you’d say to me (because you, my dear blog readers, are a wonderful, supportive group of people). “Katie,” you’d say. “You have a preschooler and a baby, you have your editing, a husband who does housework, and a wonderful, full life.” And I’d say, “Yes, that is all true, and thank you for saying so.”

I do have all these wonderful things in my life, but I only have two published books and one collaborative work on the way, and I want more published books. I want more work to put out there. I want more time to write and when I do have time to write, I want to write more. Bottom line, I want more! “Wah, wah, wah,” right?

Then I feel guilty because there are other writers who are struggling to have anything published, writers who deserve to be published. Because I remember having that kind of wanting before ELIXIR BOUND came out, and that is a whole other kind of longing.

Back on topic, even this blog post feels like it’s taking forever to write. Why can’t my brain just get the words out of my head and onto the page in a manner that doesn’t feel like losing a 100-meter race to a slug? I’m a fast typist, so that’s not the problem. I’m a fast thinker, too. I think part of the problem is how much I have to think about things before I write them down. My process is part of who I am, not just as a writer but as a person. That’s hard to change.

I have to have a really good sense of what I’m writing before I even begin to put it down on the page. And then when I do start to get it down on the page, it spawns all these other thoughts and ideas that I have to rein my brain in. Wait, I think that means I think too fast, so it’s hard to focus on the writing and just get it on the paper. My brain moves too fast for my fingers. Plus, I’m a deliberate person. I don’t just do things nilly-willy (not saying prolific writers do things this way…only a comment on myself); I need to be ready to do things before I do them. I’m not sure there’s a way to circumnavigate that.

Okay, now I’m thinking out loud on the page, and boy, that’s a scary thought because who knows what will come out next. Let me gather my focus again. I am not a prolific writer and I may never be one because it’s just not the way I work. So all you prolific writers out there, just cut it out already! 😉