Sophie McKenzie: The differences between writing books for adults and for teenagers

The differences between writing books for adults and for teenagers

Sophie McKenzie

I am very much at home writing from a teenage point of view but I love the challenge of adult books too. Essentially I don’t think about the age of the reader as I write; I’m primarily writing for myself.

So what are the differences?

Clearly an adult thriller is more likely (though I’m sure there are exceptions) to have adult main characters and a longer and more complicated plot than a book for younger readers.

Thrillers are essentially escapist reads – though the best of them are thought-provoking too - and my storylines often put ordinary people that readers can hopefully relate to, into extraordinary situations. Because young people are generally less powerful in our culture than adults, I think this means my younger thrillers probably read as slightly more exaggerated than my adult books do. It’s not that the events I describe couldn’t happen, but children have less freedom in real life – and so fewer opportunities to take daring risks and get into the kind of danger described in my books.

There are differences in the writing process too. I found my editor’s response to the first draft of Close My Eyes really interesting. One of her main comments was that I had over-explained certain elements of the story and she wanted me to cut these back. There were many, many places in that first draft where she wrote ‘this is already implied’ in the margin. I guess I was used to spelling things out a little more than she felt was necessary. It was a useful lesson.

Likewise, whereas when I write for teens I try to keep back-story to a minimum, I felt I had a little more leeway to give background on the characters and their relationships in my adult books. Certainly when writing Trust in Me (my second adult thriller, to be published in 2014) I often worried that I was putting in too much background. However, once I’d finished I realized I hadn’t at all, I’d simply included a level of detail in the first draft that had taken me three or four drafts to accomplish with Close My Eyes.

And what remains the same?

I’d say there are more similarities between my adult and teenage thrillers than there are differences. Fundamentally, whatever age group you’re writing for and whichever genre you’re writing in, all that really matters is the story. I try to start all my books with a clear sense of whose story I’m telling and what is driving them. There will always be some goal or need that they have – and plenty of obstacles getting in the way of their achieving it. That is the story and everything must drive the narrative towards telling it. The only real difference is that with an adult book I allow myself a little more time to look at the scenery along the way!

Mary Higgins Clark, on becoming a writer

You asked about the first book that inspired me to write and why.

I wasn’t inspired to write.  I was writing from the time I was 6 years old and could put two sentences together.

I have always maintained that at our cradles, the legendary Godmothers visit each one of us and leave a gift.  The one who might have given me the voice of an angel was out of town.  The one who might have made me dance like Ginger Rogers did not show up.  I have absolutely no ability to thread a needle or sew a button.  My daughters remind me that the hems of their school uniforms were scotch taped and they were entirely accurate.

I raised and fed five children and not one of them was malnourished but no one ever begged an invitation to my dinner table.

The one Godmother who showed up whispered – “I give you the gift of being a storyteller.”  I am so happy she came that evening.

From the time I was six I was in love with reading as well as writing.  I loved mysteries.  I started with Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton and moved on to Agatha Christie, Mignon Eberhardt and Josephine Tey, to name a few.

Even as a child I wanted desperately to be the first reader to know ‘who done it’.  I did not realize I was teaching myself to write suspense.  “This is a clue I would tell myself – this doesn’t mean anything but sounds like a clue.” That was why, after my first book, Mount Vernon Love Story, an historical novel about George and Martha Washington, was published in 1969 to good reviews and no sales, I looked over the shelves of my library and realized that my favorite reading was in the suspense field.  I decided that I could understand why the authors I just named were so successful, and why I had to struggle through the books by other authors because I didn’t care if the butler did it.  He usually did.

I took a short story writing course when I was 22 years old right after I was married because I was desperate to learn how to be a successful writer.  The professor said, “Take a real life story that has fascinated you – maybe it’s a family secret; maybe something you read in a newspaper or magazine.  Ask yourself two questions – ‘suppose’ and ‘what if’ and turn into fiction that true incident”.  I have written 42 books with that structure as a building block.  I added one question of my own - ‘why’.  Because if three or four people might have had the opportunity and motive to commit a crime, only one would have gone over the edge and taken another one’s life.  His or her motive was the strongest and most compelling.

The Lost Years was initially a great challenge.  My editor of 37 years, Michael Korda, suggested that I write a book with a biblical background – a letter that Christ may have written to someone.  My response was, “Michael that could be considered irreverent, if not sacrilegious.”  A letter from Christ against the background of a murder seemed crazy, but I found I was drawn to the concept.

Christ was a religious Jewish boy who went to the temple three times a day to study.  At age 12 he was teaching the elders in the temple of Jerusalem over Passover and astounded them with his wisdom of the scriptures.  Obviously he could both read and write.  Another example is when he traced names in the dirt and saved the life of the adulteress.  Then I asked myself – “To whom would he have written this parchment?”

On Palm Sunday one of the Psalms gave me the answer.  ‘Then Joseph of Arimathea, a good and just man and a secret disciple of Christ had the courage to go to Pontius Pilate and ask for the body of the crucified Christ to lay in his own tomb.’  I thought it not unlikely that Christ, foreseeing his death, may have written to Joseph and that is how the story began.

I am in the final pages of Daddy’s Gone-A-Hunting as I write this on December 18, 2012.  I will be turning the final chapter in within the next few days.  I thoroughly enjoyed writing the book but it is always the same.  I know who did it and why but the journey, from the first page to the last, is one I undertake with the reader.

My chapters are not neatly laid out with what is going to happen in them.  Only the main characters have identified themselves to me.  We walk through a narrow path in the forest together and have a lot of fun in the process.

Toward the end of the time when it is completed, my publisher is calling every day – waiting for those final pages.  Well, they’re ready now and I hope you do enjoy Daddy’s Gone-A-Hunting.

Child of Vengeance

David Kirk on his quest to find the real Musashi Miyamoto

            In Fukuoka prefecture, upon the westernmost island of the Japanese ‘mainland’ Kyushu, stands a dojo hall where men and women practice an art four hundred years old: that of swordfighting. In this particular dojo they study the techniques of Ni Ten Ichi Ryu – the Way of the Two Heavens as One – unique in that it prescribes wielding a sword in either hand, the methods and secrets of which have been passed down through generations, leading all the way back to its progenitor the samurai Musashi Miyamoto.

            It is an art entirely useless in the modern world, but still they practice; because it is an art, because it is Musashi. A kind of ancient and obstinate jazz almost, unloved and irrelevant to most youth today but hammered out in smoky basements on ill tuned pianos nevertheless by the devout that refuse to let it die.

            Perhaps I am being too harsh (on both samurai and jazz): reverence for and interest in their history is more pronounced in Japan than in the west. Musashi himself has a kind of place in the Japanese cultural pantheon similar to the one Robin Hood has in ours, both being roguish legendary warriors. As we know of feats of archery and the Sheriff of Nottingham, so the Japanese know of the man who walked masterless in a time of clan and Lord, who killed sixty men in duels as he sought enlightenment and who wrote a philosophical treatise (The Book of Five Rings) in his dying months that is still studied to this day.

            However Musashi is infinitely more quantifiable than Robin Hood, as we have his writings, his school, his legacy. Though it is sometimes difficult to separate definite objective truth about him from apocryphal elements added through the embellishment/creation of stories over the centuries, at the very least we know some of the way the man thought and felt. Thus the author that chooses to write about him has a broad outline he has to adhere to.

What appealed to me about Musashi was his sense of pragmatism. The classical Japanese culture of the nobles and the samurai was one sodden with ritual, pomp and forced adulation, castle halls ringing with the didactic praise of Lord and Lady by thousands. Sword schools promised unrivalled ability with the blade only through blood oaths and secret rituals. Any outsider unlucky enough to catch sight of such rituals would be killed. Musashi, by contrast, lived in the woods and evoked self-sufficiency as paramount. He said: ‘Here’s how I do it, try it a hundred times. It might not work for you as it does for me. If so, tweak it.’

Yet despite these traits that I admire it is hard for me to see Musashi as a ‘good’ man. In his supposed quest for enlightenment he likely killed much more than ‘only’ the sixty men he formally duelled. In his old age Musashi himself made cryptic remarks about his temperament before the age of thirty being questionable, though states no outright regret or apology. Certainly it seems clear he had an innate predisposition towards violence, or ‘savagery’ if you will, but you cannot portray him as a thoughtless psychopath because that would be patently untrue (as well as making a terrible protagonist).

The instinctive response to this, to me at least, was to assume that he was merely a product of his times and culture. Then you dig deeper and you start to wonder. You remember that he lived in a realm of where two lifestyles were taught. One where monks gently brushed spiders out of their path, refusing to harm even insects, such was the sanctity of life to them. And conversely the samurai preached death, both of their enemies and themselves. Maybe Musashi followed this creed, you think, but then you remember that he renounced the traditional ways of samurai when he chose to wander masterless.

Who was at ‘fault’ here? The society, or the man? Neither? Both?

Exploring this objectively became the main challenge of Child of Vengeance, as well as the planned subsequent novels. Where first I perhaps wanted simply to tell the details of his swordfights, I found the scope of it growing. Examining both internally and externally; though Child of Vengeance remained a story largely told from Musashi’s perspective, the sequel Hours of the Dog (hopefully coming in 2014, 90,000 words in and still only half done...) is far more holistic in nature.

But even so, the protagonist in both books ultimately remains ‘my’ Musashi. It is not a definite biography because there can be no such thing in the English language; the language of the samurai and modern English are so wildly different that the act of simple translation becomes sort of a guessing game, so vague and full of allusions is ancient Japanese. What I know as ‘fact’ could very well be erroneous.

The realization of this is somewhat liberating, as rather than worrying about sticking to some non-existent dogma, you take what he did and run with it, make it work for you  – maybe a little like how Musashi taught the sword. I hope that if I do not always present him flatteringly, I at least present him fairly on his quest for meaning.

After all, the man still has disciples who are really, really good with swords; these are generally not the kinds of people you want to go around pissing off.

David Kirk explores the life and story of Musashi in his debut novel, CHILD OF VENGEANCE, out now.

Guns and Drugs and Other Literary Things

Guns and Drugs and Other Literary Things

By Urban Waite – author of Dead If I Don’t

I’m pretty sure I’m on the FBI watch list. I spend a lot of time researching guns. Looking for the perfect fit. Trying to picture how they’d feel in the hand, the weight, the way the gun bucks and recoils, the smell as the chamber claps open to eject a casing. In the first few days of writing DEAD IF IDON’T I looked over a Ruger handgun, I moved onto a hunting rifle with a telescopic sight, picturing the scene, trying to recreate it and feel the way the character holds the stock to his shoulder, the cold hardness of the rifle pressed close into his cheek. I think about another character holding a pump shotgun in his hand, loose at his side, the matte finish barely visible in the early morning light through a locust thicket in southeast New Mexico.

But the truth is I’ve never done those things. I’ve never looked down at another human being and seen into their future, or more aptly, seen there is no future for them. I try to imagine it. The closest I’ve ever come was when I spent a week walking the shores of Kodiak Alaska, a shotgun on a strap over my shoulder and the big slugger shells loaded up in the belly of the gun. Lead slugs big and dangerous enough to stop a 680 kg Kodiak Bear from charging. Lucky for me I spent most of my time simply walking the shores and watching the cool dark shadows beneath the trees. Waiting and wondering and hoping I would never need to take that shotgun off my shoulder.

I travel a lot as an author and I think this too keeps me on the watch list. I spent two weeks this past January huddled in a tent close to the New Mexico/ Mexico border because I thought it would help me nail down the facts for my novel. I traveled out there from San Diego with a couple friends and to many I’m sure we looked a little strange. The only tent set up in all that wide, open flatness. Simply being there, looking south, waiting with a warm cup of cider steaming in our hands and our hats pinched down close over our brows, watching the thin clouds stream across the sky. It’s a truly beautiful place to write about. But I’m sure people saw us—crouched over a small wood fire, combing charcoal with a stick, our hair wild and unwashed, wearing the same worn pair of jeans all the while—and thought us suspicious. 

I don’t know what it is about the books I write, but they seem to get people thinking I’m actually one of these guys out there smuggling drugs across the border. I’ve spent a good amount of time recently going up to Vancouver, sometimes simply just to go, and the last time to meet up with a director putting together a film based on my first novel, The Terror of Living. It’s a nice little trip for me. Two and a half hours away from my home in Seattle. Easy enough to drive, but better to fly. And of course they keep tabs on me whenever I cross the border. Quizzing me to see if I can remember the last time I left the country and seeing if I can duplicate my story. Often the story changes, I sort of like giving those border agents the run around. Sometimes it’s business, other times pleasure. I wonder what they think of me. All that travel. The drug dogs sniffing at the bag I’m carrying, or running their noses by my shoes. Once even sitting next to me and then moving on again. Of course that’s what they’re trained to do when they smell drugs on you. Sit and wait. Silently saying what everyone is thinking.

Urban Waite’s brand new novel, Dead if I Don’t, set in the gangland territories of the Mexico border, is out now.