Episode #108: How do you brainstorm your plots? -with Janet Fox
On this Kids Ask Authors episode, we are joined by author Janet Fox! Grace and Janet will answer the kid question, “How do you brainstorm your plots?”
TRANSCRIPTS:
Grace Lin: Hello, I'm Grace Lin, children's book author and illustrator of many books, including the middle grade novel When the Sea Turned to Silver and the picture book A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Today, I'm here with Janet Fox, the author of the middle grade novel The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle, it's companion book, The Artifact Hunters, and a contemporary middle grade novel Carry Me Home, which will come out in the summer of 2021. Hi, Janet.
Janet Fox: Hi, Grace. How are you?
Grace Lin: Good. How are you today?
Janet Fox: I'm doing well. Thank you.
Grace Lin: Good. I hope since you're doing well, you will be ready for today's question. Are you ready for today's question?
Janet Fox: I'm raring to go.
Grace Lin: Okay. Today's question is from a person named Ellie, and Ellie asks.
Ellie: How do you brainstorm your plots?
Grace Lin: How do you brainstorm your plots?
Janet Fox: Oh, Ellie, I love that question. It's one of my favorites. I usually start with a spark, and the spark can come from anywhere. Sometimes it comes from something I hear on the news. That was the case with Carry Me Home. I heard a report about a homeless family. Sometimes it comes from a dream. I literally wake up in the middle of the night and have this very vivid image in my head. And when I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is write down something about that image. Sometimes it comes from seeing something. That was the case with The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle, where I saw picture of the chatelaine that features in that book.
Janet Fox: Often then, I spend a lot of time imagining and drifting, and I do that quite often right before I fall asleep. I try to plant an idea in my head about what I want to think about the next day when I start working again. And that brings up all sorts of things in my subconscious, that when I wake up, I'm just ready to go to work. I often don't plan very far in advance in my books, but I've gotten better at doing that, because I waste less time if I spend a little time thinking about what I'm going to write. Go ahead.
Grace Lin: Do you do like scene by scene?
Janet Fox: I do a very general two page outline that I've discovered that's very brief, but it goes from scene to scene, but it's what the impact of the previous scene has on the next scene. In other words, because of something that happens, the next scene then unfolds quite naturally and organically. It's not detailed, but it gives me enough of a template to go forward.
Grace Lin: That's so cool. I know when I do my plots, I have all these Post-it notes and I'll have all these different scenes. I'll like put them all on the board, and I'll like move the Post-it notes around and all those things and be like, okay, but maybe this should go here. Maybe this should go here. It's kind of like this very influx thing of trying to figure out how the plot goes and how it all fits together.
Janet Fox: I have done that too, and that's also a great way to manipulate plot without getting too tied in. I just don't like to be too tied in to something that's going to happen, because then I lose interest or I lose enthusiasm for the story. But the two pieces that are so important to me to set up right away, I don't know how you feel about it, but I have to know the beginning and I have to know the ending. I have to know where the story starts and where it ends in some sort of pretty strong way so that I can get the arc of the story. And then everything else in between can move or float or change. It's adaptable in the middle, but I need to know those two points very specifically.
Grace Lin: Yeah, I agree. I think, for me, I need to know the beginning. I need to know one scene in the middle, kind of like the turning point scene, and then I need to know the end. If I have those three scenes and everything else is kind of like move aroundable or disposable.
Janet Fox: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, flexible. The spark is always something... I can't push that. I can't sort of force that to happen. It just happens, and I know it when I see it. In the case of Carry Me Home, for example, I had heard that story in the news maybe five or six years ago and it just sat in my brain for that long until I heard another story and I made this little bridge and they're very disconnected. They're very separate pieces, which you'll see when you read the book, but they formed a bridge in my mind of how this girl could deal with being homeless and how I could bring that to life in a way that would mean something to readers and with which they could connect to.
Grace Lin: Did you have something like that happen for either The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle or The Artifact Hunters?
Janet Fox: The Charmed Children, it was all focused around that chatelaine. I saw that chatelaine as a picture online, and it was so weird that I put it on my computer desktop and it sat there. And two days later, my then agent asked me if I wanted to write a story about jewelry. That just freaked me out. I've never even considered writing a story about "jewelry," but this is piece of jewelry, this chatelaine. I said, "I'll get back to you." And two days later, I sent her 40 pages, which I've never done before either. That was just a really rich image that had... It just spoke to me in so many ways, because it was so odd.
Janet Fox: It was so unusual, and it brought out all these emotions that I focused on as a child around reading the Narnia books, that sort of magical place that you go to where you learn how to use your own inner strength or your inner power.
Grace Lin: That's awesome.
Janet Fox: And Artifact Hunters, because it's a spinoff in Rookskill Castle, I took an entirely different character and I wanted to play more with the idea of magical artifacts and the power that objects can have in our lives. Even when they don't seem to have any inherent power, maybe we give them a power or maybe they do have something that resonates through time and history and so on. I also wanted to play with time travel, because that's fun.
Grace Lin: That sounds great. Well, thank you so much, Janet, for answering this great question, and thank you, Ellie, for asking it.
Janet Fox: Thanks, Ellie. I really appreciate the question. It was wonderful.
Grace Lin: Bye!
Janet Fox: Bye.
Today’s BOOK REVIEW comes from Madelyn! She is reviewing Planet Middleschool by Nikki Grimes!
Hi, my name is Madelyn. The book I read is called Planet Middle School, by Nikki Grimes. This book is about a girl named Joylin Johnson finding who she wants to be and the struggles of being in middle school. Joylin tries out different clothes, wears makeup, and high heels, but finds that being her true self is the best, no matter what people think about you. I liked this book because It showed real struggles kids have in middle school and that you should just be yourself. I recommend this book if you like books with girls as main characters, basketball, and books about middle school.
Thank you Madelyn!
More about today’s authors:
Janet Fox writes award-winning fiction and non-fiction for children of all ages. Her published works include the non-fiction middle grade book GET ORGANIZED WITHOUT LOSING IT and three YA historical romances: FAITHFUL , FORGIVEN, and SIRENS. Janet’s debut middle grade novel THE CHARMED CHILDREN OF ROOKSKILL CASTLE received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness, is on a number of state lists, and is a Junior Library Guild selection. The novel won SCBWI’s Crystal Kite award in 2017. Check out the book’s website: www.rookskillcastle.com. Her debut picture book, VOLCANO DREAMS: A STORY OF YELLOWSTONE, illustrated by Marlo Garnsworthy, features the science behind the Yellowstone super volcano. Janet’s next novel is a companion book for THE CHARMED CHILDREN titled THE ARTIFACT HUNTERS and she has several more projects in the wings, including CARRY ME HOME. Janet is a 2010 graduate of the MFA/Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. A former high school English teacher, former regional advisor for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Janet lives with her family in Bozeman, Montana.
Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.
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