Some of the most vivid memories I have from childhood are about
the camping trip I took with my family from Long Island to Wyoming when I was eight.
More than twenty years later I still can remember the trip in detail so when I
started writing books, it seemed natural to try to share that experience with
others. After all, everyone always says, “Write what you know.” I know that
trip.
So I wrote a story about a girl who goes
camping with her sister. I called the book, The
Camping Adventures of a Carsick Mosquitophob, because that was my
experience. Even though I loved the trip, I couldn’t be in the car for more
than a half an hour without getting nauseous and I was so allergic to
mosquitoes my legs swelled like balloons the first night. I wrote everything
down then revised it, edited it, and sent it off to my beta readers. Their
response, “It’s a nice, sweet, quiet story.” One even went as far as to say
that she would pick it up, read a few pages, fall asleep, and then read some
more. Not what I was going for. But now, about ten years after writing that
manuscript, the book, The Perfect Trip, will
release on Friday. Here is what I learned over the past ten years that helped
me take a story from real life and turn it into something new that someone
besides a member of my family will want to read.
Know Your Character
As much as
we think we know ourselves, how often do we do a complete character analysis? Yet in
order to write a good novel, a writer needs to know their character inside and
out. Even if you are going to use yourself as your main character, take the
time to do some character work. For my story, I decided I needed a completely
fresh perspective, so I created a girl who plays baseball who was a lot more
determined and strong willed than I ever was at that age. This character became
so real that she needed a whole book about playing baseball before I could get
to the camping trip story.
Discover Your Character’s Wants and Needs
As a kid on
a camping trip, the only thing I really wanted was to have fun, not get
carsick, and not get bitten by mosquitoes. That wasn’t enough. A book character
needs a purpose, a drive. Something that will push her forward and guide her
decisions. My main character wants to play baseball and that is part of her
motivation, but she also comes from a broken home where her mother is rarely in
the picture. Her father has remarried and she has only started to appreciate her
stepmother. She has to figure out those relationships and more as she is moving
though her trip.
Create Obstacles
An obstacle
needs to interfere with the character’s wants and needs. Being allergic to
mosquitoes and carsick did ruin the fun, but not in a significant way.
Something more needs to be standing in the character’s path so that she can
work to overcome the problem and decide its level of importance in reaching the
overall goal. I will not give away my character’s obstacles, but I will say
that they have the potential to ruin everything she thought she had
accomplished in life and in baseball.
Character Growth
By the time
the characters reach the end of the story they have to grow and change. This
was probably what my first story lacked the most – growth. By the end the
characters had a fun experience, but they were the same people they were when
they started. In the new story, each important character has an emotional arc
and develops some new understanding.
In the end
When the
current book reached my betas (some who were the same readers from ten years
ago) they no longer thought of the book as a nice, quiet, story. Instead they
were looking forward to each page turn. It’s almost as if my character and her
family knew about the trip I took as a kid and decided to go to the same locations.
Like any trip taken a second time, even if there are similarities, the trip is
a whole new experience.
Stacy Barnett Mozer is the author of
The Sweet Spot and
The Perfect Trip, which releases this Friday, March 24, from Spellbound River
Press. She is a third grade teacher, a mom, and an assistant regional advisor
for the New England chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and
Illustrators.
