Boys reading about girls and the realities of the marketplace

I was in fifth grade listening to a girl give her book report about a Nancy Drew mystery. I loved mysteries, but I would never have been caught dead reading Nancy Drew. Hardy Boys, yes. The Alfred Hitchcock “Three Investigators,” yes. Nancy Drew, which warned away boys with its yellow spine, never.  I didn’t know that that was about to change in a matter of minutes.

The girl gave a very good book report. It was interesting. It was a great mystery. I wanted to know the ending.

But she didn’t tell the ending.

Foolishly, I raised my hand. “How did it end?”

The teacher jumped in. “Well, Michael, you’ll have to read the book to find out.”

Then I said the fateful words. “Make me.”

She did.

I was not allowed back into class until I read Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase. It took me a few days, but I would dutifully take my copy of Nancy Drew and read it in the sixth grade classroom across the hall. Oh the shame of it all.

But.

I liked the book. I may have even read more Nancy Drew, if it hadn’t been associated with a punishment. But I liked it. Shockingly.

I hated to admit it back then, but I enjoyed it. I shouldn’t have hated to admit it, though.

I have distinct memories of my mother fighting against sexism in the 1960s — such as when she went to get a loan at a bank and was condescendingly told she should come back with her husband. She didn’t. That bank got an earful and another bank got her business. Go Mom!

Shannon Hale recently wrote about her experiences with giving presentations at schools and how boys are sometimes not even allowed to listen to her speak because she writes about girls. This opened up a discussion about the topic of boys reading books with girls as main characters.

And now I am worried.

Orson Scott Card wrote about how he noticed the prejudice:

One thing I’ve been told ever since I began writing as a career — by librarians, publishers, editors, and booksellers — is that while girls are perfectly happy reading books with male protagonists, if you start a book with a female protagonist you had better make it a “girls’ book” because very few boys will ever read it.

I didn’t believe them, because I knew I read books with female protagonists and I always had. … Why should I abide by such a stupid gender rule?

Because, sadly enough, it’s true.

Ender’s Game, with a boy protagonist, is my best-selling novel. Speaker for the Dead, which won all the same awards, sells far less — but the first long section has a girl protagonist.

…

My Alvin Maker series is, in my opinion, better than Ender’s Game, but young male readers mostly never find that out because the opening chapters star a little girl named Peggy, and those boys never get to the story of Alvin Maker himself.

My YA fantasy novel, Verity’s Oath, begins with a female teen protagonist named Verity. There is also a boy named Conner who is a main character. All in all, the book is about them both, but the first chunk is about Verity. So, should I shift things around? Should I put in a prologue featuring Conner? Should I start with Conner and then use a flashback to tell Verity’s story?

I really didn’t know what is the best thing to do as far as getting boys to read my book (assuming it is published, of course). Then I remembered something.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

My all-time favorite books/movies have been Hayao Miyazaki’s works — particularly his “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” manga and movie. His movies usually center around a girl. And they have done just fine.

Sure, I’m no Miyazaki, but maybe seeing his success is just enough to keep my story the way I love it. I will start with a girl. She is a wonderful character and I just love her and want teen boys and girls to get to know her.

So you want me to write a book about a strong female main character, eh?

Make me. Please.

Racing to the finish so the slashing, cutting, and slicing can begin

I knew that a first YA novel needs to come in around 70,000 words. There are reasons for this, of course—some of which I may know. It takes more resources to edit a novel that is long. I’ve realized this with my non-fiction book, Visions of Freedom, which comes out in April. That book has 56 biographies of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. It has googles of endnotes and tons of quotes. I pity the fact checkers and editors and designers who had to wrestle with it.

But bigger means more cost. It also means more can go wrong. It is harder to keep everything in your head.

My goal was to keep my first novel as simple as possible. Make it easy on myself.

Yet…

Here I am in the fifth month of writing, trying to reach the magic 70,000 words. And, I am at 101,067 words. That’s 31,067 too many. And I still have several scenes to go.

I spoke with author Chad Morris on the phone today* and he was very nice to suggest that perhaps some stories need that many words. That may be true, but I know better for my novel. Things will have to be cut. Fictional lives will be destroyed as if they never existed at all. Alas.

For now, however, I push forward. I’m letting the momentum pull me to the end.

I just hope I don’t write more than 200,000 words by then.

---

*Chad Morris is the author of the Cragbridge Hall series of books about a futuristic school. My daughter, Ellie, was interviewing him for an upcoming review in the Deseret News for his new book, The Impossible Race, and I jumped in on the end of the call. He is very nice to my daughter, so all I can say is go buy his books!

Influences and Rosebuds

As I’ve been creating my novel I’ve noticed the works that influenced it (and also the works that didn’t influence it that other people may think influenced it).

Orson Scott Card wrote in a review of Saving Mr. Banks about its many “rosebuds.” A rosebud is something in a character’s past that people say explains her somehow. The term comes from, of course, Citizen Kane.

[Saving Mr. Banks] was written by writers (Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith) who clearly believe that Citizen Kane‘s “Rosebud” is just the very cleverest thing ever created. They pack Saving Mr. Banks with little Rosebuds, so we’re constantly going, “Oh, look,that’s why she doesn’t like pears! Oh, look, that’s where the carousel comes from!”

The most appalling case of this is the arrival of the dreaded Aunt Ellie (Rachel Griffiths, though we barely see her face). She arrives with the carpet bag, the bird-headed umbrella, a no-nonsense attitude, and a series of absurd “magical” gags she pulls out of the bag.

The movie seems to be saying that P.L. Travers didn’t invent anything! This is the standard baloney that English professors have embedded in the minds of their victims students — all inventions in fiction must be “explained away.” It seems to be an article of faith that “There’s always a Rosebud.” – Orson Scott Card, “Uncle Orson Reviews Everything” Dec. 26, 2013

I guess it is impossible to prevent people from looking for rosebuds in a person’s life that explain their creative work. It is also probably impossible to write something without people thinking you stole it from here or there if there are slight similarities.

So what are a few direct “influences” on my story that I fully admit?

The movies It Happened One Night and African Queen play a part. Both movies have a man and woman thrown together on a journey. Their personalities clash and bubble over in humor and, at least in these movies, love. I think, however, that these movies’ influence would be the least obvious of anything in my book.