Author Patrice Sarath

The second draft of Bandit Girls is now complete. One more pass — or half-pass — should do it before I send it to my beta readers.

What have you learned, Dorothy?

I learn something with every book I write and this one is no different. In this case, I have a better understanding of what I want each part of the book to do. Every scene has to have multiple purposes; it must advance the plot and our understanding the characters and the world in which they live. While this may appear formulaic, the point is that it’s not about me and what I want; it’s about what will engage the reader and pull them through to the end.

Writing the ending

I’ve often said that I usually know the ending of my books about two-thirds of the way in. In several books I’ve written the ending, and then gone back and written toward it. Bandit Girls was a little different; I didn’t write the ending in advance, but I knew where it had to end up. And lo, although at that point I was writing organically, it all came together with a great satisfying conclusion.

Outlining vs. Pantsing

I am beginning to see the virtues of outlining. I’m not saying that I will do a formal outline for my next book (although I’m leaning that way), but with the minimalist outline that I did for BG, I could see where it kept me going on the right path instead of allowing the story to deviate from where it should go. The proof is in the pudding, or rather the cut file; it’s probably my smallest cut file to date. Note to aspiring writers; save everything you cut from your working draft in a cut file. It’s not a question of if you will need it, but when. A small cut file means that these deviations are fewer, saving time, and making the first draft go more smoothly. As a former died-in-the-wool pantser, that’s the kind of improvement I can get behind.

Does an outline make a work less imaginative? I used to think that, but talking with friends who are staunch outliners, and reading their manuscripts, I have changed my opinion on that. Their work is wonderfully inventive.

Writing The End

The two most important words a novelist — especially an aspiring novelist — can write are: The End. It signals a project completed and a commitment kept. You learn more from completing a novel that doesn’t work very well (note: there are no “bad” novels, just novels that don’t work very well) than from dozens of fabulous novel starts. Remember that, even when the middle-of-the-book-suck has you in its merciless grip.

But when it comes right down to it, The End is just the beginning. It’s the beginning of the editing process, the redrafting, the polishing, and possibly, the publication process. No matter how many novels you write, The End is a mighty accomplishment. Embrace it! I do.

My score of The Right Saint John‘s included a bonus; Several pages of other titles that the publisher puts out for young readers.  These books are separated by Books for Boys, Books for Girls, and Books for Children. It’s a treasure trove of research material. Of course the books for boys are adventures, and the books for girls are domestic stories, but here is this gem, proving that we’ve always known that girls also love a good adventure book.

The Girl Crusoes, by Mrs. Herbert Strang

It is a common experience that young girls prefer stories written for their brothers to those written for themselves. They have the same love of adventure, the same admiration for brave and heroic deeds, as boys; and in these days of women travellers and explorers there are countless instances of women displaying courage and endurance in all respects equal to that of the other sex.  Recognizing this, Mrs. Herbert Strang has written a story of adventure in which three English girls of the present day are the central figures, and in which the girl reader will find as much excitement and amusement as any boy’s book could furnish.

And lo — Project Gutenberg has it. Onto the Kindle it goes! I am looking forward to reading this one, especially after reading Emilie and the Hollow World. We need more adventure books for girls!

I bought this old children’s book at an antique mall last weekend and was thoroughly enchanted.

The Right Saint John’s by Christine Chaundler was first published in 1921 by Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press.

It’s a classic British school story. Jacqueline Brown goes away to boarding school for the first time, when her parents have to go abroad for her father’s health. She finds herself at Saint John’s, a lovely little boarding school that probably made every girl reading it at the time run to their parents and beg to go to school. This school is nice. Girls get their own rooms. They can bring their pets. The teachers don’t make them study very hard, and they don’t really have to do anything very much. Most of the girls are just marking time until they come out and marry well.

I had just read Bright Young People, about London during the Jazz Age of the 1920s — the girls in this book are the younger sisters of those hard-partying 20-somethings who drank themselves to death between the wars.

But things are changing at Saint John’s. For one thing, the new headmistress is determined to raise the standards of the school. All the girls are appalled, and so are some of the teachers. The headmistress knows she is facing a tough headwind, so she is ecstatic that Jacqueline is a new student there. Because Jacqueline, like Harry Potter after her, is no ordinary kid.

She’s smart and determined to do well in school. She’s not wealthy so she knows she will have to earn a living, and she’s quite matter-of-fact about it. She does well in sports and loves hockey (a girl after my daughter’s heart!). She participates in the high jump against the nemesis girls’ school, and she wins, getting the grudging admiration of the rival school. Since the headmistress has been raising the standards for the girls, the girls have all been cheating. Someone has stolen the answer books from the teacher’s cupboard. Jacqueline sets an example and makes them stop.

In short, she could probably have taken on Voldemort too, just by being plucky and no nonsense.

The crisis of the book is not well set up and not well resolved — as it turns out, Jacqueline was supposed to go to the “other” Saint John’s but got on the wrong train. Oops. But because she’s so plucky and well liked, her grumpy and disgruntled uncle, who’s footing the bill, decides to let her stay. Crisis resolved in no time at all. But the book is so good natured and instructional, I can’t say I minded.

I love these kinds of books. They are just so blatant about teaching children how to behave, and so cheerfully old-fashioned, it’s kind of awesome. Jacqueline is relentlessly good and so  very competent at what she does. And there are all sorts of nods to the classics — Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, etc. — in fact, Jacqueline even has to walk a plank just as Anne had to walk the ridgeline of the barn.

I know that this kind of book doesn’t work for girls nowadays. It isn’t particularly interesting, it’s episodic at best, and even Jacqueline’s uber-competence was making me roll my eyes (although I admire the author for just laying it on with a trowel). I wish the plot reversal had been better explored, and it was certainly resolved too easily.

But one thing this book doesn’t have is that modern heightened sense of a girl’s role which is somewhat narrower than we think. She doesn’t have to be sexy or have a boyfriend; the business of her life is specifically to be a good student, a jolly pal (in the vernacular of the book), good at sport (again, British!), and in short, a fairly asexual being. Contrast this with the overwrought romantic attachment that is portrayed in the YA book that shall not be named. Surely there is a middle ground somewhere. A girl’s sexuality should not be ignored, but there’s more to life than that particular aspect of a person’s life.

Granted, I’m surely being a curmudgeon about this, but I also think there’s room for all kinds of YA out there.

What do y’all think?