… the more you can know your characters and the more you can know the place before you start…
WMM: I always tell them that they need to interview their main characters…. CA: And are there any setting or character exercises that you would recommend to young writers? I love David Copperfield…The main character in The War that changed my Life by Kim Brubaker Bradley, that character stayed with me for so long. … Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon. For sure Meg Murry from A Wrinkle in Time. CA: And do you have any favorite fictional characters? … you also have to be really careful, especially when you’re writing for kids, to not get bogged down in so much minutia that they get bogged down with you. So, like Phillip Pullman’s worldbuilding in The Golden Compass … I could live in anything that was kind of Dickensian. WMM: … I love really amazing worldbuilding. CA: Do you have any favorite settings from other people’s fiction? And you have to see yourself in them… I think that even that’s part of the reason why the first few books I’ve written, I set in New Brunswick.
… And they’re the books that you’re picking out….
… the books that I read when I was in middle grade are still the books I find great comfort in now as an adult. But I think that we do kids a disservice when things are too easy and don’t cause pain, you know. … When I read too many books like that, I usually need like a palate cleanser, like give me something funny. … I think though, once you get into YA, then I think you’ve got a lot more flexibility. I think that in middle grade, even if it’s sad there has to be hope. CA: … How do you feel about sad endings or endings where the good guy loses? … …people have come to me since then and said, “I did not see that coming.” …That’s so great. WMM: … I really enjoyed the moment when I discovered that Voldemort was up in Quirrell’s turban… The very ending of The Frame Up solves a problem between my two main characters perfectly. CA: Do you have any favorite plot twists? that’s one of the things that I recommend is to really drill down into the character’s internal and external struggle through it all. WMM: Oh yeah for sure…Probably my most intense was when I was writing about the paintings at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery … The idea was what would it be like to be stuck in the painting, you can’t get out, and then what if you made a friend who has not the greatest home life and is an artist, and wishes they could get into the paintings because wouldn’t life be easier.
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