The Writing Barn is thrilled to be a stop on the Sara2 Blog Tour!
Today we welcome, Sara Kocek, author of Promise Me Something, a debut novel which is called “Compelling, honest storytelling” in a starred Kirkus review. Bethany, Author & Creative Director at The Writing Barn knew this was true months before Kirkus, as Sara is a core member of an Austin writing group that meets at The Barn on Thursday nights. Bethany has long been a fan of the work Sara Kocek puts on the page, “Sara’s insights into teens–both troubled and dealing with everyday circumstances–are uncanny. She writes both beautifully and brutally.”
What My Last Book Taught Me
by Sara Kocek
Hi, everyone! Sara Kocek here. I’m the author of the contemporary YA novel PROMISE ME SOMETHING (Albert Whitman Teen), and today I’m thrilled to be making a guest appearance here at the Writing Barn blog to talk about what I learned from writing and publishing my most last book. Since my last book was also my first book, here are the top three things my debut novel taught me:
1. Outlines are your friend. But not your best friend. More like that friend you eat lunch with sometimes and wonder why you don’t sit together more often.
Before I wrote PROMISE ME SOMETHING, I thought outlines were for boring people. For one thing, I thought they involved roman numerals—which, to be honest, I haven’t used since middle school. For another, I thought outlines killed imagination. And most of all, I thought they took the magic out of writing.
But then, halfway through my book, I had an idea for a plot twist. It was big—way different than the ending I had originally planned. I remember I was sitting cross-legged on my bed at the time, and as I looked up at my reflection in the mirror above my dresser, I could practically see a cartoon light bulb blinking over my head.
The problem? This idea was complicated. It threw everything into question and involved an intricate timeline with lots of layered clues. So I started writing down the details in list-format. Then I added time markers. Then bullet points. Before long, without even realizing it, I had written an outline.
That outline soon became my lifeline. Whenever I found myself muddled in my plot, I conferred with my outline to get me back on track. Plus, every time I finished a scene, I got immense pleasure from crossing out that scene on my outline. So, really, it was like an outline AND a to-do-list! My organizational brain was in heaven.
But did my creative brain suffer for it?
No. On the contrary, it flourished. In the end, I learned that nothing can take the magic out of writing. Creativity will always have that certain “je ne sais quois.” Outlines are simply a tool to harness it.
2. Kill your darlings. Drown your puppies. Strangle your babies.
Editors seem to delight in horrifically violent metaphors about the wisdom of killing your most beloved scenes, metaphors, and images. Specifically, they seem to enjoy delivering the six-word kiss of death: “I don’t think we need this.”
My last book taught me to make peace with this advice—even to embrace it. By the time I finished my final revision, I got rid of a number of “darlings” throughout my manuscript. These were sentences that people in my MFA program underlined and put lots of check marks next to; in other words, the things I thought were literary. On their own, these sentences were great—sometimes beautiful, sometimes poignant, sometimes even funny. But in most cases they were inconsistent with the voice of my narrator. They gave away my authorial presence by sounding more like something I wanted to express than something my character wanted to express.
The hardest darling to kill was my prologue. When my editor suggested that we cut it—or at least drastically reduce it to a single paragraph—I did a lot of soul-searching. You see, the prologue used to be my favorite part of the whole book. It was the one part I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt was good because I had combed over it and polished it so many times over so many years.
But in the end, I learned that prologues are like scaffolding. Sometimes you need them to build the house, but once the house is finished, it’s best to tear down the scaffolding. In fact you have to, to admire the house.
So go ahead, drown those puppies! Be a sadist! Just try not to cringe too much along the way.
3. Never underestimate the power of cute boys with brains.
In my very early drafts of PROMISE ME SOMETHING, Levi (Reyna’s love interest) was a minor character. He was simply a boy Reyna had a crush on from afar, but they never actually went on a date or got together. To be honest, he was a bit of a cardboard cutout: a cute, shaggy-haired guitar player who trips over Reyna’s backpack in the cafeteria and makes her heart go pitter-patter. I figured that because he was so cute, he didn’t need to have much going on “up there,” as the expression goes.
And then I started fleshing him out. I thought more about his background. His family. His religion. His friends. His thoughts on life and death and whether animals can go to heaven. And suddenly I realized he had a brain. A brain with opinions on politics and philosophy and music and art! A brain that was even more appealing than his looks!
Revolutionary, I know. But it made all the difference, and pretty soon Levi was one of the main characters in the book. He’s also one of the few people whose opinion Reyna really respects. So when he tells her that he has two moms, it forces her, for the first time in her life, to think through her prejudices.
I read too many books with cardboard cutout love interests who don’t offer much more than a pretty face. I’m so glad I pushed Levi’s character further and discovered a more interesting, thoughtful, creative guy underneath!
Thanks for following along on the blog tour, and thanks for reading!
See what the other half of the Sara2 is up to today over at Moonlight Gleam and stop by The Writing Barn blog on Wednesday September 10th, as we are the last stop for Sara Polsky on the Double Debut Blog Tour.
Sara Kocek is the author of Promise Me Something (Albert Whitman Teen, 2013). She received her BA in English from Yale University and her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, where she taught fiction and poetry to undergraduates. A freelance editor and college essay coach, Sara has served as the Program Director at the Writers’ League of Texas, a literary nonprofit. She is also the founder of Yellow Bird Editors, a team of freelance editors and writing coaches based in Austin, Texas.
And, if a high school junior or senior, don’t miss College Essay BootCamp with Sara Kocek coming to The Writing Barn on Oct. 29-30. For more information and to register, click here.