Somewhere in On Writing, Stephen King repeats trite writing advice, namely: Write what you know. He suggests that if you are a plumber writing science fiction, write it from a ship’s plumber POV (point-of-view). This is the type of advice that gives conventional-wisdom a bad name.
In a writer’s workshop, I read a section where my lead character waxed lyrical on his bicycle. As an avid cyclist, at the time, I knew which bicycle characteristics would help define his character. Overwhelmingly negative feedback. One writer related his experience writing about his lead character’s car. When he read that section to the writer’s group, they convinced him to cut that entire section. Several other authors related their experiences with enamored details of some of their favorite things. They agreed, the surest way to bore readers is to write what you know.
Stephen King does have plenty of good advice in On Writing. My favorite is to not bother researching topics while writing the story. Research can come later; the story comes first. Repeat: THE STORY COMES FIRST. Note: Obviously, Stephen King needs to research things which means that he strays away from what he actually knows. There are some great historical novels where authors add a section at the end delineating what in the novel is historical and what is not. “Why?” Because they love history. “Then why not just write it historically?” Because THE STORY COMES FIRST.
When readers crack open a novel, the readily suspend disbelief to give authors narrative space to introduce characters, build conflict and set their fictional world in motion. Suspension of disbelief may not last long. There is only so much belief readers are willing to suspend. Many things can pull readers back to disbelief.
In The Third Girl, my disbelief began in the first chapter when the first line from a police officer is, “OK, let’s go find Penelope. Think you can help us?” It read too unprofessional to me. I was previously irritated by the author’s choice to withhold critical details about what happened to Christina Johnson’s before her escape. In fact readers don’t get significant information until well past the seventy percent mark in the novel.
I’m a plodder when it comes to reading. Even after determining that a novel isn’t well written, I keep reading. There have been a few novels I never finished, but this isn’t one of them. Sadly, I don’t find most novels well written. What readers may not realize, is that writers fall into two categories: Plotters and Pantsers. Plotters map out every aspect of their story before sitting down to write it. In college Alex Haley spook. I missed the event, but read about it in the college newspaper. Haley described his extensive research process and likened his writing process to clerical work, filing 3×5 cards, cross referencing, jotting down notes and outlining. Pantsers (writing from the seat of their pants), Stephen King is a famous example, set the characters in motion and see what happens next. When I write fiction, I am mostly a pantser, the “mostly” part is due my practice of telling myself the story until I know where it will end. Once I have a destination, I pants out a beginning and keep writing until I reach the destination. I often overshoot my original ending as many things happen along the way and may require resolution.
The Third Girl reads like it was pantsed. One reviewer on Amazon wrote “Midway, the story line started to drag a bit then became implausible. The ending tried to quickly tie up the loose ends.” The author captures the havoc a severe traumatic experience wreaks. That was good, but the author forgot the lesson from Stephen King. The story comes first. THE STORY COMES FIRST. The novel reads like the author did not know the story. This is a good way to aggravate readers (me). Too often authors try play with readers’ minds by withholding crucial information when the story would benefit from revelation. Again, they forget that suspense does not come from holding back what has happened or what is happening. Suspense comes from knowing what is going on and the circumstances leave many possible, and divergent, outcomes.
When I finished the novel, I was convinced that this was the work of a bored housewife written during the hours between sending children off to school and waiting for them to return. The “about the author” section revealed something completely different. The author had careers both in law enforcement and as a lawyer.
It’s not that I doubt the author’s background. There were several instances of unprofessional police behavior including a chain-of-custody violation from a cold case that would send the whole police department back to POST certification training. The story is set in a small California town whose police are corrupt. The many instances of blatantly unprofessional police behavior may have been intended as emphasize the corruption of this towns police.
If the above supposition is true, it is a risky tack. In my case, it obliterated any suspension of disbelief. Even worse. Penelope, who the audience first believes was kidnapped along with Christina was actually staging the whole thing to escape her mother. When Christina is at the wrong place and the wrong time, she gets abducted in Penelope’s staged kidnapping. Penelope okays torturing Christina. The torture went on for weeks.
Twenty five years later, Christina finally discovers what happened and learns of Penelope’s involvement. Not only does the DA somehow not press charges. Since torture was a component of this, fictional, kidnapping, there is no statute of limitations. The novel did not mention any plea deal where Penelope turns evidence on her, now dead, conspirators/kidnappers/torturers. I can’t see how anyone with a law background would consider Penelope’s skating away from these revelations plausible. Readers, like me, can no longer believe anything we read in the story. It reads false. Disbelief in full effect.
There is enough wrong about this story that it is easy to believe the author claims both law enforcement and legal backgrounds to give potential novel buyers a reason to believe that the novel would be more authentic than one written by a former journalist, accounting clerk, orthodontist or bored housewife.
Diary of a Throwaway Kid was written by a North Carolina psych nurse. She wrote from a foster child’s point of view.
Writing in diary form carries many risks. The first is that they often read as “I am a writer.” Many unpublished writers create writer characters. I have read too many of these, and they read worse than amateurish. They read like the author has nothing authentic to say about life, so they pretend/fantasize about being professional writers. Perhaps this is the origin of “write what you know” advise.
In DOATK, Storm, the diarist/throwaway kid, tells readers that writing the diary was a therapist’s assignment. Instead of resenting the extra effort, Storm enjoys it, and she continues with journal entries long after she stops seeing that therapist. Here, readers get the feeling that the diarist is really a pretentious writer in disguise. DOATK rarely slips into pretentious author mode, so the novel should be commended for that
Writing in the form of a diary has other perils. One peril is that readers know that diarists tend to summarize conversations and other verbal encounter rather than write out dialogues, Anais Nin being a notable exception. Novelists know that dialogue is a great tool for character development. The diary form tends to take this tool, and character development of non diarist characters, away or risk reading like fiction, which it is, and less authentic. For the most part, the author maintains an authentic feel even when incorporating dialogue.
Slipping out of character is another risk inherent with writing in diary form, and there are several slips in DOATK. The worst instance comes when Storm (now Serenity) delivers a speech at a foster care conference in the state capital. Previously, while in a hospital psych ward, she lets out her grievances, and the nurses tell her policy makers need to hear what she has to say. After adoption, she gets her chance. Instead of repeating her past grievances, she relays a series of statistics and other boring information. The narrative should have included that adults helped her with that part, and it would have been bad help. Other, boring, adults can, and probably did, the statistical part. Her contribution, like her hospital outburst, should have focused on how it feels to be part of the statistics. In short, she gave a professional, adult speech. Completely out of character. Storm is a tempestuous teenager. Like most teenagers, she’s a bit impetuous and struggles with control issues. The person giving the speech, was nothing like this, and the novel does not seem to notice incongruities.
Character slips in DOATK point to bigger problems in the novel. Oooh … that previous sentence sounds ominous. So, to be clear, I recommend Diary of a Throwaway Kid. It is a good read, and it brings to light many issues facing America’s foster children. For readers familiar with these issues, it’s an interesting read. For readers unaware about the state of foster children in America, it’s a really interesting read, perhaps a necessary one. My beef with the novel is that author waves her hand at two major issues and doesn’t realize how much exclusion of a third harms arguments for reform. So, here we go.
First:
Storm finds herself in a good home, eventually her adoptive home, where she finally feels like part of a family. The children go to school. She finds her “sister” in the lunch room after her sister had been beaten by another student (female). Storm goes to her class room and lays a hospitalizing beating on her sister’s attacker. Storm is arrested, but, in the end, never faces criminal charges for this incident even though the victim’s parents want justice, not forgiveness, for their daughter’s assailant.
Storm is removed from her new family and sent to another hospital psych ward. This is unfortunate for several reasons: although juries in civil law cases can adjudicate two wrongs into a right, criminal justice treats each wrong as a crime in itself. Letting Storm skate, though it is a difficult skate, reads false to anyone familiar with criminal justice in America. This is also a lost opportunity to expose the foster-to-juve-pipline. Over ninety percent of foster children, nationwide, go through juvenile justice systems. Many end up in Juvenile Hall.
The novel gives readers plenty to contemplate on how youths, like Storm, find themselves reaching adulthood in Juvenile Hall instead of some form of non-penile home (foster home, group home or adoption). The novel would more authentic had Storm found herself in juve with other foster children.
Second:
In one psych hospital, Storm notices that a lunch table is often shared by some “trafficked” girls and rarely/never mentions it again (trafficking is never a theme). This, again, seems like hand waving over an important topic, and, again, missing an important opportunity. I heard of a high ranking county official trying to hold arrested teenage foster girls in police custody longer because he was tired of seeing them released to their pimps instead of their guardians/foster parents. This does beg the question of how good their group home guardians and/or foster parents are.
Through Storm, DOATK, shows why foster children learn to distrust the foster system and yearn for a family. Gangs often offer a “family,” exploit fostered girls and turn them into money generating sex workers. This is a major problem. I wished that DOATK would have explored it in greater depth.
Third:
In my state, between placement foster children do not spend time in psych wards. Specialized group homes handle foster children with behavioral problems. This practice was, probably, a cost saving. Specialized group homes are more economical than psych wards, but they are, by no means, cheap.
In DOATK, Storm spends a lot of her time in various psych wards, which is normal for her state. The author, a psych ward nurse, doesn’t seem aware of a taxpayer’s point of view. Psych ward hospital days are expensive. Several weeks of psych ward hospital days are really expensive. Tax payers have to pay for it. For the sake of tax payers, there has to be a better way.
When Storm became a ward of the state, she was assigned a guardian who must approve of all of Storm’s care. Storm, her foster parents, police officers and social workers are all frustrated by Storm’s guardian’s unresponsiveness. Her voice mail is always filled. She almost never responds to mail request, so Storm is facing a maze of public servants, and their demands, alone. Storm is unable to take advantage of promising opportunities because her state appointed guardian did approve of them (no response, not denial).
I always felt a little guilty for the amount of financial aid I received to attend an elite private college. Between Cal Grant A, Basic Education Opportunity Grant (BEOG), Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant and federal work study earnings, I was gifted several thousand dollars a year. Sometime after I graduated, I read that it cost more per year to incarcerate a prisoner in my state than a year at Harvard. Had I been caught and imprisoned for some youthful misadventures, the state, represented by an assistant district attorney, would have had to make a troubling call.
Economically, the difference between my income potential as a college graduate and my income potential as a juvenile hall graduate is immense. As it is, income taxes on the difference between my earnings and what I could have expected to earn without a college degree made all of the scholarship money a good investment.
In DOATK, Storm managed to end up in a good place, and she was well on her way to becoming a productive, tax generating, citizen. Many foster children face much bleaker prospects. Their lives often include incarceration as an adult. Economically, states are better off investing early and heavily in their wards. They may, like me, pay back all of the investments in higher income taxes, but the best reason for heavy investment in foster children is looming costs of failed adults, and the state would have no one to blame but their short sighted selves.
The economic argument doesn’t even get hand-waving treatment in DOATK because it was written by a psych ward nurse, and not an aspiring writer with an unhealthy interest in economics. Actually, I blame Ms. Tessari’s developmental editor. Writing is best when it’s a team activity, and someone on the DOATK team should have pointed out the economical costs of neglecting state wards. The conference near the end of the novel is a great vehicle for introducing perspectives Storm would have little knowledge of.
Overlooking lay perspectives is a great risk when author’s write about what they know. Few, if anyone, has familiarity with the author’s area of expertise. When writing about areas of expertise, best to step back and approach the area from outside, as if it were being discovered.
So, write-what-you-know is bad advice. Good advice should be write-about-what-fascinates-you. Let a character or two discover an area of interest. Odds are, if it fascinates you, your readers will find it fascinating as well.
Writers are well advised that characters are not mouthpieces. They have lives of their own and often do things authors never predicted for them. While working their characters through plots and fictional worlds, authors find that doing what they predicted would be out-of-character for their fictional characters. Readers distrust authors when their characters stray from what readers thought they understood. Sometimes, the deceit is intentional, but if it doesn’t serve the story, it detracts from the story and leads to negative reviews.
