How a Young Adult Novelist Starts a Book
Lesson number two from writing No One Else Can Have You, my new book about friendship and murder from HarperTeen
I always start every draft, every character, in the same way.
“My name is ____ and I am _____.”
To me, it feels like a thesis. Everything the character says afterward becomes evidence.
As a writing exercise, it probably sounds pretty elementary—and to be honest, it’s rarely worked for me until now (almost all of my earlier attempts at novels and short stories have been discarded in various laptop trash bins). But when I started No One Else Can Have You (my new book from HarperTeen), I followed the same old formula, and something finally clicked. “My Name is Kippy Bushman, and I am bereaved”—I mean, who talks that way? A very specific kind of person. A sort of semi-formal yet open-hearted weirdo who wants to get things right.
And then I was like, so here’s Kippy Bushman, someone who thinks she’s lost her only friend—someone with a raw heart and a tendency toward stiffness in situations that are uncomfortable. She’s squatting with her guidance counselor of a Dad, who’s a kind of helicopter parent, and they’re in a tiny motel room until some small-town sheriff finds out who murdered her best friend…so they’re basically hiding.
How would this girl be acting right now?
Well, she’d probably be crying, for starters. (Someone is going to say that’s sexist, or whatever—but it’s like, fuck you, girls cry.) Also, having lived in various teensy New York City apartments, with very little soundproofing, and multiple roommates, I knew from experience that sometimes the only semi-private place to cry is the shower.
So, shower + a grief-stricken outsider.
I filed that away and started writing the first scene of my book.
My name is Kippy Bushman, and I am bereaved. Right now I’m bereaved on the toilet. Well, not like going to the bathroom or anything, more like using it as a chair. For some reason the motel put a television in here, so I’ve got the seat down and my pajamas on with my knees pulled up toward my face. When you’re sharing a motel room with your dad, the bathroom’s pretty much the only place you can have privacy. And the shower is pretty much the only place you can cry, if you want to avoid getting hugged. So I’ve been hanging out in here, watching a lot of Diane Sawyer, and occasionally taking off my clothes to cry my guts out.
Dom and I have been staying at the Great Moose Motel since last Saturday night. He says there’s no way he’s letting his Pickle run around when there’s a homicidal maniac on the loose. I’m getting a little claustrophobic, to tell you the truth, but I guess I can tell where he’s coming from, hiding us here. I mean they found Ruth in the corn behind our house.
Every so often while I’m sitting here thinking about her, my brain is bombarded by semi-normal thoughts brought on by too much daytime television. “Should I start taking vitamin D supplements?” “Do I need a paraffin wax treatment tub thing for my foot calluses?” It doesn’t seem fair, in a way, because maybe I should be sad constantly for the rest of my life if I’m the one who gets to be alive. But the weirdest part is when this other feeling creeps in: a sort of vague annoyance, like Ruth has gone somewhere and not invited me.
The thing is, we were supposed to have a sleepover that night. She was on her way over and the next day they discovered her less than 200 yards away from our back door. She almost made it. And the thing on top of that is I have a car and she doesn’t—didn’t—so I could have gone and gotten her. But I didn’t.
That’s the part that makes me keep climbing in the shower to cry. I should have picked her up. I should have gone and grabbed her.
Here’s lesson two, on advancing the plot, and lesson three, on writing an awkward character. Click here for more on No One Else Can Have You.
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