The
Black Butterfly
Penny is furious, and who can blame her? She has to spend
Christmas break alone at the Black Butterfly, an old inn at the coldest,
bleakest edge of the country—the coast of Maine. This “vacation” is the brainchild of Penny's flaky mother, who's on the
other side of the country hunting ghosts. Penny most definitely does not
believe in spirits. Or love. Or family.
Until, that is, she discovers two very real apparitions which
only she can see…and meets George, the strangely alluring son of the inn's
owner…and crashes into some staggering family secrets. If only Ghost Girl
didn't want Penny dead. If only George were the tiniest bit open to believing.
If only she could tell her mother. Then maybe this could still be a vacation.
But it's not. It's a race for her life, her first love, and her sanity.
Shirley has been writing since she learned
how to hold a pencil. Her first professional publication, when she was a high
school senior, was a pun in Reader’s Digest. The Black Butterfly is her third young adult novel, following the
award-winning The Blood Lie and Remember Dippy. Her work has appeared in
Cosmopolitan, Salon, Good Housekeeping, and newspapers nationwide.
Shirley is a graduate of Cornell University
and an alumna of the Radcliffe Writing Seminars. The first paranormal novel she
ever read was Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
and it remains one of her favorites. She lives in Western Massachusetts with
her husband, two daughters, and two frisky dogs.
Start with an Idea
How one author finds her groove
Shirley Reva Vernick
Ideas are the writer’s lifeblood. You
can’t tell a story, after all, unless you have a concept, a purpose for telling
it. So where do I get those amorphous and sometimes elusive creatures we call
ideas?
For me, the first creative spark
usually arrives in the form of a character, or maybe a voice around which a
character will eventually congeal. This voice, belonging perhaps to a lost
teenager, a frightened child, a desperate angel, or a world-weary ghost, serves
as the story’s lynchpin. My job is “simply” to figure out what’s driving that
voice. From there, I can determine how to propel the narrative.
The paranormal figures prominently in
the storyline for The Black Butterfly,
as well as for the novel I’m currently writing. As an author, I’m drawn to the
paranormal—that is, phenomena that science can’t currently explain—because it’s
so rich in possibilities, so ripe for exploration. Here are some of the questions
The Black Butterfly checks out: how do
supernatural entities feel about being what they are? How would a nonbeliever
respond to undeniable evidence of paranormal activity? What’s the common ground
between humans and supernatural beings?
Okay, so I’ve got my characters, both
normal and paranormal, and I’ve got my burning questions to investigate, but I
still need a plot—you know, action, dialogue, conflict and resolution. And
while the element of voice may magically appear in my mind like manna in the
desert, the plotting is another matter. It involves more purposeful
brainstorming, and for that, I need to mine all my resources.
One abundant source of plot ideas is
personal experience, both direct and indirect. That is, things that have happened
to me or to people in my circle. For
instance, just like Penny in The Black
Butterfly, I had a terrifying experience in water, I wrote a short story
that no one in my class understood, and I spent high school collecting
quotations. And although I was fortunate to have two loving and present
parents, I have friends whose parents were either absent or not all there.
I also get ideas by avidly reading the
news, as well as journals and blogs of interest. So while I’ve never seen a
ghost myself, I’m familiar with many accounts of people who believe they have.
I maintain a special file in my office where I keep copies of intriguing
articles.
What really ties it all together for
me is what I call deliberate daydreaming—using my imagination in a focused way
throughout the writing process. Mostly this looks like playing the what-if game.
What if the daughter of a failed ghost hunter turned out to be the one with the
supernatural gift? What if a boy and a girl were falling in love, but their
conflicting beliefs about the supernatural were tearing them apart? What if a
ghost felt horribly guilty about something he did in life, something he can’t
change or fix?
I rarely have the solutions to the
what-if conundrums when I first pose them. It’s really up to the characters to figure
it out on the page. I have to write the book to learn the answers myself!
As I close, I’d like to fess up that,
on a day-to-day basis, my process is not as systematic as this article might
make it sound. It doesn’t feel like “step 1: create character,” “step 2: access
idea sources,” “step 3: write.” It’s much more fluid and intuitive than that. Characters
and plot are ever evolving. Scenes get created, then deleted. Subplots demand
further exploration. Moods and motivations change. Plans derail. Someone does
something unexpected and wonderful. It’s an unpredictable and thrilling ride,
this writing thing, and I can’t get enough of it.
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