Happy February,
My story has been several years in the making, and I now have a short
manuscript written that has been okayed by my editor, Margaret. This will be
revised many times, and usually even fine tuned after a year of working on the
art.
I think about the three elements in a story, character, plot and setting,
although the big emphasis is on plot, because that's the hardest for me.
Because my main character is a troll I know the setting will be Scandinavia,
where trolls are mythological creatures. I've been to Norway three times and to
Iceland and Denmark, but Sweden will be the setting for my new book because our
friends Gudrun and Elof Eriksson have offered to show us the old family farm
and bring us to some remote northern places. We are planning the trip for late
April. My story about a runaway troll takes place from late summer until
winter. At the very least I'll be able to ID plants and trees which I can
supplement with Swedish books about flora and fauna. For example, if runaway
Rollo the troll eats acorns and mushrooms, what kinds of mushrooms grow in
northern Sweden? If he lives with an owl, is it a gray owl? The owl must nest
in a tree. We will travel to snow-covered northern Sweden to get some ideas
about how the terrain will look. There is a unique environment that occurs near
the Arctic Circle. The stunted Birch trees and rich moss and lichen covered
boulders found there I find beautiful and mysterious. I hope I'll find places
like that to visit. The moss and lichen on the rocks look like artwork.
In Norway and Iceland I visited open air folk museums and I hope to visit
Swedish museums like them. A very old and typical farmstead is brought piece by
piece to the museum setting, reassembled, and furnished with handmade tools,
artifacts and textiles so the visitor can imagine life in the olden days. Part
of my book will take place in a trolls' farmhouse/cave which is fairly
civilized. My trolls are not the traditional evil, mean-spirited scary trolls,
but are scruffy slightly dim rustic trolls. I admit they will be cutesified in
order to make my plot work. There are many stories and legends about trolls,
and I plan to ask Swedes I meet to offer any family stories passed down to them
about trolls. Here is some troll history I've already dug up. I will put a (Y)
yes or a (N) no, after the troll tidbit which will tell you if I'm going to use
it in my book.
Troll tidbits:
-- Trolls hair grows straight up because they cannot be bothered to brush
it. (Y)
-- Trolls often have missing or black teeth because they cannot be bothered
to brush them. (Y)
-- Trolls often wear one gold earring or a jewel in one ear. (Y)
-- Trolls have cow-like tails which they loose if married in a church. (Y,
but in a modified version.)
-- Trolls live under mountains with a mining gold which they work into
jewelry and armor. (N)
-- Trolls are short and misshapen or tall and misshapen. (N)
-- Trolls have ferocious black cats with red eyes. (N)
-- Trolls ride pigs. (Y)
-- Trolls burst when the light of the sun hits them. (N)
-- Trolls have frogs and salamanders living in their hair. (N but I'm
still thinking about it.)
I will post more troll tidbits when I returned from Sweden. I will devote
a section of my website to troll fun and friends can add to the list of troll
traits. I will post pictures of trolls I see in Sweden. (That's a joke!) When
I was little, my parents read us a bedtime story about a mother who left her
child unattended. A troll mother, watching from the forest and admiring the
laughing sweet tempered human baby, seized the opportunity to switch it with her
bad natured bawling one. At the end of the story she got her baby back, but she
had to pay a high price for it. Whenever my sisters and I acted particularly
bad by teasing and by being obnoxious, I often wondered if my mother thought I
was a changeling! I thought it was very funny that I might have spent some time
with a troll mother where I may have picked up some bad habits.
I don't remember how I thought up my story, but I remember reading a
traditional story about Lars who ran away after turning very small, small enough
to ride on a goose's back. I did think of running away when I was little, and
for very silly reasons. I liked the adventure of it and the thought of skipping
school. I often will start with a cloudy idea and work on it when I'm running.
Sometimes my runs are a couple of hours long. If I have a very big hurdle to
get over in the storyline, I will solve it by thinking of it before going to
sleep and then have the answer when I wake up. This method is not foolproof and
may take lots of tries.
If you like to write stories, maybe you would like to start your book now
and work on it with me. It takes me a year to do a book. For a children's
book, it should fit a 32 page format. I usually have no more than 4 pages of
typed manuscript. The book dummy, which show sketches of the main scenes, and
where I divide up the type, takes about three weeks to complete.
Reading aloud your manuscript, or going from longhand to typewritten are
two ways to get a clear notion of the story you have internalized. I will put a
story away for several months and not touch it and then read it to get a fresh
look. Of course, when the magic really happens, it's as if the story writes
itself. When that happens, I just throw up my hands and enjoy the creative
force that we lucky to tap into from time to time.
Good luck, your friend,
Jan Brett