Guest Blog: Maggie Stiefvater
It's easy to get a feel for how incredibly talented Maggie Steifvater is by watching the book trailer she made for Shiver. Step one, write an amazing book. Step two, create cut-paper pieces. Step three, create stop motion art with the cut-paper. Step four, oh, and write the musical score while you're at it.
I've asked Maggie on facebook if there's anything she can't do, and while she says she's no good at baking shaped cakes, I'm still sort of convinced that she actually has superpowers.
I am delighted to welcome Maggie here today as a guest of the blog, discussing the story behind Shiver. Thanks, Maggie! (Don't forget to check out Maggie's blog here on livejournal--she's m_stiefvater--and keep an eye out for her other books, Lament and Ballad, due out in October.)
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There’s this common writing wisdom that says that there are only a handful of plots in the world and a million ways to tell each of them. I always agreed with that concept in a dry academic way, but it wasn’t until I wrote Shiver that I realized how true it was.
Because Sam’s story in Shiver is this: wolf bites boy, boy becomes wolf. And Grace’s story is: girl falls in love with werewolf.
I didn’t really think about the idea that there were a million ways that this could go until well after I wrote the novel. Interview questions started coming in and a lot of them were variations of “do you think that readers will be upset to find out this isn’t a traditional werewolf story?” and “this isn’t a traditional romance, do you think readers will be surprised?”
Because although I started Shiver with a definite plan in my head for the mood and character of the story, just looking at the plot, that was not the only way it could go. It’s odd to think about how, in the hands of another writer, Sam and Grace’s story could’ve been a horror. Had I tweaked the plot differently, it could’ve been a thriller. Or a straight romance. Heck, a comedy.
It reminds me of my other life as an artist. There are a lot of parallels between art-making and writing, but artistic style and genre is the one I’m thinking of now. One of the last things an artist acquires as they get better is a style: that distinct way of marking the canvas or paper, that unique way of seeing the world that makes a Van Gogh a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt a Rembrandt.
As an artist, first you learn how to replicate the image of a scene realistically, then you figure out how to replicate the mood of the scene instead. It’s about seeing all the details in the scene and then choosing which you keep and which you omit. Seeing all the colors but picking only the ones that further your moody agenda. Choosing which lines to reproduce faithfully and which ones to distort and exaggerate.
So five artists can paint the same scene five wildly different ways, depending on what they choose to focus on. A painting of a couple in front of the Eiffel Tower, for instance. Do you paint all of it? Focus in close on the couple? Paint it in black and white? Emphasize the scar on the man’s face? Day? Night? Blues? Golds?
It’s the same way with writing. That same image -- that same plot of wolf bites boy, boy becomes wolf -- can be done five million different ways. And has been. It all depends on which details you focus on, what you exaggerate, what you choose to leave out. When I wrote Shiver, I wanted a bittersweet love story, something poignant and deliberate and lovely. So instead of focusing on the horror, I chose only the details that supported my version of events.
It’s strange to think of my characters being written down a different road, because though there might be a handful of plots being written millions of different ways, there was only one way I could write this one.
I've asked Maggie on facebook if there's anything she can't do, and while she says she's no good at baking shaped cakes, I'm still sort of convinced that she actually has superpowers.
I am delighted to welcome Maggie here today as a guest of the blog, discussing the story behind Shiver. Thanks, Maggie! (Don't forget to check out Maggie's blog here on livejournal--she's m_stiefvater--and keep an eye out for her other books, Lament and Ballad, due out in October.)
--
There’s this common writing wisdom that says that there are only a handful of plots in the world and a million ways to tell each of them. I always agreed with that concept in a dry academic way, but it wasn’t until I wrote Shiver that I realized how true it was.
Because Sam’s story in Shiver is this: wolf bites boy, boy becomes wolf. And Grace’s story is: girl falls in love with werewolf.
I didn’t really think about the idea that there were a million ways that this could go until well after I wrote the novel. Interview questions started coming in and a lot of them were variations of “do you think that readers will be upset to find out this isn’t a traditional werewolf story?” and “this isn’t a traditional romance, do you think readers will be surprised?”
Because although I started Shiver with a definite plan in my head for the mood and character of the story, just looking at the plot, that was not the only way it could go. It’s odd to think about how, in the hands of another writer, Sam and Grace’s story could’ve been a horror. Had I tweaked the plot differently, it could’ve been a thriller. Or a straight romance. Heck, a comedy.
It reminds me of my other life as an artist. There are a lot of parallels between art-making and writing, but artistic style and genre is the one I’m thinking of now. One of the last things an artist acquires as they get better is a style: that distinct way of marking the canvas or paper, that unique way of seeing the world that makes a Van Gogh a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt a Rembrandt.
As an artist, first you learn how to replicate the image of a scene realistically, then you figure out how to replicate the mood of the scene instead. It’s about seeing all the details in the scene and then choosing which you keep and which you omit. Seeing all the colors but picking only the ones that further your moody agenda. Choosing which lines to reproduce faithfully and which ones to distort and exaggerate.
So five artists can paint the same scene five wildly different ways, depending on what they choose to focus on. A painting of a couple in front of the Eiffel Tower, for instance. Do you paint all of it? Focus in close on the couple? Paint it in black and white? Emphasize the scar on the man’s face? Day? Night? Blues? Golds?
It’s the same way with writing. That same image -- that same plot of wolf bites boy, boy becomes wolf -- can be done five million different ways. And has been. It all depends on which details you focus on, what you exaggerate, what you choose to leave out. When I wrote Shiver, I wanted a bittersweet love story, something poignant and deliberate and lovely. So instead of focusing on the horror, I chose only the details that supported my version of events.
It’s strange to think of my characters being written down a different road, because though there might be a handful of plots being written millions of different ways, there was only one way I could write this one.