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Inspirations
KITTY FITZGERALD
FIRST DRAFT: Alternating narrators
A published author compares a segment of her book in relation to an earlier draft, discussing how – and why – she made her editing choices.
DRAFT
Holly Lock is a loner. Her only friend, Samantha, is edgy and manipulative. Seeing Jack Plum up so close is a shock in more ways than one as she’s always been told to keep away from him. All the kids in the area think of him as the monster at the end of the street. But being so near means she’s had a chance to stare and what she saw isn’t as frightening as her imagination had conjured up.
Out of breath when she reaches the other kids after running from Jack, she decides not to confide in them. And when Samantha wants her to join in a game she shrugs her off, despite getting a sulky reaction. Holly tells herself it serves Samantha right for the number of times she’s dumped her for new friends, and maybe it does.
Alone in her bedroom, her emotions are mercurial. She’s trembling and upset but intrigued, knowing that Jack could have stopped her running away, but didn’t and wondering how he could have known about her birthday. As far as the kids in the street knew, Jack Plum couldn’t even talk, but obviously he could, even though it was very stammery. The thought occurred that he might be stalking her and sent ice trickling down her back. She knows all about nutters and paedophiles, her mum’s made sure of that. But she isn’t some Barby girl, she’s plain and tomboyish so maybe looks don’t matter to perverts. If they did Samantha would be the target because she’s very pretty, or so Holly’s logic went. Holly’s dad always said she’d have been drowned at birth if she’d been a dog. What a relief when he ran off.
Now it’s just her and mum and that’s the way she likes it. Safe in her room surrounded by her plants and flowers she can relax and forget about what the world expects her to be. She has plans to work with trees or plants when she leaves school, maybe something like a botanist. That’s why she was in Pardes Wood in the first place; she was on the hunt for a special flower called the ghost orchid. If she found one of them she’d really make a name for herself. The conditions in the wood are perfect, lots of shady areas beneath old beech trees. Even though the orchid had only been spotted a few times in the past century, it didn’t put Holly off; she was a very determined girl.
Her mother got home while she was watering her plants. She considered telling her about the encounter with Jack Plum but decided against it as she wasn’t supposed to go to the woods on her own anyway.
PUBLISHED VERSION
Y’know when you wake up from a frightening dream, how the edges of everything are blurred, like the everyday picture of the world hasn’t had time to come back. Well, when I was there, standing so close to Jack Plum, it was like things had shifted just a little bit, like it wasn’t real time. All the way up the uneven path from the wood I felt as if I was wading in custard. I didn’t look behind at all, just kept going and I had a stitch by the time I got to the others.
‘I started to feel like I was getting control of this character; looking at her through Jack’s eyes worked incredibly well.’
It had all dropped back into place by then, no more fuzziness. Samantha’s bored face was sharp and clear. She lives on our street and she calls herself my best friend but she’s always going off and trying out new girls or getting a boyfriend, then I don’t see her outside school for weeks and weeks, till it all goes wrong, which it always does. She can get a bit clingy and people don’t like that, sometimes it freaks me. Because she’s very pretty she gets away with a lot. Anyway, she was fed up of the skateboarding competition and wanted me to join a team for a game of cricket but I shrugged her off. She’d just come back to me after getting really close to this girl Paula for a few weeks, so I didn’t see why I should do everything she wanted all of a sudden. I thought she was going to complain, as per usual when I said I was going home, but she didn’t, something just shifted behind her eyes like she was notching up my faults. Or maybe I was feeling a bit paranoid. My legs were unsteady and I wanted to be in my bedroom, alone, to think about what had happened so I didn’t give a damn.
I lay on the bed for about half an hour. My head was all sort of frantic, hopping about from one thing to another and I wasn’t sure if I was trembling because I was still scared or if it was just relief. It’s funny about dreams, how they make this world seem unreal and how you get similar feelings when you’re frightened, like it all goes out of focus for a few seconds. I mean, I was only metres away from our house when Jack Plum spoke to me but I felt as if I was in some other unexpected place. Mam says I’ve got an ‘excess of imagination’ as if it’s some sort of hormone imbalance but maybe it’s all just chemicals.
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New Writing
From Issue 31 ◊ Oct/Nov/Dec 2006
THE WORK
The book is about Jack Plum who’s been isolated from the world for various reasons and has been regarded as the monster at the end of the street by the other kids. He develops a longing for human contact; that’s why he approaches Holly Lock. She’s terrified at first, but then her perception changes. The novel’s narration alternates between Jack and Holly, and this scene is in the second chapter, the first one narrated by Holly. It’s her reaction to their encounter.
Originally I assumed that I couldn’t have two first person narrators so Holly’s chapters were in third person, but when I read the completed draft her chapters were clunky and distant; I realised the only way the reader was going to relate to Holly as well as to Jack was if they could feel that intimacy of her talking directly to them.
I had spent a lot of time working on Jack’s narrative because he uses a distinctive, made-up language. I had been writing Holly in, but not giving her much attention, not giving her a chance to grow. So then I started working on the notion of what Jack had seen in Holly: someone who was a loner like himself, though on the surface it might not appear that way. She’s not a typical teenage girl. She manages to cope with all the stuff that’s around her, all the other girls, but basically she’d rather be alone with her plants. I finally started to feel like I was getting control of this character and who she was; looking at her through Jack’s eyes worked incredibly well.
In the early draft this authorial voice tells us that Holly is a loner and she’s only got one friend, Samantha, and that being near Jack gives Holly a chance to look at him and has not made her so frightened. We get information about her and Samantha and Holly’s mother and Jack, but it feels like too much of a rush, like it’s an exercise in a summary of Holly Lock rather than Holly developing. I dealt with that same stuff when I used the first person, but because Holly is telling us about it, it’s a much more gradual process – the reader discovers with Holly what she feels about the people around her, about what just happened to her instead of being directed to it. Her internal life comes alive. The first person has slowed down what’s going to be revealed and does it in a much more clear, natural way.
I made a classic mistake: I had been so consumed with Jack and all the difficulties of his voice, so focused on the narrative, that I hadn’t actually identified the other character properly in my head before I started writing it.’
PHOTO© Stan Gamester
