Hatching Stories by guest blogger Randall Platt

Here is another entry from a 2010 festival author. In April, Randall Platt will share her latest during our Family Focus on Saturday, April 17. She first will read with our headlining YA author, Victor Lodato, and later will talk about writing novels for young adults with other local YA authors.

Platt grew up in the Pacific Northwest and she says, "I had the best childhood in the world growing up in Lake Oswego - well, I wasn’t IN the lake ALL the time, but a major portion of it." Most of her books are set in WA or OR, like The Likes of Me, which was chosen as a Best Book by the American Library Association. Platt writes for "adults, young adults, and for people who don’t own up to being either." Check out her latest Hellie Jondoe, about a tough street orphan who, in 1918, heads west towards Oregon. Hellie is a girl who can pick your pocket, lift your watch, and just possibly steal your heart. The Kirkus Review said this book is "...a solid historical fiction with a scrappy heroine who is genuinely touch and a true surviror. Irrepressible and irreverent."

Check on our website for more information as we are adding details all the time. Meanwhile, here are some thoughts on writing by Randall:

The Chick That Wouldn’t Hatch

Okay, maybe that’s not one of Aesop’s fables, but it’s the one I hereby offer:

It seems there’s this chicken egg and, in spite of the mother hen’s love, care, devotion and constant worry, it just isn’t hatching. All its nest-mates popped out right on schedule and yet this one egg is crack-less. The mother hen is frantic! She goes to all the other barnyard animals with her problem:

“All the eggs
In my last batch,
Came to life
And now they scratch.

But there’s one absent
In this patch.
One stubborn egg,
That will not hatch!”

To which the horse replies,

“What’s one chick
more or less?
Too many chicks
just makes a mess!”

The cow replies,

“On this farm,
chicks come and go.
One less baby
for you to know!”

The sheep replies,

“Just because
it’s in your nest,
shouldn’t mean
you love it best!”

And the duck replies,
“Sorry, dear,
that I am chuckling.
It’s probably just
an ugly duckling!”

The egg, of course, is a metaphor for the novel that has been gestating in my head for years. The one I always come back to. The one I have written over and over again. From countless points of view: a comic novel for adults with a male protagonist, then with a female protagonist; then as a screenplay with a male lead, then as a screenplay with a female lead; then as a coming of age novel for young adults. The story, the setting, the theme is always the same. Yet the characters who are locked safely inside their warm, protective shell will just not hatch.

What’s a mother hen to do? Hurl that egg across the barnyard and cackle cruelly as it breaks and oozes down the fence? Sneak it under the nest of the next hen over and let it become her problem? Get back on the nest herself and let the egg just fossilize? Or …. perhaps, she will do the brave thing:

So the hen took the egg,
and a wee, sharp knife.
and cut out the chick,
to give it a life.

So, this mother hen - I mean writer - will also do the brave thing and surgically bring that story to life. Open that egg and see what works and what doesn’t, breathe those characters to life and most of all, find out what it is - truly is - that haunts her about this story.

How?

I take a long, careful listen to the voice that seems to be calling me to this story .. the character(s) that keeps poking me awake at night. Assuming I have already written a few chapters or opening scenes, I try to imagine myself in the shoes of my character and do a 360 degree view through that person’s eyes. I see the past, the present and the envisioned future. Then, I do the same thing with the other lead characters and rewrite that first chapter(s) from the points of view of ALL these central characters. … sometimes in several different tenses. Busy work? Maybe. But it is amazing to me how many times I have discovered whose story it really is and, better yet, which character is the best one to tell that story and from what point of view. Yes, I have even written the opening scenes of a screenplay in novel form and visa versa. And it’s not because I don’t have anything better to do. Each form FORCES me to surgically look at the plot and the characters in entirely different ways. I have opened the egg and instead of frying, scrambling, or poaching it, I have found a live little chick ready to take on a life of its own. All I have to do is keep the foxes out of the henhouse, but that is an entirely different article.

Maybe I was a surgeon in a past life. I’ll probably be a hen in the next.