Posted on September 27, 2009 - by MG

Quite Secret New Thing

Marple - a passive observer until she's good and ready to stop the killing.

As neglectful of this blog that I’ve been, I hope you’ll forgive me. The usual excuses apply.

In the past few weeks I’ve launched a new website, Mayan Mysteries of 2012 – a Young Person’s Guide, as well as two new trailers, for The Joshua Files series (2010 version) and for Joshua Files 3: ZERO MOMENT.

And very exciting, I’ve been working with the Walker Books for Young Readers (part of Bloomsbury USA) the US publisher of Joshua Files on their version of INVISIBLE CITY.

As well as putting the finishing touches to the proofs of ZERO MOMENT. It’s starting to feel like a pretty full-on job, this author lark. (I’m joking, it always was, now there’s just more pressure.)

But FINALLY I can start to devote some real thought to Quite Secret New Thing.

We have a title, for one thing. I’m not going to tell you the title just now, sorry to be a tease. I feel like it might jinx things, so lets wait until I’ve got going with the writing, n’kay?

Titles often come last, after you’ve written the darn thing at least. (And I have yet to write a SINGLE page of Quite Secret New Thing.) But for some reason I needed to know I had a good title. We (Agent, Editor and I) had been referring to QSNT as (harumph) For Kids where (harumph) is a stupendously famous and successful novel for adults which hasn’t yet been kid-ified.

I’m not going to say what (harumph) is obviously…

The thing is, there is a very sound reason, or seventy, why (harumph) hasn’t yet been kid-ified, in fact the whole project began with me musing whether it could even be done. So for the past year I’ve been thinking about why (harumph) doesn’t work for young readers, what is the essence of (harumph) which makes it exciting and what needs to be done to provide young readers with the equivalent reading experience.

Thinking, however, is one thing.

Writing is another. Ha. Many an idea sounds good until you commit it to paper.

So on Friday I drafted the plot, the plot of Quite Secret New Thing aka (harumph) For Kids aka (censored).

And immediately I saw the first flaw.

The nature of the genre of QSNT is such that the protagonist is thrown into a maelstrom of a very complex, very alien adult world. He does not cause the story to happen; the story happens around him.

Which is Very Not Good. As literary agent Rachelle Gardner reminded her readers recently, the protagaonist must be pro-active.

Or at least, ideally.

Sometimes though, you have to have quite a lot of stuff happening to the protagonist or around the protagonist, before they take action.

Think of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Harry is passive, the things that happen to him happen in spite of what he does or wants to do (being abused by the Dursleys, which he puts up with, being sent to Hogwarts). Until his friend Hermione suggests that they investigate the forbidden corridors of Hogwarts, in true Famous Five fashion, and stumble upon the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone.

In detective stories, the protagonist, the detective often is a passive observer of events, remaining somewhat outside of the action (crime, generally). Until they engage with the mystery. (I watched a MARPLE show last week, Murder Is Easy, in which Miss Marple merely flashed her gimlet blue eyes at all manner of suspects, murderer and victims, but did not a thing to stop the carnage of murder, until she was good and ready. She did not really alter the trajectory of the story until right at the end.)

But whatever the allowances of the genre, Rachelle Gardner is quite right. The protagonist should be pro-active. It makes for a better story. So even in detective fiction, the author should go back to the plot and make as much of the action happen because of the actions of the protagonist.

It really helps, at this stage, to have written the plot down. Or if you’re a jump-in-and-write type of writer, to have written about 20,000 words.

So I’d better get down to it.