At school events, I tell a story about a friend who, at four years old, was so freaked out by Darth Vader in Disneyland that he tried to save his parents by headbutting the Sith Lord in the crotch. The story is a lot of fun, is completely true, and usually by the time I’m miming my friend stamping on Vader’s neck the whole room is in stitches.
At one event, however, I was two lines into the story when, with the deliberate, mechanical threat of someone cocking a shotgun, a kid raised their hand.
“Is this the story about Darth Vader?”
He’d seen me before. I froze.
When everyone knows the joke, you can change the punchline. When generations of good books have given us all the same neural pathways, you can surprise people, and yourself
Look, everyone has their bandolier of anecdotes. If the group hasn’t heard the story before but you have, it is the accepted, polite and adult thing to do to sit through it and dutifully laugh at the bits you’re supposed to laugh at.
(This may provide insight into what my friends have to put up with)
Young people, however, have no time for any of that nonsense, and it’s extremely refreshing. A recent Guardian article by a writer I quite like reveals she actively banned her students from writing children’s fiction, firstly because she didn’t see any merit in it before she decided to write one herself, and partially because she wanted them to experience something new… like Joyce.
I think we forget that for young people, everything is new. Experiences burn themselves new neural pathways in your brain, and every repeat performance is simply tracing a road already laid down. (As they will happily point out) The same lines will just not fly.
I wrote Knights of the Borrowed Dark because I wanted to write a book about an orphan who discovers magic. That idea, you will be shocked to learn, has been done. And whether through TV, film, games or books – we are all students of story. Like chefs who know the taste of ingredients but not what they’re called, even the youngest child knows a hero’s journey when they see one. From Greek myth to Spiderman, these paths are worn and well-trod.
Writing is a contradictory art. On one side, you have to tell yourself your story is worth telling and deserves a space on the shelf. On the other, you have to tell yourself that your story is terrible, and edit it constantly until no rogue comma remains. The same principle applies to originality – striving to go further than other books while also going inwards, because the one story nobody else is telling is your own.
The Knights can barely control their magic, because I think magic should be difficult and dangerous. Its use slowly turns them to iron because I think bravery should cost you something and my villains are cruel and small because evil is not the flipside to good, just the lack of it; a thousand petty failures.
Most crucially, my protagonist Denizen Hardwick has read books where the protagonists have silly names. Having a silly name generally means destiny has painted a target on your back.
Kids read KotBD, and enjoyed it, and said a lot of nice things over 215 school and library events and I went the colour of my hair and it was lovely, but it was the kids who asked what now that delighted me the most.
When everyone knows the joke, you can change the punchline. When generations of good books (Sorry Scarlett) have given us all the same neural pathways, you can surprise people, and yourself. Denizen is not the same person he was in the first book. His power has grown, his responsibility, his allies, his enemies, his anger – the challenges and size of the world must grow as well.
As a teenager I hated the notion of chosen ones, because either you were chosen or you weren’t, and that kind of certainty seemed both horrifying and unattainable. Knowing I couldn’t repeat the villains from KotBD, I dug deeper into that idea – creating for The Forever Court a family raised to believe they are chosen, a certainty that has made them into monsters. Questions are not tolerated within the Family Croit, and when 13-year-old Uriel begins to query doctrine (as teenagers always will and always should) neither is he.
I researched cults, read about Derek Black renouncing his white nationalist family but crucially, still wanting to save them. I looked at the idea that young people are now growing up in a world where news has become untrustworthy, and their only hope is cross-referencing, questioning, doubting. I did Q & As where I told kids there was no such thing as a bad question, which subsequently ended up with me being asked do I drive a Lamborghini (no) and what was my worst break-up (not here, thank you)
Writing a sequel became about that question – what now? I had built a world and established characters, but even that became a challenge because you have to reintroduce and remind readers about the world by finding new angles, new ways in. I found myself panicking that I wasn’t going to be able to reproduce KotBD… before realising that I shouldn’t, and nobody would want me to.
The first question I was ever asked by a student was “do you think you’re class?” Luckily, I’ve known the answer to this since I was 10 – no – but it’s a useful guideline towards writing a sequel. Each new novel is a chance to surpass the one before it. Each new novel is a chance to improve yourself, to learn, to incorporate feedback and push yourself further than you’ve gone before.
That’s the other question kids ask me a lot.
“What’s your favourite book you’ve written?”
Honestly? The next one.
The Forever Court, the second book in the Knights of the Borrowed Dark trilogy, was published by Puffin last month
