Award Winners: Young Adult Novelist Becky Wallace

We are starting a new series, interviews with recent AML Award winners. We start with Young Adult Award winner Becky Wallace, who was interviewed by Amanda Shrum, a Creative Writing MFA candidate at BYU.

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to meet and interview Becky Wallace, author of The Storyspinner and recipient of the 2015 Young Adult Novel AML Award.

Becky grew up in West Jordan, Utah before attending BYU-I and BYU where she received her degree in Public Relations. She moved to Chicago and worked for a sports marketing company where she was able to put her writing skills to use. She currently lives in Houston with her husband and four kids.

How did you get into writing?

I started writing when I was twelve. I wrote my first romance novel as a seventh grader about a girl named Becky and a boy named Matt, who may or may not have gone to my school. It was about her trying to convince him to be her boyfriend on a school field trip. People loved it. Especially other 12 year old girls in my class. I remember that being the beginning, but my parents were school teachers and as you may know, school teachers in Utah are not very well paid. I wanted a profession that maybe made a little more money. I knew that a lot of authors didn’t have that. So when I went to BYU, I majored in health sciences and then changed to PR. Then I worked as a journalist. I did work for a major league baseball team for two years and then ran the newsletter that went out to all the sports marketing directors.

So you were already writing professionally.

Yeah, I was writing non-fiction, which was great. After I had my second kid and quit my job, I was bored and lonely so I started to create characters to have someone to talk to. I write at nap time and bed time and whenever I can sneak in a few minutes here and there.

I noticed that in The Storyspinner, the location is very present and unique. What can you tell me about how you created the setting?

My husband served his mission in Brazil and I traveled there with the BYU ballroom team. We spent not quite a month there with members and it had a profound effect on me. The country felt in some ways so modern but sometimes you would walk through a street market and end up in a giant avocado orchard in the middle of the city and that felt very magical as an eighteen year old. When I sat down to write the book, a lot of that was in my head. When I had the artist draw the map, I told her it looks like a shark’s tooth and when she drew it I thought, “People are going to think that looks just like Brazil!” So what I did is try and use some bastardized Portuguese to make it feel authentic and like it was rooted in some sort of historical setting but was not super close to actual Portuguese. But it developed from that experience and falling in love with those people.

What other techniques did you use to help incorporate the setting?

I used a lot of Pinterest. Seeing something visually can help you describe it better. So I pinned a lot of things that helped build that world.

The structure of your novel is also very interesting. What made you decide to flip between multiple characters very quickly?

The quickly part is an easy part to answer. Part of it is that my brain processes things by “getting it done, getting it out of the way and moving on to the next thing.” I write that way too. When I submitted it to editors, there were only three points of view, Johanna, Jacaré and Rafi. My editor wanted me to flesh out the other characters which I thought was crazy. I thought people were going to die when they saw that there are six points of view, technically seven. But I think it worked well for the story and helped flesh out the world as well as develop the characters for two books instead of just one. I have had teachers tell me my book is great for reluctant readers because they are constantly moving on to the next thing. I tried to include a little bit of a cliffhanger at the end of every section so that you want to keep moving. It is nice to hear that the technique worked for that, but I am not sure I would ever want to do it again.

Which character did you enjoy writing the most?

There is only one Dom chapter in there, but I enjoyed writing about Dom. He is everybody’s favorite. He is fun and full of life. In the second book he has so much weight on his shoulders but has a way of playing it off. People ask me who I would want to hang out with, I would want to hang out with Dom. Everyone needs someone in their life who can just hang out, have fun and eat chocolate.

What road did you take to get published?

The very typical road. The only thing that was atypical is that I started by writing a NaNoWriMo book which I sent off and got an agent. I thought I was going to be one of those people who get a book deal right away. We had two bites but nothing happened. I wrote another book which my agent thought was the one. It went to acquisition at two houses before getting cut. So I wrote a third book which was the darkest book I had ever written but apparently it wasn’t dark enough. My mother in law told me maybe I should give up my hobby since I was going to have four kids. I decided to write one more book and pour everything into it. I wrote Storyspinner in six weeks and it sold in three days. I felt like that was a message from the heavens to keep going.

That is a great story for aspiring writers to hear.

I actually have 45 feet of rejection letters, some agent rejections and some editorial rejections. I printed them off and I had this great moment of realizing I had conquered something huge. I am definitely not at the end of the road and there are going to be more rejections in the future, but it feels great to have done this much and gotten this far. So if you really want to do it, keep at it. Have the persistence and the tenacity and keep pressing forward.

What made you decide to tell this story for young adults?

This is actually one of my favorite stories to tell. My daughter was in this phase where she wanted to watch Sleeping Beauty over and over again. While watching it with her, I noticed this scene where Prince Phillip sneaks up on Aurora in the woods and grabs her from behind and starts dancing. I very clearly remember sitting up and watching the scene from a mother’s perspective and thinking “Here is this stranger sneaking up on this beautiful girl in the woods and grabbing her. They have no conversation, they just start dancing.” I remember asking my two year old, “What if someone grabs you?” And she said, “I yell this is not my mommy, this is not my daddy.” And I thought ok, yeah there should be some kicking and screaming. So that night I wrote what ended up being chapter 3 of this book. I wanted my daughter to know that if someone grabs you in the woods, the correct approach is to punch him in the face. I realized the Aurora we all love was raised by fairies who didn’t know how to do anything. So she didn’t have the background to be the kind of character who could do that. So I created a character who came from a background that gave her the strength and ability to stand up for herself and have that confidence and skill. Which is where the performers came from. It is technically a Sleeping Beauty retelling where the fairies are replaced by circus performers.

What projects do you have planned for the future?

I am working on revisions for a book I am hoping to submit by next Friday. It is very different from Storyspinner with the main character based on Scarlett O’Hara. It is sort of taking that character and figuring out what would make her tick and drive her to stay on a certain path no matter what the consequences would be. The other side of the story is about why magic would be forbidden, a trope which is used often but not usually explored. In this book, magic causes an environmental residue, like a fast acting pollutant where things mutate. So the cause and effect of magic is very apparent from page 20.

Anything else you would like to say to other writers and readers out there?

I get asked a lot what my best advice is for writers. The best advice I can give is that if you want to be a writer you have to do it. You have to sit down and make it happen and that requires sacrifice and lack of sleep and not watching TV. You can never fix a blank page, you have to put words on it first.

Becky’s second novel and sequel to The Storyspinner, titled The Skylighter, is out now. You can read more about Becky at beckywallacebooks.com.