Bella at Midnight (26 page)

An Interview with the Author

On Writing

An Abridged First Chapter from Diane Stanley's Upcoming Novel
The Mysterious Case of the Allbright Academy

 

What gave you the idea to write a novel based on the Cinderella story?

I had already done a number of picture books based on fairy tales—
Rumpelstiltskin's Daughter, Goldie and the Three Bears
, and
The Giant and the Beanstalk
(plus one based on a Greek myth,
The Trouble with Wishes
). I thought it might be fun to see if I could come up with an original twist on
Cinderella.

I do a lot of my creative thinking at night. I usually read in bed until I start to feel sleepy, then I turn off the light and focus my thoughts on whatever book I'm working on at the time. I might go over a particular scene or think about a certain character. One night I decided to explore
Cinderella.
Was there a new story hidden in the old, familiar one? Perhaps I should start with the wicked stepmother and stepsisters. Who were they? What happened to them before they met Cinderella and her father?

And as soon as I asked myself those questions, I knew the answer, every detail of their history: the beloved merchant father, their bourgeois life and aspirations, the shipwreck and financial ruin, the treacherous maid, the long walk to the capital city, and the frosty welcome from Matilda's sister and her pompous husband. The only detail I added later was the magical emerald ring.

Though I didn't realize it at the time, much of this story came to me from books I had read over the years, and especially from Shakespeare (I was into drama big-time in my teen years, and read a lot of his plays). The shipwreck and its terrible consequences were clearly inspired by
The Tempest
and
The Merchant of Venice.
Even the opening lines of Book II, “My father lies below the sea. Crabs scuttle over him and scatter his bones,” came to me, by way of my subconscious, from Ariel's song in
The Tempest:
“Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made.”

Bella
was my first attempt at historical fiction, and I found the prospect appealed to me enormously. I have always loved history and biography because they open a window into a vanished world, so different from our own. This was another way of exploring the past, but without the constraints of writing nonfiction. Add some elements of fantasy, and I found it fit me perfectly as a writer. Of all the books I have written,
Bella
is my favorite.

Did you do research for this book, or just make things up out of your imagination?

I did both.

I certainly used my imagination a lot. But some of the things that happen to my characters are based on events in my own life. I decided early on, for example, that Bella would have an absent father and would be raised by a kindly foster family. It wasn't until I thought about it later that I realized how autobiographical that was: when I was about seven, my mother became seriously ill with tuberculosis. Since she and my father had divorced when I was a baby (and I didn't know him at all), I went to live with my aunt and uncle and two cousins, an older boy and a younger girl—just like Beatrice and Martin and Will and Margaret in the story. Even the castle of the King of the Fairies, with its magical self-opening door, and the plucky Kitty-Pair-of-Kitties came straight from my childhood, courtesy of my cousin Jim.

But, of course,
Bella
had a historical setting. I wanted to get the period details right, and that meant research. Fortunately, I had previously written five biographies of people who lived in the early to middle Renaissance, so I knew the period pretty well in general terms. But Bella wasn't an artist like Leonardo and Michelangelo, or a playwright and actor like Shakespeare. Nor was she a queen like Elizabeth. Only one of my subjects turned out to be a rich source of inspiration for my story—that, of course, was Joan of Arc.

Like Joan, Bella was raised as a peasant. Both were steadfast in their character and remarkable for their courage in the face of danger. The scene where Bella and the villagers flee from enemy raiders into the safety of the walls of Castle Down was based on a similar event in Joan's childhood. And the pointless conflict between Moranmoor and Brutanna, a war that drags on for generations, bringing death and destruction to two countries, is not unlike the war Joan fought in, known for obvious reasons as the Hundred Years' War.

As much as I already knew about the period from my research for the biographies, I still had a great deal to learn. I read cookbooks with recipes (or “receipts”) from the period. I learned about marriage customs, falconry, the education of a knight, and midwifery. And as I read, the story began to take shape in my mind. Using research to spark ideas and add detail is a large part of the fun of writing historical fiction.

The Worthy Knight isn't in the original Cinderella story. Why did you add it?

I knew from the start that the original ending of
Cinderella
—in which she is rescued from a wretched life of poverty and servitude by marriage to the prince—wouldn't work in these postfeminist times. My heroine would have to earn her happy ending. If she and the prince were going to marry, they would have to come together as equals.

I had already decided that war would be a central theme in the book, and certainly Bella doing something to avert or end the war would be very heroic. But how could that happen? Girls were at the very bottom of the pecking order in fifteenth-century Europe. They didn't go to war. They had no power or influence whatsoever.

The exception, of course, was Joan of Arc, who was not only young, and a girl, but an illiterate peasant besides—yet she changed the course of nations. She had no military training or skills on the battlefield; it was her astonishing courage and unshakable faith that inspired the army of France.

Looking back on it now, the connection between Joan and Bella is patently obvious, as is the origin of the Worthy Knight. And yet, to the best of my remembrance, I was never consciously thinking about Joan of Arc while writing the story. I was looking for a great deed my heroine could do, and the prophecy of the Worthy Knight simply popped into my head. It was in keeping with the superstition of the time, and somehow I liked the idea that Bella would fulfill the prophecy, though I wasn't sure exactly how it would happen. I just kept writing till I got to that point in the story and it revealed itself to me.

Once I knew that Bella, in a transcendent moment, was going to throw herself between the two armies, becoming the Worthy Knight in spirit if not in body and bringing two armies to their knees, I had to go back in the story and arrange things so as to keep the identity of the Worthy Knight a surprise until the end. First, he is always described as a man. Then, as the battle is about to begin, I put Prince Julian in the vanguard of the army. I was hoping to suggest, at least till the end of that chapter, that Julian would be the one to save the day. Later, when the reader is starting to suspect the truth, we see the Knight in the emerald ring, and again he is described as a man. Only when they arrive at the cottage do we learn that it was all an illusion, and that Bella herself was the Worthy Knight. She more than deserves her knighthood and her happy ending.

 

W
RITING A BOOK
can be a messy process—at least it is for me. It would be lovely if I could just sit down at my computer with an idea in my head and begin with chapter one, progressing neatly through the story till I reach the end, at which point I would be finished and ready to send it off to the publisher.

Unfortunately, this never happens.

Instead, I sit down at my computer with an idea in my head (an idea that is half-formed at best) and begin writing. Usually I start at the beginning, since that's the logical place to start when telling a story. (Though with Bella, I started in the middle. To be more precise, I started at the beginning of the middle section, Book II, the story of the stepsisters and stepmother. I started with them because I knew their story already.) But where you start writing isn't really important. It's in the
process
of writing where things begin to happen. No matter what you think you're writing about, no matter how well you believe you know your characters, things are going to change. Ideas will come to you unbidden. Your characters will take on a life of their own. The plot will take a sudden unexpected twist. This is the most exciting and delightful part of writing for me. I can't imagine beginning a novel with a tightly plotted outline, everything already worked out and decided in advance. It wouldn't be any fun.

And so, not having everything planned as I begin, discovering my story along the way, it's only natural that some of what I write will never make it into the book. Either I will later go back and rewrite it, or take it out entirely; or my editor will suggest I make some changes.

I originally included several chapters told from the point of view of King Gilbert the Unfortunate. They were great fun to write since Gilbert is so vain and stupid that he offers much opportunity for humor. Unfortunately, my editor thought the almost slapstick quality of the Gilbert chapters was out of place with the rest of the book, and so we cut them.

In my original opening to
Bella at Midnight
, Maud simply talks to the reader, telling the history of the war and the Prophecy of the Worthy Knight. There is no scene, no dialogue, no action. It feels like a prologue or an introduction. Now, I actually read the introductions to novels, but lots of people don't, and it would be a shame if the reader skipped it and missed the whole background to the story. And so, at my editor's suggestion, I rewrote Chapter One. Now we have a scene in which Maud is called to her sister's bedside and Isabel is born. We still learn about the war and the prophecy, but this time through dialogue.

I agree that this is better, that it pulls the reader into the story more effectively, but I'm still very fond of that original first chapter. Still, it had to go. A writer must learn to “kill her children” when necessary. Those children, of course, are the offspring of my imagination, those wonderful scenes, those clever bits of dialogue I was so pleased with when I wrote them. Only they don't fit with the story and move it forward. They have to go. I do cling to them sometimes to an unreasonable degree. I have been known to keep a separate document on my computer called “material I removed but may want to reuse.” Sadly, I rarely do.