I like baking. Better than cooking–the results are so much yummier. My kids like baking–so much so that they’ve branched out into “experiment baking”. They take ingredients used for, say, chocolate chip cookies and, without following a recipe, without measuring, they throw the dough together. You can imagine that the results vary: sometimes the cookies turn out deliciously well; sometimes they… well, don’t.
With my writing, it turns out that I’ve been experiment baking. I’ve taken a broad concept (i.e.: the hope of ending up with chocolate chip cookies) and I’ve thrown a bunch of ingredients onto the page, with little thought, less measurement and, fingers crossed, hoped for the best. It seems, though, that understanding what goes into your scene, with the right proportions, is a better recipe for a successful story.
My concept:
What would happen to a girl who grew up without religion, is introduced to it in the most violent way and then has to reconcile what she sees of it with her own experiences? (Ok, ok, that’s the whole book, but work with me… let’s focus on a scene…)
Ingredients:
- a girls’ school in the Second World, abandoned by force
- Lyra learning the slimmest bit about Islam (having learned the slimmest bit about Christianity earlier in the novel).
- Lyra and David are in the clutches of small-time insurgents who are different from our villain, Simon Moto’s terrorists, but they are still dangerous.
- a 12-year-0ld boy named Pir who interacts with Lyra in naive and honest way
The first experiment “batch”:
Lyra questions Pir, about Mohammed, the unseen leader of their group:
“Is Mohammed your brother? Or your father?”
Pir is quick to shake his head. “No, no, no! Mohammed is like our imam.”
“Imam?”
“Well, not really, he is not a real one, but he should be,” Pir is vehement.
“What’s an imam?”
Pir looks at her, uncomprehending. He searches her face, as if to see that she’s joking. “You do not know imam?”
Lyra shakes her head.
“It is our leader. You know at mosque.”
“Mosque?” Lyra feels off kilter, like she’s failing an exam for which she should have studied.
“You do not know mosque?”
There’s a taste of the final product, but you can’t call it a successful experiment…
I tried again, this time focusing on the ingredients and right proportions. For example, if I want to (barely) introduce Lyra to Islam, is the concept of an imam the best way forward? If I want to set up that the girls’ school has been abandoned, I should get to it right away.
Here’s my second “batch”:
“Was this a schoolhouse?” Lyra asks. She steps over broken desks, and splinters of wooden chairs that face the back wall and a curiously intact chalkboard. An English grammar lesson survives in dusty chalk. “It’s”= a contraction of “it is”. Example: It’s a beautiful day. “Its”= a possession. Example: “The dog’s bone… its bone”.
“Oh yes,” Pir answers cheerfully. “It was a girls’ school. But girls are not allowed to be learned, so they bomb it.”
Lyra, startled, stops mid-step. “What do you mean, girls aren’t allowed to be educated?” That’s a ridiculous notion, a sexist, misogynistic attitude that disappeared decades and decades ago. Of course girls deserve the same education as boys. They get the same education, and job opportunities and pay…
…In the First World, Lyra realizes.
“Girls don’t go to school here?” she asks.
“Not anymore,” he says proudly. But it is a pride that seems learned, as if he is repeating, by rote memory, what he has been told.
“Why?” Lyra asks, still dumbfounded.
Pir casts her a strange sideways glance, as if she should already know something so obvious.
“Because Allah says so.”
“Who is Allah? Mohammed’s friend?” Lyra wants to get as much information as she can out of this boy.
Now Pir goggles at Lyra as if she has two heads, as if she breathes fire
“You do not know Allah?”
Lyra, now worried about the dangers of her own ignorance, shakes her head. She reaches into her memory, afraid she’s forgotten something useful that Annie or David may have told her. She’s learned about Prince Sol and Simon Moto, of course, and the King, but is Allah another insurgent? Is he a threat like Moto?
“You do not know Allah, God?” Pir stands, still dumbfounded.
There’s work to be done on this, maybe another batch or three. Maybe I don’t yet have the right proportions (since there is no recipe to follow, no matter how many “how-to” books I’ve read), but at least I feel I’m no longer squeezing my eyes shut (metaphorically–gotta see to type) and hoping it will all turn out all right.
It will turn out all right in the end, despite (or because of ) my detours and experiments. I’m convinced of this because, well, my chocolate chip cookies are to die for. 🙂