For years, I lived inside Mackenna Duff’s head. She’s my main character from my first YA novel. I knew all about her love of cooking and all this Parisian, her strained relationship with her dad, and her close connection with her twin brother Ross.
Turns out my readers never would have learned all that, had I submitted the draft I thought was finished. Thankfully, I had a writer friend read it. “Not enough backstory,” he said. He explained it was as if Mackenna had sprung to life as a 17-year-old high school senior without a past. “Give us a hint of what her life was like before your story begins.”
I learned from my earlier mistakes and tried hard to incorporate details of Lyra’s pre-explosion life into the narrative of her surreal present.
For example, when Lyra and David travel by car to Rahma, the bad guy’s town, I have her reflect on family road trips:
They ease into the last part of their drive. It’s a regular road trip now, one that, despite the difference in country, reminds Lyra of her own family drives. They were long but Lyra rarely felt frustrated; she loved that her family, all four of them, were trapped together in a car, her mom unable to fly off to rehearsal or her dad stay at work late or Ivy to accept a last-minute babysitting job. They’d play word games and brain teasers and, Lyra’s favorite, “Name-that-Tune.” Her mom would whistle or hum a portion of a song; Lyra, Ivy and her dad would try to guess in the least number of notes. Charlotte’s repertoire was vast, a formidable challenge to overcome, and Ivy and John were formidable challengers, but more often than not, Lyra won. Her pinnacle of success was a one-note victory when she correctly guessed it to be an obscure jazz tune.
“No way!” Ivy protested. “Mom, you’re siding with Lyra. You would have said yes to anything she guessed.”
Lyra knew in no uncertain terms how wrong Ivy was. Her mom, a woman used to being the best at everything and used to getting her own way, would never stoop to give Lyra the edge.
It tells something of Lyra’s family dynamic, especially her relationship with her mom, so I thought it fit well.
Until I started revising it.
That’s when I realized I wanted to focus less on Lyra’s family and more on her friends. There’s more to Lyra’s life than an insular family, so this seemed to be a good opportunity to expand on her life.
The weight of [David and Lyra’s] journey lifts considerably as they return to the highway. Lyra sips her water, only now aware of her thirst and grateful she can quench it. David munches happily on his chips and the playful crunch of his junk food lightens the mood in the car. For a moment, Lyra pretends she is on a jaunty road trip with a cheerful friend she’s known for ages. For a moment, she shoves aside the knowledge that she’s in the Second World—and in a dangerous part of it—and she ignores the fact that she is with a man whose every guiding principle is an anathema to her own. For a moment, she imagines she is on the journey she and Jonah and Emily dreamed up earlier this spring.
“After graduation, we go!” Jonah bounded into Lyra’s bedroom one day last month when she and Emily were cramming for the next day’s biology test. He picked up Lyra’s binder and flung it into the air; the spirals snapped open and pages of scribbled notes fluttered about them like snow.
“Jonah!” Lyra cried, scavenging her papers. Emily laughed and helped Lyra sort out her notes.
“Forget biology and chemistry and information vegetable, animal and mineral,” Jonah cried. He flopped on the floor beside them, rolling onto Lyra’s newly-restored notebook.
“Jonah, I’m serious,” Lyra said, a line she now thinks, with a pang, she said too often.
“So am I,” Jonah insisted and Lyra didn’t understand how much he meant it. “We hit the road, Jack, and put the pedal to the metal, and live where the rubber meets the road. You and you,” he pointed to each girl with a theatrical wave of his index finger, “and me and your boyfriend, Emily, we blow this popsicle stand.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend, you twerp,” Emily laughed.
“All the better,” Jonah sprang up, an unraveling bundle of uncontained energy. “We find you one on the way!”
“Where, pray tell, will we go?” Lyra asked. She knew such a trip would never happen, knew her relationship with Jonah would not last the summer, but the fantasy of ditching their real lives for the great beyond was, at that time, refreshingly appealing.
I like this peek into Lyra’s old life. It shows her focus (school) and her friends (Emily and Jonah). It also shows how easy it was for her to miss another sign that Jonah was dissatisfied with life as they knew it.
I’m in the middle of revising this scene; I might still end up changing it, but for now, I think I’m moving forward.
So I’d better get back it it, because both Lyra and I still have miles to go. 🙂