{"id":26753,"date":"2015-05-07T06:56:33","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T10:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=26753"},"modified":"2015-05-07T06:56:33","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T10:56:33","slug":"gwenda-bond-five-things-i-learned-writing-lois-lane-fallout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2015\/05\/07\/gwenda-bond-five-things-i-learned-writing-lois-lane-fallout\/","title":{"rendered":"Gwenda Bond: Five Things I Learned Writing Lois Lane: Fallout"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lois Lane is starting a new life in Metropolis. An Army brat, Lois has lived all over\u2014and seen all kinds of things. (Some of them defy explanation, like the near-disaster she witnessed in Kansas in the middle of one night.) But now her family is putting down roots in the big city, and Lois is determined to fit in. Stay quiet. Fly straight.<\/p>\n

As soon as she steps into her new high school, though, she can see it won\u2019t be that easy. A\u00a0group known as the Warheads is making life miserable for another girl at school. They\u2019re messing with her mind, somehow, via the high-tech immersive videogame they all play. Not cool. Armed with her wit and her new snazzy job as a reporter, Lois has her sights set on solving this mystery. But sometimes it\u2019s all a bit much. Thank goodness for her maybe-more-than-a friend, a guy she knows only by his screenname, SmallvilleGuy\u2026<\/p>\n

How to channel my inner Lois Lane.<\/h2>\n

The first question everyone asks me about this book is how it came into being. Was it my idea or theirs? How did I score such a sweet gig? (I always want to say: Believe me, I don\u2019t know what they were thinking either! I\u2019m just grateful.) The answer is that I was approached via my agent about whether I was interested in writing Lois Lane as a teenage reporter. I asked if I\u2019d have freedom to flesh out the concept, and the answer was yes. So my answer was YES PLEASE.<\/p>\n

With a side helping of terror and secret worries that I wouldn\u2019t be able to pull it off. Because, truth is, I adore Lois Lane (and Superman) and always have. This was a dream project, dropping from the sky into my lap at the exact perfect moment when I could say yes and get started right away. But . . . what if I screwed it up? Well, you can\u2019t be so afraid to screw up that you aren\u2019t willing to try.<\/p>\n

I had to channel my inner Lois and be determined to do my best, while developing the superpower of shutting out the worries about being the person who screwed up a showcase for one of the greatest characters ever created, one known around the entire world. I think, though, that this lesson is applicable beyond this specific book\u2014at least, I plan to treat it that way. If we\u2019re not challenging ourselves to do something a little or a lot terrifying as writers, where failure is possible and has consequences, then we probably should be making bolder choices. That mix of terror and determination is where good writing lives.<\/p>\n

Exploit the strengths of your chosen form and genre.<\/h2>\n

Lois is obviously one of the best known characters in pop culture, period, the end\u2014and for good reason. Since her first appearance in Action Comics #1 in 1938 (also Superman\u2019s first appearance), she has been an inspiration for so many of us. She\u2019s a working woman, a truth-seeking journalist willing to do anything to get the story. And her boyfriend has traditionally been pretty interesting too. \ud83d\ude09 Lois Lane is probably one of the few characters in the world that we could all list off traits for and hit most of the same ones: stubborn, loyal, tough, witty, driven. She\u2019s a hero. A superhero, even though her lone superpowers are her personality, her pen, and commitment to justice.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s had many, many incarnations. Some wonderful, some . . . er . . . less so. But one of the things that makes a character an icon is the ability to survive good and <\/i>bad portrayals.<\/p>\n

What I wanted was to truly use the thing that novels provide that other forms of storytelling can\u2019t in quite the same way: a close-up of the character\u2019s interior life. Getting the balance of Lois\u2019s tough exterior and more vulnerable interior right was challenging, and my editor helped me with that lots, but it was key in hopefully making my teenage Lois feel not just like the versions who\u2019ve come before (though I did want to reflect them), but like my <\/i>Lois too. This is Lois becoming who she is and finding her place in the world, something young adult fiction is uniquely poised to portray.<\/p>\n

My process is still changing.<\/h2>\n

Never in a million years would I have thought myself capable of writing as detailed an outline as I did up front for this book, and\u2014largely\u2014sticking to it. But it\u2019s what was required to make sure everyone understood my concept of the book and its world and characters, as well as how the story would unfold, and so I did. And it came remarkably fast.<\/p>\n

The lesson I learned here is that sometimes by deciding we know exactly what we\u2019re capable of as writers and defining too strictly what our processes are we may box ourselves into the same old thing when a new approach is required. I\u2019m much more open to considering different methods of preliminary work on a story now, or even if I hit a wall during the writing. Outlining in depth doesn\u2019t require that I stick to it devotedly if a better idea comes up in the writing itself\u2014but it did make me stop and question. Am I making a change that\u2019s actually better or just different?<\/p>\n

If I don\u2019t enjoy living in the world of the story or the point-of-view character\u2019s head, what are the odds the reader will?<\/h2>\n

This isn\u2019t a likeability thing at all, but it is an experience of the story thing. I know for some writers, having their work described as fun makes them want to run screaming from the room. But I actually want my books to show the reader a good time, particularly this one. To me, fun isn\u2019t antithetical to deeper layers of meaning or characterization. The two can go hand in hand.<\/p>\n

Lois fans are the best.<\/h2>\n

This speaks for itself, but the dedication and smarts and support of the Lois Lane fans out there since the book was announced up through today (and I\u2019m guessing tomorrow and the day after that!) is something\u2014like this project\u2014I could never have known to dream for. And something, like this project, for which I\u2019m tremendously grateful.<\/p>\n

And I hope if you aren\u2019t a Lois Lane fan already, Fallout will make you one. Join us.<\/p>\n

Bio:<\/b> Gwenda Bond is the author of the young adult novels\u00a0Lois Lane: Fallout<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Girl on a Wire<\/i>, among others. She has also written for Publishers Weekly, <\/i>the Los Angeles Times, <\/i>and the Washington Post<\/i>, among other publications.<\/i> She has an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, author Christopher Rowe, and their menagerie.<\/p>\n

Gwenda Bond: Website<\/a><\/span> | Twitter<\/a><\/span> | Tumblr<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Lois Lane: Fallout: Amazon<\/a><\/span> | Barnes & Noble<\/a><\/span> | Indiebound<\/a><\/span> | Powells<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lois Lane is starting a new life in Metropolis. An Army brat, Lois has lived all over\u2014and seen all kinds of things. (Some of them defy explanation, like the near-disaster she witnessed in Kansas in the middle of one night.) But now her family is putting down roots in the big city, and Lois is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-26753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-6Xv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26754,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26753\/revisions\/26754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}