WHERE IDEAS COME FROM: A “Stanley” Interview

Michele: I’m so curious how this novel came to you in terms of plots and themes and characters.

Sally: It came out of having three teenage boys at the time, being here in San Diego, and having them being really interested in Comic-Con and all things, Marvel, all things comics. They made me watch all the Marvel movies in order. We were really geeking out to it as a family.

It’s really hard to get tickets to Comic-Con in San Diego. There’s a lottery and you have to sign up. It’s a massive pop culture event that takes over the whole town.

The year we got tickets I had happened to break my leg before the event. I fell in a hole while I was walking down a sidewalk. So I was in a wheelchair and I was really too scared to go.

Or maybe it was that actually, it gave me an excuse not to go because I have such sensory overload.

Even spending a few hours socially with people that I love, laughing and talking, I need a lot of downtime to sort of detox from that and to process it in my brain. Because my brain holds onto all the little fragments of conversation, every little aspect of visual stimulus. I have to learn how to offload that a little bit. After an event, it’s hard for me.

So the thought of doing Comic-Con …  ah, sorry, I broke my leg. You guys go on without me.

I stayed home and I was really mad at myself. I thought, well, what if I wrote a story?

Because of course, it’s always from some kind of personal tender spot that the stories grow.

So I guess it came from that little personal tender spot of longing to do this comics trivia, super fun thing and not being able to do it with my kids. So Stanley came into mind.

Michele: So he’s partly based on you.

Sally: Yeah, that feeling. And also the fear of active shooter drills that go on in schools and all that kind of stuff and how they affected my kids growing up. It was really scary for them to have to do those active shooter drills, but also, to be honest, kind of… goofy.

This was because the principal was kind of eccentric. He had this idea to have a secret code phrase for their active shooter drill. He would get on the intercom and say, [deepens her voice] “John Lockdown is in the building.” Incidentally, that was the original title of this book: John Lockdown Is in the Building. [It got changed because an important bookselling outlet objected to it as being too scary a title for middleschoolers to handle. Hm. Well.]

Anyhow, I wanted to work that in. I wanted to work in everything that swirled around a character dealing with fear of all kinds that a 12-year-old kid would feel in a new middle school—active shooter drills that are really scary, longing to do social things or be out in the world but having that be scary, the reality of the world and what that feels like. So that’s what fed into Stanley.

Michele: My favorite part of the whole book is basically the trivia treasure hunt. How exactly did you plan all of that out?

Sally: It was so fun to do. I started with a huge map of San Diego and thinking about where he could feasibly walk or, you know, take a quick bus or trolley ride and get to in the course of six or seven hours. After I found all of the interesting little areas downtown, which is a cool consolidated little downtown, and where he might probably go, then I thought about the trivia.

I had been doing tons of research. I had all of these books, history of comics. Oh my gosh, I read so many comics and all the characters.

I knew that there was a submarine in the maritime museum down in the harbor called the Black Widow. We had just gone to the San Diego Zoo and I had been really impressed with the reptile exhibit and all the really amazing insects. You know, Ant Man.

So it came from looking at the geographical places and then thinking about what might fit in based on all the comics reading that I had done.

The last part was writing the clues and then getting them from place to place.

Michele: Did you test your clues on people?

Sally: [laughs] I tested them on my middle son, who was the main driver of all of this comics trivia.

Michele: One of the things I loved about your book was how you kept bringing in the characters, how they were all important in some way or another to Stanley’s overall plot, but also his personal development. How much of that were you able to plan and how much of it happened in revision?

Sally: So much comes in the revision. The first draft is really a skeleton, putting all of the pieces in place. The approach for every book, I’m finding, is so different, but for this one, it really was laying down the blueprint about where he would go, what the clues were and then painting with a more detailed brush with every revision pass and adding in his increasing stakes, taking a look at how each auxiliary character has to nudge him in a different way out of his comfort zone too. And also what their stories are, what their story arcs are and giving each of them more and more of a personality.

I tend to write in a weird loop way. I’ll write in one day a first draft of a scene. And then the next day I have to revise that scene and finesse it a little before I can write anything new. I really like to feel like everything’s very fluid.

I don’t write out of order. I’ll write from the first word to the last word completely in order, but I have to do that looping of going back and then writing new, going back and then writing new, always referring to what happened before.

For some reason, for me that just keeps the characters way fresher in my mind about their personalities and how they should develop.

Michele: That was the big takeaway that I got from reading your novel, seeing how you layered in the characters and all those different little subplots. It’s so effective at taking advantage of what you’ve already created for yourself.

Sally: Yeah. Just use that world. Really use it to milk the emotions and the relatability and the connections. So that it’s really a more coherent world.

The one idea I love to pass on is this little chart with characters. It’s got the main character in the middle and then I do a clock around that main character with all of the other auxiliary characters. It’s not enough that they each push and pull our main character in some way, but I think they need to push and pull our main character in different ways.

So across from Grandpa, who’s an annoying, grumpy person that kind of bothers Stanley, there’s Doc, a character that will pull him in a different way by nourishing him a little bit. His friend Joon is pushing away and avoiding him. But now he has Liberty, who’s coming at him and challenging him in a different way.

So all the characters surround the main character. It’s not enough that they’re there. I think they have to do something very strategic that an author can create to help pull and push that main character in intentional ways.

Michele: I love that image of a clock with the main character in the middle so you can see the relationships. Did you actually draw this stuff on paper or anything?

Sally: Yeah. Like the spokes of a wheel. How do they line up? And then I started to realize once they did line up that I wanted to balance them somehow too. You want to balance the negative characters with the positives a little, especially for middle grade, you know. You gotta give the kids some hope.

Michele: Stanley’s first-person voice is so fun. Why did you choose first-person, present tense?

Sally: I think it’s a great choice for stories like this one where there’s a lot of action. The stakes are high, but they’re not scary, deep stakes. So to get that light comic feel, first person present is great.

The book that I just finished has a little bit more of a serious subject matter. I chose to go with third person immediate past, because I think it’s going to be easier to have just a little bit of distance from some of the tough stuff that’s going on.

Michele: You write Stanley to be quite vulnerable. He shares what he is feeling in the moment and he doesn’t feel ashamed about that. Was that at all challenging for you as the writer to access that and put yourself on the page in that way?

Sally: No, I think that’s the beauty of it. And I think I love it for that reason. I love it because the whole point of writing it for me is the connection. This is how it’s been for me. Has it been that way for you too? Do you feel these feelings too? Is this something you can relate to?

If we put it out there in the world, if we articulate it, can we talk about it then? Is it going to be demystified? That is what I yearn to do so much.

Michele: Who do you imagine Stanley was talking to?

Sally: You know, that’s always a trick. Does it seem weird? Does it seem too artificial? He’s just talking to himself or confiding to an imaginary friend. You’re having a window into his brain. Hopefully it comes across naturally and doesn’t seem too weird. [laughs]

Michele: No, I didn’t think so at all. I mean, present tense seemed totally appropriate for his story and his voice. I think what can get tricky is first-person past tense. Who is that narrator sharing the story with?

Sally: Yes. I totally agree.

Michele: Do you have anything else that you’d like to share about Stanley?

Sally: I wish I’d had a little bit more time, that I could have finessed the ending. I feel that to some extent about everything I’ve written. I love the quote, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” [generally attributed to Leonard da Vinci]

It’s kind of true, but Stanley has helped some kids. I’ve had letters from them. And that’s the most heartwarming, wonderful thing. If you reach one kid that loves it, then you feel like everything is so worth it.

I’m glad that Stanley’s out there—Stan Lee. That’s why he was named.

Michele: Oh my gosh. I never realized that! [laughs]

Sally: A little extra trivia.

Michele: Your third novel is coming out in 2023.

Sally: It’s called The Fire, the Water and Maudie McGinn. It’s set here in San Diego as well. It’s about a girl who usually lives with her mother and a stepdad that is emotionally and sometimes physically abusive, but spends summers with her actual dad who has learning disabilities himself. He’s a carpenter and he lives in a cabin that he built himself up in the Santa Cruz mountains, but there’s a fire. And that’s the inciting incident of the book.

Michele: And you’re working on your fourth.

Sally: That’s another girl, invisible Isabel. She’s a super, super shy fourth grader. It’s the first time I’m trying younger. And I just made the decision to change from prose to a verse novel.

Michele: It sounds like you’re creating a nice career for yourself as a children’s writer.

Sally: It definitely has ups and downs. For some reason it came easy for me right away. With The Someday Birds I didn’t have trouble finding an agent and getting it published. But then after that two-book deal of Stanley and Someday Birds, I really struggled. My picture book came out in 2018 and I haven’t published anything since, but I’ve written books that have been rejected, massively rejected [laughs], and ones that my agent didn’t even think were worth sending out.

So it’s been a struggle. It isn’t always easy. There’s that part of it too. It’s a roller coaster and you need a lot of fortitude in this business.

Michele: Amen to that.