Writer Unboxed

Sarah Micklem is one of the rising new stars of the literary fantasy genre. Her 2004 debut novel, FIRETHORN, put her at the top of many “best of” lists, including my own. Last week we brought you part one of our interview with Sarah, and we are delighted to bring you part two to enjoy over the long holiday weekend.

Q: In FIRETHORN, you explore varying levels of violence and exploitation against women, some subtle, some overt. What draws you to those themes?

SM: I’ve had a hard time answering this question, and tried about five different ways. Is it a question about my own psychology? Does it call for a political statement? I’ve been lucky enough to live a peaceable life so far, and I don’t write about violence from personal experience. But I watch TV and read the papers. It’s not like all these issues are tucked away inaccessibly in the historical past, long ago and far away. It’s all here and now.

So the short answer is a question: how could I leave out those themes? Exploitation is so widespread, so much a part of daily life for so many people, so integral to the machinery of many societies. Violence and the threat of violence sustain exploitative hierarchies, and also overturn them. So I tried to look at violence—whether beating a servant or going to war—as a structural part of Firethorn’s society rather than an eruption of primal force from outside of it. How do people codify violence? What happens when the rules are bent or broken? These things vary in a fascinating way from culture to culture.

The big framework of the book is a warrior society with a two-caste system. I’m looking at this society through a one-inch window (to repurpose a phrase from Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird): the viewpoint of the protagonist, Firethorn. She is a low-caste female servant. She can’t take up a sword to defend herself when she’s attacked, she wouldn’t have a chance. This is one obvious reason she hitches herself to a warrior; as Sire Galan’s ‘sheath’ or camp follower, she is under his protection, which means the only person allowed to commit violence against her is Galan. This is a choice many women have had to make.

Violence is often considered as a male property—property as in ownership of the means of committing violence, and property as in intrinsic propensity to be violent. My parents were Quakers for a time, avowed pacifists, and occasionally a man would ask my father, “What would you do if a stranger broke into your house and tried to rape your wife?” No one asked my mother what she would do if a stranger broke in. The underlying assumptions are that a woman can’t possibly defend herself, and that she is owned by her man. An assault on her is an insult to him. Rivalries between men take place on the battleground of a woman’s body. Firethorn becomes such a battleground too, though to tell the truth I wasn’t thinking explicitly in those terms when writing those scenes. Instead I discovered that threats made by characters many pages ago were not rhetorical. Rather than going back and changing the dialogue, I decided to see what the consequences would be if the threats were carried out.

One reviewer of my book classified Firethorn as part of a trend where authors used “rape, free of its psychological or physiological consequences, as a plot device to draw sympathy to or to steel a female character.” He gave me a chance to respond, which I did at some length. I won’t reprise it here except to say I don’t think of rape as a gratuitous plot device, but as something that happens to many people, especially powerless women, especially in times of war. It is difficult to write about well, to be sure. Does that mean we should avoid the subject altogether? (See his review and my comments at http://www.sfsite.com/12a/ft189.htm

I don’t think of Firethorn as an emblem of victimhood, or as a character immune to the violence done to her. She resists by enduring. She has fortitude. She holds onto a secret and possibly deluded sense of her own worth, and she resorts to magic to get her way. Her relationship with Galan is supposed to be a simple one of servant and master, but there’s nothing simple about it. He gives her an inch, she takes a mile. When she uses violence herself, it’s covert. This is the path of most resistance: silent, invisible to history.

Q: You’ve also achieved a high level of authenticity with regard to the natural world: plants, herbs, and their effects, far beyond the usual surface level of research. How much research should a writer engage in? When is it ok to say “enough”?

SM: I’m glad it seems authentic. Some of that herb lore is from books, and some, I confess, is made up. I’d like to know how to live off the land like my hero Euell Gibbons (Stalking the Wild Asparagus), so I gave that ability to Firethorn. I’d probably starve, even if I had all my books with me.

As an example of the mixture of real and fake, dwale is based on a real plant, deadly nightshade, but I took liberties with its effects. In this wonderful herbal I have by Mrs. Grieve, she gives some of its other names: belladonna, devil’s cherries, naughty man’s cherries, divale, dwayberry. I used dwale because I loved the sound of it—it was the name used in Chaucer’s day. Nightshade is a poison with some hallucinogenic properties. The hallucinations in my story were suggested by a very weird book of homeopathy I found, a chart of drugs and symptoms, printed in India in 1979. Under Belladonna: Delusions, imagination, I found: “Imagines ghosts, hideous face, insects, black dogs, the gallows, in delirium. Illusions; of the senses; with fixed ideas; talks with the dead; believes he is being persecuted; that his ankles are bound, much > by forcibly uncrossing ankles. Visions; frightful; fiery, shining; fantastic, even when closing eyes.” (All punctuation reproduced faithfully.) Firethorn inhales nightshade smoke as part of a cure—this was not in the reference books. I have no idea what the actual effects might be. Please don’t try it.

Research is a pleasure whether or not it is strictly necessary. I love plants and find them beautiful, and always wanted to know the names of trees—gingko, maple, ash, elm—as if naming gave me some sort of power. I had a wonderful experience recently, working on Wildfire. Firethorn has to find some sort of herb that would be good for a sick woman, and I was going through my books, looking for something useful. I came upon the herb Celandine, from Chelidon, which is greek for swallow. I loved the etymology, and the story that went with it, that swallows dropped juice from the plant into the eyes of their young so they could see. I looked it up in various books, and one had a very good drawing of the plant. Then I took a walk by the river, and there it was, Celandine, absolutely recognizable. I would not have seen it the day before. It was total serendipity that Firethorn is suffering from a cataract in Book II and Celandine juice was supposed to be able to cure eye problems. So of course I had to use it.

There’s no end to the research, but I do have to write as well. I heard a writer on a panel say he doesn’t allow himself to look up anything in the morning, during his writing time; he saves all his questions for research in the afternoon. I wish I could remember his name. I’d give him credit for his excellent advice, which I ought to follow.

Research can serve as a distraction. But there are times it is absolutely necessary for me to delve into a subject so I feel I know enough to go on. It’s still shallow knowledge; I read widely, not exhaustively. Fantasy is the perfect genre for a generalist. If I wrote historical fiction I’d be worrying about every buckle, or when the buckle was invented.

Q: Do you prefer to let the character drive the plot or let the plot suggest the character? Do you feel that getting the world right is crucial to the story itself? Does it inform characterization, plot choices, etc.? Or do you get the plot and character down first, then decide what world fits your story? (classic chicken/egg question). What’s your writing process? Do you prefer to plot in detail before you begin writing, or let the story evolve? You’ve created a complex mythology for your world. What’s your approach to world-building?

SM: I’ve grouped these questions, because to me they are related. I started with a character, and I made simple rules for her society (simple compared to reality, that is), such as a two-caste system. Then I had to figure out the implications of those starting conditions, and I had to elaborate them. As I said before, world-building was my hobby before I started writing, but I made up many details and characters later, as I needed them. Now I’m building the world as I write, because Firethorn travels to new countries and has to adapt to new cultures. Which meant I had to invent them. Not from scratch—none of us can invent from scratch—but with the same magpie methods I used before.

The culture, characters, and plot are in some sort of feedback loop. When it gets to the nitty-gritty I have to write scene by scene; the needs of the plot lead me to create a certain kind of setting, and the setting influences what the characters do, which changes the plot, etc. I try to keep in mind that just because a society has a law, it doesn’t mean that everyone obeys it. I’m looking at how people get what they want by going around and between the rules, in the shady areas, even if all they want is a little bit of joy.

I don’t plan out everything in advance. Sometimes this means going back and making lots of changes, if I come up with a good idea on page 300 that has to be woven in. Occasionally disparate events or details littered throughout the story begin to connect and fit together quite suddenly. I’m pushing these little pieces around and a new configuration takes shape that seems right and necessary. It feels exactly like fate, if I believed in Fate, which I don’t. Though Firethorn does.

In the first book I was surprised by Sire Galan’s bet. I imagined him talking to Sire Alcoba almost as if I could hear it, which hasn’t happened before or since. As a novice writer, I thought it would be a good idea to see where that led, and their wager hijacked the plot. With this second book, I had another idea that took me by surprise, and it has made writing much more difficult and yet seemed absolutely necessary to pursue.

From the beginning, I’ve had a certain ending in mind for Firethorn’s tale. I didn’t know it was going to be a trilogy at first, I thought I could get there in one book. Now I’m not sure I’ll get there at all. I may get somewhere else instead.

Click below for Part Three of our interview with Sarah!

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She has written two novels under the pseudonym Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter--both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President's teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins.