The Ink Splat is our monthly activity letter filled with inspiration sparking challenges and resources guaranteed to inspire your creativity. Featured in this Ink Splat is Claire M Caterer, author of The Key & The Flame. Submit a response to the writing challenge for a chance to be published online! What are you waiting for?
The Challenge: Gateways
Magical worlds are just beyond ordinary gateways. A rabbit hole leads to Wonderland. A wardrobe leads to Narnia. Wherever you are right now, look around and pick an ordinary object. Describe the object. Imagine this object is a gateway to a magical place. What fantastical world does it lead to?
Submit your response for a chance to be published online HERE.
The Key & The Flame by Claire M Caterer
Eleven-year-old Holly Shepard longs for adventure, some escape from her humdrum life. That is precisely what she gets when she is given an old iron key that unlocks a door—in a tree.
Holly crosses the threshold into a stunning and magical medieval world, Anglielle. And as she does so, something unlocks within Holly: a primal, powerful magic. Holly is joined on her journey by two tagalongs—her younger brother Ben, and Everett, an English boy who hungers after Holly’s newfound magic and carries a few secrets of his own. When Ben and Everett are sentenced to death by the royals, whose fear of magic has fueled a violent, systemic slaughter of all enchanted creatures, Holly must save them and find a way back home. But will she be able to muster the courage and rise above her ordinary past to become an extraordinary hero?
An interview with author, Claire M Caterer
1. There are so many great fantasy stories with incredible worlds. Did you draw inspiration from any particular stories?
I’ve always been attracted to what are called “gateway fantasies”—stories in which an ordinary person in our own world finds a doorway or travels in a machine to a magical world. Books like The Wonderful Wizard of OZ, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and of course, The Chronicles of Narnia, fit this pattern. The Narnia books were my very favorites growing up. I also love stories by Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling. I love the idea that fantastical worlds are hiding around a corner or behind a bookcase.
2. The Key & the Flame is the first in a series. Did you know you were going to write a series when you first began? If so, how did it affect your writing?
When I initially thought of the idea, I didn’t intend it to be a series, but once I started to map out the story, it was clear I would need more than one book to tell it. I stepped back then and really thought about how the story would play out over five books, each of which would focus around a particular mystical element (fire, water, earth, air, and aether). I took time to write out a detailed history of the fantasy world and to think of how the characters would evolve over time. Because of all that preparation, the first book took quite awhile to write. And I was terribly nervous that I would end up breaking my own plot rules before the series was done!
3. In Inklings classes, we talk about doorways into stories, and how some authors like to start with character, others with setting, others with plot ideas, and others with theme. How do story ideas start for you? How did the idea for The Key and the Flame start?
Some of my stories start with a character. A very strong person will assert herself in my imagination, and the story just builds around her and her choices. But The Key & the Flame started with the idea and setting together. Forests to me are mystical places, whether they’re here on Earth or in some alternate world. Trees are among the oldest living things in our world. The idea that a tree would exist as a bridge across time made sense to me. Then the idea shifted, and I thought that a tree could act as a bridge or portal to another, alternate world entirely. Holly, my main character, grew very quickly out of that idea, because she is a girl who loves the natural world.
4. The Key and the Flame is told through multiple points of view. Some young writers struggle to find each character’s unique voice. How did you overcome this challenge?
That’s definitely the challenge in writing with multiple points of view, but I think it’s worth experimenting with. In my case, it helped that my characters are so distinct: Holly is an American girl; Everett is a British boy. Their speech cadence is different, their outlook is different, their life experiences are different. I tried very hard to imagine myself as Everett when writing his chapters, and as Holly when I wrote her chapters. In a way, it’s harder when the characters are too similar. Everett is not exactly like Ben, Holly’s brother, but they’re both boys of similar ages, and they share a lot of scenes in the book. So in their scenes, I used a highlighter to mark Everett’s dialogue in one color and Ben’s in another. Then I read through just Everett’s lines and made sure they sounded consistent with his character, and I did the same with Ben’s. I was especially careful to do this when writing a scene with five or six characters. Each one has to have a distinct voice.
5. What drew you to choose modern and medieval England as your settings?
The British Isles work very well for gateway fantasies because so many of our myths and legends come from that place. Our visions of fairy folk are rooted in Celtic stories, and the legends of King Arthur have inspired many sword-and-sorcery tales. In the book, Everett talks about history being heavy there—a lot of layers on top of one another. That makes slipping between times and places a bit easier.
6. Did you do a lot of research about knights and the Middle Ages?
I did, but a lot of what I read didn’t make it into the story, and I felt free to change and adapt what I’d learned as well. Because Anglielle is an invented world, styles of dress or language aren’t exactly like ours, so I certainly wouldn’t use my book as a historical reference! However, I did use my research to flavor the book and to get an idea of what life in that time period was like.
7. What advice would you give young writers who want to write a fantasy story?
First of all, read a lot of fantasy stories. Read as many as you can get your hands on, both classic and contemporary fantasy. See what writers before you have done and how they’ve handled issues like world building, characterization, action scenes, and magic. You’ll learn both what works well and what’s been done so much that it’s clichéd and boring.You’ll also need to do a lot of dreaming. I’m serious about this. You have to be open to the unusual and the fantastical. Even if you’re just riding in the car on the way to your piano lesson, be thinking of what could happen: What if the car had a mind of its own and sprouted wings, like in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Ian Fleming)? What if the car were a time machine, like in Back to the Future (a film by Robert Zemeckis)? Or what if it got angry and attacked you, like in Christine (Stephen King)? Which superpowers would you love to have, and which ones would seem cool to start with but turn out to be troublesome later on? Let your imagination run wild.
Finally, you’ll need to do a lot of writing. Fantasy writing is fun because it seems like the sky’s the limit—except that it’s not. There are limits and rules, even if they’re of your own making. Harry Potter had to learn magic bit by bit, and it didn’t solve all of his problems. In fact, often magic causes more problems than it solves. Write as much as you possibly can, and then rewrite. That’s when the best writing happens.
Thank you, Claire.
Visit the author’s website.
Buy The Key & The Flame here.
