Matter of Craft with Melissa Albert
In this installment of Matter of Craft, Melissa Albert, author of Our Crooked Hearts, chats about pacing, creating tension, writing dual storylines, why she loves to write YA and teen characters, and staying off the internet.
Kailey Brennan DelloRusso: I’m very excited to talk with you today. I’ll admit, I typically don’t gravitate towards YA novels or witch stories, but wow, I couldn’t put this one down.
Melissa Albert: Oh, I'm delighted. Well, thank you so much for saying so.
KBD: So what was the initial spark of inspiration for Our Crooked Hearts?
MA: Well, my first two books are urban fantasy. I would say they're like contemporary urban portal fantasies. And I loved writing that. It’s reflective of the fact that I live in New York City and that I previously lived in Chicago and I wanted to kind of explore my love of urban fantasy. But I was raised in the suburbs and I wanted very much to write a book that was crackling with that noirish sensibility of urban fantasy, but set in a deeply specific suburban place. Like the suburbs, where I grew up. The idea of the empty parking lots and the 7- Eleven. All those kinds of elements of setting that make a suburb rich and kind of Lynchian. So I set out with that in mind. It started really with setting and then as I worked it, everything else just got pulled in from the writing. So the witches and the second thread set in the city. I guess I couldn't really quite the urban fantasy thing at all.
KBD: That's so interesting that it was setting first because the witch element is so pivotal and I kind of assumed that that was the first spark.
MA: It's funny. I was almost resistant to writing a witch book. I love witch books, but I had almost read so many of them that I'd moved on to other kinds of paranormal. So when I realized I was circling around that, it made so much sense to me that it came out of this suburban setting because when I was a teen in the suburbs, I absolutely wanted to be the witch. So it was very hand in hand for me.
KBD: The series you are most known for, The Hazelwood series, is also about a mother-daughter relationship and I’d love to know what you love about exploring this type of relationship in fiction.
MA: Well, what I realized after I finished Our Crooked Hearts was that The Hazelwood was very much a daughter story. In the Night Country, we see a little more of her mother, but in The Hazelwood, it's kind of the impetus for her journey is that her mother has gone missing. So she's barely on the page — a little bit at the beginning, a little bit at the end. So I didn't actually have to write about her too much or consider her in her life too much. And I wrote that when I, myself had not had children yet. I now have a son and in becoming a mom, my perspective shifted. Our Crooked Hearts is a book I could not have written before I became a mother.
And initially, the book was just gonna be Ivy's story. I wasn't sure the shape of it yet, but I had envisioned it being sent entirely in the suburbs. And then as I was writing, I had this scene where she sits down at a kitchen table and her mom tells her a story about her past. I was trying to figure out how that would be important to Ivy's narrative. And as I wrote it, I was just like drafting day after day until this like kitchen table recounting became like a 20,000 word wildebeest. And I realized like, oh, this is half the book. As I wrote, I realized the things that the mother character Dana had done. There are reprehensible things and betrayals in her past that will be hard to stomach no matter what, but I think I wanted to give her a fighting chance and I knew the way to do that would be to give her half the book. So you can actually live through the decisions with her and then judge.
KBD: So in terms of structure, once you found out you wanted to write Dana’s story, did you take a break from Ivy’s? Were you writing them both together?
MA: So I've been really lucky in my writing. Or I guess I set myself up for this luck. In The Hazelwood, it is a book that has some short stories beside it, some fairy tales. So when I got tired of writing the narrative, I could take a break with short stories. The same with The Night Country, the sequel to the Hazelwood. With this book, it was like I could always refresh my head. I definitely wrote them back and forth, but I wasn't doing the weaving yet. So I waited until I had two chunks of manuscript and I looked at their chapter length and their word count and I figured out how the weaving had to happen. And then it was so much trial and error, like so much copying and pasting. I should have figured out Scrivener, that would've made it easier, but I’m bad at the techy stuff. So it was really good fortune and a lot of shuffling and reshuffling. And I had turned in a version where the balance wasn't quite right. Then I had one kind of last drafting push toward the end. I don't remember how exactly it happened, but that final reshuffling made the story click and suddenly it was in the right order. But it just felt like really, really good luck because I did write them separately and I knew that I would have to do the work later.
KBD: As I mentioned, I couldn’t put this book down. The pacing was amazing. I was constantly wondering what would happen next. Can you talk about how you achieved that as well as any tips you have for creating tension in our stories?
MA: So I will say first that I edit a lot. I have this tendency when I write, when I draft the first time through — I love mood. I love building a mood of dread or uncanniness. And I love it as a reader too. But I always find with the first draft, my characters are just like walking around, feeling the vibes and I'm like this isn’t a book yet. So I have to edit a lot.
Then as far as building tension, I like a book where you've got that big plot push where you have the big questions, but then there's all of these little questions kind of accreting over time. I think nesting and seeding little mysteries in the pages for yourself, even if you are not aware of what the answers to those mysteries will be, even if you're gonna edit some of those out later. I like spiking it with little things that caused me to ask myself a question just as a reader and that I know that I'm gonna probably try to answer later in the book. And I think by the end of it, if you have enough of those, it gives this forward push because you have all these questions that are popping up in your head.
KBD: Yeah. I like what you said, that even if you don't know where something is gonna lead when you're drafting to kind of leave it there. I feel like our subconscious knows a lot, you know? And we sometimes overthink it and we're like, I need to know what this means now. Sometimes it might come up later and you didn't realize that you already planted the seed.
MA: Or sometimes you'll have a plot question where you're like, what's the ending and you'll realize the entire massive answer to this big question you're asking yourself is like something you seeded without knowing what you were doing on page 20. And then you're like writing is magic! So I think the richer you make it, the more editing you have to do, but also the more — oh who said it? I think it was Terry Pratchett who said “a writer is the only artist who has to create their own materials.” So I figure the more you put into a first draft, the more materials you have to work with.
KBD: Yeah. Are you an outliner or do you just write and see what happens?
MA: I kind of go for it and see what happens. But as I'm working, I have all these drafts open with like “ideas” “ thing that could happen” “what's the big thing.” All these questions I ask myself and then I'll have bulleted lists of maybe answers or just fragments of conversations or like “what if” ideas. So I have very messy, vaguely categorized notes, drafts kind of running so that as I'm writing the main thing, I've got my out brain of all of these other like little ideas I have. And then I just circle back and start from the beginning to try to smooth it out and figure it out.
KBD: Yeah. That makes sense.
MA: (laughs)
KBD: I guess that's kinda what I've been doing and I feel so disorganized. So it's nice to hear someone else say it too. (laughs)
MA: I hear from writers whose work is brilliant and surprising and rich and they plot ahead of time and I'm like how? That's so time saving. I don't know.
KBD: Yeah. The whole outlining thing— I've tried a few times and it just makes me frustrated. Like I don't find it enjoyable and I'm just thinking it's not my process. So I'm always interested in people who do outline. But I like what you're saying too, like it's fun to have surprises in your own work and be like, wow, writing is magic.
MA: Totally. And I'm sure people who outline do have those surprises in other ways. But I find that without that— back to writing like a reader— without that spur to find out what happens next, I'm like I have to write the scene today. I find out what happens next because I can't sit and think it up. I have to think with my hands.
KBD: What does a typical writing day look like for you?
MA: Well Our Crooked Hearts was really atypical because I started writing it, I wanna say in May of 2020, and we had a little then two year old at home with us. No childcare, no nothing. Stayed healthy though, so that was key. So really my writing during that time was just when he napped and he was a great napper. So I had this usually three hour chunk in a day. Or I could be right when he went to bed. I'm working on my fifth book now, so it's not like I've got this massive back catalog, but this was the most joyful, purely pleasurable writing experience of my life. Because it was such an escape. Writing is my job now. In 2019, I left my day job. So it's been my full-time job since then. So of course, anything that becomes your day job, you're not always running to your desk. But during the writing of Our Crooked Hearts because of everything around it, I was running to my desk and it was this place of joy and excitement and escape.
So there were days, especially writing Dana, when for some reason it just flew and it was such a great experience. But that is not usual. I mean, that was its own thing. My schedule now is that I get my kid off to school. I have coffee. I like to read a few chapters of something. And usually, if I wanna have a good day, I have to be working between like 9:30 and 10. I have to have started working when 10:30 rolls around. If I start to lose that morning kind of energy, I’m just like the day is practically over. (laughs) So it is best for me to really be going before 10. And I rarely work past 3:30. So really like my work time is pretty much between 9:00 and 3:30. And it’s not solid. I'm reading, I'm— God help me— checking the internet for things. I have the forest app where you like plant a tree and you kill it if you get on your phone.
KBD: Oh I’ve never heard of that.
MA: Sometimes those things work. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes I have days that are too internety. But I find that if I'm really stuck or my brain starts to feel fallow, I have to get off the internet in a more serious and rigid way. And that can usually get me over the hump of it. Any kind of block, every time, I've been able to trace it back to internet use.
KBD: It's so funny how we are always compelled to check it and then it just sort of drains you and you're like, my book is more interesting than this. Why am I doing this?
MA: I absolutely agree. It's draining. The antithesis of creativity is the internet. And yet its siren song is so potent. Especially for me, because I've got a book coming out so I'm like what's going on? (laughs) But I’m excited post publication to have more headspace again.
KBD: Did you have to do a lot of research on witchcraft and such? What did that look like for you?
MA: Oh, that's a great question because I was reluctant to do research. I know witchcraft for some people kind of borders on their spirituality and their religious practice. So I strongly felt that if I over-researched, I would end up using and potentially misusing true practices. So when I spoke in kind of a surface level way, I felt comfortable name checking true paths of working as I call it, because it's not just your standard witchcraft that I tried to explore in the book. I wanted it to be like a broader kind of understanding of magic. But when I really went deep into descriptions of how the magic might work, I wanted that to be entirely fantasy, entirely invented, with just like those little jumping off points of things like divination or mirror magic. The things that we are kind of aware of. I wanted it to come from that hazy headspace of having absorbed and devoured so much kind of fantasy in witch content throughout my life without being overly determined by reality.
KBD: As a reader, I definitely enjoyed that because as much as I liked those elements and obviously that drives the story, it's about the characters. So I feel like it definitely could have been bogged down if you had too much or went too in-depth. You stuck a great balance.
MA: I was really worried about that. I think one of the big things that I was trying to avoid was cheesiness. I mean, I love “The Craft” and the cheesiness is my delight when I'm watching that movie, but I wanted to avoid like crackling fingers. I wanted there to be a little more of something real and something genuinely dreadful in it without that cheese factor overwhelming the creep factor.
KBD: And it was definitely creepy. The part when Ivy goes outside because she hears a noise and then cones back to see one of the cookies she left out had a bite in it! I texted my sister and summarize that part and we both decided that might be the scariest thing that would happen to us. (laughs)
MA: That is amazing. There is this Stephen King quote where he talks about the three kinds of horror. And I wanna say the first horror was violence and the second horror was monsters and the third horror, the way he described it was, you come home to your house and it looks exactly the same, but you can tell that every single item inside it has been replaced by an exact replica.
KBD: Oh my God.
MA: And like, oh my God, the hair is lifting on my head even saying it. I love that idea. Like just a space that should be. Or a person, even better. Like that moment in a movie, when you're looking at the smiling character you've just discovered is a horrible betrayer. And your skin crawls. It's like that moment when the familiar and the comforting turns strange. I love that turn in fiction.
KBD: What do you love most about the YA genre or the YA community?
MA: I just love that when you're dealing with teen characters, you’re dealing with firsts. And that's for better or worse. Like there's first kisses and first crushes and there's first betrayals. For me, this is, for whatever reason, really fertile ground. That first discovery of your parents' fallibility and their life before you, like the fact that that was a thing, they were people before you. I don't know why. I just find that to be such an interesting space to work in.
Also as I'm getting older, it's clearer and clearer that it's not like you're a kid and you cross a bridge and you're a grownup. It's like you are absolutely the person you were. I don't feel that much older than I was. The other day I found in my parents' closet, a printout of an IM — now I’m dating myself— a printout of an IM conversation I had with a friend back in the day and I'm reading it and it's like very pretentious, but 1000% was me talking. And I was like, oh, I talk the same way. I think the same way, like not that much has changed. So it allows you to write about people at this really fascinating kind of crux point in their lives, where everything is so fresh. And there is a feeling of— even though my books so far have been quite dark, I would say that's generally how people have characterized them and I do see that— but there's the leavening of hope in YA novels. Almost every YA novel ends on a note where you feel like there are just so many blank pages ahead of the characters. So as long as they're alive, what you've left to them is possibilities still. That sense of hope. I think it would be hard to write a book this dark for an adult audience because there's more closed doors and you would have to be in a different head space entirely to really put your characters through the ringer when they don't have that school of time and potential to work through. I just love that I can write these things, but then leave it with that open door. Not that adults can't have that too, but I think there's something particularly special about that for a teen character.
KBD: My last question for you is do you have any tips for aspiring writers or a piece of advice that keeps you going while writing?
MA: I think that when I started writing seriously, I had this notion that because I read so much, it would be so natural to me. I think in novels all day long, I'm just absorbing them. I'm just gonna sit down and write and it's gonna come out like a novel. And that was not the case. Just having to learn about things like how do you get a character out of their bedroom, down the stairs, and out the front door? Like, do you have to say they walked out of their bedroom. I didn't know. Just all those little kind of technicalities kept tripping me up, not to mention it was just not coming out right. It all sounded terrible.
There is the quote from Ira Glass. I'm gonna misquote him, but it's something like the despair you feel at the badness or the subpar nature of your work as compared to what you're trying to do with it, all it represents is the gap in your good taste. So it's what you're able to do and what your taste defines as good is the gap you have to cross. But it's like only by having taste that is like beyond your grasp, are you going to be a good writer. Like you need that ability to discern that it's not good yet. So it’s a good thing. Just trying to convince yourself that if you can see that it's bad, even if you don't yet know how to fix it, knowing that it's bad is the first step.
This is actually the most downer advice I've ever given now that I'm saying it, but for whatever reason, it's really held me in good stead. Tightening that loop between hope and despair. So it used to be like, if I wrote a bad scene, it would really bring me down and I would step away from it for like a week. Now if I write a bad scene now, all I need is like 15 minutes. I step away and then I start to feel like maybe I'll write it better tomorrow. It’s just like that hope to despair loop, tighten it if you can by having faith that your taste and your hard work will eventually guide you.
Melissa Albert is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of the Hazel Wood series (The Hazel Wood, The Night Country, Tales from the Hinterland) and a former bookseller and YA lit blogger. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and included in the New York Times list of Notable Children’s Books. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
