Red Kayak
Red Kayak
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Priscilla Cummings on Red Kayak
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.
Why she wrote it
Real life, not darknessCummings spent thirteen years as a newspaper reporter before turning to fiction, and that career trained her to see the material other writers avoid as simply the material of ordinary life. When an interviewer characterized her subjects as dark, she rejected the label outright.
I have to disagree with your premise that these are ‘dark subjects.’ I call it real life.
deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com, “Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb: Q&A with children’s author Priscilla Cummings”Across her novels, the emotional trigger that gets a book started is consistent. She names it without qualification.
Most of these stories were inspired by something in real life that moved me emotionally.
For Red Kayak, that emotional charge runs through a boy’s complicity in a child’s death and the years of guilt that follow. The synthesis notes no single named event that sparked this particular book, but the pattern she describes is visible in every choice the novel makes.
Once she decided to write about moral extremity for young readers, she needed a rationale for putting that weight on a young audience. She found it in what fiction can offer that real experience cannot.
Why not, in the safety of a book, allow young people to explore how they might endure and triumph over these challenges?
deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com, “Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb: Q&A with children’s author Priscilla Cummings”How she wrote it
Three years, one rewrite at a timeThe timeline of Red Kayak’s composition is something Cummings tracks precisely. She separates the drafting from the revision from the research, and the total is longer than many readers would expect of a book aimed at middle-grade readers.
I know for a fact that it took me eight months to write the first draft of my novel, RED KAYAK, and that I spent the next year rewriting it to make it a good book. That does not include all the research I did for the book, which won the Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award in 2008. In all, the novel was three years in the making.
Research for Red Kayak required her to inhabit worlds the book depends on: CPR saves a life in the plot; watermen define the community’s economy and identity. Her account of how she researches any book suggests the range of that preparation.
Research may involve reading books, or going online to research certain topics. It might involve learning a new skill such as CPR, or driving a tractor trailer rig. It could mean visiting special places like a burn unit or a homeless shelter. It might involve talking to people such as doctors, nurses, hunters, teachers, paramedics, watermen, truck drivers, police officers, fire fighters, judges, blind and deaf teenagers, kids in middle school or boys at a juvenile detention center.
The habit of observation she built as a reporter became the foundation of her fiction writing. She describes it as a practice, not a talent: something she learned to do by necessity and then carried into a different form.
As a newspaper reporter for ten years, I learned that standing back to watch and listen often gave me as much compelling information as asking a question or demanding an answer. As an author, I have discovered that standing back to watch and listen gives me many of the valuable details that bring a character to life and drive a story forward.
The revision process, by her own account, does not taper off after a first or second pass. She describes it with a typographical emphasis that suggests she is not speaking loosely about the difficulty.
When I’m writing - and rewriting - AND REWRITING -- I love the challenge of creating believable characters and creating a story that maintains my readers’ interest with the right amount of tension and suspense.
What she wants us to sit with
Guilt that demands an answerThe goal she names most clearly is not emotional impact but identification: getting readers close enough to Brady, the protagonist, that the question he faces becomes theirs. She describes the method as a craft problem, not a thematic one.
The way to do this, I believe, is to create characters that are believable. That way, my readers not only enjoy a gripping story, but they can put themselves in the shoes of my characters and experience the story first hand questioning how they themselves might respond in such a situation.
deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com, “Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb: Q&A with children’s author Priscilla Cummings”After Red Kayak was published, readers did not let the characters go. The volume and specificity of what they kept asking her in school visits and letters eventually changed what she had planned to do next.
When I finished writing Red Kayak I had no intention of carrying the story forward with sequels or companion books. But over the years, after visits to middle schools throughout the country and many emails and letters from readers asking me what happened to the three boys, I decided to go back to them.
deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com, “Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb: Q&A with children’s author Priscilla Cummings”When she returned to the story for the sequel, the character she chose to center reveals what she sees as the deepest unfinished moral business of Red Kayak. Digger, a minor character in the original, was the one who drilled the holes in the kayak that caused the drowning.
I focused on Digger because, after all, he was the instigator of a disastrous prank. Was he sorry? How was he handling the guilt? I felt he had the most issues and needed the most help.
deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com, “Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb: Q&A with children’s author Priscilla Cummings”The question she asks about Digger is the same question Red Kayak asks about Brady, and about any reader who has ever stayed silent when speaking up might have changed something. She wanted the book to leave that question open long enough to be uncomfortable.