Frances O'Roark Dowell is the author of The Class, a new middle grade novel for kids. It focuses on the members of a sixth-grade class. Her many other books include Dovey Coe and Trouble the Water.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Class, and for
the various kids in the story?
A: I was thinking about how fun it would be to tell a story
from the point of view of every student in a sixth-grade class—to get the big
picture by painting a lot of small pictures.
I thought maybe I could do it through linked stories, and
that’s essentially what the first draft was—the stories were chronological, and
there were events that were commented upon by more than one character, but
there wasn’t an overarching narrative thread that pulled the stories together
into a novel.
My editor, Caitlyn Dlouhy, felt it would be better to
connect the stories more closely—which is to say, she wanted an actual plot.
As for the various kids in the story, I wanted to look at
people who fit various stereotypes--the mean girl, the jock, the popular
jokester, the hyperactive boy, etc.--and find the real people inside of them.
There are also characters in The Class who are harder to peg, the average kids
who aren't known particularly for one thing or another.
I wanted to give each of them a story that showed them to be
unique and interesting individuals--as we all are, of course, even when others
don't see what's especially special about us.
Q: You tell the story from each sixth grader's perspective.
Did you plot it out before you started writing, or did you change it around as
you wrote?
A: I never plot anything before I start writing—I find I
lose interest if I know where the story is going. As a result, I do lots and
lots of drafts because it takes me a while to figure out how to get a
story right.
Most of the characters stayed more or less the same
throughout the many drafts of The Class, but I kept rebuilding and refining the
plot.
Q: The book takes place over one month. How did you decide
on that time frame?
A: I’m asking a lot of younger readers by presenting them
with a new character every time they start a new chapter. The story has to have
some sense of urgency to it to help readers stay invested in it, which means
things need to unfold at a faster pace.
If I’d stretched the story over a period of several months,
I’m not sure it would have worked.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: That you can’t tell much about people’s insides by
looking at their outsides. Some of the kids in the class roll their eyes at
Becca, for instance, because she’s such a goody-goody.
But the reader eventually learns why Becca works so hard to
be a teacher’s pet, and they come to understand some of the reasons Matt is a
bully and Henry's so irritating.
I also think The Class is a story about how you
can build community among pretty different people. I like how the kids come
together to solve the Sam mystery and find a way to keep Mrs. Herrera from
getting fired. They have different skills and strengths that they lend to the
cause.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m putting the final touches on a nonfiction book for
young writers—it’s called How to Build a Story, and it’s essentially a
short story workshop in book.
I teach a lot of writing workshops, and I find that kids are
great at coming up with ideas for stories, and they’re good at starting
stories, but a lot of them lose steam after a few pages, mostly because the
middle of a story is the hardest part to write.
How to Build a Story takes the writer from the very
beginning of the process all the way to the bitter (and not so bitter) end.
I've been using the method outlined in the book for a couple of years now, and
it really does seem to work!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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