What story to write? Rebecca and Tia
Coming up with an idea for a book isn’t easy. You’re going to spend a long time with it for the manuscript module — even longer if it attracts the eye of a publisher!
So . . . is it the book you’ve always wanted to write? A character who won’t leave you alone? A message you believe a child needs to read?
In the second of a series of posts from the 2023 cohort, Rebecca and Tia tell us how they decided on their stories.
Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash
“It’s only sitting down to write this blog that I’ve realised the very first workshop piece I wrote on the MA was what became my manuscript. That feels about right for a story that has surprised me at every twist and turn so far, but which – even when I’ve wanted to delete the whole thing – has kept me coming back. I had the shadow of a character, Grey, who’d been in my mind for a while, and the idea of writing something set in the Isles of Scilly, a place I’d loved as a child. What began as a historical novel morphed into a timeslip story, with a contemporary character, Coral, becoming my second protagonist. Since then, it’s a book that’s led me to create (and ditch) treasure hunts and clues, draw maps, chart tides, scream with frustration at how to make timeslips make sense, and delve into my own memories and experiences. None of which I had imagined when I nervously shared my work that first time.”
Rebecca Frank’s u
pper middlegrade historical time slip, Tideslip, is set on the
Isles of Scilly. In 1855, Grey (11) is a treasure-seeker on these remote islands on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. One day she unexpectedly stumbles on a hoard of treasure that has the power to change her life. In 2023, Coral (11) is on a family holiday she’d rather miss, thanks to her bickering parents. But when she hears a legend of lost treasure, she can’t resist joining the hunt for gold. When tide and time merge, Coral falls back through the centuries. The two girls race through time to reclaim the treasure, escape the dangerous sea – and save both themselves and their families’ futures.
“I was a contemporary teen verse novelist . . . wasn’t I? But I wanted to make the most of the ‘Ages and Stages’ module, so to challenge myself with one of the exercises, I decided to write ‘prose’, ‘younger’ and ‘historical’; going to a period which has always fascinated me, the British home front in WW2. I absolutely fell in love with the two characters I devised in that exercise - Stan, such an ‘old man’ of a boy, so afraid of being buried alive, and his ebullient, fearless friend Billy. I wanted to stay with them and see what adventures developed. While on the MA I really wanted to write inclusively, and to accurately represent disability in historical fiction in a way which would still have the sensitivity and awareness essential for today’s readers, so I gave Billy a disability and worked with a sensitivity reader to develop his story. I have loved every bit of the research and learned so much about how to structure this upper middle grade story. It was such a departure from my usual writing, but it has been a joy.”
Tia Fisher’s u
pper middlegrade historical adventure The Last Last Post
is set in Croydon in 1944. Twelve-year-old Stan can’t accept that his father is ‘missing, presumed killed’ after D- Day. Nor can he face his terror of being buried alive as Hitler sends over wave after wave of revenge rockets. If only he could be as brave as his pugnacious friends Billy and Nellie!
When they’re evacuated to the coast and a mysterious piece of shrapnel seems to point to his father’s survival in a POW camp, Stan must find the courage to discover what really happened to Dad, and in doing so, learn what bravery really means.