fff
asked
Zoë Marriott:
Hi! I've reread FROSTFIRE many times and unlike other books, the plot and characters still are fresh. I'm wondering: what difficulties did you encounter in writing that awesome book, what was your inspiration for Frost, and how did you come up with the absolutely beautiful songs ('The falling night has cast your eyes...) peppered throughout the book?
Zoë Marriott
Thank you for your question! I'm so glad that you've found FF a re-readable book. I re-read all my favourites on a yearly basis, so that's a very special compliment.
FrostFire - which I wrote in 2010, ach, that's a long time ago! - was the first book that I completed as a full-time writer, and I had a lot of difficulties finding a balance in my working life. I wrote 2000 words each day religiously, directly onto my laptop (because that seemed like a grown-up, professional, full-time writer sort of thing to do). But at the end of the drafting process I found that my manuscript was a complete mess - some bits were barely readable to me. I couldn't even tell what I'd been trying to say, let alone if that was what I *should* have been saying. And I realised that the method I had developed while I was working full-time in an office (scribbling long-hand during teabreaks, my daily commute, and in the evenings, and then typing up and revising those notes at the weekend) had actually been an effective drafting process and that I shouldn't have been so quick to cast it aside. I had to do a massive rewrite before I felt ready to submit it to my editor, trying to make the story anything like the book I'd imagined in my head.
Then my editor came back to me with more problems! She felt the characters were hollow. She had never identified with Frost. She was also deeply unconvinced by the central relationships of the book - at that time, Luca was a female character, and the editor simply didn't like or sympathise with her, or her love for Frost. There were also a lot of pacing problems in the middle. She said she felt the book was unpublishable as it was.
So then I spent three months doing ANOTHER massive rewrite, changing the story from third to first person so that I could really find my way into Frost's character in a way that perhaps the third person hadn't allowed me to do (this was the first time I realised that the reason I'm drawn to first person isn't about voice, but about characterisation). I wrote an entirely new middle section for the book and then changed the beginning so that the stuff which happened in the middle of the original one instead became the first section. And I changed the gender of every single person in the book except two: Frost and Arian. So the character of Luca (although remaining the same in almost every other way) became a man, and the love triangle at the centre of the story became a more traditional one.
My inspiration for Frost came from many, many, many places! I can't put my finger on even half of them now. But I do know that one of the sparks of life for her was a recurring dream/fear that I had as a child, about wolves chasing me, or finding me in my bed and eating me. This was partly to do with Little Red Riding hood, and that queasy idea that an animal could consume you, but you might still be alive and trapped inside them, while they impersonated you. It was also partly to do with my sister telling me that if I left my foot or arm outside the covers, wolves would come from under my bed and snap it off (thanks, big sis!). I was playing with ideas one day and this voice spoke in my head: 'In my dreams, the wolves come for me...' and Frost basically grew from there.
Finally - if you've read any of my other books you might have noticed that a lot of them feature music, poetry, songs... before I was a novellist I was a poet, and I am also a music geek. All my books have multiple playlists. When I start to worldbuild one of the first things I imagine/invent/research is the music, poetry, ballads and stories of my fantasy world. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, there's a place thematically in the story for some of the material that I come up with, such as with the songs in FrostFire (or the haiku and music in Shadows on the Moon, or the ballad in The Swan Kingdom). So it really comes from a love of poetry and music and how I use them to world build.
FrostFire - which I wrote in 2010, ach, that's a long time ago! - was the first book that I completed as a full-time writer, and I had a lot of difficulties finding a balance in my working life. I wrote 2000 words each day religiously, directly onto my laptop (because that seemed like a grown-up, professional, full-time writer sort of thing to do). But at the end of the drafting process I found that my manuscript was a complete mess - some bits were barely readable to me. I couldn't even tell what I'd been trying to say, let alone if that was what I *should* have been saying. And I realised that the method I had developed while I was working full-time in an office (scribbling long-hand during teabreaks, my daily commute, and in the evenings, and then typing up and revising those notes at the weekend) had actually been an effective drafting process and that I shouldn't have been so quick to cast it aside. I had to do a massive rewrite before I felt ready to submit it to my editor, trying to make the story anything like the book I'd imagined in my head.
Then my editor came back to me with more problems! She felt the characters were hollow. She had never identified with Frost. She was also deeply unconvinced by the central relationships of the book - at that time, Luca was a female character, and the editor simply didn't like or sympathise with her, or her love for Frost. There were also a lot of pacing problems in the middle. She said she felt the book was unpublishable as it was.
So then I spent three months doing ANOTHER massive rewrite, changing the story from third to first person so that I could really find my way into Frost's character in a way that perhaps the third person hadn't allowed me to do (this was the first time I realised that the reason I'm drawn to first person isn't about voice, but about characterisation). I wrote an entirely new middle section for the book and then changed the beginning so that the stuff which happened in the middle of the original one instead became the first section. And I changed the gender of every single person in the book except two: Frost and Arian. So the character of Luca (although remaining the same in almost every other way) became a man, and the love triangle at the centre of the story became a more traditional one.
My inspiration for Frost came from many, many, many places! I can't put my finger on even half of them now. But I do know that one of the sparks of life for her was a recurring dream/fear that I had as a child, about wolves chasing me, or finding me in my bed and eating me. This was partly to do with Little Red Riding hood, and that queasy idea that an animal could consume you, but you might still be alive and trapped inside them, while they impersonated you. It was also partly to do with my sister telling me that if I left my foot or arm outside the covers, wolves would come from under my bed and snap it off (thanks, big sis!). I was playing with ideas one day and this voice spoke in my head: 'In my dreams, the wolves come for me...' and Frost basically grew from there.
Finally - if you've read any of my other books you might have noticed that a lot of them feature music, poetry, songs... before I was a novellist I was a poet, and I am also a music geek. All my books have multiple playlists. When I start to worldbuild one of the first things I imagine/invent/research is the music, poetry, ballads and stories of my fantasy world. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, there's a place thematically in the story for some of the material that I come up with, such as with the songs in FrostFire (or the haiku and music in Shadows on the Moon, or the ballad in The Swan Kingdom). So it really comes from a love of poetry and music and how I use them to world build.
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Sarah
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Zoë Marriott:
I have just finished reading Shadows on the Moon. This book has captured my heart. It had me on an emotional roller coaster. It made me cry, laugh, fall in love, and even through pillows across the room in excitement and anger. My question is if you are or will be writing a sequel?
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Zoë Marriott:
I have just started reading shadows of the moon and barefoot on the wind. It's the first series in a long time that I have read in a night. Are you planning on writing any more in the series. Would there be a little mermaid inspired novel set in the Moonlit Lands?
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