The story of Yasuke, and of the events surrounding him, offered many different directions that I could go with the story. Early on, I considered a sprawling story that could drag in some additional elements of some of the other characters in the story – Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, Tokugawa, Valignano, and Ranmaru all have fascinating stories of their own, and there are additional characters whose stories I could have included had I gone that route. Ultimately, I abandoned that idea and decided to write Yasuke’s story in the first person. That meant cutting a lot of the secondary stories, but it also allowed me to present feudal Japan from the eyes of someone unfamiliar with it. Yasuke was an outsider to Japanese culture, trying to learn as much as he could, and I, as a non-Japanese person, was mirroring that journey in writing the novel. As much as I wanted to write about some of the other incredible moments from this period, those are not my story to tell, and I felt most comfortable moving forward by keeping the focus on Yasuke.
I don’t have a long list of writing rules, I think every story demands its own approach. However, I do have some principles that I keep in mind when I write, and I hope that you will recognize these from the novel. Thanks, and look forward to speaking with you at SDG Reads!
1) Respect every character on the page in the same way you would respect them if you met them in person.
2) Every character has to believe they are right. And you have to understand why they believe that. Conflict doesn’t come from right vs wrong; it comes from disagreements over what is right and what is wrong.
3) Diverse characters need to be individuals first and foremost. Their concerns, fears, hopes, ambitions, etc. should be at the forefront, not their identity. Whatever gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion they belong to should be a small part of what informs their character, not the whole character.
4) Leave spaces for the reader to fill in themselves. Respect your readers’ intelligence and give them opportunities to participate in the story.
5) Somewhat related to the above, but the right level of detail is better than an abundance of detail. Most times it is not important that the reader picture the same thing you picture, just that they feel the same thing you feel.
6) Rhythm matters. Vary up sentence length and move words around in the sentence in a way that makes them flow, even if it is at the expense at times of grammatical correctness. Creating a rhythm for the reader is what will bring them along from page to page, and keep them reading a little bit longer than they maybe would otherwise.
7) In real life, people rarely speak plainly. Characters should always have a goal with their dialogue, but they should talk around that goal. Conflict in dialogue does not have to mean an argument. More often the conflict is to determine who will come out and say what they mean first. In most conversations, people don’t want to reveal their intentions until the other person has revealed theirs.
8) Tension is better than drama. Characters don’t constantly need to be involved in world shaking events, they just always need to be carrying some kind of weight.
Submitted by Craig Shreve
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