Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

writing

The Birth of a New Story

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Last week, I mentioned on Facebook that I had finished the first draft of a new novel. Tentatively entitled Stonegate, it finished at just over 92,000 words, about the same length as the first four of the Dancing Priest novels. The fifth included a 20,000-word novella, but without it, it would have been about the same length as the others.

The idea for the story was born in early 2019, but I didn’t seriously begin to tackle it until late last year, almost two years later. What had to be finished first was Dancing Prince, the final novel in the Dancing Priest series. I had to get the Michael Kent-Hughes story fully out of my system before I could turn to a new story.

I surprised myself when I started it. First, there were two very strong story ideas I’d been toying with, one based on my own family history and the other a more-than-half-written novel. But as these things will happen, Stonegate grew and became something real. 

I believe the shift from the other stories happened because of the November election. Stonegate is not a political novel; it’s not about politics or red state versus blue state or personalities or anything like that. What it is about is a family, one having the familiar stresses of life in the 21st century. And it’s about what happens to that family when the oldest child is arrested for a hate crime. 

A house that inspired one of the settings

The story is set in a suburb of St. Louis, not unlike the one I live in, but which could be any of about a dozen similar suburbs in our metropolitan area. Some of the houses of my suburb inspired settings in the story. But none of the characters resemble anyone I know or know about in our town. They are invented, fictional people. And nothing like what happens in Stonegate has happened in my town. 

The story is a political one only in the sense of examining what happens when a child is charged with a hate crime – what happens to the child, his siblings, and his parents. The story is told from the perspective of the middle child, an 11-year-old boy, but it’s told as he ages from 11 to 31.

This past weekend, I finished what I call my “first read-through.” When I’m writing, I edit as a go a long, looping back periodically to reread (and edit) from the beginning. When I reach the end, I set it aside for a day or two, and then undertake a series of re-readings. I want to see if the story holds together as a unified whole, if it makes sense, if it seems like a good story, if it holds my attention, and if there are any glaring errors or omissions. If I lose interest in it, I can’t expect others to stay interested. 

My “first reading” report: the story works. It holds together. It reads well, and it’s reads fast. It held my interest to the point where I didn’t want to stop reading. (It’s a good sign when a writer gets so absorbed in reading a work that he forgets he wrote it.) I did see a couple of similarities to my previous books, but they’re minor. This is a very, very different kind of story.

More full readings like ahead. The second reading usually focuses on major gaps, if any, and the third reading on minor corrections. If past novels are any guide, I will have read this story between 15 and 20 times before I submit it for consideration by an agent or a publisher.

Top photograph by Michael Hart via Unsplash. Used with permission.

How Many Writer Hats Do You Wear a Day?

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The hats we writers wear can seem awfully heavy.

The hat we wear every day is the writer’s hat. This is what we do. This is what we’re about. We’re here to tell a story, and that can be difficult enough. It looks like a baseball cap.

We learn to write by listening, memorizing, and repetition. We learn writing by doing writing. We don’t sit time the first time and write stories effortlessly. We wrestle with our plots and themes. We fight and argue with our characters. We imagine scenes in our minds long before someone else reads the scene on a page of text. We’re perfectionists, because we’re not satisfied until we get it exactly right. And while we write, we occasionally have to add a few additional hats – like fact-checker, editor, and researcher. This is the bowler hat of writing.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph by Joshua Coleman via Unsplash. Used with permission.

A Predictive Manuscript

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My wife has told me that the Dancing Priest novels can sometimes feel creepy because, well, I write the story, and some of things, or similar things, happen in real life. Not long ago, I wrote a post about something specific that happened after Dancing Prophet was published, but there are examples from all five of the books.

She has what I think is a good explanation for this. My reading ranges all over the social, cultural, and political landscapes. Everything I read is potentially research for the books, and I become aware of things happening, things potentially happening, and events that almost happen. When something real does occur, it can look as if I predicted it in a book.

I’ve discovered that this can even happen when I’m in the middle of a manuscript. 

I’m almost 30,000 words into a new novel. It’s something completely different than what I’ve written before. The setting is a lot closer to home than the Dancing Priest novels, and it’s generally along the lines of a coming-of-age story, told by a boy whose family goes through a convulsion that tears the family apart.

Life gets intense when I’m writing like this. I take walks, and I’m working through scenes. I’m in the shower, and I’m rewriting a conversation to add something it needs. I’m at the grocery store, wondering what one of the characters would be buying. I’m driving, and I go out of my way to get a close look at a house that might fit a setting in the story. Everything I read in the newspaper or online is potential grist.

On Wednesday, I opened the newspaper as I usually do when I drink my coffee. The newspaper has become easier to read over time; you can look at a headline or the first paragraph of a story and know almost instantly whether you’re reading news or an editorial disguised as news. (I skip a lot of what goes in the newspaper these days.)  On an inside page there was a local story involving a school and a lawsuit. A fairly lengthy story, I was surprised that it was written as straight news. I was even more surprised when I started reading the last third of the story. It read like it was lifted from my manuscript. 

I could not have predicted these real events described in the story. But I’ve been doing enough reading and research to know that what I was writing about was certainly possible. Things like it have been happening in other places. And now it had gone beyond possibility in my own community. 

In my story, a student is accused of a crime at school. The accusation goes public. The news media, social media, parents, and school officials all assume the child’s guilt. Conventions and laws about media not naming minors involved in crimes are mown down in the eagerness to get the story. Adults and officials who are supposed to care about due process and facts disregard both in their rush for public virtue. And a family is destroyed in the process. 

The heart of the story is about what it takes to bring healing, even when some things can’t be healed. 

It’s not the big sprawling story of the kind that characterize the Dancing Priest novels. It’s about one family in one community and how people and children can be damaged in the tug of war of politics and ideology.

They say life imitates art. It may be more a case of art mirrors life and art mirrors things that can be expected to happen. This is not an easy story to write. It’s also not an easy story to live. And some people are living it. 

Top photograph by Andreas Brunn, middle photograph by Waldemar Brandt, both via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Giving a Minor Character a Bigger Role

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The character of David Hughes, twin brother of Sarah Hughes, has been a part of the Dancing Priest series from the beginning. In Dancing Priest, the first novel, it was David who had decided to do a study year abroad in Scotland, dragging his sister along with him. David was the scholar in the family, and at the University of Edinburgh he was studying Scottish history. Because of a fire at his dormitory, David ends up rooming with Michael Jent and Tommy McFarland, even though they’re two years older. And it’s Tommy’s girlfriend Ellen who fixes David up on a blind date with Betsy, whom he’d eventually marry.

The character of David Hughes served as something of a counterpoint to Michael and Tommy. They’ve been friends since they were six years old and have roomed together at St. Andrews during their entire time at university. David is the quiet American, the scholarly outsider, contrasting with the outgoing McFarland and the self-confident and often-quite-candid Michael. McFarland is an outspoken champion of Scotland and Scottish independence; David is the young man who’s been in love with Scotland from afar and is now living exactly where he wants to be.

David and Sarah experience family upheaval when their father turns his back and cuts off all communication with them and their older brother Scott, a doctor in San Francisco. As a result, the Hughes twins spend Christmas at McLarens, the home of Ian and Iris McLaren, the guardians for Michael. While there, David helps Ian, an equine veterinarian, deliver a foal.

David has a very small roles in the next three books in the series, but I always felt he deserved something more. The opportunity for that arrived with Dancing Prince. 

Some 30 years have passed since the first novel. David is a history professor at the University of St. Andrews. He and Betsy have two now-grown children. Over the years, it is David who has become a key figure in the life of Thomas Kent-Hughes, the youngest of Michael and Sarah’s children. 

As Michael grows more estranged from Tommy, David unintentionally helps to fill the gap, to the point where Tommy feels closer to his uncle than to his own father. Early in the story, Tommy and his father experience one of the many crises in their relationship, and it’s to David in St. Andrews to whom Tommy flees from London. When it’s time for college, Tommy will select St. Andrews, and a large part of the reason is that David teaches there. 

In many significant ways, Tommy becomes part of the Hughes family, and he clearly feels more comfortable with his uncle than with his father. Tommy looks more like his uncle than he does Michael, and he’s often mistaken for David’s son. They share a love of scholarship, and early on David is guiding Tommy is his pursuit of Norse and Icelandic languages. And it’s a reciprocal relationship. When David’s own son experiences a breakdown, it’s Tommy to whom David turns for help. 

The character of David was a quiet, stabilizing one from the beginning. Those characters rarely get center stage is stories and novels. Dancing Prince offered the opportunity to bring David out of the background and give him a significant part in the story. And, as it turns out, it will be a crucial part that he plays. Michael will eventually tell Tommy that he owes Davis a debt he can never repay, “for being there for you when I wasn’t.” Davis is something of an unsung hero of the Dancing Priest stories, and it was gratifying to give him his due. 

Top photograph by Shipman Northcutt via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Did “Dancing Prophet” Become Prophetic?

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In 2012, I had a conversation with my publisher about the future novels planned in the Dancing Priest series. Dancing Priest had been published in late 2011, and the publication of A Light Shining was imminent. I walked him through what I saw as the main subjects and themes of several additional books (another six, if I remember correctly, which eventually became another three). 

The fourth book was to focus on the conflict between Michael Kent-Hughes and the Church of England hierarchy, which would eventually lead to a reformation. The catalyst would be a child sexual abuse scandal, happening over decades and facilitated (as in, covered up) by the church. The inspiration for this was the scandal in the Roman Catholic Church; what I did was to transfer the Catholic scandal to the Church of England. Or so I thought.

Two weeks after that conversation, my publisher sent me an article that had just been published in Britain. It looked like the Church of England had its own, homegrown child abuse scandal, and didn’t need any fictional help from the Catholic church. 

Dancing Prophet, the fourth novel in the Dancing Priest series, was published in 2018. That year, more revelations were unfolding about the Church of England. In 2019, an independent inquiry was established to look at what had happened and why. Last week, the inquiry panel released its study. 

It sounded like the story line in Dancing Prophet. My wife says I need to stop writing about things that become true.

It gives me no particular joy that real events seem to follow several of the key events in the Dancing Priest stories. (Sometimes, the correlations aren’t horrific, like the DNA study made of Vikings that sounded a lot like what happens in Dancing Prince.) But it does seem uncanny at times. I don’t have the gift of prophecy, but I’ve asked myself, how do real events happen that mirror the stories I wrote in my five novels?

I don’t have a solid answer. I have an idea of what happens, and it has to do with the research I do for the stories and the work experience I’ve had.

The Dancing Priest novels are not historical novels in the strict sense. They’re not about the past. They are more futurehistorical novels, because they’re set in the soon-to-happen future. (One reviewer has called them alternative historical novels.) But they are based on considerable reading and research and first-hand experiences on visits to London and England.

The streets Sarah’s car has to take from Buckingham Palace to the Tate Britain (Dancing Prophet)? I’ve walked them. The visit Michael makes with the two boys to the Imperial War Museum and the Guards Museum Shop (Dancing Prince)? I’ve done both. Taking a train from King’s Cross Station (Dancing Prince)? Been there, done that. A tube ride from South Kensington to the Tower of London (Dancing King)? Yep. And the books I’ve read have ranged from Peter Ackroyd’s multi-volume History of England and a history of coronations to a domestic history of the British royal household and a history of the Church of England.

My work experience has also served as a resource. Working for two Fortune 500 companies, a Fortune 1000 company, a public institution, a newspaper, and my own business has taught me a lot about how organizations respond to crises. Almost by default, the initial response is self-protection. The ongoing response tends to be self-protection. And that response can put public relations people in very difficult positions. The fact that the Church of England responded to its child sex abuse crisis almost exactly like the Roman Catholic Church did is no surprise.

You don’t have to be a prophet when basic human nature never changes. 

Top photograph by Cajeo Zhang via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Uses of a Novella

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On July 1, with the publication of my fifth novel, I brought a five-book series to a conclusion. Each of the five was about 93,000 words in length, except for the last one. The last one has an additional 20,000 words, included as an epilogue but actually a freestanding novella.

It’s related on a minor way to the main novel; it’s mentioned as a manuscript one of the characters is writing. The idea for it predates the novel it’s part of; its genesis was years earlier from an article in Discover Britain magazine on the Celtic and Viking history that saturates the Orkney Islands.

I wrote it as part of a break from writing the novel. My novels are contemporary fiction; this novella is historical fiction, set a thousand years before the contemporary story. I wrote it without actually knowing what to do with it. What was likely in the back of my mind was an understanding of all the various ways authors use novellas.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.