Q: How Does a Fifteen-Year-Old Do This?

A: The Same Way a Fifty-Year-Old Does.

CAROL PLUM-UCCI

This essay by Plum-Ucci is less a commentary on Paolini’s young age than it is a mediation on how it si we writers do what we do. I have often commented that everyone has interesting insights, odd observations, and unusual connections occur to them-writers just make a point of writing them down, and then waiting until the proper occasion to string them together. Plum-Ucci shares some of her own insights into this concept, and offers some succinct conclusions about Paolini’s own processes

When novelists have the opportunity to meet their readers, the most popular question they’re asked is, “How do you come up with your story ideas?” Readers’ eyes loom, full of wonder. Some anticipate a blow-by-blow description of a process, similar to what they might hear from a bridge builder. Others would love to hear what borders on magical: “I was sitting at my terminal and suddenly became overwhelmed by the sounds of mighty, rushing water! The hero, the setting, this powerful plot drove me into another world, and I rarely came back out of until the final page was written!”

The real answer inevitably seems tame, like perhaps something is missing. Christopher Paolini has taken some stabs at answering, such as this one he posted for Teenreads.com: “It took me a month to hammer out the main details of what was now the Inheritance trilogy. Then I sat down, put my tremulous pen to paper, and finally started book one: Eragon. I worked sporadically at first, but as I became more and more engaged with my project, I spent as much time as I could writing.”

The answer interests us—but perhaps because it came from Paolini himself. If he’s like a thousand other authors out there, he finds that the questioners say, “Oh!” politely, but often continue to stare.

Lots of authors take Paolini’s stance, trying to answer the question with as much sanity as they can impose on the process of novel writing. However, we’re aware that when our answers resemble the description one might give of completing an extra-long math homework assignment, something indeed seems missing.

Strangely, there are fascinating explanations for the writing process—but normally the writers don’t know much about them. Busy novelists are up to their gizzard in imagery, settings, story-weaving, and reader response. We should think of them like sea captains, who might understand a lot about their boat, but not necessarily a lot about the sea creatures roaming the depths beneath them.

The magical concept of capturing a story is so stupefying that I really had to study it myself five years ago. In doing so, I found myself in the world of psychology, specifically psychoanalysis, the study of dreams and how the dream center interacts with our imagination even when we are awake. A walk through information pertaining to imagination can shed some light on how Paolini has created the Inheritance Cycle.

We can all agree that the Inheritance Cycle is driven by a very powerful imagination. And specifically in the case of Paolini, the complex question of conjuring story components is buttressed to the question of, “How does someone do this at the age of fifteen?”

The second question is slightly easier to approach than the first, if one is willing to accept a bit of a surprise. Unbeknownst to many, a critical key to story writing is not sweating bullets like a student taking the SAT or plotting calculations like an accountant balancing columns of numbers. In fact, the opposite is true in chronicling tales: The best passages are written when we are most able to relax. Some psychologists suggest that writing comes from a part of ourselves they call the “Inner Child”: the part that likes to color, paint, play. It is only when the “play” thoughts become taxed by “work” thoughts that the imagination falters and creativity is disrupted.

Personally, I never suffered from writer’s block until after my first book, The Body of Christopher Creed, won numerous awards and I was suddenly inundated with contracts. The connotations of “work” associated with “contracts” wreaked havoc on my “play station.” Telltale of a well-functioning “Inner Child” are Paolini’s words further along in the Teenreads.com interview: “Eragon flowed out of me at a tremendous pace; I never had writer’s block. Part of my speed was due to the fact that I had no idea what, technically, constituted good writing, and therefore, I did not edit myself during this process.”

Granted, he ran into challenges later in editing (which uses brain function that more closely resembles that required for the SAT), but in laying the groundwork, in painting his fantastic world and breathing the breath of life into characters—the boy was simply having some fun.

You might say, “We all have imagination, and that doesn’t explain how dragons and boys and wizards and caves and Urgals come together so engagingly for a fifteen-year-old.”

Having never been published myself until I was forty, I have often said, “I learned nothing of the art of writing until the age of twenty-one when I was able to put school behind me.” Teachers are well intentioned and encouraging, but so many hours in school are spent on work one is not interested in, waiting for others to complete their tasks, operating in circumstances where free choice is nominal, and warding off social scrapes. One arrives home from school quite mentally taxed, yet often facing another hour or two of homework. According to John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down, the sensitive, artistic student could border on intellectual burnout by the age of fifteen or sixteen.

In this sense, homeschooling could be a benefit to some future artists, and I believe it explains a lot in Paolini’s case. I could write a hundred essays on this subject, but for the purpose of this one, let’s suffice it to say that specialists often comment on how the imagination of children is far more dynamic than that of their adult counterparts. A five-year-old can imagine for hours at a time, but as the impositions of school, then work, then marriage and family build, imagination dims. Essentially, the imagination of a fifteen-year-old, properly cultivated and preserved, is far less banged up, damaged, and cluttered than the imagination of his elder counterparts in publishing. Paolini has that edge in this sense.

Let’s leave that for a moment and move on to what happens to him while writing. Imagination does not shut down when one is sleeping. The founding fathers of dream analysis suggested a hundred years ago that literature pulls from the dream center to acquire its organic materials—characters, settings, ideas for plots, symbols. This doesn’t imply that writers work in a sleepy trance. If the phone rings, we’ll answer it.

But think of the dream center as a closet with many interesting things on the shelves. When we sleep, the light in the closet is bright; when we’re awake, it grows dim—except for those who are involved in creative processes such as writing, painting, or daydreaming. The artist’s conscious mind works with his subconscious mind to create.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud theorized that everyone has a “subconscious,” that part of our mind that acts like this dark closet full of images, actions, and emotions. As we dream, Freud said, these closet images drop off their hangers and dance around in the air, causing us to see, feel, and respond to an amazing parade of people, things, and plots.

This imagery can signify things in our waking life. For example, last night I dreamed I was holding a beautiful little lizard who was annoyed by being held and turned to bite me several times. The bites didn’t hurt, but I felt sorry for the little thing and finally let it go. It sprouted wings, flew out my window, and grew to the size of a dragon I recognized as Eragon’s Saphira. I knew the dream had to do with my nervousness about writing an essay for publication when, generally speaking, I only publish novels these days. Letting go of Saphira symbolized “letting go” of my anxiety. If I did so, what I had to say would actually grow into something far more worthwhile than if I were uptight about writing the essay.

Thank you, Dr. Freud.

Karl Jung, initially a student of Freud’s, coined the term “collective unconscious,” implying that what lies on the shelves of our dream closet proves somewhat common among all human beings, of all races, cultures, and eras. For example, psychologists agree that a circle usually symbolizes unity in a dream. Hence a dream about being given a beautiful ring might reflect how the dreamer is coming into a time of peace with herself or her family.

For the images, impulses, and life forms that are common to us all in dreams, Jung used the term archetypes. These include numerous universal symbols like the circle, plus impulses, emotions, and plots that people have fixated on universally, throughout history. Jung was also among the first to suggest that the same archetypes that serve in dreams also serve in literature. Hence, a ring that causes strife—such as the featured element in Lord of the Rings—might represent unity gone bad in story as well as dreams. As Tolkien wrote the trilogy bearing the scars of World War II, the ring, with all its malignant power, could represent what he sensed as a serious threat to world order.

It’s generally the people we remember best from our dreams, and since the days of Aristotle people have named the character as the most important element of the great story. Some popular archetypes and their meanings in both dreams and literature include the following, with examples from Paolini and friends:

The Child

In dreams, this is the innocent part of ourselves. A happy child in a dream may reflect a carefree feeling about some aspect of our lives. A sad child or lost child may represent a feeling of being overwhelmed with responsibility. In literature, the Child often appears either as an innocent or in a carefree state, but with problems approaching. Frequently the Child is about to embark on a journey that will take him through a coming-of-age process. This Child often doubles with another archetype, the Hero. Eragon is a Child Hero.

 

The Prophet or Wise Elder

In dreams, this is the wise part of us that perhaps wishes to influence or comfort the less certain parts of ourselves. In literature, this (generally) aged person can lead the Child Hero to wisdom. He is a key player in countless stories through history, but since we’re discussing the Inheritance Cycle, let’s acknowledge Obi-Wan Kenobi of Star Wars and Gandalf of Lord of the Rings, both of whom compare strikingly to Brom of Eragon.

 

The Lover

In dreams, this archetype is someone whose face or aura we are drawn to romantically, and often represents the romantic part of ourselves that seeks completion. It is both a wish and projection. The Lover allows both dreamers and artists to exercise the side of themselves opposite their gender. As Virginia Woolf stated in A Room of One’s Own, all great artists should be “androgynous in mind,” and every day artists draw up excellent characters of the opposite sex, projecting from their own psyche. Princess Leia of Star Wars, Arwen in Lord of the Rings, and Arya of the Inheritance Cycle are projected similarly from male writers.

 

The Shadow

In the Shadow, the darker more repressed aspects of ourselves find an outlet. The Shadow contains all the feelings we would not like to admit possessing when we are awake. People who dream of monsters and wake up screaming are often thought to be facing an emotion or situation that is too painful to face while waking; that emotion or situation is said to be kept in their Shadow. In literature, the Shadow generally produces our antagonists. Shadow archetypes usually thwart the Hero on his journey toward greatness and are responsible for a great deal of the story’s tension. Projections of the Shadow include Darth Vader, Sauron, and Galbatorix.

 

The Savage

The Savage is the manifestation in dreams of our instinctive or primal side, and can have either negative or positive connotations. The Savage can appear as anything, from a small, rat-faced creature to a voodoo priest imparting words of wisdom. In literature, the Savage sometimes shows up to help out the protagonist when conventional wisdom has failed him. Yoda in Star Wars is an example of a positive Savage. Negative Savages include the Inheritance Cycle’s Urgals, and Lord of the Rings’s Orcs.

 

The Parent

Regardless of whether our relationship with our parents is peaceful or tense, we will dream the Parent archetype as noble and upstanding. The dream Parent often symbolizes a sense of comfort and security that conjoins with the wisdom of the Prophet. Dreams of Parents being injured or being violent symbolize a perceived threat to our security. In literature, if the Parent is unknown, obliterated, or in danger, it often propels the coming-of-age journey. Luke’s Uncle Owen in Star Wars Episode IV and Eragon’s Uncle Garrow in Eragon both play this role. Both met violent deaths via the foot soldiers of corrupt governments, and a desire for justice triggers both Child Heroes’ departures for journeys with their Prophets.

Flip the genders of certain archetypes and you have mildly different implications, and of course both literature and dreams are surrounded by a host of support players who fit these and other archetypes. In Lord of the Rings Gollum could also be interpreted as an infusion of the Savage. Many versions of the Savage appear in the Inheritance Cycle, most notably the Urgals and the Ra’zac. In Star Wars, R2-D2 represents the Child archetype insofar as his computer noises and jumps and whinnies reflect innocence.

This scenario, where the Child Hero embarks on a coming-of-age journey, may not seem to fit Lord of the Rings, as Frodo Baggins is an adult at the start of his journey. But ultimately it may. Sometimes archetypes can be symbolized by a group rather than an individual, in which case the “Hobbit nation” would assume the archetype of the Child. This is implied by their tiny stature and their undisciplined, adorable, and yet indulgent natures. And while Frodo Baggins may remain fully Hobbit at the end, his death may represent a transcendence akin to coming of age.

I have left Paolini’s dragon for last, because Paolini has included some intriguing twists that seem to defy definition. Amidst the archetypes found in the dream center or collective unconscious are many symbols—so many that psychoanalysts have devised uncounted “dream dictionaries” to shed light on these symbols. But in nearly all, one will find the symbol of the “reptile” or “lizard.”

In psychoanalyst Eric Ackroyd’s A Dictionary of Dream Symbols , the appearance of a “lizard” in a dream “may represent something in your unconscious that you don’t wish to take notice of.” And dreams recorded with slithering lizards do often inspire the dreamer to feel either a sense of fear or revulsion. In much of literature, the dragon has been an antagonist, an instrument of the Shadow.

Eragon’s Saphira is a unique twist on the typical literary dragon in that (1) she is a protagonist and an instrument of the Child Hero, (2) she is intelligent more than primal, and (3) she is decidedly female. Ackroyd has a definitive entry for “dragon,” which is lengthy, but one definition in particular relates to Saphira: “The dragon may represent the devouring aspect of (your relationship with) your mother. ‘Slaying the dragon’ may therefore mean putting an end to whatever attachment to your mother is detrimental to the process of finding your own psychic individuality.”

Slaying the dragon, then, might imply a very comfortable and healthy relationship between the author/creator and his mother (literal or symbolic). The fact that Eragon scrapes the skin off his legs the first time he rides his dragon had me wondering if a Mother figure close to Paolini was at times abrasive and fire-breathing. But Saphira is also both loyal and beloved, and unless Saphira is fueled by something that breaks with the conventional symbols of dreams analysis, she symbolizes a closeness, mutual respect, and friendship with parental figures.

But let’s examine whether Saphira has potentially transcended the usual connotations. She almost seems like a vortex of archetypes falling into one another: she’s not quite the Lover, but her intimacy with Eragon (for example, in their exchanging thoughts without words) is Lover-esque. She’s not quite the Mother, but as Eragon never had a mother, Saphira is put somewhat naturally into a proxy position. And finally, the two are not only best friends, but cross-gender best friends. Having a cross-gender best friend is not the norm in real life, but it is a huge fantasy among average people, representing what we sense would be a perfect balance of character traits, male and female.

Saphira is also, according to many, the most intriguing character in the novel and one of the key ingredients to its success. I’m back to wondering about the impact of homeschooling in the creation of this novel, this time as applies to Saphira, because I’m not certain that this type of character could have arisen from a mind that placed institution (school) at its center of affection as opposed to home (where a parent is usually the nucleus).

Part of the reason Saphira is such an intriguing character may have to do with Paolini’s age. He is in a unique position compared to other authors who write the coming-of-age tale: He is writing the coming-of-age tale while, in fact, coming of age. And it’s possible that such unique immediacy infused his dragon as a very dynamic vehicle for the Child Hero’s journey. Ackroyd also describes the winged dragon as symbolizing “some kind of transcendence, some passing from a ‘lower’ to a ‘higher’ level of personal maturity.”

Through all of this, we can see that Paolini is doing something quite different from the accountant reconciling columns of numbers. He and the accountant are reaching into entirely different parts of the brain for their work. The accountant is reaching primarily into the information processor, but Paolini is reaching often into his dream center. During the creation process, characters and settings and even plot details began to materialize much like they do in dreams, but because the author is awake, he can make some choices, do a bit of molding, erase, and go back if something isn’t working.

For example, Paolini does say that he gave a lot of thought to whether Saphira should be intelligent or primal. But the circumstances of her initial appearance, or the fact that she has blue scales instead of green, or the fact that she was injured in her wings and not her foot in Eragon—these manifestations might be as mysterious to him as the images tossed forth in dreams are to us.

In interviews, Paolini emphasizes that success is largely attributable to good editing, discipline, and conscientious presentation. None of these things have much to do with the subconscious, and his statement is correct. However, in both graduate school and the many workshops I have led, I have seen writers exercise these disciplines—sometimes for decades—without producing a salable manuscript like Paolini did. Hence I would like to make one more point about how he met with success.

Let’s go back to the dream closet of Freud and Jung and the various things that lie on the shelves. When Jung coined the term “collective unconscious,” from which archetypes emerge, he gave us a very important concept for understanding how and why certain writings like Paolini’s are successful.

Here is the concept, simplistically put: The collective unconscious implies that my closet looks very much like yours, and Christopher Paolini’s looks like ours. Paolini is able to grab us and keep our attention because the images that drop off his hangers and dance for him have the same effect on him as they do on us.

Writers who are successful have managed to find the items in their collective unconscious that are (1) very intriguing to them—such that they have enough fun writing that they bring the novel to completion—and (2) equally intriguing to the reader.

I am talking here about reader interest. Did Paolini have long talks with himself about what would interest his prospective reader? I doubt it. And doing so doesn’t matter. One can hit as a matter of luck, at least at first. Paolini must have created a world that we would want to be in, or we would not have stayed there. Certainly entire books like this one would not be created about his tales.

I believe in this writer-reader relationship concept wholly, and I can best describe it through my own life. One of the greatest days in my writing career happened early on in my twenties, when I finally admitted to myself I was not Albert Einstein, I was just your average Josephine. It could have become a very sad moment, looking back on myself as an average student, who never broke a thousand on her SATs or attracted a teacher’s attention outside of the writing arena. It was actually an exciting revelation. Why? Because it meant that what interested me would probably interest other average people—average readers, of which there are thousands—and if I found a way to write about things that were most intriguing to me, I would probably be writing about things that were intriguing to many. A career was born, one far different than Einstein’s—but if Einstein had tried to write a popular novel, his audience being a limited number of erudite scientists, the results might have been horrendous. I can look into the minds of others and anticipate what will sell, not because I’m some sort of genius but because I’m so wonderfully average.

Granted, I write in the teenage mainstream, and Paolini has entered the realm of sci-fi/fantasy. It could be that readers therein are given to higher IQs than my readership—perhaps—but I would not carry the burden of genius too far in trying to understand this young man’s abilities. Paolini went ahead with what was most intriguing to him and, in the process, had enough instincts to keep what would be most interesting to his readers and shy away from what would not.

There’s nothing flowery or tricky about much of writing. It’s not so much in the words; it’s in the imagery, and in the ability to create a writer-reader relationship—which is very similar to a boy-girl relationship except that, in the former, the parties are caught in a weird time warp. If a girl rings a boy’s cell phone, he picks up and answers after a second. But when the writer writes, the reader doesn’t pick up the pages for months or years. Yet the response and the relationship are very real; just ask publishers, who bank fortunes by having faith in this concept.

I emphasize this relationship because I have seen its importance often overlooked in writing classes, whether at the junior high, high school, college, or graduate level. It annoys me to no end, and Paolini, having never suffered the woes of learning writing via mega-institution, seems to have come out ahead. Professors are paid to read papers; they have to read. Perhaps that is why so many forget that readers do not have to read anything that they don’t feel like reading. Hence the writer-reader relationship is a critical part of understanding the art of writing.

I learned this as a young journalist who enjoyed feature writing for newspapers. My paycheck was at stake: If I didn’t catch the audience and keep them, I wouldn’t have an audience . . . and eventually, I wouldn’t have a job either.

Paolini had a lot of time to play, to entertain himself thoroughly, to paint a world that appealed to him in almost every way. Beyond that, he employed a gut instinct about what captivates, what bores, what works, what aborts. The proof of his success is that what he had to say, readers chose to hear, to the tune of millions of copies.

We’re still hearing him. So is Hollywood. If he can hold up under the weight of contracts and obligations on his “play station,” we’ll be hearing him for a long time.

Carol Plum-Ucci has authored many young adult novels published primarily by Harcourt. The Body of Christopher Creed and What Happened to Lani Garver are studied in high schools nationwide, as both were named Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association’s young adult division, YALSA. The Body of Christopher Creed and The Night My Sister Went Missing were finalists in the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, and The Body of Christopher Creed was named a Michael L. Printz Honor Book by

YALSA.

Plum-Ucci lives in southern New Jersey, and all her novel settings pay homage to the South Jersey barrier islands and the Pine Barrens, which have housed her family for fourteen generations. She has a bachelor’s degree from Purdue University and a master of arts from Rutgers, and she attributes her greatest training as a writer to working as an editor on her college newspaper, the Purdue Exponent. Her sequel to Streams of Babel, called Fire Will Fall, is slated for Spring 2010, and she recently finished a sequel to The Body of Christopher Creed, to be released Fall 2010.