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Captive Prince at Galaxy Bookshop
Jun. 19th, 2015 11:31 pmIn April, Galaxy Bookshop hosted a signing for Captive Prince by CS Pacat. For years, I've been kind of holding off starting the series till it was done, but it's looking very close to it now, and it seemed like a good time to go pick up a copy of the first book.
It turned out to be more than just a signing - CS Pacat gave a talk about the process of writing and publishing the series, gave a reading from an early chapter (the bathhouse scene!), and did a Q&A session.
* How to descibe the story? A friend suggested, "It's about princes in love!" So next time she had to pitch it, she said, "It's about princes in love!" The response was, "That's great! Who are they in love with?"
* She wrote 20,000 words of a draft that wasn't working and that she had to discard. In that first draft, she had taken pains to make Laurent likeable. But she realised that no, he actually had to start off being unlikeable. Still, when readers respond, "Oh, I'm hating him so much!" part of her thinks, "Noo..."
* She drew on her own experiences of attending a school that was very different from her suburb, for the idea of moving into a foreign world and not quite belonging, but also not able to go home again.
* Getting the book deal and writing the third book in one unit allowed her the luxury of going back and fixing things to make the plot work. If she had written it as a serial, she almost certainly would have hit a point where she got stuck and was unable to continue.
* Ways that writing a serial influences the story:
- You learn that the things you feel most vulnerable writing about are what readers respond most strongly to.
- Sometimes readers will develop a passionate caring for a minor character, and then you might reconsider their importance.
( Also, spotted in the city, posters I never expected to see )
It turned out to be more than just a signing - CS Pacat gave a talk about the process of writing and publishing the series, gave a reading from an early chapter (the bathhouse scene!), and did a Q&A session.
* How to descibe the story? A friend suggested, "It's about princes in love!" So next time she had to pitch it, she said, "It's about princes in love!" The response was, "That's great! Who are they in love with?"
* She wrote 20,000 words of a draft that wasn't working and that she had to discard. In that first draft, she had taken pains to make Laurent likeable. But she realised that no, he actually had to start off being unlikeable. Still, when readers respond, "Oh, I'm hating him so much!" part of her thinks, "Noo..."
* She drew on her own experiences of attending a school that was very different from her suburb, for the idea of moving into a foreign world and not quite belonging, but also not able to go home again.
* Getting the book deal and writing the third book in one unit allowed her the luxury of going back and fixing things to make the plot work. If she had written it as a serial, she almost certainly would have hit a point where she got stuck and was unable to continue.
* Ways that writing a serial influences the story:
- You learn that the things you feel most vulnerable writing about are what readers respond most strongly to.
- Sometimes readers will develop a passionate caring for a minor character, and then you might reconsider their importance.
( Also, spotted in the city, posters I never expected to see )
