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WILLEY: The plotting of Four Secrets was quite a challenge. I had a basic plot in my head, but I really wanted all four narrators (really there are five) to have a clear purpose and a contribution. I also wanted to very carefully build suspense until the final chapters and the revelation of the secrets.
In the past, I have written fiction that is more conventionally chronological, so this was a new invention for me. I puzzled and puzzled about when to reveal this or that clue and when to save it for later. Many times, I realized I had revealed something too soon or too late and so then had to reshuffle my cards and try again. I posted time lines for each character on one wall of my office. It was difficult to make it all come together, but also really satisfying when it did.
AUTHORLINK: How challenging was it to write from so many different points of view and in varying tenses? Did you know from the outset that you would alternate perspectives among the characters?
WILLEY: I actually love writing fiction from at least two POVs and have been doing it ever since my novel Saving Lenny (Bantam Starfire, 1989). With Four Secrets, I knew that my three teenagers would each have a different style of keeping a journal, so that the social worker would become a detective and read between the lines.
The idea to have Renata draw pictures instead of writing occurred to me because my old friend from college, who has been clairvoyant since childhood and who is also a visual artist, was in part the inspiration for that character. I was thinking about her a lot—her hypersensitivity—as I fleshed out Renata’s character and situation. It seemed a lovely conceit, and I was really hoping that whomever published the novel would agree to my plan to have Renata’s illustrations be the third journal.
AUTHORLINK: It’s Renata’s art that actually enlightens the reader to the story’s underlying mystery. What were some of the considerations you had to make when weaving visual material that adds to plot (as opposed to being simply illustrative) into the story? I understand you have an art background; did you create Renata’s artwork in the book?
WILLEY:Thank you for asking me about the drawings! Once I decided that Renata would speak primarily through her art, I had to visualize what she would draw. I created four drawings, but the process was excruciating, and I realized that I would not be the person providing these illustrations.
My editor’s choice of graphic illustrator Bill Hauser was at first difficult for me because Bill’s drawings were so very different from my early sketches—my drawings were lyrical and soft and his were so edgy and dark and, well…graphic-art-inspired.
Editor Andrew Karre and I had much back and forth about this, Andrew insisting that Renata’s drawings needed to be very harsh. He was right. The man knows his audience. The drawings serve the story well and broaden the impact. Incidentally, my favorite of all the illustrations is the map of North Holmes, a ghostly and sorrowful place in Renata’s rendering, as the town would feel to her during her ordeal. Kudos to Bill Hauser.
AUTHORLINK: Did you do any research into the juvenile detention process? If so, did you make any surprising discoveries?
WILLEY: I spent a lot of time at the juvenile detention center on the outskirts of my hometown in Grand Haven—an exemplary JDC with many folks on the staff who are passionate about helping kids in trouble. I thanked these people in my acknowledgments, along with a local judge who read the manuscript twice, checking for legal impossibilities.
It was very eye-opening to spend a little time in a for-real JDC. I had the director lock me in a cell. I went to several staff meetings. I observed in the classrooms and the pods. I also spoke to some kids who had spent time inside this very well-run and exemplary JDC and hated the experience—were very traumatized by incarceration. So I got the different perspectives and used them all.
AUTHORLINK: Talk about the book’s path to publication. How long did it take to write? Did many editors see it? What was the reaction? Did you have to do much revising?
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