In this week’s author interview, NOWW Executive Director Jessica Kinnison interviews NOWW Creative Director and Author Allison Alsup about her new novel Foreign Seed and her upcoming class. Her four-week class “The First Forty Pages: Building Your Novel” takes place on Mondays, October 21 – November 11, 2024 from 6 PM – 8 PM CT at the NOCCA Foundation. Early Bird Sale ends October 10.
[“Many of us need to write the book that doesn’t quite work in order to be able to write the book that does.” – Allison Alsup]
Jessica: You’ve mentioned that Foreign Seed was actually your second attempt at writing about the explorer Frank Meyer—that you wrote an entire manuscript that didn’t work and had to be put aside in favor of a new angle. Can you speak to that moment?
Allison: It was pretty dang hard. My agent said no. Moments like these can cause us to doubt ourselves as writers, to doubt our talents. Who hasn’t been here at one time or another? But that care, that disappointment is a sign of our investment in our material. I’m grateful that I was surrounded by others, including my agent, who saw my potential that I didn’t stay in the failure mindset. It wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough or that the material couldn’t work, it’s that the vision wasn’t yet there. Making this distinction saved me—and the book that would become Foreign Seed.
Jessica: Starting over from page one sounds really tough. What did you take away from that experience?
Allison: The most important thing I came to understand was that the first manuscript was not a waste of time. As a writer, teacher, and editor, I cannot stress this enough. Many of us need to write the book that doesn’t quite work in order to be able to write the book that does. That first manuscript was the training I needed to finish the race. I also understood that I wasn’t really starting over from mile zero. The research, world-building, and characters, these weren’t going to waste. If anything, they were going to feel more nuanced and credible in the second version because of my long relationship with them.
Jessica: Your agent took the second manuscript; the novelist Richard Russo also strongly encouraged you after reading your first chapter at a writing conference. What do you think made the crucial difference? Why did one storyline not “work” and the other did?
Allison: I got back to the basics. That first manuscript lost sight of the essentials. No matter how long you’ve been writing, no matter how unusual the material or interesting the details, stories have certain requirements. If we bypass them, the narrative won’t connect with readers. Thinking that somehow the rules don’t apply to our manuscript or that we can just tweak what needs total re-envisioning will sink us.
So I made a massive shift. Meyer was no longer my protagonist; his explorations weren’t the focus. My protagonist became a detective-like figure—the vice consul sent upriver to find Meyer who was now missing. I need to create, from the very start, a clear challenge or dilemma; even more, I had to dig into why this case would be personally triggering for my protagonist. From there, I needed to flesh out some events to increase the tension and pressure. I credit Netflix for reminding me of these basics. Literally, the path forward presented itself while sitting on a couch and watching the first five minutes of some British murder mystery. Oh Allison, I thought, and laughed in a gallows humor sort of way, this is what you needed all along. The essentials were always there. You just didn’t see them.
As a writer, editor, and teacher, I’ve learned this the tough way: we usually need others to help us start out on solid footing, and remind us of the reader’s needs. We also need others to remind us of what’s valuable about our vision, and what, with reshaping, can work. “The First Forty Pages” workshop is born from my own experience. I want to help other writers pose essential questions and do the critical thinking around a manuscript—either early on or after we’ve thrown our hands up—that pave the path forward for a book that can work.