When I began writing The Folk Keeper, I had not yet invented the Folk. I began with a simple idea, inspired by a simple folktale. I had been reading a number of British folktales and found myself returning again and again to the stories of the selkies (or silkies, as they are sometimes called). Selkies assume the shape of a seal while in the water but may shed their sealskins to assume human form. If, however, their sealskins should be lost or stolen while they’re in their human form, they cannot return to the sea. I found this fascinating and I knew I wanted to write a novel based on the selkie stories. What, then, did I know about my story at the outset? I knew that my heroine, Corinna, would be half selkie, half human; I knew she would be ignorant of her true nature. I knew something about her emotional journey, which would be a journey of self-discovery; and I knew something about her physical journey, which would be a journey from a mainland to an island. It would be on the island, I knew, that Corinna’s emotional and physical journeys would intersect. It would be there, when she was surrounded by water, that she would discover her true nature and have to decide how to live her life. Would she choose to live in the sea, as do the selkies? Or would she choose to live on land, as a human being? I began, as do many traditional stories, with a journey. And the beginning worked well enough, for a journey provides its own energy. But when Corinna reached the island, the story ran out of steam. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t then realize what I now know: it was because there was nothing for Corinna to do. She drifted about, exploring the cliffs and the beaches, staring into the crashing waves. There was plenty of description but little action. I finally sent the manuscript to my editor, Jean Karl, who knew just how to help. “The main problem,” she said, “is that we don’t know what Corinna really wants. What does she want before she discovers she’s part selkie and has to decide where and how to live her life?" That made a lot of sense. Of course: give Corinna something she wants! If she wants something badly enough, she’ll do something to try to get it: she will act. If she doesn’t want anything, she has no reason to take any action, and a story without action is boring. Somehow, then, the idea of the Folk came to me, the idea of dangerous creatures lurking in dark caverns deep below the earth—savage, ravenous creatures, all wet mouth and teeth. The Folk—yes, Corinna would have to respond to the Folk! They would plague her, they would menace her . . . they would give her something to do. How did I get the idea for the Folk? I cannot quite say. They sprang into being once I started to think about what Corinna wanted—sprang into being as though they had been lurking in the dark caverns of my mind all the while, just waiting for Jean Karl to ask the right question. Perhaps I modeled them on the goblins of the Victorian fantasy The Princess and the Goblin (George MacDonald), a book I had loved as a child. I read and reread that book, thrilled and terrified by those menacing creatures lurking just out of sight, in the dark, down corridors and around corners. Perhaps I modeled the Folk on the trolls and dwarves and other dark-dwelling fairy-story creatures that had captured my imagination when I was a child. Perhaps in the back of my mind, I wanted to create a story like those stories I had so loved. But if so, it was never a conscious decision. The arrival of the Folk seemed to be one of those “Aha!” moments—the comic-book moment when the light bulb flashes on over the character’s head. The arrival of the Folk gave my story a shot of adrenaline: the Folk gave Corinna something to do. When the Folk showed up, so did the idea of the Folk Keepers, people in charge of pacifying the Folk (who do no harm when they are quiet and content). Corinna was to have this dangerous job; Corinna was to want this job more than anything else. What does Corinna want? That was the all-important question. Corinna wants to be a Folk Keeper. From there, I worked backward. In order for my story to be believable, I had to give Corinna a good reason to want to be a Folk Keeper. It’s a dangerous job, not one most people would want. So I gave her a motivation: Corinna wants power. A Folk Keeper has power she knows, and so she sets her mind on becoming a Folk Keeper. I also gave Corinna a history to explain her need for power. She had grown up, I decided, in a foundling home, where she was set to work as a servant. She was stripped of all dignity, all power. No wonder she’s desperate to be a Folk Keeper: it will rescue her from a life she detests. From there, the challenge was to increase the tension. A reader will be interested in a book that begins on a note of high danger—we love to read about characters in dangerous situations, don’t we? But a reader soon grows used to the danger and in order to remain interested, needs the situation to become still more dangerous, or needs a new danger to arrive. I used both techniques. The story begins on the mainland where Corinna has experienced little trouble with the Folk. She journeys, then, to the island, where the Folk are especially fierce and savage. Her difficulties increase; several times, the Folk manage to hurt her. The nature of the danger then changes. Corinna finds she has an enemy; he throws her into the Caverns to die at the hands and teeth of the Folk. And it is there, in the Caverns, that she begins to come to terms with who she really is. It is there she begins to make new decisions about how best to live her life. I wrote four drafts with Jean Karl after the novel turned into The Folk Keeper; that took ten months. I was lucky to have an insightful, patient editor to guide me through the writing of this novel. To all of you who are interested in writing, I have two words of advice. First, try to find experienced and kind readers for your story, readers who can give you good advice about what your story needs. Second, never give up! Writing takes a tremendous amount of perseverance, and it is those writers who keep on writing in the face of rejection, and of self-doubt, who ultimately succeed.
Copyright 2003, Franny Billingsley. All Rights
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