The Feedsack Dress

Reading articles about Carolyn Mulford

As a journalist, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people for articles. Occasionally I switch roles, answering rather than asking questions.

The Feedsack Dress was the major topic of two interviews published in March. An article by Charlotte Atchley appeared in the Columbia Missourian and on the newspaper’s Web site at http://voxmagazine.com/stories/2009/03/05/write-stuff. Charlotte interviewed several women writers, each of whom has followed a different path. One thing I told her about why I became a writer: “When you’re fond of reading stories, you want to write stories.”

Phoenix, the national magazine of Alpha Sigma Alpha Sorority, published an article called “Alpha Beta alumna authors historical novel.” Cretia Rowlette, another Missouri native who served in the Peace Corps and settled in the Washington, D.C., area, interviewed me for that article.

One quote from that article: “To her delight, the book elicits a powerful emotional response from adults who remember the days of feedsack dresses. The book conveys a true picture of that time and of the timeless trials of adolescence.” 

I enjoy talking about the book, but I prefer to be the one asking the questions.

—Carolyn Mulford

Preparing to rewrite

Honest criticism of another writer’s work can ruin a friendship or break up a family, but writers learn most from readers, particularly readers who are writers.

I risked cutting the family ties by reading a teenager’s novel and giving her the same kind of feedback I would an experienced writer. That’s tough love. Fortunately she proved dedicated enough to accept criticism of technique as well as praise for creativity.

I gave her the following tips on preparing to rewrite.

Look at each page. Does it have paragraphs of different lengths? If all your paragraphs are short, you probably have too much dialogue and not enough action. If all your paragraphs are long, you probably have too much description.

Does every page look like the one before and after it? Then you haven’t varied the pace. Your writing may be monotonous.

Look at the beginning of each paragraph. Do you start several with the same word? Watch particularly for paragraphs beginning with “The” or the name of a character.

Does every sentence have the same structure? Most should follow the strongest pattern in the language: subject-verb-object.

List your characters. Does each name start with a different letter? If you start names with the same letter, people have trouble telling the characters apart. Do the names have a different number of syllables? If several characters have a one-syllable name (Joe, Bob, Dick), readers may not remember which is which.

Have you described each character the same way all the way through? Be sure no one is short in one chapter and tall in another. Be consistent in describing a character’s personality, too. Either before or during the first draft, write a brief biography of each character. Include not only what they look like but what they want.

 

Rewriting begins with an analysis of what you’ve written.

—Carolyn Mulford

Where characters come from

This weekend I’m going to a reunion of my high school graduating class. As The Feedsack Dress takes place in ninth grade, I’m expecting a lot of people to ask me if such and such a character is so and so from our class.

No, he/she isn’t.

For decades I’ve been a nonfiction writer and dealt strictly with facts. The facts leave little wiggle room. One reason to write fiction is to control the action and the people, to keep the facts and credibility in mind, but to create my own world.

Naturally I base that world partially on people I’ve known, emotions I’ve felt, events and incidents I’ve been part of or observed or read about. In a very broad sense, all fiction is autobiographical. We write from the truths we’ve learned. But if excitement ruled the days of our lives, we wouldn’t write fiction. A lot of the fun comes in taking all those things in the dark hole of the subconscious and creating something unique.

One or two characters suddenly appear in a scene and intrigue you enough to get to understand them as you do few people you know. You decide not only what they look and sound like but also what they’ve been doing all their lives and what they like and don’t like. Most of that never appears on the printed page, but it has to be in the writer’s head.

You choose a name.

I spend a lot of time choosing names for my characters. I use books on naming babies, I read obituaries, I read the names of the crew at the end of movies, I browse the phone book, I listen, I make them up. The name has to fit the person, and each person must have a distinctive name readers can remember. You need a mix of opening sounds and of number of syllables. I often rename minor characters because they change as I write about them, but once I name the major characters, that’s who they are.

Most characters serve to further the plot or to reveal other characters, particularly the main character. The girl in the feedsack dress would lead a dull life if she didn’t have the mean queen to battle. And every school, every organization, every social group has a mean queen or king, although some are smart enough to hide it as they get older.

Everyone has friends as well as enemies, and for the feedsack girl the friend is another outsider, the girl who seems older and wiser, who draws gossip like a magnet, who protects herself by withdrawing. I’ve had at least a nodding acquaintance with a dozen of them. Other characters also come from common types: the mean queen’s me-too friend, the quiet girl who gets things done, the good-hearted but trouble-prone class clown, the sweet boy who infuriates you, the teacher who sees more than she says.

These characters may germinate as types who will move the action along, but they become real people with unique characteristics as the writing progresses. Quite often they make you divert from the outline and go in another direction because these characters simply wouldn’t do what you planned. Cardboard figures don’t challenge the writer or appeal to the readers.

As a writer you live with your characters a long time. They must surprise, delight, annoy you. They must become as real as the people who walk in your door. But, for me, they aren’t those people.

--Carolyn Mulford

Getting the facts

I learned the importance of getting the facts right in journalism classes and on the job. I enjoy writing fiction because I can create a world, but the facts still have to be right.

When I started writing The Feedsack Dress, my own memories of farm life and ninth grade guided the plot, but I needed facts about life in 1949. I looked for them in the same places I would have if I were writing an article.

At the library I wore out my eyes scrolling through microfilm copies of the Kirksville Daily Express and two great photo magazines, Life and Look. These answered such questions as the styles of dresses or skirts and blouses a fashionable ninth grader wore to school and how much they cost. Few girls wore jeans or slacks to school back then.

Copies of fair catalogs told me what exhibits 4-Hers would enter in hopes of winning prize money. As a 4-Her for seven years, I already knew that only country kids belonged to 4-H then.

Books and local and national newspapers told me about historical events, and on the Internet I found such riches as President Truman’s speeches, the history of feedsack dresses, and lists of popular songs, radio shows (almost no one had television), movies, and books.

The most enjoyable part of the research was talking to my mother and others who remembered 1949 well. They linked important events in their lives to that year. They, and I, recalled how a chicken bounded around after a well-aimed hatchet removed its head and the awful stench when you dunk the chicken into a bucket of hot water to make it easier to pull out the feathers.

Some things you’d rather forget.