First Draft Episode #245: Veronica Roth
APRIL 7, 2020
Veronica Roth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent series, the Carve the Mark duology, and the short story collection, The End and Other Beginnings, talks about her first adult fantasy novel, Chosen Ones.
Sarah Enni: First Draft is sponsored by the newest book from critically acclaimed young adult author Adi Alsaid We Didn't Ask For This. Inspired by The Breakfast Club, this timely new novel brings climate change to the fore as a group of international students turn their annual lock-in night into a platform to use their voice for environmental change.
We Didn't Ask For This is a powerful look at not only how we treat the planet, but how we treat one another. Adi is fantastic. He's been a guest on this very show and I love his books (listen to his First Draft interview here). We Didn't Ask For This is out today from Inkyard Press and is available wherever books and eBooks are sold. You can find a link to buy the book in the show notes of this episode.
First Draft is brought to you by our sponsor Highland 2, a writing software created by John August, screenwriter and cohost of the Scripnotes podcast. While it originally started as a screenwriting software, Highland 2 now has an entire template that will automatically format your novel to industry standard. I just finished writing a first draft of a book and I wrote the entire thing in Highland 2 and I loved it.
In Highland, you're writing single space in a regular non-indented chunk like an email. It's only when you hit preview that you see the manuscript formatting and there's something about it not looking like a book that just really let me let it go and just write. Highland 2 is clean, beautiful and organized, which is to say it didn't distract me, it just got me to write. Check out Highland 2 @Quote-unquoteapps.com, or find the link in this episode's show notes.
Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Veronica Roth number one New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent series, the Carve the Mark duology, and the short story collection The End And Other Beginnings. Veronica's debut adult novel, The Chosen Ones, is out today.
We talk about the pain of growing and getting better at something, the quicksand reality that has been the planning of her book promotion for The Chosen Ones, and the introduction of a brand new segment, Julz's Corner, questions from my mom.
Everything Veronica and I talk about on today's episode can be found in the show notes. First Draft participates in affiliate programs and that means that when you shop through the links @FirstDraftPod.com it helps to support the show at no additional cost to you, and we are an affiliate of bookshop.org which also benefits independent bookstores.
If you'd like to donate to First Draft either on a onetime or monthly basis, simply go to paypal.me/firstdraftpod.
This week I am thrilled to announce a new project within the world of First Draft, Track Changes. A nine episode podcast mini series that will get into everything you don't know, you don't know about book publishing. The first episode airs April 16th and you can find a trailer in the First Draft feed right now. Everything's gonna happen in the First Draft feed, so you don't have to go anywhere special to listen to the podcast. You just have to stay tuned right where you are right now.
In researching for the mini series, I learned way more than I can possibly fit into nine episodes. So on April 16th I'm also launching the Track Changes newsletter, a subscription newsletter that every week will bring you further insights into how books get made. Both projects aim to provide transparency and give writers the information they need to think of their art as their career. Find more information about both @firstdraftpod.com/track changes.
Okay, now please sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Veronica Roth.
Sarah Enni: Hi Veronica. How are you?
Veronica Roth: Hi, I'm good. How are you?
Sarah Enni: I'm doing well. It's good to hear your voice.
Veronica Roth: You too. It's been awhile since we had any contact.
Sarah Enni: I know, since since either of us had contact with anyone in the outside world. Okay, so I'm gonna start off by just letting everybody know that you and I have spoken on First Draft before, in fact a number of times. I'm gonna link to all of those episodes that we've recorded together where people can hear a lot more about how you grew up and what led you to writing (Just prior to the Insurgent movie being released, and as Carve the Mark was being released). Then we talked about Carve The Mark in your second series after Divergent. So people should definitely check that out.
But for today's episode I want to start with publishing The Fates Divide, which was the second book in The Carve the Mark series and it wrapped up that duology. I want to talk about wrapping up a duology, the first series from Divergent, and then shifting to writing totally new other things. What was your headspace when you were wrapping up that duology and thinking about the future?
Veronica Roth: Well, I mean it was always gonna be a little weird publishing something after Divergent. So my agent, Jo, she warned me about that. She was like, "Whatever you do next, you better love it because it's just never gonna be Divergent and that's gonna be hard for you to adjust to and for other people to adjust to." Because Divergent was lightning in a bottle scenario, like really remarkable special time for books, and for me, like the two colliding.
So Carve the Mark was very much like a transition away from that just to learn what my career might be like and to learn what kind of writer I actually was outside of Divergent. So it was definitely an adventure and a little bit of a weird adjustment period and a little bit of a less accessible book series for people if they're not acquainted with their own love of science fiction. Because I always insist to people that they secretly love science fiction even if they don't know it.
Because if you like dystopian, dystopian fiction is science fiction. Anyway, it's another world, Carve the Mark, and a little bit of a space fantasy adventure. So it's not as easy for people to enter into as a dystopian book. So it had a lot of challenges, but man, The Fates Divide itself creatively was one of the easiest books I've ever written.
Sarah Enni: Really?
Veronica Roth: Yeah. I don't know why. It just had a clarity of vision that I was not accustomed to. I plan the rough draft very carefully. And I had planned so much of it from the beginning because it has a lot of revelations in it that are set up in Carve the Mark very clearly. So there were a lot of things that like, this has to happen and I have prepared for it.
And so structurally it was a lot clearer to me how it was gonna work. And then I had a plan and I actually followed it [chuckles]. I've since developed a theory that at certain points in your writing career when things feel really hard, it's because you're at the bottom of the hill with your creative development, like learning something new. And that means you're growing, you're in like a growth phase, which is really encouraging even though it feels discouraging.
And with The Fates Divide, I think I was at the top of a hill. So I had learned the lessons I needed already to write that book, and I just wrote it. At least that's a theory that I'm working with now. That's kind of why I think it felt easier. It required a lot less revision than any other book I had ever written. And I've reread it since then and I still really love it. So I dunno, it's such a positive creative experience for me.
Sarah Enni: That's great. I am so really compelled by that. What are we gonna call it? A metaphor? For the top of the hill and the bottom of the hill. I was just thinking the other day about this and for some reason I love a gear analogy. I always think about gears when it comes to mental growth, I don't know why. But anyway, to me I was thinking about when you have two gears and they're about to sync up, but the last little inching towards connection and locking into something are the hardest and most challenging, right?
And then all of a sudden it's easy and things just move. That's how I have felt in my own process, and in writing, and in a lot of aspects of life is like it gets really, really hard and then one day you wake up and it's just smooth sailing and it's like, what happened?
Veronica Roth: I know like why is, why was this so hard before? And now it's easy. But I also think in writing, people get concerned when a book feels too hard to write. Like they must be doing something wrong. They're fighting against some kind of internal tide. And I think sometimes that's true, but sometimes it's not because sometimes it means you're just in the process of learning something so it feels hard. But that doesn't mean that it's bad. It might actually mean that it's better than anything you've written before. So I'm sure we'll touch on that a little later cause, spoiler alert, that's how The Chosen Ones felt.
Sarah Enni: Oh that's so interesting. It's always, I mean obviously you know what I do, I talk to writers all day, but I love hearing people reflect on how it feels to write certain projects and how we're all growing. I think we probably all felt that kind of discomfort back in school, right? When you had to study. And then as a grownup you're like, "What? This is hard. I don't want this anymore."
Veronica Roth: "Studying? I have to work to get better at something?"
Sarah Enni: "No thanks!" I love that you've even gone back and reread The Fates Divide and felt good about it. That's a really satisfying feeling.
Veronica Roth: Yeah, I listened to the audio book. I think that's how I'm able to reread old work. It's like someone else is telling it to you. So there's a little less of a cringe factor. Although for me there was a little more of a cringe factor because the guy who does the voice of Akos in the audio books, is an actor. And so I've seen his face. And then having him read these like spicy make-out scenes and a couple of more intimate scenes. I was like, "Ahhhhh!" It's so uncomfortable.
Sarah Enni: That's amazing. Oh my God, I love that. I'm so interested in what you went on to do next. The End and Other Beginnings. I would just love to hear about how that came about. It's so interesting to look back on your time in between The Fates Divide and The Chosen Ones. You wrote a lot of short fiction.
Veronica Roth: I did. Yeah, it was weird because I would have told you that I hated it before I did it. And then I've had to admit since then that I definitely don't. I like it, but it just feels a little different to me. So a couple of the stories in The End and Other Beginnings are from a few years ago. One of them was the first short story I ever wrote for a publication, outside of college. And that was Hearken, which is the second story in the collection I think that I wrote in 2011. So that was the oldest one. And then I wrote three new ones for the collection. So it was a range of time, which was odd to reread old things and think, "Well some of this has held up quite well and some of it less so."
So the way it came about is that the rights to the short story Inertia, which is the first one in the collection, sold to a movie studio, Fox 2000. And it seemed important for that story to be available by itself in some way, because it was part of an anthology before. And those are just a bit unpredictable with whether they go out of print, or whether they're available widely, and stuff like that. So for business reasons, it seemed like a good thing to have it available. But we weren't sure, me and my publisher, weren't sure how exactly that should come about.
And my editor, Katherine Tegen, really likes my short fiction, which is nice. And she suggested a collection because she's like, "You should really have it all in one place. It's been in a variety of anthologies and wouldn't it be nice if it was like a really beautiful book that people wanted to have the physical version of?" Like, "Let's do it." And I was up for it. So that's kind of where it came from.
And then she suggested that I write a bunch of new ones. Obviously I didn't have enough not to write new ones. So we agreed on three new ones, three old ones. And that's when I wrote Armored Ones, which is set in the Carve the Mark universe with Carve the Mark characters. And then the Transformationist which is set in the Carve the Mark universe without any characters that we're familiar with. And then the other new one was, gosh, what's it called? The Spinners.
Sarah Enni: And these are, I'm saying short fiction, they're kind of novella length, is that? I'm not sure exactly what page count we're talking about with all these things, but they're longer than a couple pages, that's for sure.
Veronica Roth: Yeah. And there's a range of short story, quote unquote. I forget what the actual parameters are. When it comes to length, I have a very skewed understanding of what is long. Most of my books, all my books, are over a hundred thousand words.
Sarah Enni: I was interested in, when it comes to writing short fiction, what muscles do you think you're flexing in that format?
Veronica Roth: Well, because I write so long, I think part of it is just being more concise and trying to learn how to get things across in a very small space. So one of those things that I think is most important with short stories is character, because the character really drives a short story. Especially in sci-fi short stories, where concept can be the focus. For me that's never really enough. So I have to make sure that I care about the people who are moving through whatever the story is.
And also I try to use them to work on more craft level things like just description and dialogue and stuff like that. Because you're so restricted, you have to focus on those things a lot more. Like, "Is this necessary? Is it good? Because I shouldn't have anything in here that isn't good." Because I don't have any time to waste, basically.
So I think that's why, for a long time, I felt that I didn't like them because they were more difficult to write in a way. Cause I couldn't just kind of relax and be like, "Oh, I'll revise it. It's fine." Obviously you can revise a short story, but you, from the very outset, have to focus very hard on what you're trying to do. And that was a really good exercise for me.
Sarah Enni: I feel this when I talk to people that write scripts. I think often people who come from a screenwriting or TV writing background look at novels and think it's so amazing. And I'm like, "Honestly, what you guys do is so amazing." Having to plan so much ahead of time and then having to condense everything into shots and unspoken parts. And every line of dialogue in a script has to do ten jobs. It's really remarkable.
Veronica Roth: It reminds me of cooking, you know? So if you have a fully stocked kitchen that's like writing a novel, you can make whatever you want. But people who do a lot with very few ingredients, that's like the Top Chef challenges where they're like, "Here, make a cake out of these Doritos and some baking soda." And they're like, "Okay!" And they can make a gourmet meal out of it. You're like, "Damn, good job!"
Sarah Enni: I'm like on Nailed It, being like, "No." [Laughs] Oh my God. That's such a good analogy. I love that.
Veronica Roth: Oh, thanks.
Sarah Enni: I want to talk about how The Chosen Ones came about and this is kind of a clunky way to phrase the question, but what came first? The idea for The Chosen Ones or the desire to write something that was not necessarily focused on a young adult audience?
Veronica Roth: Ah, well that's a good question because the answer is the idea, basically. I didn't even really think about that until after I had articulated the idea. So basically I have this long-standing love of chosen one stories, as I think anyone who ever liked science fiction or fantasy growing up does, because there's just so many of them. But specifically for me, the big ones were of course Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, but then also the Animorphs books, which I was into when I was a kid.
And then a bunch of the like Narnia ones have chosen one figures in them. And then The Giver and Ender's Game. So all of those are chosen one stories. And I wrote one with Divergent. It's not exactly a classic chosen one story, but she's special. She's set apart and she is the only one who can accomplish this particular destiny. And then I played on a lot of those tropes intentionally because it was fun. And I didn't upend them. I just faithfully went into chosen one tropes in Divergent.
But a lot of people asked me this question that I can't answer which is, "What would've happened if the Divergent series hadn't ended the way that it did? Would Tristan Four have gotten married and had babies and lived happily ever after?" And as I said, I can't answer that because it ends the way it does and I never thought of another ending that worked, and that's not how my mind works. What's on the page is what I think.
But it got me curious cause I thought, "You know, with what she had been through, would she be capable of a healthy relationship? How would she relate to the idea of having children or settling down?" I don't know how that would happen. So it kind of sparked the idea for Chosen Ones there, just being unable to answer that question for Divergent made me want to try to answer it but with different characters so that I could have the freedom to reinvent their story and to reinvent them, and see what might come of their post chosen one's life.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that. And I don't want to, there's a question my mom's gonna ask you that's gonna get into some of that, so we'll revisit some things about Sloane and the characters themselves. But there's this great quote that I read that you said about moving into the adult space. It's, "This book," The Chosen Ones, "Is not about coming of age. It's about taking responsibility for shit. It's about learning that pain doesn't give you the license to be an asshole."
And I want to talk more about the actual content of that phase, but it also just struck me that you really were starting to grapple with stuff that isn't what we typically address in young adult fiction. I'm just interested in like when did it become clear to you that what you were writing really wasn't for a YA audience?
Veronica Roth: I think it was clear at the very concept level before I'd ever developed a character or thought about how old they even were. I mean, YA fiction, I think people get confused about it. You do not, which I always appreciate. But people do get confused about it. They think that it's something about content or even about pacing, but that's just not true. For me, YA fiction is trying to occupy the mental space of someone who is an adolescent and writing as if you are in that space. So the second that I realized this book was about reflecting backward on an adolescent experience that had occurred, I knew it wasn't YA.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I just read this really excellent book by a Rufi Thorpe called The Knockout Queen and it is about two high school kids as they grow to inform their own identities, but it's written from the point of view of one character who is looking back on it, therefore immediately it is just not a YA book. Even though the language and everything else kind of is like that, I was like, "Oh no, this is definitely not YA."
Veronica Roth: Yeah. And I'm trying to think of the best example I read recently. Oh, it was All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders. It starts off, the character is young, but it always feels like an older person is telling you a story about a younger person. And so then the characters, obviously, become adults and it is very much not a YA novel moving forward. But people do still categorize it as kind of cross over-y and I get frustrated because I'm like, "Just cause it's about a young character does not mean it is YA."
Sarah Enni: Right. Okay, well sorry, I kind of jumped a little bit ahead. I want to pause and have you pitch The Chosen Ones for us?
Veronica Roth: Oh yeah, sure. So Chosen Ones is about a group of people who defeated a Dark Lord figure when they were teenagers. Now they are older and they have issues, with a capital "I" because they're the most famous people who have ever lived and they are dealing with the trauma of what they went through when they were younger. And what they discover is that evil is never quite as thoroughly defeated as you might hope.
Sarah Enni: One question I have for you is how you are able to talk about this book in promotion because there's more than one pretty big twist in it.
Veronica Roth: Yeah. So it's been hard because, basically, I feel like what people think the book is about, all happens in the first 100 pages. It's definitely still about those things after that point, but there's just so much more.
Sarah Enni: It feels, in some ways, like multiple books in one, which is great.
Veronica Roth: Oh, well I'm glad you think so.
Sarah Enni: We open with five characters who collectively are like the Chosen Ones together. And they have all, as you say, in the ten years since they've defeated the Dark One, they're all kind of falling apart in their own separate ways. It felt like five different versions of coping with something massive. I don't know, this is a clunky way of asking it, but it felt like five different versions of oneself, of how one could choose to kind of fall apart. So I'm just interested in like how you develop those characters or what you were exploring with each of them separately.
Veronica Roth: Well, it's a little bit of a tricky thing to talk about because I think each of them, they're defined very much by how they relate to fame. And a lot of that was me reflecting on how I related to fame, which is a hard thing to talk about only because what happened to me is not traumatic at all. It was wonderful and amazing and very much set up my writing career beyond what I could have hoped for.
So I don't want to be unclear on that point. Divergent happening was a good thing for me in my life, but it did present me with a lot of challenges that I wasn't quite prepared for, particularly at that age and with an anxiety disorder. So I think each of the characters has some aspect of me in them.
So you know, one of them like Matt, he takes on his fame as a responsibility. Like, "Well now I have to do something good with this platform that I've been given." And he puts a lot of pressure on himself to do what's right. And I definitely felt that at the peak of Divergent. And then Sloane just feels resentful of the whole thing, which of course happens occasionally. Like when people are weird to you in the airport, or when people say things to you that are unkind thinking that you don't have the same feelings as other people. That's an aspect of becoming more well known, that is just a reality. So Sloane has that aspect of it.
And then Esther is like, "Yeah, bring it on!" And she starts a lifestyle brand and is active on the fake version of Instagram that I have and she kind of uses it. She's like, "Yeah, give it to me!" And so there's always a part of that. There's a part of you that relishes it. Like you feel important when people recognize you or I've heard of your book or something like that.
And then the other two are a little harder to define. Albie is very much overwhelmed by everything, which of course me as someone with an anxiety disorder, that happened a lot. And then Ines, it makes her paranoid. And that one was a little less, I mean, she's probably the character who's least explored in this book and I hope to explore her character more in the followup to Chosen Ones. But it just makes her paranoid. She starts rigging her house like a Home Alone fantasy, which is what it says in Chosen Ones about it.
So basically I took these little grains of truth that were in my own life and I kind of blew them up. And that's usually how I approach character anyway. You've got to find something to identify with and then you take them beyond yourself and make them into a new creation. But there has to be something in each character, even the antagonists, that you relate to.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Okay. So Veronica, you and I are friends in real life and you have met my mom who is a huge fan of your books. And my mom came to my house and read my Chosen Ones ARC, rudely, before I got the chance to read it myself. And she loved it. I think she read it in two days and was obsessed with it. And I wanted to give her the chance to answer questions. So we're gonna do something totally new on First Draft, which is Julz's Corner.
Veronica Roth: Yeah, Julz!
Sarah Enni: Julz had questions! So I asked her to leave a voicemail. She actually has three questions and they're all really great. So I'm gonna give you the chance to answer them. So let me hit play and we'll get to her first question.
Julz: Hey Veronica, I love this book. I tore through it in just a couple of days and Sarah asked me to provide a couple of questions for you today. So the first one was one that I thought the entire time I was reading the book, it made me wonder if all of your experiences, after Divergent blew up, helped to inform you when writing Sloane's character. I could see similarities to what you went through.
Sarah Enni: And that's a little bit of what you just talked about, but if there's anything else that you want to say about that.
Veronica Roth: Yeah, I talked about this recently in an interview, and it's never come up before then and it's never come up after, but I figure we could talk about it. So Chosen Ones opens with a celebrity profile that is pretty misogynistic toward Sloane and it very much objectifies her. And then also there's a horrible moment where the interviewer tells her that her relationship with the Dark One, I mean calling it a relationship is a bit of a misnomer, but her dynamic with the Dark One is the most interesting thing about her. And that's when she storms off in the profile.
And I did a lot of research for that profile because I was never a celebrity. And I wanted to know, specifically, how are women, and then most particularly white women, talked about in press. Because there's obviously a whole different set of issues for any woman of color being talked about in the press. And because that's Sloane's experience, I was very narrow in my focus there. So I read profiles with Margot Robbie and Scarlet Johanson and Brittany Spears all in mainstream publications that had very much the same tone.
So I did research for it, but one of the pieces of research I didn't have to do is that I had a profile written of me in peak Divergent. It did not sexualize me, but it did objectify me. And I was described, I was almost never quoted. People talked about the phenomenon of my books, but there was nothing about me from my perspective. And I've always been really frustrated with that profile. It was in a major publication. It was so hurtful to me. I had spent days with this person doing all this interview stuff, and I had been vulnerable with him, and then none of that made it in. I was just like this figure to him.
And so it's not like a terrible profile. If you read it, you might not even notice these things. But to me in particular, it really wounded me because I was just like, "You never saw me as a person. You always saw me as Divergent, and this phenomenon, and some kind of emblem of YA." Right? And what was happening with YA literature at that time. And that was just really upsetting.
And so I drew on that experience, very much, when I was writing that profile. And it was just, I don't know, it was fascinating to go back to those feelings and let myself actually have them. Because I always wanted to be grateful for everything that I had gotten. And even getting a profile, at that time, was like a huge, I mean it's still a huge deal for an author. So I never wanted to be like whiny about it.
But I think through Sloane I let myself feel mad for being treated that way, by not just this guy, it was in small ways by a lot of media around that time. Because I was young and because I was conventionally attractive, I think there was a lot of like... I wasn't even there. I was just sitting in my body and with this phenomenon behind me that no one felt that they could explain. So like the explanation, "I don't know the kids just like it," was never enough for anyone. It had to be like some way I had tricked people into liking it!
Anyway, so a lot of that frustration really came out in Sloane. So it almost sounds like that's what your mom is picking up on a little bit. Like the commonalities. I don't think Sloane and I are alike in personality at all cause Sloane very much does not give a shit. And I definitely do. But it was cathartic writing about her cause she let herself be as angry as maybe I wish I could have been at the time.
Sarah Enni: Well, you know what's interesting to me to think about, and this may be putting too much on you, so let me know if this doesn't resonate. But I've been thinking about this a lot lately in a lot of different ways. I've heard different celebrities talk about like the minute that you become famous, and again, we're not talking about you being famous like a Margot Robbie or of Leo DiCaprio, but I read this, I think in the context of Leonardo Leonardo.
Because people were saying like, when you become a celebrity at a certain age, in some ways it freezes you at this age. I actually listened to an interview with Adam Brody who was on the OC and became really famous through the OC, right? And he was talking about how he was so glad that he was in his late twenties when he was playing that, and not an actual teenager, because of how distressing that would've been for him personally before he really knew himself.
And then I was thinking about sometimes in relationships when people get together in high school, there's some part of them that stays at that age because that's like the contract that they've made with each other. These are all like whatever, swimming in these thoughts for for whatever reason. But it makes me think about how when you came on the scene, you were this young writer who was having massive success at the same time that people were really grappling with like, "What are the kids reading and what does it mean?"
Veronica Roth: Oh yeah, think of the children.
Sarah Enni: And, yeah, god a different time. But it's interesting to me that you're having now to demand to be seen as what you are, which is an older, more mature grown woman who is writing books and building a career for herself and is not this like vestige of whatever zeitgeisty moment happened ten years ago. You know? That's what comes to mind for me when you're talking about Sloane and her experience and what you've gone through yourself personally.
Veronica Roth: Yeah, I have heard that quote about freezing at the moment you become famous, before. And when I meet people who are famous, you can sometimes see that in people like, "Oh, I bet I know when you became famous." The thing about being an author is you will never be famous enough for that. So that is a great gift, right? I got recognized by one... one young woman in an airport bathroom once and that was it. So I just want to be clear, that's what we're talking about here.
But I was very conscious of that when Divergent was taking off cause people were doing things for me a lot, like holding my bag, or opening my car door. And I was like, "This is how it happens." You stop doing things for yourself. You start believing, like drinking your own Koolaid, and then it's all over from there. And so I was really aware of that. And then, of course, Divergent fever stopped and life went back to a much more normal state.
And all of that was great in many ways. But I think there are things to wrestle with here, and I think I wrestled with them through Sloane. So her story is basically about... like she does feel frozen, in some ways, in Chosen Ones at the beginning. She's not taking responsibility for herself. She has refused to go to therapy even though she desperately needs it. She is not moving on. She is full of this kind of pouty attitude toward media. And also she's this kind of alternative girl who's not like the other girls. And that's very on purpose, because she's basically stuck at the age that she defeated the Dark One, which was like eighteen.
And the book is about her wrestling with that and trying to figure out what she wants now. And how to be an adult after, in the aftermath, of all of this insanity in her life. And so, I don't know, I guess these questions about fame and what it does to you and how not to let it warp you, they're definitely present in this book.
Sarah Enni: And I mean, that brings us back to the quote that I brought up earlier, The Chosen Ones, your quote was, "It's about taking responsibility for shit. It's about learning that pain doesn't give you the license to be an asshole." And yeah, that does feel very like all of our journeys as adults, right? Like, self-soothing, processing your own experiences, learning how to move forward in the world without like flinging your own pain out at other people and compounding suffering, you know?
Veronica Roth: Yeah. And I feel that a lot, especially having anxiety, because a lot of things that people say to you when you have anxiety, provoke your anxiety. So, you could hold them all accountable for it. You know like, "You can't say that stuff to me. It makes me anxious. You can't talk about cancer around me. I have health anxiety." And when you're younger, maybe you feel comfortable doing that.
But as an adult, it's very much like people will say things that provoke my anxiety, it is not their responsibility to take care of me. It's my responsibility to take care of my own shit. So these are thoughts I've been having a lot recently. So, you know, I think inevitably whatever you think about while you're writing, it just bleeds into your characters and what they're dealing with. So that's certainly the case here.
Sarah Enni: Oh man, I was able to interview Zan Romanoff, whose book Look is coming out. And it's such a great book and she had this great quote in that interview where she was like, "You always think you're writing about something and then it ends up that you're writing about yourself."
Veronica Roth: Yeah!
Sarah Enni: I was like, "Oh God." It's so true.
Veronica Roth: I'm kinda relieved to hear that from her because I always feel like I must be just exceptionally self-centered to be constantly writing about myself all the time.
Sarah Enni: Oh god, no. Zan and I, I think, at least have the same process where like you start and you think you're writing about ideas and whatever, and then you're like, "Oh God, this is just, it's just therapy again." Okay. So let's get back to Julz's Corner. She has a second question and I'm gonna play that for you now.
Julz: The second question would be about magic. You describe the magic at the center of the story very well. It was very believable. How did you research for the creation of it?
Veronica Roth: Julz man, bringing it with the great questions.
Sarah Enni: I know, she sent that to me and I was like, "Oh great, cool!"
Veronica Roth: So the magic system in Chosen Ones was a fun process of development. So basically, this book is fantasy... except is it? So I usually write science fiction. Like I've never really veered into fantasy except with Carve the Mark was kind of straddling the line between the two, in the same way that Star Wars does. But with this book, it was definitely fantasy, it was definitely about magic.
And I was like, "Okay, you're gonna develop a magic system. All right. Now how do we do that?" And I was like, "What if I just make fake science instead, because I'm used to doing that." And so I decided, I was trying to figure out what it would be based on. And something that is both romantic and measurable is sound. So it's romantic, because sound is music, it's singing, it's whistling, it's humming. It can be all of those things.
And there's something beautiful about it, and something mysterious about what makes certain things beautiful to us, and what makes certain things dissonant and all of that. So on that note, it seemed like a great foundation for a magic system, but it's also something that you can measure. So sound has a frequency and you can reproduce it, exactly. And there are devices to measure this sort of thing.
So it felt like a good balance for me. Something that I could kind of make feel like science fiction, which was a little more comfortable for me. And I also just love that kind of thing, where it feels like it could be real because it's grounded in something that we understand and can measure. And magic in the book is a little bit less of a mystical force and more of something that we just don't yet understand.
So like a physical reality that we have not yet sorted out, I guess. And that's how I intended for it to feel. But there was something missing. Because if it's just about frequency, and it's just about replicating exact noises for exact things you want to do, like every time I light something on fire, I make this sound. Then there's no accounting for any power differences. So if you're gonna have a Dark Lord that can destroy the world, then some people have to be better at magic than others. And it shouldn't just be that they're like better at whistling, like that's so indescribably lame [laughs].
So I decided there's this other component to it, which ended up being what some characters in the book call intent, but it's more appropriately called desire. The desire specifically for impossible things. So, you know, I want to light this thing on fire with my mind, is a desire for an impossible thing. But it's also something that you can kind of explore with a character in a deeper way.
So Sloane, I mean, she's very much got PTSD, and she is depressed, so she doesn't really want much of anything. She has very few desires except, as she says, to be left alone, which is almost like wanting nothing at all. And so throughout the book she has to come to terms with what the desires underneath the depression are, and reacquainting herself with herself, almost. With the person that she was before she went through this trauma and with the person that she is now, even if it's a dark person, or a scary side of herself.
So I liked that the magic system was able to compliment her character growth in a profound way. And the way that she uses magic throughout the book is very much reflective of what's going on inside her. Which made it, I don't know, I just love when things in books can do multiple things for you. So multipurpose... this magic system.
Sarah Enni: The other thing that I, and I haven't really, you know, I'm still kind of rolling it around in my brain how I feel about it. But I'm so interested in the fact that it was one of the major fuels, as you're saying, of the magic system is desire and we follow the main character who is a woman. So to have a woman's desire be this universe altering force, was pretty satisfying to read about.
Veronica Roth: Yeah. I mean this is a type of magic that women would be good at, right? Because the world makes a lot of things impossible for us and we still want them. And that's a hard thing to get in touch with a lot of the time. Cause you feel that it might be easier just to want nothing, or to want only things that you know you can get. But when women are allowed to want the impossible, I feel like most of the women I know who are the most ambitious, and the most driven, and the most passionate, frequently want things that they know they might not get. But they still let themselves want it. And to me that feels extremely brave.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, oh, I love that. And it's magic when it actually happens.
Veronica Roth: Yes.
Sarah Enni: Right? Sometimes we get what we want and then you're like, "Fuck, this is great!"
Veronica Roth: I know and isn't it funny? And then we all want to act like it really is magic like we didn't work for things, cause we're socially conditioned to be that way. We don't need to get into this, but it does make me mad.
Sarah Enni: Mm-hm. That's real. Again, the magic system working on many levels here. Okay. I can't let you go. We're gonna get to my mom's last question, but I feel it is imperative that we talk about all the research you did reading government documents for this book.
Veronica Roth: Yeah. Oh my God, I'm so pumped and ready for this. I have my research journal to tell you about it.
Sarah Enni: Please! So, first of all, just lead me to why did you feel the need to start reading government documents?
Veronica Roth: Right. Basically the book has a traditional narrative part where it's just Sloane, third person, moving forward in time. And then there are interstitials throughout and they are government documents, they're poems, they're articles. There's a quote from a comedy routine, there's a product review, there's all kinds of things in the book kind of interspersed throughout. The main reason for the interstitials is that you need to know what Sloane and her friends did in the past.
But I didn't want to use flashbacks because I don't like flashbacks that much, even though I have used them before. I just find them to be difficult to maneuver in general. So I thought it might be interesting to reveal what Sloane did and what she and her friends went through, through other documents. And in the first part of the book, Sloane has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for these documents that are about her and it's granted.
So she is reading these documents and it's influencing the narrative in the first section, as you read them. So as you learn more about her, she's learning more about herself in the way that she was handled by the government, and the way that she was discussed. It kind of makes her come unraveled a little bit because some of her heroes, or her mentors, are not quite as nice as she would have liked. So that was kind of the idea for the interstitials.
But because it's a Freedom of Information Act request, I had to know what government documents sounded like. So just the language and the responses that you get, I looked those up. And then I found declassified documents on a variety of subjects. But mostly what I read were the project MK Ultra documents, like hundreds of them. And MK Ultra...
Sarah Enni: Tell us what that is!!
Veronica Roth: Yeah, I know you're gonna love this.
Sarah Enni: I am so excited.
Veronica Roth: MK Ultra was the government experiments using LSD for the purposes of maybe mind control, or weapons, or all kinds of stuff. But this happened in the sixties and seventies, I think. And we now, because these documents have been declassified, have learned a lot of weird stuff about what the government put money into back before there was like more oversight. And that, I mean, I'd like to say there's more oversight over government funds now, but is there? So who knows what they're researching now.
Sarah Enni: Who knows?
Veronica Roth: But I also read the Project Blue Book documents and I think those are the UFO ones. Hold on. I know I read some UFO ones. I gotta look it up [keyboard clicking sounds].
Sarah Enni: I mean, this is so interesting to me because research can be so... you can be very purposeful and pointed in your research for a book, but sometimes it's just following a, what's the phrase I want to use? I don't know, just falling down a rabbit hole and getting really obsessed with something. And not putting pressure on yourself to make sense of it in the moment.
I can't imagine that reading about such specific things didn't manifest somehow, in some way, into the actual writing of the book. Like, this isn't a book about UFOs or government mind control operations, but there's elements of just soaking all that up. Right?
Veronica Roth: Yeah. I think you're right to point out that you pretty much go with your gut on these things. So I just knew I needed to get the voice down for a particular kind of government project. And to be able to use the language that they use to make it feel real. And I only picked MK Ultra because it was interesting to me. So you know, I could have read about a lot of dry stuff, there's so many declassified documents. And I certainly went through a lot of them to see like maybe this project suits this a little bit more.
The UFO one didn't work out as well because this isn't some like massive government coverup. It's more of an operation that people aren't aware of, which is exactly what MK Ultra was. But I think they very much influenced each other. So I picked MK Ultra because I thought it was a good fit and because it interested me. But then also the things that interested me about it ended up reflected in the book, in the way that these characters are treated and handled by the government. So yeah, they kind of work together.
Sarah Enni: I don't know. I love that you did that and the interstitials were really fun. I always love when you read a book and it's got multiple fonts in it and top secret stamps. It's a super big challenge for your book designer... but hey.
Veronica Roth: And in the audio book it'll be a lot of voices, as a result. Which is my favorite thing. So one of my favorite audio books is Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders cause there's over 150 voices, or something like that, in that book. It's amazing.
Sarah Enni: And you also mentioned having your research notebook with you. I would love for you to talk about the physical process that you went through about going through all this information. How did you keep it straight? How did you write...? Cause I know you have a pretty sweet process in your notebook.
Veronica Roth: Yeah. So with this one, I mean I don't usually keep a notebook, but I just knew that this would require so much more research. Especially because, for Chosen Ones, I developed an alternate history. And if you're gonna develop an alternate history, you have to know about our history. And you'd think that you know about our history because you went to school, or took classes, or whatever. But you don't... is what I learned. Or at least I don't.
So I know a rough idea of how things happened and how long they took, but not really. So I started off with researching the space race because the two universes diverge at a particular moment. But what leads up to it is also different. So we went through the space race with Russia, which was the race to get to the moon, basically. In order to like, almost as a cover to develop more sophisticated surveillance and ballistic missile technology. Like that's why we did that. That's why we went to the moon.
And I figured in this other universe, maybe they didn't want to go up to the moon, but they developed more like underwater exploratory technology, and you can do a lot of surveillance underwater also. And they do. Which is interesting. Anyway, so that's kind of where the notebooks started because I knew almost nothing about this. And if you'd asked me, I wouldn't have told you I was particularly fascinated by it. I like going to the moon. I like space, but that's pretty much where it stops. So I learned about that and I was like, "I have to keep track of it cause I need to develop a timeline."
And then I started writing down all the buildings in Chicago. Because I decided that all the buildings that were built before 1969 would be the same. But after 1969, they may be would and they may be wouldn't. So there's a big list of buildings and when they were built, and whether I included them or not. And then there was a lot about the development of modern computing. Because would you develop modern computers if you had magic? How would it influence the use of the internet? Like would it be that important to us or not? So you need to know like how we did it, and then how it changed.
And yeah, it was a lot to keep track of I guess. And so I started writing it down and making it pretty because it was kind of like an encouragement for me in difficult times. Cause you know, research is fun but I'm not really a big researcher. Some people, some writers, really relish that part of it and have trouble letting it go. And I'm like, "No, I only want to know as much as I need to get this book written. And that's it."
Sarah Enni: Okay. Let's get to Julz's final question cause you kind of led me right to it.
Julz: The last question I have is why do you keep destroying Chicago? That poor city? What did it ever do to you? [Laughing] Thanks Veronica.
Veronica Roth: [Laughing] I love this. It's because I love Chicago that I keep destroying it. Basically, I keep writing about Chicago because that's where I like to be in my mind as well as physically. I love it here. So, if you're gonna set a book somewhere, you should want to live in it in your mind for a year at least. And I love Chicago so I keep doing it.
But the book is dedicated, "To Chicago, the city that endures." And honestly, part of that dedication is a reference to how many times I've destroyed Chicago. I think it's like three times now. Once in Divergent, and then once in a short story, and then once in this book. And part of it is, in the last couple of years I've become really defensive of my city. Because the way that it was discussed by certain politicians was as if it was a war zone and it became discussed only for its gun violence which is, of course, a real issue in Chicago.
And I'm not saying that it's not a difficult place to be in some ways, but that is not everything that we are. And I don't appreciate it being talked about like we just need to send in more police officers and that will fix the problem. And so not to get too intense about anything, but Chicago is one of my favorite places on earth and it will definitely endure through the difficulties that we have had, and continue to have. And so this dedication is partly related to that. That's a bit of a tangent, not exactly what your mom was asking.
Sarah Enni: No, I love that. And, of course, you talked about it. I feel like you got the chance to talk about it a lot with Divergent too. But yeah, my mom was like... I know my mom got really into the descriptions of architecture, cause she loves that stuff.
Veronica Roth: Oh, good!
Sarah Enni: So I think she really appreciated how like how the setting, imaginative and also detailed you got with the setting in this book was like her exact wheelhouse.
Veronica Roth: That's awesome. And Chicago architecture, that's like one of the main features of our city. And you can also trace its history through the architecture. So that's why it became so important.
Sarah Enni: Let's talk about promoting The Chosen Ones, your first adult book out in the world, spring 2020. What could go wrong? Oh boy.
Veronica Roth: What didn't go wrong? Is the question I would like to ask.
Sarah Enni: [Laughs] Yeah, and I got the chance to talk to Zan about this. So I really am interested in, to whatever extent you're comfortable talking about, even like a timeline because things moved so quickly. You had plans for a big tour, of course, to coincide with the release of the book. What were the plans and what has happened to them?
Veronica Roth: Well the plans, which were in place since last year if not longer, was to go on a really long tour, which I was really excited about. Fifteen cities is a long tour and it was gonna be all of April. And that was really great, a great gesture of support from my publisher and it was gonna be really great for the book. So for awhile, when coronavirus started to spread in the U.S., it seemed like we were still gonna have public events but we were gonna need to be really careful at them.
So I announced like, "The Tour is still on, we're gonna be really careful. No one's gonna touch each other. That's gonna be our plan." And then two days later I called my agent and I was like, "I don't think it's good to have any public events right now." And that's how quickly it changed. Two days. Because it felt like I was making the most responsible choice in the moment, and then suddenly it felt irresponsible... like two days later. So weird.
So we canceled the tour. That was, at that point, the only option. So it was not a hard decision. It was like, "This is how people are gonna stay safe. I am not contributing to this problem. The end." But then the aftermath of it is like, "Well what do we do now, instead?" You know? There's a lot of loss there. It's hard to articulate it even because you're just like, "This is not the most important thing that is going on right now by far. And we're in a much more serious situation than cancelling a book tour."
But the things that happen in your life, they're personal to you and they feel acute for that reason. So in that sense it's been hard. But there's no uncertainty involved. It's just not going to happen. So in that sense it's easy because it's like, "All right, well this is how it is and we just have to deal with it." But a lot of people have been moving their pup dates, so that's interesting to see.
Sarah Enni: I have a tab open on my computer about that. There was some Publishers Weekly write up about people moving pub dates. And again, all these questions are just... answer them to the degree you feel comfortable. But what were those conversations like with your team? And now we're at the point, and when this comes out certainly I think we'll be at the point, where everybody's inside and is like holding in place.
But you're talking about decisions that were made when every single day was a huge shift. And we were learning more about how extreme we were going to have to be to help prevent the spread of this virus. But what were those conversations like with your team? I'm just curious about what the thinking was behind the scenes.
Veronica Roth: Sure. What was odd about it was, that everyone was coming to the same realizations at the same time. So you know, the day that I emailed and said like, "We need to make clear that there will be restrictions at these events where you'll be encouraged not to make any physical contact. And we maybe should consider limiting the size of them." And all that stuff. The people at my publishers had already been talking about the same thing.
And then two days later when I emailed to say, "I think we should cancel." I actually was about to reach out to them, and then I got an email from them telling me they were cancelling all public events in April. And I was like, "Alright!" It was the easiest process possible because everyone knew exactly what we were supposed to be doing at that time.
And in that sense it was really great. We were all on the same page and very much like, "Okay, well what do we do now?" But there was some panic. I mean, there's panic for me just because I've always gone on book tours for my books, which I feel very lucky for. Not every author tours period. Or gets that opportunity. So I've always done that. I don't know what you do if you don't do that.
But I sent an email the day after we canceled to my agent, and to the people I work with at the agency, and I said, "I think we should see this as an opportunity. This is a chance to innovate. And to do something weird and interesting and fun." And they were all on board with that. And then so was my publisher.
So it's very much been like this team feeling, which has been really nice. I mean, it always kind of feels that way cause you are a team, you're all working for the same goal. But having conference calls with them where everybody's in their respective homes and there's screaming babies in the background. I just feel like I've gotten to know everyone a lot better and in a really different way. That part has been really great. Even though the uncertainty is really stressing everyone out, like a lot.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. We're not trying to downplay that at all. But speaking of, I mean, where did your head go? You're talking about this being an opportunity to innovate and try new things. What are some of the things that came to mind? What are some things that you're trying? What's that been like?
Veronica Roth: So this week I am doing a series of virtual events. So some of the authors who agreed to do the public events with me in person, have agreed to do the virtual events with me via live stream. And that's gonna be really fun. They're open to the public, but each event is partnered with a bunch of bookstores. And that's our attempt to help our local independent bookstores, not my local, but in particular regions.
Because independent bookstores rely a lot on foot traffic and their presence in the community. And they have, of course, been forced to close their doors. And most of them are still delivering and still fulfilling orders online. But their margins are very thin and they're vulnerable right now. So they really need our support if we want to continue to have independent bookstores in this country, which we absolutely do.
So anyway, the events will be in cooperation with a couple of stores. But you can still attend if you haven't purchased the book from those places. So it's more just like, "If you enjoyed this event, please consider supporting these bookstores." Anyway, so that's what I'm doing this week. And I have had to test a lot of technology that I did not know how to use previously, such as Twitch and Zoom. Both of which sound like, "What are we even talking about right now?"
[Both laughing]
Veronica Roth: I've also become way more active on Instagram. Partly for promotion purposes, but to be honest, partly because l really like it. It helps me to maintain a connection with other human beings in a difficult time. And I've loved tuning into other people's Instagram Lives where I get to see peaks into their lives. And so I've been doing that too.
And I kind of feel like, you know, this is hard. And no one knows how it's gonna go. But I'm also uniquely suited for it. Our whole generation is. Because we know how to use these platforms, and we do use them, and we enjoy them. So I can imagine it being a lot harder if I were older, but I'm super comfortable on video and on the internet. So I feel like that's good. Use your strengths, you know? Don't be afraid. Just do your best. So I'm relying on what my mother used to tell me, which is like, "Don't get overwhelmed. Just do the best you can with what you have at the time."
Sarah Enni: Oh man, I'm gonna be taking that to heart.
Veronica Roth: I know. I literally think of it every day.
Sarah Enni: That's useful. Don't get overwhelmed. Step one. Okay, we're gonna try that.
Veronica Roth: She always encouraged me not to look at the big, big picture because it's really overwhelming. Like you know, "I have to write a ten page paper... oh my god!!" And she'd be like, "Okay, don't think about that. Just think about, pick a topic, write your intro paragraph, and then think about what comes after that." Like, don't think too far ahead, basically, is her advice. Which sounds like it could be bad advice, but actually it's very good advice.
Sarah Enni: No, that's such good advice. I love that. So how are you [pauses] I think we are all feeling the particular kind of grief that comes with having a sense of how your life is going to proceed week-to-week. And very suddenly having that reality, however important or normal day-to-day it was, altered, is very unnerving. And I've been reading a lot of articles about how we're all experiencing a collective grief about that. Because there is a grief with thinking that something's gonna go one way, and then it going a very different way, and you can never reclaim that life that will never be led.
So no matter how small it is, I was supposed to go to my brother's wedding. Well that's not happening anymore. So obviously I'm not grieving it to the same degree that he is, but it's also like, "I had plans, I was gonna see my family. And now I'm not." So I'm just interested in, you know, this is a very important book for you. It's a big deal. You have a new publisher, it's really exciting. And it's the first adult book. And now it's not gonna be rolled out into the world the same way that you had hoped. So how are you kind of emotionally responding to that? Or coping with it?
Veronica Roth: Yeah. So, if we'd had this interview a week and a half ago, I would have been a much different person that you were talking to. I try to be a trooper about it because, like I said, really people's lives are on the line here. And so it is not a good look for anyone to be overly concerned with a book release, or a movie release, or a show getting canceled. Everybody needs to cool it and think about what's important.
So I very much have that attitude. But now that we have acknowledged that, let me say, I am still a person with profound anxiety and also emotions. And yeah, I felt like, "Wow, I worked so hard on this and this is my first step into a new market, the adult market." And we had all these amazing, great plans and it was supposed to be this great debut.
And I have had bad experiences in the publishing industry, much as that may sound odd considering my career has been in many ways a dream. And so I was hoping this one would not be one of those. And I still hope that it isn't, but it seemed certain that it would be. And there was a lot of grief associated with that. First there was denial. Like I was constantly thinking that like, "Maybe it would get better, and I could still go!" You know, just totally... now sounds bananas.
And then just anger that this was happening. And really I went through all of the stages of grief. And now I think what happened is, the day that it got better was, people were moving pub dates. So for a day I thought maybe we should do that. And then all my people talked to their people and everyone talked. And basically, the book had already been shipped to all of the retailers, and it was too late.
Like that's it, you can't move it. And I think having that decision made for me was good because it was like, "I no longer feel like I'm concerned that I'm not making the right choice for this book. I have no choices left except to do my best with what we have." And honestly, this huge burden lifted. And I was like, "Okay, like I can deal with hard situations. I have learned that about myself."
And as long as I know that there's no other path for it that could be better, that I'm ignoring, I feel a lot of peace with that. And so I went through the grief of it. And now I very much feel like, "Wow, I'm in a really good position in this time. I have a lot of publisher support. I have some name recognition. And if anyone's gonna stick to this pub date, it should probably be me, because people need stuff to read."
And it should be fun and it should be escapist. And this book is that. So I'm glad it'll be in the world and I'm glad people will be able to read it. And I don't feel the need to psych myself up every day to be a trooper. I feel very much like I'm still lucky to have this book come out. But yeah, a book takes a lot of work and you really hope that it's gonna get its best start in the world. And it feels unfair for awhile that you won't get the start that other books have gotten, that you thought you would get.
Sarah Enni: That you would've gotten if it'd come out a month earlier. You know what I mean? You could twist in your head so many ways. It's kinda nuts.
Veronica Roth: But you know, you get what you get and you don't get upset [laughs]. That's kind of the mindset.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I'm glad that you kind of moved through all those. I was having this, I feel like this conversation is peppered with my weird asides, but I was having this thought on one of my now morning ritual walks. About the stages of grief actually, which are... what are they? Avoidance, or denial, anger...
Veronica Roth: Depression, bargaining, acceptance. Yeah. Can you tell I've thought about it?
Sarah Enni: Thank you. I was gonna say, I knew you'd have those. And then I guess there's a more recent book by someone who was a co-researcher with a person that came out with that model and it adds another step. And that step is creating meaning.
Veronica Roth: Oooh.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And there's a whole book about it, which I actually really want to read and get into. But I was thinking about that on this walk because, to me, I was like, "I think what might make someone an artist is their propensity to take that sixth step, that making meaning step, and move it way up the chain." Like you probably start feeling that first or second. Because the stages of grief can be gone through in any order. It's not sequential.
And I can only speak to my experience, but when my dad passed away, I was like fully in denial and immediately trying to make meaning because I started writing books. And that was far too early to truly make meaning of anything. But I think that if you lean towards the artistic that like a good metric to tell if someone's an artist or not. Maybe?
Veronica Roth: Yeah. I really like that and I definitely, I mean, this feels like a dumb thing to even talk about compared to losing your father. But I find it helpful to keep things in perspective. So I allow myself to have feelings, to have sad feelings, have angry feelings, to have all those feelings. But I always try and remind myself that, overall, life is good. I have a really supportive spouse, and I'm financially stable, and my job has not been like canceled because of this.
So, you have to keep things in proportion with what's going on in the world. So I think that's an important thing. But I still felt, what you're talking about, like throughout this process. So one day I'd be like pissed, you know, I was just like mad. I wasn't mad at anyone. I was just mad at coronavirus.
And then I would also be trying to, basically create a narrative for it, where it was like this like triumph despite adversity. And I was just like, "This is ridiculous what you're doing right now." And so at every stage I would have the moment of the actual feeling, and then the moment of trying to make the feeling into a story of itself, which is not great.
But I think that is the impulse as writers, right? Like, "I'm building this narrative. I'm gonna tell myself this narrative in future days. So this could be the great injustice of my writing career where I didn't get to release the book I wanted. Blah, blah, blah." Or, it could be the story of what happened to me during coronavirus. Cause I think we will all have those stories, and they'll be important to share in the coming months.
Even if they're silly and they're like, "I sat at home with my cat and I learned how to knit." I want to hear those stories anyway. So this is mine, and that's okay. Maybe the book won't have a great launch. That's okay. Because life goes on, and more books can be written, and we will all go back into the world and remember how to hug each other again. And it'll be okay. I believe this.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I love that. As you know, I like to wrap up with advice. So you are now someone who has written in two categories for young adults and now for adults. So I would love to hear from you what advice you have for someone who is thinking about shifting into a new category.
Veronica Roth: I think it's important to read in the category that you are trying to enter. Even if you have written books before, you have to know what's out there. So anytime that you write a book, you're entering into a context. And you can so tell when you read something where the person thinks that they just invented it, like it's the first time it's ever happened. And that's so disappointing to me in a book, when I feel like what you're writing is really trope-y or derivative, but you think it's like the first time it's ever been done. And you just shouldn't do that.
And so for me, I had always read adult science fiction and fantasy, but the year before I wrote Chosen Ones, I started going into high gear and reading things I wasn't even that interested in, based on a pitch. And just trying to discover what the environment was like so that when I wrote in it, I would know what I was stepping into. So I think that's really important.
Also, don't make the mistake of thinking that the genre distinctions are that important. Because I approached this book like I approach every book I've ever written. It's just that I am a better writer now, in a lot of ways. And an older person, and someone who's learned a lot. And so I really was like, "Well, I'm just gonna take this idea seriously, and do a whole heap of research, and get outside readers when I encounter my own blind spots. And I'm going to be diligent about my revisions."
So it was very much the same as writing YA, but with different characters who were going through different things. And it was distinct on a conceptual level. But in other ways it was very much the same process. So it's important not to be too daunted by like, "Oh, I don't know if I could ever like write in this category." Like, "Whatever." You are a writer and you do know how to do it, but it might take more preparation.
Sarah Enni: I love that. Thank you so much. Veronica as ever. It was a total joy to talk to you and I hope everyone goes to check out The Chosen Ones, which is a beautiful book both visually and content wise. I loved it. It kept me up all night reading. So it's a real, real pleasure to read something that fun and engrossing, at this time in history. So go check it out.
Veronica Roth: Thank you for having me again. It's great to reunite on the podcast. And, you know, wash your hands, don't touch your face, is how I sign off every conversation now.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Veronica. Follow her on Instagram @VRothbooks, and follow me on both Twitter and Instagram at Sarah Enni, and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram). The show was brought to you by Highland 2 the writing software that won't break the bank or your brain. Available @quoteunquoteapps.com. And We Didn't Ask For This, the newest novel by Adi Alsaid, out from Inkyard Press April 7th. Today! Go get it!
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If you have any writing or creativity questions that you'd like me and a future guest to answer in an upcoming mailbag episode, I'd love to hear from you. Please call and leave your question at the First Draft voicemail. That's at (818) 533-1998. Or you can record yourself asking the question and email it to me at mailbag@Firstdraftpod.com. That seems to be easier for the international listeners and I love an accent, so please, please send me your questions.
Hayley Hershman produces First Draft and today's episode was produced and sound designed by Callie Wright. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks also to transcriptionist-at-large, Julie Anderson.
And, as ever, thanks to you secret government mind controllers for listening.
I want to hear from you!
Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998 or send an email to mailbag @ firstdraftpod dot com!
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