Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter, especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for April is Picture Books, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Leslie Johansen Nack and I discuss:

• Why she leaned into fiction for this project as opposed to writing a biography.
• Her research process and how she chose which scenes to fictionalize.
• How she balanced writing about the public and private personas of her characters.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Leslie Johansen Nack

Leslie Johansen Nack’s debut, Fourteen, A Daughter’s Memoir of Adventure, Sailing, and Survival received five indie awards, including the 2016 Finalist in Memoir at the Next Generation Indie Book Award. She lives in San Diego and enjoys sailing, hiking, and reading. 

Before she started writing, she raised two children, ran a mechanical engineering business with her husband, took care of her aging mother, and dreamed of retirement when she could write full-time. She did everything late in life, including getting her degree in English Literature from UCLA at age thirty-one.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The Blue Butterfly, A Novel of Marion Davies

New York 1915, Marion Davies is a shy eighteen-year-old beauty dancing on the Broadway stage when she meets William Randolph Hearst and finds herself captivated by his riches, passion, and desire to make her a movie star. Following a whirlwind courtship, she learns through trial and error to live as Hearst’s mistress when a divorce from his wife proves impossible. A baby girl is born in secret in 1919 and they agree to never acknowledge her publicly as their own. In a burgeoning Hollywood scene, she works hard making movies while living a lavish partying life that includes a secret love affair with Charlie Chaplin. In late 1937, at the height of the depression, Hearst wrestles with his debtors and failing health, when Marion loans him $1M when nobody else will. Together, they must confront the movie that threatens to invalidate all of Marion’s successes in the movie industry: Citizen Kane.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

(Right-click to download.)

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 407: Public vs. Private Personas: Crafting a Novel Based on Historical Figures – Interview with Leslie Johansen Nack appeared first on DIY MFA.

What is agency?

Contrary to what I’ve heard in writing circles, I believe a strong protagonist can be shy, quiet, reserved, and still be a hero. The word “active” has been misconstrued, I think. What draws readers in is a strong sense of purpose and a goal. Our character’s needs and wants and misconceptions should be driving the narrative. 

We have all been guilty of the passive world at times. The one where our protagonist gets hit over and over with horrible things, unfortunate happenings, and heartbreaking loss. 

For this world to take off, our character must have agency in the plot. She needs to make choices that result in a consequence where she learns something about herself, causing her to make another choice, and learn another lesson. 

I promise you, if you drive the story from that perspective, even a mousy, awkward social outcast will look like her own hero. Isn’t that the ultimate hero’s journey? Taking ordinary people and making them do extraordinary things? 

Forgotten women of the past

What is it that draws me to women’s history? Well, so much of our history books have been written by men, for men, celebrating men. We focus on wars and conquering and battle of the wills. 

Where were the women in all this? They were living their lives, changing history in their own way, often against unbelievable circumstances. In researching seventeenth-century France and the women who settled French Canada for my book Daughter of the King, I discovered an entire side of history I hadn’t ever heard of. 

These young women were plucked from dire poverty in France, many of them orphans. The King offered them money, a dowry, protection, and a new life where they chose their fate. And what does history say about them? That they were prostitutes and another run-of-the-mill mail-order-bride program. 

Let’s break that down. These women had to pass a series of requirements, one of which was purity, certified by their local priest. And they were not sold to a man and shipped across the world to become a domestic slave. Quite the opposite. They traveled with no requirements to marry, and once in Canada, they held interviews to choose their preferred husband, even marrying under a notary instead of the church so they could break the marriage contract if they so desired. 

Eight hundred women with power was so frightening to our idea of history, that we remember them as prostitutes and commodities. As a historical fiction author, I believe we have a responsibility to blow these misconceptions wide open and rewrite what we know of the past. I wanted to celebrate the truth of these pioneers, and their belief that they could shed their troubled past and start over. 

Show me their heart

All the women from our past, whether working in servitude or under the control of their fathers and their husbands—all had hopes and dreams and desires and faults. There’s your story. 

Not what happened to them, but how their inner world drove them to make choices, big and small, to alter the course of their lives and those who would come after them. 

Show me their mistakes, their failures. Women who made the history books—Amelia Earhart, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, Harriet Tubman, Jane Austen—I’m going to argue that they found their place not solely because of their accomplishments, but because of their deep desire to change the world and their place in it. 

Sure, the giant accomplishments are wonderful to read about (hello… escaping slavery and rescuing dozens of fellow slaves!), but what I find most fascinating about these women is the belief that they alone could change the world. The fear they had to overcome, the expectations they had to shatter, the insecurities they had to swallow. 

In the words of Amelia Earhart, “Everyone has oceans to fly if they have the heart to do it. Is it reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?” 

You see, men already had the world’s support. Show me the woman who takes the leap when everyone around her tells her she isn’t capable and show me how she found the strength to try. That is where HERstory lives.

Born in California wine country, Kerry Chaput began writing shortly after earning her Doctorate degree. Her love of storytelling began with a food blog and developed over the years to writing historical fiction novels. Raised by a teacher of US history, she has always been fascinated by tales from our past and is forever intrigued by the untold stories of brave women. She lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon with her husband, two daughters, and two rescue pups. She can often be found on hiking trails or in coffee shops. You can find her on her website or follow her here on Twitter.

The post HERstory: The Woman’s Side of History appeared first on DIY MFA.