Today I welcome writer M.A. Larson to The Hiding Spot to talk a bit about his new middle grade novel, Pennyroyal Academy, his various jobs (including writing for a cartoons you know and love!), his unique writing process, and more.
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I love that, in Pennyroyal Academy, it’s princesses that
are the kingdom’s lead defense against witches and dragons. As a bookseller who
often has young girls asking for books about strong princesses, I find this
premise very exciting. Can you speak about your decision to make princesses the
rescuers and the princes backup?
It’s a long, eight-year story of how that decision came to be, so I’ll
try to give you the short answer. When I
first came up with this idea, it was for an animated series called Princess Boot Camp. We developed the show for a while, but nothing
came of it, so I decided to turn it into a book. At that time, I was just sort of researching
princess culture and trying to think of ideas of where to take the story. I read a book called The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim, which looks at how the
Grimm’s Fairy Tales work in the adolescent mind from a psychological and
developmental perspective. Seeing those
old familiar stories analyzed in this way made me realize that their darker
elements were not only interesting, they were essential. I began to reframe my story for an older
audience and to strip away the parody elements.
I knew I wanted to attack the stereotype of the helpless princess
trapped in a tower waiting for a prince, and I still had the spine of a military-style
training academy for princesses left from the original idea, so naturally those
princesses would need an enemy, and that enemy would have to be dark and
frightening. Witcheswere the natural
choice. Then it was just a process of
refining this princess/witch conflict until I hit upon the angle that only a
princess has the attributes necessary to defeat a witch. They are the last line of defense for the
innocent people in this Grimm’s Fairy Tale world. It felt a bit like a Western in that sense, and
it made the princess into quite a heroic figure.
Tell me a little bit about your
writing process: Do you outline? Start at the beginning? The middle?The end?
I’m sort of all over the shop on this one. When I’m writing a film or television script,
the structure is so important that I wouldn’t know how to do it without heavily
outlining. You have two hours for a
movie, which is roughly 120 pages, or you have twenty-two minutes for TV with
commercials. You have to fit your story
into that mold, so structure is everything.
And yet, I know many screenwriters who just start writing and see what
happens. My outline for Pennyroyal Academy was complex and
massive, around thirty pages single-spaced.
It was color coded for characters, objects, themes, and plotlines so I
could track them chapter by chapter. I
couldn’t really tell you why, but I’m in the middle of the sequel now and I am
doing it in an entirely different way. I
know where I want to characters to end up, and I’m starting each writing day
saying, “Okay, what needs to happen in this chapter?” It’s pretty uncomfortable for me as a staunch
outliner, but fun little subplots keep forming that I wasn’t really expecting. So I’m kind of enjoying flying blind a little
bit. As for where do I start, I always
try to think of the big, “what does this mean for the world?” ending, and then
the story becomes following the characters’ journey from the beginning to that
end point.
What jobs did you have on your
way to becoming a published author? Is there a certain work experience that has
shaped your writing or provided inspiration?
So many jobs! I’ve been working
since I was fifteen. My first job was at
an amusement park in Minnesota, then Circuit City and AMC Theaters and
Honeybaked Ham and even Victoria’s Secret (I applied for jobs in every store in
the mall near my college and they were the first to call me back). Then I bartended for awhile, and finally got
a job as an assistant to a legendary film director called Mike Nichols. I worked with him for years and got to be
involved with Angels in America for
HBO, “Spamalot!” and other plays on Broadway, and CLOSER for Columbia Pictures.
It was an amazing experience, and I’ll never forget hearing piano and
singing coming from Mike’s office during the writing of “Spamalot!” followed by
roaring laughter as he and Eric Idle and John du Prez devised the lyrics. And that job allowed me to meet so many
incredible writers, like Tom Stoppard and Patrick Marber and Emma Thompson and
Tony Kushner and Buck Henry, that it only made me want to be a professional
writer that much more. After I moved to
Los Angeles, I was fortunate to get a job writing for an animated children’s show
at Cartoon Network, and I never looked back.
That’s why Pennyroyal Academy
was originally going to be an animated series.
Writing for animation, you are required to generate so many scripts and
so many ideas and take so many notes from so many executives that you quickly
learn to not be too precious with your work.
I also learned that rejection is just a thing that happens – a lot – and
you have to be prepared to move on to the next idea without letting it depress
you.
If you had to pick a favorite
word, what would it be and why?
This is probably a bit of a cheat answer, but I really like “inconceivable.”
The Princess Bride is one of my
all-time favorite stories, and I can’t hear that word without thinking of
Vizzini, and then I automatically smile.
And if hearing a word can automatically make you smile, how can it not
be a favorite?
My blog is dedicated to my
personal hiding spot, books. Who, what, or where can be credited as your
personal escape from reality?
You took the best answer! But
after books, it’s got to be the movies.
There’s nothing quite like that strange feeling of disorientation when
you come out of a movie theater after being completely lost in something for
two hours. A good, rich, immersive film,
like There Will Be Blood or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,is
my favorite place to hide out.
What can readers look forward to
next?
I’m in the midst of writing the follow-up to Pennyroyal Academy right now.
I also story-edited and wrote part of the next season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,
which should air early next year. And
beyond that I have a whole slew of ideas for more books of all ages.
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M.A. Larson (www.malarson.com) is a film and television
writer who lives with his wife, daughter, and two dogs in a canyon in
California. Larson has written for Cartoon
Network, Disney Channel, Disney XD, Disney UK, Discovery Kids Channel, The Hub,
and Nickelodeon. As a writer on the cult sensation “My Little Pony: Friendship
is Magic”, he has been a guest at “brony” fan conventions from Paris, France to
Dallas, Texas. Pennyroyal Academy is
his first novel.
Pennyroyal Academy: Seeking bold, courageous youths to
become
tomorrow'sprincesses and knights….Come one, come all!
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