Coaching KidLit Episode 45: Creatures as Characters & Symbols with Guest Rebecca Dolence

[00:00:00] Sharon Skinner: Welcome to coachingkidlit.com, a podcast about writing and publishing. Good KidLit. We dig into various aspects of writing craft through a KidLit lens and provide inspiration and clear actionable items to help writers like you move forward on their KidLit writing journeys. I’m Sharon Skinner, author accelerator, certified book coach and author of Speculative Fiction and KidLit, including picture books, middle grade and young adult.

[00:00:29] Hello listeners. It’s Sharon again, and today we have another fabulous guest for you, Rebecca. A Dolence is a lover of stories, over analyzing, and everything creepy. When she’s not listening to the crow’s cackle or writing under the oak trees canopy. You’ll find her dancing under the moonlight in the backyard or slinging mud in her Jeep.

[00:00:51] As a certified author, accelerator fiction book coach, she specializes in coaching fantasy, magical realism and various sub-genres of horror for adults and children’s literature. Yes, kids love horror too. Rebecca has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Detroit. Mercy is a longtime member of SCBW. I has learned several certificates in writing for children.

[00:01:15] From the Institute of Children’s Literature is a blogger of positive perspectives of pouty people, A developmental editor and business owner of RAD Notes, a book coaching LLC. Hi, Rebecca. It’s so good to have you here.

[00:01:30] Rebecca Dolence: Thank you, Sharon. Thank you for having me here. We’re gonna have some fun today.

[00:01:33] Sharon Skinner: Yes we’re gonna dig into one of your areas of genius here today. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about symbolism and using creatures in storytelling. But let’s start with a short overview of your writing journey and how you got to be where you are today.

[00:01:52] Rebecca Dolence: Well, how it all started, Sharon, was that, I’ve always loved story. I always wanted to write and it wasn’t very successful by any means. So I was down on my luck, felt bad about myself, as we all do, as rejected writers.

[00:02:07] And I started the blog Positive Perspectives for Pouty people not expecting anyone to actually read it. And it is, as silly as it sounds, it’s personal humor just with real life scenarios. And I try to do in a short period of time. But what happened was is that when I started writing this, assuming no one was going to actually be reading it, I found my own voice coming out of it.

[00:02:30] And I said, I like that voice. I like who I am. I’m not going to write for other people anymore. So that is the biggest part of my journey, is recognizing that who I am, my authentic voice. is it still popular? Eh, we’re still working on that, but, I feel so much better being able to coach my clients to be able to understand different aspects of story because now I truly understand who I am as a writer, and that voice comes out, and I’m sure that that’s something that you’re aware of as well with all of your writing endeavors.

[00:03:07] Sharon Skinner: Yes, but being a poet, prior to writing my novels, I do believe that I found my voice early on in the fact that most of my poetry was very personal. And also because I was in the slam scene for quite some time, and voice is everything when you’re doing slam poetry, and I’ll put a link in the notes for anybody who’s interested in what slam poetry is, but basically it’s a form of performance poetry, and you really get to know your voice.

[00:03:40] I did that for a number of years and I did a lot of readings until I really got to know my voice that way. So when I started writing. Children’s, literature. And when I started writing my novels, I really feel like I reached voice more readily because I had already had that background, but writing is writing and so, that exercise of doing all that kind of personal writing did not hurt.

[00:04:01] Just like when you did your Pouty people blog. You found that you were writing from a personal place and that’s where I think we find ourselves.

[00:04:10] Rebecca Dolence: Absolutely. And, it’s grown. I think I have somewhere near 400 followers. I put out a Halloween story every. Year. The problem with that as I’m learning is even though some of those stories I feel are pretty good, they could have been published, is now it’s considered a reprint if I want to, put them out.

[00:04:27] But, there’s plenty of places that will take reprints and such. , Actually one of them I did get, shortlisted and was, Able to have an interview with, Ken Deisha press for it’s,. Women horror writers.

[00:04:39] And, that boost your ego makes you feel a little bit better about yourself. So it’s wonderful. It’s not to say that, I can’t coach by any means, you know, it’s like a sports coach or a musician that. The coach isn’t necessarily as wonderful as an athlete, but they really know the ins and outs of how it all works.

[00:04:59] But again, it goes back to subjectivity and, , how do you fit into the world. So, we’re all trying to find our place here and see where we fit in, but, we work on it every day and, like-minded people, we boost each other up and we have a good time.

[00:05:12] Sharon Skinner: Yeah. So let’s, move into talking about creatures as symbols . Cause I know that when we write creatures. We’re not just writing for necessarily fantasy. There’s a lot of speculative fiction that has creatures in it. There are ways to bring unusual animals into our books, especially for kids.

[00:05:34] so talk a little bit about, your take on this topic.

[00:05:38] Rebecca Dolence: When you read my bio, one of the first things you read was that I love everything creepy, so I have a fascination with weird things that don’t make sense, hence speculative fiction. when we look at that though, because creatures come from either folklore or mythology. There’s a hidden meaning for that story.

[00:05:57] So folklore, for instance would be, don’t go into the forest kids at night. The chupacabra will get you. Well, is the chupacabra really gonna get them or is it just a warning, Hey, don’t go into the woods, because there’s a lot of predators out there. things like Bigfoot.

[00:06:14] People think of him as being just a scary creature that smells really bad, but. If I told you that his true purpose of his creation is that he’s a protector of Mother Earth, that surely takes on a completely different perspective of, any kind of writer, whether that’s speculative or not. a doll, for instance, can be a creature.

[00:06:35] Why? ’cause a lot of times, like a ghost will, will take over the body of the little doll. Well, I would throw out that why couldn’t that do also be used in a romance novel? And I know that sounds crazy, but a typical romance trope is.

[00:06:51] A woman comes home, she’s been gone for a long time. You know how the romance tropes goes, and she, she’s gotta come home for the holiday ’cause something happened and she’s full of nerves and goes into her old bedroom and sees her old 7-year-old best friend, her little doll still in the same little rocking chair it was there. Now if you look at that, you can say, well, that’s cute but Why is that doll there? The doll is a symbol. That creature is a symbol. I’m using that purposely as saying it’s a creature because it is. about innocence. It’s about going back to feeling comfortable, but then I could throw out at you, if you’re writing the story and this doll was particular in that story, that means we gotta focus on it. Why did that child. as 7-year-old need that doll what was happening in that girl’s life that she felt she needed that doll for comfort. So that’s a whole character arc , of this romance novel and saying, wow. Now why did I need that comfort? Why am I afraid to go home after all these years of trying to make it on my own?

[00:07:56] And now I have to come back to, my roots. Why was I avoiding it? What’s so precious about this doll are, are, you’re with me. So right now in a horror setting, it’s, possessed by some kind of demon of some sort.

[00:08:10] Well. That’s also a creature and a symbol of this doll, and there’s still a main character that has to deal with this doll. So throughout the story, why is this doll keep attacking ’em? What goes back to their childhood that says that there’s a problem here? So every symbol, every creature. Has its own personality, it has its own way that it can be seen in the world through literature, and those are what can move your story forward.

[00:08:41] So when we talk about creatures, it’s not necessarily about an actual monster of any sort. There’s plenty of my neighbors that I can say are monsters. And you could take a personality of a creature to build your character. Because each one does something different in its life. It each has its own purpose.

[00:09:01] Just like any character, just like us.

[00:09:03] Sharon Skinner: what you’re saying really reminds us that we don’t want to use stereotypes of any kind, including with a lot of creatures. And we see a lot of stereotypes like we see the creepy doll thing. A lot people have a thing about it, but the idea that that doll can also be a comfort, seeing the, two sides of that, depending on the story that you are telling, I think is really important.

[00:09:29] And viewing it through character lens. I’m very big about character lens and how we see the world and how our characters view what’s going on in their world. And that all goes back to that backstory that you’re talking about. Why did they need this comfort or what, broke them when they were a child that they have to face through this creepy doll.

[00:09:48] And my book, Mirabella and the faded Phantom is a ghost story, and what I’ve done in there is at the beginning, the way that she sees the house is very different than the way she sees it later on. So the same exact furniture and house and things are completely different because her perspective changes her lens that she sees it through changes. So I think that using those symbols and then also using that character lens, they go hand in hand.

[00:10:17] Rebecca Dolence: And, there’s something amazing about first, why are these things created in the first place? So, you talked about stereotypes, but there’s, a reason why we have stereotypes and then we have social constructs and we have hidden meaning behind all these different creatures.

[00:10:35] And you spoke of animals as well, that you can throw in an animal in there? Well, there’s this really great website, not that I’m getting paid by them, but I, do reference them a lot. It’s called, what’s My spirit animal dot com I believe it is. We’ll have to look that up and get that correct.

[00:10:51] But what happens is, is when you look up a creature, let’s say a dragonfly or something, it’ll tell you. Personality aspects and things to look within yourself. So if some, if a dragonfly came through in Arizona where you’re at, I’m going to guess it’s not normal. So the idea is that if you see something that comes into your, world, it represents something.

[00:11:15] So you look up, you know, what did that animal mean? Well, a dragonfly is about transformation. So we have to start in one place and we slowly have to transform into something else. There’s some change that’s going to happen. So if you were to throw a dragonfly in your story, you would have to know the background of what is that creature.

[00:11:36] Why is it there? So that, that would also make sense for, I don’t know if you remember the Golden Compass quite a few years ago. And so, for those that don’t know for every person, there’s a thing called a Daemon, D-A-E-M-O-N that is on the outside it actually represents their soul.

[00:11:55] So when the angry, lady wants to, take the Daemons from the kids. Basically they’re cutting their soul away from them, and then the kids kind of become zombies. But here’s the interesting thing, is everybody that has a particular creature, a Daemon that follows them, when I looked it up into native American animal totems, they all had that personality of that person.

[00:12:18] So, Philip Pullman. Had to have paid attention and looked into and researched that each one of these creatures represents that person. And what hinted symbolism that we didn’t necessarily recognize. That’s the other fun thing about creatures and symbolism is, you can understand the story and how it goes, but once you start looking deeper into it, wow, it just brings out a whole different set of imagination and fun in the book.

[00:12:44] Sharon Skinner: Yeah, I was thinking about books where we get to see unusual creatures that are part of the story. And I was thinking Scorpio Races by Maggie, Stiefvater. And what I really like about that is that she took an unusual creature and made it into something still dangerous, but to some extent able to work with humans, which those creatures typically are not I just really like seeing that kind of a story where we take and we twist some of that symbolism and we see it a little differently, or we use it a little differently. In the Nelig Stones, my portal fantasy for middle graders, my fairies carry swords.

[00:13:23] They’re warrior-like they battle these giant bees and stuff, they’re not your typical fairies in kids’ books. They’re different. And I, did that purposely as I wanted them to be different.

[00:13:34] Rebecca Dolence: Absolutely. And, there’s pros and cons to, or a good and a bad, or however you wanna look at it. There’s a yin and a yang as above, so below in everything, and when you look at that, that’s so important when you’re adding those creatures is you’ve probably looked at some of the stereotypical things, then you switched over to, who could they be?

[00:13:55] that kelpie that’s in the Scorpio Races. I actually did a Creature of the month on a kelpie and used that as partially as an example because, if I’m not mistaken, the folklore of it is if you can get a hold of them, there was some magical way to go up doing that, then they’re going to be yours.

[00:14:13] But. Don’t stay on their back too long because, while they have all this strength, they’ll suck you in and they’ll take you back down into the water. So, really fun. I do. love, different kinds of ways in which writers will, take something and flip it and make it so much more interesting you know, that idea of just because we’ve always done it this way.

[00:14:38] Doesn’t mean we have to continue to do that that way.

[00:14:41] Sharon Skinner: I’d like to see the innovation and the changes. there’s a book and I can’t remember the title of it, where the elves are evil and the goblins are the good guys and it’s a YA and I wish I could remember the title. I’ll try and find it and put it in the, show notes. But I loved that twist and I think it makes it more interesting. So we see a lot of creatures, we see a lot of werewolves and their love interests and vampires that are trying to be human and things like that.

[00:15:09] We see a lot of love stories with elves. But let’s talk a little bit about how creatures can also be heroes and villains in story.

[00:15:19] Rebecca Dolence: I was thinking about dragons in particular, that a, stereotypical dragon, I know we’re kind of going backward to move forward is known as shoots fire and it kills the people of the village and kills, crops and all the livestock. And then on the flip side of that, ’cause now we’re, doing duality.

[00:15:38] Is who was that crazy dragon? Or the mean dragon? It lived in a lair. Who else lived in a lair? Kings noblemen. that at any point in time could come down and s. Take your land and kill your livestock and want something more. ’cause they want their taxes. But going on doing a, a complete flip is let’s look at, how to train your dragon.

[00:15:59] It’s coming out again, but, it’s redone. But the idea of this dragon is just what we’re talking about is. Just because we’ve done it before doesn’t mean we have to, because now this boy, it befriends this dragon who has a similar disability. It has a limb problem. I don’t wanna go into it in case no one’s seen it, but, but they have similar disabilities.

[00:16:21] They’re both fighting. Authority in their own small ways. And they’re trying to explain to those noble men who want to kill the dragons ’cause they think they’re all evil, but they’re good people. And just because we’ve always done it this way doesn’t mean we have to continue to do it.

[00:16:38] So that is a, great way to show an other side. Of a creature that they don’t have to be the stereotype, that they don’t have to be, that, anger management issues that they’re there to help I just find that so important to. Look at things from such a larger perspective instead of, having blinders on.

[00:16:59] And it’s because you’ve always been told this way. No, we can change our points of view. We, can see a bigger picture and as writers we can do that. We have the power to change what was and show a potential of what could be. I think that when we use creatures, when we use symbolism, we can really make a difference in the reader’s lives.

[00:17:25] Sharon Skinner: Yeah, if you wanna see a completely different take on dragons, I highly recommend Peter Beagles. I’m afraid you’ve got dragons. I think it came out last year. It’s.

[00:17:33] Rebecca Dolence: oh, that’s fun.

[00:17:34] Sharon Skinner: Yeah. it’s a very different take and quite enjoyable. And of course, I’m a huge Peter Beagle fan. I have been for years.

[00:17:41] He’s a lovely, lovely person I highly recommend him. But, yeah. i’m afraid you’ve got Dragons by Peter Beagle if you want a new, different take on dragons.

[00:17:49] Rebecca Dolence: Wonderful. And I think it was, Jasper Fford. He had a completely different take on dragons in the last Dragon Slayer. that is a wonderful story. The, girl is the last dragon slayer and she’s the only one that can cross the threshold to talk to the dragon. The dragon’s, like, this is one big political game.

[00:18:07] I’m just trying to live my life.

[00:18:09] Really enjoyable. what’s another great example? Oh, they threw us away is by, Daniel Kraus. It’s these teddy bears they wake up they’re out of their box, but they’re in the junkyard and they find each other. This group of teddy bears finds each other like they threw us away and all they wanna do is get back to the kids.

[00:18:29] And the whole time the seagulls are trying to get ’em. ’cause now they’re in the junkyard, so they’re fighting off seagulls and they’re fighting off The other teddy bear with only one leg. And it’s like, Hey, if you go into the city, kids just be careful. And then in the city is the scariest big teddy bear of ’em all.

[00:18:46] And that if they want information, they have to give a piece of themselves. So this big scary, teddy bear has like extra ears and extra buttons and layers of arms and stuff. , It’s scary for the young ones, but at the same time, it’s all about not being thrown away and, how kids grow out of their phases.

[00:19:07] But again, a different way of telling, animal side points of view

[00:19:12] Sharon Skinner: I totally just added that to my TBR but it’s interesting too because we went from, when I was younger, it was the teddy bear picnic and all of that, joy and love and pretty stuff. And we’ve kind of morphed because we had, in Toy Story, we had the teddy bear as not so nice.

[00:19:27] Right. As one of the, antagonists. And now we’ve got this creepy horror, adjacent kind of kid story with these teddy bears. And some of them are good and some of them are not good. And so we’ve really kind of given them those broader personality than made them more complicated, and they, have their own backstory, they have their own experiences and things like that.

[00:19:48] Rebecca Dolence: And that’s the point of that original question that you asked me is that a creature can be a villain, it can be the protagonist, it can be a side character. Just know who they are and, yeah, create a backstory of why they are the way they are., You’ll get a whole different read about just throwing in a Griffin, just throwing in, a dragon or whichever.

[00:20:12] But, ’cause now you have a deeper understanding of who that is and how it’s gonna fit into your story. ’cause he has a personality. Exactly.

[00:20:19] Sharon Skinner: Yeah. So is there anything we didn’t cover about your approach to creatures as symbols, and this discussion that you’d like to touch on?

[00:20:29] Rebecca Dolence: Do you mind if I tell you about my favorite subject of death? Death is absolutely my favorite. ’cause it is. It is a perfect example. It’s a creature and it’s a symbol and it has to be in every tale in some way, shape, or form or another you can look at death is. Grim Reaper.

[00:20:45] You can look at it as, Charon, who is the ferryman that brings, in Greek mythology to crossover to the river sticks. we can look at devils and death and ferryman and all these really wonderful ideas of what death is as its own creature, but it’s also a symbol. So when you’re in a story and you know that your character wants something.

[00:21:07] They wanna accomplish something, they’re they’re gonna go to any means to get to it. Now, we’ve already established that that character has a backstory and why they want it. But when you get to the point where they truly have to decide, do I move forward? Do I go back to who I was, so they’re kind of in this little cave this place that says either I’m going to let a piece of me die because it’s an old way of thinking in order to move forward or they actually have to die.

[00:21:40] Like death is such an amazing creativity of symbolism of creatures. Again, because your character has to find that they have to get rid of themselves in order to truly make that change, they have to find themselves, they have to get into a place where mentally they can say, I need to be different. And that is a form of death. You could face death in so many different aspects, but that in particular is absolutely one of my favorite, favorite examples of creatures and symbolism and how they really work well in every story.

[00:22:17] Sharon Skinner: Yeah. I’m thinking back to a picture book that I read called Hortense and the Shadow, and it’s actually about a little girl who tries to get rid of her shadow. It’s by Natalia O’Hara but she discovers that she needs the shadow. And it’s similar in that vein, right?

[00:22:35] It’s that dark side of us that we don’t necessarily always want to own. And then coming to terms with the fact that that dark side of us has to exist and it’s done in a picture book. It’s beautifully done.

[00:22:47] I highly recommend people take a look at that because again, the shadow is treated like a creature and a symbol in that book.

[00:22:54] And it stuck with me for. All these years.

[00:22:56] Rebecca Dolence: you have to cuddle your demons. your characters, people there, just what you’re saying, there’s a dark side to everyone. But without that dark side, we, really wouldn’t be in an existence because then there would be absolutely no balance.

[00:23:10] So, you know, you can’t have good without the evil. there’s a fine balance between that and there’s a fine balance of that in every character as well. Going back to why are you the way that you are, something happened in your life that your brain went, Hey, I’m gonna just be like this now. Something made me love weird creatures.

[00:23:29] where it came from, I don’t know, but it came from somewhere. There’s some kind of desire to say, wow, I really like weird things. I don’t, like this reality place. I wanna create something different, something fun. Maybe I should start writing my, own folklore.

[00:23:44] Sharon Skinner: Why not? There’s, There’s a whole series of Cthulhu books for kids now, just FYI, they started with a Cthulhu A, B, C, and they have just branched out. I actually have a stuffed Cthulhu from that series in my living room because it’s adorable, and because They totally scooped me.

[00:24:01] ’cause I was working on a Cthulhu kids book and then these guys did a big old Kickstarter and I was like, darn, that’s when you put something into the universe and you don’t act on it quick enough. It’s out there. Somebody else is thinking about it too. But they’re adorable.

[00:24:15] There are bedtime stories, there’s counting books, there’s ABCs, they’re adorable.

[00:24:20] Rebecca Dolence: This sounds like a purchase for not only me, but probably my nephew who loves it. So are they RA Salvator books or just, someone took the concept of that creature

[00:24:30] Sharon Skinner: it’s a very different take , and they do really fun illustrations and now they have the creatures, the stuffies. So highly recommend that, just go out and find that they’re very active and they’re continually adding to the series.

[00:24:44] Rebecca Dolence: We love, books. We love creativity.

[00:24:46] Sharon Skinner: We love helping people make great books for kids of all ages. that’s kind of our goal in life, is to put good KidLit out into the world, good books into the world and help people do that.

[00:24:58] Now though, we’ve come to the point in our program where we like to give our readers. Action items. So would you like to offer up your action item for our listeners?

[00:25:09] Rebecca Dolence: being that we’ve talked about that if we use creatures, if we use symbolism in story, that means that we have a particular vision, we have a voice that we can put out into the world. So my action item would be find something, whether it’s an, animal outside that you absolutely love, a creature, a werewolf, a gargoyle, something.

[00:25:31] Look it up. And look up and find both the positive and the negative to each side. There’s origin stories for absolutely everything and if you can find that one creature that, kind of resonates with you, Think about how this creature that you’ve just researched could fit into your book, but before you add it in make a origin story up of why this creature is the way it is in relation to your book, and how that personality can move through your story,

[00:26:01] Sharon Skinner: Why it matters.

[00:26:02] Rebecca Dolence: why it matters.

[00:26:03] Sharon Skinner: That’s good. So my action item for the listeners is to take something and twist it, because I’ve always been a big fan of seeing monsters that we’ve seen in other stories twisted to be something else. And one of the things that I loved about writing the Nelig Stones was taking those fairies and making them warrior like. They are very warrior like they need to be because of their environment. This is part of who they are and how they exist. So take something lovable, something that we usually see as one of those. Lovely, joyful, pretty characters and give it a twist.

[00:26:37] And I’m not talking about a 180 because I didn’t 180 my fairies, they’re still good creatures, but maybe 45 degree them. Find a different kind of angle to look at your creatures that maybe nobody else has done yet. Just give them a completely different aspect that maybe hasn’t been tried.

[00:26:57] I think that’s a fun exercise,

[00:26:59] Rebecca Dolence: that is a wonderful exercise,

[00:27:01] Brings out your imagination, new sense of creativity, and who knows, it might be the next big, thing.

[00:27:07] Sharon Skinner: Cuthulhu bedtime stories, right? You never know. Alright, Rebecca, where else can we find you online?

[00:27:15] Rebecca Dolence: Well, you can go right to my website at, Rad Notes book coaching. It’s rad because those are my initials, so I thank my parents for that one. there’s two popups that are gonna come up. The first one is, understanding that villains are created, they’re not born.

[00:27:33] So there’s a worksheet with understanding how to develop your, villain, and finding, like we’re talking about today, finding that other side of your villain. The other one is my creature of the month. every month at the end of the month, I put out a new creature and. All of these are free, but what it is, is my creature, it’ll give you an origin story.

[00:27:52] It’ll give you basic attributes, personality traits. sometimes there’s theology, crossovers, cultural crossovers, and then a little, writing infusion at the end to hopefully get those writing sparks flying.

[00:28:06] Sharon Skinner: Yeah. I love that you do the cross-cultural component to that so that we get to see the aspects from different viewpoints.

[00:28:12] Rebecca Dolence: it’s interesting and, you know, every time I put one out, I learn something as well, which, we all need to keep on learning, right? It’s just, it’s part of life, part of change. So I get to enjoy this with, all of my readers as well.

[00:28:25] Sharon Skinner: That’s great. I will make sure that in the notes we have your website and your social media handles so that people can check in and maybe grab that creature of the month club, and thank you so much for being here. It’s been a pleasure as always, to speak to you.

[00:28:44] Rebecca Dolence: I really appreciate you having me on the show, Sharon, this is a treat. It’s fun. We love talking about books. So thank you again for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:28:53] Sharon Skinner: Bye for now.

[00:28:54] Speaker: We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Coaching KidLit, a writing and book coaching podcast for writers who want to level up their KidLit game. For more episodes, visit coaching KidLit dot com and to find out more about what a book coach could do for you, visit my website, book coachingbysharon.com.

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For more information about Sharon Skinner, visit bookcoachingbysharon.com or follow her on Instagram @sharon_skinner_author_bookcoach

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Want to know more about working with a Book Coach on your KidLit book? Check out my KidLit Coaching Page or fill out my inquiry form to schedule a FREE Consult call and let’s get started!

Coaching KidLit Episode 45: Creatures as Characters & Symbols with Guest Rebecca Dolence

Coaching KidLit Episode 45: Creatures as Characters & Symbols with Guest Rebecca Dolence

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Coaching KidLit Episode 45: Creatures as Characters & Symbols with Guest Rebecca Dolence