Q&A with Holly Race

We always love chatting to our alumni and we were thrilled to welcome Holly Race back for one of our Twitter Q&As last month. Holly’s debut YA fantasy novel, Midnight’s Twins, had just been published and we talked about the inspiration behind it, the process behind planning a trilogy and how she uses her experience in script development when plotting her character arcs.

FA: Welcome, Holly! Thanks so much for joining us and congratulations on the publication of Midnight’s Twins. Do you want to start by telling us a bit about the book?

HR: Thanks! Midnight’s Twins is a YA fantasy set between our world and the dream world. 15-year-old Fern and her twin brother Ollie discover that there’s an army who protects dreamers from their nightmares – because if we die in our dreams, we die in real life too.

FA: It’s SUCH a great pitch… Where did the idea come from? And how long did it take you to write?

HR: I’ve always had very vivid dreams (& nightmares!) which made me wonder what would happen if those dreams were real in some way? If the dream world was an alternative reality we entered every time we went to sleep? Everything else stemmed from there. I had that idea about 10 years ago, so it’s taken a while to come to fruition! I spent a LONG time planning it, then my husband snapped at me to write the thing already & prompted me to apply for Faber Academy, & I haven’t looked back since.

FA: And we’re so happy you came to us! Ten years is an amazing amount of time to spend immersed in that world – the novel is the first in a trilogy, did you have the other books already planned out at that point?

HR: Me too! You guys & @JoannaBriscoe definitely gave me the confidence to get stuck in! I actually originally had it mapped out as a five part series, until I started taking it out to agents, who told me that this was maybe a bit… ambitious. They were right in the end (as usual!). 

I re-mapped it out as a trilogy as my agents were taking the book out to publishers, and it’s a lot stronger, even if some of the smaller threads I’d wanted to explore have had to be cut. Having said that, I’ve tweaked some things in the plans for books 2 & 3 over the last year. One character got a reprieve. Two more are getting the chop…

FA: I love that – ruthless! Actually that leads in well to another question we’ve had about the editing process for Midnight’s Twins… how much did the novel change? And are you someone who edits as they go or do you prefer to get everything on the page first?

HR: Having spent years planning the first novel, I ended up going off piste in the second chapter! Originally, Fern was going to be recruited into the knights directly, but when I was writing it made more sense for it to be Ollie who’s recruited instead. That had a huge impact not only on the plot for the first half of the book, but also on Fern’s emotional journey, because she spends a lot of time trying to prove herself, and believing that she doesn’t belong. Once I’d written that, though, I didn’t go back to re-plan. I decided to power through and get a very rough first draft, which worked well for me in the end. I accepted that I’d end up doing a lot of editing, but I definitely prefer to have words on the page as soon as possible, even if most of those words end up in the bin. 

It also helps to have been through that rather painstaking process already when your editor gives you notes, I think. My editor, who is *incredible*, turned up to our first meeting (before I’d even got a publication deal!) with reams of questions. Midnight’s Twins is now very different from the version that was sent out to publishers. It’s more ambitious, gallops through more plot and the relationships are more complex now. It’s a much better creature for having gone through a ruthless editing process.

FA: That’s so interesting – I think sometimes even the most meticulous of plotters will find the characters pulling them in another direction once they sit down to write! I love how important that emotional journey is to you too, and the relationship between Fern and Ollie – could you tell us a little bit about how you developed that, and do you have any advice for writers who are trying to get to know their characters better?

HR: I have an old system that I used to use when I was a theatre director (yonks and yonks ago!) and was tracking relationships and character arcs in scripts. It’s a bit difficult to describe on Twitter, but it involves making a sort of graph of my characters’ key ‘want’. I map how close or far they are from achieving their goal as the story progresses – ideally I’d end up with a nice variation of curves. If anyone wants to see in more detail how I do this, it’s on my Instagram stories (@holly_race) under ‘character arcs’. I use variations of this for mapping multiple characters, their relationships with each other and also what the reader wants for them. I find it easier that way to see where something is missing, or where they hit a boring plateau.

As for trying to get to know your characters better: there are a lot of brilliant resources online with questions you can ask your character, or ideas for scenes that you can write, and I think a lot of people do find those exercises very helpful. I am not one of those people! Personally, the only way I can get to know my characters is by writing the story – maybe it’s because I’m writing fantasy, but until I can get them into that world, I can’t truly anticipate how they’re going to react.

FA: Oh wow, that’s brilliant – you may well have just sorted out my Friday night plans for me, as I’m at this stage with my WIP at the moment! Okay, another question: Which books helped/inspired you while you were writing?

HR: Ha! Nothing like trying to work out a character arc over a Friday night glass of wine! The main inspiration for Midnight’s Twins is an epic poem called The Faerie Queene, which I fell in love with at uni. It’s set in a gorgeous fantasy world and features horses, knights & battles. I think I’ve probably also been influenced a lot by books like His Dark Materials, The Hunger Games & The Sword in the Stone. Someone told me that the book reminded them of Buffy, too, which was the ultimate compliment as I binged on BTVS as a teen.

FA: Yep, that is *definitely* the ultimate compliment if you ask me! Okay, time for one more question before we let you go… or actually it’s a combination of two (sneaky). On Facebook, you’ve been asked: ‘I got to know Fern a lot in this first book. Will we get to know Ollie more in the next?’ We’ve also had a couple of people asking if you can give away any spoilers for Book 2 – so are there any secrets you can share with us?

HR: The story is still from Fern’s POV, but we definitely get to know Ollie better in book 2. We spend more time unravelling some of the insecurities that led to him acting the way he does in book 1, which I’m really excited about. As for the rest of book 2? Weeeeell… there’s a lot more romance & more at stake because the Big Bad is growing stronger, in this world and in the dream world. We’ve got an influx of new characters, including someone who had a cameo in book 1 (feel free to send me your guesses!)

FA: Exciting!!! And hopefully you’ll come back and chat to us again then. Thanks so much for all your answers, you’ve been brilliant – off I go to start mapping my arcs…

HR: Thank you so much for having me! Good luck!

Holly Race is now a full-time writer, but she used to work in TV and film script development, for companies like Red Planet Pictures, Aardman Animations and Working Title. She is a graduate of our Writing a Novel course, and Midnight’s Twins is her debut novel and the first in a trilogy. Holly lives in Cambridge with her husband and daughter. In her spare time, she enjoys baking, trying not to kill plants, and travelling to far off places at short notice.

Midnight’s Twins is published by Hot Key Books and is available in paperback and ebook now.