It is my pleasure to host Adam Sydney, author of Yolanda Polanski and the Bus to Sheboygan.
By mere chance, I discovered Adam’s novel while researching a very specific
topic on my Kindle. Adam is a screenwriter, having completed his Masters in
screenwriting at the University of London and also trained at The American Film
Institute. Recently, though, he took time off to write novels, including the
one he discusses today. In one of the Kindle reviews of Yolanda Polanski, the reviewer writes, “It’s impossible to dislike
Yolanda and her joie de vivre, to not
want to be friends with her.”
GAIL’S FAST FIVE: Welcome, Adam, and thank you for taking
time for an interview today. In this fast-paced world of social media, we’ve
grown accustomed to the 140 character comments, but can you share with us a
more detailed account of the novel and your research for Yolanda Polanski
and the Bus to Sheboygan?
ADAM
SYDNEY: I'd be glad to, Gail. And thank you so much for the opportunity to join
in your blog and connect with your visitors.
As
some of your readers already know, I did woefully little research on Yolanda Polanski and the Bus to
Sheboygan. I'm originally a screenwriter, and over the course of my
experiences writing for the screen, I discovered that the more I outlined, the
worse my work became, so after fifteen years or so of studying and following
the rules and struggling to write something -- anything -- good, I finally
decided just to write whatever came to me, whenever it came to me.
Astonishingly, that first screenplay, which was an experimental comedy, was the
first time people seemed to genuinely like my work. The whole experience of
writing it was subconscious, and so in a way, anti-outline, and I've continued
in this subconscious way of writing ever since.
Another
element of deliberate writing is, of course, researching, so when I started to
write Yolanda, I
did the opposite: I had no idea what I was going to write or in what setting it
was going to take place. I just started. When the time came, I made up the name
Two Rivers, Wisconsin-- or so I thought! Only after writing quite a bit of the
story did I decide to check and see if there really is a Two Rivers-- and lo
and behold, my subconscious had dredged it up from somewhere! At that point, I
did do a bit of retro-research, but it was very minimal. In fact, an important
element of the story is the ice-cream sundae, and it was there that I finally
made the connection: I'd seen a TV show years before about Two Rivers and its
dispute with Ithaca, New York, as the birthplace of the sundae. Weird, eh, that
it would pop up in a novel?!
I might have also been a little more comfortable writing
about a small town in the Midwest, as I was raised in small towns in the
Midwest. So even though it didn't feel like it, perhaps I was writing what I
know-- a central tenet to many writers that has never really felt all that
crucial to me. Well, at least consciously!
GAIL’S FAST FIVE: I love your story about how you
subconsciously chose Two Rivers, Wisconsin as the setting for your novel. Of
course, you already know that my home town is Two Rivers, Wisconsin and this is
why I can relate to Yolanda! Is “the job” the most important part of your
protagonist’s life?
ADAM
SYDNEY: "The job" is absolutely at the center of Yolanda Polanski's
life during her time in Two Rivers. Remember, I come from screenwriting, where
my professors drilled into my head that every major beat (and most of the minor
ones) had better be generated by the pursuit of the main character's goal. I
know that reading a novel is a much different experience than watching a film,
but I still believe that keeping narrative tension taut is at the core of a
good story. So even though I was just letting the characters do whatever they
wanted to do, they had to be swept up into Yolands's incredibly strong desire
to reach her goal, which naturally leads them to generate goals of their own.
Yolanda's
central purpose also gives us a good insight into her character. The
bizarreness of this goal, in fact, lets us know that she's maybe a little crazy
right off the bat. But her generosity towards others comes through in that she
attempts to befriend a very odd group of people and ultimately never stops
trying to recruit them to her team until they befriend her back.
There
is perhaps another element of Yolanda's relentless striving to attain her goal
that helps us understand her better as a character. She's constantly trying to
get smaller goals accomplished in pursuit of the larger one, but because she
seems to misinterpret basically everything that everyone else does or says,
she's in many ways her own worst obstacle. I think this situation is often at
the heart of a lot of great comedy-- maybe because it reminds me of myself a
little...
GAIL’S FAST FIVE: Adam, your basic screenwriting goal of
having every major beat (and most of the minor ones) generated by the pursuit
of the main character's goal, is also a major tenet of novel writing. What
unique or suspenseful twists make your novel and protagonist stand out?
ADAM
SYDNEY: I think many of the twists in the book that might help Yolanda stand
out among comedic heroines are not actually surprises to the audience, but
rather surprises to her. As I mentioned earlier, she misinterprets pretty much
everything that she experiences. Hopefully, what's funny to the reader is that
juxtaposition between what's obvious to us but isn't to her. I haven't seen
this situation much in novels-- and especially novels told in the first-person
point of view-- so I thought I'd give it a shot.
Of
course, a major series of twists show up at the end of the book. Here, we
discover that some of Yolanda's misinterpretations might not have been as far
off the mark as we thought, and we also find out that what she's been telling
herself (and us) about her past and present might not be 100 percent accurate.
GAIL’S FAST FIVE: What draws Yolanda Polanski into the
novel’s suspenseful situations?
ADAM SYDNEY: The beauty of character-driven stories, I
think, is that the main character often generates the suspenseful situations
herself, rather than being dropped into them. I hope this is the case with Yolanda Polanski.
Basically, she comes to a little town on the western shore of Lake Michigan
that's minding its own business and proceeds to create over-the-top scene after
over-the-top scene. There is no suspense before she shows up because there's no
real conflict, but because we see how important her goal is to her, hopefully
readers care about all the hot water she lands in-- and voila, suspense! How
did she get herself in this situation? And how on earth is she going to get out
of it?! Stories with this kind of suspense always engage me, so my goal was to
engage readers in the same fashion.
GAIL’S FAST FIVE: Is Yolanda Polanski and the Bus to
Sheboygan part of a series, and are you working on a sequel?
ADAM SYDNEY: One of the nicest compliments I got on this
book was that a few people wanted the story to keep going. That meant a lot to
me. But I'm one of those restless writers who wants to keep moving forward. I
started off with a serious literary fiction novel, My Heart is a Drummer, and then I wanted to
try my hand at a more comedic story, hence, Yolanda.
Now, I'm getting a little more experimental and am presently revising a
semi-narrative horror novel called Something's
Wrong. I know it's not very bright for marketing purposes, but I
keep jumping around genres. So after the third one, who knows what I'll be
writing next...
So to sum it up, I have a feeling that Yolanda's main
story has been told in this novel, so there's probably not a sequel in me-- but
you never know!
GAIL: Along with many delightful tales about Yolanda, your
interview today reads much like a tutorial in novel writing. I’m sure many
authors looking for helpful hints will find your responses enlightening. Adam,
this last isn’t so much a Fast Five question as an “if/then” scenario: If Paris
is not an option, then where would you most like to spend your time writing and
why.
ADAM
SYDNEY: Darn, because I just love Paris, Texas.
Okay,
so a second option... Well, I'd have to say the countryside of Essex in
England. I lived for a while in the northern suburbs of London and would often
drive up into the ancient villages of Essex, which had a particular appeal to
me. Besides being beautiful, the area seemed very peaceful, which I think would
foster good writing. And Central London would only be 45 minutes away, so when
I needed a little sensory overload to goose my faculties, I'd have that option.
But then again, I've discovered that places where you really want to be often
can be detrimental to getting any writing done, so maybe I should have said Fulsom
State Prison or something.
Is it too late to change my answer?
Where readers can follow Adam Sydney and his books:
My blog: www.adamsydney.wordpress.com
My company's Facebook presence: www.facebook.com/newcraftpress
