Tokyo Heist (Viking/Penguin) is out today, so we we've hauled our fellow sleuth Diana Renn into the interrogation room. Tokyo Heist has gotten amazing reviews from the L.A. Times, Kirkus and School Library Journal and it's also made the Summer 2012 Kids' Indie Next List. Go, Diana!
About Diana Renn
Diana grew up in Seattle and now lives in Boston with her husband and son. She graduated from Hampshire College and earned an MA in English and American Literature from Brandeis University. She has taught ESL, writing and literature and has authored several ESL textbooks. She also writes short stories and essays, and enjoys travel, bicycling and taiko drumming.
About TOKYO HEIST
When sixteen-year-old Violet agrees to spend the summer with her father, an up-and-coming artist in Seattle, she has no idea what she's walking into. Her father's newest clients, the Yamada family, are the victims of a high-profile art robbery: van Gogh sketches have been stolen from their home, and, until they can produce the corresponding painting, everyone's lives are in danger—including Violet's and her father's. Violet's search for the missing van Gogh takes her from the Seattle Art Museum, to the yakuza-infested streets of Tokyo, to a secluded inn in Kyoto. As the mystery thickens, Violet's not sure whom she can trust. But she knows one thing: she has to solve the mystery—before it's too late.
It's tough to interrogate the queen of the interrogators but we did, thankfully, manage to get some information out of her without having to resort to our sneakier tactics.
Elisa Ludwig: Violet is a great heroine—she's smart and curious but
also very believable as a teen. How did this character come to you? Was her
voice simply in your head or did she come into focus more gradually over time?
Diana Renn: Thank you! When
I started writing, it was an adult novel, narrated by a thirtysomething Violet,
with a parallel narrative about her teen self in Japan. The younger Violet was more
fun to write. I heard her voice like a radio signal. I started over with the
younger narrator, and was happily surprised to find I was now writing YA.
While Violet’s
teen voice took awhile, I started the novel with an image of her. When I was in
Japan, I saw an American girl at a summer festival, wearing a summer kimono and
combat boots. She haunted me. I wondered about this girl who was straddling
cultures and what her story was.
Elisa: You have written about how your setting chose you, but
how did the ultimate choice to set a mystery in Japan inform the writing
process? What were the challenges of this particular setting and what aspects
made your job easier?
Diana: One challenge
was letting go of my travel itinerary and memories from Japan. It was tempting
to include every cool place, experience, or person I encountered, and it took many
false starts to realize that my story needed to go its own way. I can’t tell
you how many months I spent trying to figure out how to get my sleuth and her
sidekick to a remote mountain town where people used to farm silkworms. Why? It was going to take them on a
fifty-page detour to a dead end. My book has nothing to do with silkworms.
Everything they needed to accomplish could be done in other cities and towns. So
cutting loose my travel experiences was hard at first, but once I did, the
writing got easier.
Initially, I
was worried about setting the novel in Japan knowing I could not return there
for research. When I needed to fact check or get ideas, I turned to travel
guidebooks, the Internet, Japanese friends, books. And YouTube. Tourist videos
on YouTube made my job so much easier. Instantly I could recall what it was
like to board the shinkansen, or walk
through a department store, or lay out a futon on a tatami mat in an inn. Thanks to videos, I could either remember
details or gather new details to bring scenes to life.
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Elisa: An art heist is a special kind of mystery with its own
set of clues and investigative techniques—what sort of research did you do to
get the details right? How did the mystery itself evolve through drafts?
Diana: I’m totally
fascinated by what happens when art enters the marketplace and becomes a kind
of currency. That fascination extends to art heists. Art heists are incredibly
complex. They are also underreported. Museums and galleries don’t really like
to talk about them, for fear of exposing their vulnerabilities to crime. There
are, however, many books and documentaries on this topic, many of which I
consulted.
I’m obsessed
with the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum heist that happened in the 1990s here
in Boston. I studied that heist a lot to understand the types of people who
might steal art, who might ferry or harbor stolen art to a buyer, and who might
be motivated to find it. I contacted the
FBI, the Seattle Police, and various other law enforcement officials to find
out how they would go about investigating the type of crime(s) involved in my
novel.
Despite all the
research, it took a lot of revisions to nail the criminals, investigators, and
motives in my story. The research and writing were always going on
simultaneously. The story development led to questions I needed to answer with
research. The research in turn affected the story development. Characters were
added and subtracted as needed.
Elisa: Violet is less than satisfied with her parents and their
involvement in her life and the way she learns to forge a better relationship
with them is a wonderful subplot in the story. You did such a great job
balancing this emotional arc with the action of the story—what is your advice
to other mystery writers who might want to create richer characters and
relationships in their narratives?
Diana: Thank you!
Balancing the emotional arc and the mystery plot was a challenge. In early
drafts, the two arcs were competing, or confusing. Beta readers weren’t sure if
it was a contemporary, character-driven story or a true mystery. Eventually I
chose to foreground the mystery without sacrificing the emotional arc. What
really helped in the end was crafting scenes that could do “double duty” –
conveying character development and furthering the mystery plot at the same
time. For example, in early drafts I might have a scene where Violet finds some
clues (mystery plot) and a separate scene where Violet confronts her father
about some issue (emotional arc). In subsequent drafts, I was able to combine
those scenes, so that Violet might unearth a clue while having it out with her
dad or confessing her feelings to someone – or the reveal might lead to an
emotional scene — within the same two or three pages. This strategy cut down
the word count too.
Later, I created
a chapter-by-chapter chart where I tracked the mystery plot and any subplots,
coding them in different colors. In that same chart, I wrote out questions I
wanted to leave the reader with, regarding both the mystery plot and the
emotional developments. Finally, I did
lots of journaling from the points of view of my main characters. That helped
me get into their voices and characters.
Elisa: What did you learn from the writing of Tokyo Heist that
you have taken with you into your subsequent work?
Diana: I’ve learned
that I love mystery! I resisted the genre label for a long time, mainly because
I feared plot. But I had so much fun putting together this puzzle. Mysteries
are difficult to write, but there’s nothing more satisfying to me than those
moments when plot points, clues and revelations all suddenly work together, and
everything clicks into place.
I’ve learned to
be a better planner and think through problems before I write myself into a
corner. I’ve learned that charts, timelines, and other graphic organizers can
be used at any step of the process. I’ve learned that the mystery has to be
introduced early on – ideally in the first ten pages, and definitely in the
first twenty.
Above all, I’ve
learned that mystery demands clarity. This is key. A mysterious, atmospheric, ambiguous story is NOT a mystery.
As the author, you have to know who did what, and when, and where, and why –
maybe not all of that when you begin, but at some point. You have to know what
the effects of a crime are and how they will ripple through the entire book.
You have to be able to separate the clues and red herrings, and put the right
weight on each, and plant them. Then you have to wipe away your fingerprints and
your footprints for the reader.
Elisa: This is a book that could appeal to so many different
types of readers: mystery buffs, manga fans, art aficionados, anyone curious
about Japan and Japanese culture. Who do you envision as an ideal reader for
Tokyo Heist?
Diana: I do hope the
book appeals to these various readers – though those weren’t groups I had in
mind when I wrote. I wrote for a teen girl who was introverted and creative, who
made sense of the world through some kind of art, and who needed to discover
her inner strength and resources.
Elisa: What are some of your influences, literary and
otherwise?
Diana: These days I read
a lot of contemporary fiction, both YA and adult. I’m reading more mysteries
than ever. In YA mystery, Peter Abrahams and Alane Ferguson are two favorite
authors of mine. I also love John Green, for the voice and the intelligence of
his young characters. I love authors who introduce me to other places and
cultures. Laura Resau is a favorite YA/MG author of mine – she writes such rich
stories with global settings, places I’m dying to visit (and a dash of mystery,
too!)
I also really
love art as a source of inspiration. I poke around in art galleries and museums
as often as I can. (I swear I’m not plotting a heist of my own!) Exploring a
different medium always triggers new ideas for me.
Elisa: What is your writing process like? Pantser or plotter?
When do you prefer to work, and how do you stay focused?
Diana: My writing
process is strange. I sketch out ideas in rough outline form. I try to write
30-50 pages. I reevaluate and sketch out more ideas. I revise and push out
30-50 pages more. And so on. I seem to write deeper into the story as I go, while
pushing the length out little by little. So I’m a combination of pantser and
plotter, I guess.
When drafting
new material, I prefer to work at night when my family is asleep, outside fades
away, and I have a stretch of uninterrupted time. I pay for it the next day
with fatigue, but if I can stay alert from nine till midnight, I can get some
good, workable material. During the cold light of day I can then edit and plan
the next chapters. As for staying focused, I watch almost no TV – I purposely
don’t get wrapped up in series dramas, since those characters will then take
over my mind and my creative energy. Also, I swear by internet blocking
software; I use “Freedom.”
Elisa: What's next from you?
Diana: I’m working on
a new YA mystery (unrelated to Tokyo
Heist). I tend not to talk about works in progress until they’re ready to
face the world, so that’s about all I can say right now.
Elisa: Do you have anything else to confess?
Diana: Yes. I can’t
write in a café at all – too distracting – but the physical prototype for one
of my characters works at my local Starbucks. I drank a TON of coffee there
over the years while stalking studying this person, and spent God knows
how much money on frequent coffee breaks. Now, when I get my occasional latte,
I see him and smile to myself – he’s aged out of the YA market, beyond the age
of my character, and he has no clue was used as a model!
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