Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic
You can read a review of This Rough Magic by Suzanne Fox on the blog Mary Stewart Reading.
On this episode of Tart Words, Suzanne Fox and Linda Hengerer are discussing Mary Stewart’s book This Rough Magic and how she uses a dolphin as both needing rescue and being the rescuer, and plays characters off each other who are at the beginning and end of their respective careers.
It was first published in 1964 by Hodder & Stoughton and is now available in ebook editions.
Description from Amazon:
Lucy Waring, a young, out-of-work actress from London, leaps at the chance to visit her sister for a summer on the island paradise of Corfu, and what's more, a famous but reclusive actor is staying in a villa nearby. But Lucy's hopes for rest and romance are shattered when a body washes up on the beach and she finds herself swept up in a chilling chain of events.
I shuddered, and drank my coffee, leaning back in my chair to gaze out across pine tops furry with gold towards the sparkling sea, and surrendering myself to the dreamlike feeling that marks the start of a holiday . . .
Takeaways for writers:
In This Rough Magic, Lucy Waring is a young actress at the beginning of her career, and renowned actor Sir Julian Gale is at the end of his career. While at different stages and with different skills, they enjoy each other’s company and catching up on the London stage scene.
Mary Stewart gives the reader all the information they need to understand William Shakespeare’s The Tempest by having Lucy and Sir Julian talk about the play; Lucy also gets information about why Sir Julian thinks Corfu was the setting for The Tempest from other characters.
Lucy is in the bay with the dolphin when she realizes someone is shooting into the water. To scare the dolphin away from danger and to alert the shooter of her presence, she jumps out, splashes around, and shouts up to where she thinks the shooter is. Near the end of the book, the dolphin Lucy befriended helps get her to safety.
Exercises for writers:
Characters – How do you show characters at different stages in the same profession? How do you show tension when characters are trying to keep information from each other, using subtext and action instead of dialogue?
Backstory – Do you drip in backstory only as the reader needs that information? Read your work in progress from the beginning, and only leave in the relevant information about the character’s past that the reader needs to understand the story at that moment.
Structure – Scenes with the dolphin bookend This Rough Magic. Lucy rescues the dolphin in the beginning of the story and the dolphin rescues Lucy at the end of the story.
Do you structure your plot lines to answer story questions in the reverse order that they are introduced in the story?
Read your favorite book in the genre you’re writing in, and note at what point story questions are introduced and at what point, and in what order, those story questions are answered.