Q&A with Sally J Pla, Part 1: Where Ideas Come From
After analyzing the characters and how they show up in the plot and subplots in Sally J Pla’s MG novel, Stanley Will Probably Be Fine, I had more questions. So I reached out to Sally and she generously agreed to a short interview. This Q&A is an edited version of our conversation.
NOTE: If you haven’t read this novel, beware that there are spoilers.
Michele: I'm so curious how this novel came to you in terms of plots and themes and characters.
Sally: It came out of having three teenage boys at the time, being here in San Diego, and having them being really interested in Comic-Con and all things, Marvel, all things comics. They made me watch all the Marvel movies in order. We were really geeking out to it as a family.
It’s really hard to get tickets to Comic-Con in San Diego. There's a lottery and you have to sign up. It's a massive pop culture event that takes over the whole town.
The year we got tickets I had happened to break my leg before the event. I fell in a hole while I was walking down a sidewalk. So I was in a wheelchair and I was really too scared to go.
Or maybe it was that actually, it gave me an excuse not to go because I have such sensory overload.
Even spending a few hours socially with people that I love, laughing and talking, I need a lot of downtime to sort of detox from that and to process it in my brain. Because my brain holds onto all the little fragments of conversation, every little aspect of visual stimulus. I have to learn how to offload that a little bit. After an event, it's hard for me.
So the thought of doing Comic-Con … ah, sorry, I broke my leg. You guys go on without me.
I stayed home and I was really mad at myself. I thought, well, what if I wrote a story?
Because of course, it's always from some kind of personal tender spot that the stories grow.
So I guess it came from that little personal tender spot of longing to do this comics trivia, super fun thing and not being able to do it with my kids. So Stanley came into mind.
Michele: So he’s partly based on you.
Sally: Yeah, that feeling. And also the fear of active shooter drills that go on in schools and all that kind of stuff and how they affected my kids growing up. It was really scary for them to have to do those active shooter drills, but also kind of goofy.
The kids’ K through eight principal was kind of funny. He had this idea to have a secret code for their active shooter drill. He would get on the intercom and say, [deepens her voice] “John Lockdown is in the building.” That was the original title of this book, John Lockdown Is in the Building.
I wanted to work that in. I wanted to work in everything that swirled around a character dealing with fear of all kinds that a 12-year-old kid would feel in a new middle school—active shooter drills that are really scary, longing to do social things or be out in the world but having that be scary, the reality of the world and what that feels like. So that's what fed into Stanley.
This map helps identify some of the places Stanley went during the trivia treasure hunt.
Michele: My favorite part of the whole book is basically the trivia treasure hunt. How exactly did you plan all of that out?
Sally: It was so fun to do. I started with a huge map of San Diego and thinking about where he could feasibly walk or, you know, take a quick bus or trolley ride and get to in the course of six or seven hours. After I found all of the interesting little areas downtown, which is a cool consolidated little downtown, and where he might probably go, then I thought about the trivia.
I had been doing tons of research. I had all of these books, history of comics. Oh my gosh, I read so many comics and all the characters.
I knew that there was a submarine in the maritime museum down in the harbor called the Black Widow. We had just gone to the San Diego Zoo and I had been really impressed with the reptile exhibit and all the really amazing insects. You know, Ant Man.
So it came from looking at the geographical places and then thinking about what might fit in based on all the comics reading that I had done.
The last part was writing the clues and then getting them from place to place.
Michele: Did you test your clues on people?
Sally: [laughs] I tested them on my middle son, who was the main driver of all of this comics trivia. He rolled his eyes at some. He thought they were all easy.
In Part 2 of the Q&A with Sally Pla, we’ll talk about how Sally strategically weaves in her secondary characters and a visual approach she uses to help her think about them. Want to make sure you get it? Sign up below. You can unsubscribe at any time.