That One Question: A Guest Post by Jennifer A. Nielsen
More than 110 years after the Titanic’s fateful voyage, young readers continue to be enthralled by survival stories set on board the “unsinkable” ocean liner. Jennifer A. Nielsen’s latest gripping historical tale follows a young stowaway aboard the ship when disaster strikes. Read on for an exclusive essay from Nielsen on writing Iceberg.
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Iceberg
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As disaster looms on the horizon, a young stowaway onboard the Titanic will need all her courage and wits to stay alive. A thrilling tale from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen!
As disaster looms on the horizon, a young stowaway onboard the Titanic will need all her courage and wits to stay alive. A thrilling tale from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen!
One of the most common questions I’m asked as an author is whether I base any of my characters on someone I know. My answer is always the same: Never, because I give my characters so much trouble, I’d never be able to write their stories if they were inspired by someone in my life.
That held true for the creation of Hazel Rothbury, the central character in ICEBERG. Hazel has to leave her home in England to travel to the workhouses in New York, because her father has died and her family needs the extra money. Hazel stows away on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, but believes she may have one last chance. If she can write about this great ship and sell her story to the newspapers, she could earn real money as a journalist and not have to go to the workhouses.
Let’s pause for a moment while I firmly state that I was never on the Titanic! But I have been fascinated by it throughout my life. Who hasn’t?
When I set out to write ICEBERG, I knew many others had told versions of the Titanic story before, both in books and in film. It’s the subject of multiple documentaries, YouTube videos, conspiracy theories, and scientific evaluations. The story is so well known that my fear was I’d fail to offer readers anything new.
So a lot of my research focused there, on finding information about the Titanic that I’d never heard before. The information I uncovered became the foundation on which my story began to take shape.
Did it matter if the rivets were hand-tightened in places, or that some parts of the hull were single-layered? Did the bulkhead design make any difference, or the number of portholes in the ship? What about the ship being on fire, or Captain Smith’s Sunday afternoon party?
The answer, of course, is that all of that mattered very much, and I loved the process of discovering why.
Yet in the end, all story is about character. This was Hazel’s story. What I did not realize at the time, was that in many ways, her story is also my story.
I am the daughter of a single mom who worked the night shift so we’d have a roof overhead, and the day shift so we had food to eat. Every statistic back then said that my future would be the modern-day equivalent of workhouses. And yet notebooks and pens are cheap, so we had plenty of those. I was a reader and my mother encouraged me to write as well. Gradually I began to believe that I had it in me to rewrite my stars.
Now, when readers ask that same question – do I base my characters on anyone I know, I give a new answer. Hazel is the most personal character I’ve ever written. Her story is one of hope, and of the power we all have to rewrite our own destinies.
