WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!
Thanks for reading The Spring.
I hope you enjoyed the novel. On this page, I've assembled some
“behind-the-scenes” artifacts and trivia that you might
find interesting. If you haven't finished reading the novel yet, I
suggest you bookmark this page and finish reading the book before
proceeding any further since this page describes and refers to events
that take place throughout the plot of the novel, including the ending.
You have been warned!
The original title page. Hooray for kerning!
The Creation of The SpringI composed the first draft of The Spring
during the spring semester of my own senior year of high school. Having
exhausted all of the course electives that interested me, I enrolled in
a zero-credit study hall for my third period class, and I spent most of
my days sitting in a desk in the corner of the half-empty classroom
writing this novel. None of my classmates, nor the teacher assigned to
babysit us, ever asked me what I was writing. Experienced writers often
suggest working at a particular time of day, everyday, and after that
experience in study hall, I can't help but agree. Study hall gave me an
hour every day during which I could write. I usually filled two or
three pages each day, scribbling away in a spiral notebook. I began the
book in February and finished it in May, taking a break during the
semester to write a short story.
From Day One the story was titled The Spring. I've never considered any other title.
My
reasons for originally writing the book were twofold. First, I was well
aware that my own high school career was ending, and conscious that
this would not be a time in my life that I would ever be able to
repeat, I wanted to capture a snapshot of what the high school
experience was like, at least as I lived the experience. The novel is
not autobiographical--none of the events described actually occurred to
me--but they could have.
The
second reason, closely related to the first, is that when I was a
teenager, I was annoyed by how inaccurately mass media portrays the
teenage/high school experience. Too many movies, television shows and
novels tend to portray teens in terms of one of three extremes: first,
teenagers are either presented as immoral hedonists interested only in
drugs, crime, and illicit sex; second, teens are portrayed as
squeaky-clean, Disney-fied cartoon characters with mentalities that
border on an almost kindergartenish naivete; and third, writers and
filmmakers focus on the abuse--physical, sexual, and
psychological--that some children suffer. While one can find real life
examples for each of these extremes, the reality for the majority of
teenagers lies somewhere in between. Teenagers realize this, but
adults, who have long forgotten what it is like to be a teenager, tend
to buy into one (or even all) or these media stereotypes. When I wrote The Spring, I wanted to avoid those stereotypes, and I wrote The Spring to remind myself, as I got older, what my younger years were really like.
More often than not, when a writer or a filmmaker sets a story during
his characters' senior year of high school, that writer or filmmaker
seems obligated to offer a scene that takes place at either the senior
prom or graduation (or sometimes both). Such scenes have become so
expected and have become such cliches that when I planned the novel, I
purposefully excluded those two events from the plot because I knew
that I wasn't going to be able to say anything new or interesting about
either of those iconic events. And really, what could I do? Would Jimmy
and Brittany Kaufman be named Prom King and Queen? Would Rachel deliver
the Valedictorian speech? Neither of those scenarios sounds like a good
idea that would fit with the rest of the story. So I set the plot
during the lull between the senior prom and the end of the school year
(and, as a result, the prom, which takes place about a week or so
before the first chapter of the book, is probably a little early
compared to when most senior proms take place in America).
Like
I say, the story is not autobiographical. None of the events described
happened to me during my final semester of high school, but it isn't
total fiction either. Rather, it's a strange hybrid of fact and
fiction. Since I graduated, I haven't returned to my high school
campus, and I don't think I'd want to. I'm not sure if I'd feel like
I'd be returning to the place where I went to school or if I'd feel
like I was stepping into the pages of my novel. Either way, it would be
a weird experience.
In the Original Draft . . .
Rough drafts always
undergo major changes as stories evolve into the final product. The
following is a list of some of the more interesting plot details that
changed as I revised the story.
In the original draft, the novel consisted of nine BIG chapters and an epilogue.
In
the original draft, Jason listens to Charley Z through his Walkman,
rather than an mp3 player. (Mp3 players didn't exist when I wrote the first draft!)
In
the original draft, Jason had a slight crush on Emma. (You might still
see some traces of this in the beginning of chapter two.)
In the original draft, Rachel's car accident involved hitting and killing a stray dog instead of rear-ending another car.
In
the original draft, the Carnival chapter focused almost exclusively on
Andrea, Jimmy, Stacey, and Jason. Rachel and Brian were there too, but
they didn't factor into the story.
In the original draft, Brian
had a much smaller role in the story than he does now. He was more of a
device to complicate Trey and Rachel's story.
In the original draft, Pallas University was simply referred to by the more generic name, State University.
In the original draft, Jimmy, Stephanie, and Andrea went to an ice cream parlor instead of a coffee shop.
In
the original draft, many of the characters had different names. Jason,
Jimmy, Emma, Brian, and Keith were all known by other names. I also
gave Andrea a last name ("Gates"), but I dropped that detail from
subsequent drafts because if Andrea had a last name then I felt
obligated to give all of my other characters last names too, and I
liked the idea that the reader only knows the characters' first names.
In
the original draft, I included a number of less-than-flattering
glimpses into the teachers at the high school, but I excised most of
these because I wanted to keep the story focused as tightly as possible
on my eight main characters, not the adults. Only a few abbreviated
episodes remain, such as Stacey's story about the flaky Mr. Thomas and
the scene in which Rachel and Dan present their report to their
somewhat bored and distracted English teacher.
Page 1
The Calendar
It isn't that hard, if
you pay close attention, to figure out the precise dates on which
events occur. The entire novel takes place over a period of just 26
days in March and April, starting on Thursday, March 28 and ending on
Monday, April 22. In the original draft, the story ran a little longer,
and on my first revision of the book I had to reduce the time frame
slightly and reorganize some of the events. I also adjusted the
calendar so that April 1st was set on a Monday instead of a Tuesday. In
order to keep track of the events, I drew a calendar into the notebook
in which I was writing. Here it is:
The calendar for the first draft. Note the chapter numbers.
Here are dates for some of the important events in the finished novel:
March 28 (Thursday) – Day Three of Jason and Keith's separation.
March 29 (Friday) – Jason joins Jimmy's friends for the first time.
April 1 (Monday) – Rachel receives her acceptance letter from Pallas.
April 2 (Tuesday) – Trey receives his rejection letter from Pallas.
April 3 (Wednesday) – Greg finally dumps Andrea.
April 4 (Thursday) – Jimmy and Stacey's “date”.
April 7 – Easter Sunday
April 8 (Monday) – Stacey begins her self-imposed exile.
April 10 (Wednesday) – Jason leaves the group and joins Stacey in exile.
April 11 (Thursday) – Rachel's car accident.
April 12 (Friday) – Jimmy and Stephanie's “date”.
April 15 (Monday) – Rachel and Dan deliver their English report.
April 19 (Friday) – The trip to the Carnival.
April 22 (Monday) – Brian and Trey fight; Jason and Keith reconcile.
When
I began assembling this web page and taking a closer look at those
early drafts, I checked to see whether the original calendar
corresponded to the year in which I wrote the novel. It doesn't. The
only year in the recent past (or the near future) in Easter occurs on
April 7 is 1996, and that is not a year that has any special meaning to
the novel. My calendar, then, must have been designed simply according
to the needs of the plot.
One size does not fit all.
Some Comments on the CharactersIf you were to compare that original draft of The Spring with the final, published draft, probably the first thing that you would notice is that I originally had placed Jason in
the role of first-person narrator. That seemed like a good idea when I
started writing, but it very quickly produced an odd effect in the
narrative because I didn't always want to describe the other important
characters from Jason's point of view. As the narrative voice,
therefore, Jason was not only speaking for himself, but he was
also—somehow—able to enter the thoughts of all of
the other characters, which was really weird and didn't make a lot of
sense. So the bulk of my first round of revisions was to transform the
entire novel from a first-person narrative into a third-person
narrative. Believe me, it takes a lot of work to transform all of those
“I” pronouns into “he” pronouns!
My
attitude towards Jason has also really evolved over the years. Where
once he was the undisputed main character and narrator of the novel, I
realized as I prepared the final draft of the book that he
might—possibly—be the antagonist of the story. He certainly
seems antagonistic, in varying degrees, to April, Jimmy, Andrea, Brian,
and ultimately Stacey. I'm not sure if it's fair to label him the
“villain” of the story, but I find it very interesting to
consider him in that light.
Jimmy is
the one character who was most inspired by a real person. He was
patterned after one of my own friends from high school whose mother met
the same tragic end as Jimmy's. My friend went by another name, and I
used that name in the first draft of The Spring, but one of
the first changes I made when I began revising the novel was to change
the character's name to “Jimmy”. It's a name, I think, that
just seems to smile when you see or say it, and Jimmy is always smiling.
The real-life “Jimmy” did have a sister who I met a number
of times, and I based the character Emma upon her. The bantering,
love-hate relationship these siblings share in the story was also
shared by their real-world analogues. The occasions of dialogue between
Jimmy and Emma is one of my favorite things in this novel.
When I was composing the first draft of The Spring, I wanted to base the character of Andrea on
a real girl I knew casually at school. Very quickly, though, before I
was even halfway through the first draft, the character of Andrea (or
“Annie,” as she is known to her friends) turned into a
separate and independent entity quite different from the real-life
Andrea that I knew from school. I considered changing the character's
name when I started revising the book, but I liked the name and the
Andrea/Annie duality, so I kept it.
Every school has its Stacey.
There's always at least one unlucky kid in every class who is
designated, rightly or wrongly, to serve as the class pariah. Stacey my
favorite character, and writing about her was a lot of fun because, in
spite of her flaws, she is really easy to root for and sympathize with.
Throughout the course of the novel she just keeps getting kicked down
when all she wants is to live a normal life; it's impossible not to
feel sorry for her. I like to think that when Stacey got to college,
she was finally able to live the life that was denied to her in high
school. (The name “Stacey,” by the way, is derived from
“Anastacia” which means “of the Resurrection."
Rachel and Trey were composites of several different people that I knew
in high school. Trey is sort of the “uber-bully”. Imagine the worst
bully from your school—Trey could kick his butt, easily. Just as Trey
and Rachel are described as a “celebrity” couple, so too in my class I
remember that there was one couple, who had been dating throughout
their high school career. Rachel, or at least her physical features,
were loosely inspired by the girl, but the guy that she was dating was
definitely not someone like Trey. Rachel's dream school, Pallas
University, is just that: a product of my imagination than a specific
school. It's just a typical, private, expensive, liberal arts college.
Brian isn't based on anyone in particular who I knew in school. In the
first draft, he is simply an obstacle standing in the way of Rachel and
Trey's reconciliation—as well as an foil to Jason—but in the revised
drafts, I fleshed his character out a little more and turned him into a
more of a three-dimensional character.
Believe it or not, April was the most difficult character
to write. Her epilogue—when she finally speaks—was the hardest part of
the book for me. In the original draft, the epilogue consisted of a
monologue in which Jason regrets never getting to know April better.
Later, I removed Jason from the epilogue completely and started to
write a kind of short story about April spending a summer day some time
after graduation, but I didn't like that scenario any better and
scrapped it. Finally, I had the idea of letting April sum up the events
and characters of the book from her perspective, and that idea evolved
into the epilogue that made it to the final draft.
You might not think so, given how rarely she appears during most of the
novel, but April's role in the story is very important. She's the
“anti-Jason,” in a way, and it is not a coincidence that although the
book begins with an emphasis on Jason, it ends with an emphasis on
April. It's also not a coincidence that she is named after the month in
which most of the events of the novel take place. April obviously
serves as a symbol, but she's a character too. (And perhaps that was
what made the epilogue so difficult to write—in the earlier drafts I
tried to treat April as a symbol, but in the final draft, I treat her
as simply another character.) Unlike all of the other characters who
are developed in the traditional way—by the things they say and do
during the story—I allowed April to develop differently. I purposefully
prevented the narrator of the story from recording anything that April
said during the chapters when she appeared, even though the narrator
does report that she is just as engaged in the group's lunchtime
conversations as anyone else sitting at the table. I decided to let the
other characters create April's character for her. She may not speak at
all during the first 26 chapters of the book, but you'll notice that
many of the other characters—Andrea, Jason, Stacey, Rachel—tell stories
about her. We learn about April through her friends, so that when she
finally tells her own story in the epilogue, she isn't a complete
stranger.
*
I've spent so much time with these characters that they seem like real people to me. It's weird to think that I have never actually met them and never will. When I read The Spring, I can hear their voices and see their faces. In trying to capture a snapshot of life in high school, I created a work of fiction that has, in many ways, superseded my memories of my real experiences.
The Cyclical Nature of [The] SpringOne of the recurring motifs in the novel is the idea of repetition and
cycles. High school seems as natural a setting as any to explore these
concepts since it's easy to settle into a routine—going to the
same classes, sitting at the same place for lunch, seeing the same
people day after day. There are a number of instances of repetition in
the novel, some subtle (like Brian and Trey's identical reaction to
Rachel's haircut) some obvious (Jimmy's dates with Stacey and
Stephanie).
When repetition occurs, though, it isn't like
watching a rerun on TV. Instead, when an episode from early in the
story is repeated later on, the repetition is set in a different
context, and events play out differently. For example, Jimmy's date
with Stephanie doesn't just parallel his date with Stacey, it is
actually a mirror image of that earlier date. As he did on that date
with Stacey, Jimmy picks up the girl at his house, but Stephanie's
departure from her house is exactly the opposite as Jimmy's awkward
meeting with Stacey's parents. Where everything went wrong with Jimmy's
date with Stacey, everything seems to go right with Stephanie—he
goes to the right movie theater and basks in its lights, he enjoys the
movie, and he has a date who has no expectations for further dates. And
while his date with Stacey ends disastrously, causing a rift in Jimmy
and Stacey's friendship, at the end of his date with Stephanie, there
is a chance for a further romantic relationship—with Andrea.
MusicObviously, music plays an important role in the novel. There is Jason's
obsession with Charley Z, of course, but most of the other characters
have music on their minds as well. Unfortunately, none of the bands
mentioned in the novel (Suspicious Janitors, Mad Devils, Dumb Angel,
Radiation, etc.) really exist, and the Charley Z lyrics that are quoted
from time to time are actually lines from poems that I wrote as a
teenager, selected because they offer either a nice ambiguity (the two
lyrics from chapter one—does Charley Z really long to be alone,
or does he long to be with others?) or because they comment on the
action in some way (the final quoted lyric in chapter twenty-six).
The way in which teens (and everyone else) acquire music is one of the
things that I had to update and revise. The first draft was written
before Napster, file sharing, and the iPod changed the music industry
forever. In the original draft, Jason gives Stacey a mix tape—not
a mix CD—of Charley Z's songs. Stacey still buys a CD of her own
at the mall, but I wouldn't be surprised if even that small detail
becomes a quaint anachronism in the next few years.
I love
music, and for me, writing stories and listening to music have always
gone hand in hand. The following is a list of some real artists and
songs that inspired me over the years as I wrote and revised the novel:
Weezer - “Buddy Holly” (for Jason)
The Polyphonic Spree - “Hanging Around the Day, Part 2”
Manda & the Marbles - “Seventeen” (for Andrea)
Talk Talk - “April 5th”
Sarah McLachlan - “Shelter”
Badly Drawn Boy - “Nothing's Gonna Change Your Mind” (for Brian)
The Awkward Stage - “So Stupid, So Smart” (for Rachel)
Sloan - “Will I Belong?” (for Stacey)
The Smiths - “Rusholme Ruffians”
The High Llamas - “The Old Spring Town”
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