Buffalo Flats, Ep. 4: External Desire
Martine Leavitt’s YA novel Buffalo Flats is full of desire. The main character, Rebecca Leavitt, wants more than anything to own a piece of land near where her family is homesteading in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Erin traces how Martine introduces the external desire right from the start, where Rebecca runs into obstacles, and what the stakes are for Rebecca.
Links:
Heroes Trailer: Save the Cheerleader, Save the World
Another way to make desire concrete: Controlling Beliefs on KidLit Craft
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Erin Nuttall: So we see all these difficulties and we're like, yeah, just give up, man.
Anne-Marie Strohman: Welcome to the fourth episode of the Kid Lit Craft Podcast. This season we're taking a deep dive into Martine Leavitt's YA novel, Buffalo Flats.
Today we're focusing on the main character, Rebecca's external desire, the obstacles that get in the way, and what will happen if she doesn't get that desire. I'm Anne-Marie Strohman and I write everything from picture books to YA, and also short stories for adults.
Erin Nuttall: Hi, I am Erin Nuttall and I write for kids; mostly YA and a little bit of middle grade.
Anne-Marie Strohman: At KidLit Craft, we look at mentor texts to discover the mechanics of how writers do what they do so we can apply it to our own writing.
Erin Nuttall: As Anne Marie mentioned, we are exploring Martine Leavitt's Buffalo Flats, which is about Rebecca Leavitt, who is a teenager [1:00:00] in the Northwest Territories in the 1890s. And what Rebecca wants more than anything is her own land and we'll talk about that more today.
Anne-Marie Strohman: So let's start with vocabulary. Erin, what do you mean when you say external desire, and how is that different from another term we've used in previous episodes, internal desire?
Erin Nuttall: Okay, sure. So external desire is usually what people think about when we talk about desire. It's often tangible, visible, the thing the main character really wants. You may have heard of the Disney "I Want" song that's what the external desire is. In Newsies, it's Jack's dream of going to Santa Fe and living on his own and on his own terms. And in Buffalo Flats, Rebecca wants land that is hers and hers alone.
And it's different from the internal desire because internal desire is the internal, as you might expect, change that we look for in the character. Frequently the character doesn't know that this is what they need.
In Newsies, Jack [2:00:00] has to see that he doesn't have to always be alone and that he can rely on others and others can rely on him. And that's the internal change that this lone wolf needs. In Buffalo Flats, Rebecca is conscious of her internal desire and that is to be a better person to, as she says, love the people in the world. And in the best stories, at some point, the external desire and the internal desire should come in conflict with one another, and we will talk about that more in the next episode.
Anne-Marie Strohman: Two other concepts we'll be talking about today are obstacles and stakes. Tell us about those.
Erin Nuttall: So obstacles are things that are in the way of either or both desires and stakes are what will be lost if the desire is not achieved. Stakes is kind of like why we care.
Anne-Marie Strohman: And last, tell us about tension. I often confuse stakes and tension, so what is it and why is it a good thing to have in a story?
Erin Nuttall: So tension is where the author butts up the desire [3:00:00] of the character with their inability to get their desire. And there should be many tension points between those two ideas; the desire and the inability to get the desire throughout the story.
And this is a big part of what keeps the reader engaged in the story. Without tension, the reader either doesn't care if the main character gets their desire or thinks their desire will easily be achieved.
The difference between tension and obstacles and stakes is the stakes is the result of the character not getting their desire while obstacles are the thing that gets in the way and tension is the feeling that the reader gets that this is going to be a difficult endeavor.
Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah. I like to think of it as stakes are what matter for the character and we as readers empathize with that and then tension is what we feel as we're reading.
Erin Nuttall: Yeah, that is a good way to think about it. That idea that the reader is engaged in the story in such a way that they have feelings about [4:00:00] what's going to happen to the main character. That's a good way for your reader to want to keep reading. With no tension your reader's like, "ah, this is boring."
Anne-Marie Strohman: We want to keep those pages turning.
So in previous episodes we've talked about how Rebecca's two desires show up in that opening scene and also in the opening chapter. And both desires are really front and center from the start.
Let's focus on that external desire, having her own land. If Rebecca were able to get her land right away, this would be a shorter book than it is already. So what keeps her from getting what she wants? What are the specific obstacles she has in this story?
Erin Nuttall: Okay, so Martine is amazing at setting everything up from the beginning, and that's why we spent so much time on the opening chapter was because she set up these obstacles. And then she continues to remind the reader that the obstacles are there.
First of all, single women can't homestead and that is the the easiest way to get their land. Easy, it's a lot of work. Maybe I should say it's the cheapest [5:00:00] way to get their land. It's $10 and four years of hard, hard work. But single women are not allowed legally to homestead. Even if that were not the case, if she can somehow overcome that obstacle, her neighbor, Kobe, has first dibs on the land she wants, the specific patch of land that she wants.
And then worse, she's friends with Kobe, and so she thinks that he might not be too big of an obstacle, but worse, the terrible neighbors, the Semples also have dibs if Kobe doesn't want the land. There's also the Cochrans who are a big outfit in the area, a big cattle outfit. And they are concerned about water rights in the area. If she gets the land, they may be upset because they may worry that she's going to infringe on their water rights.
And then if she were to buy it outright rather than to homestead the land, then she will have to earn $480, which is a lot of money, [6:00:00] an impossible sum. And so those are the initial problems, the initial obstacles that she faces. Some of those will change throughout the story, but those are the really big ones that engage the reader right away that they see that there's this tension between her wanting the land and her ability to get the land.
Anne-Marie Strohman: Okay, so let's keep going with that tension. It could be easy-peasy, Rebecca wants the land, she saves up money, she buys the land. But we have these outside pressures you've mentioned the land rights, the people who have dibs on the land, the water rights. What other kinds of outside pressure does Martine put on Rebecca's plans?
Erin Nuttall: Okay, well first of all, I just want to say the pressure that Martine puts on the reader is that she repeats Rebecca's desire over and over and over throughout whole story. Sometimes it's a repetition of Rebecca saying, this is what she wants, outright. Sometimes, she shows Rebecca working really hard for her money and having difficulty with that and sometimes Rebecca's [7:00:00] talking to someone about her land or defending her choice; the reader never forgets what Rebecca wants. So while that's not an outside pressure in the story, that is a pressure that Martine puts on the reader to engage the reader. We know that Rebecca really, really wants this land.
And then, as far as outside pressure goes is a difficult task, right? There's the initial impossibility that she as a single person, a single woman, can have the land, it's nearly impossible to earn that much money, and then throughout the story, Rebecca works and works and works and yet the money in her money box grows really slowly. And the reader sees Rebecca despairing that she won't make enough money. So that's the difficulty portion. And there are other like natural difficulties and neighbor difficulties that, that come into it as well.
Martine also gives us a ticking clock which is a great way to add that tension. We know there's a limited [8:00:00] amount of time and then also to put pressure on our character to get this done.
And Rebecca's ticking clock is that she has until the end of the year before Kobe's rights expire. And then the Semples have the option to buy the land and the Semples are terrible so we know that they would not be amenable to Rebecca's plan.
And then one, I think that is really an interesting way to do it is Martine gives Rebecca hope. And she gives the reader hope. So we see all these difficulties and we're like, yeah, just give up, man. But because Martine gives Rebecca and the reader hope, there's that tension again that yes, this seems super impossible, but it's not totally impossible
Rebecca's mother gives Rebecca her Japanese enamel box that holds Rebecca's mother's personal treasures, and she gives it to Rebecca to keep her money she's earning for her land. [9:00:00]
We know this is a big thing because they are in the Northwest territories of Canada, which still is sparsely populated. And so we know how difficult it would be to have a Japanese enamel box and how precious that would be for her mother. Rebecca thinks, "'For your land,' Mother had said. And Mother never lied." So we get this hope: Mother believes in Rebecca, so the reader can too. Of course, there's a lot of other tools but those are some prominent ones that Martine uses in Buffalo Flats.
Anne-Marie Strohman: And that last one, that hope, and you mentioned that box, that's one of my favorite techniques in writing, is finding objects that can be symbols within the story. And so this box we see later in the story, it comes to stand-in for that money. It comes comes to stand-in for that hope that she has for the land.
Erin Nuttall: Yeah. And it's just a little object and actually she only references it a handful of times in very short scenes. And yet, when she does that, [10:00:00] it's just like, 'Hey, don't forget there's this hope it's out there. This little, you know, balloon is flying up.' And so I agree with you. It's a great way to symbolize that.
Anne-Marie Strohman: Let's move on to stakes. What are the stakes for Rebecca in this journey to get her own land, this external desire thread? In other words, what happens if she doesn't get the land?
Erin Nuttall: Right. Okay. So I think that the way Martine has set this up is really interesting. Frequently stakes are a big thing. Like there was a show on, I don't even remember what it was called, but it had the tagline, which were the stakes, "Save the cheerleaders, Save the world." Do you remember that show? Saving the world is a big one. That's just like all of Marvel that's the stakes. They don't do this and the world implodes or explodes or Thanos takes over or what have you. In Newsies, Jack, his stakes are that all of the working class will continue in poverty.
This is not that. Buffalo Flats is not that. It is not a save the world stakes. [11:00:00] There are no outer stakes to Rebecca not getting her land. The territories will continue, her family will continue. But there are extreme inner stakes almost to the same level
She made Rebecca's desire essential to Rebecca's character. And in doing so, it makes it a stake as big as saving the world. If Rebecca doesn't get her land, then she loses an essential part of who she is. And I was trying to pick a quote for this, and it was really hard because Martine reiterates it throughout the book in different ways, but I felt like this one really summed it up nicely.
It says, "She could go away, but she'd only be a ghost anywhere else without this land around her, with these mountains reminding her every day just what Mother Earth could do if she set her mind to do it. That, as much as anything, made her want her land, and every day she dreamed of it." [12:00:00]
So that is a big stake. She would be a ghost without it.
Anne-Marie Strohman: As we've said, Martine set up this desire for land right from the start and Rebecca's working toward this goal throughout the book. In what ways does Martine keep our focus on Rebecca's desire? You mentioned that she talks about it a lot. How does she do that?
Erin Nuttall: She talks about it a lot. Rebecca tells everyone what she wants, and I think it's one of my favorite parts of her character because she wants something that is so out of line for what a woman of her day should want. So she does, she tells her family, she tells her friends, she tells the land agent, she tells everybody.
But one thing that Martine does that I found really interesting and I hadn't noticed other authors do, and they probably do and I just hadn't noticed. She ends many chapters with references to Rebecca's external desire.
So I'll just read a couple of them, or a few, maybe more than a couple. [13:00:00] They're pretty short. It's just the last line of the chapter and frequently we think of that as like the kicker, right? The one that kicks you into the next chapter. And I love that idea that it's this desire that kicks you into the next chapter.
So she has, "But the miracle she really wanted was her land." Another chapter, "Rebecca imagined that runty little pig, which she named Abigail, crawling right into her money box." Another one, "She couldn't give up. There had to be a way to have her land. God might have all manner of tricks up his omnipotent sleeves."
So we have these ends of chapters that show Rebecca just really, really wanting and needing that land, and that pushes us into the next chapter. So I love that combination of reminding us of the desire, setting up that tension, and pushing us to find out does Rebecca really get her land or not?
Anne-Marie Strohman: I've heard some teachers and writers talk about that [14:00:00] desire as a yearning, and I can see that for Rebecca here that it's so much a part of what she wants. Her focus is on it. It keeps our focus on it. Everything is related to that desire for land.
Erin Nuttall: It's true, it's an integral part of her character. I think a lot of us or at least I personally, take deep dives into these ideas of plot or theme and we, and I personally, tend to leave out desire or I'll put it in once. And I don't remind the reader over and over. Because it is such a part of who Rebecca is, it's not annoying. Because I think that can be, at least that's always my worry, that that's the danger. And I think why I don't put it in this often. I see that I could do better in that I can make it a bigger part of who my character is. Because it does make me like Rebecca, it does make me want to cheer for her. [15:00:00] It does make me hope that she can get her land and that she can get this thing that means so much to her. So that would be my suggestion to myself, and to anyone else who is writing, that we keep that desire in the forefront of our reader's minds and we make it something that is undeniable for the character, who they are.
Anne-Marie Strohman: I think Martine did a really great trick here too, where, or smart thing. It's not a trick, it's just a smart thing to do when writing, is that she's taken this kind of ephemeral, loose woo-woo thing of being a part of the land and loving the land and given it to Rebecca as a concrete desire for her land, for this little piece of land. Right.
And I'm working on my YA novel right now, and I've had people ask me again and again, like, what does she want? What does she want? What does [16:00:00] your main character want? And I'm like, well, I know what she wants, but it is really non-concrete, right? Abstract, I guess is the word there. And so watching the way that Martine has taken this abstract concept of love for the land, and made it concrete in this one piece of land that Rebecca wants for herself that makes me appreciate Martine so much and start rethinking how my novel is playing out.
Erin Nuttall: Well, that is a conversation I had frequently with Martine when she was working with me on my YA manuscript. She would always be like, we need to know more about her desire. And I'm like, I already said it, you know, and clearly she's, you know, doing X, Y, or z get this thing. But yeah, it's not, it was not a part of my main character. It wasn't essential to her nature. And I hadn't understood how powerful that [17:00:00] idea is. And so it really makes me want to look at things and be like, okay, well how do we do this so that my reader knows who my character is through what they want.
Anne-Marie Strohman: Martine does it by giving Rebecca this outspoken character that, she will tell everyone that she wants the land. It's not a secret desire. That I think helps her along in the writing we get to see that in dialogue. We get to see Rebecca telling people and we get to see people interacting.
I think oftentimes my characters have a more secret desire that they're afraid to tell people. So I have to rely more on internal thoughts to get that desire communicated. And some of those last lines you read are Rebecca's internal thoughts, right?
Erin Nuttall: Yeah.
Anne-Marie Strohman: The imagining the pig climbing into the enamel box, for instance. I love that line.
Erin Nuttall: I know it was so cute. Martine does a really good job of mixing those ideas where you have this super deep emotional tie to the land and we see that [18:00:00] in Rebecca's descriptions of the land. But then also these funny little things like the pig, or she hates chickens. Rebecca hates chickens. And someone gives her a chicken for some work she's done and she decides that she'll love chickens because chickens will get her closer to her land. So there's things. It's really funny because Leavitts are not supposed to be afraid of anything and one of the things Rebecca's afraid of is chickens. Chickens can be really mean. I will say that.
She mixes it up in a way that is engaging. And the humor, we'll talk more about humor in another episode, but it's really hard not to talk about humor with Martine. She is inherently funny and it comes through in her books and it's always like this little subtle thing. So like you're saying, external dialogue about desire and then internal dialogue about desire, and then these funny pieces of things that are happening or attitude changes or what have you that help underline the desire. [19:00:00]
Anne-Marie Strohman: And every time that desire comes up in different contexts, in different chapters, it's at a different point in Rebecca's journey, right? So her attitude toward it or her thoughts about it may change. It's not going to be samey-samey all the time.
Erin Nuttall: No, it is not for sure. I think the strongest one is her ability to describe the land and that description of the setting and of her love of it comes like in the different seasons and the different ways that she engages with the land. Also, I don't know, there's just so many ways Martine is just so good at this whole desire. I feel like I am not even giving her due credit for all of the cool things that she does.
Anne-Marie Strohman: So my brain's a little bit exploding with ideas about what I'm going to do when I'm working on my novel this afternoon. But Erin, why don't we move to our last thing which is one beautiful sentence. What beautiful sentence did you choose for us today?
Erin Nuttall: Well, [20:00:00] speaking of a lovely way to describe the land there's so many to choose from. And I love them all. But this is one, "The pulsing prairie arched its back, half woke up as it stretched along toward the mountains, then sank and sighed into the deep green timber to the west."
Anne-Marie Strohman: That's gorgeous. And one of my other favorite, nerd alert, nerd terms: personification. She personifies the land here.
Erin Nuttall: She personifies the land a lot and ooh, that's not something I'd thought of. But I wonder what role that plays in Rebecca's desire because the land is frequently personified in these gorgeous descriptions of it. And I think it must, well, obviously, it ties me to Rebecca more and ties me to her desire more. I'll have to think about it more and figure out why exactly. Right? Or you can too. And listeners [21:00:00] you do too, tell us why personification of the land makes us desire the same thing Rebecca desires.
Anne-Marie Strohman: That is it for today. I am learning a ton here. Thank you, Erin, for doing all the hard work on this podcast.
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