Buffalo Flats, Ep. 5: Internal Desire

January 22, 2024 Anne-Marie Strohman

Martine Leavitt’s YA novel Buffalo Flats is full of desire. In addition to wanting to own a piece of land, the main character, Rebecca, also wants to become the person God wants her to be, and that means loving other people, most of whom she finds annoying or unlovable. Erin walks through how the desire is introduced, what standard Rebecca is holding herself to, and what internal obstacles there are. She also examines how the external and internal desires conflict with each other and support each other.

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Erin Nuttall: Okay, I am getting teary. It's not fair, Martine. Don't make me confront my emotions.

Anne-Marie Strohman: Welcome to the fifth episode of the KidLit 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 internal 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 for children; picture books through YA. And I also write short stories for adults.

Erin Nuttall: Hi, I am Erin Nuttall, and I write for kids. I write mostly YA and dabble a little bit in middle grade.

Anne-Marie Strohman: On 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 going to be looking at the craft of Martine Leavitt's Buffalo Flats. It's a story about Rebecca [1:00:00] who lives in the Northwest Territory of Canada in the 1890s and her desire that she wants more than anything is her own land. That's her external desire anyway. Today we'll talk about her internal desire.

Anne-Marie Strohman: Let's start with vocabulary as we do every time. Erin, what do you mean when you say internal desire?

Erin Nuttall: So internal desire is the change that we look for in character. Frequently, the character doesn't know that they need this. In Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton needs to become a better person by learning to be humble and realize that he doesn't know everything. The main character may or may not realize and like I said, Hamilton did not realize that he needed to take his internal journey, but on occasion they do realize it. And in Buffalo Flats, Rebecca is consciously trying to be a better person by learning to, as she puts it, love the people of the world.

Anne-Marie Strohman: So how is that different from external desire?

Erin Nuttall: External desire is usually [2:00:00] what people think about when we talk about desire. It's the tangible, visible thing that the main character wants. The Musical Theater's "I Want" song. The musical Hamilton's, My Shot is Alexander Hamilton's want song where he declares that his external desire is to have a shot at helping to free his new country. And then side note, to become famous while doing so.

And Rebecca, as I mentioned before, her external desire is to have a piece of land of her own. Just like external desires the internal desire can't be easily accomplished, and if Rebecca were already a compassionate and loving person, there would be nowhere for her to go. And if she went from being selfish and quarrellous to loving overnight, the reader won't believe she changed or that she needed to do so. In the best stories, at some point the external desire and the internal desire should come in conflict within one another. It could be conflict that is throughout the story. In Hamilton, the more [3:00:00] successful Alexander Hamilton becomes, the more arrogant he becomes. And so he has these two desires that are fighting against one another. Or it could be like in Buffalo Flats where Rebecca's desires frequently work together. As she works hard to try to earn the money to buy her land she is becoming a better person. But she has one point where her two desires clash and she has to make a decision.

Anne-Marie Strohman: So we've talked about external desire, internal desire, and conflict. Three great vocabulary terms for our craft study and we have two others that we mentioned last time but let's refresh here. Obstacles and stakes. Tell us about those.

Erin Nuttall: So obstacles are the things that get in the way of the desires and they could be different obstacles for each desire, and they could also be the same obstacle for both desires and stakes are what will be lost if the desire is not achieved.

Anne-Marie Strohman: And lastly, remind us [4:00:00] about tension. Why is that a good thing to have in a story and what is it?

Erin Nuttall: We talked about this quite a bit in in the last episode, episode four but tension is where the author butts up the desire with the inability to get the desire, and there should be many tension points between these ideas throughout the story.

Anne-Marie Strohman: And we talked last time too about how oftentimes the reader is the one who feels the tension. Will they get out of the cave before the water floods in? Right. That creates a lot of tension in the reader.

Erin Nuttall: Right. So those obstacles and the stakes and desire, the three work together to create the tension for the reader.

Anne-Marie Strohman: So let's focus on Rebecca's internal desire. You mentioned that this is a journey of change, right? Of character change. So who is Rebecca at the beginning and who is she at the end?

Erin Nuttall: In the beginning Rebecca is really great. She is very self-aware, but probably her main difficulty is being judgmental. [5:00:00] And she is judgmental of herself just like she is of other people. And I read this in an earlier episode, but I think it's worth repeating, "She figured she might be able to Love the World, or at least the general idea of it, if she didn't have to love people in the particular. ... And people were always unhappily surprising her by being just like her—scared sometimes, selfish sometimes, tired and lazy and thoughtless and uncertain." And so Rebecca is applying those not so great character traits to both herself, but also to the people in general. So that's where she is at the beginning.

By the time we get to the end, Rebecca has grown a lot and she is easier on herself and she is easier on other people. And she has to make decisions, which I think is key to this journey, that allow her to grow. She could choose to just not do these things but she over [6:00:00] and over chooses, and even though she fails a lot, she still makes progress.

We were talking about this earlier and I just think it's a, interesting to point out, characters don't always recognize their internal growth and by don't always, I should say most of the time. So it's really interesting to have this character who has an external desire that is clear and vocalized to herself and others, and an internal desire that is clear and is vocalized to herself. It makes for an interesting way to tell a story I think.

Anne-Marie Strohman: Just like with external desires there are obstacles and stakes with internal desires. So tell us about Rebecca. What keeps her from becoming who God wanted her to be?

Erin Nuttall: The biggest part is being judgmental. So that's a really big thing and we see it throughout the story as Rebecca interacts with others and as she judges herself. [7:00:00] And one of those is her envy of Radonna Beck, who is a girl her age who's in the community, and they both have a shared crush on Levi and they both want his attention and they both get his attention. He goes back and forth between them. And so Radonna is a lot of things that Rebecca sees in herself and she judges Radonna harshly for it. And then additionally Rebecca sets up, a measuring stick of perfection in her mother and her best friend LaRue. And she sets it up right from the beginning, page four she says she could never be as good as her best friend, LaRue or her mother. And this is the bar that she compares herself to and when she looks at them she sees how far she has to go. There are a bunch of others. Rebecca is far from perfect but those [8:00:00] are big ones that I wanted to talk about today.

Anne-Marie Strohman: And we see her failing to love people over and over in this book as well which we'll talk about in a minute. But what about stakes? What are the consequences if she doesn't reach this goal?

Erin Nuttall: So the stakes are kind of interesting because they are also very internal. Rebecca is generally a good person. She is not a perfect person, she doesn't love people the way she thinks God wants her to, but in general, she could continue on her life as she is forever and just be who she is and not make any changes. But she has this self-imposed goal to be the person that she believes God wants her to be. And that his visit in the opening scene, his visit with her, implied that he thinks that she can be. And so in some ways it's kind of an arbitrary goal because it's self-imposed, but in other ways, knowing and understanding Rebecca's deep belief [9:00:00] in God and her deep desire to have this relationship with him. And in order to have that relationship with him: to be able to be like him, that is a huge stake.

Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah, and that belief really motivates her throughout this story as well.

Erin Nuttall: It does really motivate her.

Anne-Marie Strohman: Let's look at how she goes about trying to reach this goal. What does she do to become more like the person God wants her to be? What does she do to try to love people? And I'm assuming we're going to see her fail.

Erin Nuttall: Oh, yes, for sure. Well, so she fails right away in the first chapter. She is going to take her mother as her model and behave like a lady just like her mother does and then only speak kind and gracious things. And maybe 30 seconds after she sets that goal she fails at it and has to speak her mind and tell her father and her brothers what she's thinking. [10:00:00]

A really cute-I thought it was cute, it endeared me to Rebecca, is when she goes to church and she wants to talk to Levi, he's her crush, but she decided that she would take an example from mother and LaRue and quote, "visit with the sisters who might need a word of kindness." And then she does what I think is really interesting, "She chose the most frightening of all Sister Gladden—who had a palsy that caused her unceasingly to shake her head."

So I get that that would be very frightening to Rebecca but that's the person she chooses. She picks the hardest one, which I think is really cute. And Sister Gladden is really funny and so I will just leave it at that. It's really funny the conversation that they have, but Rebecca sees that she misjudged Sister Gladden and that she wasn't scary. So in some ways it was a success. But then [11:00:00], "Rebecca looked for Father to tell him she needn't go to church now, for in discovering how wrong she had been about Sister Gladden's true nature, she had already had a sermon in how not to judge others." So.

Anne-Marie Strohman: She could just skip church

Erin Nuttall: So two steps forward, another step back.

Anne-Marie Strohman: That's really important in a story that our characters are going to have some successes, if it's all failure it starts feeling hopeless. Why are we reading this book? But if we have some successes and kind of balance those out with failures, like you said, one step forward, two steps back, maybe two steps forward, one step back. So we're making progress toward that journey. It is really important to have those successes.

Erin Nuttall: Oh, for sure. And I think that Martine does a good job with the failures in that often she sticks a little humor in there so that it helps soften the failure a little bit for the reader. So it isn't like womp-womp all the time, right? [12:00:00]

Anne-Marie Strohman: So tell us about another attempt.

Erin Nuttall: Okay. So Rebecca and Radonna they're both interested in Levi and because Radonna is not particularly kind to Rebecca, Rebecca feels really justified in judging her and she is kind of a thorn in her side, in this attempt to love all people. Like everyone. She has set this goal to love everyone and she can't quite get to Radonna.

There is a really funny scene where they're at the fair or some kind of town party, I can't remember. And one of the little boys is selling caramel apples. And Rebecca picks one, she picks a smaller one and it's a delicious caramel apple. And Radonna is there, Radonna, Rebecca and Levi are there. And Radonna picks the biggest looking apple and she takes a bite of it and it was a joke, it was an onion. And [13:00:00] it's so funny that this little boy thought that that would be such a funny joke and Radonna is not happy and Rebecca takes a little bit of glee in that.

And so here again we have another funny episode, but it's also an episode where Rebecca is thinking Radonna is getting her just desserts because Radonna is pushing herself in between Rebecca and Levi, she's dominating the conversation, Rebecca suspects Radonna sabotaged her picnic basket that was supposed to be bid on by the bachelors of the community. So she takes a lot of glee in Radonna's reaction to getting the onion.

Anne-Marie Strohman: Honestly, I did a little bit too.

Erin Nuttall: Oh, for sure. I think Martine does a good job. She sets you up on Rebecca's side. You want Rebecca's lovely basket to be beautiful and have a high bid, and you want Radonna to step in cow manure, right? So yes we, like Rebecca, [14:00:00] find Radonna's distress funny.

Anne-Marie Strohman: Any other examples you want to tell us about?

Erin Nuttall: So, this is a real, a tight bit of storytelling that Martine does, and actually the whole book is really tight obviously we've mentioned that a lot of times. But this little piece of storytelling I really liked. It's Rebecca's desire for her land that inspires her to help her mother in her midwifing because it'll bring her profit and that can go towards buying her land. But slowly, those experiences make a change inside Rebecca.

And so it's difficult in her first time, all she does is like clean the house, clean the already clean house because she's there with her mother and her mother's doing everything and Rebecca's like 'I don't know what I'm supposed to do,' but she gets a chicken out of it. So that inspires her to keep doing it. And she tends to focus on this material aspect of the midwifery rather than the personal aspect [15:00:00] of delivering a baby. But then she has to deliver a baby on her own. Her mom's at another delivery and is far away, there is no doctor there are no women, other women close enough at hand and so it's left up to Rebecca to help LaRue's mom.

It says, "While Sister Fletcher nursed her baby, Rebecca washed up. The whole time she was thinking that she was different now. Yes, different, or maybe it was that she had forgotten some part of herself, or why she had been who she was. And all because she had seen that baby come away from her mother and breathe." And so we have this experience that is a clear movement of Rebecca from here to there towards being a better person. She is now thinking about this mother and this baby, and not necessarily about are they gonna give her a chicken or some cheese or whatever that will help her [16:00:00] in her endeavor for her land.

Anne-Marie Strohman: And because this internal desire is one that she's conscious of, we get this lovely reflection of her recognizing that change in herself.

[00:16:09] Erin Nuttall: She does. Yes. And so that again, is another thing because frequently, if the character doesn't recognize that they need to make this change, it's all left up to the reader to recognize it. So maybe that is why Martine, this is just off the cuff here, maybe Martine decided to have Rebecca be aware of this internal change so that she can have these reflections because so much of this book is her internal thoughts and dialogue with herself and it might be more difficult to have that recognition for the reader if Rebecca herself doesn't recognize it. I like to try to figure out why Martine does what she does, and I feel like if I can do that, I will be better at what I am trying to do.

Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah, and I think it, it can be really tricky, this aspect of self-awareness in character. Rebecca has a lot of self-awareness, [17:00:00] I have a character who has like quite a bit of self-awareness and I've actually had comments in, you know, critiques about having too much self-awareness not being accurate for but I think some teens are very self-aware.

Erin Nuttall: Oh for sure.

Anne-Marie Strohman: Some teens aren't. But that's a decision when you're writing YA to figure out what level of self-awareness your character has.

Erin Nuttall: Well, and I do have a manuscript where I have a character who is very not self-aware and I try to use that for humor so that the reader is aware and he is not as aware. But it is tricky to to figure out how to do this internal desire line, this internal journey, when he is so oblivious to so much. But also I think that is accurate. I think that teens run the gamut of self-awareness and in different arenas too. [18:00:00] Like, I will say Rebecca is not very self-aware in the boys department but she is self-aware in other ways. Yeah, so I think that's an interesting thought to think about. How and where is my character self-aware?

Anne-Marie Strohman: So you've mentioned the bar that Rebecca sets for herself with this internal desire. Mother and LaRue, their perfection, meeting with God, and having that be kind of a motivating factor. Does that idealization or very high standard that she sets for herself, does that change during the course of the novel?

Erin Nuttall: There are definitely some changes and we'll talk more in depth about them in the later episode. But Mother and LaRue turn out to not be perfect. They're not totally who she thinks they are and that is a step on her internal journey as she recognizes that, perfection may not be the actual goal. That [19:00:00}] perfection may not be possible.

But the other part that you mentioned was her visit with God which inspired this idea that she needed to become a better person. And you get that like in the first scene of the book, she has an actual visit with the actual God of the universe. That is important groundwork that Martine laid. And it's important for Rebecca because like you said, this is a desire that she is really working hard for and it's also a really difficult desire to reach. But she accepts it because she has this love of God and she feels his love for her and his love for the land. Which she also loves as we know. It's interesting that she just accepts it wholesale and just starts working on it and wants to be that person until some grief, some really terrible- her baby nephew dies [20:00:00] at birth and she was the one who delivered him. And it was just, that chapter, that it is just so moving. And I, as you may know, I'm not a crier, but that chapter did make me cry. It is just, it's so, it's so touching.

Anyway, so Rebecca pushes back, she pushes back on God a little bit, a lot really. And it's an interesting piece of her journey. It says, "Rebecca wondered if Kincaid," that's what they named the little baby. "Wondered if Kincaid would be a bit resentful, upon entering the gates of heaven, saying it was brief, Lord. She stood and walked among the tombstones and then returned to sit down next to her baby nephew. ... Kincaid Leavitt, the tombstone said, and the year of death. That was all. He had come to get a tombstone out of life, and to cause exquisite grief. She thought that the dust beneath her was whispering something she didn't want to hear. If she saw God again, she would tell him all this. He would likely know, but he wouldn't mind her telling him anyway. He was like that. She would tell and tell and tell, until she was done telling. That, she suspected, was part of what eternity was for."

So she still loves God. She still feels his love for her, but she has a thing or two to talk to him about. That chapter is really fantastic. And it might be my favorite chapter in the whole book. But because of Rebecca's struggle, she struggles with what happened.[00:21:38] She struggles with her role in it. She struggles with God's role in it. she struggles with what that means for who she's trying to become.