Homage to Howl's Moving Castle

Melissa Balmer  
Deciding to pay homage to the fantasy classic Howl's Moving Castle is helping me write a better novel by learning to write characters that are more flawed and authentic, realizing arguing can be a love language, and early feedback from beta readers who also know Howl's really well.

Homage to Howl's Moving Castle - are you taking a page from a favorite book in your WIP?


Last year about this time I dusted off the idea for a novel I'd set aside a few years earlier. This time I decided to just write for fun and see if that might help me finally finish it! I reformatted it as a romance novel, and I decided to throw in all kinds of things I enjoy. Even though my story is set in modern times, I decided I'd also make it an homage to one of my favorite books Howl's Moving Castle.

Paying homage to a classic story is nothing new, of course. Let me step back a moment and share where my concept was probably sparked. I was in my 30's in the mid-90s. It was a magical period when modern-day homages to Jane Austin started to become a big thing. In 1995 Amy Heckerling's sleeper hit Clueless based on Austen's novel Emma came out. That same year the glorious mini-series version of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth came out (I loved it so much that I bought the series so I could watch it over and over), and then in 1996, Helen Fielding published Bridget Jones's Diary (which became a movie in 2001 also starring Colin Firth totally by design).

For a while, I was a big reader of the Jane Austen-inspired books that came after that. I continue to be a fan of movies and TV show adaptations.

But I digress. What I really want to write about today is what I'm learning even more deeply about writing a great story by studying Howl's Moving Castle.

1) Interesting characters can be a contradiction in terms

Wizard Howl starts off as a supposed villain in Howl's. The main character Sophie has overheard gossip that says he's such an evil wizard he literally eats young women's hearts. When Sophie gets cursed by the Witch of the Waste to go from 18 to 90, she decides that such a powerful wizard is probably the only one who can lift this curse and goes off in search of him. She figures he'll have no interest in her heart because she's too old.

The rumor is a metaphor. Howl, it turns out, is a perpetual heartbreaker, he is in a sense heartless, but I don't want to say more and spoil it for you if you haven't read it yet.

At the end of the day, both Sophie and Howl are the heroes of the story, and they're both very flawed authentic characters. Sophie believes herself to be cursed with an uninteresting life as the eldest of three and argues frequently for her own limitations (this is one of author Diana Wynne Jones's fun twists of a fairytale theme). Howl has to trick himself into being brave and dealing with the true villain by painting himself into a corner over it.

Howl is fascinating because he comes across as vain and lazy when in reality, he's incredibly insecure and a brilliant strategist using magic in ways that no one else has thought of.

Reading the book again and again in the process of writing my own novel (Kitsap Summer if you're interested) has helped me have more courage to make my own two main characters flawed. It made me realize my love interest Rune was too much of a sweet cinnamon roll character (especially as he too is extremely good-looking like Howl - though Howl's handsomeness is created by magic) and he needed much more of Howl's snark.

Note: The book was originally published in 1986 in an era when young women weren't often fierce take-matters-into-their-own-hands protagonists in their own stories (and in this case Sophie has to become old before she does so). Sadly, the beautiful, 2004 animated film from

2) Arguing and snark can be a love language

Anyone who enjoys an enemies-to-lovers romance knows this. I don't know if Jane Austen created this trope with Pride and Prejudice, but she certainly created one of the best couples in history for it with Darcy and Elizabeth.

Here again, it was by studying Howl's that I realized I'd originally made my characters fall too quickly and easily in love for the story to be interesting. In my second draft, I've been going back through to give many of their encounters sharper edges and wry observations.

What I realized from Howl's is that used well snark can be a way of one character telling another, "I really see you." Howl falls truly in love with Sophie because initially she sees him through the eyes of an old woman and is very immune to his beauty and charm. Sophie falls in love with Howl because she realizes that his laziness is all an act and that he truly is a kind-hearted generous person underneath who also happens to be vain and life with him with always be interesting.

3) Early feedback readers who also love the original story can find parallels you missed

I have two people reading my WIP who know Howl's as well as I do and their feedback is so very valuable - and - in a few cases they've either pointed out where parallels are that I didn't consciously realize I was creating, or they've pointed out where I could make one.

Are you a Howl's fan? Has re-reading it recently helped you do a better job with your own writing?

Are you a Jane Austen fan? Has re-reading any of her books helped you in your own writing?

Or is there another classic story you love that you're paying homage to in your own WIP?

I'd love to hear about it!

P.S. If like me, you're a Howl's fan and are constantly looking for books to read with a Howl's vibe I highly recommend you check out Heather Fawcett's Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies.




14 Comments

Luluo

Just about every book I’ve read has contributed to my writing in some way. Even the bad ones teach me what NOT to do! This is why it’s so important for writers to read often and widely.

That aside, my current WIP—the first draft of which I’ve just finished—was inspired by another Dianna Wynne Jones story… in a way. One of the books in The Dalemark Quartet had a throwaway line that needled its way into my head. It really wasn’t an important part of Dalemark, but it became the basis of my novel. Gotta love Dianna Wynne Jones! I often recommend her book Tough Guide to Fantasyland to fellow Fantasy writers. It lampoons the genre marvelously.

Aug-21 2023

Josielynn

A great read, thank you. Like you I adore Howl’s Moving Castle. I first came to it via Studio Ghibli, and though I think it’s a fun animation, when I read the book I realised it merely scratches the surface. I remember laughing aloud at the part where he goes home… Oh, he’s Howell

Since then I have also fallen a little bit in love with Chrestomanci, another of Diane Wynne-Jones’s creations. I think she’s terribly under-rated in the hyped world of Potter. And I agree with you about how when you find a writer whose work you truly admire, and they somehow speak to you personally, it’s like they’re whispering in your ear… this is how we do it… See…

Aug-21 2023

Piggle

Yes, love Howl’s Moving Castle, the book and the film. The book has that much maligned trait of whimsy that’s hard to get right (it’s not just silliness, which is more like whimsy gone wrong). Market Chipping, Kingsbury, they feel like real places, yet they’re unlike anywhere actually real. It was almost the perfect novel for Studio Ghibli to adapt. Their films have always had that ‘this is bananas but definitely happening’ vibe to them. I didn’t even read it until I was an adult, so it’s not just a misplaced sense of nostalgia. It just captures some of that porous world of children where magic and reality can live side by side and why would it be otherwise?

Aug-21 2023

Pedallove

Now I’m totally curious what the line is! Do tell! (as Howl would say)

Aug-21 2023

Pedallove

You’re so right! The movie is totally charming, but it only scratches the surface.

The Howl vs. Howell Jenkins is one of the most hysterical things in the book, that and that Howl charms himself to be so handsome and has no qualms about it whatsoever.

Aug-21 2023

Pedallove

Piggle! Welcome!

You’ve really helped clarify something for me that I know I’ve been trying to do with my own WIP but didn’t quite have the language for. It’s creating the magic of cozy nostalgic whimsy that Wynne Jones so excels at. How’s is a masterpiece of it.

What a great line!

I’m writing a modern-day romance, but about two creative people, and as I write this I wonder, have I done this justice? I think not, something to remember for the third draft! Many creatives like myself (and I hope you as well) can still live in that porous world, we can still be Howell in grad school in Wales and a Wizard in another).

Howl’s was a perfect book for Ghibli to adapt. The crowds for May Day. The romantic theme song. The cake shop alone is a dream. I’m getting hungry now for a cream cake I’ve never tasted.

I get why Myazaki made it into an anti-war film, but wouldn’t it be marvelous if he’d stuck to the actual book?

Aug-21 2023

Piggle

Yes, cosy, nostalgic whimsy is so hard to do because it’s so hard to define. It needs to be teetering on the ludicrous without ever being so. Try and recreate it with hard lines and strict rules and you’re liable to produce nonsense. I’m not even quite sure what Jones is doing to make that book the way it is (and I once wrote out several chapters of Howl to try and find out), but it creates this feeling that transports you back to the lightness of childhood when anything was possible.

I actually watched the movie before reading the book, as I was already a Ghibli fan, and so didn’t perhaps get some people’s frustration with the inaccuracies of the adaption. To be honest, I don’t really like it when they adapt a book scene by scene, as it usually just ends up a worst version of what I already had in my head. I could have done without the anti-war sentiment, I suppose. But it’s pretty much standard for Ghibli, and the messaging is pretty light compared to most ham-fisted Hollywood movies these days. I still think it captured the spirit of the novel, even if it played around with the story. And those little Ghibli flourishes are a sort of magical whimsey all of their own.

I see them as two separate entities and enjoy them both for different reasons.

Aug-21 2023

Pedallove

I haven’t yet written out anything from Howl’s, but I’ve read it about 5x time as I work on my own book. I love how she takes really old fairytale tropes and turns them on their head.

I may be a bit of a purist on book to movie translations - though it’s not possible given the time frame, I just really wish more of Howl’s true personality came across, so he wasn’t such a perfect prince, and that Sophie got to have her own magic as she does in the book.

Aug-21 2023

Pedallove

I too adore Chrestomanci. Not too long ago I watched an online conversation with members of her family and other writers. One woman pointed out how sexy Howl is, that he was her first book crush. The same can be said of Chrestomanci with his elegant robes.

Yes, she is underrated in the hyped-up world of Potter (and I loved both, but Howl is sticking with me more these days).

Aug-21 2023

Tadennye

I’m a huge fan of Dianna Wynne Jones and Howl’s Moving Castle (and Chrestomanci) too. I wanted to write like her when I grew up, but no one else can really write like her! What another cool thing about this site–to find other fans of the books we loved as if they were our secret books so many years ago!

Thanks for writing this post. :heart:

Aug-21 2023

Pedallove

Alas! No, no one can write like her. I’m so delighted your delighted. One of my most successful posts on Reddit earlier this year was a list of all of my favorite blond snarky heroes in fantasy books that I felt were paying homage to Howl’s.

On the top of that list is Emily Wilde’s Enclopaedia of Fairies if you haven’t already read it.

Aug-21 2023

Tadennye

Thanks for the recommendation. I just reserved it at my “local” (library, not pub :rofl:), even though I’ve got a stack on my bedside table and not enough hours to read!

Aug-21 2023

Pedallove

I hear you! But you’ll be happy you did!

Aug-21 2023

Luluo

I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was something about how wizards only gained their magic after death, and therefore, the big baddie Kankredin was already dead… or something like that. It’s been a while, so I can’t remember exactly how it went. But I’ve taken my own spin on this basic idea and made it the center of my story.

Aug-21 2023
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