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.