Mima Tipper: Part 3 "When Characters Speak"

***Spoiler Alert*** This blog post contains story spoilers. Read the full version of my YA short story “Waiting for Alice” in the first issue of Sucker Literary Magazine at http://suckerliterarymagazine.wordpress.com/

Can You Hear Me Now? When Characters Speak Through Revision, Part Three

(In which Mima finally hears what Alice has to say)

I thought about the story more, about Mia more and, as the following bits from my writing journal prove, obviously more and more:  

September 16, 2008…What is it with Mia? Should I change her name to Alice so I can really look at her with fresh eyes?

…September 19, 2008. How crazy to be afraid of my writing, like it will bite me.

…October 4, 2008. Some days I am a little freaked out by “…Alice.” I just finished M. D. Bauer’s collection of gay-themed YA short stories, and it scares me a little to have imagined what I’ve imagined… (Tipper Journal)

My journal shows me having finished the Bauer collection, so I know that the October 4^th entry occurred after I had my library-epiphany. What I also know is that the moment I began writing Mia (now Alice) from the perspective of a young girl struggling to understand an unexpected development in her growing sexuality, the story, now titled “Waiting for Alice,” came to life. As did the revised ending:

Three girls come in. They smile at you in that way that says they don’t know you. It’s true. They don’t know you. There’s a whole world out there that doesn’t know you. You look beyond them to the door.     

Mom and Stacey—your best friend Stacey—are out there somewhere, waiting on the other side. 

The dream dark waits, too. Black and soft and velvet as falling. How much easier it would be to go back there, stay there. Blink—what’s it going to be, Ali-girl, Ali, Alice?   

You can’t do it.You can’t stay in that empty, lonely, not-true place. 

But there won’t be any falling or diving or jumping. Just one step, and then another. 

Out. (“Waiting for Alice,” Sucker Literary Magazine, Winter, 2012)   

Examining the two endings I’ve included, the style and structure of them is not that different. In truth, the style and essential structure of the entire story didn’t change much from the first bit in my fantasy novel. The meaning, however, changed not only dramatically, but also in a way far beyond any intention. By the time I wrote the first of the drafts titled “Waiting for Alice,” it was as though I was channeling Alice as opposed to creating her. 

What writing “…Alice” has revealed to me as a writer, is that a story concept, even a full first draft, is one piece in the larger part of writing a story. I’d always thought of writing and revising as a linear process, draft after draft leading in a line toward whatever the initial inkling of the ending would be. When Alice spoke to me on that library day, I understood that revision is not just part of writing a story, it is writing the story.  That writing is more like a big puzzle, where the writer begins placing pieces—some fitting, some not—to see what the picture is. And if a writer is open to the picture becoming something entirely different than presumed, the process of revision will create magic. The kind where a protagonist will speak, as if sitting at the table, and tell an unexpected whopper of a story.  

Thanks for listening, everyone, and for sticking with me and Alice!


Thank you, Mima, for such a great story!

Works Cited:

Kaplan, David Michael.  Revision.  Cincinnati: Story Press, 1997.

Krishnaswami, Uma.  Letter.  6 May, 2008.

Leavitt, Martine.  Letter.  28 August, 2008.

Tipper, Mima. “Faerie Games.” Ms.  VCFA, 2007.

---. Journal. 2008.

---.  “Peer Pressure.” Ms.  VCFA, 2008.

---. “Mia’s Letter.” Ms.  VCFA, 2008.

---. “The Alice Effect.” Ms. VCFA, 2008.

---. “Waiting for Alice.” Sucker Literary Magazine, winter, 2012.

This series ran originally on the Hen & Ink Literary Studio blog last January at http://henandinkblots.wordpress.com/. Also a freshly updated version of my interview with Sucker’s editor-in-chief, Hannah Goodman, is up this week on Through the Tollbooth at http://www.throughthetollbooth.com/ and I’m also guesting on Lindsey Lane’s blog for “Quotable Tuesday” this week at http://www.lindseylane.net/blog/


Mima Tipper spends as much time as possible writing stories and novels for kids and teens, and recently had the tremendous good fortune to earn an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Along with being mad-proud that her YA short story “Waiting for Alice” is in the premiere issue of Sucker Literary Magazine (live now) she is thrilled that another YA short story, “A Cut-Out Face”, was a Katherine Paterson Prize finalist in 2010, and appeared in Hunger Mountain’s online Journal of the Arts’ Art & Insanity of Creativity issue, Fall, 2011. Mima lives in Vermont with her family, is represented by Erzsi Deàk at Hen & Ink Literary Studio http://henandink.com/ , and can be found @meemtip on Twitter.