Fiona and the Forgotten Piano by Kate DeMaio

MG First Page Revision Journey

I’m delighted to celebrate a book birthday today!!

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

Happy book birthday to Kate DeMaio for her middle grade novel Fiona and the Forgotten Piano.

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Fiona and the Forgotten Piano is a woodsy and whimsical scavenger hunt through hidden worlds. Eleven-year-old Fiona Duet hears music in the trees outside her home. She isn’t allowed to explore the woods— that would mean leaving the safety of her yard. It isn’t until the trees fall silent, so silent the leaves stop rustling, that Fiona tiptoes into the woods to find the music.

The initial draft of my first page didn’t do a great job hinting at the adventurous nature of this novel. I knew there was something exciting in the woods, but readers had no real way of knowing that until later on. The book opened with a perfectly pleasant piano lesson where the only conflict was a sticking key. The scene moved quickly. I was eager to show Fiona the woods. But my main character fought back, not wanting to break the rules.

Sometimes it feels like characters, not writers, control the narrative. Fiona was one of those characters. Her rule-following tendencies led to several battles of will, many of which Fiona won. There are at least six versions of chapter one stuffed in my computer’s folders. In one, Fiona builds a fairy garden next to the woods. In another, she kicks a soccer ball into the woods. In a third, she manages to lean into the woods, but only with the top half of her body, so she’s not technically breaking the rules.

I had to ask myself, why won’t this character enter the woods? Doesn’t she want to explore them? Could she trip over a tree’s roots and fall into the forest? What if she’s pushed?

In the end, I had to make the woods so enticing no one could resist entering them. The Fermata woods had to be unlike any forest in the world. They were going to play music.

With this idea in mind, writing the newest (and final) version of my first chapter flowed easily. I took one step back from the piano lesson and set the first scene outside the woods. Fiona is late for her lesson on her walk home from school. She stops to wonder whether she should take a shortcut through the woods to make it home in time. The sticking piano key still makes an appearance, but there’s also a splinter, a gloomy piano teacher, a surprise recital, and a note that emanates from the woods.

Lessons Learned:

• Regardless of whether your opening scene has magic or adventure, it needs conflict.

• If your character doesn’t want to move forward, don’t push them into the woods. Instead, make the woods impossible to ignore. (You’re probably not having this same exact dilemma. The point is, make the character’s wants overshadow their other desires.)

• Stuck on the first page? Try changing the setting. Or back up and write the scene before what you were imagining.

Now that we’ve talked about my first page (and first chapter) revision journey, please enjoy this snippet of Fiona’s adventure. I hope readers will want to discover what’s in the trees just as much as I did.

The sign at the edge of the Fermata woods wasn’t big or bright or loud. It was small, wooden, and obscured by ivy vines. It was about the size of a cat who is curled up for an afternoon nap, and it was held in the ground by a stake that looked as sturdy as uncooked spaghetti. Almost no one knew the sign was there.

Fiona knew though. She recognized the little things. The things that were insignificant to others. Maybe she was one of those things.

Though the sign at the edge of the woods was odd, the problem with it wasn’t that it was small or unstable. The problem was that even if the occasional passerby did stop to read it, they would learn little more about the woods than someone who hadn’t noticed it at all. The sign read:

Fermata Woods

176 acres

Est.

It was puzzling. Normally, when the letters E-S-T are followed by a period at the bottom of a sign, they are meant to be followed by a date. Est. is an abbreviation for the word established, after all. Fiona knew this because her school had a similar message carved into one of the stones at the entrance to the building. The stone said SONGFIELD ELEMENTARY, SONGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS. EST. 1909. That sign made sense. 1909 was the year the school was built. But the sign at the edge of the woods was different. It had no year after the Est. And it didn’t appear as though the year had faded away over time since the rest of the words on the sign were perfectly clear.

Perhaps the missing date was a message. It was as if to say that the exact date at which the woods became the woods didn’t matter. It only mattered that they were there at all.

Getting started drafting MG: (1) Make sure your opening scene has conflict. (2) If your MC is fighting with you about where to go next, make their wants overshadow their other desires. (3) If you’re stuck on your opening scene, try either changing the setting or writing what happens right before where you want to start.

***If you read and enjoy this book, leave a review! If you’re having trouble getting started writing a review, read this blog post.***

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