How was the writing process of Hallowed Halls characters such as Beth like?
Good question! The process for writing the Hallowed Halls characters took a lot of plumbing my own childhood experiences as well as the childhood experiences of others. It was also a very melancholy process which is to say I specifically wanted to make the entire article feel halfway somber halfway fun, reminding the reader that for as outlandish and fantastical these stories were they were happening to very scared and isolated children.
It also required me to know who Jeffery Klein was as a person before I could write any of his book summaries. From reading you can probably tell that he is someone who both enjoys scaring the hell out of kids but also feels a deep understanding and sympathy for how difficult their social status is to exist in. This was doubly so for little Beth who displayed the pre existing dehumanization that children experience but also coupled with her blackness.
Beth was a very difficult character to write not because I didn’t know what I wanted with the story but because I wanted to give it more time and care compared to the previous tales. The topic of race in her story felt pertinent to thoroughly think about and I must have written and rewritten her story about four to five times from scratch because nothing felt right. In the end I was able to write something I was happy with.
As a character Beth has a quiet sadness about her matched only by the closet from outer space story, she is in so much danger, has some hint of herself being in danger, but she’s just a kid and against two evil (and I mean inarguably evil) adoptive white parents what the hell can she hope to do? It feels like the entire story is her being put on a conveyor belt to her death which makes the intervention of Winerva a relief. Evil things were happening in that house and I really wanted there to be a point at which the quiet tension of the story erupted into a feeling of “ok. I need to Get Out Of This House RIGHT. NOW”.
