Photo: Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. by J. Wilder Bill

Artwork: Clio by Carlo Franzoni, Clock by Simon Willard

Authoress, Joyce Sweeney, lives the hero’s journey with her writing. She flourishes as an author by winning the first Delacorte Press Prize for Outstanding First Young Adult Novel, the Silver Medal in the Florida Book Awards, and the Nevada Young Readers Award. She has a book named a Top Ten Sports Pick by Booklist, four times her books are named Best Books for Young Adults, and four additional times are Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers.

Within the writing industry, she is appreciated for co-creating with Jamie Morris, the four act Plot Clock. Like so many great dramatists, her life mimics her art.

At the initial stage of Joyce’s life as a writer, she fulfills the elements of the Plot Clock’s Act I, by dissecting horrific scenarios through young adult novels. She forces teens to embark outside their nests due to dire circumstances that even grown-ups could hardly handle. The pressure to outsmart life’s enemies is coupled with dysfunctional families and self-inflicted obstacles; yet, Sweeney plots her characters’ paths without judgment as to whether the high drama they confront could have been avoided.

J. Wilder:

Joyce sets forth nurturing overtones in her narrative, along with realism in her characters and their conflicts. Do you create dramatic intensity by writing narrative with an unbiased opinion about the characters or by steering the readers to see the world your way?

Joyce:

I think in every work of fiction, every character is an aspect of the author. So even with the antagonists, and this is where the hard work comes, I have to have some sympathy, some understanding and some guilty association with what they feel. Without that, you aren’t building a true world, you are just grinding your own axe. But then layered on top of that, is the point of view. The main character can have much different feelings from me the author, and should. And we can both be wrong! In Players, I have sympathy for Noah, Corey has sympathy for Noah but a different character, Luke, is the one who is right about him.

J. Wilder:

A signature of a Joyce Sweeney novel is the significance of strong friendships. Are functional relationships as crucial for character development as those dysfunctional families authors consistently embellish?

Joyce:

Absolutely. You have to have the dysfunction or you have no conflict, no story. If you’re in a place in the main character’s life where no one is challenging or testing them, you are in the wrong place. But I am a very social creature myself and very aware of relationships and how much help I get on a daily basis from those around me. So my characters always have those support systems as well.

J. Wilder:

During Act II of her writing accomplishments, Joyce develops her skills like a warrior preparing for the final battle through the exercise of teaching others her trade secrets. In what ways did your writing transition as a result of you mentoring others?

Joyce:

I started teaching classes around 1990 and I think one can easily see a jump forward in quality in my own writing around that time…between Tiger Orchard and Shadow. My earliest books are good too, Center Line for instance, because I was in graduate school studying craft. In the middle, you forget, you lapse, you make mistakes. As soon as I was reviewing the principles of craft to my students, I was reviewing them for myself and my work got much tighter.

J. Wilder:

At the end of Act II of her dynamic career, Joyce is dealt a low in life, symbolized by the death of her dearest companions. Her artistic expression of those unlocked emotions most of us avoid digesting shifted her craft to an authentic poetic form. In what way does poetry develop writers’ descriptive signatures of emotions and settings?

Joyce:

For me, there was a period that covered a double blow in life. My mother’s Alzheimer’s and subsequent death followed very fast by my friendship with Irene, which ended in her suicide. During this entire dark period, I didn’t have the energy required to process my feelings into fictional stories or put on any kind of dramatic mask. I could just cry out my feelings first person and raw and real. That’s poetry. Poets are courageous beings. They come onstage with no makeup or props. Now that I’m feeling better I see I went back to the safe haven of fiction.

J. Wilder:

In synch with Act III, Joyce brings stories into three-dimensional time and space by directing and producing theatrical works in South Florida. This physical form of storytelling leads to her climatic endeavor to release a multigenerational fantasy saga set in Atlantis. What elements of character development are crucial for creating the complexities of relationships over several generations? 

Joyce:

Well, this is brand new territory for me. Until this Atlantis book came to me, I wasn’t even a fan of generational sagas or long timelines…one reason I loved YA is that it covers one character very intensely through a short timeline. But since I’m still in the middle of this process, I don’t honestly know why I suddenly wanted a bigger cast and a bigger canvas. You link it to theater…I’m not sure. Could be. Theater is a very collaborative art compared to writing, so it may be that my ‘camera angle’ has widened.  Stay tuned!

Joyce Sweeney breaks down readership barriers by understanding the reader’s perspective in relating to his world at each stage of life. Regardless of the genre, Joyce Sweeney consistently presents protagonists searching for a way to accomplish seemingly unachievable goals, thus serving readers as a nurturing life coach. Joyce Sweeney can be reached via www.SweeneyWritingCoach.com.