ALAN Online

An Interview with Elizabeth Scott, author of Living Dead Girl
By Pam B. Cole

Cole: Can you talk about how the idea for Living Dead Girl originated?

Scott: Usually, when I get an idea for a story, it comes in bits and pieces. But once in a while—a great while, frankly—an idea will come to me fully formed, a story demanding to be told. Living Dead Girl was one of those stories. I woke up the night of April 5, 2007, from a disturbing dream. I write all my dreams down, and usually they’re pretty nonsensical, but this one was different. I wrote:

“Alice.” It is her name but it isn’t her name. She thinks of who she was as someone far away. Long ago. Kidnapped when she was ten. Five years, and she lives with kidnapper still. Now he wants someone else. New. She’ll do anything to get him off her. Knows no one sees her, staring at blue thing, plastic like water but not water, reflection strange. Blurred, featureless. Flash of teeth, grinning not grinning, hands and pain, HIM. Thinks, I am a living dead girl.

By the time I was done writing, I knew Alice’s story. I knew I had to tell it. But I had other projects I was working on, and I told myself to file it away. The night of April 6, 2007, I had the same dream again. By the night of April 8, 2007, I woke up from the now-familiar dream and wrote only one word: Alice. I wrote Living Dead Girl because it demanded to be told, and writing it was an intense experience.

Cole: Can you elaborate on what you mean by intense? 

Scott: It was intense because it was one of those books that just comes out, and the speed with which it did was something I haven’t often experienced.

Cole: You wrote the protagonist’s story from three points of view—in the opening pages you use first, third, and second. Can you talk about why you approached the story that way?

Scott: It wasn’t entirely intentional, but I think that it reflects a couple of things: the first and third are Alice’s own fractured nature, the way she has become a creature of Ray’s creation, and the second person point-of-view pieces are Alice’s way of addressing what we see—and how that is not what is. I think second person is a good way to show how people see things—or chose to see them—versus how they are in a way that first or third can’t. First person puts you inside someone’s head, third lets you watch them, but second forces you to be there in a unique way that can’t happen with first or third.

Cole:  Can you talk about the character of Ray? How did he develop as the story took shape? Was he a difficult character to create?

Scott: Ray was there from the beginning, a shadow that grew and took shape as I began writing. He was always young, always broken and made cruel by it, and exactly the kind of guy Alice says he is at one point in the book, the type of man who would be called “quiet,” “polite,” and even “he seemed so normal!” by others. 

Cole: One of the most shattering scenes for me is the one in which Alice is in the car with Jake for the first time. He is frightened by her matter-of-factness. I immediately think to myself, “My god, she has become like Ray! There is a sense of control here and she gets off on it.”  What was in your thinking as you wrote the scenes between Alice and Jake? What do you think about my take on the scene?

Scott: Alice does enjoy Jake’s fear of her, so I think your take on the scene is exactly right. It’s not a comfortable scene, but I don’t think it would have been right for me to pretend Alice’s reaction away—she has spent five years with Ray, after all, and that time—and Ray—have shaped her.

Cole: Did you have any conversations with friends/editors about how to tell the abusive scenes? If so, can you elaborate? Were you concerned with censorship? 

Scott: I didn’t actually talk to anyone about Living Dead Girl while I wrote it—I wasn’t under contract for it or anything—I wrote it for myself because I felt that I had to tell the story. In fact, if it hadn’t been for a friend who read it when I was finished, and who urged me to send it to my agent, it would still be sitting on my computer.

So, as far as what shaped the story, what you see is what came out when I was writing. I wasn’t thinking about what I should or shouldn’t say or should or shouldn’t do—I just wanted to write about a girl who could have been spared the life she has, who should have been saved from Ray at some point before all hope was gone but wasn’t because no one ever took the time to really see her.

I think it’s easy to get outraged over a child’s abduction, but it’s also equally easy for us to see something—someone—that makes us uncomfortable, a moment or an expression that give us pause, and to do nothing.

And that moment where we see and turn away is, I think, the heart of Living Dead Girl. Alice’s story isn’t just about what she endures with Ray. It’s what she endures at the hands of the world. How it doesn’t see her.

As far as censorship goes, I hadn’t even thought of it until I read your question! I suppose it could happen. I can’t tell people what to think or how to feel about the book, and if what I’ve written upsets them, I believe they’re entitled to their opinion, just as I was free to write a story I felt needed to be told. And while I don’t believe any book should be banned, I know there are those who feel differently, and though I hope that Living Dead Girl will be read and discussed, if there are those who want the book banned, then—well, we do all make choices when it comes to what we want to see, don’t we?

Cole: What was your thinking behind how you wanted to end the story. You chose to have Alice saved from Ray in the end. 

Scott: I don’t know if I would say that she’s saved. I would say that she’s free in the only way she could truly be at that point. It’s the only ending I ever saw for her.

Cole: I know the book is still in galley form, but have you had any responses from teen readers yet? 

Scott: I have heard from a few teen readers, and what I love about the responses I’ve gotten is that they all understand Alice’s plight in a different way than adults, who tend to focus just on the fact that she’s been kidnapped. The teen readers I’ve heard from have all noticed that Alice is trapped just as much by the world as she is by Ray. They see what I was thinking about when I wrote the story—that it’s so easy to turn away.

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You can read more about Elizabeth Scott on her webpage http://www.elizabethwrites.com