Thieves' Gambit, Ep. 4: Shifting Desire Lines
In Season 1, we talked about internal and external desire, but how does it work when the character wants one thing at the beginning and switches to wanting something else? In Season 2, Episode 4, Erin and Anne-Marie dive into Kayvion Lewis’s YA thriller, Thieves’ Gambit, and dig into why it the main character Ross's shifting desire line works, as she goes from wanting to making friends at a summer gymnastics camp to winning an international thieving competition.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Anne-Marie Strohman: Erin, you enlightened me.
[00:00:01] Erin Nuttall: Oh, my dreams are fulfilled.
[Music intro]
[00:00:06] Anne-Marie Strohman: Welcome to season two of the Kid Lit Craft Podcast. This season we're doing a deep dive into Kayvion Lewis's YA thriller Thieves’ Gambit. Today we're focusing on desire, specifically shifting desire lines. I am Anne-Marie Strohman, and I write for children and young adults as well as short stories for adults.
[00:00:24] Erin Nuttall: Hi, I am Erin Nuttall, and I write for children and young adults, usually young adults.
[00:00:30] Anne-Marie Strohman: On Kid Lit Craft, we look at mentor texts to discover the mechanics of how writers do what they do, so we can apply it to our own writing. And Erin, as we always do, let's start with vocabulary. Some of these terms are ones we broke down in season one, but there's a new one in here too. So let's start with our review terms.
[00:00:49] Erin Nuttall: Okay, well, I'm actually very excited about today's episode because yes, we have talked about external and internal desires before. But everyone can always use a review. They are so critical to having a character that the reader relates to. So external desire. That's tangible goals that a character has and works towards during the course of a story.
So if we look back to last season's Buffalo Flats, Rebecca's external desire is to own a piece of land of her own. While internal desire is the often profound, sometimes hidden, or a subconscious need that steers a character's emotional journey. So again, if we look at Buffalo Flats, Rebecca's internal desire is to be the person that God wants her to be.
[00:01:41] Anne-Marie Strohman: So now I said in the intro that we're focusing on shifting desire and what does that mean?
[00:01:46] Erin Nuttall: So that's why I'm so excited. Shifting desire is a term that I made up. So here we go. I am now entering the annals of writing craft because I have my own term. So it is important though, I think, to story writers and it allows a level of flexibility with the story and the character. So what it is, is when the external desire of a character starts as one thing and then becomes something else, either because of external circumstances or internal changes, or sometimes both.
So in The Hate U Give, Starr's external desire is to fit in both worlds that she lives in. So she has a Black world at home and a white world at school, and she wants to fit into both. After the riot, Starr no longer wants to fly under the radar. And her desire, her external desire, changes to her wanting to use her voice to create change in her community. And that desire changes because of external circumstances, the riots and the events leading up to it, and internal changes as Starr figures out her place in the world.
[00:02:58] Anne-Marie Strohman: Ooh. So I have thought about shifting desire in a little different way sometimes where you'll— sometimes in a, a novel have kind of a little mini arc at the beginning. So in this book, for instance, like the first heist is kind of this little mini arc and it's solved. Like her, her goal is to escape with the vase.
And then we move into kind of a larger story arc. But I really like what you're talking about here, where there's a desire that actually changes, not because an arc ends, but because something in the world or the character changes.
[00:03:35] Erin Nuttall: Right. Which I think Lewis does so well
[00:03:39] Anne-Marie Strohman: So it's the character really moving from what they want in a, a less pressure situation. And then when there's a high pressure situation that comes in, that desire necessarily changes. So talk to us about how Ross's desires shift and start us with the initial desires that are set up early in the book.
[00:03:58] Erin Nuttall: Right. So we talked a little bit about this in our last episode, but right away we learned two things about Ross. We learned that she wants to go to gymnastic camp and be normal and have friends and that she also is lonely. Kayvion does a really excellent job with this, where she has an external desire. Ross wants to go to gymnastic camp. But her internal desire is tied to that. Ross wants to go to gymnastic camp because she's tired of being lonely and she doesn't wanna be lonely anymore. So she really wants friends. So her external desire is to go to gymnastics camp, and her internal desire is friendship. And it's always more powerful to tie the two desires together.
[00:04:44] Anne-Marie Strohman: Gymnastics camp makes sense for Ross because we know she's had this agility training because we're seeing her as a pretzel tied up in a cabinet at first, so to take these skills that she uses in the thieving world, and she kind of wants the normal world equivalent of that, which for her is gymnastics camp.
Of course, like as readers, gymnastics camp might sound kind of boring compared to the thieving world, right? So it's this interesting reversal of what readers might want. So last season we talked a lot about how Martine reminds readers of Buffalo Flats, about those main character desires, does Lewis do the same thing here?
[00:05:21] Erin Nuttall: She does. She sets it up by telling us several times about Ross's desires just in the first few pages. If you remember the cat from the last episode, we know how lonely she is. We know she sent applications to the gymnastic camp. She's waiting to hear back from them. She hears back from them all really quickly and within the first handful of pages.
And then she continues to remind us throughout the book what her desires are. So for instance on page 19, Ross says “I couldn't spend another year by myself isolated like this. Trusting people in the industry outside of the family was out of the question. The options were stay locked up here or give up the life and make normal friends. I would give up the exhilaration of weekly heists for that.”
So right there, we know how bad she wants it. She's willing to give up this, what feels like a very glamorous lifestyle, to get what she wants. And then if we go to page 30 she says something that I think is just really fantastic. She says “I was stealing my own future back” and I..
[00:06:34] Anne-Marie Strohman: Ooh.
[00:06:34] Erin Nuttall: I know! So strong, especially when you have a thief. It's again, that's that play on words that Kayvion does so well.
[00:06:42] Anne-Marie Strohman: So I know from being a reader that really good desire lines have obstacles and stakes and Ross's obstacles are pretty clear, right? Her mom, her life, pretty much everything, keeping her isolated in her world. But what are the stakes for her desire?
[00:06:57] Erin Nuttall: So again, Kayvion does a fantastic job setting up the stakes. We got a little hint of that in that previous quote where she says she's gonna have to give up her life. And we have some takeaways from some of the other pieces where Ross talks about how lonely she is.
If you go into 31, we find out this really important stake. She says “This would be nothing but a betrayal to her.” She's talking about her mom. “Even if I came back a week later, a day later, an hour later, even if she tried to drag me back, this would always be between us. Ross ran away. Ross left the family. Ross didn't think we were enough for her. I was about to snap my life into two halves: before and after. Which would I look back on as the better?”
I feel like that's such a powerful explanation of what the stakes are to Ross. She will be breaking off her relationship with her mom possibly forever.
[00:07:55] Anne-Marie Strohman: Wow. Every time you read something I, I wanna end with like, ooh. Right. Because those, those endings of paragraphs are just so punchy, right? Like, which one would be the better choice? Right. And it's just like dun duh at the end. So just a little pause for ending paragraphs.
[00:08:13] Erin Nuttall: Yeah. She has a lot of good ones, which is an important skill too, especially for a thriller. But anyway, that's just a little sidenote.
[00:08:20] Anne-Marie Strohman: But back to desire.
[00:08:22] Erin Nuttall: Yes.
[00:08:23] Anne-Marie Strohman: So how does Ross's desire change and what motivates that change?
[00:08:27] Erin Nuttall: At this point we're like, you know, 30 pages in and we are very clear on Ross's desire and she wants it so badly. She's willing to give up her relationship with her mom who up until this point is everything. So you would possibly not expect her desire to change. Except that it does. Everything changes when Mom is kidnapped.
And this is the inciting incident, but it's also where Ross's external desire for gymnastics camp vanishes and it shifts to saving her mom's life. So again, we have big stakes. This time it's not her relationship with her mom, but her mom's life. It's life and death for her mom.
And then…
[00:09:13] Anne-Marie Strohman: I wasn't sure those stakes could get higher, right? It's her relationship with her mom, everything she's ever known, and yet Lewis steps it up. It's not just that relationship, but her mom's life itself.
[00:09:26] Erin Nuttall: Yes. And then she does a really excellent job of reminding us of those stakes throughout. And just for a, you know, a really smattering of an example. If we jump to page 95 we have just this tiny little reminder where she says, the ring or her, Mom's life or hers, and I'm not gonna tell you what that's all about, but right there, we know that Ross as she's making a decision, it always goes back to Mom's life. And then just a few pages later on 105, “Help, like Mom needed the help. Help I couldn't give her anymore. Phase one, and I was already out of the gambit. I was her best hope, and I failed saving a stranger. I was practically an orphan already.” So we have again. A reminder of the stakes.
We jump ahead a little bit to 149. “I was going to leave Mom alone, for what? To try to make friends with a bunch of high schoolers who could also hit the splits.” So again, we have stakes not only in Mom's life, but the fact that her new friends might not be reliable. And then a few pages later I really love this 'cause Ross, of course, has a love interest. And, so often when she is letting down her guard a little bit so she can fall in love, she gets a thought like this.
“Ross Quest is not here to play games with handsome con artists. Ross Quest is here to save her kidnapped mother.”
So she gives herself these little pep talks when she starts falling in love. But that's just a few of the ways that Kayvion reminds the reader of how important it is that Ross win the gambit.
[00:11:17] Anne-Marie Strohman: It seems to me like this idea of shifting desire lines might be a little bit risky to start with one desire and to shift it kinda like a bait and switch. We're expecting a gymnastics camp story and we get the thieves’ gambit. So what makes this an effective switch?
[00:11:35] Erin Nuttall: So, for me, I am much more excited about a thieves’ gambit story than a gymnastics camp story and no shade on gymnastic camp stories. But I open the book knowing the, and I read the first pages, learned what the world as it is, and that feels like that would be a letdown to go from an international thieving ring to a regular life kind of thing. As though gymnastics camp or a regular life, I can't do any of those things either.
So, so, but if I had been, you know, like we talked about last episode with the world as it is, I was promised an international thieving conspiracy kind of book. And so in reality the shifting desire is living up to the premise that was set up in the beginning. So I think that that part is important to recognize that she is keeping those desires in line with the premise of the book.
[00:12:36] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah. So I can see reader and I was kind of like this too. I'm like, why are we talking about gymnastics camp? Like I was leaning toward the thieves’ gambit. And I've seen interviews with Kayvion Lewis where when she pitches the book, she just talks about the gambit. She's like, it's a book about an international thieving competition of teens.
That's what sells the book. And so we're leaning toward it. The title, the cover, everything leads us toward that. But on a practical level too, it's a massive change in circumstances for her. It becomes more urgent and so she has to change. I think if you were to say she wants a desire and then her mom told her no and took a vacation to Italy, like she can't change her desire there, right?
Something big has to happen or the, the level of urgency has to change in a massive way, otherwise it feels like a bait and switch.
[00:13:31] Erin Nuttall: Like we were talking about just a minute ago, we felt like the stakes were really high with her risking her relationship with her mom for gymnastics camp. But, now she has this new desire and it's life and death for her mom. And I think upping the stakes makes it so that the reader was willing to go along with it. Kind of like you were saying, we have a big change in circumstances, but we also have a big change in stakes as well.
[00:13:57] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah. And at that point nobody cares about gymnastics camp. Right? Readers? Ross? No one. So talk to us about Ross's internal desire. Is that something that changes as well?
[00:14:10] Erin Nuttall: It does not actually. Ross is still very lonely, but she is not focusing on it as much anymore because she has this big thing of her mom's life is hanging in the balance of her actions. Right? And so, one thing that I think is really cool that Lewis did was that at the beginning her external and internal desires were aligned.
But now her external and internal desires are in direct conflict with one another. A little bit like I was talking about earlier. Anytime she gets close to trusting someone, Ross is reminded about Mom. Ross risks losing the gambit because she takes a fellow competitor to the hospital.
Then she is faced with the possibility that she just risked her mom's life for the life of someone else. And like I said before, anytime she starts having feelings for Devroe she is faced with the stakes of her mom's life. So we have her wanting to open up and wanting to make friends with her competitors, and then also having her worldview of not trusting anyone, and then also the stakes that she has to win in order to save her mom.
But I want to do a quote. So heads up Anne-Marie, prepare yourself. It is time for a kiss. I know. For listeners who don't know, I love kissing scenes and Anne-Marie could really do without.
“The room lights were dim, but he had a glow to him that couldn't be ignored. My chest rose. His eyes didn't leave mine. Well, until they dropped a few inches to my lips. ‘Do you want a taste?’ He whispered. Taste. Did I? My heart squeezed, aching for me to do something.
He dipped down. Or maybe I was moving up to him because I did wanna kiss him and that was why I couldn't. If I gave in, then he'd win. Didn't he say so on the train? He liked that I could see the game. Did he like it? Because that would make winning even more delicious for him. Was he in it for me or was he in it just for the win? Someone across the ocean, Mom, was counting on me. Was I gonna gamble that, gamble her? Catching feelings for some boy who told me he was playing with me? I wouldn't, I couldn't. My heart and my mom's life were too important to risk.
I jerk back, snapping the tension between us in an instant.”
[00:16:37] Anne-Marie Strohman: Talk about a bait and switch. I thought you told me there was gonna be a kiss.
[00:16:41] Erin Nuttall: I know. Devroe thought there was gonna be a kiss too. What can I say?
[00:16:49] Anne-Marie Strohman: So I think it's really interesting how Lewis uses that internal desire in concert with the first external desire, right? Going to gymnastics camp, making friends, like getting out of, lonely, and then in conflict with the second external desire that she's always having to say, I have an opportunity not to be lonely, but I have to squash that in order to save my mom.
Right? And it just adds this extra element of tension for Ross throughout.
[00:17:16] Erin Nuttall: Right. and for the reader, 'cause it's so frustrating because her competitors are great characters that you wanna be friends with and you want Ross to be friends with. But because Kayvion is reminding Ross and us all the time of what the stakes are, you're like, okay, fine. Don't give him a kiss, right? Like, you know, I mean maybe you're saying that anyway, but I am like kissing, kiss him.
[00:17:45] Anne-Marie Strohman: I was even saying kiss him. So the stakes have to be that big though for us to buy it. If it were lower stakes, we would just feel frustrated that she doesn't, that there's something internal getting in the way of it, instead of actually like real world external stakes that matter that keep her from that internal desire.
[00:18:07] Erin Nuttall: Especially because we know how strong her internal desire is. Like she was willing to blow up her relationship with her mom to go to gymnastics camp so she could have friends. So we know that is like a big push, right? Like she really, really wants that. And so yes, the risk has to be so much bigger. Or you're right. We wouldn't believe that she wouldn't kiss Devroe, who by the way, sounds so adorable.
[00:18:35] Anne-Marie Strohman: Mm-hmm. That constancy of her internal desire, I think is a really important piece too 'cause it anchors us to her character. And that's another reason we don't feel like it's a bait and switch because it is the same character with the same internal desire, it’s just in different circumstances her external desire changes. And as we said before, the second desire makes this the book that we all came to read.
[00:18:59] Erin Nuttall: Right, I do think that, like you were saying, the internal external desire in concert and then in conflict really make that possible. Her internal desire was so strong. She was going to follow her dream of this external solution for it.
[00:19:16] Anne-Marie Strohman: As a mom, I'm really comforted by that decision that she makes.
[00:19:22] Erin Nuttall: Yeah. Well, especially 'cause the first part you're like, wait a minute, don't blow it up. Actually, not really. You're not thinking that because you can already tell how controlling her mom is. And how Ross might need a little breathing room. All of this is set up so well. The emotional part is set up so well that it really underpins the external action and desires. It's, it's done really well.
[00:19:47] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah. Again, that conflict just increases the tension more. When you're in an international thieving competition, there's already tension. They might get caught in all these different circumstances. They might let their teammates down and then you add this other dimension of, and her mom might die, and it's just, it's just huge.
So, Erin, what are you taking away from today?
[00:20:09] Erin Nuttall: I am taking away, basically what you just said is that if we have big internal desires, then we need big external desires and external things happening so that they're balanced. And I hadn't really thought about that before reading this and before kind of taking it apart. But I do think that that really helps me engage with the book. What about you? What are you gonna take away from today?
[00:20:36] Anne-Marie Strohman: I'm gonna take away this big concept of shifting desires and what it takes, like what's necessary in the story to shift the desire because I hadn't really thought about it in that way before. Erin, you enlightened me.
[00:20:49] Erin Nuttall: Oh, my dreams are fulfilled. Okay so Anne-Marie, what is this episode's Cool Gadget?
[00:20:57] Anne-Marie Strohman: So my Cool Gadget today is from chapter two, and it's the black box email account. Ross gets the email from the organizers of the gambit, and here's what Ross tells us about it.
“The black box email account, how our family accepted jobs accessible only through the deep web and 100% hack proof and untraceable. That was the way Mom explained it to eight-year-old me. You needed a passcode just to get an email sent to it. I never got notifications from the black box email. It should have been impossible.”
And this does, again, so much work. It gives us information about the organizers of the gambit that they're working at this whole other level. They can hack the unhackable. And it also sets up how much trust the family has in Ross both telling her about it when she's eight years old, and then right after this paragraph, she knows the five consecutive passcodes to get in the black box account. She's really integral to the functioning of this Quest family thievery. And it also introduces the idea of digital information and that becomes super important later in the book. So it's another gadget that does a lot of work.
[00:22:07] Erin Nuttall: That is impressive. There's some of that that I hadn't even thought about like the trust that the family has in Ross. I hadn't thought about that in those terms. And you're right. It, it does. It tells us a lot. It works really hard.
[Music outro]
[00:22:21] Anne-Marie Strohman: So that's it for today. If you're enjoying this podcast, you can find more content like this at kidlitcraft.com. Find us on social media @KidLitCraft, and you can support this podcast on Patreon. We've also got T-shirts and drinkware and phone cases, and you can find those at Cotton Bureau and we will put a link in the show notes.
[00:22:41] Erin Nuttall: Please download episodes; like, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Also let your writer friends know about the podcast. We can't wait to nerd out with you.
[00:22:52] Anne-Marie Strohman: Thanks for joining us. See you next time.
