Practice Writing Conflict & Tension with Natalie Baszile

Write along with Queen Sugar’s playlist!

Prompt #1: Left Unsaid

Write about a time, real or imagined, when you really wanted something and either you or someone else stopped yourself from getting it.

What did you say? How did you act? What do you wish you’d said? How do you wish you could have behaved?

Prompt #2: The Other Side

Imagine the same scene from before, but from the other person’s point of view.

What were they thinking? How were they feeling? Why didn’t they want you to have what you wanted?

Prompt #3: A Crucible

Think of a crucible (a car, a bathroom, a plane, an elevator, a boat) and write a scene where the two characters you wrote about earlier can’t escape.

Have them get into an argument, but they don’t start out yelling at each other. Have them start off slowly, trying to get along, and then turn up the heat and the pressure.

Q&A with Natalie Baszile

Do you have a history of farming in your family? 

Yes, but not recent. My great-great-grandfather, Mac Hall, born in 1845, was a farmer who owned about 600 acres of land in Alabama. But my immediate family, no, I don’t have any history or any experience. This is just something that I have appreciated for a long time. I just appreciate the stories of farmers and kind of the bigger story of what it means to have this connection to the soil. 

How do you deal with conflicts and stereotypes?

You know, that’s a great question. It’s hard, right? It’s hard when you’re trying to write about your community and you’re aware of all of the assumptions and misinformation, and all I can say is that if you are writing— if you are trying to bring your characters to life, and what they are and doing and acting and feeling and saying is real— then don’t worry about the stereotypes. Make your characters specific. And in doing that, you just have to free yourself, right? And allow yourselves to write the characters as they are, as you imagine them to be, and free yourself. Because the more specific they are, the more particular their actions, the more those stereotypes won’t be relevant, right? You’re writing about people, and that’s what you have to remember. 

How long did it take you to write Queen Sugar?

Eleven years. Eleven long years of toil and hardship and struggle! But I also loved it. Did I receive resistance? No— well, not really. Not because the characters were Black, but I had to write a good story. That was the most important thing, right? And when I did that, it was still hard. So I just want you to write what you need to write, okay? Just write it. Get to the business of publishing later. Your job first is to write the story that’s in your heart. That’s the most important thing. And if you’re true to that, we can get to the publishing stuff down the road. But you will have written something that is real and true, and that is the most important part.

How did you feel about the way Queen Sugar changed as it became a TV show?

You know, I’m okay with it. The reason is because I lived with those characters in the book for eleven years of writing the book, and so I was at a point where Queen Sugar the book is the book that I imagined. And at that point, I could kind of let it go and let other people do what they were gonna do with it. Every now and then, there’s something— they’ll make a choice and I’ll be like, “Oh! Well… I wouldn’t have made that choice…” but it’s okay! It’s in the hands of other creative people and they’re trying to reach a broad audience, right? And so they have to do what they have to do, it’s fine. I don’t mind. I actually kind of enjoy watching the show because now it’s so far from the book that I’m like, “What are they gonna come up with next?”

With your new book about farmers, do you see them as artists? 

Absolutely. One hundred percent. The thing about farmers, and the thing about artists and writers and painters… we’re all making something out of nothing, right? When a farmer gets in his field at the beginning of the season, there’s nothing there, and he has to use all — he or she — has to use all of her imagination and her desire and her passion to coax something out of the soil, just like we have to use all of our imagination and our passion and our hard work to pull something out of the air and out of our imaginations and get it on paper so that it’s real. There’s a lot of overlap in creativity.

As tension and conflict go, are you drawn to plot-driven or character-driven works? 

Character-driven. I’m always more interested in people than moving them around a chessboard. If you’re thinking about the character, then they’re going to do things and our job is to fill out that world and follow them or lead them and that’s what’s more interesting to me. I mean, I like a good car chase, too, but if I have a choice, it’s always gonna be about the human drama. 

What was the process like building your characters from Queen Sugar?

The process of building Queen Sugar… I’m not gonna lie, there were moments where I was like, “I LOVE this! I LOVE this book!” And then there were moments where I was like, “Oh my God, what am I doing? I don’t know what I’m doing and this is so much harder than I thought it was gonna be and when will I ever write this book?” And… oh my gosh, it was so hard. But you know what? Even when it was hard, and I was discouraged, I still loved the journey. And if I could leave you with anything, it would be that as creative people, as writers, we have chosen a life that is rich, and textured, but it can be hard. I don’t want you to get discouraged when it is hard. I want you to keep going, okay? And enjoy the process. Enjoy the journey. Find that little bit of sweetness and goodness, even on those miserable days when the words aren’t coming, and you’re frustrated and you’re wondering why you are doing this in the first place, it’s okay, all right? It’s all a part of it.  

This event was originally recorded on February 19th, 2020.