The Boy and the Elephant Chess

Author's note

Hello,

Thanks for reading! Even though this story isn't a New York Times' bestseller, but only a short that's only 5000 words for children ages 9-12 (a demographic I presume you the reader are not part of), I'm still very proud of it. Whether you like it or not, it means a lot that you've come here to read it, so thank you. And a massive thank you to everyone who liked my posts about it on instagram!~  Those were huge encouragements for me.

Overall, it was a fun project! I hadn't written an actual story for ages before this, so it was like going out for a walk after months indoors (and the whole world knows how that feels!). I even learnt a few new facts after researching the few concepts I had. I simply set out with the premise of a young chess prodigy making a living with his wits and skills, against a class system that resents his success because of his status. I know the underdog is a well established, maybe long worn trope, but I just have a sweet spot for them. Everything else, the inspirations and themes, simply came along during the ride, bit by bit.

It was also cool to feature traces of Chinese settings and cultures. I've never done that, which is also why this short story means so much to me. Granted, this is all in mainland China, while I am Malaysian Chinese, but there are elements here that I personally feel connected to, like the mother scenes. I also appreciate all these animals featured, and Chinese fables and folktales depict animals that talk and show personality, just like western ones. Also, while I never grew up playing Xiangqi, I picked it while trying to find some way to connect with Chinese arts/pastimes, and was pleased to find it as much an intellectual challenge as western/international chess, if not more so. You'll also notice I say Xiangqi a lot more than Elephant Chess, or Chinese Chess, and that's to normalize it with myself as well as you guys. By now, the translation's sunk well in for me, I don't know if it'll be the same for y'all non-Mandarin speakers. Either way, I'm so happy to feature it. Maybe one day, I'll become good at playing it.

Okay, back to the writing process.
I did have some internal struggle writing a children's story with a 5k word limit, because I found myself having to simplify tone, plot and even world building. With an adult-genre mindset, I couldn't help but grow critical towards this piece. For instance, aside from the main character's quest to find a cure for his mother, he took down every other conflict without much of a fight. The major background problems (the boy and his mother's poverty, and the use of war elephants) got happy endings when in real life, they would have been much more complex, messier. And the tiger? Had to be subservient and at the mercy of the humans who reduced the habitat he once ruled over. Hardly a happy ending for the likes of him, even in a children's story.

I was also between two minds when I looked at the world I had made. Being a huge historical fiction fan, I try my best to portray any characters or worlds as close to their inspirations as possible, to pay the real life counterparts true homage. So I struggled a bit with establishing the setting in China, then featuring an incident that has historically occurred in India.

The diversity of the Dai locals in Xishuangbanna (whom the Daughter of Elephants was supposed to represent) was something I questioned myself over a lot too. Is it a good idea to give myself only one character based off this ethnicity, with its many subgroups? How do I want to portray their vivid, full lives and cultures? I ended up making allusions to parts of their home terrain and not depicting anything of the peoples themselves at all. The reason is sheer word count. By that point, I was still a long way from the story's climax, without many words left, so I had to pay more attention to my plot.

Part of this still feels like a cop out, putting in the references I did without anything more, but ultimately, I made peace with the simplifications. This is a children's story after all, I had to remind myself. Even as the world got more complicated and layered since my childhood, there's still allowance for overly easy, happy endings, and less nuance. I feel like multidimensionality belongs in adult-genres, where the target audience could comprehend and explore them. In the end, this just came down to understanding my target audience.

I do think it's healthy to ponder questions about representation and do your due research, if you are taking inspiration from actual sources, be they events, characters or places. I don't think every detail needs to be 100% identical for a good portrayal. That depends on each writer's intentions with their themes and the core things that snagged their attention in the first place. I wanted the whole story to carry the general theme that humanity has a negative impact on wildlife, so I made sure it had consistent examples throughout. If I can sum up this lengthy monologue, I think it comes down to being as transparent as a writer can be, with yourself and your audience. The inspiration and fun fact sections are my way of sharing what I found fascinating about my sources, and why I made certain choices. Also I love sharing education.

Even the need for due diligence extended to how I and Emily my illustrator approached the artwork. We were both aware that neither of us were experts in Chinese portrait or landscape art, but it meant a lot to me that the illustrations here were as similar to those styles as we could get, as this felt like an exploration of my Chinese roots that I never dipped into when I was younger. So I carefully handpicked images of certain muses that mimicked Chinese style art, combined it with my scenes, and asked Emily to try and replicate it. She in turn did her own research, stained wet paper with tea to create a parchment effect that we used to make the book cover, and all in all, worked around the clock with sketch after sketch.

So if anyone reading this is somewhat an expert in Chinese art/paintings, please show us some grace - we tried our respectful best! Of course, feel free to point out any discrepancies or missed subtleties in these renditions, but I won't stand for any unhelpful shade. 

I want to end by encouraging anyone with writer's block to try writing for a younger audience! One perk of simplifying the concepts and lightening the tone is that you get to focus on the pure fun of writing. Even if your work goes nowhere, it's good practice. If you perform better under pressure, set yourself a word count and a deadline (5000 words within a month for me), and have someone hold you accountable. Short stories are easier to finish than full length novels, so it'll give you a sense of accomplishment. 

Also, like me, you might find yourself with a set of concepts that you can see yourself developing into a longer tale. A friend and fellow uni alumni who also contributed to the anthology discovered the same perks by the end of her piece. Really, I think you lose nothing and gain everything by giving this a shot - again, even if it's just for fun, and you don't plan to publish.

Once more, thank you, thank you for reading! You can find Calliope's Collection of Mystical Mayhem (featured in the picture above) for sale on Amazon, available in the US & UK. 
$14.99 for paperback regular print

Large prints means 6 point type, sans serif font, and 7x10 dimensions instead of 5x8! (good for struggling readers and people with vision problems. Absolutely perfect for grandparents reading to their grandkids) :)

and a whopping $3.99 for e-book!