PASCALA friend of mine had lunch
with a [ book] editor, a man, who
said, “Why isn’t there a Dallas for
young people?” I thought about it,
and I actually had a book [proposal]
due. There are a lot of twins in my
life. [My agent] Amy [Berkower] is a
twin. My sister-in-law was a twin.
People are always fascinated by
twins. You’ll never be alone.
[Laughs] I thought about it, and this
other soap opera thing was in my
head, the one that I couldn’t sell. I
sat down and I wrote a [character]
bible and the first 12 [SVH] stories. It
went quickly because it was such a
fertile idea. Bantam Books loved it.
They ordered all 12.
Pascal had a “heavy hand” in the cre-
ation of the first SVH book, Double
Love, but she never had any interest in
writing the books herself. “My [previ-
ous] writing for young adults was
humorous, and I didn’t think there
was going to be humor in [these
books],” she explains. Instead, Pascal
oversaw a team of ghostwriters who
worked off her character bible and the
detailed outlines she created for each
story. When asked what her “do’s and
don’ts” were for SVH’s ghostwriters,
Pascal is blunt.
PASCAL“Don’t do anything of yours—
only do what I say.” It’s true! Because
I trusted myself, and [the publisher]
trusted me, and we just kept doing it.
It was mostly very young, new writ-
ers. The story outlines weren’t
chapter by chapter, more like acts:
You get from here to here in the first
quarter, then you have to get from here
to here. Don’t forget, they already had
the bible, where I had written deeply
into the lives of the twins and their
backgrounds. With the characters,
you knew what they liked, you knew
what the walls in their room [looked
like], every single thing about them.
The writers had to use those [guide-
lines] and follow them strictly.
SVH became an instant phenomenon,
and publisher Bantam Books began
cranking out spin-offs (including
Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley
Kids, Sweet Valley High Senior Year,
and Sweet Valley University). They
also launched bonus installments like
the murder-mystery Super Thriller
series and the Sweet Valley Saga
books, which chronicled the ancestral
history of the Wakefield clan and
other prominent SVH families. As the
number of books multiplied, the story-
telling boundaries expanded beyond
boy troubles and intra-clique rival-
ries: Later SVH installments featured
supernatural flourishes, like vam-
pires and werewolves, and delicious
melodrama, including a trilogy about
a pair of murderous Jessica and Eliz-
abeth doppelgängers named Margo
and Nora (see: The Evil Twin, Return
of the Evil Twin). Pascal conceived
the stories for every book and says she
took care to incorporate her “ethics
and morals” into the narratives.
PASCALI had total freedom to do
anything I wanted. If I wanted to
make them fly, that was okay. If I had
to do 10 more, I could do 10 more,
but my God, I did every single thing.
The very important thing was, I
was a liberal Jewish woman, and a
New Yorker. So [my perspective] is
going to be quite different from a
lot of the people who are reading
the books. I realized the power
that I could have. I [think I] made
Mr. Wakefield’s parents Jewish, in
Europe, escaping from the Nazis or
something. Why not? It’s mine, I’ll
do what I please.
By today’s standards, SVH’s characters
are woefully homogenous—but Pascal
intentionally made some inroads with
diversity later in the series.
PASCAL Don’t forget, it was the ’80s.
Things were very different then. I
never saw so many white people in
my life as in Sweet Valley, it’s true. It
finally had a Latino [character, in
book No. 81, Rosa’s Lie]. I liked that
one because Rosa was ashamed and
pretended that she didn’t speak
[Spanish], and then she had to save
the little girl in the well who only
spoke Spanish. [Laughs] There were
↑ Pascal in her
Manhattan
home, filled with
SVH memorabilia,
in 1988
↓ Brittany Daniel
and her twin
sister, Cynthia, as
Jessica and Eliza-
beth Wakefield
EW● COM SEPTEMBER 2019 63
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