Cinderella with a Teddy Bear

On February 18, 2016, WriterGirl4Life wrote, I find that I’m always getting bored with my stories, putting them away, critiquing myself, or just getting bored with my plot. Can you help?

When one of my stories isn’t going well, I just don’t want to go near it, which is my version of getting bored. Working on the project feels like slogging through glue. It’s happened many times, and the reason varies:

∙ We’ve made our MC unsympathetic, a mistake I’ve committed than once and the latest instance is very recent. I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve started a new book in Ella’s world, and my main character, Daria (recognize that name?), is turned into an ogre in the first chapter, so this isn’t much of a spoiler alert. I’m only twenty-two pages in, but I started feeling gluey and eventually realized that likableness is the problem. Instead of responding with horror over her transformation, Daria minimizes the situation and instantly plans how to deal with it. I want her to be capable and self-confident, but these qualities mean the most when a character struggles. In this case, the consequences are that the reader doesn’t worry because Daria has the situation in hand and doesn’t care because Daria doesn’t seem to. The reader may think, I don’t understand this character. If someone turned me into an ogre, I’d want to jump out of my skin.

Once I figured that out, I went back to the beginning–contrary to the advice I give here–and fixed. Daria is now miserable, and I’m out of the glue. So one cause of boredom may be MC character trouble, and one reason for that may be unlikableness caused by a deficit in vulnerability.

∙ We’re not in our MC’s mind and heart enough, which is related to unlikableness. We’re telling our story more through action and dialogue and our MC’s inner life is missing. We’re bored because we can’t seem to connect with him. We may have our plot path worked out, but we don’t know why he goes down it.

I’d go to my notes to consider this. I might interview him in my notes and ask him what he feels and thinks about what’s going on in the story. We may dream up alternative answers for him, and we can decide from them what sort of person he is, or we’d like him to be. We may discover he’s not willing to do some of what’s being required of him. Based on our discoveries, we may adjust our plot or adjust him, which may involve rethinking earlier scenes, whether we revise on the spot or wait until the whole story is written. That done, we can work his thoughts and emotions into our narrative.

∙ We’ve solved the problem in our story without realizing. I did this in an early version of The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre. To be specific would be a major spoiler alert, so I have to speak in generalities. My MC has a mission, but she’s propelled to pursue it only because of a need that’s deep-seated in her psyche. Accidentally, without realizing and in a tangential way, I solved the need, and the wind went out of my sails. I was trapped in glue until, finally, I saw what I’d done. Let’s take an example from the traditional “Cinderella,” not my version. In my opinion, the underlying problem, and the reason the story appears in some form in every culture, is that the MC feels unappreciated, a near universal source of unhappiness. Cinderella is great! Look at how helpful and capable she is. And kind. And plucky. But the only one who might appreciate her–her father–is never on the scene, and she gets no respect from her step-family. Well, suppose, a year before the balls, her fairy godmother shows up and gives her, say, a magical stuffed teddy bear that can talk. Every night at bedtime, Cinderella cuddles up with her toy and he admires her for all her accomplishments and her sterling qualities. Nothing really has changed; her step-family is still cruel. But she’s satisfied. Who cares about a prince when she has Teddy? We’re likely to stay bored or gluey until somebody wields a sharp instrument and slits that bear open from his cute black nose to his darling belly.

In this case, we may not know why we’re bored, but we can think about what our MC wants or needs most. Have we accidentally provided it? Have we been unable to tolerate her unhappiness so we helped her out just, we thought, a little bit?

∙ Houston, we have a plot problem. I never fail to have some of these, alas. You may remember how tangled up I got writing what eventually became Stolen Magic. In an earlier version, which I eventually revised out of existence, MC Elodie’s mother falls under a spell of greediness. She believes she’s King Midas and doesn’t mind when Elodie seems to turn to gold, because she’d rather, in her madness, have wealth than a living daughter. It was horrifying, and, forgive me!, I loved it. But I didn’t know how to end the spell without making everything okay or without giving Elodie an ally I didn’t want her to have, so the madness dragged on and on, and I sank in glue. I wish I’d figured this out and been able to use this plot twist, but I couldn’t.

We may not have to revise everything. If we’ve written ourselves into a corner, we can go back to the point where we got into trouble, or we can list ways to change what’s going on, and we can judge how we’re doing by our state of mind. Are we no longer bored? Are we eager to write again?

The point is, we’re not stuck with anything. The final state of our story is changeable until we say it’s done. If we save our old version, we can blow up any part. I love this freedom, which is a prime advantage of writing, in my opinion, over every other art form!

Here are three prompts:

∙ In this election season, here’s a political’ish plot idea. Your MC at fifteen is running to be the youngest member of the town council. She has the vote of her parents’ generation, who, basically, think she’s adorable, and that’s enough for them. The problem is the youth vote, because young people near her age but old enough to vote find her unlikable–you decide why. Write the story, being sure to include her thoughts and feelings.

∙ Give Cinderella the admiring teddy bear (or other stuffed animal), but make him creepy. Lead the reader to suspect him right away even while Cinderella is delighted with him. Soon, he adds to her many troubles. Write “Cinderella with a Teddy Bear.”

∙ Snow White has escaped to the dwarfs. The magic mirror breaks, and her evil stepmother goes on thinking she’s been restored to fairest-in-the-land status. Readers all over the universe are yawning. Give her a new problem–the hunter? a problem dwarf? the prince in danger? an approaching asteroid?–and write the story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Other Than Weepy

The sad news is that the Powers That Be at my publisher are no longer pleased with the title The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre. I suggested Look, This Book Has No Title. Everyone laughed. I’ll keep you posted.

On February 16, 2016, Writeforfun wrote, What are some emotional reactions to lots of terrible changes happening at once in a preteen’s life that don’t include crying? My character, an independent but insecure 12-year-old girl, has gone through a lot within a three-day timeframe; her dad was framed for a terrible crime, someone broke into her house and tried to kidnap her and her mom, she had to go to live with a friend to be safe, where someone tried to break in and kidnap her again, and now she has been sent to live on the other side of the country with relatives she has never met. When I try to write her reactions to all of these events, I find that she just ends up crying! I suppose technically she isn’t crying the whole time, but whenever she stops to think about what is going on, she always winds up bursting into tears. How can I make her reactions seem real without making her cry all the time?

Poppie suggested this: Mrs. Levine should have a post on emotional characters. I recommend reading it. It might help.

That post is called “Weepy.” If you’re interested, you can look it up.

In my last post, I proclaimed the helpfulness of lists in getting to writing solutions. Writeforfun’s question is perfect for the list approach. I’d start by listing possible emotional states. Some may be appropriate and others not so much, but I’d list every one I could think of, and I wouldn’t rule any out right off the bat. And, to give my brain a break, I’d probably research the question. I might google “list of emotions” and see what I got. If that didn’t yield much, I’d rephrase my query. If you have time right now, try it. It’s wonderful to remember that we don’t have to go everything in writing alone. While I’m using the possibilities that the worldwide web gives me, other ideas may also arrive. Everything goes on my list.

Yesterday I heard a short segment on the radio about the neuroscience of creativity. Seems that studies on the generative part of creating (as opposed to the editing stage) show that the part of the brain that pays attention to social norms is dialed way down. We turn off the side of our minds that cares about what other people will think of us or our ideas. I think this is critical. We’re creating! Who cares what anyone else thinks?

I’m not online as I write these possibilities, so I’ll wing it. Here’s at least a partial list:

∙ tearful (which is the problem, but which pops up first)

∙ sad but dry-eyed

∙ angry

∙ happy (we’re writing everything down)

∙ joyous

∙ ecstatic

∙ calm

∙ anxious

∙ hysterical

∙ amused

∙ frightened

∙ cerebral, thoughtful (which probably isn’t an emotion, but who cares?)

∙ disoriented

∙ comforted

∙ satisfied

∙ self-satisfied

Let’s stop here, though I might be able to wring out a few more. And, when it comes to lists, it often pays off to keep going after we think we’ve squeezed out every possibility. Stare out a window. Stamp around the room. Give it ten more minutes before moving on.

In this case let’s look at what we have. Let’s start with the least probable one: happiness. How might that one come into play? Well, let’s make a list. I’ll make it short, just to illustrate how we can keep using lists:

∙ MC Judith arrives at the home of her unknown relatives, and the welcome is warm. She’s so relieved (add relief to our list of emotions) that she feels a brief burst of happiness.

∙ Judith uncovers her first clue to what’s behind her troubles, which she comes about purely by her own brainpower. Briefly again, she feels happy. Her adversary doesn’t know she’s smart.

Looking down our list of emotions we see others that will be easy to draw on: anger, fear, anxiety, disorientation, hysteria. We can use them to vary the weeping. But if we bring in some of the more surprising ones, like amusement or thoughtfulness, we’ll also expand Judith, make her more interesting, deeper, and more varied.

I’ll end with this over-the-top statement: If the only writing wisdom you take from the blog concerns lists and the freedom to generate them, I will have done a good job!

Now for four prompts:

∙ Before Judith leaves for her relatives, at her friend’s house, the friend criticizes Judith for the way she’s handled her many crises. Write the scene and bring in a surprising emotional response from Judith. Use notes and lists in writing the scene.

∙ Judith is picked up by the police for questioning about her dad’s supposed crime. Write the scene and have her run through three emotions, and not all of them have to be genuine–she can play act strategically.

∙ Rewrite the questioning scene and make Judith make everyone, herself included, laugh.

∙ Turns out Judith’s relatives aren’t very happy to have her as a guest. Write the scene when she finds this out and do not let her cry.

Have fun and save what you write!

Pride and Prejudice and Lists

First, if you’re interested, here is a link to an interview with me. When you click on it, the first thing you’ll see is login information. Ignore this and just scroll down to hear the interview: http://newmoon.com/podcast/gail-carson-levine-interview/.

On February 4, 2016 Ella Hensen wrote, I really love writing fiction and whenever I start writing something I get really excited about what I’m going to do. I’ll write some the first day and then the next day I keep going but by then it’s turned into something I don’t like at all! Most of the time it’s way to similar to a book I have just finished reading that I loved. How do I stop this from happening? Has this happened to anyone else?

Christie Powell wrote back, It seems like Gail has answered similar questions about this. Here’s a good one: http://gailcarsonlevine.com/blog/2015/06/10/like-falling-in-love-and-out-and-in/.

NPennyworth commented, You’re not alone; this has happened to me too many times to count! Whenever it does I look at the story and ask “What don’t I like about this?” Sometimes I want to write a different part of the story, and then I switch to that. Sometimes a character doesn’t make sense and I take a break to do some character building. Sometimes it’s just a slow, but necessary, part of the plot, and I try to just plow through it so I can get to the more exciting parts. I usually find that if I dislike what I’m writing it’s because I’m bored, so I try to shake things up by putting in an action scene or a new character, or switching POV.

If all of the above fails, then I try to give my brain a break for a while. I can switch to writing another story, or do something else entirely. But I eventually sit down and try again. Being a writer isn’t all light bulbs and inspiration; a fair bit of writing is just forcing yourself to write.

I love NPennyworth’s suggestions. And I love her calm and practical tone. No desperation or self-condemnation. Writing is almost always a bumpy ride. We need approaches that help us keep jogging and slogging.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what loosens me up when I write, because, in my opinion, being loose is imperative. When we’re tight nothing new can squeeze out–or at the least our original ideas have a harder time getting past our rigid gate-keepers.

For me, I need a space in my work where nothing counts. In a poem, all I have to do is drop down a couple of lines. As soon as I’ve done that, I’ve disfigured the poem–really! The stanzas no longer descend in an orderly way, and all bets are off. I’ve made a mess, so I might as well play. I can feel my brain relax. I often copy over the lines that don’t satisfy me and try them different ways. Many different ways. The loosening allows me to consider the poem as a whole, too. Maybe the words are fine but the lines aren’t arriving in the right sequence. I try one way, close the poem up again, consider, and, often, start over.

In a novel-in-progress, I toggle over to my notes in order to relax. If what’s troubling me is the way I’ve expressed myself in a paragraph, for instance, I’ll copy the whole thing into my notes. Suppose I don’t think I’m being clear, well, I may rewrite the paragraph in the most basic way I can think of, even if the writing is less than charming. Then I may copy that and revise. If I’m not happy, I start again.

If the problem is bigger than the way I’ve expressed myself in a paragraph, if it’s a plot or character problem, I’ll write notes about that. And often I’ll list possibilities.

Ah, lists! The world’s greatest boon to originality. All great thinkers use them, actually down through history. When the wheel was invented, it was the product of a list scratched into dirt with a stick, like this:
Possible shapes:
diamond
square
isosceles triangle
circle
hexagon
blob

As history proves, the right solution may not be the last to appear on our list, but it’s the one we most often circle (hah!) back to.

So how can we use a list to move our story from following the course of the last novel we read and loved?

A thread in comments on the last blog concerned Pride and Prejudice and Lydia’s elopement with Mr. Wickham, which ***SPOILER ALERT*** had the eventual effect of uniting Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Suppose we’re writing a romance, too, and we adore P&P, as I do, so we make our two star-crossed lovers misunderstand each other, even though the reader knows they’re meant to be together. It’s a contemporary tale, because we’re a tad doubtful that we can be pitch-perfect regarding early nineteenth century England. Our MC Melanie’s family is wacky and can be counted on to say and do precisely the wrong thing at precisely the right moment for maximum trouble. Melanie’s sister Winette has a crush on geeky James, who is a whiz at all things tech and oh-so helpful when anyone’s computer melts down. We’re tempted to make James kidnap Winette, and have Melanie’s opposite number Stefan find her while she’s still alive. But even we realize this is just too derivative. So, how can we use James and Winette to bring Melanie and Stefan together? We make a list:

∙ Stefan discovers that James has hacked into the family’s financial information and has account numbers, passwords, and social security numbers. Stefan brings his discovery to Melanie and never suggests by so much as a sneer that her parents are careless fools who deserve to be swindled. Since we don’t want her rescued (though Austen doesn’t mind), she handles James.

∙ Melanie herself realizes what James is up to. With more courage than caution, she confronts him. He shrugs and says that he did nothing without Winette’s knowledge. If he’s prosecuted, she will be, too. He leaves her at the coffee shop where they met. On the way home, she runs into Stefan, who sees how distraught she is. She tells him what’s happened, and between the two of them, they cook up a way to foil James. In the course of their planning, they come to appreciate each other.

∙ James steals the family service dog, who is the only being who can calm down Melanie’s father when he becomes agitated. Family and friends mobilize to find the dog, and Melanie and Stefan wind up collaborating on the rescue.

∙ This one moves away from James. Despite her flirting, Winette is friendless. After being aloof at a social event, Stefan is kind to her when her schoolmates torment her. Melanie begins to appreciate him.

We can keep going. If I were writing this story, I would, to give myself even more choices. I’d think about Melanie’s family members and come up with a possibility that involves each of them. I’d also consider other characters and other aspects of Melanie’s life, and I’d invent possibilities for Stefan, too. I might even go back to other Austen books and see how she brought matters to a head in them. Then I might adapt one to these circumstances and use it.

Lists can be any length, but it can help to set a minimum number. I may say I want at least seven options. When I get to seven, I can still keep going.

Just one more thing about my process and finding the freedom to develop ideas. When I wrote the possibilities above, I got tight about my list, because I was going to put it out where others could read it, while my lists and my notes are usually private. I had to drop down on my page, away from the bullets where the final ideas would go. Then I could loosen up again. That’s what I mean about how important a safe space is.

Here are three prompts:

∙ You knew this was coming. Add three more possibilities to my list.

∙ Write a scene based on an item on your list or mine.

∙ Write a list of four other ways Jane Austen might have taken P&P. Leave it in the eighteenth century or make it modern. Write a scene from your new plot development. Or do this same thing with a different book.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Aaa! Ha!

First, I’ll hearken back to my recent post about poetry. In my final (sob) class of poetry school, we’ve been assigned a textbook that I think may interest people on the blog who’ve caught the poetry bug. It’s Introduction to Poetry by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia–high school and above–very comprehensive. There are a few poem prompts but not many. The value is in the discussion of all the topics in poetry and the selection of poems, from classic to modern. Also phenomenally expensive, so I’d suggest asking your library to get it for you or buying it used. Try to find the latest edition, which contains the most up-to-date poems.

On January 27, 2016, Bookworm wrote, I need help with some things in my novel. I have it pretty much figured out, but the scenes seem to zoom by. I don’t think my MC is really getting enough challenge in some of the scenes.

I also need some help with a side MC. He’s the main comedian, and I don’t have many jokes and puns for him. I could really use some help to get some good puns and jokes. Can you help me?

First question first. Writer of Magic weighed in with, What I would do to make it more challenging is to go through each sentence and see if you need more detail. Example: Her jeans ripped. Or: The seam on her jeans ripped. Blood seeped out. Sorry for the gore.

I’m all for detail, which does more than add length. Detail puts the reader in the scene. There’s nothing like it to increase tension. What do the jeans rip on? How deep is the cut? How painful? Who sees the event? Is anyone there to help? What else is going on? Does our MC–let’s call her Rose–have time to see how badly injured she is? Is she in danger of passing out from loss of blood? If a lot is happening, we can slow down to a kind of play-by-play.

A scene won’t zoom if we present our details through Rose’s head and heart. What is she thinking? Is she worrying about something even more pressing than bleeding? Is she phobic about blood? What’s her state of mind when the injury happens? Is she angry? At whom? Frightened? Sad? Even happy? Maybe cutting her leg solves some other problem for her. Now she thinks she won’t have to spend a week with her despised cousin. She wonders if she can make the injury worse.

Detail also contributes to humor. Rose’s jeans rip, revealing the laughing frogs on the long underwear her mother makes her wear. A dot of blood seeps through the flannel and reddens a frog’s nose. Can she conceal the whole disaster? What can she wrap around herself? A tablecloth! Can she pull it out without disturbing all the dishes, the way they do in movies?

And how might we challenge our Rose more?

We’re always finding a balance between barriers and abilities, locks and keys. Leaving behind the bleeding situation, let’s say Rose is loyal to Queen Lorraine, but a lot of people are dissatisfied with her rule. Attracted by the noise, Rose joins a crowd surrounding a street speaker who’s inciting the mob to storm City Hall, where the queen’s representatives hold sway. The mayor happens to be away, leaving Rose’s mother, the chief constable, in charge with only three guards to help her. Rose decides she has to persuade the crowd not to attack.

Suppose we want Rose to fail ultimately. The Hall will be attacked, which will propel our plot into its next phase. But we don’t want her to fail quickly. We want to make the most of our dramatic situation.

We might consider what Rose has going for her and what her obstacles are, but let’s start with the obstacles. The anger of the rabble rouser is infectious. He’s a good speaker with valid arguments on his side. The queen’s subjects are tired of a war that’s continued for a decade–although she’s been on the throne for only six months. Many able-bodied people have been forced to become soldiers. A promised school in the town hasn’t been built.

Rose thinks the queen should be given more time. If the throne is overthrown, who will step in? Chaos will follow, and the enemy is sure to take advantage. Rose has made this argument to a few friends, whom she’s persuaded to agree with her. Plus, she knows a lot of the people in the crowd, and she’s well-liked.

Going back to obstacles, she’s soft-spoken. No one will hear her if she speaks up. So we start the scene. Rose clears her throat. “Excuse me.” No one hears. What is she feeling? Thinking? Who’s standing next to her? What’s the weather?

We use these details to create a scene with ups and downs and plenty of challenges for Rose. When one effort fails, she tries something else, seems to make progress until some other upset comes along. We end with her the loser, but she isn’t entirely defeated.

Moving along. When it came to jokes, Writer of Magic asked, What era is this? Then I could probably make up some jokes.

Bookworm answered, The era is modern times, but the action takes place in different dimensions. For example, there’s the real world, then there’s Destiny Forest, and another dimension is Musical Hills. There’s not more than one of the MC though, like a doppelganger.

Humor helped poured in.

From Mary:
What type of bagel can fly?
A plain bagel!!!

NPennyworth:
What’s brown and sticky?
A stick!

Two man walk into a bar. One turns to the other and says “Ouch.”

“A train just passed by here!”
“How can you tell?”
“It left it’s tracks!”

“Did you get a haircut?”
“No, I got all of them cut.”

If you need more try searching Google.

As for puns I find that they work best in the situation. If the character drinks chicken soup they can say it tastes “fowl.” Fish is always really heavy because it has so many scales. Cheese has many “ Gouda” puns attached, and can be “grate” to use. Horses also have many puns attached. (Behooved is a good word, and people can mention neighbors, both of which can be used in many “tales.”) A mention of eyes can lead to many puns, such as “eye see,” mention of pupil(s) (for teachers or students), and complaints that people will always “lash” out. Cars are “wheely” good, and if you’re getting “tired” of my examples Google can help with some more specific examples. I hope this gives you a few ideas!

These are great! I’d just add that a list of homonyms (words that are spelled and sound the same but have different meanings, like bear) and homophones (words that may be spelled differently but sound the same, like plain and plane in Mary’s pun or bear and bare), which you can google, can be helpful for thinking up puns. Heteronyms (words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently, like bass, the fish, and bass, the low musical pitch) probably won’t be as useful, because our puns will probably crop up in dialogue, but there may be times when we can use them, too. Of course, some puns are pure inspiration, which can arise only from sub-basement Y of our brains, like the joke about the chicken, the frog, and the librarian, which is best said out loud. If you don’t know it, here’s a link: http://allaboutfrogs.org/funstuff/jokes/lbrry.html. For best effect, sound like a chicken for her lines and like a frog for his (hers? its?).

Here are prompts:

∙ I find it helpful to think of categories when I fool around with puns. So, looking at your googled lists, come up with three puns in each of these categories: food, occupations, and animals.

∙ Remember a time when you were injured: sports injury, clumsy injury (as most of mine have been), kitchen injury–whatever. Not life threatening, because we want to take something with medium intensity and deepen it. Write it and milk it for every smidgen of detail you can dredge up: the moment before the event, how it happened, how it felt and looked, who was there, who said what, what you said and thought, what made it better, what made it worse, plus whatever I’m leaving out. Now move into fiction. Make yourself a character, and make the other people who were there characters, too. If it fits, turn one of them into a villain. By using detail, make this a scene that doesn’t zoom by and that maintains tension.

∙ Injure your MC in your WIP and use some of the moments from your life and your fictionalized version of your life. Write the scene.

∙ Write the scene in which Rose tries to calm the crowd.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Strange New World

On December 20, 2015, Zoe wrote, So I’m working on inventing the world where my story is set right now, and I’m totally overwhelmed with having to invent languages, cultures, religions, political structure, geography, history, all that stuff. I was just wondering, how in depth do you go when you invent the world for your stories, like Kyrria, Bamarre, etc.? How much do you invent about your worlds?

It’s hard to remember what my thinking was with Kyrria and Bamarre, because I wrote the books so long ago. The latest world that I invented entirely was for my mysteries, A Tale of Two Castles and Stolen Magic. And even those I don’t remember well. A kind of amnesia falls over me about the hard parts of writing a book, and the whole first draft is always hard.

So for that reason, I looked at the beginning of my notes on A Tale of Two Castles–and found virtually nothing about world building. The novel is super loosely based on “Puss ‘N’ Boots,” and what I see is me wondering about Puss and why he’s so weirdly clever, not to mention why he can talk. So the world would have to accommodate magical cats. I speculated about introducing a genie, so then this would also be a world with genies, probably because I’ve never written a genie, and they interest me. (Neither the genies nor the magical cats made it into my story. Maybe in a future book.)

A word search on world in my notes. gave me nothing about creating the universe of my story. What I was doing was starting to work out my plot. I do remember that I wanted to use as much as I could of the Middle Ages. In Ella Enchanted, Fairest, and The Two Princesses of Bamarre I invented a fairy tale land that never was historical–but some readers intuited a medieval setting–and must have gotten a prettified idea of the period. In Fairest, for example, I dwelled a lot on fashion, and I used actual clothing, mostly gowns, from several reference books. However, I leaped centuries back and forth, and the outfits were post-medieval, because medieval dress was much simpler than the periods that followed, and I wanted to make Aza look ridiculous.

For the Middle Ages, I bought Castle by David Macaulay, which cannot be beat for clarity, and used his castle as the blueprint for mine. I got two books on daily life in the Middle Ages, not that I read all of either of them–just the parts I needed. And I supplemented the books with googling. For example, I learned what covered the floors in a medieval house: reeds. No carpets yet. And tapestries came later than the thirteenth century, which is the time I focused on.

Unless you enjoy world-building–some people do–why make up more than we have to? I do like to create new versions of imaginary creatures, like dragons, and there aren’t any real-life models anyway, so I spend time on them. In Stolen Magic, I made up an entire new kind of being, the brunka, and that was fun, too.

But my kingdoms have always been monarchies, although I could invent a new system of government, which probably would be fascinating. However, I might also lose myself in it. And when I get lost, when I haven’t made trouble for a character in a while, I get bored.

When my stories involve travel, I do have to come up with geography. But, again, I’ve never developed a new kind of landscape. I’m an admirer, though, of writers who have. I’m thinking of the forest of Ents in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, and the geography in the Discworld invented by Terry Pratchett.

I did create parts of languages in Ella Enchanted, Fairest, and Ever, but I did that because I wanted to, because I loved the languages in The Lord of the Rings, especially the orcs’. I didn’t have to, I could have made all the creatures speak Kyrrian.

Our universe, in my opinion, pales in importance next to plot and character. We don’t have to defy the laws of earth if our plot doesn’t demand it. But, since many of us are into fantasy, it’s nice to indulge ourselves if we want to.

However, sometimes the world steers our plot. In my Disney Fairies books, which take place in Fairy Haven and in which the fairies are the main characters, I had to think about this sort of fairy, and I did create a partially new world, which leaned a lot on the one invented by James M. Barrie in Peter Pan. Looking at my earliest notes, I see myself grappling with the world, but always in hopes of finding conflict. My first idea was that humans were building a bridge to Neverland. Then I decided that the island, which had floated, would get stuck on something. And my notion was that either of these would disrupt the island’s power to confer eternal youth on its inhabitants. I didn’t use these set-ups, but the one I finally came up with did create a crisis in aging, and I had a blast nudging the classic characters along the trajectory of life. Peter Pan, for example, loses some baby teeth!

So, I’d say we should let making trouble be our guide in our world-building. If we are going to invent a legal system, for instance, let’s come up with a law or two that endangers citizens, especially our characters. If we’re going to dream up customs, let’s include a few that oppose what our MC wants or needs.

We can toggle back and forth between world and plot. We can think, What kind of government do we want? And when we think, let’s not leap immediately to tyranny for maximum trouble. We can list possibilities. Maybe, for example, our kingdom is governed by a committee of university deans who want the best for everyone. How might this go wrong? Considering potential problems, we begin to imagine our MC. Who might she be, and what might she want that would run counter to her benevolent rulers?

Here are three prompts.

∙ Imagine that world ruled by university deans. Write a page of description. Write a scene in which your MC bumps up against authority. If you like, keep going.

∙ Your fictional world is our real one, contemporary modern life. Make it a slice of the ordinary that you know well, your neighborhood or your town or the theater group you’re part of. Change only one thing to make it fantasy. Make a list of what that single thing might be, and consider how it might affect your main character. Write a scene. Keep writing.

∙ Going entirely into the strange and unknown, your story is set inside a black hole in dark matter. Take a half hour to google black holes and dark matter (which I haven’t done). Write a page of notes about the possibilities. Write a scene. Be as strange as you can while still being understandable.

Have fun, and save what you write!

The Sneaky Snake

Before the post, a little news. Some of you may have wondered: I’m restarting my summer workshop this year. For writers from ten through high school age who live not impossibly far from Brewster, New York, it will run on Wednesdays from 1:30 to 3:00 for six weeks starting on July 6th. Interested writers need to commit for the whole time, although if you miss a week the world won’t end. It’s free, my gift to budding writers! If you’re interested, you should call the Brewster library to sign up. You know I’d love to have you.

On December 4, 2015, Nessa wrote, Congratulations to everyone who finished NaNoWriMo! My sister and my best friend’s brother encouraged me to do it this year, and I said I’d try, but it was really only a half-hearted attempt. I ended up with a measly 2,900 words instead of 50,000. :/ I think my biggest problem (besides schoolwork, and all the time-destroying other things I have to get done) is that I’m a perfectionist. I don’t really have an “inner critic,” exactly–I’ve read some less-than-stellar books before, and I figure if people like them, they’ll like mine–but whenever I write something, I always think, “It doesn’t sound quite right,” so I re-phrase it… and re-phrase it… and rephrase it. Getting 350 words in a day is basically a miracle. Anyone have any tips on how I can handle my debilitating writing perfectionism? (Seriously, it took me about an hour just to write this comment…)

Lots of you chimed in.

NPennyworth: I think the only way to do this is remembering that nobody can manage to churn out a 50K word story perfectly on the first try. You may need to take a step back and remind yourself that you can fix it later, but you can’t fix the story if you haven’t written enough of it.

Melissa Mead: I can’t remember where I saw this, who told me, but one writer said that rough drafts are basically putting clay on a wheel. You just pile clay/words on. It’s SUPPOSED to be a big messy lump. Then, when you get to an ending, you shape it into something beautiful.

Kitty: I feel you. I had the exact same problem until I discovered the various word crawls on the NaNo forums. They are super fun and addicting, and I found myself sprinting a couple thousand words a day and enjoying it. My fav is the Harry Potter one: (http://nanowrimo.org/forums/word-wars-prompts-sprints/threads/251242), but there are plenty of others, from pirate themed to NaNo themed, to Mean Girls themed. The full list of those, and other activities, is here: (http://nanowrimo.org/forums/word-wars-prompts-sprints). Maybe try one of those next year, or even just whenever you want to write. When you’re focusing on getting words down so that you can progress to the next “level” of the game, you’ll find yourself focusing less on the quality of the words, and instead on the quantity, which is essentially what NaNo is about. Also, the timed word sprints really help get your pulse and mind racing, so that you’re thinking less and writing more. Especially the fifty-headed-hydra. You won’t have time to even think for that one. They are incredibly fun and addicting, and got me out of a rather large word count hole that I dug for myself after the second week.

That being said, just because you didn’t meet the official word count goal and “win” doesn’t mean that you aren’t a winner. You wrote 2,900 words, which is 2,900 words more than you had at the beginning of the month. You developed a consistent habit of writing, and that’s something you should be very, very proud of. This pep talk (http://nanowrimo.org/pep-talks/n-k-jemisin) and this blog post (http://blog.nanowrimo.org/post/134534953571/didnt-win-nanowrimo-here-are-3-reasons-to) say so themselves. So celebrate! You’ve still accomplished a remarkable feat, and you should be extremely proud of yourself.

One more tip: If you’re under 16 right now, and if you decide to do this next year, you might want to consider joining the Young Writers Program (http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/) instead of the normal NaNoWriMo. It lets you set your word count goal instead of the default 50,000. That might help you finish and officially “win” a bit easier if you’re super busy.

Ann: I have this exact problem, so I tried handwriting for a bit instead of typing on a computer. It’s so easy to go back and fix things on word processing, I think it magnifies the problem somewhat. It didn’t work out for the long term for me, and I think of it as a temporary fix, but as an exercise in not ending up reworking the same page over and over, it really helped me. (Try it in pen if you’re feeling brave).

These are great and encouraging! I particularly like the word-sprint and switching-to-pen ideas, which focus us away from feeling bad about being perfectionists and toward action. I tend to get too much into revising, too, when I’m in first-draft stage. I may try NPennyworth’s and Ann’s suggestions to bypass my bad proclivities, or I may start typing with my nose or gripping a pen with my toes. Any words I get out that way will be good enough!

I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: I once read a description of a book–I don’t remember the source, so I can’t quote it exactly–as a long document that has something wrong with it. There are no perfect novels, probably no perfect essays or perfect poems. My next novel, after The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre, is going to be set in Ella’s world, so recently I reread Ella Enchanted, which was my first published book, and I’ve learned a few things since then. I’d revise quite a bit if I were starting over. For example, I’ve learned about the placement of the word only. Here’s an example that makes me grind my teeth: Ogres weren’t only dangerous because of their size and their cruelty. It should be: Ogres weren’t dangerous only because of their size and their cruelty. The difference is trivial, but the second is more precise than the first.

The only mistake I learned about from HarperCollins’ copy edits on some manuscript or other. I often see it in the work of wonderful writers, who have less gifted copy editors, but I don’t like to see it in moi! Getting deep into the weeds, I don’t think it’s a mistake when it shows up in dialogue, which reflects how people actually speak–generally with misplaced onlys, but in narration, I like to get it right.

Here’s another foolish move I constantly make as I write a first draft: I fix sentences I’m going to wind up cutting. I don’t know that at the time, but I do know that my most frequent action when I revise is to snip. Perfect sentences on the cutting room floor are useless.

Having said that, though, this may be a necessary part of my process, even a comforting one. I start every writing session by rereading a few of my latest pages, and when I reread, inevitably, I revise. Since I love to revise, since it’s my favorite part of writing, by the time I start on fresh work, I’m in the groove.

For those of you who struggle with this along with me and who are high school age at least, a good antidote may be to read a mystery by Elmore Leonard, whose writing is a marvel of simplicity. I don’t know how much he revised to get there, but he goes for a thing plainly said.

In her comment, Nessa says she doesn’t have an inner critic exactly. I beg to differ. When her thought slithers into her brain: It doesn’t sound quite right, who else is whispering but that reptilian inner critic? And once we recognize him, we can talk back or stuff a sock in his mouth. We can say, You may be right, but let me keep writing and after I type or pen The End, I want to know all about the problems. We can even flatter him by pointing out that he’ll be even more helpful once he knows the whole arc of our story.

Also, by the time we get to the end, he may be so pleased with us (since he is us), that he couches his criticism in an encouraging way.

As many of us have said many times, no two writers write alike. Some of us soldier through a first draft uncritically, without ever coming up for air. Some of us are compulsive nitpickers. We may learn to rein ourselves in, but we may never entirely eliminate our three-steps-forward-two-steps-back methodology. And we should respect that. And let me add that Nessa’s question, even though she took an hour to frame it, was clear enough and poignant enough to elicit the help she got. I say, Good work!

Looking for a title for this post, I googled quotations about perfectionism and found this link: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/perfectionism. I didn’t find my title, but there are lots of gems. I already knew this quote from Oscar Wilde: “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”

Here are three prompts:

∙ I’ll try a sprint prompt. If I understand right, there needs to be a reward for success. My reward would be a game of Free Cell solitaire, so pick some time sucking pastime you usually feel guilty about and indulge guilt free for up to half an hour. Here’s the challenge: Write an argument between two friends. You can come up with your own starter line, or use this phrase: Your first mistake was… Write for fifteen minutes without stopping or fixing anything.

∙ Write a page about your WIP as if you were describing it to an admiring friend in conversation. There is nothing to correct, because you’re just talking on the page.

∙ Write the next page of your WIP with your eyes closed. I can type with my eyes closed, although the temptation to look is very strong. Don’t give in to it! If you can’t type with closed eyes, write longhand on paper. If your eyes are closed, you can’t correct. When you’re finished, don’t go back to fix it. Just keep going, eyes open or closed.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Lemme out!–convincingly

I am proud and relieved to announce that the Two Princesses prequel has a title. Alas, the dragons in sales and marketing nixed all other suggestions, including excellent choices from the blog, and I had to cudgel my head again. But finally, I came up with this one, which they like, my editor likes, and I like, and I hope you will like, and which I don’t think I gave you enough information to come up with. Here it is: The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre. Hooray!

So, there’s a lesson in this for all of us: We needn’t seek the perfect title until we have a publisher, because publishers have final say anyway. We can go eponymous and just call our book by the name of our MC and then dig deeper when the time comes.

And, if not a lesson, an idea: To loosen myself up and get out of the title groove I was mired in, I googled “popular fantasy novels for children” and clicked on a selection from Goodreads, which helped me realize that almost anything can be a fine title. Thus freed, my mind started wandering and got me where I needed to go.

Thanks again, many thanks, to all of you who posted title possibilities! I’ll probably ask for your help again.

Now for this week’s post:

On November 20, 2015, Kitty wrote, I need some ideas for a way for my MC to escape a prison cell. However, I would like to avoid anything involving the following:
1. Cliches (air vents and the ol’ fake escape gambit are out).
2. Mary Sue-like abilities (so no “Oh, I just happen to know some obscure physics/chemistry fact that I can totally apply to the situation, plus I can pick locks and dangle from walls). The MC is twelve, so anything that would be obviously beyond the ability/knowledge of a 7th grader is a no-go.
3. Outside help. She has to do it alone. Her friends are in different cells, so she’s not going to get any help from them, or anyone else. And
4. Excessive violence. PG 13 is probably okay. R is probably not. I’ll let you use your best judgement on that one.
5. Deus ex machinas. No “Oh, look, somebody left the door unlocked! Lucky me!”, or “Look, I happen to have a magical door unlocking device with me! I grabbed it when I got kidnapped, but I guess they didn’t notice!”

The cell is modern day with fairly heavy security (though I’m willing to make adjustments on the exact nature of the cell/security system), something that perhaps the CIA or FBI might have at their offices. There probably will be security cameras, though I’m flexible about that one. I don’t need her to escape the whole compound (I already have that planned out), just to get out of the cell she’s stuck in.

NPennyworth suggested: It sounds like the only way she’s getting out is if someone lets her out. Maybe she can use her age to her advantage and trick a guard into taking her out, maybe something like she says she has a stomach bug and pretends to throw up, or insists she needs to go to the bathroom. Once the guard opens the door maybe she could stomp on his foot and incapacitate him, and take it from there.

And Poppie said, I agree with NPennyworth about your escape scene: being let out is the only logical way to get away. I have never written about breakouts, so the only other thing I can recommend, is reading and watching some appropriate books and movies about the subject.

I’m with Poppie, in that research may be useful. We can google “famous prison escapes,” and even try “escapes from juvenile facilities,” since Kitty’s MC is twelve. Then we can mix and match what we come up with to suit our circumstances.

Kitty seems to be after originality in solving her incarceration problem, and the key, in my opinion, to original solutions is character.

Who is our MC? What characteristics that we’ve already established can she use to get herself out? NPennyworth suggests she pretends to throw up to get out of her cell. This becomes more plausible if she has a history of feigning illness to evade going to school, and the reader knows she’s really good at it. She’s discovered ingenious ways to make herself look pale and clammy or turn green or pink with fever. We have her decide which illness will most likely get her out, possibly make the guards uneasy and unlikely to scrutinize her closely. This can be a lot of fun to write–and to read.

But we can give her other useful qualities. She can be artistic or persuasive or over-the-top charming. Let’s go with artistic. There isn’t much to work with in her cell, but she pulls a few strands of horsehair out of her ratty mattress and fashions a convincing tarantula in the corner. It won’t bear close examination, but from across the cell, it’s a stunner. The reader already knows that the prison is in the desert, so tarantulas aren’t an impossibility. Then she starts screaming. Guard rushes in, stands in the doorway, annoyed, says, “What?” She points. He runs in or runs out, leaves the door open.

This escape, or any escape, will be most believable if our MC has tried once or twice before and failed.

When we use character, the qualities we exploit have to be revealed earlier, when our MC is established. If she becomes artistic in her cell half an hour before she makes the fake spider, the reader is likely to be unconvinced and may shout “Mary Sue!”

In fact, Kitty’s Mary Sue example typifies the problem of the solution that pops out of nowhere. We may be able to pull off a knowledge of obscure physics or chemistry principles if the reader knows she’s a genius in those subjects, and this is established very early in the story. But scientific brilliance plus the ability to dangle from walls, even if set up early, will probably be too much for a reader to buy and may move our MC from a real girl to a young super-heroine.

Our MC isn’t the only character we can use. If she’s observant (a really handy quality that we can give to almost any MC, along with whatever else we give her), she’ll pay attention to prison routine, the personality of this guard and that and of her fellow prisoners (which Kitty suggests she already knows). She can plan to use the nice guard in one way, the one who does everything by the book in another. Any other characters in her prison life can also be brought in to serve her purpose.

We don’t want to make the escape too easy. In the same way we use our MC’s character to let her escape, we can use her character to cause her to fail in an early attempt or to almost fail in her final successful one. Suppose she’s the spider artist, but she needs her creations to be admired, she may give herself away the first time. The reader will be terrified for her. An added benefit of an MC’s flaw is that it will counteract any Mary Sue’ishness the reader may have detected in her.

In the same way we use character we can also use the prison setting to develop the escape–although character will usually be part of it. Here again research may help. We can google prisons: maps, routines, personnel. It may be useful to search on well-run prisons and badly run prisons. Think about how your MC can use what you discover. Again, we need to set this up as early as possible so that whatever she turns to her advantage doesn’t seem too convenient to the reader. If there happens to be an abandoned aqueduct, for example, just outside the prison walls, our MC and the reader need to know about it before escape planning begins.

A lovely aspect of writing is that time inside our story doesn’t behave for us as it does for our characters. We can realize as we’re writing her escape that she doesn’t realize a crucial fact she needs to realize. Zip! We jump back three days and twenty pages and sew the fact in seamlessly so it’s there when she has to have it.

Obviously, these strategies apply not only to prison breaks, but also to any pickle our MC may find herself in.

Here are three prompts:

∙ Design an escape for a character using another quality other than artistic ability. Make one up or pick one or use one of these: persuasiveness, charm, taciturnity, short attention span, high energy. Write the escape.

∙ Rewrite the scene, but this time make it fail because of a character flaw. Keep her alive, though, and have her try again. If you haven’t before, bring in secondary characters and use their personalities in the scheme.

∙ Write an escape in which the prison itself, its routine or layout, possibly its computer system, is crucial to success.

Have fun, and save what you write!

I’m trying to think, but nothing happens

First off, many, many thanks to everyone who suggested titles, which I will soon present to my editor, and you will be first, after my husband and dog, to know the outcome. I can count on you guys!

On October 23, 2015 Rayne Simone wrote, I hope to find an answer to this question and present it clearly-it’s very important in a story I’m working on. Often, story ideas fizzle out, and I have about a hundred 10 pg. stories in my computer. Now that I have started a novel, I plan on delving more into my character and her growth, but I’m finding it hard with her thoughts. When she’s struggling over a decision, or coming up with an idea, I don’t know how I should properly convey her thought process. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions I’m all ears. I hope that this is clear enough.

NPennyworth wrote back, If this persists, you may want to try to write another 10-page story that is just the character talking or her backstory. It doesn’t have to be featured in your novel but may help you to get to know the character better and write her thoughts. You could also try switching your point of view to see if that will work better for your novel.

And Rayne Simone answered. Thank you for your advice, and I will be glad to try it, although I think I understand her character, I just don’t specifically know how to articulate what I want to be written. For example, I could go on and on forever in her voice (I love using it) and write many paragraphs about her home, family, and friends, but I can’t write one sentence of her figuring out a problem. If there was a situation where, let’s say, she was given a riddle or problem that she had to solve, I wouldn’t know how to begin. How do you describe the thought process of people? Thank you for answering, and I am certainly going to try all of your suggestions, and I’m glad that you wrote back.

MisplacedPoetry weighed in, too. Maybe you should just let her go on and get all that out of her system; then she might be ready for some problem solving and you might get how to do it?

And this from Melissa Mead: Can you demonstrate her thoughts through her actions?

Giving credit where it’s due, the title of this post comes from The Three Stooges.

In poetry school, we often do close readings of poems, looking at language, sound, sentence length, meaning. Let’s do a close reading of Rayne Simone’s two comments above, but in this case we’ll consider how we might express thoughts in writing. And let’s intuit her thoughts as she was writing. Rayne Simone, I hope you don’t object to the invasive mind-reading (which may be entirely wrong). I’ve put the guessed-at thoughts in bold:

I hope to find an answer to this question and present it clearly-it’s very important in a story I’m working on. I want them to be crystal clear about how much I need this. Often, story ideas fizzle out, and I have about a hundred 10 pg. stories in my computer. See how urgent this is! Now that I have started a novel, My first! I hope they understand what a big deal this is. I plan on delving more into my character and her growth, but I’m finding it hard with her thoughts. When she’s struggling over a decision, or coming up with an idea, I don’t know how I should properly convey her thought process. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions I’m all ears. I hope that this is clear enough. Will they get it? Will they respond?

And:

Thank you for your advice, and I will be glad to try it, although I think I understand her character, I just don’t specifically know how to articulate what I want to be written. Maybe I didn’t ask the question in the right way. For example, I could go on and on forever in her voice (I love using it) and write many paragraphs about her home, family, and friends, I’ve really done that! but I can’t write one sentence of her figuring out a problem. If there was a situation where, let’s say, she was given a riddle or problem that she had to solve, I wouldn’t know how to begin. How do you describe the thought process of people? Thank you for answering, and I am certainly going to try all of your suggestions, and I’m glad that you wrote back. I want to be sure NPennyworth knows I’m grateful. I don’t want her (him?) to think her effort was wasted on me, and I want other blog commenters to see how carefully I’ll consider and use whatever they send me.

Actually, I think Rayne Simone’s posts are chiefly thoughts expressed (well) on the page, and I’ve just added some of what she didn’t write. So what gives her phrases a thought quality?

The struggle to get it right. Rayne Simone is refining what she says to convey just what she wants. If she were a character narrating action or feeling, there wouldn’t be–couldn’t be–that struggle. Our MC either draws a sword or doesn’t, or even draws it out halfway. Her heart pounds or doesn’t pound. If we write, She fought back tears, that’s action. If we write, She fought back tears. There was nothing to cry over, anyway. She hadn’t lost anything because she hadn’t had anything in the first place, that’s action followed by thoughts. (I’ve written this in third person, but we can easily switch it to first. Thoughts can be expressed either way.)

What other strategies can we introduce to convey that thinking is happening?

∙ A debating quality. Not all thoughts go this way, but many do, especially when we or our characters are coming to a decision. We question: Is this the right way to go? What else is there? What would Manny think? Doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. Wait! Maybe it does.

∙ Sometimes we order ourselves around in thoughts: Wake up! Get up! Don’t put it off!

∙ Sometimes we address ourselves: Way to go, Sylvie! Or, You are a bleeping idiot, Sylvie!

∙ Sometimes (usually) thoughts continue in interpersonal situations, a running commentary on what’s passing, like the crawl at the bottom of a TV screen: I love this teacher! Or, Who wears shorts over leggings? (Do people do this?) What a weirdo!

∙ Simple language. Most of us don’t think in elevated prose. However, you may have a character who does, who will be an exception.

The rest of the post will be prompts to try out these ideas. Keep the strategies above in mind as you write.

∙ Pick a decision you need to make now or in the next few months. Write down your thoughts about it. You won’t get them all, because thoughts fly by too fast, but snag as many as you can. Fill a page or more.

∙ Pick a character, major or minor, in your WIP, and think what you know about her, what she’s like. Keeping those qualities in mind, either have her debate in her thoughts your real decision, or write her thoughts about your thoughts. Or both!

∙ Snow White has asked the dwarves to give her asylum. You can use Disney’s dwarves or your own. Do this with at least three dwarves, each with a different personality. Write down their thoughts about the decision, because everybody’s thought process is a little different.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Help! And poetry!

Happy holidays! Happy New Year! Next post in 2016!

First off, this is an appeal: I need title help again. I wanted to call the Two Princesses prequel just plain Bamarre. But my editor nixed that, alas, so I’m back in title misery.

This no more than what is revealed in the first chapter, but I think you need to know something to get in title mode: The story starts off Rapunzel’ish. Peregrine, nicknamed Perry, is born into an underclass Bamarre family. Impoverished, the father steals from the local Lakti lord’s garden and is caught by Lady Klausine, who takes toddler Perry to raise as her own daughter (concealing her Bamarre origins), and she takes her older sister to be Perry’s maid. Perry isn’t to be told about her birth family or that she was born Bamarre.

I don’t know if this is enough to go on, but I hate to give more away. However, if you need more, please ask, and I’ll answer if I can without too many spoilers. Please post your ideas, whether they look good to you or not. This is no time to activate your inner critic–I need you!

And, as in the past, if you come up with a title, I will acknowledge you in the book and you will get a free copy.

Now for the post: On October 18, 2015, Bug wrote, I love poetry, and would love to be able to write it well. But I’m also not very good at it. Does practice help with this kind of thing? With writing in general? Or do you have to actually figure out exactly what’s wrong with what you’re writing and try to fix that?

Last week, in my poetry class, my teacher asked us, all students in the MFA Creative Writing program at NYU and most of us going for the Poetry degree, if we read mostly poetry as children.

Not a single hand went up. We all read more fiction than anything else and fell in love with poetry later. We became writers, I believe, because of fiction, which gave us our fascination with language along with story. Most of you, I’m guessing, read obsessively. The words get inside us. The first step in becoming fiction writers happened without our noticing, a lot like learning to walk and talk.

But to become poets, since we’re older, we have to take that first step deliberately. We have to read poems, lots of them, old poems and new, rhyming poems and ones that don’t rhyme. Since we’re older, we can sample widely and then concentrate on poems and poets that speak to us. I don’t think reading poetry should be bitter medicine; we should mostly go with what we like. If we’re very virtuous, we can occasionally sample poems that are harder for us to chew.

A warning, though: For those of you who are younger than high school age, get guidance. The erotic is a frequent (and legitimate) theme in poetry.

Another warning: Reading poems by other beginning poets doesn’t count. Read poems that have been published somewhere, picked by an editor. You can find many important poets and poems online. The Poetry Foundation website is a great source of poems, and the poets on the site have been published. Here’s a link: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/. But Warning #1 applies; some of the poems won’t be appropriate for all ages.

A confession: I tend to read poems at the same breakneck speed I read prose, which is better than not reading them at all though not ideal. But if a poem grabs me, I reread and reread and remember. My favorite poems lodge in my brain. And by taking up residence there, they make me more of a poet. Same as with fiction.

If you like a poem, reread it. Read it out loud. Observe the tools of poetry at work! Notice the sounds. Pay attention to the sentence structure. Does the poet vary her sentence length? Or not? (No way is better than any other.) Do most of the lines end in punctuation? Or not? Is the poem punctuated at all (it’s up to the poet)? Is the punctuation regular? Are the lines long or short or varied in length? Does the poem tell a story? Or not? Does it even make sense? Do you understand it? You don’t have to, and it doesn’t mean you’re stupid. (I am susceptible to feeling stupid if I don’t understand, and I’m not fond of poems that leave me feeling that way, but some poets are more interested in sound than meaning, and some readers enjoy that. You may discover that you’re one of them.)

Does it rhyme? Does it rhyme sometimes? Are the rhymes unexpected? Does the tense change surprisingly? Does the person (first, second, third) stay the same or shift? Are there metaphors and similes (not all poems have them)? Is there a surprise near the end? Or anywhere else?

And pay attention to what you feel as you read. Some poems are intellectual, but many go straight to the gut or the heart. I love the emotional wallop a poem can pack.

So reading poems is the absolutely essential, sine qua non step to becoming a poet. A lovely collection to get you started is Step Lightly: Poems for the Journey, anthologized by Nancy Willard. Though I haven’t read it in a long time, I think this one is fine for middle school and up, but check with an adult to be sure. Nancy Willard is a wonderful poet with exquisite taste. Years ago, I took a workshop led by her.

As you read, notice how vast the world of poetry is. Some poems are short and as light as air. The poet isn’t making a STATEMENT. Some are deeply emotional. Some are intellectual. Some advocate causes.

When you write poems, experiment! Poems are generally short enough that we can play around and try many approaches and many kinds of poems. Write serious and silly. Rhyme and don’t rhyme. Learn about meter and try a metrical poem. Go for feeling, and go for intellect. Write long poems and short. Try some of the short forms, like haiku, cinquain, tritina. Try other forms, like sonnets, pantoums, sonnets. If you’re feeling like a challenge, try a sestina. You’ll find descriptions of all these forms online. And my go-to reference book on forms is The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms, edited by Ron Padgett (high school and up).

Suppose you write ten poems today… Don’t judge them! Put them aside for, say, ten days. Read poems by other poets in the meanwhile. Look at your poems again. Still don’t judge them, but revise without judgment. See if you can push the sounds by switching to synonyms with more alliteration and more assonance. Try breaking the lines in different places. Put them aside again and write new poems. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Most, maybe all, learning is subconscious. In reading, we writers give our brains poems and stories, which they churn while we’re unaware, and learning happens.

Aside from improving as a poet and becoming friends with great poets decades younger than I am, what has poetry school done for me and for my fiction? Most of all, I’ve become more aware of sounds in my prose. I notice especially when I use alliteration, which I push sometimes and take out others. I’ve gotten better at noticing words and clauses I don’t need, because poetry is often compressed, so my prose has become leaner, which I like in my work and in everybody else’s. Sometimes I’ve used poems to try out in this short form ideas that I might use in a novel. For example, I’m thinking that I might like my next book to be a strange fairy tale variation on “Beauty and the Beast,” and I explored the idea in a poem.

Back to Bug’s question. Improvement in poetry and fiction comes with practice, more than with identifying what’s wrong and fixing it, although that helps, too. If we can figure out what doesn’t work, of course we should look for ways to address the problem, but we should avoid that negative voice. What we identify should be concrete, like too many adjectives and adverbs, not enough thoughts and feelings, taking too long to get to the conflict. Not: Today I’m going to transform my writing from lousy to good.

There are lots of prompts above, and here are three more:

∙ Write an unsentimental poem about a pet. An example of this is a disturbing and funny poem by Billy Collins. A dog dies and its soul reveals that it never liked its owner.

∙ In a poem, argue a position you feel strongly about, but also bring yourself into it. Show in the poem why you care, why you have something at stake.

∙ Pick a last line from one of the many poems you’ve been reading and make it the last line of your own new poem. This isn’t stealing, because you’re going to acknowledge your debt. Under the title of your poem, write After Name of Poem by Name of Poet.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Spark Notes

On August 31, 2015, Jordan W. wrote, I have finally figured out my entire plot and I’m about to start writing my first draft, But there is one minor problem. I have no idea how to make my MC meet the love interest. I know what happens before and after they meet I just don’t know how to go about the actual confrontation. Can anyone offer any inspiration?

Yulia weighed in with useful ideas, some of which make my ears burn: I’m not a romance expert, but I’ve read lots of romance stories, and I can recount how the love interests were introduced there. Gail herself has written many great books, so let’s look at her versions:

In ELLA ENCHANTED, the MC Ella’s feeling bad because her mother died and love interest Char cheers her up.

In FAIREST, the MC Aza sees love interest Ijori at a wedding, and he saves her from embarrassment in the receiving line.

In EVER, the love interest Olus rescues MC Kezi from a mean, creepy guy. (Actually, both Olus and Kezi are MC’s, but you get the idea.)

Some other examples:

In Shannon Hale’s THE GOOSE GIRL, the MC Ani is sitting in a goose pasture when love interest Geric comes riding in on an unruly horse. Ani jumps on the horse and rides around before Geric tells her that it’s not her horse; they have a spat, and the next day he comes with flowers.

In Soman Chainani’s THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL, the love interest Tedros throws a rose (which signifies his love) into the audience of girls. MC Sophie is so desperate to catch it, but she misses.

In books with younger MCs, the romance is a lot slower. Take Emily and Aaron in Liz Kessler’s EMILY WINDSNAP series (she’s 12 or 13 and he’s about 14). They’re just friends for a long time before they dive in.

These are great examples, and they each share a quality: a vulnerable moment. In Ella Enchanted, for example, Ella might have been more guarded with a stranger if her mother hadn’t died recently. Also, I know from sad experience that after the loss of a loved one, people and characters are eager to hear the departed remembered, to know that his or her life mattered. Char, without calculation, does this.

This absence of calculation is a common element, too, in the incitement to romance. If Char were intentionally endearing himself to Ella, he would come off as disturbing, possibly villainous.

So that’s a strategy to keep in mind, to put our MC at risk, not serious risk, because we don’t want to overwhelm the moment. And I don’t mean that the hero has to save the heroine. She can save him, or they can be in trouble together.

Here’s an approach to crafting the meeting: Make it reflect a reason the two wind up loving each other. In Ella Enchanted again, Char admires Lady Eleanor’s sense of humor. As the romance develops, Ella enjoys making Char laugh, and he, the more serious of the two, loves that she can.

So first we think about what elements cause the two to mesh. We can make a list. For example:

∙ They’re both adventurous, even risk-taking.

∙ She’s direct; he’s diplomatic. Each wishes for some of the other’s quality.

∙ They grew up in different cultures, and she loves his exoticism. He loves teaching her about his village.

And so on in large ways and small. When you write your list, go for five to ten elements. Some of the meshing can be physical, so put those on your list, too, but, unless we have strangely shallow MCs, there need to be emotional and probably intellectual traits that attract as well.

Now how can we use what we have? Taking the first one, they can meet on a wilderness adventure. He proposes something the group could do, which the tour guide nixes, nastily. She can support the idea. The first spark has flared. If my second bullet also applies, she can tell the tour guide off. He can admire her fearlessness. If the tour guide has a fit, he can use his diplomacy to lower the temperature, and she can be impressed. Spark two.

Notice that nothing enormous has happened. We’re setting the stage to let their feelings build.

Notice also that we’ve used their characters to create the situation. It isn’t enough to engineer events so that they’re in the same place at the same time. The two have to work together.

Here’s another way to think about it: When we consider how to bring them together, we can use the ways they’re alike and the ways they’re opposite. Characteristics that are unrelated won’t help much. If she loves dogs and he likes to walk on the beach, we’ll have to work harder. But if he hates dogs or is afraid of them and she loves them, ideas stop popping.

Before I go to prompts, I just want to remember my favorite romantic beginning, which comes from Anne of Green Gables: Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe are classmates, each fuzzily aware of the other, but the awareness doesn’t sharpen until he calls her hair carroty and she slams her slate over his head. I love that romantic beginning!

Here are three prompts:

∙ Think of two people you know in real life. If they aren’t near in age, imagine that they are. It doesn’t matter if they know each other. Think about how they might work as a couple. Write the scene that sets off their romance.

∙ Using my third bullet, have her be a tourist in his village and have her commit some social faux pas. Use the incident to incite their romance.

∙ Write the wilderness adventure that I set up.

Have fun, and save what you write!