Threading the Plot Needle

First, here’s a link to an interview with me: http://www.bookshoptalk.com/2011/09/interview-with-one-and-only-gail-carson.html. On the site you’ll find interviews with other authors and lots more for us bookish types.

And I heard something horrifying (in a writerly sense) on the radio in an interview with Patricia T. O’Conner, whose books Woe Is I and Woe Is I Jr. I keep recommending. She said that a question came in on her blog, http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/, a fascinating site, about the meaning of head nodding and head shaking. The questioner wrote that she’d (I think it was a she) had always thought a nod meant yes and a shake meant no, but lately she’d come across instances of the reverse. Pat looked into it and discovered that the meaning had shifted somewhat and the questioner was correct; sometimes a nod means no and a shake means yes. Aaa! Talk about shaking. My world is shook, rattled, and rolled. I’ve always used head nods for yes and shakes for no. Have I confused my readers? Have these neat, quick, formerly unambiguous gestures been taken away from me? And from you, too?

I don’t know what I’m going to do from now on, maybe ignore this bulletin from the front-lines of English usage and assume that most readers will understand my meaning. Or maybe make each nod and shake so clear no one can be mistaken, but, ugh, that will require extra words I didn’t need before. Anyway, I wanted to share the news with you because confusion loves company.

The interview moved on to naming places where a nod always means no and a shake always means yes, like Bulgaria and India, which is interesting, but not particularly worrisome.

Now on to this weeks question. On June 24, 2011, maybeawriter wrote, What’s driving me nutty is that I barely have any scenes for my main story, and the one or two I have are no longer completely relevant to my story. I think my problem is that my storyline keeps changing in notes, conversations and deep thoughts. Not that a changing storyline is a problem, but it’s almost changing too fast. And now I had this new, completely story-changing idea. And now my story is shattered and I have no idea how to put it back together and make something from it, something that makes sense and somehow involves my oldest ideas. Maybe I just have trouble letting go of my old storyline. And maybe I fear the blank nothingness of the unknown, of the ever-changing story where nothing is sure, nothing set in stone, nothing to keep this story, well, this story. If I change too much, is it still the same story, or something new and unfamiliar?

I love to get together with writer friends and talk about current projects because the discussion is almost always reassuring. I’m making up names here, not using real friends: Annabelle says she’s trashing her novel and starting over; she had to write the wrong book so now she can write the right one; this has happened to her before.  Randy says he hadn’t been able to write anything for two months but he wrote three pages last week and hopes he can keep going. Inga says she doesn’t know what her book is about fundamentally, which is making the going rough for her. I say I’ve started my novel over five times, once after writing 260 pages.

Nobody I know ever ever ever says, I sit down at the computer every morning without fail and pop out seven glorious pages. Isn’t writing the merriest occupation going?

No, writing is strange and inexplicably hard. It all comes out of our heads. Our materials are ideas, so why can’t we shape them easily? Why don’t they just chink into place?

They don’t, and that’s why it’s delightful to be with other writers, the only people who really understand. Maybeawriter, I don’t have a solution for you. What you’re going through is, in my experience, the writer’s lot. But I have a suggestion, which you may do already: when you’re most miserable, talk to other writers or read writers’ blogs or books about writing. I love the name you’ve given yourself: maybeawriter. That uncertainty is wonderfully honest about the writer’s state.

I glean two questions from you, one about scenes and the other about story direction. Scenes first.

Suppose we have a character, Mallory, who is starting a new school, say it’s magic sculpture school. Graduates create manikins that assist people in subtle ways, physically and emotionally. Mallory’s problems are that she’s brutally honest and has trouble taking criticism. Her strengths are her creativity and her sympathy. The major conflict in this story will revolve around these traits.

We need scenes to show Mallory in action. Where to set them? With which characters? Do we start by getting her in trouble in a small way and build or do we make it bad right away?

This is where I would begin to wander if I were taking this on, because I don’t know how to answer my own questions. Maybe I’ll write a scene with Mallory and her mother. Mallory has insulted her cousin, and her mother is taking her to task for it, and Mallory isn’t responding well.

But the action isn’t going to take place at home, so that scene won’t advance the plot. Probably I won’t use it. Still, I’ve seen Mallory in her home environment, which is informative. Now let me try one at the new school. In this scene we’ll see her creativity and her touchiness and we’ll introduce a character or two who may be important later on.

With luck this second scene moves us into the story and suggests scenes that can follow. Mallory antagonizes one of her teachers but interests another. A fellow student hates her; another falls in love with her. How will the teacher she antagonized react? How will the others? We temporarily forget our thematic ideas in the excitement of the detailed moment-to-moment writing.

Then we stop writing for the day. We walk the dog and ruminate about plot direction. Ideally our ideas support the direction we’ve started in, and sometimes this actually happens to me. But sometimes I anticipate problems based on what I’ve written. I think I need to go back to establish a new path ahead or I see a different route entirely, and I know that’s the way I have to go.

In an earlier version of Beloved Elodie, which finally is moving along, I had madness descend on Elodie’s island of Lahnt. Elodie’s mother is possessed by greed. She imagines herself as King Midas and has no regrets about turning her daughter to gold. It’s a disturbing and powerful scene, and I still love it for its power. I mourn giving it up, which I had to do to take my story in a viable direction. My tale isn’t what I started with, but now it’s one I can write. Maybe someday I can use the ideas in the mother-Midas scene and maybe not.

We have to go with what we can do. I’ve said before that I’m an unconscious writer. This is the way I see it: Our selves below the surface guide what we write. There are layers to that hidden self, which is why we veer this way and that, why the road through a story takes many detours. Although I’m often not happy about how long I need to meander to follow my story thread, I believe the added complexity serves our art. Maybeawriter, “the blank nothingness of the unknown” is where writers operate and where we shape our magic sculptures.

Here are three prompts about Mallory:

∙    Mallory is assigned to create a sculpture that will help a depressed eight-year-old boy. Write the scene in which she meets the boy for the first time.

∙    Write the scene I mentioned above in which Mallory alienates one teacher and interests another, causes a student to hate her and another to fall in love with her.

∙    Write a scene in which Mallory begins to create the sculpture for the boy.

Have fun and save what you write!

Speech!

Starting off with a reminder that I’ll be at the children’s book festival in Tarrytown, New York, on Sunday. The event is held at historic Sunnyside, Washington Irving’s home, a literary destination in its own right.

On June 20, 2011, Jen wrote, ….I am a very introverted person. But I’ve read in a lot of places that self-promotion is just as much a part of being a successful author as good writing is. Do you agree with that perspective? Is there any hope for someone like me that would rather not be in front of people?

I would never ever ever agree that anything is as important for an author as good writing. Success is a separate matter, hinging on many things, including luck and timing. And yes, self-promotion is useful. You, all of you reading the blog, should do some when you get published. If you already are published, you know.

And if you’re already published, I hope you’ll chime in with what worked and what disappointed you.

Self-promotion doesn’t necessarily mean public speaking. There are more ways today to promote your book than ever before, and new ones keep springing up. I’m not an authority on the subject, but there are lots of books that may help. Your library may have some, or your local bookstore may suggest some titles.

I googled “self-promotion for authors” and lots of links popped up. One of them, a fascinating and funny New York Times article, goes over author self-promotion from a historical perspective. To my amazement the practice goes way, way, way back. Many of the examples do not involve speech at all. The article’s tone is adult and may not be right for elementary schoolers. Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/books/review/how-writers-build-the-brand.html.

Luck is luck, and you can’t do much about that, and timing is hard to control too. Your first picture book comes out when the market is down for picture books. Your paranormal novel is released just when the trend is fading, or your historical novel about the San Francisco earthquake hits the bookstores just after an earthquake strikes… somewhere, and interest is high.

The internet is the self-promoting author’s good buddy. You can create a website, a blog; you can tweet, use Facebook and, I suppose, LinkedIn for publicity. You can link to other sites that may link to yours as well. Some literary blogs interview authors, and these interviews are written, no speaking necessary. You can shoot something for YouTube about your book. Some authors develop online book trailers, not cheap, but not a fortune either. A friend has created an e-newsletter for teachers and librarians. She promotes her own work but also offers articles of more general interest.

I have a website and a blog (as you know!). The website is mostly for people who are interested in my books. The blog, obviously, is about writing, and it offers value even if you never read a word inside one of my books. But I do often mention a title or two to illustrate a point and to remind you that I’ve written this book or that one. I don’t do it so frequently that the blog is all about me, but the self-promotion is there, subtly. And of course I want to encourage you to come to appearances, where it will be hard to resist buying a book.

However, the results of promotion are hard to measure unless you score a huge coup, like an interview that is sure to result in thousands of sales. I have no idea how many books have been bought as a result of this blog, but I like writing my posts, so I continue to do it. It’s not worthwhile to promote in a way that makes you unhappy.

I don’t tweet, and I keep meaning to set up a fan Facebook page, but I haven’t gotten around to it, so I could do more. Everyone can do more. We have to choose between promotion and writing or hiking or talking to friends or flossing our teeth.

Off the internet, you can have postcards made and send them to everyone you know and leave them at local libraries and stores, especially bookstores. Your editor will almost certainly give you a PDF of the book cover to use. Heck, the publisher may even go halvsies with you on the cost or may pay for the whole thing. I always do a postcard mailing for my books. If nothing else, the postcards keep me in touch with cousins and friends I rarely see.

Friends can host book parties for you, although I’ve heard that doesn’t do much for sales. Still, a book is an achievement worth celebrating. You can write a press release and send it to local newspapers. If an editor wants to interview you, that will be one-on-one, most likely by phone, and your shyness may not be activated.

You can arrange a signing at a local bookstore and pressure your friends and family to come to hear you talk about your book. You may not sell many, but your supportive audience will give you experience in discussing your work.

Kids’ book writers can visit schools, which I’ve talked about before on the blog. School visits are a direct source of income as well as promotion, because we get honoraria for our visits. Some people who are shy with adults are comfortable with people half their size.

If you’re willing to give speeches or run workshops and if you have a particular expertise that relates to your writing, which might be in writing gothic mysteries for teens, for example, you can develop presentations for conferences and apply to showcase them. Often you’ll get an honorarium for this too.

I like to speak publicly, but it wasn’t always so. I got nervous. I feared that my nervousness showed, and my audience was suffering for me, miserable in the face of my misery. This was years before I started writing. Luckily, management at my job at the time brought in a public speaking consultant to work with me and a bunch of other newbies. He videotaped us (or whatever the technology was at the time) so we could see how we did. My big discovery was that I didn’t look afraid. No one but me knew how scared I was, which put me at ease. Now I regard nervousness as a boon for my energy level, and I never begin a speech as some do by confessing my fear.

If you can get training in public speaking, I suggest you go for it. It’s comforting to know you can handle yourself in from of a crowd. After all, if success does come your way, you may need to make acceptance speeches.

I remember a lot of the public speaking advice the consultant gave us, which I’m happy to share. He was opposed to written speeches and even speeches from notes. He said if you don’t know your topic well enough to talk from memory, you shouldn’t give a speech about it. I’ve taken some of that advice. I use notes to make sure I get to everything, but never a written speech. However, I do practice my speeches in the privacy of my office until I have what I want to say down solid, even to the cadence of my clauses, the expressions I’ll use, a particular wording. Then, except for an occasional glance at my notes, I’m looking at my audience the whole time.

The consultant was against podiums too. He wanted to be able to walk in the aisles and lock eyes with anyone on the verge of falling asleep. An assertive fellow, he refused ever to speak after his audience had had a meal, when they’d be drowsy. I don’t love podiums either, but I speak from behind them when I have to, and I certainly speak after a meal. And I have observed people fall asleep, which throws me off my game a little, but I soldier on.

I don’t remember if these are his techniques or if I’ve come upon them myself: I never use a power-point presentation, although I do project images on a screen when I need them. Power point, in my opinion, like a written speech, lacks spontaneity. If the room isn’t full, I urge my audience to move up to the front rows. I ask for the lighting to be as bright as it can be and still have people able to see the images on the screen. The most distressing speech (distressing for me) I’ve ever given was in a darkened auditorium with lights only on me. Afterwards, I was told it went well, but I couldn’t judge audience reaction and I felt boring and foolish. I know I would have been better if I could have seen a few people nodding or smiling.

The point of the consultant’s advice and my own strategies is to shrink the distance between audience and speaker. It’s that distance that causes the horror, but when you close it, the experience becomes more intimate even when hundreds of people are listening. Intimate is familiar. We often do intimate.

Here are three prompts:

∙    If you belong to a writing group, my guess is that sometimes talk wanders to publishing and even self-promotion. Take turns with group members in giving a chat about your story. Listen to the others. What worked? What didn’t? What can you incorporate into your own presentation?

∙    Write a variant of (part of) Cyrano de Bergerac. Your main character, Bethany, has published her first book. The publisher has set up a local signing, but she’s terrified. So she enlists a friend, Wanda, to speak for her. Wanda, however, isn’t much of a reader. She’s told Bethany that she read her book and loved it, but in truth she got only as far as the first chapter. Write the scene.

∙    Every year the empress of the Ocean Islands judges a poetry competition among her islands. The winning island hosts the empress until the next contest, and her presence brings the people of that island both esteem and wealth. On Parrot Island the judges have chosen Alti’s poem as the one to represent them this year. Alti will have to read the poem to the empress, and his delivery will be part of her evaluation. Trouble is, he suffers from awful stage fright. His teacher, Yora, has been charged with helping him prepare, but she preferred a different poem by another student, and she’s decided to sabotage Alti rather than help him. Write what happens.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Mysterious

First off, for those of you who may live a little north of New York City, I’ll be signing books at a children’s book festival a week from Sunday, on September 25th, in Tarrytown. I’ll just be signing, not speaking, but I’ll be there for two-and-a-half hours, and unless a miracle happens, I’ll have time to chat. This is a wonderful event, with many terrific kids’ book writers. Details are on the website. Hope some of you can come!

On June 16, 2011  AngieBelle wrote, …I have read many mysteries and am always fascinated by how the author ties everything together- even in seemingly simple children’s mysteries, which are usually what I’m reading. How does one come up with all the details that lead to solving the mystery?

I’ve written two other posts about writing mysteries, one on May 27th, 2009, and one on January 6th, 2010, which you may want to look at too. These are additional thoughts. I said in the earlier posts that I’m a newbie mystery writer, and I still am. In fact, I would welcome tips from other mystery writers who read the blog.

In my first mystery, A Tale of Two Castles, I didn’t know who the villain was until I’d written two-thirds of the book, and this worried me, as you can imagine. But then this character did something revealing, and I knew. The advantage of this is that the bad guy’s identity may come as more of a surprise to the reader if it was also a surprise to the writer. I’m not saying that careful plotters and outliners can’t create mysteries that feel unpredictable, only that this is the approach that worked for me, on a single book.

I’m trying it again in the new book, Beloved Elodie (tentative title). I’m making several characters potential villains, and I’ve invented back stories for each that could give them a motive for the crime, the theft of a flask, which, if not recovered,  will cause hundreds of lives to be lost.

These back stories can supply the details that pile up in a reader’s mind. In A Tale of Two Castles again, two of my characters were spies, which I didn’t reveal until near the end of the book. Their undercover activity caused them to act suspiciously. I knew why but the reader didn’t, and I could sort the details out because of my secret knowledge.

The back story technique goes something like this: Madame Peppercorn is knifed to death at midnight. Mr. Marjoram is found with a knife. Congresswoman Thyme was seen loitering near the scene of the crime. Professor Basil was overheard arguing with Madame Peppercorn the day before the murder. Madame Peppercorn’s daughter, Miss Allspice, has been corresponding with a lawyer about declaring her mother incompetent. Doctor Nutmeg was prescribing sedatives to Madame Peppercorn for her anxiety. Detective Tarragon finds clues galore, details galore. The reader goes to sleep at night counting spices.

But the author knows the following: Mr. Marjoram had the knife to protect himself from a colleague who threatened him; Congresswoman Thyme lost her engagement ring somewhere near Madame Peppercorn’s estate; Madame Peppercorn demanded an acknowledgment from Professor Basil in his forthcoming book about rich old ladies; Miss Allspice is worried about her mother’s recent memory lapses; Doctor Nutmeg murdered Madame Peppercorn because she threatened him with a malpractice suit, which he knows would cost him his license. He visited her, ostensibly to explain his prescriptions, knocked her out with something that leaves the digestive system quickly (Is there such a thing?), and stabbed her to death.

The author can keep it all straight because he knows who’s doing what for which reasons.

I’m not as organized as the above herbal mystery suggests. I toss in clues and details willy-nilly, hoping they’ll come in handy later, but I do make up the back stories – usually. In A Tale of Two Castles I had a mild-mannered character speak harshly at one point. I didn’t really have a reason, simply that it was late at night and he was alone. My editor asked me to tie up that loose thread and fondly told me she was sure I knew the character’s motivation. I didn’t, but at that point the book was written. All the elements were in place, and I found the character’s reason, and it fit.

It fit because writing is magical or the human mind is magical, which I’ve said before on the blog. We plunk in details to enrich our stories, to flesh out our characters, hoping the details will come do double duty and be useful for the plot, but when we write them in we have no idea how that will happen. We keep writing and find, often enough to be remarkable, that this little thing, for example a character’s fascination with a certain painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, turns out to be the key to the entire story.

Some of what I throw in turns out not to belong, and I waste time on plot points that don’t take me the right way, but these come out in revision, and some points were interesting to explore even if ultimately not right. Writing isn’t efficient, at least not when I do it.

A few months ago I bought a book on writing mysteries, then read only part of it because most of the advice offered didn’t apply to fantasy. But I do remember one rule: neither too many suspects or too few. The author suggested at least three and no more than six, a good rule, I think.

In A Tale of Two Castles, suspects abounded because my victim was despised and feared by many. I narrowed the field simply by authorial spotlight. The people I shined my beam on were implicated; the hundreds of others never entered the picture. The mayor, for example, was present when the crime was committed, but I paid no attention to him, so he didn’t become a suspect.

Is this fair? I’m not sure, but without this technique many stories couldn’t be told.

The crime in Beloved Elodie takes place in an isolated spot, so the number of suspects is limited. Still, a few more characters are present than I can use, so these extras’ time on the story stage will be short.

As readers, we anticipate future events, even in a non-mystery. The writer gives us clues that the story characters can’t pick up on. Watch out! we want to scream to the main. This friend is treacherous!

Mystery readers tend to be extra vigilant about clues. I don’t read mysteries with a pencil and paper, taking notes, trying to figure everything out logically, but I do keep an eye out for the likely villain. This habit as a reader is worrying me as a writer. If, for example,  I make Ms. Clove an unpleasant character, the reader may think, It will be too obvious if Ms. Clove does it. She can’t be the thief. Then if I make Mr. Turmeric nice, the reader may think, He’s too sweet to endanger all these people; he can’t be the one. But maybe the author will think I won’t suspect Mr. Turmeric, and he really did do it.

If it turns out that Mr. Turmeric is the villain, the reader will think that’s predictable and be disappointed. If Ms. Clove did it, the ending may feel too easy. The solution has to be layered, surprising characters. I’m working on that, but the predictability factor is on my mind.

Here are three prompts:

•    In the mystery of Madame Peppercorn’s murder, write interviews between Detective Tarragon and the suspects. Have the detective discover the meaning behind some of the statements and misunderstand others. (You can pick a different villain if you like.)

•    In 1967 silk magnate Jim Thompson disappeared while visiting a friend in Malaysia and was never seen again. Here’s a link to Jim Thompson on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thompson_%28designer%29. The entry goes into the disappearance in some detail, and you need to read that part in order to do the prompt. Your challenge is to solve the disappearance. If you like, you can turn the circumstances into fantasy.

•    Now for a children’s mystery. You may know the nursery game, “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?” It’s just an accusation and denial. Turn it into a story and solve the mystery. The trouble, of course, is that the most important evidence gets eaten.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Start-stop, start-stop

On June 10, 2011, Limegreen wrote, I find that most of the stories I don’t finish are because I just start writing. I jot down some random beginning to a story and get a random idea for the story. However, when I do that, I have no idea where the story is going and the plot putters out after a few pages or so. But I also can’t seem to find a good way to outline my stories. I either over plot it and have no fun with the story, or I under-plot and my story putters out too. Any advice on how to fix that?

I’m not an outliner either, as I’ve said many times on the blog. Sometimes I attempt outlining, but when I start to write, I realize problems that didn’t occur to me earlier, and the outline doesn’t accommodate them. I suspect serious outliners spend as much time, or almost as much, outlining as actually writing. They anticipate the issues and also manage not to over-plot. Wish I knew how to do it.

Even without outlining, however, you might restrain yourself from starting your story until your idea gels a little. Write notes instead of actual story. Write what ideas interest you in the beginning you have in mind. Consider where you might go with them, loosely, and put your thoughts on paper. Think (in writing) about a few characters who might fit. I also like to think of real people I know whose personalities fascinate me. Can you put any of your fascinating people in, in a fictionalized fashion?

Then ruminate over how the story might end. Write a few alternate endings. You can commit to one if it strikes you as perfect or you can leave them all hanging out there as possibilities. As you write, keep them in mind. One may become more probable as you move along.

I hope you’ve been saving your petered-out beginnings. Go through them and pick one. Tentatively decide that you just didn’t stick with it long enough. Stare at it. See if you can coax a new paragraph out of the void and then another. What do you make of your main character? Ask yourself questions about him. Who are his friends? His family? What’s easy for him? What’s hard? What tempts him into trouble? Can you move the story toward that trouble? Did you start in the right place? Is it possible that your beginning is really the end, and what you have to do is write toward it?

Ask yourself these questions and any others you can dream up. Then go back to your beginning and see if you can make more progress.

Look over your false starts again. Do any belong together? If you combine them, do they move you deeper into your story? If yes, keep going.

You describe your beginnings and ideas as random, but I believe nothing in writing is random. I say in Writing Magic, and I think I’ve said on the blog that writing comes from a very deep place. Even the simplest, lightest stories do. Let’s take “Little Bo Peep” for example. Here we go:

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
and doesn’t know where to find them.
Leave them alone
and they’ll come home,
wagging their tails behind them.

I may not have broken the lines correctly. Sorry. But there’s profundity to spare here. We’ve all felt the desperation of losing something important, could be homework, money, even trust. And we’ve all (I think) had the experience of letting the lost thing go, and the relief of that. Sometimes the loss is never recovered, but sometimes we get whatever it was back, and it seems that the letting go made the return possible. All that out of a nursery rhyme!

Themes repeat, not just story lines. Look at your beginnings once more. Is there something that unites them? If you can’t find a thread, ask your friends or family to read them and suggest a theme. They may see more than one, which is great.

A frequent story thread I see in kids’ stories is a main character being kidnapped. So what might be going on underneath? You may think of more possibilities, but here are two of mine: the victim, Eloise, is wanted, needed, so desired for some quality (her mind, her lovableness, her beautiful voice, her paranormal power) that the kidnappers put themselves at risk to capture her; or Eloise is in danger of being taken over, of losing her will, even her self, to her captors. Or both. So where can the writer take these themes? How can he play them out? Who are her captors? What are their personalities, flaws, virtues?

In both these examples, Bo Peep and the kidnapping, what chokes off the writing may be the underlying depth. It may be scary to explore, in the kidnapping case for instance, what it means for a main character, the one both reader and writer most identify with, to be so valuable. It reminds me of the sequence in the old movie It’s a Wonderful Life when the angel shows George Bailey what his town would have been like without him. I love that part, but it also embarrasses me – kind of like imagining your own funeral and how much everyone loved you.

Now I don’t mean that we’re aware in the slightest of feeling frightened when we write our failed beginnings. The idea simply peters out. But if we look at our themes, bring them out in the open, that lurking uneasiness may melt away. What we have turns into mere story and we see where we can go with it.

Contrariwise, ordinarily I resist examining my underlying motifs because I suspect that their subterranean natures give my stories power. But these cut-off beginnings are a special case and make the exploration worthwhile.

Here are some prompts:

•    If you too have trouble staying with your beginnings, review your false starts. Seek out your themes. Ask friends for help. When you have a few ideas, see where they take you. If a particular thread makes your heart race a little, keep going. If your heart persists in beating according to its ordinary rhythm, keep going anyway.

•    Expand Little Bo Peep’s situation, showing her story rather than telling it. How did she lose the sheep? Where does she search? What will the consequences be if the sheep stay lost? Who will be angry? How will Bo Peep suffer? If you like, turn the nursery rhyme into a novel or a series, The Bo Peep Chronicles.

•    Look up nursery rhymes, like “Little Bo Peep.” Pick one or two or more and speculate about their deeper meanings. Write down what you think.

•    This familiar lullaby is totally crazy (and creepy), in my opinion:
            Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop,
            When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
            When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
            And down will come baby, cradle and all.

      Who put Baby up there? Does somebody want to kill him? Turn this one into a story or a novel. If you want to see my silly interpretation, look for it in my book of mean poems, Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It, coming out next March.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Who’s on first? Who’s on third?

Just to let you all know, I’m copying the latest comments for the blog that came in to the website here rather than with last week’s post so they’re more likely to be read. Reminder, if you can post directly to the blog, please do because it’s easier for me, but if not, I’ll keep copying your comments over.

Now here goes with two questions about point of view (POV). On June 3, 2011, Rina wrote, I have a question regarding first-person narrators. In one story I’m writing, I worry about how I can possibly get my narrator to observe everything important to the plot. She’s not the most useful or important person. Should I use another narrator, change to third person, or just try to have her hanging around whenever something important happens?
  
And on June 10, 2011, ToNature wrote, …I usually write from first person but I decided for a new story I’m working on… that I would try to use third person. My problem is that though I’m writing about a person, my story sounds more like a dry biography than anything. I’ve read excellent books from 3rd person and have found it just as easy to get to know a character as when an author writes from 1st person, but I’m having trouble doing this myself. Do you have any suggestions?

Choice of POV character is one of the most important story decisions we make, and I sometimes take a long time making it. When I wrote Fairest, I couldn’t get the POV right. I wrote about 300 pages from each of two wrong first-person POVs and another 300 from an omniscient third-person narrator before I found my final first-person POV character.

I wouldn’t wish this 900-page misery on anyone, but sometimes we have to fumble around for a while before we get the POV right. In Beloved Elodie, which I’m working on now, although I know that Elodie is my main first-person narrator, I’ve recently decided to add a few more first-person narrators who will chime in now and then. Part of my purpose is to solve exactly the problem Rina mentions. These other narrators will be able to report on events Elodie can’t be present for. However, until I thought of using other narrators, I didn’t plan for there to be important action at a distance from her.

Additional narrators can not only  inform the reader of what takes place elsewhere, they can also provide another perspective. In Ever, the chapters alternate between two main characters. Sometimes they’re separated, but often they’re together, and the reader (and I as I wrote) experiences what happens through two different sets of senses.

I’ve mentioned before that I love Terry Pratchett’s novels. He sometimes tells snippets of his story from his villain’s POV. These are usually teasers and don’t tell much, but the reader gets a glimpse into an evil mind, and the tension is heightened.

So using multiple first-person narrators is one way to present plot moments to your reader when your first-person narrator can’t be there. Writing in omniscient third person is another, of course. You can take a stretch of your story and try one way and then another. You need length for this, say fifty pages (maybe less), so you can narrate a few events and see how the perspectives work for you. Testing may bring clarity.

Rina writes that her POV character isn’t the most important in the story, and this is another decision to consider. A narrator who’s on the periphery can be fine. It works in The Great Gatsby and in the Sherlock Holmes tales, for example. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby doesn’t seem reflective enough to tell his own story, and there is the matter of the ending. In the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories, author Arthur Conan Doyle may have decided that there would have been no suspense if Holmes himself had narrated. Doyle may even have tried to make Holmes the narrator. He may have attempted third-person, too, and may have torn out chunks of his hair deciding. I’m not a Sherlock Holmes or Arthur Conan Doyle scholar. Maybe he knew what he was doing from the start, or maybe he struggled like the rest of us.

If we choose a peripheral character’s point of view, however, there are challenges. This character may not be as emotionally engaged in what’s happening as the major players are, and she may have less at stake in the outcome. Then the reader will have less at stake too, and we may lose him.

It’s likely to be awkward to force our first-person POV character to be on the spot whenever plot developments happen. Luckily there are myriad other ways to keep her informed. If you’re writing a contemporary story, you have snail mail, email, texting, tweeting, cell phones, land-line phones, Facebook and the like, as well as news reports on radio and television. You can even make blogs convey information. If you’re writing a historical novel, you can use period methods: telegrams, messengers, smoke signals, whatever. If your genre is sci-fi or fantasy or the paranormal, the options are legion, and you can invent more. In Ella Enchanted I gave Ella a magic book to clue her in about events she wouldn’t know of otherwise.

A character’s absence can ratchet up the tension. Say for example that Marcus is under house arrest. His cell phone and computer have been confiscated. He found out just before his detention that his friend Michael is a spy. He needs to warn his pal and secret cellmate Millicent, who is to  meet Michael this afternoon – but he can’t. Will she reveal secrets Michael shouldn’t know? Aaa! She’ll endanger everyone and their cause. Marcus worries and the reader worries.

What’s more, in terms of tension, the main character can question the reliability of the intelligence he’s getting. Marcus sends a verbal message to Millicent through his neighbor’s young daughter. The daughter returns with a note from Millicent. Marcus is surprised that Millicent would put anything in writing. He wonders if the daughter actually delivered his message or delivered it to the right person, Millicent.

ToNature, I’m assuming you’ve chosen third person for plot reasons. You might try switching back to first person for the beginning of your story so you can get into your main character’s thoughts and emotions. Then, when you’re comfortable in her skin, translate what you’ve got back into third and keep going. If the writing gets stiff again, revert to first. If you have to, you can write a whole book in this back-and-forth way.

Or, you might pick a different first-person narrator, as I suggested before. Try choosing one who feels strongly about your main, an interesting character in his own right who can bring your story to life with his particular take on your main.

It’s also possible to shift between a first and third-person narrative. For those parts when your main can tell her own tale, let her. But when she can’t, have your third-person narrator step in – or a different first-person character.

Here are three prompts:

∙    Read or reread a Sherlock Holmes story; some are short. Tell it from Sherlock Holmes’s POV. He has a strange mind and is probably not a linear thinker. Reflect his thought process through his voice. What does he think of Dr. Watson?

∙    Continue the story of Marcus, stuck in his house while events swirl around him. Help him find out what’s going on and influence events.

∙    Tell the fairy tale Snow White from several points of view: the evil queen, the hunter, a dwarf, Snow White’s father, her pet gerbil, as reported in the castle gazette. Or pick a different fairy tale and other points of view. As I suggested before, rewrite a swath of one of your stories from several POVs.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Name Dropping

On May 20, 2011, Jill wrote, ….Is it possible to say a name too many times? One of my biggest pet peeves is when writers use the same word too many times, so I am really conscientious about it when I am writing. I was just now writing and realized I was using one of the character’s names a lot to avoid using the pronoun too many times. How can I avoid this?

Then bluekiwii wrote, @ Jill
    I read somewhere that words such as “she”, “he”, or “I” tend to be invisible–which means that when readers read them they don’t tend to notice them. I normally use names when using the pronouns would be too confusing (like when two women are having a conversation). Does this help? It had never occurred to me that saying a name too many times would be annoying to read, but, on reflection, I agree. It will also be a useful device to use on a specific character to make him appear obnoxious.

And Jenna Royal wrote, I definitely have a problem with using he, she and it. I know they become invisible to the reader, but as the writer they really bother me. I find myself inserting the words “the girl” or “the boy” or “the woman” a lot, which I don’t really like either. It’s not the right voice for my stories, and it’s kind of jarring. I guess I will just have to get brave and use the pronouns. 🙂

I googled but couldn’t find anything I could quote about the invisibility of pronouns. I did find a blog post in which the author opined that good writing is invisible, that the reader should be so lost in a story that the words disappear, which I half agree with and half don’t. When the writing is stunning I am sometimes aware of it even if I’m engrossed in the action.

By stunning I don’t mean the author is using exalted language. The words may be everyday, but they’re perfect in the moment. A character says something simple but surprising, exactly what she would say. A detail is revealed in a character’s bedroom, and it’s the right detail. There are many, but a few young adult and children’s book writers who jump to mind for great writing are Sharon Creech, Laurie Halse Anderson, Kimberly Willis Holt, and of course my friend Joan Abelove.

If I reread a book, when I’m no longer so worried about what’s going to happen next, then I’m likely to notice the writing.

I also notice when the writing is annoying, and annoying sometimes means confusing, which can happen in a scene when I don’t know which character a pronoun represents.

Referring to characters often feels awkward to me, too. When I have a character who has a title and a name, I vary their use, referring to him sometimes by name, sometimes by title, and, when it’s clear, by pronoun. In A Tale of Two Castles the ogre’s name is Count Jonty Um. I refer to him by turns as he, the count, His Lordship, and, at the beginning of the novel when I want to establish firmly what he is in the reader’s mind, the ogre. Often doing this feels mechanical, and I don’t know whether or not it reads smoothly. But I don’t like the alternative of sticking to just the name and pronoun. I guess I agree that a name can be overused.

And, as I think about it, I do believe the pronoun disappears, which may make it the best choice as long as you’re sure the reader will understand who is meant and isn’t going to forget the character’s name.

The charm of writing scenes with the dragon Meenore is that IT keeps ITs gender secret, so it’s an IT. Ordinarily in scenes involving three characters there have to be two of one sex, but if Meenore is among them and there’s a male and a female, no problem! I capitalize IT because, while there’s no danger of mixing IT up with another character, a small i t IT can be confused with a chair or a rock!

First person has a similar effect. The narrator is I, and so you can include a male and female character in a scene without activating the pronoun problem. With Elodie as I and Masteress Meenore as IT, I can crowd in two more characters and be home free.

Of course, we don’t structure our scenes around pronouns. When a scene calls for two or more same-sex characters, we write it with clarity and name repetition as needed. Story needs trump pronoun considerations.

I question using “the woman,” “the man,” which Jenna Royal wondered about. I think those expressions may distance the reader from the story. Naturally you can do it if distancing is the effect you’re going for, which is valid. But if you’re not, and you want the reader fully engaged, I say repetition of name or pronoun is the lesser evil.

What I really dislike, especially in a story for kids, is when a writer alternates the name and the pronoun with “the little girl” or “the little boy.” The reader, presumably, is a little boy or girl, and the description seems condescending as well as distancing. In my opinion, the writer of a children’s book should be inhabiting a child’s point of view and those terms make me doubt that’s happening.

Pity the poor Finns, who have no masculine or feminine pronouns! Everyone is it. I spoke to a person at a Finnish publisher who told me that translators from other languages do resort to “the man” or “the woman” for clarity. And I don’t know what happens in languages where objects have gender. La plume (the pen) is female in French, and the pronoun is elle, same as for a woman. Oy!

In dialogue, it’s nice when you can eliminate the need for names or pronouns entirely here and there. I discuss this a little on the blog and even more in Writing Magic. If the reader knows who’s speaking, no identification is needed. In A Tale of Two Castles, for example, the princess says La! a lot, and she’s the only one who does it. Another character characteristically says By thunder, and he’s the only one who does it. When the reader sees La! he knows the speaker is Princess Renn, and when he sees By thunder, he knows it’s the cook, Jak. In the Disney Fairies books the character Rani finishes people’s sentences for them. When the reader sees this, he knows the speaker is Rani. Of course, you can overdo this. If Jak said By thunder every time he spoke, the reader soon would wish lightning would strike him.

Melissa asked what I’ve been doing at my summer workshop, and I’ll answer in a future post, but the first of these prompts was adapted from prompts I gave the kids. Write your stories or scenes in third person and go on at least long enough to have to make decisions about repeating names and using pronouns. (Naturally, if you like, finish the story or the novel or the series.)

•    Carl, who doesn’t like to share, possesses something that’s very precious to him, something that can have magical properties – or not. You decide. His three friends, Tomasina, Max, and Wendy, want it. The four are at a local park. Write what happens, including action and dialogue.

•    Beauty is visiting home from her Beast’s castle. As in the fairytale, her older sisters are jealous and want to keep her from returning. The three are in their father’s modest parlor. Write what happens.

•    Three characters are around a campfire, conspiring to overthrow their king. The discussion isn’t going well, and one threatens to leave their group. They also hear noises in the woods. Write what happens.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Disappearing secondaries

On May 13, 2011, bluekiwii wrote, ….I often have the problem that I concentrate solely on one character as I do a scene and the result is that I often neglect the other characters in the scene –making his/her speech patterns, overall behavior, and, well, “character” inconsistent. This often happens because I’m so in tune with the main character’s mind-set, that I sort of forget the mind processes that the characters reacting to the MC have. How do guys avoid this?

In A Tale of Two Castles, the ogre Count Jonty Um is usually with his dog Nesspa, who’s important to the story, but, since this isn’t a talking-animal tale, he doesn’t speak. As I wrote I tended to forget the dog was there, and the reader would forget, too. Then, when he comes into the action, the reader has to leave the story for a moment to think, Nesspa? Then the reader may page back to make sure Nesspa was in the scene to begin with. By that time the reader is feeling sleepy or hungry or checking to see what her own dog is doing, and the book is closed to be picked up later or never again.

The solution was to cause a refrain to go through my head as I wrote and as I revised. Where’s Nesspa? When did I mention him last? Put him in. Put him in. Put him in.

Since he doesn’t talk, I needed other ways to bring him forward. Count Jonty Um, who loves him, could look around for him. Elodie, my POV character, could think about him or make sure he isn’t putting his nose where his nose shouldn’t be. Somebody could give him a command or say something else to him. Or he could bark, snuffle, whine, put his head in somebody’s lap. When you write this kind of situation, your mentions can and probably should be short, but a page shouldn’t go by without one.

In Beloved Elodie which I’m working on now, Count Jonty Um himself is the problem. In A Tale of Two Castles, he’s central to the action so he never fades into the background. But in the new book he’s not the focus and he does tend to disappear, for all he’s eleven feet tall. Trouble is, he’s shy and not talkative; he can speak, but he rarely does. I have to treat him almost as if he’s a dog, give him actions, have Elodie think about him, have a character speak to him or ask him a question, forcing him to speak.

I’ve decided to intersperse chapters here and there from other characters’ POV, including Count Jonty Um’s. One reason for doing this is to bring the ogre more to the fore. If I’m writing from his POV the reader hears his thoughts.

If you neglect characters in a scene, you keep happy accidents from happening. Let’s say the star of a scene is Harlin, who, along with his friends, Jana and Sylvie, is in the wizard Florian’s stronghold and meeting the wizard for the first time. Florian has been causing havoc in the friends’ home town: tornados, spontaneous fires, rampaging bears on Main Street. The friends have designated Harlin as their spokesman. The temptation will be to focus on Harlin and the wizard, but if we do, we may not give Jana a chance to surreptitiously lift the edge of a wall hanging and see a secret door behind it. We may not be aware that Sylvie thinks Harlin is bungling things, and she’s getting angrier and angrier until she has to burst into speech. Maybe she provokes Florian into revealing something he doesn’t want to tell.

Part of the solution to bringing your secondaries in is mechanical, merely a matter of reminding yourself until it’s automatic that there are four people in the scene, and all of them have thoughts, feelings, actions. Although you don’t have direct access to your non-POV characters’ thoughts and feelings, your main can guess at them or they can express them in dialogue and action. So, get a reminder refrain going as I do, both while you write and as you revise.What’s doing with my secondaries? What are they doing, thinking, feeling, saying?

The rest of the solution is to ask yourself questions about your subordinate characters, to get interested in them in this scene in which they aren’t the most important actors. How does Jana react when Florian pulls out his wand? Why is Sylvie crossing her arms? What got Florian muttering in a language nobody else understands?

You might try recasting your scene, just in your notes, not in the ongoing story. In my example, I’d make Jana the main for the purposes of the exercise. She might be the one to speak to Florian, or, Harlin may still be the speaker, but the scene is told by Jana, focusing on what she notices and thinks and feels. Then you can write it again from Sylvie’s POV and Florian’s. When you have all four versions, you can roll them together, probably omitting a lot from Jana, Sylvie, and Florian, but still coming up with a more rounded whole.

And, as always, it can be helpful to have someone read your scene and say if your secondary characters seem to disappear and where that happens. This someone may also see opportunities to show them off.

Alas, I have the opposite problem, a tendency to let my secondaries steal the show. In Fairest, for example, I became fascinated by Queen Ivi and Skulni, the being in the mirror. I wrote scenes for them that had no place in the story, and when they were in scenes with my main, Aza, I gave them too much attention. The manuscript called forth an eighteen page, single-spaced letter from my editor, much of which was about the pages and entire chapters I should cut – sections I had spent months writing.

The downside, of course, is the wasted time and energy. The upside is that I got to know these intriguing characters, and they live for me outside the book that got published. (Too bad for the reader!) Often my side characters are even more interesting than my main, who has to be sympathetic and normal enough for the reader to identify with. There’s no restriction on secondary characters; they can be wild, eccentric, downright peculiar. If you let them breathe and expand in the scenes they’re in, they may dazzle you with their exotic natures.

Here are a few prompts:

•    Write four versions of the scene with Harlin, Jana, Sylvie, and wizard Florian, one from the POV of each. Then write a composite scene in third-person omniscient. Decide which you like best. Rewrite your pick so that your main is dominant but the others also shine.

•    Write the story “Snow-White and Rose-Red” from the point of view of the bear. Then write it from the point of view of the dwarf. (If you don’t know this fairy tale, I found a synopsis on Wikipedia.)

•    Write the scene in Pride and Prejudice in which Elizabeth first meets Wickham from Wickham’s POV. And/or write the dance scene in which Elizabeth first meets Darcy from the POV of Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte. And/or pick a scene in a different book you know well and write it from the POV of any side character.

Have fun, and save what you write!

New characters with history

On May 6, 2011, Monica Mari wrote, ….I spend pages introducing characters, and am trying to figure out a way around it. And I have a few events that take place before some of my characters are introduced, and so it seems to come out of nowhere. Would you have any advice?

I asked for clarification, and Monica Mari answered, ….I end up introducing semi-main characters halfway through my stories, and they end up playing large roles later on, but for things to go as planned, they must be introduced after events that occur beforehand. Friends and family have told me that they are a bit confused with the suddenly introduced characters, as they appear out of nowhere as they were not introduced beforehand, and then they became important to large points in the plot.

This sounds like two questions, one about introducing characters and the second about plot. My post of 6/29/11 relates to the first, so you may want to revisit it. I’ll add only a few new thoughts:

When we meet people in real life we don’t get the benefit of introductory material, which might come in handy. A friend, let’s call her Justine, just today told me how a friend of hers, let’s call her Irma, made it hard for Justine to get necessary dental work. Justine couldn’t understand why Irma was being unhelpful (Justine needed help) until Irma confessed a childhood dental trauma. Ah. But if they hadn’t been friends the confession might never have been made and Irma’s actions would have remained a mystery.

In fiction we usually do include the confession because we want our characters’ behavior to be believable. But generally we don’t jump in with the secret information instantly. We wait and let the characters reveal themselves just as people do, through action, dialogue, maybe appearance, and, in the case of main characters, thoughts. Lengthy introductions hold up the story.

If your characters need lengthy introductions – I’m just guessing – your plot may be over-complicated or there may be a lot of back story that you’re trying to bring in. If the back story is the problem, you may want to start your story at an earlier time and let the back story be part of the actual tale.

I tend to over-complicate. My too energetic imagination waves new ideas in front of my mind’s eye, and I start weaving them in. Often they work, but sometimes they don’t. I told one of my versions of Beloved Elodie to my husband, and his eyes rolled back in his head. I wound up starting over.

Not that you have to go back to the beginning. But you may want to think about what’s important to your story and how you can streamline. It should be possible to summarize your plot briefly. Let’s try this on a few classics. Hamlet: A just, ethical, and feeling prince suspects his mother and uncle of murdering his father and can’t decide how to act. Pride and Prejudice: A single young woman of sense and decided opinions is wooed by a wealthy young man with sense and deep feelings but an exaggerated idea of his importance. Jane Eyre: An unloved child grows into a young woman with the inner resources to fall in love and yet resist the man she adores.

You may quarrel with my thumbnail sketches and make up your own, but I’d guess yours will be short too, although each of these works is rich with detail and wide in scope. Pride and Prejudice, for example, tells us about marriage and the relation between the sexes in the first half of the nineteenth century, and it’s a great story as well.

I suspect this over-complication causes the confusion when you introduce important characters well into a story. Let’s suppose there’s a plot against King Philip the Great, who is despotic and erratic. Five conspirators, important characters in this story, meet weekly to conspire. The reader has met them all. However, there’s Sorceress Moira who cast a spell on the king fifteen years ago to make him a tyrant. The conspirators don’t know about her, but she has to come into the story later on.

That seems hard to me. I’d want to start with the sorceress, maybe show her in a prologue (although child readers often skip prologues) or introduce a legend about her to lay the groundwork. for her appearance. The characters who don’t know about her can continue not to know, but the reader has been warned. If the reader knows and the main characters don’t, you’ve got delightful tension going, and when she finally shows up, the reader won’t be confused.

Monica Mari, I’m hoping this post got at your question. If not, please ask follow-up questions.

Here are three back story prompts:

•    Let’s take the tyrannical king situation. Not only is there a sorceress lurking, one of the conspirators, Alphonso, is concealing from the others that he was once imprisoned in the king’s dungeons and would do anything to avoid another imprisonment. Another, Gretchen, hasn’t told anyone that she and the king’s nephew are in love. Write a meeting of the plotters in which the back stories of the two are revealed to the reader but not to the other members of the cabal. Write a scene in which Gretchen confesses her secret to Alphonso. How does he use this information? Write the scene that follows.

•    Romance is a great place for secret back stories. Danny is drawn to Lana, a singer, although Danny’s mother, also a singer, deserted the family when he was six. Lena writes her own songs, which she bases on her romantic experiences. Danny may be material for her next CD. He’s heard her sing about her last boyfriend but not about the one before that and the one before that. Their first date went marvelously well. Write their second date.

•    Back stories can get very psychological. This is a memory prompt. I thought I’d written about my own example here on the blog, but I can’t find it on a search. The incident appears in an anthology called Thanks and Giving edited by Marlo Thomas, and here’s a quick summary: I was sick on my third or fourth birthday, nothing serious but I was running a high fever. My grandfather, out of pity, bought me an expensive, beautiful, not at all cuddly, hard bisque doll, very old-fashioned. My parents gave it to me along with a hundred warnings about how I’d better take wonderful care of it or I’d be a very bad girl, which caused me to instantly hate it. When I got well I destroyed it, which I felt guilty about but justified with the belief that a gift was a gift and they should have given the doll to me  without all the restrictions and then I might have treated it more respectfully. I didn’t understand what was behind my parents’ warnings until many many years later when I began to write for children and was casting about for topics. I remembered this birthday, and understanding came. My grandfather was very poor and buying this doll must have forced him to scrimp in other ways. My mother would have been touched and would have wanted me to treat his gift with reverence that equaled his generosity. My father, the orphan, probably never had a toy of his own. He would have been bowled over by the magnificence of this treasure, and he would have wanted me to appreciate my good fortune. The back story became clear decades after the event. So the prompt is to think of an incident in your own life when people acted incomprehensibly based on factors you had no knowledge of, which you still may not understand. Write it down and then fictionalize it a little or a lot. If you still don’t know the back story, invent one. Write a scene or a story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Short and Young

On May 6, 2011, welliewalks wrote, How do you go about writing short stories or children’s books (children as in ages 7-9)? I like writing loooong stories and novellas because I can take a while to develop (and “solve” it) the plot and add more details. I feel like short stories can’t have a complicated plot because it would take longer to write them. Does anyone have advice on writing short stories and kid’s books?

And Emma wrote, I’m writing what I thought was a children’s book, and I’m realizing it may not be for the age I expected. It involves things like court trials, attacks from other nations, espionage, etc., granted the good guys always win. How much is too much for little kids? How much can the different age groups handle?

And more from Emma (or from a different Emma) two months later: I got a book about publishing with 30 pages of writing contests for amateur novelists, and it’s great, except for one thing; almost all of them must be short stories, and all of them have word limits, but I’m a very long-winded writer. How do you deal with word limits, and what details should you cut?
In answer to Emma’s second question, Charlotte wrote, I thought I’d weigh in on the word limits thing because I have had some experience in this. I’ve done several 500-word stories for the sake of writing contests, and I also had word limits on a lot of the scholarship essays I did the year I graduated high school. The thing about working with a limit is that every word and every sentence counts a lot more than in a longer piece. You’re free to get picky with your adjectives, because you want to get ones that give you a strong sense of the setting in place of a long description. I find that my words are a lot more vivid in my short stuff, probably because with something that small, you can easily go over it about 300 times before submitting it, combing out the unnecessary words, changing adjectives around and changing them back, etc., etc. Always keep in mind exactly how many words you’re at and how many you have left–Microsoft Word will tell you, and if you print your story off (I do a lot of my best editing manually), write the number at the top and keep track of what you take off and what you add on. Knowing what your budget is can help you decide what you can keep and what needs to go.

Along that same line, the plot itself obviously can’t be that long in a short story. Judging by a lot of the short stories I’ve read in school, etc., this is more of a genre that focuses on one event or emotion or aspect of life, rather than being a series of events like a novel is. There are a million and one different ways of writing a short story where all the action consists of the protagonist making herself a cup of coffee, or walking around her house, etc. It’s what’s going through her mind that makes it great. What I guess I’m trying to say is that short stories are more mood-driven than plot-driven–that’s why it’s a different genre–so the details that don’t contribute well to the mood and theme of the story are the ones to drop.

Excellent advice!

If you like inventing many scenes and building a story slowly, the short story may not be for you, but it’s worthwhile to try something new. As for detail, although you have fewer scenes, you still want richness so the reader can enter them fully, and you still want to portray rounded characters. You’ll need setting, but maybe not more than one or two, and dialogue, and thoughts, and action, all the facets of longer fiction. You can be long-winded in a short-winded way.

Along the same lines as Charlotte’s comment, trimming excess words, sentences, paragraphs, pages tightens the work. When I revise even a novel, I delete. And when I return to one of my books for one reason or another after it’s been published, I always find more I wish I had cut. When I go over the blog post before moving ahead with it, I use my knife. If writing short stories makes you a more concise writer of long stories, that’s a big benefit.

Although I don’t read many short stories, I’ve had a few published in anthologies for children anyway. In spite of my bad example, I’d suggest you read short stories, a bunch of them, to get a feel for their scope and economy. If you have a word limit, like 500 words, which is very short, I’d read a collection or two of short short stories (which there are). By reading you gain an intuitive sense of the genre, which will come through when you start writing.

My stories have ranged from ten to twenty-five pages, which is much more than 500 words. However, I’ve written narrative poems in fewer words, and in them, as in the short story, compression is key. One poem (not written for children) is about a modern-day Cassandra attempting and failing to warn a class of fourth graders about the troubles that lie ahead for each of them. The reader sees them listen and believe and then forget the moment they leave Cassandra’s tent at the state fair. That’s it, but the reader knows that each child will suffer as Cassandra said and that Cassandra suffers already from knowing she couldn’t help. The poem is 300 words long, and a short story could do the same thing, and so could a 600-page novel. In the novel we would see the dismal future played out for each child, but that isn’t necessary to convey the meaning.

My poem centers on an idea, but it could focus on a character, which many short stories do. There will be fewer characters in a short story than a novel, but they should still be well developed.

An important aspect of many novels (discussed in a long-ago blog) is character change or failure to change, a feature shared by many short stories. In the poem I described, the characters fail to change, which makes it sad. My novels focus outward on the world, usually a fantasy world. My short stories have a narrow field of vision, family or a few friends. In one, for example, the main character comes to understand and accept that her parents are more involved with her sister, who constantly creates problems. All that happens is that the main gets the lead in the class play and the sister threatens to change religions. In a single scene the reader sees the family in action.

An analogy might be an oven (the novel) versus a pressure cooker (the short story). In the oven the ingredients cook gradually while in the pressure cooker the boiling point is unnaturally high and comes fast. Another analogy might be a house versus a tree. In a house, many posts support the weight of the roof; with a tree, a single trunk holds up the canopy of leaves. In the novel, many incidents build to the climax; in the short story very few, and each one must bear a lot of weight.

On to writing for children. A reference book you may want to read is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Children’s Books by Harold Underdown, which, alas, didn’t exist when I got started. The book I read and went back to again and again is How to Write a Children’s Book and Get It Published by Barbara Seuling. Both are excellent.

I also read tons of kids’ books, including  the books in the Newbery bookcase at my library and the new novels that were generating a lot of buzz. Later, when my editor asked me to write The Princess Tales as chapter books she sent me sample chapter books to read and study. (My favorite was Is He a Girl? in the Marvin Redpost series by Louis Sachar of Holes fame.) If you want to write for seven-to-nine year olds, read the books they’re reading, which covers a lot of ground. Some seven-year-olds read Ella Enchanted and Harry Potter. Some nine-year-olds read Junie B. Jones.

My education as a children’s book writer also included taking classes, joining critique groups, attending conferences, and joining the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. It was a process that took nine years to earn me my first book acceptance.

Some people – no one reading this blog, I’m sure – think writing for kids is easy. These people, I believe, have forgotten what it was like to be a child, how complicated it was, maybe more complicated than being an adult. Kids have to negotiate at least two universes, the world of adults and the world of their peers and possibly a third, the world of school, and all the while learning at an incredible pace, learning not only school subjects but the everyday science of being human.

Because of this complexity, children can handle the kinds of topics Emma asks about, such as “court trials, attacks from other nations, espionage, etc.” In fact, many kids are drawn to high drama and like to watch stories played out on a grand stage. I think that’s why children enjoy fairy tales and fantasy, because the events are huge, involving royalty and kingdoms, love, jealousy, rage, death.

The biggest difference between children’s and adult literature is the age of the main character. In a kids’ book the main will be a child, usually a little older than the reader. Occasionally the main will be an animal. Of course the reason is that the child can more easily identify with a child than with an adult.

I don’t mean to minimize the differences between books for children and books for grownups. I’m teaching my summer workshop for kids now, and each week I’ve been reading a poem aloud to them. It’s been a challenge to find the right poem, not because of subject matter but because of tone and sophistication and sometimes language. If I say that children can’t handle sophistication, it wouldn’t be entirely true, but we have to develop an ear for what succeeds and what doesn’t, which we do by reading and by writing and trying what we’ve written out on writing buddies and friends. Not necessarily by trying our stuff out on kids, who may be too polite, who may not know what standards to apply, who may be too forgiving.

And there are differences between writing for teens and writing for younger children. You can go darker with teens and more psychological. I’m distinguishing between dark and sad. Sad works with the elementary school crowd, dark not so much. Young kids understand the death of Bambi’s mother in Bambi, while the meaning of Hamlet’s indecisiveness and eventual death might elude them.

As for psychological, I once asked my workshop students to write a self-portrait, not only of their looks but also of their inner qualities. Those over eleven loved the assignment; those under couldn’t do it, and I had them write a portrait of a best friend instead, and that they enjoyed. Older kids like to look within. Younger children focus out.

Sometimes the author herself doesn’t know who her proper audience is. When my friend Suzanne Fisher Staples wrote her first novel, the wonderful Shabanu, she thought she was writing for adults until her editor told her she wasn’t, and the book went on to win a Newbery honor in 1989. Suzanne isn’t the only writer to whom this has happened. I’ve heard similar stories, and the people at HarperCollins thinks my book of mean poems, Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It (out next March), may appeal to adults as well as to children, but I thought I was writing it strictly for kids. So we can be surprised.

These are the prompts I was given (and remember) for the short stories I’ve written. See what you do with them:

•    A character on the edge (not specified what kind of edge).

•    A brush with religion.

•    A mystery or mysterious story.

•    A wish.

•    A grandmother story.

I was also asked to write a story about menstruation. I came up empty on that one, but you may have more success.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Appearances

A few comments came in late on the last post, so you may want to check them out before or after you read this.

On April 29, 2011, Jill wrote, Shakespeare would spell words differently or make up words to make his sentences sound “pretty” and Daphne du Maurier never said the name of the narrator in Rebecca.
    I have a story and I never want to describe her appearance because I want anyone to see themselves as her. With this and the other examples, do you like it or not? Who else did things like this?

I don’t know examples of works in which the main character isn’t described although there may be many. In some genres – romance, for example – physical description is pretty much required. Mystery as well, I think.

As a reader, I’m not sure. I’m reading a novel now, The Good Son by Craig Nova (high school and above), which is told from alternating first-person POVs. I don’t remember if one of the POV characters is described, but I’ve fashioned a mental picture of him anyway. He’s a he, obviously, and I still manage to identify with him. So far I find him the most sympathetic character in the book.

Jill, I’m not sure if you’re making a distinction between identifying with a character and seeing oneself as that character. The first can happen, usually should happen, the second can’t and probably shouldn’t.

One of my favorite books when I was growing up was Anne of Green Gables, and one of my favorite moments was when Anne breaks her writing slate over Gilbert Blythe’s head . I identified totally with Anne, but in real life I never would have hit anyone’s pate with anything, regardless of the provocation. My delight in Anne’s defiant act was complete. She surprised me and I loved her for it, but I couldn’t have seen myself as her.

We go to books, in part, for alternatives to our narrow selves. After reading Anne of Green Gables, even if I still couldn’t avenge myself physically, maybe I could figure out a satisfying retort to an offense. At the least, I could take pleasure in imagining what Anne would have done.

As we write, our characters make decisions. They can’t be Everyman because each man acts differently. As a reader – and a writer – I slip inside selves other than my own. My characters behave differently from me.

In most cases, I guess I’d rather have physical description than not. We’re physical beings and we form impressions of people, rightly or wrongly, based in part by looks. And other people respond to us on the same basis. I’m very short, four-foot-ten-and-a-half, to be precise. This perspective affects me profoundly. My life probably would have been different, for better or worse, if I had seven more inches. I like being short, but I wouldn’t pass up a chance to be tall for a day, just for the experience. When I make a character tall I have to think about that decision and be aware of it as I write.

Long ago on the blog I mentioned a memoir, Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy (also high school and above), who had some sort of cancer as a child that left her face deformed. It’s a book of suffering. Appearance, like it or not, is important.

I read Autobiography of a Face when I was preparing to write Fairest, in which Aza, my heroine, is ugly. There would be no story without her ugliness. Still, readers identify with her, and we identify with Lucy Grealy, too. Appearance, no matter what it is, doesn’t stop us from entering an emotionally appealing character.

Contrariwise, in an early draft of A Tale of Two Castles I gave Elodie a big nose. My editor asked me to take the nose out and I did. She felt it would be off-putting to the reader. And maybe she was right. Unlike Aza’s ugliness in Fairest, Elodie’s nose had nothing to do with her story. Not, I hasten to say, that a big nose is ugly. It’s a strong feature, which is what I wanted for Elodie.

What I don’t care for is a description of the main character that’s plopped into a first chapter because the author feels it has to be there. So the main is made to look in a mirror. In first person she’s forced to assess herself. In third, we’re just told what she sees.

I don’t think there’s a rush. You can get to it in a later chapter and wait for a spot where the description belongs. I’m proud of the way I did it in A Tale of Two Castles. Elodie is considering buying a cap from a mending mistress, who tells her ingratiatingly that she’s pretty. And she thinks:

    I wished I could subtract her lie from the price of the cap. I wasn’t pretty.  My eyes were too big, my eyebrows too thick, my mouth too wide, my jaw too pronounced.  But if you were in an audience, even standing behind the benches, far from the mansion stage, you would still be able to make out my features.

That’s it. I drop in a little earlier that she’s tall for her age. We don’t have to include a great deal of detail if the story doesn’t call for it. In Fairest, which does call for it, Aza’s brother first calls attention to her looks by calling her ugly, and she often thinks about her appearance, so the reader can visualize her clearly and see her the way I want her to be seen. But in many stories, we can give a few hints and let the reader fill in the rest.

In both examples from my books, a comment by another character introduces the description. You can use this technique too. For instance, Neil, not known for his tact, could tell Marisa she resembles a kindergartner’s stick figure drawing. Warren could pipe in, “Yeah, and your hair looks like you were electrocuted.” Kind Tomasina might say, “I wish I had curly hair, and I’d die for hazel eyes.” That’s probably enough.

But there are other ways. In The Wish the hook is simple. Wilma thinks about her name, describes herself in thoughts as looking like a Wilma, then goes on to explain what she means by that. In Fairies and the Quest for Never Land, an old photograph leads into the description. You can use action. A character can be especially suited or not suited for an activity, like a sport or a role in a play, by virtue of his looks.

As a reader, I rarely think about the main character’s description once it’s given. I’m inside him, peering out, remembering how he looks only when the subject comes up in thoughts, action, or dialogue.

A few prompts:

•    Look at a few of your favorite books and notice how the author handled introducing the main character’s appearance and how detailed or sketchy these descriptions are. Then revisit some of your own old stories and think about how you did it. If you decide you might have been more inventive and you’re in a revising mood, try a new way or more than one.

•    Leonard is at a Halloween party dressed in a spacesuit. Without removing a bit of his costume, find a way to describe him. Find another way. And another.

•    Carlie Werme, Tony Foote, and Blair Bratt are each teased unmercifully by their classmates about their names, and each responds differently to the teasing. Write a scene for each one, showing how he or she reacts. If you like, bring them together as an alliance and write what happens. Write the first meeting of their club and cause an argument to break out. Show how each one argues. Keep going. See what happens when they confront their tormentors as a group, but don’t let their individuality get lost in their united front.

Have fun and save what you write!