It’s time for our Tuesday Quick-Write, and I am super-excited to introduce you to guest author and scientist Loree Griffin Burns. Loree is a gifted author of nonfiction, and someone I’m also lucky enough to call a critique partner and friend.  She writes award-winning Scientists in the Field titles like TRACKING TRASH and THE HIVE DETECTIVES and is also the author of the newly released CITIZEN SCIENTISTS: BE PART OF A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD, which is one the best books I’ve ever seen for classrooms and families that value inquiry, exploration, and time spent in nature. Learn more at Loree’s website.  And now here’s Loree with some thoughts on characterization.

I love that I get to follow Sarah Albee’s Nonfiction Friday with a Nonfiction Tuesday. And how could I start anywhere else but with a link to the Nonfiction Monday that fell in between?  It’s the perfect way for me to be sure all you teacher-writers and librarian-writers know that on Mondays, nonfiction bloggers around the web celebrate children’s nonfiction with reviews and book-related links and activities.  You can find the weekly roundup by visiting the official  Nonfiction Monday website.

Now, on to the subject of my guest post: characterization.

 Be honest: are you surprised that a writer like me—one who writes about ocean trash and honey bees and backyard science—would choose to write a feature on the topic of characterization? Do you think of character development as a strictly fictional device? For a long time, I did too.  For most of my reading and writing life, in fact, I had it in my head that fiction writers were storytellers and nonfiction writers were, well, reporters. The former, in my misguided mind, had access to all the neat storytelling tools—characterization, setting, conflict, foreshadowing, pacing, etc—and the latter were meant to simply share the facts.

 This misunderstanding was blown to bits when I read THE BEAK OF THE FINCH back in 1995. In this nonfiction title, Jonathan Weiner opened my eyes to an important truth: all writers must use every tool at their disposal to make their storytelling engaging. Weiner shared the true story of Peter and Rosemary Grant—evolutionary biologists who have recorded, over the course of more than twenty years of Galapagos fieldwork, the process of evolution in action—in a book that reads like a novel. (And remains, for the record, one of my all time favorites in the genre.)

 Let readers know your character, ground those readers in a setting, entice them with a unique voice, thrill them with tension and strong pacing, include telling details, rich dialog, and don’t forget to share memorable images, literal ones of the sort Sarah talked about on Friday, or figurative ones you draw with your words.  Structure your story so that all these elements work together, pulling your readers through the narrative page by page.  These are tasks for all of us who share stories, whether the stories we tell are true or are born from our imaginations.  

 Here’s an example from my current work in progress …

 I’m drafting a book about an entomologist.  Clint McFarland is a passionate scientist and a true lover of insects … and yet his job (and this is the heart of my story) is to kill every last Asian longhorned beetle in North America. A man who kills beetles for a living will be hard enough for my young readers to take; when I tell them that the way one kills this particular beetle is by cutting down and chipping every single host tree in its range—no matter if those trees shade a schoolyard or sport backyard treehouses—well, I might lose them.  Before I share this part of the story, then, it’s important that I let readers see Clint as the caring and passionate guy he is. This man adores insects. Passionately. Deeply. How do I show this side of Clint? By sharing his personality on the page. By paying close attention to how I introduce him. In short, with careful characterization.

 To this end, I spent several hours last week reading through all the interviews I’ve conducted with Clint. (For the record, our five in-person interviews resulted in forty-one pages of transcribed notes.) I hunted for details that will help readers understand the type of guy Clint is. There was the surprising confession that he cuts his long hair every so often in order to donate a ponytail to Locks of Love. (I told you he was a nice guy!) And evidence of his passion for insects was everywhere: the set of ladybug life cycle toys on his office bookshelves (“biologically accurate egg, larva, pupa, and adult,” he told me), the worn copy of Thomas Eisner’s <i>For Love of Insects</i>. My favorite detail by far, though, was a scene I recorded when a member of Clint’s staff found an insect in the parking lot and brought it in to show Clint during our interview. “You’ll love this,” the staff member said, holding out a cup with a dead Dobsonfly inside.  I’d never seen one before, but I can now tell you this: Dobsonflies are sort of hideous. This particular beast was over two inches long, but gained almost another full inch from the set of curved, scythe-like mandibles stretching out the top of its head. The mandibles looked like pincers, and as I was trying to figure out if they could pierce human skin, Clint turned the creature into his bare hand, marveled over its ‘amazing wings’, and ran a gentle finger over its ‘gorgeous mandibles.’

 If I can craft a chapter that shares these details with readers, I won’t need to tell them Clint is a compassionate man with a heart for insects. They will have learned it for themselves.

 Writing Exercise:

The good thing about this prompt, I think, is that everyone can play along, fiction and nonfiction writers alike. 

Choose a character from one of your works in progress—a real person (if you are working on a nonfiction piece) or a made up person (if you are working on a novel or a short story).  Comb through all your files—physical or mental—on this person, and pull out the details that tell you the most about his/her character.

If this feels overwhelming, start small. Does s/he have an office? Go there and look around. Is it messy? Or crazy-neat? What’s the desktop look like? Is there a half glass of orange juice on board? A reusable thermal coffee mug? An army of old Dunkin’ Donuts cups? What is the dust situation? Is there anything hanging on the walls? Are there bookshelves? Are the books on them just what you’d expect to see, or does something there surprise you?

I think you get the idea. All writers can benefit from some quality time spent observing the little details—settings (as I’ve talked about here and in my post), but also habits, dialog, and actions—that tell us who our characters are.  

Nonfiction writers will finish this exercise realizing, if they hadn’t already, that the best way to get these details is to meet your subject—or someone with a passion for your topic—in person. Push your nerves aside and set up that interview!

Hi, everybody! Hope it was a great weekend for you. Mine included finishing a draft of a book that’s due soon (woo-hoo!), catching fish and eating  s’mores. Ah…summer!

Before we have today’s mini-lesson, we need to announce the winner of Friday’s book giveaway. Congratulations, Denise Krebs! You’ve won Joanne Levy’s SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE. Please send me an email (kmessner at kate messner  dot com) with your mailing address so she can send your book.

Guest author Pamela Voelkel joins us now for today’s mini-lesson. Pamela and Jon write the Jaguar Stones books set in Latin America, MIDDLEWORLD and THE END OF THE WORLD CLUB. Read more at their website – and right now, Pamela joins us to talk about research.

CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN

The worst advice I was ever given was: “Write what you know”. Those four little words gave me a twenty-year writer’s block. It was only when I’d spent half my life as an advertising copywriter that the truth hit me. If I didn’t want to write about what I knew, all I had to do was know about something else.

So when my husband Jon started writing adventure stories based on his childhood in South and Central America, I joined him on the project. At first, they were just ripping yarns, with some cool Maya pyramids in the background for local color. But as we started to read about the Maya, we discovered that their story was more amazing than anything we could make up. We also discovered that many of the books in print were out of date. So that’s when we decided to turn our website into a portal for teachers to access the latest research into the Maya, and offer free lesson plan CDs.

Time was passing. Jon had completed a course at Harvard on reading and writing Maya glyphs, but I was still struggling with writing English. I was concerned that I couldn’t describe the sights and sounds of the jungle if I’d never been there so, when I saw an ad for a cheap flight to Belize, I persuaded Jon that we had to go. Not just us, but also our three children – then aged 2, 9 and 12 – to observe their reactions to spooky pyramids and creepy-crawlies and whatever else may await us.

After that we went down every year. It was our second trip that changed everything. We were at a remote site in Guatemala, on a day that was free entry to locals. Our son is very tall and he attracted a crowd of local youths who followed him around, giggling and taking pictures of him. Our tour guide watched this for a while, then puffed out his chest and stepped forward. “Remember these people,” he said in Spanish, “but not because their son is tall. Remember them because they are writing books about the Maya and, thanks to them, children in North America will be reading about your history and culture.” There was a moment of silence. Then these hoodie-wearing, gum-chewing Guatemalan teenagers burst into applause, with the ancient pyramids right there behind them. My heart sank into my jungle boots. Now we had a responsibility to these kids. Now we would have to tell the story of the modern Maya as well. And that’s where our lead character (and everyone’s favorite) Lola the Maya girl came from.

So my advice regarding research would be read everything you can, double/triple check your facts, take nothing for granted, wander down every blind alley you come across, and be prepared for what you find to fundamentally change your story. In the best possible way.
 

Note from Kate: No…we are not sending you all off on airplanes for a giant field trip for research today…but we are sending you on a virtual field trip.  Like Pamela, I’ve been fortunate enough to spend time in many of the places where my books are set and to travel for interviews and other research.  I spent a week in the rainforest of Costa Rica researching HIDE AND SEEK, the sequel to CAPTURE THE FLAG, and interviewed one of the world’s leading tornado experts in Norman, Oklahoma while I was working on EYE OF THE STORM. But what happens when there’s no book contract yet, and no advance to pay for that travel?  Or what if the trip just isn’t feasible for another reason – like safety, or travel regulations, or child care issues?  That’s when the Internet is your best friend.

Assignment: Google Maps and Google Earth have satellite images and photographs that will show you the view from many addresses all over the world. This Salon piece has a great tutorial on how to use that street-view feature so you can take a virtual field trip to the setting of your novel.

YouTube, too, has videos that writers can use for virtual visits when a real one might not be possible. In my mystery CAPTURE THE FLAG, for example, some of the chase scenes happen in the underbelly of the airport, on the twists and turns of baggage conveyer belts. Airport security, sadly, does not allow for nosy writers to ride baggage carts, and so my descriptions of characters in those areas were all based on online videos like this one.

Get the idea? Find a video or street-view map or a collection of images of your setting online today. Check it out and take some notes, paying attention not only to what you see, but also what you hear, what you might feel, and what you imagine it would smell like. How would your characters see that place?  Share some thoughts in the comments if you’d like!

Guest author Sarah Albee is visiting Teachers Write to talk nonfiction and images today. I got to spend a few days writing with Sarah at our retreat on Lake Champlain recently, and she is the sort of person you wish lived next door all the time instead of just for a few days a year. Sarah wrote POOP HAPPENED: A HISTORY OF THE WORLD FROM THE BOTTOM UP, which immediately tells you that a) she is a history and science geek, and b) she has a great sense of humor. You can get to know her a little more at her website. Now…here’s Sarah!

Hello, teachers and librarians! Welcome to Nonfiction Friday! (I just made that up. Hope you don’t mind, Kate.)

I am honored to have been invited by Kate to participate in this virtual summer writing camp. I’ve been following your daily postings and am amazed at the high-level discussions about craft, character, and setting. If you’re up for putting on your nonfiction-writers’ hats today, I thought I’d launch the discussion by talking about how I approach nonfiction—and particularly history.

I’m going to start by sharing with you the shrewdest career move I ever made: *drumroll* I married a history teacher. I have learned a lot from my husband about how to make history fun, and interesting, and relevant. My goal as a writer is pretty close to his goal as a teacher: to reach that ever-elusive group of kids who think they don’t like history, and to get them excited about it. Wait. We’ve gone too long without a visual. Here’s a picture of my husband:

Photo by Gaby Hoffman

Here’s another thing I’ve learned from my history-teacher-husband: there are always going to be those self-motivated, naturally-curious, superstar kids who are born loving history. But by the time kids land in his high school classroom, the vast majority of them have decided that history is boring. These are the kids he has to win over. As a middle-grade writer, my goal is to start converting them earlier.

I’m constantly scheming up ways to snag the attention of a reluctant reader, to get him or her to open my book or read my history blog. I try to approach my topic from an offbeat angle, something a kid will relate to. Like the history of how civilizations from the Stone Age to the present have dealt with their waste. Or how bugs have affected human history.

I also try to use humor wherever possible. Kids of all ages love to laugh. Maybe this approach stems from my Sesame Street background (I worked there for nine years). We subversively disguised our preschool teaching curriculum in the form of game shows, TV commercials, silly songs, and parodies. (My book Brought to you by the Letter B! is still one of my proudest achievements!)

 But my most effective attention-grabbing strategy is to use visuals to enhance my topic. This will come as a surprise to none of you, of course—you’re all educators. But you’re wearing your writers’ hats today.

I’m constantly asking myself, what makes a compelling picture? What will draw kids into the book?

On my blog, I like to lead with the coolest picture I can find. Like this one in a post about what babies used to wear.

Or this one about how little boys used to be forced to wear dresses.

Do the pictures catch your eye? Snag your interest? Let’s face it: like it or not, as writers, we’re also salesmen. We’re luring readers toward our writing. And kids these days are savvy consumers. As teachers, you know better than anyone that there’s a lot of competition out there, calling for their attention.

That’s the challenge—and the fun—of using pictures to enhance your writing. And one of the best parts of being a nonfiction writer is that we writers get to play a big role in choosing the pictures that will accompany our text.

I absolutely love finding images. Sometimes you can acquire a picture just by asking. People can be so gracious. I’ve gotten permission to use incredible pictures taken by contemporary photographer-scientists. And I’ve found other images through fellow-writer friends.

Here’s one of a “zombie bee,” a phorid fly parasitizing a honeybee.

Photo by Christopher Quock

It was snapped by an undergraduate at USC named Chris Quock. I tracked Chris down by contacting his professor, and Chris then sent me his picture to include in my book (and in this post).

Many public domain images are digitized and available for download online. But it can be even more fun to find pictures yourself. I wrote about my recent research trip to DC here, where I visited the “still pictures” divisions at both the National Archives and the Library of Congress. It’s such a thrill to find a photo that has never before been published. It can take hours to find that one picture, but it’s worth it.

As educators, you have all kinds of image resources available to you that can help your lesson plan come alive for your students. As writers, our job gets slightly trickier securing permission for pictures we’d like to use in a book. But it’s totally worth it.

If you’re working on a nonfiction book and need assistance figuring out where to start with image research, I am happy to help. Please stop by my website and leave me a comment, or leave a comment here, or email me directly at albees AT taftschool DOT org (and include “Teachers Write” in the subject line).

I’ll check in with you today from time to time, so please feel free to post your comments and questions about all things nonfiction. Happy writing!

Today’s regular Friday Happy Hour Post is up, too, so when you finish chatting with Sarah, click here to share your progress for the week and enter to win a book.

Welcome to Friday Writing Happy Hour! First…I need to send you to a bonus Friday post from guest author Sarah Albee, who is sharing some great, great thoughts on nonfiction, making science and history interesting to kids, and photos.  Really…don’t miss it.

More Friday stuff… We’ve got another book giveaway today – SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE from guest author Joanne Levy.

To enter the drawing, leave a comment on this post before 11:30pm EST Saturday night. A winner will be announced Monday morning.

So…how was your writing week?

Friday Writing Happy Hour is a chance to relax and share comments about our progress, goals, accomplishments, and whatever else is on your mind.  If you’d like feedback on a snippet of writing, head on over to Gae Polisner’s blog for Friday Feedback, where you can share a few paragraphs of your work and offer feedback to others, too.

 Enjoy your weekend, and remember to check in at Jen’s Teach Mentor Texts blog on Sunday.  I’ll see you back here Monday morning!

Today’s Thursday Quick-Write is courtesy of guest author Gigi Amateau, the author of the young adult novel, A Certain Strain of Peculiar, a 2010 Bank Street College Best Children’s Books of the Year. She also wrote Chancey of the Maury River, a William Allen White Masters List title for grades 3-5. Her debut novel, Claiming Georgia Tate was selected as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. Come August, Come Freedom, a work of historical fiction for young adults, will be released from Candlewick Press in September 2012. Connect with Gigi at www.gigiamateau.com <http://www.gigiamateau.com>  or on twitter: https://twitter.com/giamateau

 Good morning, writers!  First of all, thank you, Kate Messner, for organizing TeachersWrite! What a great opportunity to learn from and grow alongside all of you. Today, I’d like to share a practice that I use almost daily to improve my observation skills and to tune in to nature and the natural world. I find that these exercises help me draw more vivid settings, see beyond the obvious, and heighten my sensory experience of the environment.

As writers and teachers, you already know that two of your greatest skills are your strong sense of curiosity and your keen superpower of observation. Curiosity and observation team up to help us understand our thoughts and feelings about the real world; curiosity and observation are the foundation upon which we write new worlds – whether through fiction, poetry, essay, or song. Asking questions, noticing details, and identifying patterns begin inside a writer’s heart or mind then, with practice, make their way down the arm, into the fingertips, and onto the page or screen.

  Can we really train ourselves to become more curious? Is observation really a superpower?

 Absolutely!

 To me, the greatest gymnasium or auditorium or home field for a writer to train and practice is in the natural world. In his little book Walking, Henry David Thoreau wrote that “all good things are wild and free.” The outdoors is our wild and free writing laboratory – a place to conduct experiments with language and punctuation, a place to explore new territory in our thinking, our feelings, and our storytelling.

 So, let’s begin by heading outdoors. That’s right! Set down your tea and walk outside. Just for a couple of minutes, I promise. If it’s nasty out or you’re just snug as bug, go ahead and practice right where you are.

 To get started, shake up your body a bit. Take a quick scan up, down, and all around to notice where you’re holding tension or whether you feel stiff. Give those places that are begging for it, your permission to relax and a pathway to let go. Roll your shoulders back; now roll your shoulders forward. Inhale. Exhale. And, if that felt good, repeat!

 Now, look around. Don’t alter the way you’re watching the world, but notice how you’re watching. Chances are that you’re focusing in on one section of the panorama before you. This is good! As your gaze adjusts to what you’re seeing, notice how you slice up the landscape in order to process what you see. Good job.

 Let’s bring a different type of concentration to the act of observing. What happens when you try to take in the whole landscape without focusing on any single image? What changes within your field of vision?

 I find that it’s difficult to hold keep panoramic lens going for very long; I naturally seem to return to observing one piece of the picture. That’s okay! Notice when you’ve lost the wide-angle and simply return to it. A little trick to help if you’re having trouble: keep your gaze straight ahead, but bring your peripheral vision into focus. Then, keeping the wide view, go exploring.

 As I write this, I’m sitting on the front porch of an antebellum house in Norwood, Virginia, facing the Blue Ridge Mountains. When I practice these magic eyes, I see this place differently than when I’m focused on the butterfly bush that drapes the front walkway. Looking out toward the mountain ridge, and taking in the whole panorama, I see: a red-tailed hawk riding the current, a dappling of shadow and sunlight across the canopy, a savannah of cumulus clouds against a watery sky, and an old chestnut hound lost in puppy dreams beneath my feet. Each image urges me to turn my glance only upon it, but what else will I see if I keep my wide eyes? The ties of the awning slapping against the porch post, the loop-di-loop of a bumblebee, the zig-zag of a dragonfly, an empty white rocker resisting the breeze, and swallows dipping in and out of the treetops, down near the river.

 Record your own experience with wide-angle watching. What did you observe in your wild and free writer’s studio?

 Let’s switch it up. Which of those images from the landscape would you like to know more intimately?

Now, form an O with Pointer and Thumbkin, as if you were signaling, “okay!” Bring the O to one eye and close the other eye. Turn your attention to your subject, and shrink the O by curling your index finger down your thumb to toward your palm. Now, really examine your subject.

Here’s what I see: The dog is not entirely chestnut, only in the darkest places like the top of her back, the outsides of her thighs, and the points of her ankles. Her belly is almost white. She rests her head under the shade of the bench where I’m sitting. She sleeps with her front and back paws crossed, all-ladylike. Her breath rises and falls in an easy cadence. Not even the coal train passing by at the bottom of the hill causes her to stir. The old napper is tired for good reason, I think.

Pollen and leaves and dirt are strewn across her back, her belly, and her haunches. She’s been on an adventure today.

 Record what you observed with your tiny finger-monocular.

Experimenting with different lenses is a fun practice all on its own. You may find a trail of breadcrumbs leading into new ideas or realize that you really enjoy one lens more than the other. You could also use these practices to examine and inform a specific scene of your work in progress by closing your eyes and shifting your mind’s eye back and forth between the panoramic and narrow lenses of that scene.

Before we start Q and A today, let’s talk a little about revision. Some people hate revising. Lots of students really hate it.  But I LOVE revision. I love it so much, in fact, that I wrote a book about revision, about how to revise and how to teach students to revise using authors’ strategies.  At one point, I spent weeks revising my revision book, which felt like a very meta thing to do. But I digress.

Anyway…I believe that all great writing is re-writing, so toward the end of Teachers Write in August, we’re going to host a blog and Twitter chat all about revision. I’ll invite lots of authors to come talk about how they revise and to blog about their processes and we’ll link to all of those, too.  If you’d like, you can also treat it as a book club and read REAL REVISION (that book I wrote about revision) ahead of time so that you can ask questions and we can all talk about it.

Stenhouse, which published REAL REVISION, is offering a discount for those who would like to participate in our virtual book club this summer. If you go to the Stenhouse website and place any order that includes REAL REVISION, you’ll get 20% off the whole order, plus free shipping if you enter the discount code KATE.  (How cool is it that I have a discount code? I told my family that this really calls for more respect and chocolate, but they are unimpressed.) More info on the revision chat will be forthcoming in a few weeks, but for now, go ahead and order your book (or request it from your library!) if you’d like to be part of the book club conversation. And if you have other favorite Stenhouse books that you’d like to recommend to one another, please share titles in the comments, because you can totally take advantage of that REAL REVISION discount to get other professional books, too.

On to the questions now! Wednesday is Q and A Day at Teachers Write Virtual Summer Writing Camp, so if you have questions about writing, it’s time to fire away.

Today’s official author volunteers are Jo Knowles, Donna Gephart, Megan Miranda, Erica S. Perl, David Lubar, and Raymond Bean.  They’ve promised to be around to respond to your questions today, so please visit their websites & check out their books!

Teachers & librarians – Feel free to ask your questions in the comments.  Published author guests have volunteered to drop in and respond when they can, and I’ll be checking in from my retreat, too.

Good morning, Teachers Write campers! I’m  on a four-day writers’ retreat myself this week, scribbling away with 18 other authors at a big old inn on Lake Champlain. (I so wish all of you could be here, too!)  I’ve been writing-writing-writing, and not commenting so much. But rest assured, I’ll check in and get caught up by the weekend. Keep cheering for one another, too, okay?

Our Tuesday Quick-Write guest author today is Megan Miranda.  Megan was a scientist and high school teacher before writing Fracture, which came out of her fascination with scientific mysteries—especially those associated with the brain. Megan has a BS in biology from MIT and spent her post-college years either rocking a lab coat or reading books. She lives near Charlotte, North Carolina, where she volunteers as an MIT Educational Counselor. Fracture is her first novel, and Hysteria will be forthcoming this winter. Learn more at her website: http://www.meganmiranda.com/

 

I have a confession: I am not an outliner. And because of this, my first drafts are very much discovery drafts. This is an exercise I do whenever I get stuck with the external plot (and as someone who typically has to write nearly an entire draft before finding the right plot, this happens a lot):

 

 

Add rain.

 

Rain makes things happen: Things go wrong in the rain. Accidents happen. Houses flood. People are late, appointments are missed, plans are canceled. Evidence gets washed away. Strangers help each other on the side of the road, people share umbrellas, people meet. Or people don’t meet.

 

 

Rain reveals character: Do your characters carry umbrellas, or are they totally unprepared? Do they stomp in the puddles? Does she run with a newspaper over her head? Or smile because she gets to wear those totally impractical neon green galoshes she spent way too much money on?

 

 

Something as simple as changing the weather opens me up to many other possibilities. It’s my way of brainstorming inside a scene. Truth is, the rain doesn’t always make the cut during revision, but the heart of the scene—the events, the character reactions—they become my story.

So, as an exercise, whatever scene you’re currently writing (or if you’re starting something new), try this: make it rain. And if it’s already raining, make it snow. See what happens. See how your character reacts.

 

 It’s always a surprise for me.

 

 

(Right now, I’m about halfway through a first draft. I’m pretty sure it’s been raining for a month straight.)

Note from Kate: If you don’t have a fiction work-in-progress, try this quick-write with a favorite scene from any favorite novel. Play weather god and change one of the scenes by making it rain. What happens?

 

Good morning, writers! Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Von Sanders – Congratulations! You won our Friday drawing for a copy of REAL MERMAIDS DON’T HOLD THEIR BREATH by Helene Boudreau. Please email me your mailing address (kmessner at kate messner   dot  com) so she can send your book.

For those of you who want to dive right into writing today,  Jo’s Monday Morning Warm-Up for the day is here!

And we have not one but TWO terrific Mini-Lesson Monday posts this morning. This one features guest author Anne Marie Pace with wise words on Reading to Write, so be sure to check it out.

And the one you’re reading now features guest author Alex Lidell with a character workshop!  Alex is a YA fantasy writer and author of ABNA Finalist THE CADET OF TILDOR (Penguin, 2013). Learn more at her website: http://alexlidell.com.

Today we will work on describing a character to the reader without stopping the story to give a Miss America introduction.  John entered the room.  He was a rude, grouchy school principal in his late 60s who enjoyed telling everyone about how hard his job is.  Blah.  Let’s do better than that.   

 Let’s see how much we can learn about a character just by what he says about something else.  If we can pull this off, not only will our character be more vivid but our writing will be tighter, since each sentence will do double duty – developing character AND moving the plot forward.

 Take a look at the picture below and then read what five different characters had to say about the scene.  What can you tell about the speaker from his words?

 

Adam: “35 year old female found supine in cardiac arrest.  Penetrating trauma noted beneath left scapula.  Clothes are blood soaked, wound no longer bleeding.  Asystole was confirmed in two leads.  No resuscitation efforts were initiated.  Time of death 4:32 pm.  The body was left in custody of the local PD.”

Bob: “35 year old female found deceased on third floor apartment of 123 Main St.  Body is bloody, apparently from a single stab wound to the back.  Neighbor reported hearing an argument around 3:30pm, and found the victim “dead” when he went to check on her at 4pm.”

Charles: “35 years old.  Mary Bell was only 35 year sold.  Bless her heart, but I knew something like this was coming.  Kept telling her to just forget John, to move out of the city.  But she thought she knew better.  All the young kids think they know better.”

Derek: “The lady was lying there bleeding and no one was doing anything to help!  I told dad we should bandage her up and he just yelled at me to go home.  That isn’t right.”

Eddy: “She was happy, you know.  She always wanted to die.  Everyday, she kept saying that – over and over and over.  Begging me for it.  Begging everybody for it.  And now she has what she wanted all along.  I even let her wear her favorite dress.  I wanted her to be happy.”

Note that Adam, Bob, Charles, Derek, and Eddy are all talking about the dead woman – not about themselves.  Yet, the WAY they talk about her tells us a lot about them.  Let’s look at how this happens:

Adam and Bob seem to be professionals.  There is no emotion in their voice, and they sound like they are giving a report to someone.  The sentences are chopped and sometimes grammatically incorrect – but not ignorant.  No hesitation, no repeated words, just the facts. 

Although Adam and Bob are both professionals, we can tell that their profession is not the same. Adam is using medical words.  He says “cardiac arrest” and “penetrating trauma” where Bob says “deceased” and “stab wound”.  They are also both covering their basis, but in different ways – it’s important for Adam to justify that the woman is in fact dead (asystole was confirmed in two leads), where as Bob is more concerned about what may have happened before the woman died (neighbor reported hearing an argument).  Most likely, Adam is a paramedic and Bob is a police officer. Do you agree?

Charles is a bit more personal.  He’s calling the woman by name.  Still, he does not seem overly distressed.  Charles is more focused on telling us that he had been right all long, then on grieving.  Why?  Maybe because he is self centered human being who could care less about others.  Maybe he just didn’t know her that well.  What if we add just two words to his statement: “My daughter, Mary Bell…”  Wouldn’t this reaction tell you a lot about him and his relationship with his daughter?  Also, from the way he refers to a 35-year-old woman as a kid, so we can guess that Charles is older.

Derek’s indignation that no one is helping shows us his naiveté about death.  He is likely a child. 

What about Eddy?  Now he’s different all together.  Unlike everyone else who was talking about the scene, Eddy is more concerned evaluating the morality of the murder.  She wanted it.  She wanted to be dead.  Note that he LET her wear a certain dress. Eddy thinks it’s his right and power to decide what other people should wear.  He is emotional, but not empathetic. He repeats words (over and over and over).  Probably someone mentally unstable, right? 

Look how much we learned about each character by listening to them describe something!  Now let’s see you try it.

Describe the picture from your character’s point of view, and the rest of us will try and figure what your character is like.  Let’s see how close we get it.  You may use a character from your work in progress on invent a new one.  I recommend doing the exercise twice, from two different character’s POV, to better understand how this works.  If you have any questions, or if I missed commenting on your homework, please email me at Alex@alexlidell.com

Good morning, writers! Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Von Sanders – Congratulations! You won our Friday drawing for a copy of REAL MERMAIDS DON’T HOLD THEIR BREATH by Helene Boudreau. Please email me your mailing address (kmessner at kate messner   dot  com) so she can send your book.

For those of you who want to dive right into writing today, here’s the link for Jo’s Monday Morning Warm-Up.

And we have not one but TWO terrific Mini-Lesson Monday posts this morning. This one features guest author Alex Lidell with a character workshop, so be sure to check it out.

And the post you’re reading now features guest author Anne Marie Pace with wise words on Reading to Write. Anne Marie is the author of the forthcoming picture book VAMPIRINA BALLERINA as well as A TEACHER FOR BEAR and NEVER EVER TALK TO STRANGERS. Learn more at her website.

READING TO WRITE

One day, when my oldest daughter was about 9, she handed me a sheaf of papers with a story scrawled across the pages and asked me to read it.  As I read, I started chuckling.  In her story, my daughter had unconsciously mimicked the books in Ann M. Martin’s Babysitters’ Club Little Sisters series.  The characters’ names and situations were different, but the pacing, style and voice were spot-on.  It made perfect sense.  She had devoured the series, reading the books again and again.  Of course, that voice poured out when she began to write. 

LEARNING TO SPEAK, LEARNING TO WRITE

We learn spoken language through immersion.  Babies are born unable to speak but within a relatively brief time, most can ask for juice and name their body parts.  Learning to write is somewhat more complicated, of course, but few would dispute that most avid readers find writing easier than those who read less. You’ve probably observed this in your students.

 In fact, new writers are sometimes counseled to read one thousand books in the genre they wish to write in before they start to write. Chances are good that you write in a certain format or genre because you enjoy reading it.  If you’ve read enough, the basic conventions of the genre may come easily to you.  But learning by osmosis only takes you so far. You can’t just read the thousand books and hope for the best; you have to pay attention to what you read. If you want to write with more effective craft than just the bits and pieces you’ve picked up along the way, you have to study good writing and figure out just how authors do what they do.

 WHY WE USE MODELS

 Teachers use models with students all the time, whether it’s a model essay or research paper in English class, a model lab report in biology, or a model still life in art.

 Why do we do this for our students?  Sometimes, the model simply sets an expectation:  this is what you should include in your lab report.  Sometimes, it’s freeing.  Writing poetry to some predetermined structure (say, modeling an apology poem on William Carlos Williams’ “This is just to say”) means you don’t have to think about structure.  That part is done for you, so you have more time to think about ideas, themes, or word choice.  Sometimes, studying a model is empowering. Breaking the writing down into manageable chunks makes a daunting larger task seem possible.

What’s true for our students is true for writers as well. Studying models sets expectations:  this is the quality of writing I want to aim for.  It’s freeing:  I know from my study that chapter books of the kind I’d like to write tend to be about 10,000 words, so I will write in a style that allows me to tell a fully-developed story in that number of words.  And it’s empowering:  writing a novel is a huge task, and I don’t know how to do it, but I can learn, one step at a time, from studying the best.

 HOW TO USE MODELS

 If this were a longer lesson, I’d want to spend some time at this point talking about using models at the macro-level or story level, the Big Picture.  However, this isn’t a week-long workshop, so if you would like more on this, I’ll recommend two books:  HOOKED by Les Edgerton and Ann Whitford Paul’s WRITING PICTURE BOOKS.  Both make excellent use of models in their discussion.

What I’d like to do instead is give you some examples of reading-to-write along my own writing journey, in hopes that they might inspire you to do something similar, in whatever way they might work for you. 

About eight years ago or so, I decided to recast a short story I’d written into a middle-grade novel. I had the plot, characters, setting, etc. already laid out (in short story form), but I was having trouble beginning.  So I filled in this sentence:

The readers who will like my work probably liked __________ and ___________.

 In this case, the answer to one of those blanks was Patricia MacLachlan’s SARAH PLAIN AND TALL.  (Yes, a collective sigh at its glory is appropriate here.) I pulled it off the shelf and began to take notes.

 

 Chapter 1 10 short pages; around 200 words per page; total for chapter around 1400 words

 Introduces immediately that Mama is gone, that novel is set in the past (fire), time of day, dogs “Did Mama sing every day?” asked Caleb.  2nd paragraph–that years have passed since Mama died, that Anna has been “raising” Caleb and is somewhat tired of it. Sets up that Papa has changed

a few sensory details fill in.  Interesting that they are sound details, maybe to replace the missing song – but they are not beautiful sounds, a “hollow scraping sound,” the crackling of a log breaking apart

 humor–caleb looks like bread dough with hair

 worst thing about Caleb takes her into memory of Mama’s death, which take her to description of setting and how now it’s winter but it has seemed like winter since Mama died

Caleb brings her back to the present, talk more about Mama, she starts to cry but Papa comes in

 Life continues, with small brief details Then Caleb asks Papa about singing—Papa says he’s forgotten but here’s a way to remember–tells about Sarah. Sarah’s letter is brief, poignant, more literary than factual.

 end of chapter loops back to the singing “Ask her if she sings, I said.”

 

Some notes were directly helpful, other were less so.  But as I thought about SARAH’s first chapter, two points stood out:  the importance of sensory detail and how MacLachlan picked them to highlight Caleb’s and Anna’s emotions, and the looping from the first sentence to the last, with the motif threaded in (in this case, singing).  When I began to write, this is what came to me:

            The scents of ginger and molasses curl around me like a patchwork quilt, warming the kitchen in the way that only the smell of baking cookies can do.

            I can’t help remembering how ginger cookies are Billy’s favorite, how he had a sixth sense about them.  Even if he was working way up the hill, he would manage to bound into the kitchen as soon as the first batch was pulled from the oven.  He would eat half the tray in one fell swoop, until Mama slapped his hand away and told him to save a few for Christmas Day. But as I open my mouth to say so, I see the tightness of Mama’s lips and her tired eyes and know she is already remembering the same thing.  I shut my mouth again, drawing the thought back inside me tightly. 

            Billy isn’t here this year.  He isn’t here now, and he won’t be here for Christmas, and he won’t be here in the New Year.  And maybe never.

            Mama wraps a towel around her hand and reaches into the oven to pull the tin baking sheet from the oven.  She bangs it on the table to loosen the cookies, a little harder than maybe it needs to be banged.  I wonder if she’s wishing she hadn’t baked ginger cookies at all.

            But maybe she’s hoping like I am–hoping that, wherever Billy is, that the smell of ginger cookies will drift like smoke just as far as he has drifted, will seek him out and tap him on the shoulder, as if he were just up on the ridge, and lead him back to our kitchen.  And he’ll follow that smell to the railroad track, he’ll swing onto a passing car and he’ll ride the rails back to Gordonsville, he’ll hitch a ride as farther more along as he can hitch, he’ll make the rest of the way on foot up the road and into the hollow. 

            He’ll find his cookies waiting, and find me waiting, too.

 

That exercise helped me shape that passage, which at the time I thought was a first chapter (after many revisions, it’s now just a section in the middle of the manuscript).  But I also used my notes on a smaller level.  Take a look at these lines from SARAH.

            “Well, Papa doesn’t sing anymore,” said Caleb very softly.  A log broke apart and crackled in the fireplace.

 In simple terms, it’s dialogue followed by a bit of scene-setting.  To me, it has more depth; that particular image of the breaking log emphasizes the brokenness of Anna’s and Caleb’s family because of their mother’s death.  If it were just a question of word count or pacing, MacLachlan could have used a whistling teakettle or a flickering light or Papa’s stomping boots outside to fill in that spot, but she didn’t; she chose a breaking log.  Now, I have absolutely no idea if that choice was intentional or if I’m reading something into it that MacLachlan didn’t intend.  For our purposes, that doesn’t matter.  What I learn from this bit is that I can make conscious choices about my words to give them deeper meaning.  Thus I chose to have my main character imagine the scent of baking cookies drifting outside and even across the country, mirroring her brother’s journey. 

 ANOTHER WAY TO GROW YOUR CRAFT THROUGH READING

 An exercise I have occasionally done involves writing in the style of another author–not to plagiarize, but simply as practice.  There’s not enough room to go into that exercise in depth here, but if you are interested, you might check out these blog entries of mine from February.  The first link leads you to the writing I did while doing this exercise and the second link discusses its benefits for me.

http://annemariepace.livejournal.com/298796.html

http://annemariepace.livejournal.com/298717.html

TODAY’S ASSIGNMENT:

 Fill in the blank:

 The readers who will like my work probably like __________ . 

 Study the opening section or chapter of whatever work you used to fill in that blank.  What about that work do you think readers respond to?  Why does it work so well?  What reaction does it evoke in you?  HOW?  What specific techniques does the author use to make it work?  How can you apply what you have learned to your own writing?

 Now take a paragraph from your work-in-progress.  Use your answers to the above questions to help you revise it into a stronger, more effective piece of writing.

 If you decide to share your efforts with us, please let us know what book/poem/story you were studying and what you learned from it, as well as your new writing.

Welcome to another Friday at Teachers Write!  We have another book giveaway today – this time from author Hélène Boudreau.

To enter the drawing for a copy of REAL MERMAIDS DON’T HOLD THEIR BREATH, just leave any comment on this post by 11pm EST Saturday, July 7th. I’ll draw a winner over the weekend & announce it on Monday.

So…how was your week?  Did it get swallowed up in sparklers and fireworks?  Or did you get some writing done, even with roasted marshmallows stuck in your hair?  (Or am I the only one who always ends up with sticky hair after campfires?)

Fridays here are a chance to relax and share comments about our progress, goals, accomplishments, and whatever else is on your mind.  If you’d like feedback on a snippet of writing, head on over to Gae Polisner’s blog for Friday Feedback, where you can share a few paragraphs of your work and offer feedback to others, too.

 Enjoy your weekend, and remember to check in at Jen’s Teach Mentor Texts blog on Sunday.  I’ll see you back here Monday morning!