Teachers Write welcomes debut author Mike Jung today for a guest post on world building. This will be especially useful to those of you working on fantasy & science fiction but applies to other kinds of writing, too. You may want to bookmark it for later if it doesn’t seem to fit what you’re doing right now.  Take it away, Mike!

Hello teachers! I’m thrilled to be here at Teachers Write, and I applaud you all for taking the plunge with us. My sixth grade teacher Miss Drake, would have been extremely pleased to see me involved with this terrific project.

Now, Kate herself is a far greater authority on worldbuilding than me – check out this blog post about her TED talk, for example – but I have a few thoughts on the matter, particularly as I’m currently working on two separate manuscripts that involve a fair amount of worldbuilding.

But perhaps you’re saying “hey pinhead, what the heck is worldbuilding?” Okay, here’s the Mike Jung definition: worldbuilding is the process of creating the setting that your story takes place in. If you’re a Tolkien fan like me, you may be recoiling in horror at the thought of creating thousands of years of history, a panoply of elfin and dwarvish peoples with their own cultures and characteristics, and a bunch of fake languages nobody can actually pronounce.  Create an entire world?? Are you crazy, Mike? Or maybe you like that idea, in which case, hey, go to town.

That’s not precisely what I’m talking about, though – I don’t think of “worldbuilding” solely as the creation of an entirely new world from the ground up, although that’s certainly one option. I think of it more as creating a setting with enough credibility to evoke a sense of reality in the reader, support the suspension of disbelief you’re asking of the reader, or both.

Here’s an example that’s also a thinly-veiled reference to my own book *cough cough* – Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities takes place in a small, contemporary city that’s fairly realistic, except for the fact that it has a resident superhero, Captain Stupendous, with the powers of flight, super-strength, invulnerability, and super-vision. In fact, there are over 50 superheroes scattered throughout the world, and they’re constantly defending the safety of their respective cities by battling one crazypants supervillain or another.

Nobody’s EVER going to mistake my book for a work of non-fiction, and clearly readers will have to willingly engage in some suspension of disbelief. So I didn’t try to create some plausible, scientifically-grounded explanation of how Captain Stupendous actually could fly in the real world. There’s enough pop-cultural precedent for that particular element of fantasy to make it easy to swallow.

One thing I did do, however, was try to establish some consistency and logic behind the way people in the world of Geeks think and react to the thyroidal spandex-clad weirdos in their midst. For example, I created a very broadly-sketched culture of superhero fandom throughout the country, a culture that’s represented by two specific Captain Stupendous fan clubs in my fictional city.

I also needed to create some settings that would fill the needs of my plot, and also the needs of my characters as real people, if that makes any sense. For example, there’s this pizza parlor which worked really well as the setting for my first chapter in terms of facilitating the plot, but it also fills a role in the characters’ lives outside of that chapter. Kids need public places to hang out, you know? Spud’s Pizza was my characters’ place to hang out long before the events of the book happened. And I didn’t want that because my story absolutely needed a pizza joint instead of, say, a boba tea house, an ice cream parlor, or a convenience store full of giant-size beverages and various conglomerations of processed butter and sugar – I wanted it because it helped make my characters into people who could be real.

A character’s thoughts, feelings, and actions may be driven by her pointy-eared people’s fifteen millennia of dragon-infested history, but they might also be driven by the history of her local town, which has always been driven by a particular multinational company that’s suddenly decided to shutter all its local facilities. A group of disenfranchised kids might end up mystically transported to a dimension that’s terrorized by giant, intelligent fish, or they might face challenges with the bully population at their school, but in either case the antagonistic characters will be products of their environment and history.

All of which is a rambling way of saying that on the surface, worldbuilding is about…well, building a world: creating a sense of place; conveying specific details; establishing continuity; and making things believable, all of which are hugely important, of course. But on a deeper level, I think worldbuilding is actually a vital way of showing the history behind our stories, and ultimately, the history of our individual characters. No matter how fantastical or everyday our settings are, their ultimate purpose is to illuminate the worlds inside the hearts and minds of our characters.

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Mike Jung has obviously read a whole lot of fantasy and science fiction. His debut novel Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities will be released on October 1, by Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic. He lives in Northern California with his wife (who tolerates his weirdness), his kindergarten-age daughter (who can already debate him to a standstill), and his toddler-age son (who’s developed a suddent reckless streak). Learn more at his website and follow him on Twitter @MikeJung.

Hi, everybody! Some of you have been asking if it would make sense for you to form smaller groups within the Teachers Write community to give one another feedback in addition to what we’re already doing, and that’s a fine idea. So let’s talk about critique groups.

A critique group is a small group of people (usually 2-6) who write and agree to read one another’s work from time to time and provide feedback with the purpose of helping one another improve. Critique groups can happen in person — if you live close to some other writers, you might agree to meet once a month at the local coffee shop for this — or online, in which case you’d exchange pages of writing via email or set up a system with folders in Yahoo Groups or something similar.

They can be made up of people who are at about the same level (beginners, folks revising first novels, etc.), people who write the same genre (YA, MG, picture books, nonfiction, etc.) or people who write different kinds of work but have an appreciation for what the others write, too.

Sometimes, critique groups operate on a schedule (each week, writers take turns sending maybe five pages for critique by the others) and sometimes they’re more informal (people share work when it’s done or when they need feedback, and others critique as they can. This is more common with experienced writers, I think, who tend to have deadlines and less predictable schedules.)

Sometimes, it takes a while to find the right critique group. People sometimes post new critique groups or openings in established ones at the SCBWI site or on Verla Kay’s discussion boards for children’s writers. Sometimes, you express interest in this, and someone else has filled the spot already or seems to be a better fit for that particular group. Do not take this personally or read anything into it at all. It happens. It happened to me numerous times when I was looking for a critique group, and if it happens to you, it doesn’t mean that you’re not a good writer or a nice person or anything else. It only means that your “just-right” critique group is still out there.  And sometimes, people join a critique group and then realize it’s not a good fit, so they drift away. All of this is part of the process, and it’s okay.

I’ve been in a bunch of critique groups over the years, all full of great people and talented writers. Some have been better fits than others, especially my current group with writers Loree Griffin Burns, Eric Luper, and Liza Martz.  Though we write different genres, we all appreciate one another’s work.  We run into each other at conferences & retreats sometimes, but our group operates mostly online (via Yahoo groups) and we don’t have a set schedule.  I also have a couple other good writers friends with whom I swap manuscripts sometimes.

Last summer, I wrote a pretty detailed piece on how to critique a friend’s writing for the Stenhouse Summer Blogstitute. It uses one of my editor’s revision letters as a mentor text for how to critique someone’s writing in a way that’s constructive and rigorous without making that person feel sad or frustrated or so angry they want to shove their crummy manuscript up your nose.  You should read that here. Go ahead…and then come back. I’m going to get a cup of coffee while you do that….

So…do you think you might like to be in a critique group?  I can’t create one for you…or tell you who to have coffee with, but I can provide a place for you to talk with other like-minded people who feel the same way and might want to connect with you.  We’ll do that early next week. After that, you’ll be on your own to make arrangements with the people you meet on that post and figure things out.

Watch for that post on Monday, in addition to our regular Mini-Lesson Monday.  But today…I’d like to invite your questions about critique groups, and I’d like to invite authors to comment and share a little about how their critique groups work.  I think you’ll see that like writing styles, there are many critique group styles, and the “right” one is the one that works for you and your writing partners. A respectful, supportive tone is essential, but beyond that, you can figure out how to set things up.

Questions? Comments? Critique group models or tips to share? Fire away!

It’s time for Thursday’s Quick-Write.  Before we get to the prompt, let’s have a virtual round of applause for the authors who answered questions during Wednesday Q and A.  (Woo-hoo!!) If you’d take a few minutes to look up those authors who made time to answer your questions, that would be great – their responses will mean more if you learn about their books. And if those books sound like something your readers would enjoy, please consider adding them to your IndieBound wish-lists or GoodReads to-read lists.

Today’s Thursday Quick-Write is courtesy of guest author Pam Bachorz!  (Bio courtesy of Pam’s website & photo by Louis Torres)  Pam grew up in a small town in the Adirondack foothills, where she participated in every possible performance group and assiduously avoided any threat of athletic activity, unless it involved wearing sequined headpieces and treading water. With a little persuasion she will belt out tunes from “The Music Man” and “The Fantasticks”, but she knows better than to play cello in public anymore. Pam attended college in Boston and finally decided she was finished after earning four degrees: a BS in Journalism, a BA in Environmental Science, a Masters in Library Science and an MBA. Her mother is not happy that Pam’s degrees are stored under her bed.  Pam draws inspiration from the places she knows best: she wrote CANDOR while living in a Florida planned community, and set DROUGHT in the woods where she spent her summers as a child. She currently lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband and their son.

Ready to write?

Think of the place that is home for you. It might be where you live today, or perhaps where you grew up. Wherever you choose, be sure to pick a place that you know well. Take one minute to write down every detail about this place that you can think of.

Done with the first part? Now we’re going to twist it around. Take the rest of your time to write about three changes that would make this place utterly altered for you–changes that would mean it was no longer home.

What sort of changes? That’s entirely up to you. Perhaps you’ll change how home looks, or smells, or  where it’s located. Or maybe it’s the people there who make it home.

This prompt aims to help you draw rich details from familiar settings into your fiction, and to also see how they can be altered to be something entirely different for your stories. Think of it as taking a favorite pair of pants to the tailor and coming home with a pencil skirt!

Note from Kate: If you have a work-in-progress, you can also feel free to write this from your character’s point of view. It may teach you something about him or her that you didn’t know before.

Feel free to share a snippet (no more than a paragraph or two, please!) of what you wrote today in the comments if you’d like – and thanks for the support you’re giving one another by responding to those comments! You’re making this a really fun place to be a writer.

 

Got questions about writing?  Wednesday is Q and A Day at Teachers Write! Virtual Summer Writing Camp.  Authors are always welcome to drop by and answer questions (you never quite know who you’ll run into here!) But today’s official author volunteers are Mara Rockliff, Miriam Forster, and Erin Dealey. 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.

Guest authors – Even if today isn’t a day you specifically signed up to help out, feel free to answer any questions you’d like to talk about.  Just reply directly to the comment.

 

On Tuesdays & Thursdays during Teachers Write! Virtual Summer Writing Camp, I’ll be sharing quick-write prompts, designed to get you free-writing for a few minutes in response to a question or idea. These can be used as a simple free-write, brainstorming, warm-up activity OR as a way to deepen your thinking about a work-in-progress.   Got your keyboard or pencil ready?

Today’s writing prompt is courtesy of guest author Jeannine Atkins, whose most recent book is Borrowed Names: Poems about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C. J. Walker, Marie Curie and Their Daughters (Holt).  She teaches Children’s Literature at UMass-Amherst and a graduate course in writing for children at Simmons College. You can learn more on her website at http://www.Jeannineatkins.com

Advice from a writing teacher my freshman year in college has stuck with me all these years. She took a look at my labored prose and suggested I take a break to write some letters home describing life around me. My family was glad for some details, and I got the point that writing can be best when begun with a very particular audience in mind, rather than the vague judge I’d been used to writing papers for, backing up opinions and providing citations.

I suggest taking the main character of the piece you’re working on, or want to start, and write about her or him as if to your mom or a trusted friend. Or begin a poem or story as a letter to your main character, or if you’re already on your way, take a break to ask your character the sort of sincere, casual questions we often reserve for friends. These questions might include: Do you have a favorite place to be alone?  A favorite toy, piece of clothing, pet, tree, tool, or book?  Did someone encourage you to do what you love?  How? Did anyone try to stop you?  What did they do or say? What parts of your work are hard or boring?  What mistakes did you make?  What did you learn from them? Who or what do you love?

What starts as a letter may turn into more of a conversation, and if your character seems chatty, please, just let her speak, even when it seems off topic.

You might move into writing dialog between two characters. Or you can write a poem based on questions and responses, and edit out the questions if you want. Love That Dog by Sharon Creech is an excellent example of a narrative composed of a boy’s letters to his teacher, which makes it clear we don’t need her replies to get a sense of her character.

Thanks, Jeannine!

Lots of options for today’s quick-write. Ready? Get writing! And if you’d like, stop back later on to share a paragraph or two in comments.

Good morning!  Before we get to Mini-Lesson Monday, we have some winners to announce for our EYE OF THE STORM giveaway. Drum roll, please…

 …Cindy Hundley, Carol Ann Osler, Lisa Rosenman, Stacy Dillon, and Catherine Flynn!  Please email me (kmessner at kate messner dot com) with your name & mailing address, and Walker/Bloomsbury will send out your books. If you didn’t win (sorry!) but want to purchase EYE OF THE STORM, you can click here to order from your local independent bookstore.

In addition to our Monday Mini-Lesson, remember that author Jo Knowles offers a Monday Morning Warm-up on her blog to start each week, so be sure to visit her if you’d like another idea for free writing today.

Now for today’s topic…

Outlining: When, Why, & How…

  …with guest author Sally Wilkins.  Sally is a New Hampshire author and research lover who has written both nonfiction and early readers. Check out her books here.

We’ve probably also all heard that writers should create outlines for their work – even for their fiction! We know that we’re supposed to be able to state the theme and summarize the plot of our books in a single sentence. We’ve heard expressions such as “If you don’t have a map, you won’t know whether you’re headed toward your destination” or “without a recipe, you’re just throwing in the ingredients and hoping something edible emerges.”

 And most of us have probably felt the paralysis of trying to codify our freedom-loving creativity into that oh-so-structured outline format, and wondered, simultaneously, both “How?” and “Why?”

Some authors swear by their outlines, many others will flatly state that they don’t outline. By which they generally mean that they don’t do a Roman/Uppercase/Arabic outline of their book or article before they start writing. Scratch the surface of that declaration, and you’ll almost certainly discover some other way of planning and organizing their material – something that doesn’t look or feel like an outline, but works like one.

A writer’s outline may take the form of a calendar or a timeline. It may resemble a flowchart or, indeed, a road map (or a set of directions printed out from the internet). For a picture book, the storyboard is a very common form of outline. Most important, a writer’s outline is not a static document, created before the writer begins to write and followed, point by point until the end. A writer’s outline is a dynamic tool. In the end, the finished work will have internalized the structure of the outline, so that a student told to make an outline of the book (especially if it is non-fiction) will be able to do just that, distilling the contents into that old familiar format. But that’s the finished product!

So let’s go back to the beginning and see how the writer’s outline works.

Every piece begins with an idea. The idea may be a theme or a topic (assigned pieces often begin this way). It may be a character, an event or a landscape the writer wants to explore. The very first outlining that the writer does looks a lot like jotting down notes: capturing random thoughts as they occur, adding bits and pieces of information she already knows and reminders of pieces she’ll need to research or discover. The bits may include names and descriptions of characters, snatches of dialog, one-sentence summaries of important information (with references, we hope), even photographs torn from magazines. Sometimes this jotting is an intentional, structured effort (as it will be in a classroom). Often it happens over time, frequently while the writer is working on other things, resulting in a file folder full of notes scrawled on the backs of old drafts, assorted pieces of notebook paper and stationary, and yes, envelopes and napkins. When the writer is ready to begin the project, these random bits get grouped together – maybe by character, maybe in chronological order, maybe as stops along a journey. Although the groups may not be labeled with Roman numerals, they are, in fact, the headings of an outline. In a classroom setting, you could ask students to create that outline from the groups and bits and pieces of information – but you would need to make it clear that this is not a finished product, because it is very likely that there will be A’s without B’s and all kinds of other missing parts to these outlines. Give yourself that same instruction – this is a work-in-progress tool. Leave lots of blank space in each section, so you can include new material as it comes along.

This early outline not only helps you think about the structure of your writing, but highlights the places where the material is unbalanced. In a non-fiction piece, this will point out places where you need more research. In fiction, you’ll see gaps in your narrative, characters that need developing, plot breaks where you need to construct a transition. (An important observation for those who write picture books and short form pieces – the outline may in fact be longer than your manuscript!)

Timeline for a biography that was shorter than its outline!

This is the point where the “I never outline” and the “I must outline” writers generally diverge. You may choose to fill in those gaps right then, so that when you begin to write you do in fact know every episode in your plot or every concept in your article. Or you may trust the outline to remind you that you need to go back to them later, and begin writing with only that bare skeleton of an “outline” as a guide. (Many writers don’t look at it again until they complete the first draft.)

As you continue to accumulate material you’ll create another kind of outline (or your original skeleton will morph into one). Building the structure of the “chapter” outline goes along with the process of mapping your work in your mind. Will it move chronologically, geographically, or thematically? How will you transition from one section or chapter to the next? For this outline your headings may be possible opening sentences, bullets or titles. Under each heading you’ll note the scene, the characters, and the action you’ll be describing there. You’ll note what information you’ll be including, and may decide some things need to be introduced earlier or held until later to improve the flow or balance of the work. When you actually begin to write, you may find yourself writing the middle of the piece first, then the scene leading to the climax, circling around to fill in the blank places later. An outline allows you to do this: you don’t have to write the book or article in the order that your reader will read it.

Your outlining will continue as you begin to write – the outline and the manuscript will interact, each illuminating the other.

Always, the outline remains a tool, not a dictator. As you write, the work may turn in unexpected directions. New characters may show up and demand a part. A question from a critique group member may make you rethink your underlying assumptions. Write on! You can always go back and adjust the outline. Move the pieces around. Combine some, expand others, prune and remove parts that don’t work. Contrary to the oh-so-neat finished product, outlining is a messy business. (Some writers like to put each section on an index card or post-it note, so they can move them around more easily.)

When you have finished the first draft, do another outline – this one from the text. This outline will become a useful tool in your revisions, highlighting problem areas and enabling you to see the overall structure of your work. You can look more dispassionately at the outline/summary of each chapter and say “is there enough action here?” and “does this move the plot?” than you can when you’re reading the words you’ve lovingly set down on paper. With each successive draft, the outline will become tighter and cleaner. Eventually you will be able to label it “Chapter synopsis” and include it in your book proposal!

Assignment for this week:

If your project is at the idea stage, do a brain-dump, jotting down all the random bits and pieces. Begin to sort them into logical groups. Create a rough outline (or timeline, or map, or flow chart) from these groups.

If you already have a work in progress draft, create an outline from the text. Look for gaps and bulges in the outline. Think about (and jot down) how you can smooth and balance those problem areas in the next draft.

And a note from Kate…

If you don’t have one major project for the summer but you want to practice outlining and see how it all works, try creating an outline of one of your favorite books. When I was writing EYE OF THE STORM, I really wanted to make it fast-paced for kids who love action. Before I started writing my thriller, I sat down and studied the pacing in a book I admired for its pacing, THE HUNGER GAMES. I made a chapter-by-chapter outline and learned a lot about why we can’t put that book down. It’s a fun exercise!

And remember…outlines take all kinds of forms. Here’s another example from Sally, with story elements on a calendar.

And here’s a blog post I did on outlining/planning a while back called, “Real Authors Don’t Plan…Or do they? An open letter to Tyler.”  It shows all the different kinds of planning & outlining I did for my upcoming mystery, CAPTURE THE FLAG.

Outlines are kind of tricky to share in comments, but feel free to ask any questions you have in the comments for this post, or stop back and let us know how it goes!

Congratulations! You’ve survived your first week of virtual summer writing camp. That wasn’t so scary, was it?

Friday Writing Happy Hour is a chance to relax and share conversation about our progress, goals, accomplishments, and whatever else is on your mind. Let me know how you think it’s going so far.  And if you’d like feedback on a snippet of writing you did this week, 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.

Thanks to my editor Mary Kate Castellani at Walker/Bloomsbury, we’re also going to give out some presents today.  When I told Mary Kate about writing camp and about all of you, she offered to donate five hardcover copies of my science thriller EYE OF THE STORM as a giveaway for our first Friday celebration.

So…if you wrote this week, just leave any sort of comment at all on this post, and you’ll be entered to win EYE OF THE STORM.  It’s recommended for kids in grades 4-8, and you can read more about it here.

You have until 11pm EST on Saturday to enter. I’ll do a random drawing & announce FIVE winners Monday morning.

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

First of all today, a HUGE thank you to the authors who popped in to answer questions for our Wednesday Q&A day. There is some mighty useful information in the comments here, so you may want to bookmark it for later, too. And teacher/librarian friends, please do me a favor?  Take a few minutes to look up all those authors who made time to answer your questions yesterday – their responses will mean more if you learn about their books. And if those books sound like something your readers would enjoy, please consider adding them to your IndieBound wish-lists or GoodReads to-read lists.

Okay…ready to write? Today’s Thursday Quick-Write is courtesy of guest-author Margo Sorenson!

A student walks into the library/media center at lunchtime.  What is she/he thinking?  Worried about?  Dreading?  Hoping or wishing for? What are the risks/stakes for him/her? Show us in a paragraph or two.

Note from Kate:Some possible formats for this quick-write:

• A journal entry from that character, written later on
• A letter from that character to his or her best friend
• A letter from that character to his or her worst enemy
• A poem in the character’s voice
• A monologue in the character’s voice
• A conversation in dialogue between the character and a friend/the librarian/an enemy

For those of you in the middle of a work-in-progress, try this with your main character, or better yet, a secondary character you want to develop more fully.  Imagine him or her walking into a room and feeling uncomfortable and awkward. Why? You can write this from a third person perspective, from the focus character’s point of view, or for a twist, try writing from the point of view of a disinterested observer in the room — someone who has no idea who the person is or what’s going on. What would he or she observe in terms of mannerisms and body language?

Feel free to share a paragraph from your Thursday Quick-Write in the comments later on if you’d like!