Category: TeachersWrite

It’s time for your Thursday Quick-Write with guest author Erin Dealey. Erin writes board books, picture books, mg, YA–and raps.  : ) Her picture book, DECK THE WALLS (Sleeping Bear Press), a kid’s-eye view of holiday dinners, will release Sept. 21st. Erin is an English/ theater teacher, Area 3 Writing Project presenter (UCDavis), and heads the theater department at Sugarloaf Fine Arts Camp each summer. Former co-Regional Advisor for SCBWI CA North/Central, Erin has presented at conferences, reading association PDIs, and LOVES school visits.  Today, she joins us to talk about…

Voice

Good Morning! Since it’s almost Back-to-School for all, I thought it would be a good time to share a lesson I have used in my classes–at many grade levels–so you can take it back with you. (Warning–it’s a bit longer than a “Mini” lesson–but it has truly resonated with my students.)

If you’ve been doing the quick-writes (and posting them) and/or keeping a Writer’s Notebook, as Kate suggested in June, chances are your own voice has evolved this summer.  In fact, take a look at your first entries  & posts and compare them to recent ones. (Go ahead–I’ll wait. Just don’t forget to come back…)

Notice any differences between your earlier entries and now? (Other than the luxurious feeling that summer stretched endlessly before you.) When I participated in my first Writer’s Project summer seminar, I remember making sure my writing was grammatically correct. After all, I taught English, right? The result was a textbook tone that had me zoning off by the end of the opening paragraph, a stark contrast to the plays and skits I’d written for my drama students.

Which brings us to voice.

I’ve heard many editors say voice is what hooks the reader. Even non-fiction needs an engaging voice. Some editors say you can teach form and plot, but you can’t teach voice. I disagree. The breakthrough for me came when I realized a big part of teaching theater is voice. Voice comes from learning who you are, and not being afraid to share that honesty with others. As you’ve grown more comfortable with your writing this summer, your own voice has emerged or grown stronger. However–as you’ve also experienced this summer, this sharing takes courage, even in this supportive community of TeachersWrite!

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
—Allen Ginsberg

If your students are like mine, voice takes tremendous courage. It emerges first in journals and quick-writes, and I always make a point to comment when a student’s voice shows up on the page. Like this acrostic I got from Darin A. , one of my seniors who bristled at any assignment from an authority figure…

Darin

Ain’t

Really

Into

No

Acrostics.

The day I used it as an excellent example of voice, Darin’s writing took off. Voice freed him to see writing and words as power–not just a means to complete his assignment.

But it’s scary. Even for adults.

When my writing pal, debut author Scott Blagden wrote the first drafts of his YA novel, DEAR LIFE YOU SUCK, he was afraid publishers would reject it because of the profanity used by his main character, Cricket, so Blagden tried to make his character’s voice softer.

“I toned down a lot of the language, the swear words,” Scott explains; “I toned down some of the jokes and this and that, and then I read the whole book and I had lost the character. I had lost the voice.”

Voice and vocabulary, sentence structure & pace (long sentences or short choppy ones &/or fragments) grow from your character–or the character of your narrator.

One way to release student voices is by warming up with a stream-of-consciousness format I call  Clearing out the Cobwebs. (The following is what I tell my students. Try it!)

Clearing the Cobwebs.

When I say “Go”,

write 3 words

per line (stream

of consciousness—not

laundry or grocery list…)

until your are

told to stop. 

(usually 3-5 minutes)

If your mind

is blank, start

with I don’t

know what to

write, or a

line from your

favorite song.  If

you get stuck

on a word,

DON’T STOP WRITING

Write your last

word word word

over and over

until something clicks.

Don’t think—WRITE !

 

The cool thing about this Cobweb pre-write exercise is that students think it’s so ridiculous, they let go of trying to write, and their authentic voice emerges.

Another way to approach voice is to refer to it as eavesdropping.  Creating the voice of a character is easier if you think of it like acting in the theater:  Being someone else for a while. If you ask my students, they’ll probably tell you my Best Rule Ever is:  Stop thinking–and listen.

In DEAR LIFE, Blagden learned to listen, by “getting into character,” along the same lines as actors do. “When I would sit down at the computer,” he says, “I would get into character, and  start writing in his voice. I wasn’t just writing about the character, I was [the] character.”

The voice of my latest picture book, DECK THE WALLS, came easily since I originally wrote it for my high school theater students to perform at a holiday assembly, and I could hear their voices.

Read the first 2 pages of any of the following books aloud and LISTEN to each voice. {Some of the books are on your summer Suggested Reading list. If you don’t have copies of these yet, you can find their first pages on Amazon –after which I bet you’ll want to read the whole book!}

Note that it’s not just the tone of the reader that distinguishes each voice. Patterns, pace, word choice, pet phrases, and content/topics make each voice different.  Each first page is like meeting a different person. What makes each voice stand out?

First person:

The Adventures of  Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (Remember when we used to call “voice” = “writing in the vernacular” ?)

Locomotion, Jacqueline Woodson http://www.jacquelinewoodson.com/

The One and Only Ivan, Katherine Applegate http://theoneandonlyivan.com/

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: the Lightening Thief , Rick Riordan http://www.rickriordan.com/home.aspx

Geronimo Stilton, The Curse of the Cheese Pyramid  http://geronimostilton.com/portal/US/en/home/

Pickle, Kim Baker  http://www.kimberlycbaker.com/KCB/Home.html

Pull of Gravity, Gae Polisner  http://gaepolisner.com/html/ya.html

Dear Life You Suck, Scott Blagden http://scottblagden.com/

How does the tone of the YA’s differ from the middle grades novels above? What tips you off to the age of the protagonist/narrator?

Third person:

Hide and Seek, Kate Messner,  https://katemessner.com/hide-and-seek/  How does the narrator set the tone? How does the grandmother’s voice (especially pg. 2) differ from the narrator?

Capture the Flag,  Kate Messner https://katemessner.com/capture-the-flag/

“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”
—Jack Kerouac

Now, do some eavesdropping of your own….

This lesson actually evolved when my husband asked why I have such a collection of “rusty, dusty” antiques. Now I use these treasures as writing prompts. : )

VOICES

In advance: select an object –anything will do–an antique, a child’s toy, family memento, etc.

Variation for your classroom: If you’re introducing a book or even a history unit to your class, gather some objects that might represent that story or era. I once used a few river rocks (the Acropolis) and my husband’s “Greek” sandals to intro a mythology unit.

What I tell my students: Each object, like a seashell which whispers of the ocean’s roar, has a unique story to tell.  All you have to do is eavesdrop, and write it down.

The stories have been left on the object by all who have come in contact with it:  The person who made it, the one who sold it, the one who purchased it, or trades for it, or received it as a gift;  the person who tossed it in the attic,  and the one who found it again… All of these people have left their stories for you to find.

No two individuals will hear the same story, because the object knows which one you want to hear.

DON’T  THINK !!! (Students love this rule.)  LISTEN !!!!!

(And write down what you hear…)

I can’t wait to read what you’ve HEARD!

Note from Kate: Me too! So please share a sample of today’s writing in the comments if you’d like.

 

Every once in a while, I promised we’d have a surprise guest, and today is one of those days. Ammi-Joan Paquette is here to talk about one of my favorite genres, science fiction! 

Writing Science Fiction: It’s All About the Research

By A. J. Paquette

 I am known for reading widely in all kinds of genres, but one that I always come back to—and consistently find a vast enjoyment in—is science fiction. However, I have recently come to learn in an entirely new way that there is a huge difference between reading science fiction and writing it.

On some level of course this is obvious; and it’s also true of any book, any genre. But I think in my case, when I began writing my YA science fiction novel PARADOX, I didn’t fully realize just how science intensive it would end up being. The story seed began in my mind with the main character, Ana, who awoke confined in a small room without any memories or knowledge of who or where she was. As the plot came together and the backstory unfolded, I quickly determined that the small space was the inside of a rocket; that Ana was on a far-off, habitable planet; and that she had an unknown mission to accomplish and a limited time to do so.

All well and good. The story begins, and the plot grows out from there. All stories tend to do this, and I’m certainly no stranger to the accompanying research process. My first novel, NOWHERE GIRL, was set in Thailand, a country I’ve visited several times but for which I still had to do vast amounts of research into details such as motorcycle taxis, boat rides along the chao phraya river, best travel routes from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, and much more.

But when I began delving into PARADOX, I found that there were new levels of research needed. Despite my having needed to brush up on many aspects of everyday life in modern Thailand, when writing NOWHERE GIRL I had a certain foundation to draw from: I had been to Thailand. I had a basic sense of the culture and country. On the planet Paradox, however, I had never set foot. I haven’t traveled by rocket ship. I have never analyzed contagious diseases or personally watched someone near me die a cripplingly horrible death.

Confession time: At first, I looked for shortcuts. I’m used to writing first, researching second. I return to my first drafts armed with facts and figures and proceed to layer in details, shifting the plot around any factual roadblocks that require the story to move in a different direction. (In NOWHERE GIRL, the downtown Bangkok street where Luchi first met up with a friend turned out to be in the red light district! Oops. But thankfully, easy to change once spotted.) With PARADOX, as my editor gently pointed out to me, I needed to do my research first. I needed to know all there was to know about planet rotation in a binary solar system. I had to chart out the symptoms of how my disease works, how it is spread, and how it might be cured. And this kind of research—at least for this particular writer—did not come easy.

I spent hours online. I pored over books from as many libraries as I could access. I looked up experts and phoned them. I was lucky enough to have several family members and friends with specialties in the areas my book required, and I shamelessly begged their expertise, which they were all happy to share. Armed with this information, I wrote scientific memos. I composed newspaper articles. I drew diagrams of how the suns would rise and set across the planet Paradox.

It wasn’t always fun. I distinctly remember telling a friend that if I ever decided to write another science fiction book in the future, to please punch me in the face. But looking at it now in hindsight, there is something immensely satisfying about sinking so deeply into a project, about being constrained by the boundaries of science—even if it’s science-future, with a healthy dose of possibility tossed in for good measure.

It’s important that I add a caveat here: Despite my best efforts at research and fact-finding, I am not by any stretch of the imagination a scientist. And while I did have several scientist friends pore over the various elements and backdrops, and while my goal and hope was to get it as scientifically accurate (within its futuristic sphere) as possible, I’m fully aware of my own limitations in that area.

As writers, all we can do is our best in any area; whether I succeeded in my goal is up to my readers. At best, my hope is that I’ve crafted a world that is rich in detail and scientific potential. At best, I hope I’ve created memorable characters in a story that will draw in young readers and maybe excite their own scientific curiosity. At worst… well, if nothing else, I hope I’ve written a rip-roaring good story, so that readers will be too busy flipping the pages to notice any of the writerly lacks that must exist within any story.

In the end, all we can do is write the best book we can, then step back and let the readers take over.

Good morning! It’s time for your Thursday Quick-Write, and we have a double dose for you today.

First… here’s guest author Margo Sorenson! With her latest middle grade/tween novel TIME OF HONOR (MuseItUp Publishing) featuring a prep school debater catapulted into the middle ages to prevent a murder, Margo Sorenson continues to draw on her life’s experiences to write her twenty-eight books for young readers.  A Minnesota Book Award Finalist in YA Fiction and Milken National Educator Award recipient, Margo can be found at www.margosorenson.com, on Twitter as @ipapaverison, and on http://pinterest.com/margosorenson/  Her prompt for us today might generate some spooky stories…

You come into a room and on the desk is a single slip of paper. It reads:  “Somebody knows.”

What is the room – a classroom – a jail cell – a hotel room in Vegas – the office in the dairy farm – a tween’s bedroom —  or? What kind of paper is it written on?  Is it handwritten or typed?  Is there blood on it?  Greasy popcorn stains?  Why are you worried?  Or, why are you giggling?  If you’re working on a WIP, how does this question figure in to what you’re writing?  What character knows something the others don’t?  What does one character wish other characters knew?  Have fun and don’t stop writing – let those fingers fly – it’s Quick Write!

Quick-Write option #2 comes from guest author Nancy Castaldo, who loves books and science. Her writing honors include an American Bookseller Pick of the Lists, a Smithsonian Notable Book For Children, a NSTA Recommended title and a Junior Library Guild Selection. In addition to these accolades, Nancy was honored to be the recipient of the 2007 New York State Outdoor Education Association’s Art and Literature Award for her body of work.

 

I just finished spending the week with a group of 5-7-year-olds. I led them on a weeklong imaginary Mediterranean cruise to Italy, Turkey and Greece. We discovered new foods, words and mostly, lots of art. It was wonderful to watch them after lunch on the playground pretending to sail into Venice to eat pizza and gelato.

I find the summer is a perfect time to dream about these types of new adventures, whether it be a cruise to a faraway land or exploring a nearby town.  Vacation dreams can tell you a lot about a person.  Are they daring?  Adventurous?  Meditative?  

For today’s prompt, write about the place your main character would most want to visit and why. What are they looking for there? What do they want to see? Is it some place exotic or right around the corner?

You might want to incorporate their travels into your writing, or it might just give you more insight into their character.

Got ideas to share! Fire away in the comments!

Happy Tuesday!  Guest author Laurel Snyder joins us with today’s quick-write.

Laurel is the author of many books for kids, including novels like Bigger than a Bread Box and Any Which Wall, and picture books like Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted To Be Kosher.  Her next novel, Seven Stories Up, will be out in January. Laurel lives in Atlanta, GA and online at http://laurelsnyder.com, and she spends way way way too much time on Twitter:  @laurelsnyder

 

One of my very favorite writing prompts is something I learned a long time ago, from my poetry teacher in college.

Essentially, the goal is to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone. To include things in your work you might not otherwise include.

For poets (especially young poets), this is a critical skill.  Because they often have a very formatted sense of what a poem should be about.

A young poet (or the young poet I was, at any rate) typically thinks poems are about the natural world. They love birds, the sky, rivers, mountains, lakes, seasons times of day or night, etc.  They also love to write about FEELINGS. Darkness. Sadness. Blah blah blah.  Not to mention old places in Europe and broken American landscapes and junk like that.

Of course, poems can be about ANYTHING.  But “anything” doesn’t always feel natural to a young poet.  So the assignment is this:

Make a list of things you’re unlikely to include in a poem. Categories of things!

Like mine might be…

Electrical appliances

Scientists

Brand names for cereals

Dead presidents

Types of cars

Diseases

Mass murderers

Comic book characters

Something in quotes

Cuss words

Religions not your own

Car part

State capitals

Words with more than 4 syllables

Board games

Video games

Things you can find at IKEA

Names of bad hair bands

Scientific names of mushrooms

Sports teams

Reference to WWI

Now, when you’re using this for poetry, the goal is to get a certain number of the categories into the poem.  Maybe you’d require yourself to use 5 or 10 of these things in a poem.

Of course, when you revise, you can always do what you like.  But even if you take the details out later, you will have pushed the writing into a new place.  So let’s say you set out to write a very typical poem like,

As the

sparrow

 falls

through

the gray

sky

above

the river

I can’t help

But think

of you.

Remember?

That night

we walked

The streets

Till dawn.

I closed

My eyes.

To keep

Myself

From

Morning.

Now, that poem has been written a jillion times by a jillion college students, pretty much.  But let’s add some of the details from my list, and see what happens.

As the sparrow

Falls through the gray Albany

Sky above me, I can’t help

But think of leprosy.

 

Why is that?

I guess they both remind me

of you, honey. 

 

Remember that night

We drove your sister’s Corolla

too fast, and the

tailpipe fell off?

 

I do. The Yankees

Were on the radio. They had just won.

No surprise there.

 

But you said you were leaving me.

“Why?” I asked.

“You look too much

Like Charles Manson,” you told me.

 

I closed my eyes. And tried

to remember If we were out of

Captain Crunch.  Or not.

**

Now, this is NO GREAT POEM. But do you see what the items from the list did to the work? They demanded specificity.  They demanded that I make a more real relationship for these two characters.  They required me to make sense of how incongruous the details themselves were.

If I asked someone else to put Albany, Leprosy, Dodge Dart, Yankees, Tailpipe, Captain Crunch, and Charles Manson in a poem they’d have to make sense too, but they’d make a different sense.

This exercise  a lot of fun to try, and especially good as a trick to get yourself out of feeling stuck. If you’re bored with something you’re writing, or you feel blocked.  And it doesn’t just work with poetry, obviously. You can do this with a chapter, or you can do this with an outline. Challenge yourself to work details or moments you wouldn’t typically write into an outline, and see what that does to the shape of the work.  You can keep a running list on your desk or cork board.  Call it “Things I’m not likely to put in a book.”

For picture books, it’s a wonderful way to alter the tone of your work.  And it can be a neat way to add vocabulary you don’t always find in picture books.  New words for kids to learn.

Anyone feel like trying to write a paragraph using three or more of my examples? Anyone have details to add to our list?

Feel free to share all those thoughts, ideas, and (of course!) poems in the comments!

 

Good morning, everyone! We’re down to the last two weeks of Teachers Write, and I know we’ve lost some folks to school already. But I hope those of you who are still here will hang in there and keep sharing your amazing work.

Our guest author today is Lynda Mullaly Hunt, the author of middle-grade novel, ONE FOR THE MURPHYS (Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin), winner of The Tassy Walden Award: New Voices in Children’s Literature, an ABA New Voices Pick, and an Editor’s Choice Book with Scholastic Book Clubs. Lynda has also directed the SCBWI-NE Whispering Pines Retreat for eight years and is a former teacher and Scenario Writing coach. Her second novel, ALPHABET SOUP, will be released in spring, 2015. Lynda lives with her husband, two kids, impetuous beagle and beagle-loathing cat. Today, Lynda’s discussing…

The Courage to Model Courage

As a writer, I learn things about myself that I didn’t know as I create stories. Something will leak from my fingers onto the keyboard and I’ll pause and think, I know where that comes from. These connections can create a myriad of emotions.

As writers, we are vulnerable. We have to be. Like the way a swimmer must get wet. But, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we only mine from the saddest facets of ourselves. It may mean that we are trying to be funny while wondering if our readers will laugh or scrunch their eyebrows up in confusion. It may mean that we are writing a mystery and working to get authentic red herrings in place. It may mean that we struggle for word choice, trying to drill into a universal human experience so that our readers feel emotion.

The thing is, no matter what the challenge, it’s often hard to be judged and writing for others is an open invitation to just that.

I’ve recently asked a few teacher friends if they’d share their own writing with students and most looked at me like I’d stuck them with a pin. But, I understand. It’s scary.

So, as teachers and writers and humans, how do we get past this? How do we help ourselves—and our students—move past the fear of asking the world, “What do you think?” and being ready for the answer.

As a third grade teacher prepping kids for the writing sample of The Fourth Grade Mastery Test, we did a lot of writing. A lot.

And I saw this fear and worry around writing every year. Here are some things I did to try to help my students learn to let go and write without worry. Without fear. Because this is when a writer often discovers her own voice.

• I told my students that something “set in paper” is not “set in stone.” Not everything you write will be great – and that’s okay. Even as a published author, I will often write pages of stuff I know I won’t keep in order to get that one sentence that ends up being the seed for a chapter of its own. So, just write! Push through the times you feel your writing is not quite what you’d hope for. Believe in your ability to shock and surprise yourself.

• During writing times, I’d sit at a student desk (I had an extra for this purpose) and write with the kids. I never forced anyone to share but I always did and they looked forward to it. Do you know why? Because I was NOT a good writer at that time. Seriously. I really wasn’t. But do you know what kids admire even more than good writing?

Honesty and bravery.

• I’d buy notebooks and/or journals (dollar store has them) and give them to the kids with a message: “These are for you. They are for fun to just write whatever you like. I will never correct them. I will never grade them. If you turn them in to share your writing with me, I will only tell you about the things I love about it.”

The kids wrote  in these during that getting ready morning time (I’d have a suggested topic on the board each morning but the kids could write about anything they chose). They were also free to write in them when their work was done. Sometimes, I would converse with kids through them; a lot of great things came out of these journals besides just writing. Removing the fear of negative judgment really opened the kids up, so the amount of writing in them steadily grew throughout the year. And why not? How many of us would like a deal like this?

• I would often go home at night and write terrible stories. Deadly boring. Off topic. Illogically ordered. If it wasn’t truly bad, I’d start again. I’d make a point to make the same kinds of mistakes that I knew the class needed to recognize in their own writing. Then I’d give out copies to my students along with red pens and say, “Fail me if you’d like, but you better explain why.” Even I was shocked at how deep these kids dug to fail the teacher – a lot of kids dream of this, don’t they?

It got to a point I would show up, warm copies in hand, and tell them, “Okay. This is it. Today I’ve got it. This is going to be the one that convinces you that I’m a fantastic writer.” Of course it was terrible – because it was meant to be. And they would let me know with arms flailing, faces on desks, and sympathetic shakes of their heads. We all had good laughs over it. They learned a lot about critiquing on these writing adventures but no doubt that they learned that feedback on writing is not personal. Not something to be afraid of. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough.

• Finally, my message for them—and my message for you—is that you should not compare your writing to anyone else’s. You can’t write what they write and they can’t write what you write. A voice is like a fingerprint and unique to each person. As teachers, we must teach the hows of writing. The nuts and bolts. This way, our kids have the tools to tackle the task. But the actual writing? That is about having something to say. It’s about the being human part.

And the being human part – well, I’ve always felt like that’s the very best part of teaching as well.

Today’s assignment: Reflect on Lynda’s thoughts as they relate to your teaching life, and/or head on over to Jo’s blog to participate in the Monday Morning Warm-Up!  Share your thoughts in the comments if you’d like – let us know you’re still here!

Good morning! Ready to think like a dog for today’s quick write?

Our guest author is Dayna Lorentz, the author of the Dogs of the Drowned City series (Scholastic) and the No Safety in Numbers trilogy (Dial/Kathy Dawson Books). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Bennington College. A former attorney, Dayna is now a full-time writer and lives with her husband, two kids, and dogs in Vermont. If you ask nicely, she will show you the proper way to eat a cupcake. Visit her at www.daynalorentz.com. Check out the thrilling book trailer for No Safety at NoSafetyinNumbersBooks.com.

Writing from a Dog’s-Eye-View of the World

 My first series, Dogs of the Drowned City (Scholastic 2012), is an animal fantasy adventure series for middle grade readers, and is told from the point of view of Shep, a German shepherd dog. The biggest challenge I faced in writing this series was trying to capture how Shep—as opposed to a human (a/k/a me)—perceives the world. I wanted to create for readers the world of the story as Shep and my other dog characters experienced it. To do this, I focused on three things.

First, I tried to describe everything using a dog’s primary senses: smell and sound, then sight. This is really hard for a sight-dependent human like me! It means talking about what the grass smells like and how it whispers as it moves in the wind before talking about the fact that it’s green.

Second, I had to think about the human world from a dog’s point of view. This meant figuring out what would most interest a dog in the human world. I guessed smelly things like socks and leftovers. I also had to think about how a dog might describe human things that are totally alien to them, like vacuum cleaners. (During school visits, I ask kids to come up with their own descriptions for a vacuum cleaner. Shep calls them “floor suckers.”)

Finally, I changed the language I used in the book to reflect how I thought a dog would talk. I made up dog idioms and sayings, and tried to put a doggy spin on my descriptions, such as describing daybreak as “the tails of dawn wagging in the sky.”

These steps forced me to get out of my own, limited point of view and put myself into the limited point of view of another person/dog, an exercise that can be helpful even if you’re not writing from the viewpoint of a different species. I found that I had to do similar, though perhaps not as extreme, exercises when writing my YA trilogy, No Safety in Numbers (Dial 2012): How would this particular character describe the smell of the food court at the mall? What things would she notice that maybe I wouldn’t?

So, getting to the writing prompt: I’m going to give you two! If you’d like to take a break from your work-in-progress and think like a dog for a little while, try this out:

The first Dogs of the Drowned City book, The Storm, is about a pack of pets trying to survive a super storm that wipes out Miami. A lot of my research, therefore, focused on Hurricane Katrina and the thousands of pets left stranded in the city when people were evacuated and told they could not bring their furry family members with them. This picture is one of the many I found of those Katrina Dogs.

Write a scene from the point of view of one of the dogs pictured above. Focus on making the scene as doggy as possible. Try employing these tricks:

• Describe things smell first, then sight
• Though a dog’s eyesight is far better than a human’s, a dog sees in a limited palate of colors, mostly yellow or blue, so these dogs would not, for example, talk about the bright red sedan submerged across the street from them.
• As a dog, you have four paws — use them!
• Dogs can communicate in many different ways. They bark and growl, but also use their ears, tails, and stance to signal how they’re feeling.

If you’re deeply submerged in your work-in-progress and don’t want to surface, try taking a scene, maybe the scene you’re working on, and list all the ways in which you would describe and talk about your surroundings. Then make a separate list for how your character would describe and talk about those same things. How are they the same? Should they be the same, or have you missed an opportunity to move the story further from yourself and into the space of your character? Think about the metaphors you’re using—are they yours or the character’s? One of my characters in No Safety is VERY different from me. With him, I wrote his chapters, then went back and edited all the sentences to make them less complex, and took out all the metaphorical language because that just wasn’t him—it was me talking about him and his situation, but not really being him in that situation.

Happy writing!  As always, feel free to share a few lines of today’s writing in the comments if you’d like!

Guest author Shutta Crum returns today with a writing prompt designed to follow up on yesterday’s mini-lesson, “Cornering Your Characters.”

If you read the mini-lesson from yesterday’s post you know that I’m a believer of getting your characters into jams and firmly eliminating “easy out” alternative choices along the way—so that your character(s) must choose the path you want him/her/them upon. Too often, we writers—once we know where we want the story to end up—take off head-long in that direction getting our characters into all kinds of problematic situations and forgetting the important second half of this technique. We also have to block off the other paths—paths that reasonable people (characters) might take, given the circumstances of the moment.  By eliminating these your reader is much more likely to suspend any disbelief and travel along happily for the ride . . .  er, read.

The stop and block:

1. Choose two characters you are working with, and a setting.  Or you can simply pick three words from the dictionary, at least one pertaining to a character and one to a setting. (Randomly, I chose:  cinema, furrier, and incurable.)
2. Do a 5 minute “automatic” write. No rewriting or editing. Write whatever comes to mind. Don’t wrap up the scene.
3. Stop at a point where the primary of your two characters is about to do something important.  (My incurably insane/romantic furrier has just walked into a cinema with a mink stole he made for the woman of his dreams. He notices she is attending the movie with another man. I stop.)
4. List 4 or 5 actions your character could take at this point—reasonable or crazy.
5. Choose one of the more unlikely actions as the one you want your character to do.
6. Choose another that is a very reasonable action.
7. Now start writing again with the intention of making your character’s crazy choice seem logical at the moment and, more importantly, making the reasonable choice seem illogical. (My choices:  the furrier could realize she is not for him and walk away, walk away and decided to get his revenge later, accost the man/woman, drape his stole around the woman and try to pull her into his arms, or pull a pistol from beneath the mink stole. Hmm . . . the reasonable choices are to walk away—even if he’s insane. He could get revenge another day, if he wants. So I need to block those choices. Perhaps the asylum attendants are looking for him and they are just outside the entrance? OK. So I write a line or two indicating why he can’t walk away . . . now I can write on. “ Slowly he . . .” )
8. Repeat this stopping, listing and blocking periodically as you work on your manuscripts to make sure you’ve tied up all the loose ends. Then your readers won’t complain, “But wait! Why didn’t he just . . . ?”

 Share a few lines of what you worked on in the comments today if you’d like!

Good morning, everyone! I’m traveling this week & won’t be around to comment, but we have some great guest authors for Q and A Wednesday today, including Shutta Crum, Sarah Albee, Danette Haworth, and Dayna Lorentz!

Got a question you’d like to ask one of these friendly writers?

Teachers & librarians – Feel free to ask your questions in the comments.  It’s fine to ask a general question or to direct one directly to a specific guest author. Our 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.

Good morning! How was everybody’s weekend? Great, I hope!

Today’s mini-lesson is from guest author Shutta Crum, who writes picture books, novels and poetry. She is also a storyteller, a public speaker and a librarian. Her articles about writing have appeared in many professional journals. Her book, THUNDER-BOMER! (Clarion) was an Amer. Library Assoc. and a Smithsonian Magazine “Notable Book.”  MINE! (Albert A. Knopf) was listed in the New York Times as one of the best board books of the year. Her newest book, DOZENS OF COUSINS (Clarion) came out in July, to glowing reviews.

 CORNERING YOUR CHARACTERS

Have you ever read one of those books where all along you’re wondering why didn’t the main character just  . . . call the police, tell a parent (take whatever action, any reasonable person would) and then he/she would not be in this predicament? I can tell you that one of John Grisham’s books annoyed me greatly that way. (I won’t tell you which title, in case it is one you like.) I simply could not suspend my disbelief . . . I kept wondering why doesn’t the kid just tell everybody and then the bad guys wouldn’t have been solely after him to shut him up.

When an author doesn’t take care of these kinds of loose ends he/she risks losing a reader. A character—especially a main character—must consider and act as any rational person would unless there is a compelling reason not to do the sensible thing.

If you really want to put pressure on your protagonist, and pump up the action, you need to corner your “prey”—your main character (MC). After all, part of creating plot is putting the hurt on your characters. The way to do this is that with every major cause and effect link in your plot, you need to be sure to securely close any escape routes. As you do this, you are narrowing the choices of your MC until your MC must make the hard decision you’ve wanted him/her to make all along. Then you’ll have your reader glued to the page.

Let me give you examples from two of my own works. In my teen novel, SPITTING IMAGE, (Clarion), a young girl wants to find out who her father is, and her mother won’t talk about him. As it turns out, her mother had been raped. Now, no mother who truly loves her child is going to willingly tell the truth about that. So I had to take away the mother’s options and corner her in such a way that she had no choice but to tell her daughter the truth. If she hadn’t, the one person in town who knew the truth would have spilled the beans in a most unkind way.  Doing this made for a much stronger, and well-reviewed book, that made a number of prestigious lists.

In my younger fantasy novel, THOMAS AND THE DRAGON QUEEN (Knopf), the whole plot is a simple one of elimination. Thomas starts out on his quest with three things to help him (the traditional armor, sword, and steed). Along the way he gives away, loses, or has stolen from him all the items—even most of his clothes. All of his options as he prepares to do battle with the dragon queen have been slowly stripped away. When he does meet her, he is barefoot and clad in a pair of ragged trousers. There is only one thing he can do—it’s a dangerous gamble, and it is precisely what I wanted him to do. He does it, because it is his only remaining choice.

In each novel I write, and in many of my picture books, I have to determine what the “easy outs” are along the way. Then I write scenes that eliminate each alternative “logical” action. Only then am I able to bring both my MC and my reader to the point where I want them. By using this thinking, I am able to more easily determine what my scenes should be. If a scene does not contribute to the eliminating of alternatives in the furtherance of the plot, then it has to be there for another very good reason (such as character development), or it gets cut.

What I recommend is to stop periodically and ask what are the possible options for my character(s) at this precise point in the story? (You should do this at least four to six times. More is better.)  List the options from the most to the least likely; including the step you want your MC, or other major character, to take. And then make sure you have written scenes that block any other reasonable choice from being made. After all, this process of constantly evaluating our situation and making decisions by eliminating choices is something we humans do naturally. You need to do it on behalf of your characters.  (See tomorrow’s Quick Write for an exercise to practice this technique of stopping and blocking.)

In the comments today, feel free to list options for your character – or simply reflect on today’s mini-lesson!

 

 

 

 

 

Good morning! Our guest author for today’s quick-write is the lovely & talented Anne Marie Pace!

Anne Marie  is the author of VAMPIRINA BALLERINA and its just-released sequel, VAMPIRINA BALLERINA HOSTS A SLEEPOVER, both illustrated by LeUyen Pham and published by Disney-Hyperion.  She has also written A TEACHER FOR BEAR and NEVER EVER TALK TO STRANGERS for Scholastic Book Clubs.  You can find a wonderful teachers’ guide for VAMPIRINA BALLERINA at Anne Marie’s website, http://www.annemariepace.com.

You’ll have to forgive me if I seem dreamy; as I write this, I’m physically at home, jotting notes down between driving kids to activities and doing laundry, but my head and heart are still walking along the shore of Folly Beach, South Carolina, searching for a perfect shell.  For a variety of reasons, it was our first family vacation in four years.  My vacation week has inspired this quick-write exercise for you today.

Choose a character, either one from your work-in-progress or a character you create just for this exercise.  Don’t feel you need to answer these questions one at a time.  Read them through with this character in mind, and then write something in response:  a letter, a poem, a journal entry, a descriptive paragraph–whatever flows.

First: Has this character ever gone on a vacation?  If your character is from the type of family that takes yearly trips, what was the favorite?  Why?  Does she go on the same trip every year?  Who is there?  What does she like to do there?  Is it boring or comforting to go to the same place?  How does she feel if that trip changes?  Or is it a different trip every year?  If so, how does she feel about changing it up all the time?  Does she like exploring new places or does she regret being unable to return?

At the other end of the spectrum, perhaps your character has never been on vacation.  Why has she been unable to vacation?  Is it financial or is there another reason?  How far has she been from home?  Are there any events she looks forward to during summer?  Does she have friends who are able to vacation with their families? Is she jealous?  Is she happy for them?  Would she be scared to leave home?  Does she have a dream place to vacation?  Is there something she could do to make a vacation possible (win a contest, win the lottery, convince a neighbor or friend to do something that relieves parental stress)?

Note:  These questions are somewhat slanted towards contemporary fiction.  If you are writing in another genre, feel free to replace “vacation” (in our contemporary sense) with “travel.”  If the setting of your story is a world you have built, how does that world deal with a desire to travel and/or rest?  How does your character feel about those societal customs or expectations

Now:  Think about what you have discovered about your character.  What part of that person is illuminated? Is there a parallel between your character’s experiences on vacation and what she is facing today? How might this revelation develop or connect to your plans for your work?