I am working on Halloween costumes for my granddaughters (fairy dresses with “ice cream cone hats,” as ordered).  As I was tweaking the pattern for the dresses, I realized how similar my process is in both sewing and writing.

When I was a beginning seamstress, I did exactly what the pattern directions told me.  Now, the balance of power has subtly shifted.  I have a picture in my mind of what I want the finished dress to look like.  I use the pattern as both a jumping-off place and a shortcut, but am no longer confined by it.  My skills have taken me beyond imitation and into the realm of creation.

When I first started writing, I read every “how-to” book I could get my hands on.  I also read every children’s book in the particular genre I wanted to try. (You should see the stack of early chapter books I went through before writing Dragon Dilemma.)  From both types of reading, I learned the rules of story making and followed them as diligently as I once followed pattern directions.  Lately with my writing, however, I am finding that I am more willing and able to “adjust the pattern” if my vision demands it.

For instance, in my new YA historical novel, The Book of Dove, conventional wisdom says that a story must have conflict from the outset in order to grab the reader.  The book starts with Dove telling how she washed ashore on Iona as a baby, all alone in a small boat.  So far so good.   However, Dove isn’t terribly angst filled over her mysterious beginnings because:

1. She has good and loving foster parents.
2. This conflict isn’t, as the book progresses, the major conflict of the plot.
3. Dove is a very spunky character.  Fretting about her past isn’t at all in keeping with her personality.

All good reasons to branch off from the established pattern.  But, I wasn’t confident enough when I first started sending out the manuscript to stick to my guns.

First there was an editor who really liked the manuscript.  She sent me two pages of notes that said, among other things, that Dove was too complacent and needed more tension and there was too much detail in the first chapter.  Getting a two page revision letter is, as any of you writers out there know, a very BIG DEAL.  So, I rewrote the manuscript, adding a rather contrived scene in the first chapter where young Dove agonizes over her abandonment. I also cut a lot of details, or moved them to farther on in the book.  The editor said she  liked what I’d done but ended up turning down the manuscript.

Then, an editor at a conference critiqued the first chapter and said Dove seemed more upset than the situation warranted, and I should put in a lot more details to help ground the reader.   In other words, she also wanted me to follow a certain pattern, but one that was the exact opposite of the first editor’s suggestions.

Totally confused and feeling damned if I did and damned if I didn’t, I put the manuscript aside.

I told a writing friend of my frustration.  She asked me to read both my old first chapter and my new one out loud to her.  When I was done, she said the voice seemed truer in the old version, and pointed out that Dove’s voice is the real strength of the story, which I agree with totally.

So, I sat down, threw out all the patterns, and simply wrote what felt right.  The first chapter is now closer to the old one in that it is more telling than showing and the conflict is understated.  I’ve “killed my darlings” by the drove, though–I condensed three chapters into one– and the writing is much cleaner and tighter than before.  Most importantly, Dove’s authentic voice comes through loud and clear.

Will I be successful with this attempt to color outside the lines?  In a commercial sense, perhaps not.  Only time will tell.  But, in an artistic sense, yes, I think I have succeeded.  I stayed true to the needs of the story rather than following the rules of the game and have a manuscript I feel really good about.

But–and this is very important–I learned the rules thoroughly and practiced them diligently for years before taking such a risk.  So, learn your craft.  Learn it well.  Then be brave enough to adjust the pattern if that’s what your vision demands.

Happy word stitching!  Let me know how you do.

Lawrence Block, in his book on writing, Telling Lies For Fun and Profit, points out that the “admonition to shun the first person [narrative style] . . . seems to be part of the conventional wisdom of writing courses.”  Later, he goes on to state that he questions this advice because, as a reader, he often prefers a book to be written in first person, it being “more likely to have a sense of reality about it, and the lead character is more apt to come alive for me.”

I believe that there is another factor at work, as well.   First person narration, especially first person reminiscent narration, possesses a weight to it similar to that of a myth or saga.  Block touches on this when he points out that first person narration is a convention of the Ogallala Sioux.  “An acquaintance who was raised on a reservation told me how Indian oral history. . . . is always couched in the first person.  it’s an accepted tradition for [a storyteller] to speak in the voice of a participant or observer.”  There is an immediacy in this kind of telling which appeals to something very basic in the human psyche.

Another device that is especially effective–which I touched on in yesterday’s post–and which, again, has mythic overtones, is that of the wise mentor.  There are grownups in most children’s stories, some good, some bad.  In the mythic tales, however, there is always an important older counselor figure.  This mentor models, with stories and their own example, how a sane, mature person thinks and acts.

Certainly, it’s possible to have wise mentors and other saga-like elements in a third person narrative.  But, with first person reminiscent style, the mythic quality is far more obvious.  The voyage from childhood to maturity is the most heroic journey any of us undertakes.  To complete it successfully, one must not only undergo the events of the  passage but make some kind of sense of them.  Reminiscent narration allows the narrator and her readers to do just that.

I decided to come up with my own version of a writing challenge by coming up with prompts for myself that are geared to writing for children.   I’m going to do this every other day and keep writing about writing in between.   My goal is to have something new on my blog every day.  We’ll see how it goes.

If you’d like to use my writing prompts, too, please do.  I’d love to see what you come up with.

Today, I wrote about setting as character.

Tomorrow, let’s see, I believe tomorrow I will write about a terrible birthday party.  See you there!

What would Harry Potter be without Hogwarts?  Just another dorky kid in a broom closet.  Right?  And don’t you just love the way the Secret Garden changes and blossoms, little-by-little, just as Mary and Collin do?   The big woods and broad prairie of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood are as crucial to her stories, and have just as much of an impact on her, as Ma and Pa and Mary.

In all these examples, the setting is more than window dressing.   It is, in essence, a character with which the people in the story interact.

A particularly good example of setting as character is The Talking Earth, by Jean Craighead George.  The main character, Billy Wind, has to come to terms with a very remarkable setting–the Florida Everglades.  As with all George’s books, the setting is described in such loving detail and is such a  key component of the plot that it truly becomes a character in its own right.

How do you make your setting come alive?  The same way you make your characters come alive.  With specific and carefully chosen details.   Wind should never simply blow.  It should howl or whisper, burn or freeze, help your protagonist’s ship sail to a safe harbor or carry her to Oz.   Is there a  tower in your story?  What kind?  Ivory or granite?  A stalwart lighthouse saving sailors’ lives or a haunted wizard’s den luring travelers to their doom?  A forest can be friendly or menacing, a seashore bleak and lonely or sun-drenched and cheerful.

Describe your setting with these kinds of telling details and you will not only ground your characters in a specific time and place but will create a setting that lives forever in your reader’s memories–as all good characters do.

“I’m adding a new character to the first chapter, and moving the last scene to the fourth chapter and ratcheting up my main character’s angst another notch or two and shifting the focus more solidly onto her throughout the story.”

My friend said she’d never realized what a fluid medium fiction writing is. I’ve never thought of it that way, but realized that, as usual, she’d hit the nail on the head. Writing a story is all about flow, which is probably why my little Piscean soul has such a passion for fiction writing, and particularly fiction writing for children.

Nobody goes with the flow as thoroughly and naturally as kids. They don’t care if your syntax is correct or your similes scintillating. All they care about is that you tell a good enough story to sweep them up and take them along for an exciting ride.

So, now, I tend to think of plotting in terms of river rafting, which is something I enjoyed doing once-upon-a-time. (Nowdays I get too seasick to enjoy it.) Here’s a list of “river writing” suggestions:

• Start at the right place. Begin your story when the boat goes into the water, so to speak, not the day before when the characters are packing their wet sacks.
• Vary your scenes. No river ride is fun if it’s all placid water, but it’s equally a bummer if it’s all rapids. Both rafters and readers need a chance to catch their breath every so often and go “Wow, that was really something!”
• Avoid whirlpools. Learn to recognize those points in a story where your characters are going around in frantic circles, yet the plot is not advancing.
• Get out at the right place. For both raft trips and stories, this is either when there’s obviously nothing but smooth sailing ahead or in the nick of time before a waterfall–which is an especially good place to stop if you plan to write a sequel.

So there it is, my latest take on plotting. If you follow these suggestions, your readers will thank you for a memorable ride and come back for more.

Happy rafting!

There is a weird kind of alchemy which makes characters come alive on a page. It has to do with what I think of as the “five dimensions of character.”

In geometry, the four dimensions are . . .

• breadth,
• depth,
• height and
• time.

In writing, this translates into the following:

• Physical setting–does the story take place in one location, all over the globe, in some alternate universe or “in a galaxy far, far away?” The breadth of a story is determined by the breadth of the setting.
• Personal history–Is the character old or young, part of a large family or an only child, well loved and parented or an orphan? No matter what happens in the story, if questions of personal history aren’t answered, the character has no depth and becomes a mere chess piece moving around a board.
• Relationships–Who are friends and who are foee? Why? Will these relationships stay the same or change over the course of the story? How does this impact the character? This can only be seen by gaining some height and distance from our characters. No matter what voice we choose to tell the story in, our view as the author needs to be overarching.
• Timelessness–To have a character who is both true to  her era and universal enough to be interesting to readers over time requires attention to detail and a delicate touch.  The best stories are grounded in their particular time without being too dated to appeal to an ever-evolving audience.

If you have done these four things thoroughly, you have laid a good foundation for well-rounded characters. However, it’s not enough.

WHy?  Because there is a fifth dimension that is the final key to creating a memorable character. I call it the “human dimension” which must be present, even–or maybe especially–in characters who are not, in fact, human; for example, Wilbur of Charlotte’s Web.

The most memorable characters are aware of the gains in their losses and the losses in their gains and make peace with both.  Wilbur comes to terms with Charlotte’s death by caring for her eggs.  Frodo in The Lord of the Rings saves Middle Earth but is so changed that he chooses to depart with the elves. Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden lets go of her delicious secret and the walls–both inner and outer–that keep her safe when she shares her garden with Dickon and Collin.

It is this fifth dimension–this balancing act of light and dark, advance and retreat, joy and sorrow–that gives characters soul, that elusive quality without out which they never comes fully alive for the reader.

Make sure your characters have all five dimensions–but especially the fifth–and they will be utterly unforgettable.  I promise.

Good writing!