Anatomy of a Picture Book Revision

Anatomy of a Picture Book Revision

I recently needed to revise a picture book manuscript (my agent is one tough lady when it comes to making sure that everything is PERFECT before we send it out), and it was a Really. Tough. Revision. It was the kind of revision where I just felt stuck - where I simply couldn't see a way forward to a better version of that manuscript.

It got me thinking: there's a blog post in this.

Because I don't do anything the way you're supposed to.

I use the dictionary.

And the thesaurus.

And I also sketch out page spreads, even though I'm not an illustrator. (And I will never, ever show them to an editor. EVER.)

And also: coffee. (I drank the coffee. It was iced, and it was delicious.) (I guess coffee is a "supposed to do this" thing for writers. Nobody is a rebel ALL the time.)

There are authors out there who will say that no real writer needs to use a dictionary or a thesaurus, and that those are crutches, and that you're cheating by using them. But how else can you find the right words? They're not ALL in your head. I think this is especially true for picture books, where every single word counts. Where when you need a word that means something very very specific, you need that word and only that word and the page spread simply won't be right without it.

Sometimes, you won't need these things: dictionaries and charcoal. But sometimes, you might.

Sometimes doodling will unlock a new train of thought that will lead you to exactly the right words.

Sometimes poring through the thesaurus will get you thinking about words in a new way.

Sometimes you just need to ignore the guidelines and try something new. You might not use what you make, but it will point you in a better direction.

Sometimes, you need to ignore all the advice and do what works for YOU.

I totally cracked that revision that day. I sent it off to my agent with a flourish, and threw myself a mini party. YESSSS.

She told me the next day that there was a part that still wasn't quite working, and would I take another look at it?

It was the tough part. You know, the part I had thrown myself a party for? It still wasn't PERFECT.* But I knew that this time, I was on the right road.

So I got out my charcoal, and my dictionary, and my thesaurus, and I found the words.

What works for you? What's your revision process like?

*I cannot stress enough the importance of getting a good editorial agent.

#LA15SCBWI Conference Round-Up, Part I: The Nitty Gritty

I came home from the #LA15SCBWI Summer Conference last Tuesday morning, and I slept basically all day, all night, and for part of the next day. I was essentially a walking bag of skin and bone and muscle with a jumble of sluggish goo for brains for a few days. That’s what “processing” looks like, I guess.

The conference was amazing. It was inspiring and exhausting and wonderful. There is nothing like being surrounded by people who write, and having a solid chunk of five days to think and talk about nothing other than the craft of story. It crystallized my understanding that what I need right now is to create for myself the space to write - both a physical space, and mental space from my everyday responsibilities, where I can focus on nothing but story.

There were too many key moments to share them all, but here are a few highlights:

Mem Fox read her books to us, and it was awesome. You are NEVER too old to be read to. On writing, she said, “It is the emotion generated from an original felt event that drives a book to be born. The readers will feel a certain emotion because the author felt it first.”

Also from Mem Fox: cadence and rhythm are vital. She said this in reference to picture books, but really, I think they’re equally important in novels. Cadence and rhythm are what make the story’s voice distinct; they’re what make a book beautiful.

Speaking of voice: VOICE. Voice, voice, voice, voice, voice. Voice is more important than basically everything, because it’s the hardest thing for an editor to fix. (Although a strong voice with no story to tell is still going to get a “no” from most editors.)

Dan Santat had a wonderful thing to say for those of us still struggling to find our “voice”, which is this: “Be aware of your tastes and interests. This will become your voice.” I had never thought of it this way, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Because who are we, apart from our tastes and interests? Those are the means through which other people come to know us.

Meg Wolitzer gave an excellent keynote that held more one-liners and tweetable quotes than I’ve ever heard contained in one keynote. Among them was this thought that I think holds within it the reason that so many publishers say that they want a book that sits at the intersection between literary and commercial fiction: “The thing you love about a book isn’t plot; it’s character.” And if you think about it, it’s true. A book with a rollicking plot is a fun read, but the books that grab you and hold onto you and worm their way into your soul are the ones with great characters.

Varian Johnson talked at length about the importance of placing a higher priority on our work, on dedicating time to the pursuit of the creative life. It was a good reminder for me, that the people who get things done are the people who prioritize getting these things done.

Molly Idle reminded us that creativity can only happen in a safe space.

Dan Yaccarino reminded us that “Good work is never perfect.”

Stephen Fraser reminded us to let joy spill out into our work, because, as he put it, “Joy is the soil in which books are grown.”

Kwame Alexander - KWAME ALEXANDER, who is one of the great orators of our time and who you all need to go hear speak - reminded us that “A loss is inevitable, like rain in spring. True champions learn to dance in the storm.”

And everywhere, everywhere, I heard two themes:

One, that diversity is vital, and that representing all characters as complicated and deep and imperfect human beings who don’t easily slot into stereotypes is essential to writing not only diverse books, but all books.

And Two, that teamwork is key: not only between an author and an editor, but between an agent and an editor and an author and an agent. Communication among everyone, from the outset of the project, is an important part of what determines whether a book will sink or swim. Someone once told me that an author has to have the guts to stick up for what they think their book should be, even when the editor disagrees. But I think it’s actually more important to find an editor who won’t disagree to begin with, who truly shares your vision for the book, and then to trust that person when they say that your book isn’t achieving that vision yet and this subplot or character point might be the reason for that.

There was so much more than this. SO MUCH MORE. The conference was amazing, and I kinda-sorta-almost want to only go to this conference every year for the rest of forever. (Except I love my SCBWI CanadaEast friends, and they run good conferences too, and going to NYC to see my agent and go to a conference at the same time is probably a good idea, so I’m probably NOT going to only go to the LA conference every year forever...)

Of course, I was able to see many friends at this conference. Like my brilliant and amazing critique-partner-for-life, Lindsey Carmichael.

Lindsey at the Awards Banquet on Sunday.
Even geniuses have to eat.

But I’m going to have to save the “friends” portion for another post. I have a novel to write.

Wednesday Writing Wisdom: Plotting Multiple Character Arcs

So, I think Wednesdays will be a good day for writing posts. Alliteration and all that, amirite? Plus, writing is the reason I have this blog, so I should probably talk about it once in a while.

These days, I’m revising my novel, which is told from the point of view of three characters. I don’t want to get into how to do all the POV switching successfully, partly because I’m still figuring that out (although I can talk about the figuring-out process), and partly because that’s a much longer blog post than I have time for right now. Maybe we can get into it after I finish this draft and pass it on to my Beta readers.

I want to talk abut plotting all those character arcs, because if plotting one is hard, plotting three is HOLY MELTING BRAIN, WHAT HAVE I DONE?! It’s a lot. Like, A LOT, a lot. It’s a lot to juggle around inside one brain.

So I take it out of my brain, and I put it down on paper. I like to do this after I’ve finished one draft, because then I have something I can really work with. (And my rough drafts are rough and messy and all-over-the-place awful, and they have my permission to be this way. So I expect to need to do this at this stage.)

So, I have my first (ROUGH) draft in front of me. I've printed it out, because that's how my brain works, but that isn't necessarily a must. I get a stack of index cards, and I go through the draft and make one index card for each scene - whose POV it’s from, the central conflict of that scene, and the progression that character makes in that scene - then I lay them all out in order. (The floor is a good place for this.) Then I pull out three highlighters - one for each of my three main characters - and I put a stripe across each card in the color of the person whose POV that scene is told from. If the main part of the action centers around a character other than the narrator for that scene, I put an additional stripe in that character’s color, but that doesn’t happen that often in this book (so far; this may change. Actually, I think I want to play with that idea... *makes note to self and files it away for later*).

ANYWAY, now I’ve got the whole novel spread out in front of me, and I’ve got nice bright highlighted sections to let me know when stuff is happening for each character. It’s really obvious if I’m ignoring a character for too long, or if one character’s climax comes at the wrong time within the novel’s progression. It’s a good way to pull back and get a big-picture look at what’s going on for each character as the novel progresses.

So, that’s one of my strategies. I hope some of you find it useful.

How about you? How do you plot multiple character arcs? Leave your tips and tricks in the comments!

Thanks for stopping by.

Stickers, Crap, and Angst: Things That Make Me Cry

So, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. It might have something to do with the fact that my novel and I are sitting deep in the bowels of writerly angst - you know, that place where you know your manuscript needs a little work but you think it's promising, and then you open it up to work on it and you realize that it's awful, and the characters are flat, and you repeat yourself a million times, and this will never, ever, ever be as good as those books with the shiny award stickers on them, and it's not commercial and plotty enough to sell, so you might as well quit now and let The Hubbles carry the bills while you get fat eating bonbons and binge-watching Castle reruns and a loop of that Van Damme commercial on YouTube…

Maybe that's just me.

ANYWAY, when I know my work is terrible and I don't know how to make it better, I read. I read all the books with those nice shiny stickers on them. Because I'm masochistic that way. Why be satisfied with the knowledge that I need to improve when I can rub my own nose in it? Also, it's an opportunity to learn. And I want to learn from the masters.

So since my current WiP is a YA, I read a bunch of really good YA. I read John Green's Looking for Alaska, where I paid attention to things like how to structure the first chapter to introduce statement of theme without being too obvious about it (or how to be obvious and still get away with it), and how to incorporate backstory without making it feel like backstory, and how to make characters feel real, and pacing. I read it out loud to The Hubbles and learned about poetic prose and the importance of rhythm so that the words flow from sentence to paragraph to page to chapter and back again. I could get a whole writing course worth of learning out of that book. I cried a lot over the course of reading it, usually when I thought of my own sorry work-in-progress, but also when the story called for it.

I read Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion, where I noticed how important it is to get the small details right, that the reason I knew I was in the hands of a good storyteller from the very beginning was that the sights and the smells and the sound of the wind just felt right. And I thought about archetypes, and Cinderella stories and Ugly Duckling stories, and how if I hadn't just read Cheryl Klein's essay on archetypes and plot in her book Second Sight, I wouldn't have noticed the archetypes in this book, but they were still there, and maybe it was my identification with those archetypes, my emotional response to them based on my own social and cultural context, that makes those kinds of stories so powerful for me as a reader. And I also learned about pacing. Again. There's another writing course in that book. I cried at the end of that one, too.

And then I opened my own WiP and I cried myself to sleep, because, you know. CRAP.

And then I read Eric Walters' The Rule of Three, because a kid in my YA book club picked it. And I have to be honest here - I didn't want to finish it. The dialogue seemed stilted (to me). The plot was predictable (to me). The characters were boring and stereotypical and, if I can take a minute to be arrogant on my own blog, pretty slow (to me). There was an interesting character, Herb, who showed up after about 50 pages or so, but he wasn't enough to pull me through the novel. I knew the publisher was excited about the book (because I had read it in an article in Publishers' Weekly or some place like that), but I couldn't figure out why. I thought it probably had something to do with the plot. And I know this stuff is totally subjective. So I did what I always do when I am mystified by a book's buzz: I passed it to The Hubbles and asked him what he thought of it.

He read the whole thing in a couple of days. He agreed with me on the dialogue and the characters, but he thought the plot was really interesting, and he loved Herb, and he figured that for the average YA reader, it was enough. It didn't change his worldview, but it diverted him for a few hours and gave him a distraction from bills and was entertaining. I learned a big lesson there, too: that just because a book isn't the kind of book I want to be writing right now, that doesn't make it a book that isn't worthy of existence. That there are different books for different people at different times. And that having an interesting plot is really, really important, no matter who your audience is.

I can't say that it made me feel any better about the state of my novel, but at least it didn't make me cry.

And then I read Vikki VanSickle's Words That Start With B, which isn't a YA, it's a Middle Grade, but which was delightful and welcoming and honest and wonderful in a wrap-you-up-in-a-cozy-blanket sort of way, and which filled my brain with real characters and a well-paced story. It was like rediscovering Judy Blume. And holy moly - the craftsmanship that went into making that book. I'm still figuring it out. There's another writing course right there. I'm mystified at the lack of buzz for this book. Or maybe I just missed it; I only recently got around to starting the Harry Potter series, after all. If my friends had to describe me, the phrase "late to the party" would almost certainly come to mind.

That book didn't make me cry, either - I take that as a good sign, that I can read a truly excellent book now without dissolving into hot, silent tears of self-loathing (although I can still feel them as I type, swelling at the back of my throat). I've been jotting down ideas for my novel, elements I can add that will strengthen a character, plot points I can change to raise the stakes and make things more interesting, scenes I should take out or rewrite. I'm not quite ready to look at the 58,000+ words that I wrote back in November, but at least I'm no longer battling the urge to just print the whole thing and set fire to it in a garbage can in the backyard.

Which brings me to the reason for this post, apart from letting you know what books I think you should read, which is this: reading is important if you're a writer. You need to read to learn how to do it right, and you need to read to distract yourself from your own misery when you know you're doing it wrong. You need to read critically, as well as for your own enjoyment. You need to read widely, both within your genre and outside of it. But you don't have to read everything. It's okay - even preferable - to put a book down when it isn't speaking to you. Just make sure you know why you're putting it down, and why someone else might want to keep reading. Get other people's opinions if you have to. Don't let a book pass through your hands without learning something from it.

And when in doubt, look for the stickers.

Thanks for stopping by.

Note: With the exception of Cheryl Klein's Second Sight: an Editor's Talks on Writing Revising & Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults, which is only available on Amazon and is thusly hyperlinked, the aforementioned books are all hyperlinked to their IndieBound pages, should you wish to buy them. But in case you can't find a local independent bookstore using the IndieBound search engine, or are a heartless soulless pathetic excuse for an individual who hates independent bookstores with every fibre of your being, here are those books again, this time hyperlinked to their Amazon or Chapters Indigo pages:
Looking for Alaska, by John Green
The House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Farmer
The Rule of Three, by Eric Walters
Words that Start With B, by Vikki VanSickle

Wednesday Writing: When Critiquing Funk Attacks

Holy WOW, it's been a while since I've done one of these!

So, I've been in a strange kind of critiquing rut lately. The writing is great. But the urge to send my chapters in for critique has definitely waned. I haven't sent anything in to my crit group in a while, and when my turn rolls around, I look at my pages and think, but they're not ready for critique yet... I spent the longest time trying to figure out what was going on with me.

My crit partners? AWESOME. They are my rocks. They are equal parts friend and critique partner. I love them. The feedback they give me? ALSO AWESOME. They make me look hard at the words I have chosen and the structure of my manuscripts and how to make them as good as they can be. My enthusiasm for my pages? TOTALLY THERE. So what the fonk is my problem?

I read through some of my blog posts and recent emails to my group and the feedback I've been giving other people on their work and it just now hit me:

Critique groups are amazing, but sending in 10 pages at a time takes a L-O-N-G time! And once you get the idea of what direction you need to go in, sometimes it's better to just fix the whole darn thing. Plus, sometimes someone's opinion of a piece changes as they read through it. There might be something on page 67 that completely changes how your crit buddies feel about that horribly uncharacteristic thing your protagonist's best buddy does on page 9.

Put another way, sometimes you go a few chapters in with your crit buddies, and by then, you already know how you have to revise it. So you revise it. And then it's time for a Beta reader.

My crit group has begun to experiment with a couple of us sending in whole manuscripts, or big chunks of whole manuscripts, and then going for long stretches without sending in anything else while we work on the revision and other members submit weekly excerpts. I'm not sure if it's working yet - it's too early to tell - but it's more evidence that critique groups are not a one-size-fits-all situation, sometimes writers go through cycles, and sometimes you have to mix it up a little to figure out what's going to work for everyone.

As for me, right now, I just want to write and revise, and then send in the whole thing so my critters' sharp eyes can pick out the flaws.

How does your critique group do it?

W is for Web

Remember back in elementary school when your teacher taught you how to plot a story using an idea web? You know, you put the main character or central plot point in a circle in the middle of the page, and then you draw lines off of it leading to other circles with related ideas in them?

I kind of still like to do that from time to time. It oils my brain. I don't always use everything I come up with, but that's the point of brainstorming, right? To free your mind more and more until the really good or unique ideas start to flow.

Try it. You might be surprised.

When was the last time you used an idea web?

T is for Tardis

I'm SURE you all know what a TARDIS is, but just in case there's someone reading who hasn't seen Dr. Who, it was a police box that was basically like a small, free-standing closet sitting on the sidewalk. But when Dr. Who walked into it, we saw that on the inside it was really a multi-levelled time-and-space travelling machine.

Pretty cool.

And the best books are like that. They look so small and innocuous, but wen you open them up and start reading, they take on extra dimensions and transport you to another time and place.

So do that with your book. Make your book a TARDIS.

What TARDIS-like books have you read lately?

I is for Inform

inform: to give evident substance, character, or distinction to; pervade or permeate with manifest effect


When we write out scenes, we know what each character's objective is in that scene; we know what their "want" or "need" is. Additionally, we know each character's backstory: their hobbies, upbringing, family, and all the other things that have brought them to this moment in time.


Therefore, all that stuff must inform their dialogue and actions throughout the rest of the book. For example, if Sally-Ann was molested by her stepfather as a pre-teen, then all of her interactions with boys are going to be colored by that past. If Jose's parents illegally crossed the border right before he was born on American soil, then this will influence how he interacts with other kids whose parents have never set foot in Mexico, even ten or twelve or fifteen years later. If Bethany's Daddy has always given her whatever she wanted and now her daddy has disappeared, then she will react differently to his disappearance than if he had never really been around to begin with. All that stuff that happened long ago in your character's history, while it shouldn't necessarily be stated outright, should still be "there" somehow. It needs to inform everything that you put on the page.


I'm not saying that you need to create caricatures, or that you should make everything spelled out and predictable. But I am saying that when you write, you need to always think about whether this is your character talking, or you talking; whether this is a curve ball that is there as a plot device, or as a genuine reaction from your character.


Let his or her past and needs inform what they do in the present moment. This keeps the reader grounded, and keeps your characters consistent.


How have your characters' intentions informed their actions?

Writing on Wednesdays: Switching Up the POV

So, I've been working on this Chapter Book. I love it. It's fun, and the heroine is quirky and a bit sassy and super-smart, and I'm really enjoying spending time in her head.

Even better is that my crit partners like it. They like her, they like the premise, and they've been giving me awesome feedback that's helping me make it even stronger. The best feedback wasn't really feedback at all. It was a question.

If you are a CP for someone, I hope you aren't just telling them how to rewrite sections. I hope you're asking them questions about their manuscript. Because the biggest question that my CPs asked me - why does the MC want what she wants - led to the biggest change. I'm rewriting my entire manuscript in third person, instead of in first person the way it started.

Making this shift in mindset actually taught me a lot about my character: it taught me how her mind works, what her fears are, how she operates. And it also taught me a lot about her family and friends, and how they operate. I've thrown out the entire first half of my book and replaced it with something different, something closer to my vision of what I want this book to be. I think it's a stronger book now, and even if I go back and rewrite it again in first person, I'll still have this new knowledge and these new scenes.

So, when in doubt, try switching up your POV a little. You never know where it might lead you.

Also: go HERE  and HERE for a chance to win free books, from me to you.

Writing Craft: Voice, and WINNER!

FIRST: I was up late into the night counting and adding and clicking and compiling the entries for my 200 Follower Lauren Oliver Giveaway, and wow, guys! The entries! You blew me away with your enthusiasm. You guys are awesome, and I really wish I could have given something to all of you. But, there can only be one winner, and according to RANDOM .ORG, that winner is:

ARI!!!

Yay! *tosses confetti and streamers*

So, Ari, check your email, okay? I want to get these books to you!

NOW: Writing craft. I've been reading a lot lately, and one thing that's been jumping out at me in a make-or-break sort of way is VOICE. We keep hearing that having a distinct voice is essential, but what does that mean? And more importantly, how do we do it?

Well, I think the most important thing we can do is make sure our character is well-thought out and fully realized. What personality type does this character have? Is she tough-as-nails, or sweet as cotton candy? Does he hold the door for his mother, or stride on through without looking back? Is he the quintessential nerd? Is she in love with her guy, or in love with love? Who are these people?

What is the framework within which their thoughts are built? (AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES by John Green is an excellent example of having a well-developed mental framework for each character.) And how will they react emotionally to this situation that they're in? The answers to these questions, more than anything, will dictate their voice, and getting that right can really make your book sing.

And of course, having a distinct way of writing, a distinct cadence, is part of it, too. Garrison Keillor's work is the perfect example of this. Other examples are Roald Dahl (you know a Roald Dahl book by the end of the first page), Dr. Seuss, and Bill Bryson, travel writer extraordinaire.

But then there's the "break" part. I've come across a handful of books in the past couple of months that just haven't resonated with me. The voice was distinct, the background was there... But it just didn't feel right. Most of the time, the character was being snarky in a moment that didn't seem to call for it. I'm not against snarky teens, but there doesn't need to be a comment on every page or at the end of every scene for a reader to get it. Over a whole book, it gets to be too much, and it loses impact.

I wish I had a formula, but I don't. These are just some things to think about. How about you? What book have you read lately that had an outstanding voice? What made it so amazing?

Writing Craft: Parents in Picture Books, and WINNER!

First: the winner of TOOTER'S STINKY WISH according to RANDOM.ORG (shocking to see me use electronics like this, I know, but all those slips of paper just take too darn long to cut out) is:

Swaty!!!

*throws virtual confetti*

Congratulations, Swaty! You didn't have an email attached to your profile, so please email me (you'll find my addy right up there under my picture in the corner) so I can send you your prize. Be sure to do it soon, though - within the next two weeks at the latest - or I'll have to draw another winner.

ALSO: We hit 200 followers! WOO-HOO! I know I promised you an extra-special giveaway, so keep your eyes peeled for the announcement of that later this week. Probably on Friday, since I have a post planned for Wednesday, and Friday is a good day for that. But I might do shout-outs on Friday, so maybe there will be a special extra post tomorrow or Thursday. We'll have to wait and see. But it will be extra-amazing, so you don't want to miss it!

And now for today's topic: parents in picture books. Or rather, the absence of parents in picture books.*

Basically, they're usually not really there. And when they are there, they're not instrumental to the resolution of the story.

We all know that this is not the way things go in real life. We all know that moms and dads know what their kids are getting up to even before their kids do. (I can smell a plot hatching from a mile away, and I can see a lie coming before my son even opens his mouth. He thinks I'm psychic. I'm going with it.)

We all know that parents either stage things, or interfere with things, or subtly guide their kids. We all know that when we let our kids choose what to eat for breakfast, we're not really giving them real responsibility, because the choices never include things like fudge sundaes or jellybeans.

But here's the thing: the kids don't know that. 

Picture books, like all books for kids, are about giving them independence and power. If you want your picture book to be effective, if you want to connect with your child reader, it's a good idea to keep the adults out of the problem-solving process. Remember that this is the child's world we're entering, and in the child's mind, he is the ruler of his domain.

Can you think of good picture books that are examples of this? How about books that exemplify the opposite of this?

*Except in cutesy concept books about Mommy being magic or a special day with Daddy, but those books aren't the books we're talking about. There's nothing wrong with those books, but they're mostly concept books and that's not what we're tackling here today.

Writing Craft: Rounding Out Your Characters, Part Five

FIRST: Have you entered my giveaway to win a copy of TOOTER'S STINKY WISH, signed by BOTH the author Brian Cretney AND the illustrator Peggy Collins? GO HERE to do it if you haven't.

And now back to our regularly scheduled Monday programming.

So far, we've covered rounding out our characters by:

- Giving them hobbies and passions that then inform their internal thoughts and their dialogue;

- Giving them verbal tics and/or interesting, unique patterns of speech;

- Giving them specific personality traits and interests, but global problems;

- Giving them strong internal conflict to grapple with.

But I'm no expert, and I'm sure there are a bazillion ways to round out characters that I haven't thought of or tried. So, what's one way you like to round out your characters? Maybe we can all pick up some new tips from each other.

Happy Monday!

Writing Craft: Rounding Out Your Characters, Part Four

First, sorry for the lack-of-post last Friday. No computer = no blogging. But - hooray! - ol' Lenny is back from the shop, which means I am back on the blog!

We've covered a few ways to round out your characters: giving them specific interests, giving them global problems, and giving them distinctive speech patterns or verbal tics. But there are a few we haven't talked about yet. One oft-promoted way to make your characters more three-dimensional and believable is what I think of as the "C" word of the literary world. CONFLICT.


But what does that mean exactly?


Well, there's the conflict that you get when screaming yellow aliens threaten to coat your planet with purple goo and your hero has been locked in a dungeon by a fire-breathing dragon and has to figure out how to save the day, but that's external conflict, and that's not what I'm talking about here. That's more of a plot thing than a character-development thing.

I'm talking about internal conflict. What you get when you give your character a desire that is at odds with who they see themselves to be as a person, or with the type of person they want to be. Like Edward in TWILIGHT: he's a vampire and he wants to eat Bella for lunch, but he's also got a conscience that tells him that it's wrong to kill people. And that was before he even figured out he loved her! Talk about conflict. Whatever you may say about TWILIGHT, whether you loved it or hated it (and please let's not bash it here), you have to give Stephanie Meyer credit for creating characters who were brimming with internal conflict.

Another example is Teresa Toten's BETTER THAN BLONDE, the sequel to ME AND THE BLONDES. In it, Sophie finds herself tempted by her high-school crush...who is newly married. He says he loves her, and (she thinks) she loves him too, but she knows that fooling around with someone else's guy is a no-no. But then again, his new wife practically stole him from her. But then again...adultery. See what I mean? Major conflict!

The important thing to remember here is that the struggle has to be fully realized. You can't have your character mull it over for a page or two and then, easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, they decide and that's the end. Let them really be tempted by both options. Let them stew. Let them decide, then change their minds. Torture them a little. Because that's what life is: struggle over choices, regret, sacrifice, and doing better next time. And your characters need to live to be believable.

What books have you read lately that had characters who had to deal with some serious internal conflict?

Writing Craft: Rounding Out Your Characters, Part Three

We've all heard those complaints about female protagonists who are so bland, they aren't really anybody. And the general wisdom, espacially when it comes to girls in kidlit, is that Bland = Bad.

We've also heard about the importance of making your protagonist relatable to as broad an audience as possible.

And sometimes those seem like two contradictory statements.

Fortunately, I read a book lately that is a great example of a female protagonist who is simultaneously relatable, and multi-faceted and specific in her interests and goals. (And I'm sorry for not having a picture; my computer is still in the shop. It might be able to be revived, and we're pacing anxiously while we wait to hear the news. In the meantime, I've got an adequate but subpar stand-in that won't let me do URL picture links. Apologies.)

Carolyn Mackler's THE EARTH, MY BUTT, AND OTHER BIG ROUND THINGS introduces us to Virginia Shreves, an overweight, insecure, cynical teenager who feels out of place everywhere, but nowhere more than at home with her family.

I picked this book up because of the title (which is AWESOME, isn't it?), and because of the shiny silver sticker on it that says "Printz Honor Book." Yup, you read that right. How could it not be good? But within the first few pages, I thought, "Hmm. I don't think I can relate to this girl." Her problems, at first glance, were not my problems, and her interests were not my interests. In fact, I found myself identifying with her family, the ones she felt she didn't fit in with: I like learning languages and getting exercise and watching artsy films. So I was worried. I thought this was an example of "too specific."

But it had the sticker, and I loved the voice, and I believe in giving a book more than the first chapter to reel me in. By chapter four, I was completely sold on this book, and the more I read, the more I loved it.

Here's why:

Virginia's problems were not with her body, or with her family having different interests. They were with how people spoke to her and treated her, and how she viewed those people, and how she let that influence how she viewed herself.

Her personality was specific, and that made her interesting and believable. But her problem was global, and that is what makes her so relatable.

You can have a specific, well-rounded character (pardon the pun) who is also someone everyone can relate to. And these make some of the best books.

Go read this book! Study it. It's a keeper.

Do you have any other examples of books with specific characters who face global problems?

Writing Craft: Rounding Out Characters, Part The Second

The title of this post is a hint at what I'm going to talk about today: speech patterns and dialogue.

I was on the phone to different plant nurseries yesterday, looking for a specific plant in a specific size, and everyone I talked to gave me the usual, "Just one second and I'll go check." Polite, professional, blah.

Then when I called the third place and I told the guy who answered what I was asking for, he did something different. He repeated it back to me and followed it up with, "Stand by."

I immediately decided that I liked this guy. He was funny, friendly, a little quirky, and original. And I wondered what it is about him that made him use that term: did he come from a military family? Is he a math and sci-fi geek? Is he a college student on track for NASA working part-time for some spare cash? With those two words, he went from being "the guy who works at the plant store" to being an interesting person whom I wanted to know more about.

In books, as in life, people who use interesting words and turns of phrase do more than just stand out. They become memorable, and more importantly, they become interesting and endearing. So bear this in mind when you're writing dialogue. Give one of your characters a catchphrase that tells the reader a little more about who he is. Let the history teacher invent cuss words. Got a makeup freak in your book? Maybe whenever someone compliments her looks, she tells them the shade of her eyeshadow. Pick out those little details that distinguish each character from the others and let them show.

Who are some of the most memorable people in your life, and what did they always say that made them memorable?

Writing Craft: Rounding Out Characters, Part One

There are lot sand lots of ways to develop your characters more, so I'm going to tackle them one-at-a-time in these Monday posts for the next few weeks.

This week, we're going to talk about hobbies and passions. If you really think about it, everyone has a hobby, apart from their job, that they take seriously. Maybe it's a sport, like my neigbor; maybe it's antique cars; maybe it's a craft, like knitting or crocheting; maybe, like me, you know a few sci-fi buffs. It could be anything, but everybody has something.

The thing is, if you want your characters to be believable, they should have hobbies and passions, too. And those hobbies and passions should inform their internal thoughts and their dialogue.

Teresa Toten's YA novel ME AND THE BLONDES is a great example of this. In it, the main character, who tells the story, is the captain of her basketball team, so her inner thoughts are filled with sports references. When she uses a metaphor, it's often basketball-related. Not every time, but enough that we really understand that this is a kid who plays basketball seriously.

Additionally, her mother is a film buff, so her dialogue is peppered with movie quotes. And every character is like this.

There are challenges with this. If the hobby is one you don't know anything about, there will be research involved. And then there's the question of blank-slate-style relatability, which I'll get into in another post. There is a balance to be struck here, and it will take a lot of attention to detail and hard work in the revision stage. But it's hard work that will pay off.

Are you already doing this in your WiP? Did it improve your manuscript?

Writing Craft: Expecting the Unexpected

I was watching one of my never-miss, the phone is unplugged, just let that person at the door think we're dead shows with the hubster a while ago, and it features yet another will-they, won't-they couples. In this episode, there was a scene at the end where the woman basically told the man that she loves him, but not using those actual words, and then there's a moment during which neither of them says anything while their eyes do the talking, and THEN she puts on a sad sort-of smile, turns away, and the camera fades to black.

Needless to say, thew end of this scene caused some rather heated debate at my house. The hubster was certain that the woman just needed more time to process (since she is, of course, involved with someone else at the moment), while I had dramatic twists and turns pouring out of my ears. I finally settled on one of two things: either there has been a proposal from the actual boyfriend, or she's pregnant. Both scenarios would give the writers the most time to spin out the will-they/won't-they for yet another season, while delivering the highest level of immediate impact for big drama and high stakes.

And then we waited with bated breath to find out what would happen.

And then last week, what happened was that we saw her decide to make a move on this guy (FINALLY!), only to miss out by seconds.

In other words, she wasn't pregnant, and she was also probably not engaged. And nothing else was going on, either. It was predictable. It was kind of blah. And you know what else?

It was refreshing.


I have begun to expect the unexpected in books and film, and when the normal happens, it's actually kind of a nice change. And I think there's a lesson here.


When we write, yes, high drama is important. Yes, we need to keep the stakes high. But there's a balance to be struck: we need a few moments of ordinary in there, too. Sometimes, the best way to take our reader by surprise is not to try to surprise them at all.


What do you think? Do you expect the unexpected, and get surprised by the normal? Do you look to have a balance of both in your writing, or is it high drama all the way? What works for you as a reader? As a writer?

Writing Craft: A Brief Note on Concept Books

IT'S INTERNATIONAL PICTURE BOOK WRITING WEEK! More on that at the end of this post. And, I still have family in town, so this is going to have to be a quickie, but I just wanted to throw out another note on concept books, which is:

You still need a hook. In fact, since concept books are so plentiful and the possibility of another concept book out there being on the same subject as yours is so huge (like, there almost definitely, most certainly, without a doubt IS*), a hook is pretty much mandatory. So, whether it's that your book rhymes, or has a craft project at the end, or involves the counting of fish by pink feathery aliens living in a yellow submarine, figure out what it is, and include it in your cover/query letter.

And now:

IT'S INTERNATIONAL PICTURE BOOK WRITING WEEK! In which PB-ers the world over commit to writing one first draft of one picture book every day for a whole week! Because way back in November we did something called PiBoIdMo and now we have 30 ideas that we still haven't done anything with! *ahem* #notme #iswear #okaymaybe

Actually, I think NaPiBoWriWee is a great idea, and I think Paula Yoo is pretty cool for thinking of it and for putting it all together, so I'm joining in. Go here to do the same.  It's a great way to give yourself a kick in the pants if you've let the writing slide, and it's a great way to experience some camaraderie if you've been trucking along all on your writerly lonesome for the first part of the year.

So, join in! Have fun! Go nuts! Keep me posted! And remember your hook!

*Unless your book is about seasons on Mars. In which case, your topic IS your hook.

Writing Craft: Details, Details

The perfect scene is the scene that gives you just the right one or two details that you need to get a sense of the whole thing: the atmosphere, the setting, and what the characters are thinking or feeling, both in that moment as you enter the scene and throughout the scene as you take them (and their changing emotions) through it.

So, how the heck do you do that?

One way that works for me, since I watch a lot of movies (and, let's face it, I'm addicted to my favorite TV shows - I even get all snappy and irritable on rerun weeks, and I get all giddy when a new episode is coming up, and OMG SUMMER IS COMING SOON AND WHAT AM I GOING TO DOOOOOO??? *ahem* It might be a little unhealthy.), is to think of the scene as if it were being played out on-screen.

You know how often new scenes start with a close-up of something? Someone's hands fidgeting with the hem of their skirt, or a vase of half-wilted flowers on the side table, or something? Well, those are the same details you can start your scene with. Of course, it's probably not a good idea to start with those examples, because they're clichès, but you should think carefully about the tone you want to set, because the details you start with will dictate how your reader approaches each scene. Choose the one or two details that you would zoom in on if you were the director and this were your show.

And as I move through the scene, I picture it in my mind, and I write the details that my mental camera zooms in on. If the protagonist is feeling cornered by an intruder and needs to get away, in my mind, the camera zooms in on her grabbing the vase of half-wilted flowers and tracks the vase her as she hurls it at him. So, that's the detail I focus on; not what her body is doing, or what he's doing to dodge it, but her hands on the vase of flowers. (Again, clichè, but you know what I mean, right?)

So, that's how I approach it. How about you? Do you write with your zoom lens attached, or do you have another method? What works for you?

Writing Craft: Picture Books and the Rule of Three

First, I have family in town. Woo-Hoo! And also, Oh, Man! Because this means things just might get a little off-schedule here at the blog as I cram the additional obligation of socialising with my houseguest into my already overcrowded schedule.

So, since we're short on time, let's get down to business. Most of you have probably already heard about the Rule of Three, but when I started writing PBs, I hadn't. I just put it in my manuscript: the main character tried to solve her problem three times before she finally got it right. I didn't mean anything by it; it's just that two didn't feel like enough, and four felt like dragging it on a bit. And then I posted it on the SCBWI boards, and a critiquer said, "You did a nice job incorporating the Rule of Three in there."

And I went, "Wha-huh?" And I thanked her, modestly, because no-one likes a braggart, even when it's obvious that the braggart is a genius. And then I went and looked it up. :-) And I went, "OHHHH!" And I realised I'm not such a genius after all.

Basically, the Rule of Three is this: when writing a PB, do things as much as possible in threes. If a character has a defining characteristic, give three examples. If the character is solving a problem, make them try and fail three times. Jane O'Connor's FANCY NANCY starts off with a great example of this when Nancy says she likes being fancy, then lays out what that means for her by listing three fancy things that she does.

Another great example is Julia Donaldson's The Gruffalo, in which a mouse is first threatened by three different animals, then goes back and scares the same three animals. 

And it's kind of a no-brainer, because when you think about it, things are in threes everywhere: three acts in a play, three movements in a symphony, triangles in classical art, three, three, three. Even bad things, as the saying goes, happen in threes. Cerberus had three heads. Humans like the number three, and it's ingrained in us. So go with it.

Everybody repeat after me: THREE is a magic number...

Hee-hee. Happy Monday night!

Can you think of examples, either PBs or novels, that do things in threes? Share with us.