Nosy Writer with a Camera

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Erin Thomas

Saturday night my daughter was at Brownie camp. Well, she was, until about 10:30. Then we got the phone call to come pick her up. (Which, I might add, we were happy to do — I want her to know that she can always call home. It’s good training for when she hits those teen years.) Anyhow, she wanted to go back and join the other girls for breakfast and cleanup, which was how I happened to be in the Port Perry area with some time on my hands, in the quiet of a Sunday morning.

Downtown Port PerryI love downtown Port Perry. Their history is still quite visible, and they work hard to keep it that way. So, while there’s no ignoring phone poles, street lights and parked cars, if you wander around at just the right time, you can get a glimpse of what the town used to be like.

It turns out that a wintery Sunday morning, while stores are still closed and cars are scarce, is one of those times.

I have a couple of historical novels in the works, so I set out to collect some pictures. The ones from the camera don’t match the ones in my head; they never do — I’m just a point-and-shoot photographer. I don’t know how to make the picture capture the scene. But they help me remember, at least. I can take it from there.

Some things I liked: the downtown. Little shops all in a row, with brick-faced living quarters above and false fronts. I could tell, because I looked from the side and saw the wooden beam propping one of them up. Very cool. I remember one of my English professors talking about the “false fronts” in a CanLit novel, and how symbollic they were. Fair enough. For me, they bring back memories of childhood ballet classes in a second-floor studio in Whitby’s downtown. Looking across the road from Miss Inta’s class, I could see how the brick was built up in front of the roofs. I liked the way it looked, like a secret hiding place.

I spent a lot of time looking out those windows. It may explain why I was never any good at ballet.

Port Perry homeI like the old houses. I’ve been looking at old houses a lot online, recently, trying to find ones with lots of pictures and with sketched-out floor plans, to help figure out the details for a book I’m drafting. “Big house” isn’t specific enough when you’re writing about the people who live in it — you have to know where all the doors and stairways are. But looking at a picture on a computer screen isn’t the same as walking through an old part of town, feeling how many steps it takes from one old house to another, figuring out what the spaces would have been.

I took pictures of several of them. If I took a picture of your house, please don’t be worried. I’m not stalking you, and I’m not casing the joint. I just think you have a pretty house.

I like the town hall. It’s a funny, skinny building, beside an equally skinny church. They’re like a pair of bookends, across a street from one another. And the town hall has some schmancy brickwork near the top.

I like the spot where I had breakfast (a hot-crossed bun and some orange juice from a grocery store that miraculously happened to be open). Four benches, at corners around the frozen bit in the middle. It would be nice if it were a pond, but I suspect it’s just some low ground, puddled over. I’ll go back in the spring to check.

War Museum Library - Grenadier storeThis war museum library (currently a shop for war-related books and so on, I think) made me sad. It’s dated 1932. The people who built it thought the Great War was behind them, and had no idea what was around the corner. But I do like the idea of a library as a memorial.

There’s a miniatures store in downtown Port Perry. Tiny little models of victorian houses, and everything you could want to put in them, from furniture to dogs to teeny napkins and cans of baked beans. It’s a bit like what I’m trying to do — build an imaginary town and get all the pieces right.

It was early enough that the streets were nearly deserted when I got there. As time passed, people started flocking to church and the bells rang. I lost that feeling of having the place nearly to myself, but people-watching is fun, too. And then it was time to head back and pick my daughter up from camp.

On the way home, we stopped so I could take some pictures of a crumbling farm. Not so much because it was crumbling, as because I wanted to see where all the buildings were in relation to one another. Then there was a lovely stone farmhouse that I couldn’t resist. I pulled over again.

Sarah asked if this time, I could stay in the car to take the picture.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Thank You, Mrs. Granger

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Erin Thomas

Typewriter, photo credit to Kriss Szkurlatowski on Stock ExchangeMrs. Granger was my grade nine typing (we called it “keyboarding”) teacher. She had perfect grey curls, a voice that could rap like a ruler, and a spine as straight as a steel girder. She was never less than immaculately dressed. And when I saw her at a reunion last spring, she looked exactly the same as she had twenty-five years before.

And she gave me a wonderful gift. She taught me to type.

We had electronic typewriters then, no computers. And the keys were covered over in pink and orange nail polish, so we couldn’t cheat by looking at the letters. For the first couple of weeks, there was a chart at the front of the classroom. Then there wasn’t.

It wasn’t the most exciting class on offer. F-F-F. J-J-J. F-F-F. J-J-J. But boy, did I learn my way around a keyboard. Useful skill for a novelist.

And now I’ve discovered a new way to use it.

I’m taking a writing course online, and the first assignment was to retype an action scene by a writer you admire. I groaned when I read that. Who has time for retyping?

I tried to think of a nice, short scene, but really, I knew all along what scene I would choose. The opening of Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn. I hadn’t read it in a while, but I remember thinking at the time that the James Bond movie folks had nothing on Mr. Oppel.

Eager to get the assignment over with, I started typing from the beginning. And I discovered something strange.

Retyping his words forced me to read them differently. To feel them. I noticed things like punctuation, and how many lines were spent on description compared to action. I didn’t think about these things, or stop to analyze. I just… noticed.

And when I got the rhythm of it, when I could hold a sentence in my mind and type it into my Word document without having to glance back again, something even stranger happened. The scene started building itself in my mind, line by line. I saw what was happening with more detail and depth and real-ness than I’ve ever experienced while just reading. The scene was soaking up into my fingers, or coming down through them. It was hard to tell the difference.

Retyping Kenneth Oppel’s words forced me to slow down my reading and experience the text in a way that I don’t usually manage when I’m just reading. I read too quickly, maybe — skimming over the words to get at the story. Typing forced me to give the words a chance to be noticed. And instead of getting in the way of the story, that enriched it.

I’d heard before that typing out passages from your favourite books was a good idea — a way to absorb craft at a physical level. Now, if I were to start writing like Kenneth Oppel that would be lovely, but I’m not going to hold my breath. I don’t really think it works that way, and besides, I need to find and use my own voice. But I do have a new appreciation for his work at a line-by-line level, and that can’t be a bad thing.

I’m not sure I’ll make a habit of this. It took me a good long while to retype that chapter, and I have manuscripts of my own that are crying out for some keyboard time. But every now and then, when I’m reading a book and I love the language, or a scene really grabs me, maybe I’ll try this again. Retyping someone else’s work to experience it differently and, if I’m really lucky, start to notice how the magic is being made.

Sounds weird, I know. But trust me. Give it a try.

Even if you get nothing else out of it, you’ll be making your typing teacher proud.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Only the Good Parts, Please

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Erin Thomas

Pink Cupcake photo by Richard Dudley on Stock ExchangeMy daughter likes to lick the icing off cupcakes. A few swipes of the tongue, food colouring on her cheeks. Then she’s finished with it. “I can’t eat any more,” she’ll say, handing it to me.

It’s slick and shiny on top. Dampish. Not terribly appetizing.

We need a new cupcake strategy. But yummy treats aside, I want to look at her reading habits. She licks the icing off books, too. That is, she looks for the good parts. And if there are too many pages between those good parts, she loses interest.

Even Rick Riordan, who is something of a legend in this household at present (she zoomed through the Percy Jackson books and then delved into Greek mythology; now we’re in the beginning of an Egyptian phase), is susceptible to this harsh editorial doctrine. She devoured The Lost Hero, but her bookmark has been on page 152 of The Son of Neptune for a few weeks now.

I asked her why. She shrugged. “Not enough monsters.”

It’s something I try to be aware of in my own editing. Are there enough monsters, mythological or otherwise? Is the dialogue moving fast enough? Is it moving at all? Is there a point to the gosh-darned scene?

Each scene. Yup, every one.

And there’s no cheating allowed — you can’t start the scene too far ahead of where things move to that point, or let it linger on after the point has been made. And by point, I mean event or decision or goal-and-failure that moves the story forward.

If you were only allowed one sentence to describe what happens in your scene, what would it be? Give the scene a title like a Friends episode: the one where my character accidentally poisons his girlfriend.

I’ve heard the same good advice from two excellent teachers now: start the scene at the last possible moment, end it as soon as you can. Draft the scene and then start cutting from both ends. Cut until the scene no longer makes sense, then undo that last cut. That’s it. That’s all you get to include: only the necessary stuff. The good stuff.

I’m rewriting a juvenile novel now, and trying to be aware of the “only the good parts” rule. As I revisit each scene, I ask myself what it contributes to the story. I figure out what the point is, and tighten the scene around that. It’s something I struggle with. My characters talk too much. I like to know what they had for breakfast, and where every person is coming from and going to… but that doesn’t all need to be in the book.

I know a scene is getting close when I can read it aloud and not want to skip over any bits. And then, after some work, when I can read it aloud to my critique group, and not have their eyes glaze over. And then, maybe then, it will be ready for the toughest critic of all — the cupcake licker.

Who will, of course, tell me it needs more monsters.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Tackling the Tough Stuff

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Erin Thomas

Football Tackle: photo credit Adam Klepsteen on Stock ExchangeLast night my writing group critiqued one member’s middle-grade novel-in-progress. J’s novel is about a thirteen-year-old boy dealing with a truckload of difficult things–bullying at school, friendship conflicts, and a mother who struggles with clinical depression. In the current draft, near the beginning of the story, the mother attempts suicide. The boy is the one who finds her.

The scene has already been workshopped a few times. It’s gut-wrenchingly well written. There were a few tweaks suggested, but that wasn’t what dominated the discussion. The thing that bothers me, the reason the critique session sticks in my head, is that we spent a lot of time talking about whether the scene belongs in a middle-grade novel at all.

On one level, it’s simple. My knee-jerk reaction: “What do you mean? Of course it belongs!”

I like to see books that tackle difficult topics. Especially if, as is the case here, the writer is approaching them from a place of respect and understanding. Cheryl Rainfield, author of Scars (which has both won awards and been banned from libraries) is a good friend of mine. I admire her for the risks she takes in her storytelling.

But another group member brought up a valid point: would a middle-grade boy want to read about this? In a way, this points to an issue of balance. J is writing the boy’s story, not the mom’s. It’s a novel for kids. And so the trick is to avoid letting the mom’s depression take centre stage. The book needs to be about the boy dealing with his mom’s depression. And that shouldn’t be the only thing he’s dealing with, because as important as that is, it could very easily get a bit, well, lesson-y. That might be an issue book. There needs to be a story.

Another point was brought up: would a parent want their child reading this? And that’s where I get my back up. Very hypocritical of me, because I’m about as overprotective a mom as you’ll ever meet… but I tend not to hold Sarah back much when it comes to books. I think the right book can be a discussion starter.

I don’t think we can write the books that the parents want. Yes, easy for me to say — I’m about as edgy as a crumpled sock. None of my story ideas would likely even register on the librarian/teacher/parent alarm scale. (Although I did recently have my childhood piano teacher “slap my wrist” over some of the language in Boarder Patrol. I think the character says “crap” once or twice. Ah, Miss Breckenridge, I love and respect you, but you are not my target audience.)

I’m one of the lucky ones. I had a relatively happy, albeit nerdy, childhood. But a lot of kids are dealing with a lot of stuff, and to downplay these issues in books does them a disservice. I think that for a child who lives with a parent who deals with depression or another condition, seeing his world reflected in J’s book might help. It might help him feel less alone, might help him see that there’s hope. And maybe for another child, the book might offer a glimpse into a world that they don’t know. And maybe that’s part of where empathy comes from.

Anyhow, J, if you want my two cents’ worth, don’t downplay the scene. And don’t age the character. Not yet. Write the book and see where it takes you, and see what feels right. Your mind wanted the scene to run that way for a reason. Write the book now, and revisit it later, and change it only if it feels like that improves the story.

Be brave.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Notes from Packaging Your Imagination 2011

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Erin Thomas

This past Saturday, hordes of children’s writers and illustrators converged on Victoria College for CANSCAIP’s annual Packaging Your Imagination conference. I was part of the Durham contingent, a massive wagon train (okay, two cars’ worth) of creative types from the east end.

We all do our best to empty our brains in advance, so we can cram as much knowledge as possible into our cranial cavities during the actual event. Here are a few of the things I learned.

From Sarah Ellis (The Nitty-Gritty About Style):

Style can be a nebulous idea, but not when Sarah Ellis teaches it. She showed us how to look at some of the tiny Lego bricks that combine to create a way of writing — sentence types, word choice, adjectives (or the lack thereof), dialogue attribution (or the lack thereof), punctuation, figurative language. What is used, what isn’t. What is conspicuous by its absence.

We looked at the choices some writers had made and discussed the reasons for those choices — I’d never taken a comma under a magnifying glass before, or discussed why it was a comma when it might have been an em-dash or something else. I’d never taken a sentence and written it out with different types of punctuation, to see which one best caught the meaning and tone.

Style is a funny thing. It’s fine to play with it and break rules, so long as you do so deliberately. From Sarah Ellis, I learned a much more deliberate way to look at and play with language. I look forward to giving it a try.

From Caroline Pignat (Writing Hearty Historical Fiction):

Caroline introduced the concept of historical fiction as stew: you find the right ingredients and let it simmer. She also reminded us of one of my favourite pieces of writing advice, in the face of increasingly crowded bookshelves: it doesn’t matter if it’s been done before. Nobody else can write the story that only you can write.

Writing historical fiction takes a lot of work, both on the research end and the writing end, and sometimes both at once. You have to choose the time period that speaks to you, the one that you want to write about — not the one that you think will sell. I seem to keep wanting to set stories within a fairly narrow slip of time, so that was good to hear.

She reminded us to read widely (something I’m always happy to do), and suggested some good primary sources including the Illustrated London News, the Cork Examiner, and other period papers. Civil records, ship lists, diaries… they all reveal things about a time and the people who lived in it. Caroline also underlined the importance of double-checking your sources. Find out who wrote the book, who is funding the website, and what their motivations and prejudices might be.

Caroline keeps a research notebook when she’s working on a project, and jots down bits of information that feel important, along with where those bits of information came from. I like that idea.

I also loved that she talked about knowledge, creativity and commitment as overlapping circles. The centre point, where all three meet, is the place to write from.

From Kelley Armstrong (Young at Heart: Writing for Teens):

Kelley’s talk touched on some things that seemed fairly basic to me (age of readers, age of characters), but are important for anyone who’s new to YA. She also gave us an extensive list of the different genres within YA. I always like to see how those evolve, as different genres come into public awareness. For example, where once nearly all “not-realistic” writing was lumped under science fiction or fantasy,  now we have paranormal, steampunk and dystopian.

Kelley suggested subscribing to Publisher’s Weekly, or at least to some of their free “deal memos,” to see what is happening in the marketplace. YA as a whole, she said, is dropping off right now, but given the giant boom of recent years, that had to happen.

She talked about some of the tricky areas such as profanity, drugs/alcohol, sex and violence — how far is too far? How much is too much? The answer depends on the book you want to write and who you are writing it for, really, but there are some guidelines. Milder swearing is often okay, the harsher words can scare off publishers and librarians.

Most importantly, Kelley talked about getting the voice right. Listen to teens. Hang out at the mall if you have to. If possible, have a teen reader look at your work. And if you’re going to write for teens, you should like and respect teens.

Sounds to me like good advice for any children’s writer.

Finally, Kathy Stinson gave a wonderful keynote speech titled “An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff.” I’ll never be able to do it justice here. She shared poems with us, and shared herself with us, and made us laugh and cry. Karen Krossing had told her to inspire us, and she did just that.

It was a good day. For me, one of the best parts is always seeing old friends at the conference. I always hope to come back charged and excited about writing, ready to get to work and try new things. And I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference.

Posted in Writing | Tagged | Leave a comment

This Side of Morning

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Erin Thomas

Three weeks ago, I tried something new. So far, it has stuck.

During the day, I’m editing a juvenile novel that I’ve been working on for some time. Okay, years. But I wanted to draft something new as well, so I decided to try morning writing.

I started off with a bang. At 5:00 a.m. each day, I would get up and write. I usually lasted until about 6:30, then I’d run out of steam and collapse back into bed until the alarm went off at 7:00.

That turned out not to be such a great plan. In order to function at that hour, I needed to be in bed by 9:00 or 10:00 at night. But late evening is usually the time that my husband and I have together, to talk or watch television without The Critter running around. Plus, my husband is a night owl. There’s no way on Earth he could shift his hours. So with my 5:00 a.m. start looming, I would traipse off to bed just after Daughter did, and he would be left behind looking forlorn.

I seem to be settling into a more modified routine now. I set the alarm for 5:45. When it goes off, I get up and go straight to my desk and write longhand until 7:00. So far, this seems to be working. I might even try backing it up to 5:30 and see how it goes.

I also came across a book called “The 90-Day Novelist.” Usually I ignore books with titles like that. I’ve worked on enough novels to know that imposing a time frame like that doesn’t pay off in the long run. Not for me, at least. Some stories take more time, some take less time. Most stories, for me, take quite a few drafts before I’m happy with them. Okay, years. So I’m not going to hold myself to the 90 days.

What I do like, however, is that there are writing exercises for each day. I do those each morning. And sometimes I add in something I picked up from Donald Maass or another resource, or sometimes I just take a stab at a scene or write about a character I’m trying to understand better.

I’m still in the pre-writing stage. That’s something new for me, too, and I think it’s going to turn out to be a good thing. I would usually think about a story for a long time, figure out who the characters were, and then start planning out a plot. Once I had that all set out on index cards, I’d start writing. By about halfway through, of course, things would have diverged so much from the original plan that my index cards were useless, but at least they’d gotten me into the story.

So far, though, I’ve spent three weeks not-writing the story. It’s weird. Instead, I’m writing every day about the story. Answering questions from the point of view of characters, developing the world, writing about whatever I want to explore. I’ve never done that ahead of time before. It all just happened alongside or in the messy first draft.

I’m impatient. I admit, I’ve taken a stab at the opening scene. I had to. There are also some little scenes and bits of dialogue that emerged out of the writing exercises, and I’ve tucked those away in case I need them.

I hope that, when I do start writing, I’m going to have a better first draft for having spent the time. For one thing, I realized that my main character isn’t who I thought it was going to be. That’s a good thing for the story, and will save me a rather large rewrite. For another, I have a much better feel for who all my characters are and what they want, and how those wants will bring them into conflict with each other and with themselves.

I’ve also taken some time to do things like drawing a map of my main setting, and studying floor plans from the late Victorian period (my story is set in 1910) to come up with a house layout. Setting details tended to shift around somewhat randomly in the first drafts of my previous novels. Distances varied according to how long I needed my characters to take to get places. Rooms could appear and disappear. I have a fairly nebulous relation to setting (and directions) in real life, so that shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me. But I digress.

With this pre-writing, I’m not expecting a usable first draft. That’s not how I write. But I think that, because of having done this work first, I’ll end up with a first draft that has different problems than the ones I usually encounter. I have an idea of my beginning, and an idea of my end, and I know some things that happen in the middle. I haven’t got everything sorted out yet, but I’ve got different things sorted out from what I usually do. Writing from this starting point should be interesting.

So, as it turns out, this whole pre-writing thing has potential. I’ll know more once I start into the actual draft a week or so from now. I suspect that once I start writing the story, I’ll want to switch to typing rather than writing longhand (but maybe not — that might be an interesting experiment as well), and I’ll want to spend more time at it each day, so my schedule will need adjusting.

But I know now that I like working in the mornings. I like taking some time for writing when no one else is awake, and my brain isn’t full yet of all the things I have to do. And I like knowing that even if my day gets busy and everything goes down the drain, at least I did some writing before breakfast. I can hold onto that.

It’s a new routine, but it’s working.

When do you write?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Happy Halloween!

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Erin Thomas

I have two things to share today. The first is my Halloween/scary book recommendation: The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson. I started it yesterday, and had to stay up really late to finish it, because I needed to see some kind of resolution. I couldn’t possibly go to sleep with all those ghosts running around.

It’s a good book with strong characterization. There was a point just shy of the middle where I was really and truly scared, and that hasn’t happened to me (because of a book, anyhow) for a while. The last one before this was Marina Cohen’s Ghost Ride, incidentally, and I highly recommend that one as well.

I don’t tend to seek out scary stuff, but I really love Maureen Johnson’s books.Last night, reading The Name of the Star, I was creeped-out, afraid-of-the-dark, not-wanting-my-husband-to-go-walk-the-dog-because-she’s-too-cowardly-to-protect-him kind of scared. In fairness to the dog, of course, I did manage to set that one aside. And the book got less scary after that point, although still gripping.

So the upshot is, I recommend it for your Halloween read. Or your anytime read.

The second thing I wanted to share is a Halloween-related thought. Today is dress-up day for a lot of kids. It’s the day they get to be someone else. My daughter is dressing as a princess (a mediaeval princess, she likes to specify). Actually, I think princess has been a recurring them in her Halloween costume choices over the years.

I like to dress up. I usually pull together a costume of some sort to hand out candy at the door. I have a really cool witch’s hat, which, unfortunately, I can’t seem to find this year. Last year my husband and I went to a Halloween-themed Jack-and-Jill party as Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler (yup, a middle-aged, brunette Rose Tyler. Just what this world needed). Incidentally, there was someone else at that party dressed as a nerd; Aaron and I were mildly offended. But the point, I guess, is that it’s fun to dress up as something that you’re not.

But writing is even more fun. Because in writing, you don’t just get to “dress up” in someone else’s skin, you get to play pretend as well.

When my brother Mike was a kid, he and his friend Darren played with little plastic G.I.Joe and Star Wars figures. Listening to them, it seemed that every other sentence started with “say I.”

“Say I get to the top of the mountain.”

“Say your guy shoots but he misses.”

“Say I can fly.”

Anything was possible, as long as the other person agreed.

Writing is the best way I can think of to play “say I.” So, having dug out the Halloween decorations and made sure my daughter’s costume is sorted, I’m going to spend this afternoon playing dress-up in the best possible way. At my computer, writing.

Happy Halloween!

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Cliffhangered

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Erin Thomas

I love the fact that my daughter is an avid reader. She devours books. I think she’s reading above grade level; I don’t really know, and I don’t really care. What matters to me is that she picks up books on her own and enjoy them for hours on end. She has a cosy little reading corner, complete with beanbag chair, and it’s her favourite spot in the house. She knows the joy of getting lost in a good story. It’s one of the things I wished most for her.

But the other morning, before school, she finished the book she was reading. And she was in tears. Inconsolable. The writer had left things off at a very bad place.

She got cliffhangered.

Now, I know this is a common occurrence in series books. I was a big fantasy reader in early high school… Terry Goodkind, David Eddings and the like. I know that sometimes you have to wait a year or so to find out what happens next. But there are cliffhangers, and then there are cliffhangers.

Take the Harry Potter books. Each of them leaves questions unresolved. In each, we see an increase or a change in Voldemort’s power, and we’re left wondering what that change will mean for Harry and for the wizarding world. It’s a seven-book story arc, and it’s beautifully constructed. And since I was reading them as they were being written, I’ll always remember the agony of waiting for the next book. But never once did I feel that Rowling had cheated. Each story wrapped up, each delivered on its promise.

The series my daughter was reading is called The Familiars. It’s about animals, and magic, and all the things she loves. It’s funny and full of adventure. We read the first book together; by the time the second one came out, she was able and excited to tackle it on her own. At the end of the first book, there were threads left hanging, but the adventure that we had started on with the characters — the promise of the story — had been fulfilled. It was a good book.

Now, I haven’t read the second one in its entirety, but I snuck a peek at the ending to see what upset my daughter.

* Spoiler Alert *

Just as she said, the book ends with the main characters witnessing the uprising of the enemy (undead, I believe) army, about to be attacked.

* / Spoiler Alert *

To me, that’s a cheat. That’s not the end of a book; that’s getting to the climax and typing “the end.” And I suppose the original cliffhangers were cheats, weren’t they? I think that’s where the term comes from. Back in the days of those old Perils Of Pauline movies, or whatever they were called, the weekly serial would end with Pauline hanging off a cliff, about to fall. Or tied across a railroad track with the train bearing down on her, or whatever the peril of the week was.

It’s different when you can tune in next week, or even (as in the case of serialized television between seasons) after a couple of months, to find out what happens next. Books take longer. It’s usually  a year, or close to it, between releases. Books also require a greater commitment from the reader, and that commitment should be paid off.

* Spoiler Alert *

Take this with a grain of salt; as I said, I haven’t read the book in its entirety. But as a writer, I’d think that ending with the certainty of an uprising would do the trick. Or ending with word of the army on its way. Is it necessary to bring the enemy face-to-face with the characters, and then end the book before the first strike?

In fact, the second-to-last chapter ends with a rather nice moment, where the bad guy escapes in full cackle. That could have made a nice ending. Wrap up the action, get the good guys where they need to be, give them (and the reader) a chance to regroup with the inevitable threat hanging over their heads. Closure, but a reason to read on.

But when citizens are screaming and the good guys are huddled, looking across city walls at a giant army… that’s not a scene to end a book on. That’s not closure. That’s tacky. That’s a buy-my-next-book-or-you-won’t-know-if-they-live-or-die desperate.

* / Spoiler Alert *

I’ll probably read the book. It seems only fair, having voiced my opinion about it. And if I change my mind, I’ll blog about that too. But right now, my daughter’s experience has left something of a bad taste in my mouth.

The thing is, The Familiars is a children’s book series. And any series written for children faces a unique challenge in that its audience is growing up, even while the books are being written. (The Harry Potter books handled this in an unusual way, by having the characters grow up with the readers.)

When book one of The Familiars came out, my daughter needed to have it read to her. Book two, she was able to read on her own. By the time book three is published, who knows what she’ll be reading or where her interests will lie? A year is a long time for a seven-year-old reader to wait.

I admit to feeling a bit of mommy-rage. Making my daughter cry is a pretty quick way to get my dander up. But I do believe, as a writer, that there is such a thing as playing fair with readers. And typing “the end” right before a climax is not playing fair. End a chapter there. Don’t end the book.

Like I said, my daughter is a reader. One bad experience will not change that. But what about the kids who aren’t? What about the ones who struggle with reading, the ones who undertake a series book with trepidation? If they reach the end and feel cheated, how likely are they to make the effort with another novel?

I admit to not having given a lot of thought to writing books in a series before this. The DragonSpeaker books were something of an anomaly, with three of us working together on them, and besides, they were all released at the same time. But as it turns out, I do have opinions on series books. I think that each book needs to have its own beginning, middle and end. I don’t believe in cheating. And if I ever write a series, please hold me to that.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Who Inspired You?

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Erin Thomas

Last week, right here in Whitby, I heard one of my favourite writers interview another of my favourite writers. Susanna Kearsley acted as MC for Kelley Armstrong at a Whitby Library event. Both of these women are important writers in my life, and are part of the reason why I am writing today.

The funny thing is, Susanna Kearsley writes for adults, and until recently Kelley Armstrong did as well (I haven’t read her YA books yet, but I hear great things about them from Lena Coakley, and I trust Lena’s taste in books). I don’t have a lot to do with grown-up books these days, and Susanna writes romance books — not my genre at all. The thing is, the impact that Susanna and Kelley had on me had less to do with what they wrote, and more to do with who they are.

It’s a big deal when, as an aspiring writer, you get to feel a connection to a published writer. Any connection. Arthur Slade keeps a letter from Ray Bradbury on his wall. Nail Gaiman has talked about the influence Dianna Wynne Jones had on him, as mentor and friend. And for me, there was Susanna Kearsley.

The thing is, she’s a local girl. Her mom and my mom worked together. And so when she had her breakout success with Marianna in 1993, I heard about it right away. I still have my dog-eared copy of that book. I loved it. I still love it; it’s a great story. It didn’t win the Catherine Cookson award for nothing. But for me, it’s always been as much a talisman as a book.

Susanna Kearsley was the first author who was a real person to me.  I devoured each of her books as they came out, not only for the characters and world building (which were incredible — now that I’ve had the opportunity to hear Susanna speak a few times and get to know her as a writer, I have a better understanding of the effort she puts into her immaculate research), but also because she was like me. And if someone whose mom worked where my mom worked could write books, then maybe, just maybe, someday I could do that too.

This was even before I had ever met her in person. I have now, and she’s every bit as friendly and gracious as I could have hoped. It’s always nice when that happens.

The first time I heard of Kelley Armstrong was when she came as a guest speaker to a writing course I was taking. I bought a copy of Bitten on the way home from the workshop, and devoured it that night. I was hooked.

I bought the book not because I thought I would enjoy a werewolf story (that part came as a surprise), but because I liked Kelley immediately. She was down-to-earth and approachable, and she talked about the life of a writer as much as the craft. She told us about things like training her husband and children to understand that a closed office door meant they should get their own dinner.

Nobody had ever talked about that part of it before, about the struggle to actually get things done and fit it around work and family and everything else. She had worked in IT, I worked in IT. She was a mom, I was a brand-new mom.

Kelley didn’t make it sound easy — that would have been a lie. But she talked about it in a way that was real, and I realized that if this woman, with three children and a job as a programmer, could make room in her life for writing, I could too.

Last week, when Susanna and Kelley came to Whitby, the topic of mentors came up. Susanna asked Kelley who inspired her. Kelley said the answer to that question has changed over the years. There were writers whose books she loved, writers she wanted to write like. Those were the writers who inspired her at first. But as her career has grown and she has gotten to know other writers, her inspiration has come from different places. She’ll admire one writer’s sense of suspense, another writer’s depth of character, and another writer’s work ethic. Some she admires for having overcome so many things in their own lives in order to write.

I understand that — the way it can shift and change, depending on what you’re working on or looking at. There are writers I love: Kenneth Oppel, Arthur Slade, Martine Leavitt, Meg Rosoff, Laurie Halse Anderson, so many others. I’d love to be able to write like them, but I think I’m most inspired by writers when I get a glimpse of their real lives, like Kelley and Susanna.

I don’t write romantic books like Susanna or scary books like Kelley. (And truly, to boil their books down to one adjective does them a disservice — their stories and characters are more complicated than that.) I’m learning, bit by bit, how to write books for kids. But I’m also learning how to build my life around writing, and the people who inspire me are the ones who are doing that in their own ways, every day. I know them through my writing group, or through CANSCAIP or the WCDR. They’re not all published, or published as widely as they deserve to be, but they remind me that writing takes effort, and that it’s worth it.

And when they try harder, I’m encouraged to try harder. I hope it works the other way, too. Because being part of a writing community of real people — that’s inspiring.

So here’s today’s question: Who inspired you? Who was it at first, and who is it now? And why?

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 3 Comments

What’s in a Name?

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Erin Thomas

I recently read a book that featured two characters who had distractingly similar names. Harold and Howard, I think they were. They might as well have been Michael and Mitchell, or Jane and Jen. The point is, it’s confusing. And not just for the obvious reasons.

This is something I cover when I talk to people about writing for reluctant readers. It’s one of those areas of overlap between teaching-related nerdery and writing-related nerdery, and I love it, so please bear with me.

As we learn to read, we tend to look to the first letter of any given word as an important reading clue. I saw this when my daughter was learning to read. Faced with a TH word (the, then, that, those, thing, thistle…), she would nearly always guess “the.” With time, her guesses grew more sophisticated, meaning she would pick a TH word that more or less fit with the way the sentence had been heading. Still, she was ignoring the word endings and clinging to that first letter or letter sound as the best clue to inform her choice.

That’s why it’s a good idea to avoid character names that start with the same letter. Do you really need Kashif and Karyn to be in the same book? You might. Maybe the meaning of each name is important. Maybe you want confusion caused by the name similarity to be a plot point. Or maybe those are the names that speak to you and make the characters come alive, and no other names will do. Do what you have to, but there are lots of great names to choose from. If you can, why not give the reader a break?

As we become more proficient readers, we start to look at all the letters in a word, one by one. This is the sounding-out-the-words stage, even if the sounding-out happens only in our mind. Reading this way is slow but accurate, once you get the hang of it. Still, words that contain too many similar letters can be confusing.

Faster reading happens when we start to recognize words by their shapes. Try drawing a loose outline around Sally and another loose outline around Betty. Up, down, over two tall letters, down around the Y and straight across the bottom. The shapes are similar, aren’t they? Not only would I avoid Michael and Mitchell in the same book (based on first letter, letter similarity and word shape), I would also avoid Sally and Betty.

Again, there are so many great names to pick from. Put some thought into the way the name looks on the page, as well as to its meaning and sound. Do this for names, places, and any other words that you have a choice about.

(For reluctant and young readers, I tend to favour names with phonetically correct spellings as well, but that’s another blog topic.)

I recently rejected Bridget as a name for a character. It’s a great name. I love it. It has Irish roots, which I needed, and a meaning related to fire and light, which I liked. If I’d been planning to write my story in first person, I might have gone with it. But because I needed to use third person narration, Bridget was going to appear several times on any given page. And… it’s a bulky name, isn’t it? Lots of loops and up-bits and down-bits. Wide letters. In the end, I went with Kate. Faster to read, faster to say.

The Bridget/Kate book isn’t for reluctant readers, by the way. I try to take name appearance into account for most books I write.

Kate has formed herself into a different person in my head than Bridget was going to be, I think. It’s hard to know. I’m still playing with the character at this point, so she’s going to evolve no matter what I call her. I’m not too bothered by it; I liked the name Bridget, but I like the name Kate too, and I’m happy with the person she’s shaping up to be. It’s a lot tougher to change a character name once you’ve started writing the book properly and gotten attached to it.

The point I’m trying to make in this post is that books are, generally speaking, a visual medium. They’re oral, too, which is why reading your work aloud is such an important part of editing process. But we don’t tend to hear a lot about the way things look on the page, and that’s part of the reader experience, too.

These naming guidelines are especially important when writing for young children, reluctant readers, readers for whom English is a second language, or anyone who might struggle with reading. We all have off days–days when we’re tired, or when we’ve been away from the book too long and are struggling to remember who the characters are. I’m a pretty good reader, but I have to admit, the Harold/Howard thing stymied me when I’d been away from the book for a few days.

If there’s something you can do to make the reader’s life easier, to reward the process that they’re making in learning to read, to make reading more enjoyable, or to make it easier for them to keep flipping pages… why not do it?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment