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Katherine Langrish is an award-winning author of children’s and young adult historical fantasy. Her meticulous research, gorgeous prose, and instinct for a good story have won her many fans around the world. Since 2009, Katherine has been the creator of the outstanding blog Seven Miles of Steel Thistles where she shares her thoughts and fascinating […]
by Addy Farmer
You know how it is. The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry rings you up (again) and says please can you come and do your spellbinding session on muggle stories.
They'll pay a hefty 1000 galleons, a complimentary set of Gryffindor robes and as many packets of Hob Nobs as a house elf can carry.
No?
Well, maybe you arrive un-noticed at a school and find that you're
13 Comments on School Visits: It's Not all Wizards and Cake, last added: 6/24/2011
I love the comment about entertaining not teaching. Author visits should be about energizing and inspiring. After a good author visit, we see the children suddenly leap forward in their written work, and it's because very often the visit is what helps them suddenly see the point and joy of it all. And if it's a REALLY good visist the effects will carry them through the year.<br /><br />
What if I were a genuine hewed out of stone troll? <br />Anyway - worthwhile post. As a teacher turned writer ( think poachers and gamekeepers) great author visits are an absolute highlight for most children.<br />You need to be yourself , be prepared and be enthusiastic. Leave the shameless self-promotion behind and gag the inner editor/critic. You'll have a great time - and if the staff
That comment about entertaining, not teaching: in a different context, that is how I approach the Chatterbooks groups I run. They've been in school all day already: coming to the library should be all about fun. In fact, they have so much fun I have trouble making them leave at the end. And most of them leave with an armload of books.
I definitely think you're there to inspire the children generally but hopefully the teachers too. I still remember a local poet (Gillian Allnutt) who came in and worked with my class over a few sessions. She left me with so many ideas to pass on to other members of staff. And, she was worth every penny - we had a parents evening based on her visit, made and sold a poetry book of all the
Great post! So true that author visits are a varied experience. I've had a range of experiences so far and haven't been doing them long. I agree that you're not there to teach, but to let them in on the process of writing and meeting a writer. It enhances the curriculum and often teachers ask me to emphasis what they've been teaching as the kids will hear it better from the author
I absolutely believe that inspirational is the way to be. There's such a difference between being a teacher (I supply teach) and a visiting writer. I find it freeing and fun - i can only hope the children do as well.<br /> <br />I think biscuit/cake requirements should be part of any writer database. For the record I'm partial to custard creams.
I must admit the words school and visit in the same sentence gives me the heebie jeebies. But stick a bottle of wine in there, it makes me feel a bit better (as long as I get to drink it just before the visit)
What do you do with old manuscripts? I don’t mean crinkly old medieval manuscripts, I mean the manuscripts every writer owns, precious but useless piles of paper that represent months if not years of work – the forlorn not-dead-but-hardly-breathing remains of BOOKS THAT DID NOT MAKE IT. I have at least six.
I can’t bear to throw them out, yet there is absolutely zero chance of them ever being published. Not only were they never good enough, they’re a stage of me which I’ve outgrown, like an old chrysalis, and I couldn’t fit back in. On top of that, they’re too old-fashioned.
Take a look at this:
An electric bell began to ring, violently, without stopping. “Assembly!”
Another rush, this time for the classroom door. No teachers about yet. The corridor brimmed with people. Tall arrogant prefects and groups of scruffy-looking blazer-clad boys. First-form boys looking aggressive but clean, like choirboys playing rugger. The little girls were being pushed aside in the rush: Linda caught sight of a frightened face near the wall. Noise and laughter echoed like sounds in a swimming pool, saturating the corridor clad in its dirty cream paint and pock-marked notice boards.
The wide double doors to the hall were propped open: the flood surged in, slowed, broke into individuals who walked with more or less decorum to their places.
Coughing: shuffling. The slide of the khaki drugget underfoot. Herringbone pattern of woodblocks showing through a split seam. Mr Green, the music teacher, coming in talking over his shoulder to Miss Sykes: movement of interest among the girls. Mr Green was popular: he was married but rumoured to be in love with Miss Sykes, and it made the older girls jealous. He sat down at the organ, grinned at Mr Harvey who was up on the stage fixing hymn numbers, and made the organ groan breathily. Then he made it squeak. Laughter interrupted the general chatter.
The Head came in, wearing a black gown over his suit and banged for silence. He was smiling with a rather forced cheerfulness. The noise gradually faded into loud shushings from boys who knew the safe ways of being noisy. Precarious silence.
12 Comments on Old Manuscripts - by Katherine Langrish, last added: 4/16/2010
What I have done, Kath is to buy cardboard archive boxes from the stationers and every book or books is boxed up and archived. This applies to both published and unpublished stuff.
The boxes are neatly labelled and then stored. In my case in a mixture of the eaves above th garage and the room in our house we call the office (they stack quite neatly under the wooden counter we had put in there.)
There may come a day, when you've had a huge hit with a book that an American university will pay money for your archive!
Or you might suddenly decide to reanimate and modernise an idea you have stashed away. If it's all stored and labelled you will find it when you need it.
"...children who meet a strange fugitive in the woods, who turns out to be on the run from the death-aspect of the Triple Moon Goddess (yes, her again) – and involved standing stones, unfriendly elves with golden faces, owls, ruins, and mazes."
Kath, I rather like that one just from the description!
I agree, it's hard to throw away the old manuscripts. (And I bet you any money that mine are far, far worse than yours.) But I think they're invaluable as a map of the learning process. One can write 80,000 words of utter tripe, but then, buried among it, one character, one image, one turn of style, which you can notice later and say - Yes, THIS was good, and this is the direction in which I developed.
Old manuscripts are also great humbling devices. I remember my second manuscript, I thought at the time was brilliant. Looking at it now...! It makes me realise: NEVER think you've done the best you can do.
I remember pulling out a cockroach-eaten, embarrassing old manuscript and taking a pair of scissors to it. I cut out all the little turns of phrase and metaphors and descriptions I liked (the ones that weren't embarrassing), filing them in an envelope for possible later use, and burning the rest...
I just keep them. They are part of my landscape, part of my lifestory. At least I'm not a sculptor. Imagine how much space you#d need to store that lot!
What a fascinating post and how generous of you to share an extract - I loved reading it! Sadly, many of my old manuscripts are on hard drives of old computers and possibly lost for ever. I find it very interesting that many contemporary writers don't have the same paper trail for their drafts and revisions as would once have been the norm - yet every word we casually share on the world wide web will be there to see for ever. That's what they tell us, anyway.
This post came at a perfect time for me. I just posted about getting a new idea and feeling bad about leaving the old ones behind. I have 3 unfinished WIPS as of now. Two of which I never work on. I probably will never through them away. I saved them on 3 diffrent disks, in case I lost one, and printed each of them out, stuffed them in my bookshelf sight unseen. I don't read them but I remember them well enough to know they never would have made it. It's a learning process to write several manuscripts. They are all and probably will be for awhile, practice runs.
Fascinating to find out what everyone does! I do work on computer (natch) but print out as I go, so leave enormous papertrails! But some of my earlier efforts are typed - or even longhand.
At a meeting of Australian authors Patsy Adam-Smith once said that computers were going to make it very difficult for students of future literature. She said the long hand drafts with endless crossings out would no longer exist and students would not get the same insight into the writing process. It is an interesting thought.
Mine are in a folder, and at some point I'll get my parents to burn them (don't like fire), or I'll shred them. A bit worried people might steal ideas if I put them in recycling! Even if the originals are extremely different from the current versions.
If hearing voices is a form of saintliness or madness, all authors are mad saints. Creating characters means knowing them from the inside out and being able to ‘hear’ how they think and how they talk. An out-going, confident character will reflect that in his or her speech. A nervous character will sound diffident, hesitant, or perhaps more formal. The goal is to create a distinctive voice for each of the main characters. They should not all sound alike.
This is important even if you are writing in the first person. First person narratives can be in danger of sounding anonymous and samey. I’ve read a few first person teen novels which, apart from the names, you could be forgiven for assuming were all about the same heroine, a sort of generic ‘15/16 year old modern girl’. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s an expert at work:
You know that old film they always show on the telly at Christmas, the Wizard of Oz? I love it, especially the Wicked Witch of the West, with her cackle and her green face and all her special flying monkeys. I’d give anything to have a wicked winged monkey as an evil little pet. It could whiz through the sky, flapping its wings and sniffing the air for that awful stale instant-coffee-and-talcum powder teacher smell and then it would s-w-o-o-p straight onto Mrs Vomit Bagley and carry her away screaming. (“The Dare Game”, Jacqueline Wilson, 2000)
And we know this girl. She’s exuberant, imaginative, funny, a rebel – Jacqueline Wilson’s ‘Tracy Beaker’. It looks easy, but it’s not. It would be VERY easy to write something similar but far less engaging:
There’s an old film they often show on the telly at Christmas, the Wizard of Oz. I’ve always loved it, and my favourite character is the Wicked Witch of the West. I like the way she cackles, and her green face, and all her special flying monkeys. I’ve always wished I could have a wicked winged monkey for a pet…
This has lost all its energy and sounds written down, not spoken.
Then there’s the pitfall of dialects and regional accents. Here, a little goes a very long way. Unless you yourself are steeped in a dialect or accent, it’s easy to get it wrong and sound phony. Avoid “begorrah’s” and “eeh, by gum’s”; avoid too many dropped ‘h’s’ and rhyming slang. Of course, if you are really at home with an accent, it can add enormously to your writing. In this extract, an eighteenth century Yorkshire drummer boy walks out of a hill – and out of his own time:
“I wasn’t so long,” said the drummer. “But I niver found nowt. I isn’t t’first in yon spot; sithee, I found yon candle. Now I’s thruff yon angle, and it hasn’t taken so long, them bells is still dinging. It’s a moy night getting. But come on, or they’ll have the gate fast against us and we’ll not get our piggin of ale.” “Who are you?” said Keith. “I thought thou would ken that,” said the boy. “But mebbe thou isn’t t’fellow thou looks in t’dark.”
“Earthfasts” William Mayne, 1966
If you’re not this confident (and most of us aren’t), be sparing in your use of dialect words. The reader will be able to use a few subtle pointers to ‘fill in’ the accent from his or her own experience, and that’s better than getting it wrong. Slight changes to grammar will sometimes help. A nineteenth century servant girl might be l
14 Comments on Hearing Voices - Katherine Langrish, last added: 3/21/2010
Verily, Kath, thou hast strucketh ye nail firmly on ye head. Forsooth.
I remember once reading a novel in which a cave-dwelling cro-magnon uttered the line, "I haven't got a problem! He's the one with the problem!" The author would have had to work very hard after that to win me back; and she didn't.
What John said! I like having modern touches in an ancient world setting too. In Ithaka there's a slogan chalked on a tavern wall which reads POSEIDON RULES! Well, why not?
Have you seen that wonderful Blackadder episode - "The wise woman? The wise woman? Three things must ye know of the wise woman. First... she is a WOMAN! And second ... she is wise!"
I think the key to slang, especially when writing YA is to use it to enhance the feel and attitude of your characters but otherwise find different ways of creating genuine voices. I just finished writing a YA set in 1983/1984 punk rock California. The slang we used back then is practically archaic and also confined to a relatively small group of people, so I concentrated more on how my MC thought about situations and how she reacted rather than filling her mouth with lots of Californianisms. Nice to have the 'hath' 'hast' stuff sorted out.
Very timely and helpful post from my point of view, Kath! I'm just wrestling with this in edits. Firebrand has 16th century characters but like your Halewyn, they transcend time. And what's more, the narrator is telling us in English (looking back quite a while, too) what he'd originally have said in Gaelic.
So while I avoided 'OK' and yelled out loud when I caught myself describing a moon like a 'floodlight', I am going to let him use the word 'thug', and I'm still swithering over 'stroppy'. (Anybody know how old that is...?) I don't mind an anachronism or two - as you say, so long as I know they're there...
Kath, you would have got away with 'exploded' in your Troll saga. Some Norsemen might have been to Iceland and see the volcanos and geysers there. Also, caught whales can explode if you don't cut them up in time.
Don't be too hard on Aragorn, though. He's in a very formal situation when giving that speech. I don't suppose our coronations here have less high-flown language.
Lollity, Nick, I'm trying to get the image of that exploding whale out of my head now...
When I was a kid I didn't notice how pompous and highfalutin' Aragorn is in the Return of the King (I must have liked pompous and highfalutin' then). It was only when I went back and read it a few years ago that it hit me between the eyes. It seems so unlike him and I wonder if Tolkein ever regretted it. It seems especially unlike delicious Viggo, hem hem.
I've read Dark Angels, Kath, and 'take me to your leader' didn't jar for me a bit! As in, I didn't go 'ooh, tut-tut, Kath', but then get to the end and think 'ah, I see: that's all right then'!
Another curious thing is that books set in Ancient Rome seem to get away with modern-sounding dialogue more than most. Robert Harris's 'Pompeii' is a case in point (all right, not strictly Rome) and his other Rome books, are a case in point. The characters use entirely modern idioms and yet it works. I wonder why this is. Perhaps it's because we think of Rome as an advanced civilisation, a forerunner of our own (just lacking in iPhones) and so 'modern' is its mood.
Mood is what it's about, ultimately. The words and phrases we associate with certain contexts. A story set in the age of Beowulf, by contrast, would probably avoid all Latin-derived words if it possibly could.
Thanks Fiona! And no, I wouldn't expect or want it to jar or to be a puzzle for the reader, but I did feel I had that freedom with this character to be playful if I felt like it. In fact his 'voice' changes dramatically at one point later in the book.
Love the exploding whale, Nick, and point taken. I did in fact think of puffballs which explode, and I may in fact have used the word once or twice - but the point is valid and in general it's a good principle.
Nick, I think Rome gets away with a more modern idiom because it's a totally different language, so one can happily find a modern equivalent: no one is expecting you to write in Latin. With periods where they spoke an older form of English, it's easy to get caught in a slightly stilted compromise between modern and archaic forms.
Oh and Kath if you would only add the difference between "-eth" and '-est" then perhaps people who want to do "olde Englysshe" in ads etc would not make such prattes of themselves!
I have a peeve too - people who pronounce the 'Y' in 'Ye Old Tea Shoppe' as if it were the modern letter 'y', when we all know that it's actually a thorn, and that the word should be pronounced 'The'.
Charlie: I have to confess I was one of those dumbies who pronounced the "Y" in Ye. I didn't know it was a thorn. Thanks for the tip. It's amazing what you pick up around the place. I learned something new today!
It's a fact of life, but not one of the fun ones ... Yes, it's editing, and I'm up to my red-rimmed eyeballs in it just now. I checked out earlier posts on this subject, and came across Katherine Langrish's words (Monday 8 December 2008 - Why Did You Pack All This Stuff?) -
"I take my first glance at the scrawled blue loops, crossings-out and comments with indignation positively foaming through my veins.I lose my cool.My inner teenager runs riot.I phone a friend.I pour out my woes.I am bitter, furious, misunderstood."
This is an utterly accurate description of the way it feels to me. And I react like this every flipping time, as anyone living within any sort of earshot will affirm. So I'm wondering, is it completely unnecessary? Or is this peevish surge of temper exactly what I need? Maybe the exercise of rewriting on the basis of somebody else's comments is the kind of adversarial activity that requires the adrenalin to be high and the eyes beady?
I'm beginning to think it does, at least for me.
The 3 categories of editorial change are: 1. it makes it better 2. it makes it different, but not really any better or worse 3. it makes it worse.
I think what I try to do is say yes to the 1s, yes to as many of the 2s as I can bear, and be absolute clarity itself in fighting my corner for the 3s. And maybe I need to be thoroughly hyped up to do this.
What do you think? Is this knee-jerk reaction an expression of childishness, or an essential primeval battle cry? I hope most of you will think it's the latter. Otherwise, I may come to your house and throw an enormous wobbly on your front step ...
The photo is from a blog called The Cloud Factory - thanks! Joan Lennon's website
3 Comments on A Fact of Life - Joan Lennon, last added: 2/2/2010
When I'm editing I inevitably perpetrate the occasional number 3 on the author. Then when they come back to me about it I can sense the indrawn breath, and the psyching up to fight their corner about this vital issue... and I tend to go 'Hm, yeah, you were right, change it back.' Which leaves the author relieved but with a lot of wasted passion.
Joan, I love the idea of it being a primeval battle cry. That will definitely help me next time! Editing is always going to be like this, and I like your three outcomes. I did a flow-chart on this subject once... the convoluted paths towards the best outcomes...
Three of the four books I’ve written so far are set in the Viking Age, and when I visit schools, children often want to know why. Well, obviously Vikings are great material for exciting and bloodthirsty narratives. If I ask the children themselves to describe what Vikings mean to them, hands shoot up, and they say things like: ‘bloodthirsty’, ‘raiders’, ‘killing people with axes’. And I say, ‘That’s all true, but did you know they were also farmers, sailors, discoverers, poets, and adventurers?’
As a writer I’m fascinated by the paradoxes of the Viking age. Here are these hugely energetic, independent, self-reliant people, bursting out of Scandinavia and sailing all over the world, to Byzantium, to Russia – raiding the British coast, discovering and colonising Iceland and Greenland, crossing to North America. Yet their appetite for adventure is intensely practical; it’s all about things we can understand – obtaining goods, winning land for farms, settling down in a new place to raise families.
The whole period is one of colour, excitement, change. Norway and Iceland didn’t adopt Christianity until around 1000. That’s incredibly late for Europe as a whole, so you get this tension between pagan and Christian ideas, sometimes with members of the same family holding different beliefs – amulets with the cross on one side and Thor’s hammer on the other so that people could hedge their bets. We’re so entirely used to post-Christian Europe that it’s really intriguing to peer into this mirror where things were different. (And this may be the reason why so many people vaguely assume that the Vikings are, er, sort of prehistoric. A couple of years ago, Waterstones in Oxford had their Viking books shelved under ‘Prehistory’…) Christianity, it seems to me, expends a great deal of ingenuity attempting to reconcile the notion of a loving God with the world as we see it. The Vikings accepted that their world was a violent and unfair place. Even the gods were not immune from destruction. The best thing was to earn the respect of gods and men. “Cattle die, kindred die: every man is mortal. One thing never dies: a man's good name.”
And we can share their admiration of those who did their best to live up to that motto, often with grim humour:
“Bury me on that headland I thought so suitable for a home,” says Thorvald Eiriksson (mortally wounded by an arrow, in the Greenland Saga). “I seem to have hit on the truth when I said I would settle there.”
In modern terms, Thorvald richly deserved his fate, having just massacred several Native Americans as they lay asleep. Iceland’s great poet, Egil Skallagrimsson, was just six years old when he deliberately killed a playmate with his axe. Violent, ruthless, canny, yet capable of great sensitivity and author of a heartbreaking poem on the death of his son who drowned at sea, he typifies the Viking Age hero – not a man you would be happy to have for a next-door neighbour. I was thinking of Egil when I wrote the character of Harald Silkenhair for ‘Troll Blood’ – whether it’s a gun, or a sword, how do we stand up to the threat of violence? What is it to be a hero? What is true bravery? These are questions the Vikings were deeply concerned with, and so are we, however different our
7 Comments on "The Fury of the Norsemen" - The Appeal of the Vikings - by Katherine Langrish, last added: 1/18/2010
Great post. I love the idea that writers should think about bravery. I have never consciously done so, but now I think of it I see it is a theme in my work.
When I taught in a museum, I was always interested in the idea of progress. If you asked a regular adult (rather than a historian) put these 'ages' in the correct order: Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Norman, Roman, they would almost always think the right answer was 'Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Roman, Norman.' People hate the thought that there isn't linear progress.
How interesting! I'd never have thought people would get the Romans after the Anglo Saxons. But yes, I'm sure you're right: people like to think of civilization progressing in a smooth uphill line.
But how much of that is due to preconceptions of what 'civilised' actually means. I'd rather be a Viking woman than a Roman woman, any day!
Seriously? If I had the Tardis for a day or two, you would definitely find me circa 100AD wandering down the Via Appia. Olive oil and white bread for me, thanks!
Yes, but Roman women had few if any civil and legal rights. Viking women could inherit and own property, and were much more equal with men. (As the large number of very strong women in the Icelandic sagas may suggest!)
You're so right about how Christians expend a lot of energy on juggling God loves us with the awfulness of the world we see - constantly troubles me as there is no answer and I get fed up with my fellow Christians doing theological gymnastics about it! But I guess I stick with it partly because at least we're motivate to try to do something about it! Did the Vikings do charity at all? I know virtually nothing about them -just horrible history stuff like they used pee to bleach their hair!
Meg, I doubt if the Vikings did charity in the modern sense! They believed in fair dealing and neighbourliness, but often fell short! (See Njal's Saga... etc, etc.) Of course, I'm not suggesting we should all begin worshipping Odin. Just that even a religion/culture as unlike ours as the Vikings' does have elements we can respect and even learn from!
In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labor by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art.
There was a time when I read more poetry than I do now. I was younger, of course. I got drunk on words, I learned poems easily; I muttered them under my breath while waiting for buses; I repeated them at night – poem after poem - to send myself sliding away on a raft of poetry down a river of dreams. Actually I still do all these things, except that I don’t read so much new poetry anymore, and I find it harder to memorise.
Dylan Thomas’s poems lent themselves to being declaimed aloud. Incantatory. (I suppose being Welsh he knew all about being a bard.) Anyhow, I used to chant them to myself on walks, and even though some of them were pretty obscure – like unutterably amazing crossword puzzle clues – they filled the mouth and rolled out like thunder:
“Altarwise by owl-light in the halfway house The gentleman lay graveward with his furies.”
What did it mean? Who cared? It sounded bloody good. And to be fair, there was plenty of obscure poetry about in the 1970’s when I was reading these things. Almost every glam-rock album could do the mysteriously evocative stuff. Look at early Genesis! I kind of stopped bothering about the meaning: I was listening to the music. I suppose even then I preferred those poems I could also make sense of – the luminous ‘Fern Hill’ or ‘Poem in October’: but meaning was – for me, then – secondary to music.
Nowadays, though I still love the music, I’m looking for meaning too. So revisiting ‘In My Craft or Sullen Art’ is a moving experience for me. Perhaps I couldn’t have understood it, back then – is it really so long ago? – when, although of course I wrote, I hadn’t even begun to understand the demands of writing as a discipline. Well, this poem shows that Dylan Thomas did - of course he did! - and maybe, just maybe, I’ve lived enough to begin genuinely to understand some of his poems.
"My craft, or sullen art.” How honest that adjective is: ‘sullen’: because writing can be so hard, so difficult – so damned uncooperative! You try and you try, and it’s not good enough, still not good enough, but you keep trying. You keep on trying because what you’re really aiming for, what you want most – and he’s right, he’s right – is not money, not ‘ambition or bread’, not fame: ‘the strut and trade of charms/On the ivory stages’. No.
Don’t write for the special cases, don't write for the critics. Don't write (as most of us don't dare, though Thomas might have dared) with an eye on posterity and the hope of joining the ranks of ‘the towering dead with their nightingales and psalms’. Don’t write for fame. Don’t write for money. You probably won’t get much of either. Write for the lovers, for living and breathing human beings getting on with life, who have no idea about the effort that goes into writing and who couldn’t care less.
5 Comments on Our Craft and Sullen Art - Katherine Langrish, last added: 12/19/2009
Yes, I too have been drunk on words, drunk on poetry, spending a whole decade immersed in the musicality, the fire, the power of it - poetry that gets to the truth, expresses life experience more succinctly than any story ever could. Poetry was, and still is, my first love, and now that I write children's novels I still long to return to the writing from the soul. Now pleased my university course includes a compulsory poetry section. It's poetry for children, but no less powerful and fascinating for that, and I'm once more lost in its magic spell.
The magic of poetry transends age. It just has a different effect on a 4-year-old than on a 70-year-old. Like most of life, the wider and deeper your experience the more meaning you get from any art - poetry, prose, music, painting. I dont' write a lot of poetry these days - don't have time to develop the mindset it requires (it's all I can manage to develop the mindset for writing prose). I do still read a lot of it - and if it's good, I find new meanings each time. Someone remarked that good poetry reads as smoothly as prose and good prose is often poetic. Every reader and every writer should start out with poetry.
Great post, Kath! And Steeleweed, I agree with you one hundred pussent about stqrting with poetry, it teaches one economy and how to get a lot of meaning into a few words - which if you're writing for young people and trying to get the atmosphere right, is crucial.
Lovely post, Kath! I'd just like to say that if you go to the Poetry Society website, and follow links to the Knit a poem or some such, this is the poem that lots of people knitted a letter for. The individual letters and white background squares were stitched together by volunteers and the huge poetry quilt affair is going round the country on exhibition. I was asked to come to the celebratory reading in Manchester because I'd knitted one of the background white squares but I couldn't, as I was away. Most annoying. It was fun to be part of this project!
I took a brisk walk out this morning to the Anglo-Saxon grave.
It was only discovered yesterday. We were out for an afternoon stroll in the mellow sunshine, taking a lane that runs out of the village towards the Downs in the distance, when we realised the wide, flat fields were full of widely separated, slowly walking figures (some women, but mostly men) with bowed heads, swinging long metal detectors like oddly shaped proboscises. Every so often one would stop and dig a little hole, pick something up, then wander on. The big farm was running a metal detectors’ rally, proceeds of the camping fees to cancer research.
We started talking to some of the men. One pulled out a wallet and showed us a medieval silver penny. Another had more pennies, Roman and medieval: and belt buckles: and buttons. ‘And over there,’ they all said, pointing towards the furthest field behind a belt of trees – ‘over there, that’s where they’ve found an Anglo Saxon grave!’
Everyone was alight with it. A huge gold brooch had been found, together with some bones. The police had been called immediately and had thrown a cordon around the site. The archeologists were already examining the brooch, which was over in the marquee beside the farm. We headed back to look for ourselves, on the way chatting to a group of three men who wouldn’t have seemed at all out of place at a Saxon chieftain’s burial. Big lads, with acres of tattoos. One had long black hair, another a shaved head. One wore an enormous plaited gold ring on his thick forefinger.
‘Any luck?’ we asked. They were friendly, shook their heads: ‘Nah. Only rubbish today. Here’s what we got, on this table over here, take a look if you like.’
‘If you want some, have some,’ added the black-haired man. ‘It’s rubbish. It’s all going in the bin otherwise. But have you heard about the gold brooch?’
On the table was a clutter of stuff. Bits of pottery, coins, harness buckles, buttons, crumpled tin and lead. ‘Take it! Take it all!’ exclaimed the black-haired man. He shovelled it all into a plastic container. It was heavy.
‘When you start this game,’ explained the man with the gold ring, ‘you’re really excited about a coin or two, but then you get ambitious. Tell them about that ring you found.’
‘18th century, with seven diamonds,’ said the man with the black hair.
‘We’ve all found rings, one time or another,’ said Gold Ring Man. He laughed. ‘Once you start this game, you get addicted.’
We went on down to the tent. The brooch was there on display. It was the size of a large jam-pot lid, with a white coral boss surrounded by an inlay of flat, square-cut, dark red garnets. Around that, a broad band of bright yellow gold, with four set garnets standing out from it. Then more coral. And around that, a ring of intricate silver filigree, now black and dirty. People pored over it, photographed it, stared at it with awe, excitement, and reverence.
‘There’ll be another one,’ the archaeologist was saying. ‘They always come in pairs.’ And he had a look at the ‘rubbish’ the big guys had let us take away. It included four Roman coins, a bit of a medieval ring brooch, some Roman pottery, a lead musket ball the size of a marble - cold and heavy in the hand - and an 18th century thimble. Just a tiny fraction of what still lies under the dusty ploughlands.
So this morning, as I was saying, I walked out to see the site of the grave. Our village is probably Anglo Saxon in origin. The site was about two miles out from the farm, along a flat and dusty track between the fields, tucked away behind a strip of woodland, with a view of the Downs three miles away. It was marked out with striped tape, like a crime scene, and guarded by police vehicles. One of the archeologists gave me a lift the last quarter mile.
‘We think it’s a high status chieftain,’ she said. ‘Seventh century. We’ve found bones. We think it’ll be a major excavation.’
I stood there, in the sunshine and the light wind, looking at the place where, thirteen centuries ago, some Saxon warrior was laid to rest, and I had a lump in my throat.
Where beth they beforen us weren, Houndes ladden and hawkes beren, And hadden feld and wood?
I keep being told by my editor that there’s no market for historical children’s fiction; that it’s difficult to sell. Well, all I can say is, most of the people I met and talked to out on the fields yesterday were enthralled not merely by the idea of treasure hunting, but by the romance of the past. And well they might be, because this is England and the past is all around us. And surely children feel it too?
Where, asks the anonymous Middle English poet, are they who were here before us, who once led their hounds and carried their hawks and owned both field and wood?
Still here, it seems, is the answer. They’re still here.
14 Comments on Where Beth They Beforen Us Weren? - Katherine Langrish, last added: 9/24/2009
Wonderful post, Kath. And, since the Anglo-Saxons too were given to reveries of this kind, the persistence of the habit in us constitutes a kind of survival.
(The grasp of the earth possesses the mighty builders, perished and fallen, the hard grasp of earth, until a hundred generations of people have departed.)
This is a marvellous Kath... beautifully written with that lovely contrast of the 'heavies' believing it's all junk and the writer holding on to the fragility and mystery of a few Roman coins and framents of lead. Apart from the seed of a novel, there's the structure of a very fine short story in this piece of writing. Hold on to it.
Catdownunder, what a wonderful response from the child who loved 'The Woolpack'- I loved that book too. It just goes to show.
And Elen - you were an archeologist!!??
adele geras said, on 9/22/2009 8:11:00 AM
Superb stuff, Kath! And that Anglo Saxon poem sends shivers up the spine. Fantastic. I get despairing when I see how history is taught....and it's ALWAYS full of stories and kids mostly love it. Shame on everybody responsible for downgrading it so. As for historical fiction, the trouble is it's mostly single stand-alone novels and as we know they are difficult to sell to people these days. WHY? Have no idea...hope the climate changes very soon for this.
Yes, please do bring them to Bath with you I would love to see them. There is magic in the odds and ends of history even if it is not always apparent, and even if it is just the way it sets the imagination rushing towards a story of what might have been.
I hate it when we hear time and again that there is no market for historical children's fiction. (let's face it almost everything is difficult to sell at the moment.) These gatekeepers have no crystal ball and are proven wrong time and again when they make sweeping statements like that. The story is the thing and the way it is told - with the power to enchant a new generation of readers.
Penny Dolan said, on 9/22/2009 11:51:00 AM
Such a wonderful account, Kath! Good luck to you and your little bag of "rubbish" - though it's not in a plastic bag in my mind, but a bundle wrapped in old leather and knotted with hemped cord . . .
History explains who we are. That's why people love it - when they meet it in the right way.
scyran-and-paste :-) I had to pay £100 to have a special golf ball made with those characters on before I could submit my PhD thesis! And £100 was a lot of money in those days...
This is a lovely post, Kath - thank you! And those lines - were beth they... were indeed the heart of my thesis, so lovely to find them here, with the proper eth and thorn. Nostalgia time in more than one way :-)
I was asked by a fantasy and science fiction survey what I thought were the weaknesses of the two genres. This is a bit like being asked in a job interview to identify your own personal weaknesses – one doesn’t want to admit to anything. But in the end I replied ‘Poor characterisation and an over-reliance on magical and scientific hardware.’ I don’t think this was unfair. As a teenager I gobbled up Isaac Asimov’s ‘Robot’ and ‘Foundation’ books, and Arthur C. Clarke’s many and various space odysseys, but what I loved was the vast sweep of the black canvas they both painted on – prickling with stars and smudged with dusty, embryonic galaxies. Against that background, the human characters in their books were unmemorable. I’m trying right now, and I can’t think of even one of their names.
As for fantasy, the same thing applies. The world is often more important than the characters. I don’t think I would recognise Colin and Susan from Alan Garner’s brilliant early fantasies, if I saw them in the street. Even in ‘Lord of the Rings’, characters are more often conveniently defined by their species (elf, dwarf, hobbit etc) than by personality. Could you pick Legolas from an identity parade of other elves, or Gimli from a line-up of other dwarfs?
You have several wonderfully memorable science-fiction/fantasy characters on the tip of your tongue at this very moment, I can tell, and you are burning to let me know. I can think of a notable exception myself: Mervyn Peake’s cast of eccentrics in the Gormenghast books. I’ll look forward to your comments... But moving swiftly on, I began to think about memorable characters in children’s fiction – which as a genre, like science fiction and fantasy, tends to be strong on narrative. Does children’s fiction in general, I wondered, have characters that walk off the page?
So here, in no particular order, is a partial list. Mr Toad. The Mole and the Water Rat. Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger. William. Alice. The Red Queen. Oswald Bastable and Noel Bastable. Arrietty, Homily and Pod. Mrs Oldknowe. Dido Twite. Patrick Pennington. Mary Poppins. Mowgli. Long John Silver. Peter Pan. Ramona. Huck Finn. Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy. Puddleglum. Pa, Ma, Laura and Mary. Stalky. Moomintroll, the Snork Maiden and the Hemulen...
All of these characters, I would argue, are so strongly drawn that once you have met them you will never forget them. I will bet that for each of the above names (so long as you’ve read the books) you knew instantaneously who I meant, and had a picture of them in your head and the ‘flavour’ of them in your mind, just as if they were real people. These characters have a life beyond the page: not only is it possible to imagine them doing other things besides what their authors have described, it’s almost impossible not to believe that in some sense they possess a sort of independent reality.
There are many good books in which characterisation is not very important. Fairytales have always relied on standard ‘types’: the foolish younger son whose good heart triumphs, the princess in rags, the cruel queen, the harsh stepmother, the weak father, the lucky lad whose courage carries him through. This is because fairytales are templates for experience, and they are short: we identify with the hero, and move on with the narrative. Fairytales are not about other people: they are about us.
But the crown of fiction is the creation of new, independent characters. Though Mr Toad may share some characteristics with the boastful, lucky lad of Grimm’s fairytale ‘The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs’, he is nevertheless gloriously and individually himself. Huck Finn is more than a poor peasant boy or a woodcutter’s son. Children’s fiction is a fertile ground in which such characters can flourish.
Interesting that you mention Arthur C. Clarke. His characters are, as you say, often 2D at best. That said, I felt that in 2001: A Space Odyssey this works, bizarrely, as a strength. The scale of the events is so monumental that the absence of character in Dave Bowman and Frank Poole (there, some names!) seems to highlight the insigificance of humanity in the infinite universe. They are, almost literally, 'nothing'. To give them depth would have softened that terrible feeling of insigificance. (Also, being as bland as they are, they also make very convincing astronauts: super-competent but very self-contained, with no visible flaws and few quirks).
Now trying to think of my favourite fantasy characters. You're right, it is quite tricky. Terry Pratchett, as primarily comedy, doesn't really count - all his characters sparkle.
You're right: Terry Pratchett has some pretty good characters. Commander Vimes is a good example. But comedy relies on good main characters, doesn't it? We need to care about them or we won't find them funny/appealing, like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp.
I suppose when you have 'hard' SF or fantasy, the ideas become pre-eminent and the characters merely serve to frame them. The monolith in 2001, for example, comes across as a character as much as the astronauts do.
Mervyn Peake, as you say, is an interesting exception. But then Titus Groan and its sequels don't try to carry many fantasy ideas; there is no magic or supernature, just grotesque scenery and characters. So it probably has more in common with Dickens than with Tolkien.
Mmm. I'm not saying there are NO memorable characters in fantasy. I try very hard to write memorable characters myself! Some of the characters in my list come from fantasies (in the loose sense, which I think is the best sense. The Moomin books are fantasies, aren't they? And the Alice books? Discuss.) But a writer can't always do everything in a book, and I think you are right that in hard sci-fi, ideas predominate. All the same, it's wonderful to come across a sci-fi book in which the characters are less wooden. Do you know 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'?
Sue Price said, on 8/6/2009 9:02:00 AM
Hal is the character in 2001: Space Odyssey. And the hero of Bester's 'The Stars My Destination' is memorable - even though I can't remember his name! I remember his ferocity and implacable determination though.
To be fair, the whole point of Bilbo Baggins was that he turned out to be Not Like Other Hobbits, and he's distinctive and memorable - as is dear old Gollum, of course. But then, The Hobbit is a children's book. Regarding LOTR, I agree with you about Legolas and Gimli, and by extension a lot of the other characters too; but I think I'd know Sam Gamgee anywhere.
As for SF: names that spring to mind are Asimov's Susan Calvin, Elijah Bailey & R. Daneel Olivaw, and NDR-1 (The Bicentennial Man, and no, I haven't seen the film); and Spender from Bradbury's The Last Martian.
And of course we've all met unmemorable characters in children's books. But broadly, I think you're absolutely right. A great and thought-provoking post, Kath, thank you; and Yay! for kidslit!
I agree with you about Sam Gamgee and Gollum. And I can recall Susan Calvin, now you mention her, though I seem to remember her as a bit of a caricature of an uptight woman scientist. I actually can't bring Elijah Bailey to mind at all. Daneel Olivaw was a robot, I know - erm, but that's all I can remember, and I did read the books, though it was a long time ago. But I've never really gone back to them, and the generally thin-on-the-ground level of characterisation has been the main reason why.
Fair point about Calvin, Kath - perhaps she was consistent rather than rounded, although I do remember one in which she was brought out of retirement which fleshed her out a tiny bit more ("Feminine Intuition", it was called). And I haven't read the Bailey/Olivaw stories in, erp, decades (Bailey was the human robot-hating detective who was lumbered with Olivaw as a partner and slowly grew to respect him).
Maybe a better example would be Harrison's Slippery Jim diGriz? What do other readers think?
I can't begin to think, because John has just sent me into a weepy bout of timewarp nostalgia. Slippery Jim diGriz! Oh my! The Stainless Steel Rat! Oh, there was a character. Sigh.
Here's something interesting to add to the mix. I remember when the film version of The Lord of the Rings was first cast. I saw the four actors intended to play the hobbits in the Fellowship, and I knew without checking who would play whom. Granted, Sam was easy (the most yokel-looking) as was Frodo (handsome, starry expression) but the revelation was how easily Merry and Pippin (Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd) could be distinguished. People do often think of those two as less well-defined, almost identical twins - and yet, at a glance, I could tell who was whom from their faces. How was that possible? It could only mean that Tolkien had done a better job of characterisation than first appears. As had the Casting Director.
Jan Lindqvist said, on 8/7/2009 5:02:00 PM
Hi Katherine! I agree with your partial list, but as a Swede i miss "Pippi Longstocking" by our "icon" Astrid Lindgren. Best wishes! from Jan Lindqvist
H G Wells and John Wyndham manage characterisation, as far as I can remember - though it's a long time since I read much. (I did read Day of the Triffids to Big Bint as a bed-time story only 5 or 6 years ago.) Saramago's Blindness is very strong on character. And there's Margaret Atwood, of course. But I'm not really a fantasy/SF person so I don't read the 'hard' ones in which technology and space predominate so I wouldn't dream of saying how typical or otherwise these few are :-)
Hi Jan ! Nice to see you here. Of course, Pippi Longstocking should join the list.
And, Anne, glad to be reminded of the excellent John Wyndham, though I don't think his characters are especially memorable. Most of his narrators sound alike - open-minded, pleasant, youngish middle class men. I enjoy his books immensely (The Kraken Wakes is my favourite) but not for the characters, although I like the little biy in 'Chocky'.
I happened to be in the British Library this week, and there's a walk-in exhibition of children's poetry. I'd really recommend a visit if you can spare the time: one highlight for me was a notebook with Christina Rossetti's 'Who has Seen the Wind' in her own writing. There's also a letter by Ted Hughes, but the bulk of the exhibition is of printed books, old and new, open at some utterly wonderful poems, together with illustrations, some charming, others spine-tingling. Among the spine-tingling ones I'd include a version of 'The Highwayman' by Alfred Noyes, illustrated by Charles Keeping in his inimitable scrawly ink and wash. Atmospheric, menacing, and ever so slightly camp, his masked highwayman glitters in the moonlight on a pale ribbon of a road, under bare trees whose branches appear to undulate as if underwater.
As my new book, Dark Angels, comes out this week, it set me thinking about the relationship between art and text: particularly cover art. We set a great deal of store on the perfect cover these days: publishers, authors and booksellers alike worry over the exact impression the cover should make: will it stand out? Will it have 'pick-up-a-bility'?
This seems to be a fairly modern phenomenon; and I'm not sure that children are as fussed as we are about superb covers. The Harry Potter books fared quite well without them. And while some of the classic books I loved best as a child had amazing covers, others did not: some (like my version of The Wind in the Willows, which was a wartime austerity volume passed on to me by my mother), had no artwork on the cover at all, and none inside either, and it didn't put me off. In fact, thinking about it, that's probably where I gained my habit of pulling out the most obscure looking books from second-hand shelves - to see if a dull cover hides some treasure within. To the left here is the 1959 cover of Lucy Boston's The Children of Green Knowe. It wouldn't exactly stand out on the shelf, but I loved and still love its dark mystery.
Perhaps we didn't have great expectation of covers when I was a child, as witness this 1968 Puffin edition of Meindert DeJong's The Wheel on The School. No self-respecting modern publisher would dream of putting out anything so dull. Would they?
Yet really, it does everything necessary: it's got the intriguing title, the author name, and a mildly interesting picture - even if the cartwheel with nesting storks appears to be hovering in mid-air. Compared with my modern cover, above, it could even be regarded as pleasingly uncluttered. At any rate, with such a book one wasted no time in opening it to see what it was about, and so the decision whether to read it or not was prose-based... Others were better. Here's my much-read 1965 copy of Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. I don't know what the first edition cover looked like, but this picture has stuck with me for life. I love the brooding gaze of the dwarf and the rich, magical colours. All the same, it's quite clearly an 'old' look. You wouldn't get that framing effect today: the separation of artwork from title and author name. And here's the 1961 cover of Rosemary Sutcliff's classic Dawn Wind: it looks more modern, perhaps because Charles Keeping, who illustrated nearly all her books, was such an strong and innovative artist. In fact, the art here is almost more important than the title, and the author's own name all but fades into the dark shadows at the children's feet. Today we'd be wailing for gilt or silver foil to 'lift' the cover. And yet I'd hate to see this changed. You could recognise 'a Rosemary Sutcliff' at a glance, precisely because Keeping's style twinned with her historical genius made such a fantastic pairing.
Back then, of course, books even for older children were full of wonderful illustrations, and nobody thought it babyish. (Even today I can't see that anything by Charles Keeping could be regarded that way.) My Dark Angels, in common with many modern books for the 9+ 'market', has no illustrations at all, which is a shame, really. Edward Ardizzone was another artist whose work was instantly identifiable: here's a cover he did for one of my favourite books by the much-neglected Nicholas Stuart Gray: Down In the Cellar (1961). Here again, the artist is as important as the author and shares the credit on the cover. His work wonderfully expressed the spooky, yet homely world that Gray conjured up (a bunch of E Nesbit-style children come across a wounded man in an old quarry, and discover he has escaped from a nearby fairy mound.)
I do love the cover HarperCollins has provided for my Dark Angels, but it will have to make its way in the world without a friendly artist to interpret some of its scenes between the pages. I can't help feeling a bit wistful - but I'm sure that one thing hasn't changed over the years: what matters most is what is under the cover, not what is on it.
8 Comments on What's in - or on - a cover? - Katherine Langrish, last added: 4/28/2009
I'll let you into a secret, though. I really, really like Rosemary Sutcliff's books - but I simply can't abide Keeping's illustrations, which seem designed to make everyone and everything in her world uglified and somehow grimed with industrial soot. (The ones for The Silver Branch are particularly vile.) I know I'm in the minority, though!
Oh NO, Charlie - I adored them! The only illustrations he did which I didn't like so much were of Drem in 'Warrior Scarlet' - those annoyed me, as it wasn't the way I imagined Drem to look at all.
That cover for Dawn Wind certainly has stuck in my mind over the years--I'm not sure if I *liked* it, especially as a kid, but it was definitely very memorable.
Isn't the problem that children these days (in fact all of us) are bombarded with glossy images from adverts, TV, and even on a packet of cereal!
Although we love these older styled images, possibly also with a kind of nostalgia, I wonder if they have may not have the same effect on any but the most ardent (chld) reader?
catherine johnson said, on 4/27/2009 4:37:00 AM
Really interesting post- and congrats on the new book, the cover does look great. I am a Charles Keeping but not Rosemary Sutcliff fan, but my favourite books with occasional pictures are the Moomintroll books. I love the new Siobhan Dowd cover for Solace of the Road, but would be interested to know what young readers think.
Great post, Kath! Though if my post bag is anything to go by, kids are very strongly influenced by cover art; so many have remarked on how it has made them pick the book up in the first place. I think Linda makes a good point.
I think we learn from experience; I have long had a theory re: music album covers (obviously more pertinant in the Vinyl Age) that the naffer they are, the better the music, because time after time that seemed to be the case. You learned something similar from the books you read.
Catherine, I'm afraid I don't like the Solace cover, although I loved the Bog Child one. The cover for A Swift, Pure Cry has an interesting history; the original (very nostalgic watercolour) version bombed with the booksellers; none of the chains would take it. Yes, you read that right: none of the chains were prepared to stock Siobhan Dowd's A Swift, Pure Cry.
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I love the comment about entertaining not teaching. Author visits should be about energizing and inspiring. After a good author visit, we see the children suddenly leap forward in their written work, and it's because very often the visit is what helps them suddenly see the point and joy of it all. And if it's a REALLY good visist the effects will carry them through the year.<br /><br />
... authors will do anything for cake!
What if I were a genuine hewed out of stone troll? <br />Anyway - worthwhile post. As a teacher turned writer ( think poachers and gamekeepers) great author visits are an absolute highlight for most children.<br />You need to be yourself , be prepared and be enthusiastic. Leave the shameless self-promotion behind and gag the inner editor/critic. You'll have a great time - and if the staff
p.s. in my experience, authors will do anything for jam doughnuts
That comment about entertaining, not teaching: in a different context, that is how I approach the Chatterbooks groups I run. They've been in school all day already: coming to the library should be all about fun. In fact, they have so much fun I have trouble making them leave at the end. And most of them leave with an armload of books.
CAKE! and white wine.
Not sure the Society of Authors would approve of these rates, Candy
... and sweet and sour pork hong kong style.
I definitely think you're there to inspire the children generally but hopefully the teachers too. I still remember a local poet (Gillian Allnutt) who came in and worked with my class over a few sessions. She left me with so many ideas to pass on to other members of staff. And, she was worth every penny - we had a parents evening based on her visit, made and sold a poetry book of all the
Great post! So true that author visits are a varied experience. I've had a range of experiences so far and haven't been doing them long. I agree that you're not there to teach, but to let them in on the process of writing and meeting a writer. It enhances the curriculum and often teachers ask me to emphasis what they've been teaching as the kids will hear it better from the author
I absolutely believe that inspirational is the way to be. There's such a difference between being a teacher (I supply teach) and a visiting writer. I find it freeing and fun - i can only hope the children do as well.<br /> <br />I think biscuit/cake requirements should be part of any writer database. For the record I'm partial to custard creams.
I must admit the words school and visit in the same sentence gives me the heebie jeebies. But stick a bottle of wine in there, it makes me feel a bit better (as long as I get to drink it just before the visit)
Would it be incredibly rude to specify white wine on my school visits page? i don't drink red!