Festive Face!

Ahhhh, Christmas...mince pies, cosy fires, presents under the tree and the Christmas Advert War.
At their best, these adverts pull at our heartstrings and stick in our minds, at their worst they can leave us baffled or outraged  How do they stir up such strong emotions in such a short space of time? By using classic story telling - the tightness of the  structure, and some emotive tricks. Examining these tiny vignettes gives us a powerful insight into how story works.
Read more »

Add a Comment

By Nick Cross

When I started writing this post, it was because I was in the dreaded state of being BETWEEN BOOKS. I waffled on for 500 words about how terrible it was to be BETWEEN BOOKS, but not as terrible as being homeless or liking Donald Trump, but still, it was a real pain not being able to settle to writing something, and isn’t it annoying all those people who always seem to have a hundred projects on the go and can’t resist rubbing your nose in it on social media?

But then I stopped, because I checked out my own blog and discovered that I’d already posted about this at least twice (here and here). And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s the thought that I’m repeating myself.
Read more »

Add a Comment

By Candy Gourlay

Every year I help organise the highlight of my writing year: the SCBWI Conference for children's writers and illustrators in Winchester.

The irony of course is that I don't actually attend the conference. By being one of the organisers, my experience of the conference is that of sorting out the website, hustling behind the scenes, contributing to the programming, supporting the rest of the team, preparing panels, meeting and greeting on the day. But I get a huge kick out of watching something that was just a bunch of ideas turn into a successful reality.

Here I am emceeing the book launch. Thanks to Teri Terry for the photo. In the background celebrating their new books from left to right: Helen Moss, Tim Collins, Helen Peters, Ruth Fitzgerald, Janet Foxley and parrot.

This year, the title of the conference was: 'New Readers Ahoy! Creating Stories to Treasure' -- but I have to say, whatever name we give the conference, year after year, embedded under whatever we choose for the conference theme, is our true objective: How To Be Discovered.

We are all hoping to be discovered.

The unpublished are hoping to find the inspiration and information that would lead to their first book deal. Even people who have been discovered, already been published, are continuously on the lookout for ways to stand out from all the other books out there. They want to be discovered by new publishers, by people who invite authors to festivals, by journalists, by teachers who might invite them to visit schools. Self-published folk are looking for the same thing but must struggle against bias and access to distribution.

What's the good of creating stories to treasure if nobody can find our work?

Over and over again, we are told: it's no longer enough to just write well (or 'Dance good' as publisher keynote David Fickling put it). We people who make the stories have to help get it out there too. But how?

Here are a few take-aways from the conference on how to be discovered plus some of my own tips:

1. Know the game. Attending a conference will bring home to you the enormity of the journey ahead of you. You will realise that you've got to raise your game. You will meet vast numbers of aspiring authors, just as talented as you, who are also waiting to be discovered. Should you quit or carry on?

2. Discover each other. If you decide not to quit, seize the opportunity to enjoy the company of these like-minded people. No, don't just socialise. Discover each other. The friends I have made at every conference are the ones who have held me up when I've been low and cheered me on whenever I've had a success.

3. Meet gatekeepers face to face. There are many ways to draw attention to yourself on social media. You can participate in hashtags, tag famous people into interacting with you, retweet, link etc. Unfortunately there are a gazillion other people doing the same thing. So there's nothing like meeting someone face to face. Finding opportunities to meet people in real time teaches you how to conduct yourself in a professional way. You also very quickly discover that agents, publishers and editors are human beings. Seeing people as human is always a good strategy.

4. You've probably already got a platform. How do I build a platform? That's what everyone is asking - whether published, unpublished, self-published. You've probably already got one. Take a sheet of paper and make a list. You have a platform in your immediate family and friends. These are guaranteed sales. You probably have other platforms you haven't thought about before. Professional circles, perhaps. Friends around a special interest. The question is: how do you get these friends and acquaintances to not only buy your book but to persuade others to do so?

5. Know your influencers. Should I build a platform from scratch? Don't. You have better things to do with your time -- like, for example, write another book. Rather than knocking on the doors of strangers (this is what it feels like for non-bloggers who are forced to start a blog so that they can 'build a platform'), it is better to focus on influencers -- in children's books, these are librarians, teachers, booksellers. Can you get influencers to love your book? Can you get them to persuade others to read it?

6.You're not a salesman, you're an author. Promoting your book must be a lot more subtle than shouting 'BUY MY BOOK!' on social media. You're an author. You're shinier than a salesman. What a turn off if Meryl Streep turned up at your door saying, 'Watch my movie!' Don't be that kind of self-promoter. You are about STORY so craft your story ... the story you are going to tell in radio interviews, newspaper articles, festivals, school events. Read my piece Being Human is the Best Kind of Marketing.

7. Engage with communities. Communities are groups driven by shared interests. If your book has a theme or focus that drives a community, this can be a chance to engage in with interested people in a meaningful way. The quality of your participation may lead them to your book. Book promoter Tim Grahl advises authors to be "relentlessly helpful".  People respond when they are rewarded with things they want. So. What do people in your communities want?

8. Make a plan. Quoting Grahl again: "Successful  (book) launches are not random events. Authors don’t throw together a few Facebook updates and blog posts the night before, then watch their rankings skyrocket the next day." Think things through. Don't just set up a blog tour without understanding how these things work because your publisher told you to. Ask yourself, why am I doing this? What is my pay off? Can I measure it? How sustainable is this plan?

8. Be findable. It still surprises me to discover authors who haven't set up websites or at least got a presence on social media. Yes, the internet and social media can be all pervasive and time-sucking. But we are LUCKY to live in a world where we have the power to put ourselves into the public eye without depending on the vagaries of fame. Are you findable? Maintaining your own presence on the web means you control your story. If you don't have a website or run your own social media accounts, you are in danger of handing your story to others to tell. And you will have no control over what they say.

9. Be useful. The truth is people are just interested in themselves and in their own needs. They're not particularly interested in you (unless you are famous, and then they want to know everything about you - but that's for their own entertainment not so you can sell more books). People only find you if they need something from you. If you're a children's author, you will have child readers trawling your website if you can help them with their homework. Teachers will be looking for teaching resources. Librarians might be looking for reading lists. If people find you, will they get what they're looking for? Be useful.

10. Be amazing. Ultimately of course, you've got to make something amazing to be discovered. Something people really really want. Nobody was ever discovered that did nothing. So make sure you do that. Write the best book you can. Be the best author you can be. Be amazing.

Candy's books are Shine and Tall Story. It's Christmas soon. Hint. Hint.

Add a Comment

Thanks to all our SCBWI friends who contributed to this blog. Catherine Friess also wrote a lovely post in Story Snug about fictional best friends - take a look for more ideas!

Add a Comment

THE GAP
The space that's left for the reader when we SHOW rather than TELL

Readers are bringing an awful lot to THE GAP in the above worlds.  They're really dealing with a familiar unfamiliar world. But what about the next lot.

To be a hero.

Brilliantly done! Philip Reeves is a master. All that in one chapter with no info dumps. It seems to me that the protagonist's smaller world can have a bigger GAP because it's dealing with emotions and situations common to all. But the bigger world needs a smaller GAP if it's unfamiliar.

Right, now go and analyse a book  in your genre. Get the highlighter pens out. Use a colour for each heading. Add your own headings. Then apply this to your own writing. Work out what the reader NEEDS TO KNOW and get rid of anything the reader DOESN'T NEED TO KNOW. Weave the info in and out of the action. And above all

THINK ABOUT THE GAP!

It'll be fun!
by
Maureen Lynas

Add a Comment

Unlike my warm hearted, keep at-it post  on the joys to come when you've sold your first book, this is going to be a motivational post of the boot camp variety. Read on only if you're tough enough.
Read more »

Add a Comment

By Nick Cross

After 13 years, 14 Eisner Awards, 150 issues and almost 6,000 pages, the Vertigo comic book series Fables has reached its end. What began as a simple postmodern twist on fairy tales quickly evolved into a sprawling, beautiful, dark, engrossing, ambitious and occasionally frustrating saga. As I closed the cover on the final volume, I felt both exhilaration and the sad pang of loss. Under those circumstances, it seemed only fitting to introduce this tremendous grown-up comic series to a wider audience and also take the opportunity to explore the challenge of writing truly long-form stories.

Read more »

Add a Comment

By Teri Terry

Part 2 in Making Things Up: a blog series about the creative process.

So...you like writing. You think you’ve got a knack for it, and you have some things to say. Or maybe you’ve written loads already, and the time has come to write something new, but you’re stuck. How do you get started?

How do you begin putting words on paper? Blank paper. Accusing paper. Gorgeous, pristine paper that doesn’t want to be sullied by anything less than brilliant.

A Blank Page...EEEEEEEK!!

One of the questions most asked of authors is this one: 

Where do you get your ideas? 

The assumption behind the question seems to be that before any words can appear on that blank page, there must be an original, awesome, inspiring, exciting idea! Just a little pressure, then.

Not necessarily. Sometimes the heart of the story is only found by writing it. But how do you start if you only have an inkling or a vague idea what to write about, or even aren’t sure at all where to begin?

First up: Choose your weapon!

It shouldn’t matter so much, but it does to me. I do most of my writing directly on my laptop, but I always start with a notebook – one chosen specifically for a new story – and I’m simply incapable of writing anything worthwhile on paper that isn’t at least A4 in size. And ideally hard backed, coil bound, white paper, lines - ones that aren’t too thick or in a weird colour - spaced just so, maybe with an interesting picture on the front...so I’m not fussy at all, am I? And whenever I’m planning or get stuck, I go back to the notebook. Many stretched handbags and sore shoulders later I’ve tried to break this habit, but I just can’t.

Here we have working notebooks! From left: Slated; Book of Lies; and the current one, book one of my new trilogy, Dark Matter

Interestingly, I was recently rereading one of my favourite writing books, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, and came across this in the opening chapter (p. 6-7):

The size of your notebook matters, too. A small notebook can be kept in your pocket, but then you have small thoughts... It is true that the inside world creates the outside world, but the outside world and our tools also affect the way we form our thoughts.

This made me wonder: does the size of notebook relate to the kind of stuff I like to write? If I wrote, say, quirky literary fiction that focused in on the minutae of one life, would a smaller notebook be just right? It’d be worth trying it to save my handbags and shoulders.

Just a few of my notebooks in waiting...

But whatever you need to write, make it so. If you suffer from not wanting to sully the pages of a beautiful notebook, it may be that plain is the way to go. And pocket sized notebooks may be just right for you, despite what Natalie said, or you might think better with a keyboard.

Second: Write, write, write...but what?

Here are a few approaches that may help:

1. What do you enjoy reading?

What are the essential elements of the type of story you love to read? Identify them and put them together in your own way, and you will have the start of a story.
For example, if you love a good murder mystery, you need somebody to die. You need someone to find the body; someone, who may or may not be the same person, to solve the mystery and find the killer. If you start with someone dying in an interesting way or place, and develop characters for your victim, murderer, and sleuth, a story will appear.

Of perhaps you love a good romance. This

True love! In one of its many guises

isn’t so much my focus so I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure you need more than one character, whether it is boy-girl, girl-girl, boy-boy-girl – you need at least two to tango. You need reasons why they come to care for each other, you need challenges, growth: who are they, and what do they want? How do they meet? Why are they right or wrong for each other? What comes between them? Can this be overcome?

If plotting a whole book is too daunting, you don’t necessarily have to know everything about your characters and what will happen to them when you start. You can take an interesting character, introduce them to another in an interesting way or place, and see what develops.

I don’t mean to get into plotting here today, and everyone has a different approach as to how much plotting and planning they like to do before they write. But at a basic level, when you’re working out what to write, starting with the elements of the type of story you love is a good place to begin if you’re stuck what to write about.

2. Free writing

A less structured approach is to write something every day – often it helps if it is at a set time of day, for a set length of time – without any thought to where it is going or why. Begin with an object, a character, or a setting, and put pen to paper, and just go. Don’t let yourself think, just write whatever pops into your head. Once your set time for free writing is over, stop and read what you’ve written. Think about it, and ask yourself questions about the elements on the page, and see where it takes you. It won’t always work, but sometimes you can find interesting ideas or starting points from your unconscious mind have leaked into what you’ve written.

I also often use free writing from the point of view of different characters to help get to know them, but that is a whole other topic.

3. Mind mapping

Say you have an interesting scene or character but you don’t know what to do with them. 

I find it really helpful to do a mind map. So, as an example I've got below - Phoebe, a character I'd introduced in Slated. Originally she was a walk on/walk off part, who trips Kyla up on a bus, and that was it. But she was somehow interesting, so I wanted to work out ways to increase her role in the story, and on this page I was coming up with options - some of which made it in to Slated, many of which didn't.

This also works well for me if I’m further into a story, and I’m not sure how to make something happen. Eg. I know my hero has to escape from the evil clutches of my villain, but how? If I write arrows of every possible option, no matter how daft they may seem, and the consequences that will flow from each one, the answer usually becomes obvious.

I said I wasn’t going to talk about plotting, but it’s kind of like I can’t help myself...

4. Serendipity strikes: kaboom!

OK, this does happen sometimes, and I live for these moments. It might seem a bit like luck or chance, but the more of the above kind of writing and exploring that is being done, the more these kinds of things seem to happen.
With Slated, it started with a dream that I had, of a girl, running, terrified, on a beach. I wrote that down as soon as I woke up and, presto! it became a trilogy (well, there was a bit more involved than that, but that is how it started).

Mind Games started very differently. I happened to read an article about rationality and intelligence, and then wondered what would happen if rationality were prized over intelligence in a future world: who decides who is rational, and how? What are the consequences of being considered irrational and intelligent?


Finally:

Once you have a story in mind - if writing the first line, paragraph, page or chapter is too daunting, just write. Ramble. Play with words. Get going, and later on when you know your story and characters better, what should be those important first words should come to you.

Writing – especially the coming up with ideas part at the beginning – should be fun*, not torture. Enjoy it!

           *apart from the occasional influence of deadlines, but that is a whole other nightmare blog post...


About the Author
Teri Terry is the author of the award winning, internationally best selling Slated trilogy - Slated, Fractured and Shattered. Mind Games, out in March, was recently nominated for the Carnegie. Dangerous Games will be in December, and Book of Lies in March 2016. After that is the Dark Matter trilogy, which she should be writing right now instead of blogging...but that is a whole other blog post.

Add a Comment

By Candy Gourlay

So let's be honest. We authors are terrified of diversity in children's books.

Are we doing it right? Are we offending anyone by not including/including a character who is 'other' in our stories? Who is allowed to write about other cultures/races/sexual orientations? Who should be offended? Who should just keep their mouths shut?

I have publicly expressed some views on diversity (read Growing up I thought Filipinos were not allowed to be in books), but in the main, I have to confess I have been careful not to step in to the public spats that burn across the world of social media like brushfires that are hard to put out. I keep my counsel not just because I am so busy it feels like I'm drowning, but because the heat is intense.

And yet here I am, described by many as one of the UK's 'diverse authors'.

I do embrace this label (I've even put it into the search engine optimisation of my various websites so that anyone searching for 'diverse authors' will find me). My debut Tall Story was selected for a list of the Fifty Best Culturally Diverse Children's Books by a group of experts under the aegis of the Seven Stories Centre (see here and here). Librarians are always asking me to recommend diverse children's books.

At the reception for the Fifty Best Culturally Diverse Books at the Guardian Newspaper

And yet when I sit down to write, diversity is not top of my agenda. I do not design my characters thinking: 'I must have 20 percent English, 20 percent Filipino, oh maybe an American character so that I can be published in America. But I can't feature an African American because I don't know what it's like to be one.'

I just want to tell a good story and my character casting reflects the diversity that I experience on a daily basis.

When "Diversity" began to replace "Multiculturalism" as an object for society to desire in everything from the arts to business, I thought it was a very good thing indeed, widening the definition of peoples and cultures that deserved respect and recognition.

But it soon became clear that Diversity meant many things to many people.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

Diversity as Inclusion is always high on my mind because I grew up in the Philippines at a time when there was little publishing going on and books with all-white cast lists were imported from the United States. I identify keenly with that experience of wondering whether the absence of people like you reflects your lack of importance in the wider world.

I am still that little girl who wondered why there were never any Filipinos in the books she read - and so I will always write a Filipino sensibility into my characters. It is, as I often tell audiences, writing not just what I know but who I am. It is not as easy as it sounds because writing who you are means delving into places in your experience you would not otherwise want to revisit. But I sincerely believe that going there makes my stories ring truer, engaging readers from any background.

My friend Sarwat Chadda, who is British of Indian extraction, had the same experience:

I grew up reading myths about Greek heroes, about Vikings, Normans and Saracens, stories of Sinbad and King Arthur, and I’ve loved them all. But where were my heroes? My parents immigrated to England from the Indian Subcontinent and growing up in the 1970’s I had no heroes that I could call mine except Mowgli. The only Indian in children’s literature and he was over a hundred years old. Even Kim, Kipling’s other great child hero, is actually Irish. I wanted heroes like me, but not labelled as ‘ethnic’.

Sarwat writes adventure books (the Ash Mistry series) starring boys like him and featuring monsters from Indian mythology. 'I didn’t have to be Scandinavian to enjoy tales of Vikings and I don’t believe you need to be Asian to enjoy tales of Rama and of Ash Mistry,' says Sarwat. 'Heroes are heroes and we love them wherever they come from.'



But if we focus on diversity as inclusion, does it simply mean that authors of whatever race or creed can feel free to write any character of any sensibility, race or culture into their books?

I vote YES. Yes because, although I am writing heroes who are Filipino like me, my real world is not monocultural and I want to write not only about my world but for my world. Also, I would be a very sad author indeed if I could only write characters who came over to London from Cubao, Quezon City in the Philippines.

DIVERSITY AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

Ah, but someone will say, you're wrong to vote yes. The answer is more complicated than that because you might be contributing to the Problem.

A group of librarians have set up a website called Reading While White (read their mission statement). One blog post attempted to answer the question "Do I have the right to write about ______?"

The answer is easy. Yes, you have the right to write about whatever you want, in the USA, at least. The constitution guarantees free speech (although, and this is key, it does not guarantee consequence-free speech). So, yeah--we White people can write pretty much whatever we want and nobody will send us to jail for it.

But either or both of the following might be true:
1) You might drown out or overshadow (effectively silencing) marginalized people who justly want to tell their own stories.
2) You might get some stuff wrong and evoke criticism from people whom you misrepresent.

And nothing you do can alter either of these truths. Not even asking permission from someone from the culture about which you're writing. Read the whole thing

In fact, I have just run into this very problem. I am currently working on a book set in a particular historical space, told in the voice of a boy from a particular tribe in the Philippines. I have spent the past two years reading entire libraries, original documents and diaries from that era, describing these people. But from the tribe itself, there are no documents that date from that era. Have I done enough to justify the publication of this story? I may be Filipino, but I am not from that tribe, do I have the right to create a hero from that background?

Here's how one African American writer responds to fellow African Americans saying 'Bruh, don't let them tell our stories':

Whenever this comes up—and I’ve heard it more than you think—it’s probably linked to my statements about writers getting it right IF they plan to write outside of their culture. Dude, seriously, that’s not me telling another writer to appropriate someone’s culture, especially mine. That’s the same advice I’d give someone writing about engineering, or cooking with truffles, or Minecraft. What I’m saying is if you’re going to do it, don’t be lazy. That’s a far cry from, “Here, take my life.”

But, I get the concern. I have a platform, and I’m not saying, “Hey, don’t you dare write about [insert applicable Other] people.” I won’t say that. I can’t. Before I ever made a dime from my writing, I spent cumulative years of my life alone in a room making up stories about all kinds of people. I consider it a sacred process and would not have reacted kindly to someone leaning over my shoulder saying, “Don’t type that.” I will never tell another writer what they’re allowed to write. Sorry, not sorry. Read the whole post by teen author Lamar Giles

Well,  I am writing the best book that I can. And I am hoping against hope that it does not drown out or overshadow anyone but encourage them to tell their own stories.

DIVERSITY AND RACISM

Of all the structural inequalities though, it is race more than culture that is a minefield, especially in the United States.

Early in October I was one of the authors featured in the excellent Filipino American International Book Festival in San Francisco [FYI British peeps: it is still summer there ... how unfair is that?] Speaking to Filipino American novelists, poets and film makers, I was struck by how often challenges in the Fil-Am community, literary or otherwise, were described in the context of racial discrimination.

'People try harder from your neck of the woods,' someone told me, their perception being that racism in the United Kingdom is far less acute than in the United States with Ferguson and other examples of racialised violence, the emergence of words like 'blackface', 'redface', 'yellowface' (to mean appropriation and exploitation of black, native American and Asian culture) - as well as  'microaggression' to mean cultural overstepping that is equivalent to racial violence. Reading While White describes the problem thus:

... Race is society’s biggest structural organizer, and it is essential to recognize it as such. If it were not, we would see neighborhoods and schools comprised of LGBTQIA+ people, or people with disabilities, of all different races, living together. But this is not the case; instead, neighborhoods and schools are starkly racially segregated.

In 2014, the announcement that BookCon's top panel was going to be all-white and all-male sparked a Twitter-backlash that led to the creation of the We Need Diverse Books campaign. Today, the campaign is planning a festival, hands out awards and grants, mentorships, contests as well as lists of diverse authors and books. Says co-founder Ellen Oh:

"The part where we have to keep going after gatekeepers and reminding people about why it's good to read diversely and why it's good to introduce children to diversity — that part of it, I hope eventually it becomes the norm and we don't have to do that anymore." Read

The weird thing of course is that from here the other side of the pond, the bookshelves of America look incredibly diverse - I always marvel at the faces of all hues smiling out of the children's departments of bookstores and libraries I visit in America. But this is apparently deceptive. In 2013, of 3,200 children's books published, only 93 featured black people, according to a study.

It must be even worse in the UK. Not just the books but the book industry are even more monocultural (I am reverting to 'culture' rather than 'race' - because, heads up, world, there are marginalised pink-skinned people too).

Children's author Leila Rasheed says growing up in that book monoculture 'affected my own writing and what I was able to imagine'.
Leila has set up a writer development scheme called Megaphone, aimed at supporting children's authors from a BAME background. [The label for 'Other' in the UK is BAME - meaning Black, Asian, or other Minority Ethnic ... and 'Asian' in the UK means the Indian subcontinent, so Southeast Asians like me, for examole, are the ME part of BAME].

Says Leila:

I really want the next generation of British BAME children to be able to write themselves into all kinds of stories – and not to internalise the idea that to be the hero/ine of an exciting, thrilling, magical or dramatic story, you have to be white. Unfortunately, I feel that won’t happen unless we make it happen.
The fact is, children’s publishing as an industry is extremely lacking in diversity, and as a result the need to include all children equally in literature is often simply forgotten, or its importance is not understood or felt. And sometimes, sadly, people actively dislike the idea that diversity and equality might be as important in children’s literature as anywhere else. Having said that, Megaphone has had so much enthusiastic support from publishers and writers, that I am sure those people are not the majority. There is definitely a feeling that change is needed. Read the interview

DIVERSITY IN DIVERSITY

Living here (or on Twitter) it's easy to think that Diversity is an issue that exists only in America or the United Kingdom. But hey, there are diversity issues EVERYWHERE in the world.

This became extra apparent to me early this year when I was one of the tutors at a retreat for writers and illustrators on an Indonesian island just a ferry ride from Singapore.  We were a melting pot of nations – from the Philippines, Singapore, Macau, Canada, Indonesia, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Portugal, the United States, England and Australia.


It is interesting, being thrown into such a diverse group. It made us all wonder.

How come we buy into Western stories but the West has no interest in ours? Can Asia publish literature that the West will enjoy? Can we in Asia read each other's stories? How can I interest you in my story? How can we live so close to one another and yet know nothing about the other? Who are you really? Who am I? How can Asia, fragmented by so many languages and so many cultures, overwhelmingly swamped by American (irony!) culture, create a literature that is accessible to the world?

After the retreat, I gave a keynote speech at the Asian Festival for Children's Content with the following message:

Asia is not fragmented. It is diverse. Think of all the stories that can emerge from that diversity! This is not a problem it’s an opportunity.

My new friends from the retreat helped me illustrate my message with the following photos:



Diversity is vexed and complex territory, and right now authors must pick their way carefully through the burning coals. How do we get beyond thinking of Diversity as a problem to seeing it as an opportunity?

Recently, picture book writer Clare Bell and illustrator Dave Grey worked together on The Unstoppable Maggie McGee, a book about children in hospital.

I urge you all to read Clare's inspiring blog post on how spending time with ill and disabled children threw out all her plans for the book.

It is an example of how, however well-intentioned, we all tend to approach a project with preconceived notions that only research and hard work can dispel.  I have seen the final product and Clare and Dave have created a beautiful book - I can't wait to get my copy.

Indeed, let me end this piece on Diversity with three things I learned from Clare's article, that are relevant to creating diverse stories:

---

Candy Gourlay is the author of Tall Story and Shine. She also blogs on her website. You might be interested in Candy's recent article asking what Middle Grade Literature really is about over on the Our Book Reviews Online blog.

Megaphone is a new writer development scheme for Black, Asian and other ethnic minority writers who are interested in writing for children. It is now open for applications! Please share the link widely if you can. This Arts Council and Publishers' association funded scheme includes masterclasses from fantastic children's authors (including me!), feedback from top editors (Hachette , Simon & Schuster, Scholastic, Penguin Random House, PanMacmillan UK.) and promotion to the publishing industry. Applicants need to be
1) from an ethnic minority
2) resident in England
3) never previously have published a book for children/ teenagers (they could have published one for adults, or poetry).

Add a Comment

by Addy Farmer

I wonder if you can summon up the image of a glorious sunset inside your head? Can you capture the nuance of colour in the sky, the shape of the sun, the texture of the scene? I'll leave that one with you for now.


This ability is sometimes referred to as 'the mind's eye':

The phrase "mind's eye" refers to the human ability to visualise i.e., to experience visual mental imagery; in other words, one's ability to "see" things with the mind.

A Brief Peer into Visual imagination. 

In an interesting blog summary I found:

"There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether "imagination" was simply a turn of phrase or a real phenomenon. That is, can people actually create images in their minds which they see vividly, or do they simply say "I saw it in my mind" as a metaphor for considering what it looked like?

Francis Galton, a nineteenth century psychologist, gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't."

Francis Galton - close your eyes and then try and recall the detail of his lovely sideburns

Recently, a new word has been added to the medical lexicon, Aphantasia, which brings us back to that sunset. The University of Exeter has taken up the work of Galton and come up with a new study.

She ... realised that her ability to conjure a mental picture differed from her peers during management training in her 20s. She said: “We were told to ‘visualise a sunrise’, and I thought ‘what on Earth does that look like’ – I couldn’t picture it at all. I could describe it – I could tell you that the sun comes up over the horizon and the sky changes colour as it gets lighter, but I can’t actually see that image in my mind.”
Dame Gill has a successful career and does not feel hindered by her lack of a “mind’s eye”. But she said: “I became more aware of it when my mum died, as I can’t remember her face. I now realise that others can conjure up a picture of someone they love, and that did make me feel sad, although of course I remember her in other ways. I can describe the way she stood on the stairs for a photo for example, I just can’t see it.”

What does this mean for readers? Beyond being presented with images in a book full of pictures, is a reader hampered by an inability to conjure images in her head? Crucially - does it put someone off reading non-illustrated texts when they are older? In the Exeter summary, a bookshop worker says

Niel works in a bookshop and is an avid reader, but avoids books with vivid landscape descriptions as they bring nothing to mind for him. “I just find myself going through the motion of reading the words without any image coming to mind,” he said. “I usually have to go back and read a passage about a visual description several times – it’s almost meaningless.”

Okay - which part of my fevered brain did this come from?

Consider this, the strangest of facts: your thoughts, memories and emotions, your perceptions of the world, and your deepest intuitions of selfhood, are the product of three pounds of jellified fats, proteins, sugars and salts – the stuff of the brain and as tough as blancmange. It's absurd, wonderful and terrifying. The Guardian Review of The Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks

Beware moving vehicles

Sit down and get yourself comfortable (not too comfy). Put the object on the table in front of you. Lean over where your face is two or three feet from the object. Now with your eyes open, look at the object. Study it in detail. Notice any glare from the light in the room. Pay attention to its texture. Is it smooth or is it coarse? Study it and get as many details as you can.

Now close your eyes. In your mind's eyes, picture the object as if you were still looking at it. If you have a rough time at first, just make something up. Try to get as many details correct as you can. Now open your eyes again and look again at the object. Study it in great detail for a few moments.

Keep going back and forth like this for five or ten minutes. Play around with the exercise a couple times a day to become good at this skill.
2. Staying in visualization situations. When he found himself in the just-before-sleep state, he stayed there for a while and played with imagery. But he reported no increase in his range of visualisation states or ability to visualise.
3. Object drawing. He tried 3D constructions of blocks and tried drawing them from different angles on paper. But there was no actual imagery or mental rotation involved.

Add a Comment

Candy Gourlay interviews Sarah Mussi on the final stop of the Here Be Dragons Blog Tour

Candy Gourlay: I keep banging on about how the book industry is putting too much emphasis on pitch and opening hooks to the detriment of the rest of the work. What about the middle? I find myself complaining. What about the ending?  As it happens, my lovely pal Sarah Mussi has been stomping through a blog tour to promote her new book Here Be Dragons. In the course of the tour, Sarah's blogged about the way she structured her novel along the lines of the three-act structure. Viz:

Three act structure: http://tinyurl.com/ywveuj | Flickr - Photo

So far, she's talked about The Hook, The Inciting Incident, The First Turning Point, The Point of No Return, The Darkest Hour, and Act 3 and The Climax. Notes from the Slushpile is her seventh and final stop. Lucky us, she's offered to discuss:



Read more »

Add a Comment

Read more »

Add a Comment

Awesome first lines

Read more »

Add a Comment

by Teri Terry

Teri/computer hybrid

Introducing...

Making Things Up: a new blog series about the creative process

I haven’t blogged for Slushies in ages – sorry! One of the reasons – the main one, really – is because I’d hit a point where I felt like I didn’t have anything useful to say to aspiring writers, our original target audience. 

Note: please keep reading even if you fit another category – as a blog, we’ve grown!

A visual representation of all these worries

Everything I was obsessed with seemed like the kind of stuff that would either scare aspiring writers away, or that shouldn’t be aired publicly: things like stressing about book sales, publicity, reviews, covers, blurbs, deals, deadlines, royalties, tax, VAT etc etc. It’s not that some of these topics can’t have a place on this blog, but more that I didn’t want to dwell on them any more than I already was. As a new author I was heavily bogged down in the business side of things.

But earlier this year, I had one of those eureka moments. It’s a two-parter.

Eureka 1: I’m a writer!

That probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anybody else, but soon after Mind Games - my fourth book - came out, my perspective on it all finally shifted. I stopped thinking that any second now someone would tap me on the shoulder and tell me to quit faking it and go away, and started – finally – to accept that this is who and what I am, and that there was a fair chance it could work out in the long term.

Inside my brain at the time

This made me very happy.

I even started to admit it sometimes, like to taxi drivers when they asked why I was in Edinburgh (the book festival), or waitresses when they asked why I was visiting Killin (research for a book).

Eureka 2: I love writing!

Despite the moments of pain that go along with it, I’ve always loved writing. I hope I always will. But the combination of deadlines and worrying about loads of stuff I have no control over was taking the shine off the fact that I have my dream job, and this is completely daft. And even more: there was something about writing that I was missing, and it was important.

And so, I decided two things:

1. I’m going to write stuff just for fun now and then, even if there are other things I should be doing, even if it is probable that what I’m playing with will never be published. This was the thing I was really missing from my pre-published days: that joy of playing around with words, just for fun, without any reason beyond because I want to. The muse needs to cut loose sometimes! And a happy muse means a happy writer.

2. And perhaps I do have something useful to say to readers of this blog, but not the kind of things I’ve visited before. Writing is by far the most important part of being a writer. It sounds so obvious, but looking at the many courses and conferences aimed at writers, it is easy to see why the business side of things - pitching, contracts, publicity, on line platforms etc etc - seem overwhelmingly important. And so I’m starting a blog series about writing – bits and pieces of (hopefully) useful insight into my take on the creative process. I may even quote from recently-re-read-and-always-adored Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones now and then.

In fact one bit of that is so important, I'm going to put it in a box, and maybe even put it in a large font and add an excessive number of exclamation marks:

!!!Writing is by far the most important part of being a writer!!!

Next in this Making Things Up series, I'm going to write a post about getting started. 
Coming sometime in October if all our Slushie scheduling goes to plan!

And now for some news...

The first thing I played around with and wrote just for fun was a novella, a sequel to Mind Games. Mind Games was meant to be a standalone, but after it came out last March, it kept niggling away, and eventually I stopped telling myself not to waste my time when I should be doing other stuff, and I sat down and wrote an uncontracted, unasked-for sequel, Dangerous Games. Then I said, surprise! and sent it off to my publisher and agent.

And the thing I really didn’t expect for something so outside the box? It is going to be published. Dangerous Games will be an ebook with Orchard Books, out in December.

Add a Comment

By Nick Cross

To the uninitiated, writing appears to be a simple process of putting words onto the page. But the fact that I’ve re-written the sentence you’ve just read six times seems to indicate that perhaps it’s not that easy. To write well requires us to make a deep personal connection with the material, and this is where the trouble starts.

Ernest Hemingway famously said:

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

A trifle melodramatic, you might think, and just imagine the mess it caused to the internal workings of his typewriter! But we understand exactly what he meant. And there’s another use of the word “bleed” that is even more pertinent to the writing experience – the way that our daily experiences, ideas and emotions bleed into our work. Writing is not an activity that respects boundaries, in fact it actively thrives on recycling our happiest and saddest moments, tapping into our deepest fears and exposing our most shameful thoughts.

This might all be fine if the transfer was only one way. But the process of writing, editing and getting published generates a whole host of other emotions which can, in turn, affect our lives away from the desk. Often, we may not realise that we’re building a psychological house of cards, until the sudden, brutal event comes that causes it all to collapse. Life happens.

For me, the trigger event was the simple failure of my novel to find a publisher (something I covered in detail in my earlier Slushpile post). For others, it can be something far worse. In Cliff McNish’s post from June this year, he talks movingly about the death of his wife and how he found himself unable to write the ghost story his publisher wanted:

“Day after day I wrote less and less until finally ... I just stopped. I didn’t want to be in this dark place. I had enough darkness going on in my life.”

Cliff, I’m pleased to say, found a way out of the darkness and is back to writing books again. And so am I, for that matter. But what is it that allows us to see past shattering events and gradually bring our lives back onto an even keel? Psychologists call this trait “resilience” and the American Psychological Association (APA) defines it as follows:

Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences.

Building resilience is a core skill for writers, but something that’s often overlooked. The APA have an excellent factsheet about building resilience, and here (very briefly) are their 10 tips:

1. Make connections
2. Avoid seeing crises as insurmountable problems
3. Accept that change is a part of living
4. Move toward your goals
5. Take decisive actions
6. Look for opportunities for self-discovery
7. Nurture a positive view of yourself
8. Keep things in perspective
9. Maintain a hopeful outlook
10. Take care of yourself

The factsheet is very good, and I suggest you read it so I won’t have to regurgitate any more of the information here! Instead, I’d like to share some personal strategies that have worked for me, in the hope that they’ll prove useful.

Write what you want – not what you think you should

You may think you’re writing what you want to, but are you? External pressures such as market trends, agent feedback or peer pressure can subtly affect what projects you choose to pursue. And there’s also the element of “doing what you’ve always done.” We’ve seen that already in Cliff McNish’s piece, and I was struck by another recent post by Sarah Aronson where she talks about changing writing direction to find peace of mind (and also success!)

Like Cliff and Sarah, I found that writing dark, difficult books worsened my mental condition, which in turn made my writing worse. So I decided to change direction and write lighter, funnier stuff instead. I wouldn’t say it’s been easier exactly (I still find writing pretty hard work), but it’s allowed me to tap into the positive, and make myself laugh into the bargain.

“What about the cathartic effect of writing?” I hear you say. Well, I agree that you can use writing as a form of therapy, and I think that’s why my short stories have been getting darker in the meantime (You can read more about the process behind that). Short stories are perfect for me because the process is much, much shorter than writing a novel – I can get the darkness out of my brain and onto the page without wallowing in it.

The darkest of my recent stories

“Too much of anything can make you sick.”

I’d love to attribute that quote to a great philosopher, but in fact it’s the opening line of Cheryl Cole’s debut single Fight for this Love! Nevertheless, the sentiment holds true, linking nicely into my previous point.

Doing everything in moderation is important to both mental and physical health. It’s tempting to lock yourself in a room for eight hours and burn through as many words as possible, but it’s not a healthy long term approach. Varying when, how and what you write can help you work around external pressures and will probably improve your creativity too.

Worry about Your Worrying

Writers are great worriers. This can be a positive trait, because it allows us to catastrophise, imagining all of the worst things that can go wrong in any situation and make sure they happen to our characters! But the same overactive mental process that allows us to plot stories can manifest in other situations as worry and rumination. Here’s a quick definition if the latter term is unfamiliar:

Rumination is the compulsively focused attention on the symptoms of one's distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions.

Rumination is believed by psychology practitioners to be a leading factor in depression and anxiety. It’s a big risk for people who are naturally introspective and spend a lot of time inside their own heads. Er, that’s us, people.

Cognitive Behavioural Treatment (CBT) is a common way of handling negative thought patterns. I’ve had a fair bit of CBT treatment over the past five years, but it’s only in the last six months that it’s really started to stick. Your mileage will doubtless vary, and there are other treatments that may work better for you instead. See the resources section at the end for more details.

Don’t be an emotional sponge

The world is full of awful events, which – while being horrible, immoral and upsetting – don’t tend to touch our lives directly. So we experience them at a distance via news and social media, sending out our empathy in place of direct experience. This is (once again) a double-edged sword, because the process which allows us to write convincing characters by stepping into their shoes, also allows us to be very quickly overwhelmed by other’s woes.

When I was at my lowest ebb, I can remember sitting on Twitter and feeling that I was being crushed by other people’s sadness – here was someone going through a divorce, or coping with sick kids, or lamenting a parent who died years ago. I had lost perspective of the positive posts, sucking up the painful and the negative emotions like a sponge.

The simple solution for me, was to take a break from Facebook and Twitter and BBC News, to insulate myself from the grief of the world until I was strong enough to face it again.

Beware the end-of-project blues

These are a big issue for me – after the wave of euphoria and relief that a big project has been completed, I will invariably sink into a period of low mood. The Friday before last, we delivered a brand new website at work, after an incredibly ambitious and stressful ten week schedule. As the first step in a projected ten year programme, the site was an unqualified success, and I had every reason to feel extremely proud of my contribution. But instead, I mooched around the house throughout the bank holiday weekend, feeling sorry for myself.

Writing projects are no different, and the stresses can be much worse because the completion of a final draft is invariably followed by submission to agents and editors, which creates its own anxieties. I know that other writers advise you to always have more than one book on the go, so that you can immediately switch to the other one. But I find I work best in intensive bursts, which doesn’t always suit that manner of working.

I remember reading about fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s suicide, which was triggered, in part, by reaching the end of a fashion project. As McQueen’s psychiatrist told the inquest into his death:

“Usually after a show he felt a huge come-down. He felt isolated, it gave him a huge low.”

Try to plan for the end-of-project blues and have a strategy to cope with them – this may be as simple as allowing yourself not to feel guilty about the low that inevitably follows a high. Although your body and mind will need a rest after an intensive period of work, try to ramp down slowly and structure your downtime.

Build a Support Network

Everyone needs supportive friends and family to celebrate the good times and get them through the bad. Build and nurture your support network by finding like-minded people to share your journey (hello SCBWI!) If you have mental health problems and seek out a community of fellow sufferers, be vigilant to the difference between supportive friends and ones who can become a burden or project their own woes onto you (the emotional sponge problem).

Additional Resources

Living Life to the Full

This is a free self-help website set up by a Scottish psychiatrist and partly-funded by the NHS. It offers a range of online CBT courses and factsheets to address problems such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and addiction.

NHS Choices

This site has lots of mental health advice, including the Moodzone which focuses on stress, anxiety and depression.

Manage Your Mind

This bestselling book by Gillian Butler and Tony Hope is a very approachable and comprehensive guide to mental fitness. At 500 pages, its size can be a little off-putting, and I was scared of reading it for years! But once I finally opened it, I found it both comforting and useful. (full disclosure – my employer publishes this book, but that’s also one of the reasons it’s so good!)

Therapy and Counselling

There are lots of websites and directories of therapists/counsellors, and the choice can be confusing as there are many different types of therapy available. Always look for someone with accreditation – the more reputable sites will show you this information (for instance, It’s Good to Talk is a directory of practitioners who are accredited by The British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy). Always “try before you buy” - the practitioner-patient relationship needs to work in both directions to be effective, and good therapists will offer you a free trial session before you commit to regular meetings.

As well as private therapy, I have had counselling on the NHS in the past, although mental health services have been hit very hard by recent government spending cuts and you may struggle to get a referral unless your condition is serious.

Life Coaching

Life coaching is not an alternative to psychotherapy but more of a complement – it won’t help you with deep-seated psychological conditions, but is useful for addressing issues such as confidence, motivation and reaching your career goals. I’ve recently had a course of sessions with a life coach and found it immensely helpful (if pretty expensive). In fact, the confidence it’s given me is pretty much the reason I’m writing this blog post.

Although she wasn’t my life coach, I’d like to give a shout out here to the lovely Bekki Hill, who runs a website called The Creativity Cauldron and specialises in coaching writers through their creative troubles.


OK, I think that’s quite enough from me! I hope you’ve found this post both useful and enjoyable. The issue of mental health for creative people is one that doesn’t get enough focus, so I hope I’ve redressed the balance a little.

Stay resilient,
Nick.

---

Nick Cross is a children's writer, Undiscovered Voices winner and Blog Network Editor for SCBWI Words & Pictures Magazine.
Nick's writing is published in Stew Magazine, and he's recently received the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award, for his short story The Last Typewriter.

Add a Comment

by Addy Farmer

About two minutes ago, the Summer Holidays stretched out like this ...

not a computer in sight

There were delicious plans afoot: After a suitable number of days lolling in bed followed by jumping about in the garden, me and my family would go on holiday, read masses, get into all sorts of scrapes, rescue anything that stood in the way and actually climb a mountain. Not only that but I would have loads and loads of time to WRITE.

Moominpapa could write whenever he wanted to

Inevitably, it didn't turn out like that. I will not bore you, dear reader, with the list of what got in the way of my perfectly reasonable expectations but it was mostly to do with not living in the 1950s. I did write, in snatches, but it was mostly editing and revising. It's good to have the quiet head-space for that full-on flowing and original story writing.

Never mind because in the end reading is the stuff of writing.

The media would have us think that Summer is a time for reading and I did read alot although not on the beach. But I don't think that I read anymore than I do the rest of the year.  Radio 4 even had a brief say about how summer reading was no different to winter reading on the daily commute, really. Most of my summer reading has been a writer new to me, Frances Hardinge. I whipped through the brilliant, 'Verdigris Deep' and 'The Lie Tree' and 'Cuckoo Song'. I've just started, 'A Face of Glass'. These are cracking good stories and that is what I like to read any time of the year.


But I do like Winter and stories set in winter time. So, let's just conveniently forget the intervening hufflepuff-like season of Autumn and spring to contemplation of Winter stories. Is there a difference between these and those set in Summer? Perhaps, we might personify them. Summer is perky with arms-wide and smiling where Winter is dark, hunched and dour. One camps outdoors, one skulks inside. One looks out at the world, the other looks inwards ... well, you get the idea.

Add a Comment

By Candy Gourlay

One lazy evening, while googling Jackie Chan fight scenes (as one does), I found myself watching this video by Tony Zhou (of the Every Frame a Painting YouTube channel):



In his video, Tony points out that Hong Kong director and action hero Jackie Chan blends comedy and action in a way that Western directors do not. The film lists ways by which Jackie Chan manages to create action with a comic twist.

As I listened to Tony's pointers and watched Jackie Chan twirling gracefully through fight scene after fight scene, I found myself having little epiphanies - not about action comedy, but about writing.

Jackie Chan always starts by putting himself at a disadvantage.  

"No matter what film Jackie always starts beneath his opponents. He has no shoes, he's handcuffed, he has a bomb in his mouth." This is the fun of a Jackie Chan movie - the bumbling no-hoper overcoming incredible odds and enemies - gangs of Kung Fu masters, mafia goons, cowboy baddies, what have you. In the end of course the joke is on his opponents who didn't see Jackie Chan coming.

It's a reminder to us fiction writers that characters need to change.

If you're writing a coming of age story, your character at the start will be a child, innocent, naive. Your job is to grow your character into maturity. If you're writing a romance, your character must start out loveless or unloveable before you can begin introducing love opportunities. If it's an adventure you're building, your character must begin the story in a state that is the polar opposite of his ordinary world, in the way that Luke Skywalker lives in a boring moisture farm before he goes off to fight Star Wars and Harry Potter has to sleep in a tiny cupboard under the stairs before going off to live in magical Hogwarts.

Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker: from zeroes to heroes

The unputdownableness of a story is dependent on a reader's desire to keep reading. A reader only keeps reading if they want to find out what will happen to the character.

Jackie Chan uses his world to move plot.

One of the delights of a Jackie Chan movie is Jackie's creative use of his environment in a fight. He uses everything. He backflips through ladders, duels with chopsticks and Lego, parries with umbrellas, and in one iconic fight sequence, does combat by juggling a massive ladder. These scenes are funny as well as jaw-droppingly skillful.

Every story has its own particular world - and the crafty writer will infuse that world into every aspect of his or her storytelling. It's not easy, but it builds the truth of your characters and helps the reader embrace your creation. I recently finished writing a story set in a pre-Christian, tribal setting. I had to think carefully as I told my story from the point of view of my tribal characters - every metaphor had to be based on their realities - birds, trees, weather. It was difficult but very satisfying.

Jackie Chan likes clarity. 

When his opponent is in black, he's in white. That's in order for the viewer to see clearly what's going on. Not for him the handheld and dolly shots of Western film making that create a false dynamic, making actors who don't know how to fight look dangerous.

In one example, a fighting sequence that ends with a spectacular fall is shot making sure that the staircase is kept in the frame. Thus the viewers become familiar with the landscape and there is no geographical confusion when the fall actually happens. The viewers know the stairs are there, they know how high it is. They know the fall is coming, they are anticipating it. Anticipation is good, it keeps readers reading. The trick is to deliver what is anticipated ... and still manage to surprise.

Clarity is essential to a fiction writer's craft. Every event must make sense within the world you created. Every decision a character makes must be true to who the character is. Our task as authors is to keep our readers immersed in our world. If something suddenly doesn't make sense, we will have woken our readers from their fictive dream. 'I couldn't believe the character would do that.' 'Why did she love him? He was so unloveable?'

The staircase example also reminded me of one of the best ways to hide exposition. You don't want to interrupt an important moment to explain something. You must make sure you've craftily fed the necessary knowledge to your reader long before it is needed. JK Rowling was fantastic at this. (SPOILER ALERT) Scabbers, Ron's pet rat, appears in the every book until his true identity is revealed in The Prisoner of Azkaban. In that book, Hermione's mysterious ability to be everywhere is revealed to be the work of a time turner - which is the very tool they use to save Buckbeak and Sirius Black. Throughout the book, we know stuff and yet what we know still holds a surprise at the end. Neat!

Scabbers lives in the background until his true identity is revealed.

Action and Reaction

Over and over again, the narrator mentions action and reaction. Jackie Chan's visual logic requires that action and reaction appears in the same frame (3:16). You see the punch, you see Jackie recoil. It's part of Jackie Chan's obsession with clarity.

It amazed me because action and reaction is something I obsess over when I'm writing new scenes. In fact, I will often scribble 'CAUSE AND EFFECT' on the top of the page when I'm plotting. This is because I've learned that it is action and reaction -- cause and effect --  that creates the feeling of movement in a story.

A story is not just pretty writing. As I said before, for a piece of writing to be a story, there should be change at its heart. If there is no change there is no story. And what makes the reader feel that change? Cause and effect. Action and reaction.

Jack is poor ... so his mum sends him to sell their cow ... so Jack sells the cow ... but the buyer has no money except "magic" beans ... Jack accepts the beans ... and angers his mum ... who throws them out the window ... and they grow ...

It's a chain of events, connected because one thing leads to the other.

I used to sweat over plotting. I still do ... but thinking about action and reaction has made the task less excruciating.

Jackie Chan makes sure you see what's important 

According to Tony's video, Hong Kong directors like Jackie cut fight scenes differently from their Western counterparts. After showing a wide shot of a fight sequence, they will cut to a close up of a pay-off strike (5:26) - it creates a rhythm but also a feeling of satisfaction in the audience to see the coup de grace in close up. The director is saying: check this out, notice this. It's important.

Writers are constantly quoting the adage: Show, don't tell. But the truth is you can't show EVERYTHING. There are times when you do have to tell, to keep the story moving. The skill is choosing wisely what you tell and what you show - if it's important, it's got to be on stage. Show it, don't tell it. 

I've noticed that the medium of storytelling can dictate whether you're showing not telling - eg. in opera, all the big, important scenes are communicated in song because opera is about song. The opera singers tell us what's going on. But opera is in the minority. If you're writing books (or making movies) you gotta put what's important on stage.

Jackie Chan does it in his fight scenes. You can do it in your books.

Jackie is patient

The little details that make a fight scene - the flip of a fan, the twirl of a ladder triple his height - are not achieved by pure talent. Jackie Chan is the first to tell you that it takes patience and practice. Jackie will practice relentlessly to get a move right - in the fan scene, he says it took 120 takes before he flipped the fan to perfection. As a small child he was sent to Peking Opera School - a boarding school that trained drama students in a version of martial arts that combined acrobatics, tumbling and performance.

This relentlessness is onscreen as well as backstage. Jackie Chan characters are never quitters. "He doesn't win because he's a better fighter, he wins because he never gives up." says Tony in his film. "It is a direct contrast to his American work where bad guys are defeated because someone shoots them."

We writers could use that relentlessness. One of the most important things I've learned since I began writing is: There are no short cuts.

Need to patch that hole in the plot? Need to give your character a personality transplant? Need to start again? You gotta do what you gotta do. A rushed ending, a thin character, an unsatisfying plot - once the book is published there's no turning back, no hiding from readers and critics.

Jackie Chan earns his finish.

The final point in Tony Zhou's film is: Earn your finish.  'Jackie's style (of film) always ends with a real pay-off for the audience. By fighting his way from the bottom, he earns the right to a spectacular finish.'

Personally I think all the internet sharing exhorting writers to create an opening to hook a reader/agent/editor has resulted in a crop of books with fabulous openings ... but exceedingly weak and rushed endings. Think back on all the great books you ever read. What do you mostly remember? I'll bet it's not the opening but that delicious, surprising, exciting ending. Once you're published what matters is not how you grab your reader but how you leave him when he's finished reading your book.

So ask yourself ... Does your ending leave your reader satisfied? Does your character deserve his ending? Has your character earned his finish? Have you?


With thanks to Tony Zhou for the brilliant video. Here are Tony's nine principles of Action Comedy:

---

Candy Gourlay also blogs on her author website. Read her most recent post Killing My Darlings.

Add a Comment

Struggling writers are not often the best judges of struggling writing.

Quick reminder for those that have forgotten or have never heard of the four stages of learning.
Unconscious Incompetence
We don't know what we don't know
Conscious Incompetence
We know what we don't know and are shocked!
Conscious Competence
We are applying what we know but it's like walking through treacle with delicious little pools of bubbly, uplifting, lemonade every now and then.
Unconscious Competence
We know everything (ha!) and can write via a mind meld with our characters.

She is the author of
The Action Words Reading Scheme
Florence and the Meanies
The Funeverse poetry site.

Add a Comment

A note from Candy Gourlay: Dear Slushpile Readers, we are so pleased to introduce you to our latest acquisition on Notes from the Slushpile, the swashbuckling and most divine, soon to be bestselling YA author, Kathryn Evans aka @mrsbung. Kathy has long been a fellow journeywoman on the rocky road to publication and we are thrilled that her novel More of Me is going to be published next year by Usborne. Kathy likes to say she's a farmer's wife but she does a lot more than wifery on that farm, I can tell you. The KidLit world doesn't know what's about to hit it ... we're all going to be hearing a lot about Kathy very soon.  

By Kathy Evans

Oh. My. Gosh. I have been invited to join the blogging team at Notes From the Slushpile. This is better than:

Mmm, coffee cake...

And

Mmm...champagne

And all manner of other lovely things, including SLEEP, which is one of my most favourite things to do. Why so, I hear you ask?

Just over five years ago I guest blogged for NFTS, you can see how giddy I was about it all then.
I am STILL that giddy. This blog meant a great deal to me when I was serving my time on the slush pile – it was a comforting place to go for tips and insights. A place of hope. A place to dream. And I had a lot of time for dreaming. Fifteen-ish years of it – the internetty web thing barely existed back then, blogging was in its infancy, but Notes from The Slushpile had a fan base and amongst the fans was me. So much so that when I met Candy at my first SCBWI conference, I sort of pounced on her and made her be my friend.

Read more »

Add a Comment

By Nick Cross

Whether you’re traditionally published, self-published or still trying, the pressure to promote yourself has never been greater. We’re exhorted to “get out there and build a platform” via social media and word of mouth. But while some authors manage this transition gracefully, there are others who undergo a Jekyll and Hyde transformation, turning into publicity-hungry monsters.
Read more »

Add a Comment

Pat Walsh is one of my tip-top favourite writers. I relish her beautiful prose, I admire her sparkling story-telling and her characterisation is warm and real. I wanted to know about Pat, her life, her work, her address ...no, the restraining order is an effective deterrent. So read on, for all about Pat and her TOP TEN TIPS for writers. Pat Walsh was born in Kent, and spent her early years in

Add a Comment

By Candy Gourlay If you follow me on Facebook, you'll know that I attend a LOT of launch parties. At the spring launch of my pal Joe Friedman's warmhearted book The Secret Dog I try to accept invites when I can. I know the agony and ecstasy of writing a book. I also know that without a launch party, the publication of a book feels like a great big non-event. It was in your head and then

Add a Comment

By Candy Gourlay and Moira McPartlin This Wednesday, 15 July, at 6.30 PM at the Barbican Library, Candy will be in conversation with Scottish author Moira McPartlin at the London launch of Ways of the Doomed.  CANDY GOURLAY: Moira, I've been reading Ways of the Doomed in preparation for our forthcoming event at the Barbican Library and the thing that immediately leaps out about the book is the

Add a Comment

Hello again, slush fans. As anyone who's seen my Museum of Me series will attest, I like to keep hold of stuff from my past and inflict it upon share it with my loyal readers. Now that I've been writing seriously for a decade (actually slightly more, but 10 & 3/4 years didn't sound as good) it felt like time to take stock of my journey so far. And what a journey it hasn't been. Well, not in

Add a Comment

  by Addy Farmer There's a ghost in my house but don't tell the children and especially not the child who's bedroom it seems to haunt. Gather round, reader and I'll tell you. For some reason (don't probe), I was sleeping in the guest room of our fairly big Victorian house. The previous owner had put a brass door knocker in the shape of a fox on the hall side of the door. In the early

Add a Comment