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One reason that new writers have their books rejected is because their writing style doesn't match the content: either the language is too sophisticated for such a simple storyline - or the story is too long or complicated for the target readership. 

Admittedly, it's difficult to categorize books into specific age categories. Children are individuals, after all. Some advanced readers might not be very worldly-wise, and won't yet be ready for 'grittier' stories. Meanwhile, some of their peers may be ready for 'older' content but can't handle more sophisticated language.

But to give your story the best chance of publication, the content needs to match the writing style for that particular age category.

Picture books Age 0-5	Early readers 5-7	Middle grade 7-11	YA fiction 12+
0 - 200 words 24,32 or 40 pages.	500-1,500	10-20,000	50,000+
Full colour illustrations	Black and white line drawings every other page	Black and white line drawings every few pages.	No illustrations
Domestic or fantasy settings	Usually domestic settings.	Domestic magic and high fantasy. Realistic settings with parental supervision unless there’s a good reason (fantasy)	The wider world. High fantasy.
	Larger font size, restricted vocabulary. Dialogue.	Large proportion of dialogue, more complex.
	Shorter sentences	More sophisticated sentences.	Lots of interior monologue, reflection, longer speeches.
Text works with illustrations.	Very short paragraphs.	Paragraphs a bit longer.
Nearly no description	Minimal description, but a few sparkling details true to a young reader’s perception of the world.	Detailed setting and character description.	Detailed setting and character description.
Usually in third person	Usually in third person. Some character development possible.	Usually in third person. Rounded characters. Character development more obvious.	Often in first person, and present tense. It’s all about me.
Anthropomorphism, inanimate objects made animate. Familiar roles, settings, objects.	A talking animal almost always points to an early reader. Children in comic or adventure situations, usually having a good time, nothing too awful happens.	Children in danger, frightening situations, facing fears and fighting good and evil. But the real world isn’t too real.	Can be very dark and realistic. Dystopian futures, tragedy, abuse, drugs, etc. Also comedy sex/romance.
	No sex or romance.	Romance is light and about friendships. Or subliminal.	Anything goes.
For the youngest bracket, not necessarily stories with problems solved, but simply an exploration of the world.	Often deal with smaller problems resolved in a shorter time frame. Stakes are lower.	Children with flaws, interactions with peers. Children save the day or resolve things themselves. Growing understanding of the world and their place in it.	Young adults dealing with finding their own way in the world, changing the world or making a name for themselves; asserting themselves; finding own values.
Can be present tense.	Past tense, no leaping around in time or flashbacks.	Still rarely using flashbacks unless short recollections by a character.	Can play with chronology; transitions, flashbacks etc.
Happy endings or comforting closure.	Happy endings.	Happy or at least hopeful endings.	Usually at least hopeful, but recently have been a few with bleak endings.

 

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1. Have we established our protagonist in the 'ordinary world' before we turn their lives upside down and make them venture out into the 'unknown'?
2. Does our protagonist need to meet a mentor - or gain wisdom from some other external source - in order to help them on their journey of transformation?
3. What is the 'dragon' that our protagonist has to face? Is it something or someone outside themselves? Or might the dragon be their own internal 'demons'?
4. Does our protagonist face their dragon and reach a point of 'death and rebirth' - which could mean that they have to face their worst fears, relinquish their strongest beliefs or greatest dreams - and change and evolve as a result?
5. What is the 'gift' that they get? Is it knowledge, courage or something more concrete?
6. Does their new insight or situation then allow them to overcome an old problem, or help somebody else?  

Finally, can you relate The Hero's Journey to your story? Or even to stories in your own life? Or is it possible to create a story that doesn't follow this pattern at all - but still works?

Heather Dyer's latest book is The Flying Bedroom.

 

 

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I’ve been reading a book called Fearless Creating: a step-by-stepguide to starting and completing your work of art, by Eric Maisel. Like Dorothea Brande’s classic book Becoming a Writer, this is less a ‘craft’ guidebook, and more a ‘process’ guidebook. It’s the sort of book that describes the creative mind set and shows you how to develop it.

One of the exercises that Maisel says is the most important in the whole book is the ability to ‘hush’ your mind. ‘Hushing’ says Maisel, ‘is what we do when we go into a museum and sit in front of one painting for fifteen minutes.’ Hushing is a ‘quieting and an opening’ – and there is no creative life without this ability to hush.

Maisel also explains that ‘hushing’ needs to be practiced in conjunction with ‘holding’, if any real work is to be done. 'Holding' is the ability to carry an idea for a book or a painting (or any other project )loosely in the back of your mind as you go about your day. By holding the project in the periphery of your vision you allow the ideas and stimuli that you encounter during the day (or during your working practice) to enter it and inform it. I’ve also heard this process called ‘being in the grist’, when almost everything you experience seems to somehow relate to, or feed into, the container of your novel.

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I’ve always been an awful plotter. I write intuitively, going down dozens of blind alleys before (sometimes) finding my way out into the sun. I’ll admit, though, that once written, my stories do all follow the generally accepted 3-Act story structure.

http://howtoplanwriteanddevelopabook.blogspot.co.uk/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMhLvMJ_r0Y

The W-plot structure also nicely illustrates how characters change their minds as a result of things that happen to them, and consequently change the trajectory of the plot. The two major ‘turning points’ are represented by the two bottom points of the W. These turning points occur in the 3-Act plot structure as well. However, it was never clear to me (due to the linear way that the 3-Act structure is usually presented) that the turning points are not so much a turning point in the action of the story but a turning point in the character’s own motivation. In other words, your characters can change their minds. 

So, although I still write my first drafts intuitively (as, indeed, Mary Caroll Moore still advocates), I keep in mind the W-plot structure and ask myself what it would take to make a character change their mind at a turning point – and how it would affect things if they did.

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Writers are always looking for things to enhance our creative output. We worry about whether we write best early in the morning or late at night; we fret about whether reading other novels while working on our own is inspiring or distracting; we deliberate over getting our admin out of the way first, or leaving it till afterwards... But what about location? Which is more inspiring - the city or the countryside?

My writer friend loves the garret. She loves the idea of an eyrie high above the city, far enough away from the madding crowds that she feels slightly apart, yet aware that all of life is unfolding in the streets below. She feels it’s important to be able to observe things from a distance – to witness the rest of life passing by. My friend can’t imagine anything worse than writing in the countryside. Nothing happens there, she says.

But perhaps you just need to look a little closer. I spent some time writing from a clapped-out static caravan that was quietly disintegrating in a field of weeds. There was certainly a loneliness about it. But once the quiet descends it becomes apparent that life is ever-changing here, too.

In my caravan there were spiders everywhere. The nettles grew tall, right up to the window sills, and the grass around the deck was chest-high and thrumming with insect life. At night I stood outside and saw a million stars in the huge sky and I began to be aware of life passing on both a very small and a very large scale.

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After the event one of them came up to me and said he'd he loved the ideas in The Flying Bedroom- "so many metaphors!" he said, and looked at me knowingly.

"Yes," I said, self-consciously. "I know."

Is it Elinor or me who says, 'the world is a big place; it seems a shame to stay in one place all your life when there's a world out there waiting to explore'? - then contradicts herself by saying: ‘it's only when you're far from home that you can see how beautiful it is'? And surely it is Elinor – not I – who speaks the line: "I don't want to kiss Prince Charming!"

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Children have so little freedom. Freedom beckons, but is also frightening. Perhaps this is why I loved reading so much when I was a child. From the safety of an armchair in the front room or beneath the covers of my bed, I could escape safely.

When I was seven I loved books in which magical items transported children directly from the security of home into another world - stories like Enid Blyton’s The Wishing Chair, in which an old chair intermittently grew wings and carried the children off on fantastical adventures. There was also Nesbit’s Phoenix and the Carpet, in which an old rug turns out to be a magic carpet - and let’s not forget  that wonderful flying bed in Bedknobs and Broomsticks - or The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which an old wardrobe provides the portal to freedom.

Part of the excitement lay in the fact that the children never quite knew when their adventure might take place. Nesbitt’s children always had to wait until their parents were out – and Blyton’s children had to keep going down to the playroom to see if the chair had grown wings. The appeal also lay in the fact that there was always the risk of mishap - along with the assumption that the children would return home safely.

When my friend’s daughter Elinor told me about a dream in which her bedroom flew, I was delighted. What a wonderful symbol her unconscious had conjured up to grant her both security and freedom! She could go wherever she wanted without leaving the safety of her bedroom – and what’s more, she would have everything she needed with her: a raincoat, a book to read, a sunhat or a swimsuit …


So, inspired by Elinor’s dream, I wrote The Flying Bedroom, a series of short adventures in which Elinor’s bedroom takes her to faraway places including a tropical island (from which her bedroom nearly floats away), the theatre (where Elinor reluctantly takes centre stage), and even to the moon (where Elinor helps a man called Niall fix his rocket). I’m hoping that The Flying Bedroom will satisfy children’s longing for both security and freedom – the tension that never really goes away, no matter how old we are.



You can find more information about Heather Dyer and her books at www.heatherdyer.co.uk

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Game theory must be the epitome of Western faith in logic. We think that if we plug in some variables and press a button we can predict the future. Apparently, we apply it to all sorts of things: economics, war… It’s founded on our belief that if we know enough facts we’ll be in control. But do we really think that we can ever come close to factoring everything in? Isn’t it a bit like trying to predict exactly how the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Tokyo will affect the time that Mrs Morgan arrives at work in Sheffield?

And yet, perhaps those game theorists have a point. If, as quantum physicists now seem to believe, "we are one", the flap of a butterfly’s wings will affect the time that Mrs Morgan gets to work. Nothing acts in isolation. Every event, every movement, every action, every thought is affected by everything that has come before it and in turn affects everything that comes afterwards. So there is, in fact, a formula connecting Tokyo and Sheffield – and if we could plug in every variable we could calculate the outcome.

In order to predict such complex causality with any certainty, however, our equation would have to take everything into account. The result would be that it wouldn’t just predict one outcome, it would predict every outcome. It would be huge. It would be a mathematical equation that would incorporate the entire world. No - the universe! Wait a minute – this equation would be the universe. Our primitive little left brains, which like to quantify and categorize, simply aren’t sophisticated enough for this sort of maths.

Our right brains, however, would seem to be designed to compute exactly this sort of all-encompassing complexity. Not logically – but intuitively. In the creative and scientific disciplines, tiny portions of the Great Equation tend to reveal themselves in brief, bright flashes of insight, during which we shout ‘eureka!’ In fact, David Bohm, quantum physicist and author of On Creativity, believes that the intrinsic appeal of all artistic or creative endeavour is this moment of satisfaction, in which we perceive what he describes as ‘a certain oneness and totality or wholeness, constituting a kind of harmony that is felt to be beautiful’.

The truth, in other words.



Writing fiction involves exactly these sorts of flashes of insight. They’re like lightning strikes, illuminating the way. Flash by flash we find our way through the forest, and step by step the narrative unfolds. Every step must link logically – truthfully – to the one before it and the one that comes after it. One false note and the chain is broken and the mathematics goes awry.

If we try and predict a plot logically, using a pre-arranged formula – the way that game theory seems to – it tends to feel ‘wrong’. It never quite rings true in a way that makes you want to shout ‘eureka!’ What a novelist wants is for the causality of events to be so sophisticated and yet so flawlessly logical that afterwards the reader thinks, “I didn’t see that coming – but in retrospect, of-course it was inevitable.” This sort of integrity is rarely achieved by the logical mind; it has to be intuited.

So, step by step we intuit the way. We draw on all the powers of our unconscious to intuit exactly what a certain character will do and what will happen as a consequence. Intuition is about widening our perspective, holding the whole world of our novel in the periphery of our vision in order to feel the pattern.

The end result is a plot: a linked sequence of cause and effect that has an almost scientific integrity to it. The plot reveals the underlying pattern, the mathematical formula that underpins our novel’s ‘reality’. How do we know if we’ve got it right? Because it feels right. It clicks.


Sometimes people assume that writing fiction must be easier than non-fiction. They assume that because you can make it up as you go along, you can write whatever you want. But nothing could be further from the truth. You can’t just write whatever you want. You have to write exactly what would happen. No wonder writing fiction is so difficult. We are trying to predict the future.

www.heatherdyer.co.uk

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As writers, we’re standing inside our stories, so it’s difficult to know how they look from the outside. As Kathy Lowinger says, ‘Get your work read because you can’t see yourself dance’. An outside perspective can be invaluable – and offers insights that you wouldn’t get otherwise.

So I suppose I have concluded the following:

1. A writer shouldn’t share their work until they’re ready for criticism and can take it or leave it without being mortally wounded. This is usually possible only after some time has elapsed after writing it.   
2. A writer should say ‘thanks’ for the feedback they receive, and nothing more. Then they can go home and decide what to do with it. If a writer tries to defend their work, the people giving feedback will quickly stop bothering. 
3. When giving criticism, try and restrict it to the one or two main issues – don’t go on and on. 
4. Try and give other writers the feedback that they are ready for. We can’t judge everyone by the same yardstick – and when I think back to what my writing was like when I first started, I cringe. By working to our strengths and strengthening the positives, the negatives often fall away all by themselves
5. But even when giving feedback to experienced writers, don’t forget the positives. We all like being reminded of what we do well. It makes us want to carry on.

What's your experience of writers' groups? Have I forgotten anything?

http://www.heatherdyer.co.uk

 

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I visited the studio of an abstract painter once. There was a group of us. All the others were painters; I was the only writer. We started flicking through a portfolio of abstract paintings, and I have to say that they all looked much the same to me: like wallpaper samples. But every now and again when the next painting was revealed, these other painters would collectively say: “Ah! Now that’s interesting!” Their reactions were spontaneous and genuine – and I realized then that they were seeing something that I was missing.

I asked her how she managed it. “The first thing you have to do,” she said, “is stop. Then, you have to feel with your heart where you need to go next. You need to be playful, you need to be brave, and you need to take risks. And you mustn’t be afraid to make mistakes.”


I know she’s right. The best stuff is always the stuff that we never intended to write about. The best things can’t be articulated, and the most wonderful thing about writing fiction is when a story surprises you, and turns out – to your delight – better than you feel you could have made it. The same process would seem to apply both to painting and to writing – and also, in fact, to life.

www.heatherdyer.co.uk

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