Revision update: On chapter 14 out of 30. I still think I can make my end of February goal.
In my first post about the Houston SCBWI conference, I’m featuring some tips from Balzer & Bray editor Ruta Rimas. Energetic, knowledgeable and obviously passionate about books, Ruta advised authors to read books by the authors they love both for pleasure and craft.
She gave a some examples of books she thought were worth reading:
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak for word choice
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White for sentences
- Not a Box by Antoinette Portis for use of punctuation to show emotion
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak for use of sentence structure to build tension
- Coraline by Neil Gaiman for paragraph length
- Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (one of Ruta’s favorite books) for the treatment of the pivotal moment for the protagonist in chapter 16
- Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems for the way it allows the reader to experience the situation with the pigeon
- How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (which Ruta called “a remarkable piece of art”) for the way it’s so in the character’s head
- Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi for its use of word choice to show character, i.e. using the type of words this particular character would use
- The Astonishing Life of Octavion Nothing by M.T. Anderson for the way it shows the character’s voice right from the title page
Ruta also recommended Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer and quoted the book as telling writers to put “every word on trial for its life.” I love that!
To do that, Ruta told writers to look at their work in progress and:
- choose a section and look at the words. What words stick out? How do the words support the theme
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