The Art and Craft of Children’s Book Writing: my recap at last

photograph by Krista Dondero Rausin

On July 5, I arrived in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard for a week-long workshop with Emma Dryden. It was held at Noepe Center for Literary Arts, a non-profit organization that offers both writing residencies and workshops.  I was delighted to be part of the first Thursdays in the Garden at Noepe when they open the doors to the public for evenings of music, readings and camaraderie.

On the first day of the workshop, Emma led us through a discussion of first pages. I was confident about my opening when I walked in. Since then, I’ve rewritten it at least six times, and it’s not done yet. The second day was devoted to voice. Emma gave us worksheets and exercises to help us discover the unique voices of our characters. I have worked through the questionnaire for every character in my novel. I learned much about the people who have lived in my brain for over a year now. The third day was devoted to world building. How hard could that be? My characters live in modern day Michigan. Again the workshop and worksheets pointed out many ways I can enrich my novel. The fourth day was all about revision. I plan to leap into these techniques during my upcoming writing retreat with The World’s Greatest Critique Group. The last day was questions and answers, but not until we delved into the inner reasons why we wrote our stories.

Best of all, I spent a week at a beautiful place, got to know nine fantastic writers, and had the privilege of being tutored by a genius editor who knows how to get authors to dig deeper and find new meaning in their writing.

And I ate some lobster.

Thanks to Krista Dondero Rausin for generously sharing her photograph. My camera is broken, so I have no pictures of hydrangeas, lighthouses or sailboats.

See What I Mean About Rhetorical Questions?

Many writers pepper interior monologue with rhetorical questions. They are a natural construct because it takes time for protagonists to figure out the plot’s mysteries. Stating a character’s confusion as a question avoids the “I wondered” construct which puts a degree of separation between the reader and the character. Simply stating what the character wondered (or felt, saw or smelled) is more direct. 

Rhetorical questions can be overdone. A fellow attendee at a writing workshop removed all of the rhetorical questions from her novel and cut 2500 words. Writers tend to pile up rhetorical questions when a character is unsure, resulting in an overstatement of the problem. The reader understands that the character is confused after the first question. Adding three or four more is redundant. 

Rhetorical questions can be effective if employed with a light hand. Use the search function in Microsoft Word to locate question marks in your manuscript. For every question that isn’t part of dialog, consider whether it can be cut or rephrased as a statement. 

Please also see Mary Kole’s insightful post on rhetorical questions.

Nouns

I was given a writing exercise that involved counting the concrete and abstract nouns. The idea was that concrete nouns make more compelling writing. First, I discovered that I use abstract nouns more frequently than I’d suspected. Upon further analysis, I decided they made my passage stronger. Here are some of the abstract nouns I used and the reasons why I kept them. 

Everything: This word suffers from a lack of specificity, but my story is written for teens in (hopefully) the voice of a teen. High school students tend to think they are the center of their universe. When my character says, “Everything changed,” she means it. 

Energy: This is a concrete noun when it equals mass times the square of the speed of light, but is an abstract noun when referring to a person’s work ethic or personality. To me, the sentence, “Only Matt was immune to her energy,” communicates important ideas about two characters. 

Unease, Mystery & Magic: These abstract nouns are essential for the hook. I used them to stimulate curiosity in the reader. 

My conclusions are:

1. Voice trumps all. 
2. Be specific. 
3. Use powerful words.  
4. Don’t neglect the hook.

Creativity vs. Craft

At a recent book event, my husband asked the author which part of her writing process was creativity and which part was craft. The poor woman looked startled then said the two were so intertwined that they could not be separated. 

In science, creativity and craft are more easily distinguishable. The creative parts involve identifying interesting problems and figuring out which questions to ask so that a correct answer can be found. Craft comes into play when executing the experiment. Years of practice are often required to produce interpretable results. 

For me, writing is a mixture of creativity and craft. Figuring out what story to write, deducing the best way to tell it, and asking probing questions about my characters and their quests are all creative endeavors. The process of getting the story down for the first time is mostly unbridled creativity. Revision, however, is not exclusively craft. Seemingly, years of practice are often required to produce a clearly written manuscript. But a manuscript that is merely technically adept will not sell. Readers are looking for heart in a novel, characters they can identify with, and situations that are both real and unique. Breathing life into the novel is the creative part of revisions.

On Blogging

Today while visiting Sarah Aronson's blog, Beyond Revision, I found this quote:

"As you teach, you learn. As you learn, you write. As you blog, you get to goof around."

Have a great weekend. 

Useful Links

Here are two links to valuable blog posts on writing. Both were suggested by the amazing Shutta Crum on the SCBWI-MI listserv. 

The Writer Unboxed post by Lisa Cron explains how to trace your protagonist’s inner journey. The first time I read it, I stopped in despair at the words, “What they end up with is a narrative that’s basically just a bunch of things that happen.” I went back, read the article again and mapped my protagonist’s inner journey. Yes, she does change. As I revise, I can strengthen that.  

LaurieHalse Anderson’s post called Revision Roadmap is my next project. Anderson describes how to make a scene-by-scene roadmap of a novel, and ways to detect problems like unnecessary scenes, excessive dialog, misplaced subplots and pacing problems. My novel has already experienced a lot of cutting and significant expansion. Perhaps it’s time to see if it works.