Posts Tagged writing tips

A Moving Experience

By on August 10, 2012   /   Book Lists  

I’m happy to be settling virtually into the Mixed Up Files clubhouse, and settling physically into my family’s new home in rural New England. While boxing and unboxing all my worldly possessions, I’ve given a lot of thought to “moving experiences” in literature. Authors most often use relocation as a plot device, but it can also highlight a book’s theme, demonstrate character traits, or show an aspect of the setting.

Plot Moves:

This is the most straightforward example. Typically there’s a character who encounters a new kid in class, or is a new kid in class, or has to deal with a friend or family member moving away. The move might be permanent, like Pip moving to London with great expectations, or it might be temporary, like Alice’s visit to Wonderland. The important thing is that if Alice decides not to follow the White Rabbit, the entire rest of the story fails to take place. The character’s move is what moves the plot.

Thematic Moves:

Into the woodsC.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe features a group of siblings who are relocated to the countryside during the WWII bombing of London. They then discover a magical gateway and move again, this time into the land of Narnia. That second move is necessary to the plot, but what about the first? Wouldn’t this story have worked just as well if it had been otherwise unchanged but instead had the siblings discover a portal in their own long-familiar London home?

Lewis used the initial move to introduce a theme and ratchet up the tension. These kids, moved from bomb-battered London to a seemingly safe environment, suddenly find themselves in more danger than ever. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. The move has created ironic tension, because the pastoral countryside is not the sanctuary it was made out to be. The themes of danger and safety are integral to the book and make the story more impactful.

Character-Revealing Moves:

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin presents a group of unlikely characters who compete to solve a mystery and earn the inheritance of a wealthy eccentric. At the start of the book, every one of these future contestants moves into the same apartment complex, which makes it possible to tell the story in a compact space. It’s a practical move, necessary to the plot, but it also spotlights the manipulative nature and social engineering skills of Sam Westing as he entices all of these people to uproot their previous lives even before the contest and its stakes have been introduced. If any of those families had decided to stay put instead, the entire intricate plot would have begun to unravel. By the end of the book, we see exactly how manipulative Westing has been, but it all starts with that big collective move.

A World-Building Move:

Harry Potter's luggage tagConsider the Harry Potter series, in which Harry moves from his uncle and aunt’s house to Hogwarts for each school year and back again for the summer. In his first year, Harry moves twice. First, he moves to a part of the wizarding world that’s a single semi-permeable wall away from the world we live in. From there, Harry and the other first-year students move by train to the pure magic of Hogwarts, which is as far removed from the muggle world as one can get. Most of the characters who make a similar double-move are muggle-born, like Hermione. Others who are native to the wizarding world only have to move once, like Ron and Draco. Every student is in for a magical year of new experiences, but readers have been introduced to a caste system that plays out more and more in later books.

How else have you seen a move used in your favorite books? Let me know in the comments, and thanks to everyone who helped me move my words onto this blog.

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How to Give Your Readers a Hand…and a Foot…and a Face…

By on July 20, 2012   /   Book Lists  

Don’t get me wrong. Words like angry and happy and nice are perfectly good words that are long-standing members of the English lexicon. It’s nothing personal. I don’t dislike them. Really. It’s just that those words are about as energized as a solar-powered calculator in a cave at midnight—they won’t be lighting up a reader’s imagination any time soon. So authors work hard to follow the oft-repeated mantra: “Show, don’t tell.” But what does that mean exactly? And how is it achieved? I make no claim of mastery, but I do have a trick I’d like to share. And it’s a trick that may zap a bit of new life into your writing.

One way that authors “show” the underlying emotion in a scene is through characters’ dialogue—the words they say and how they say them. That’s not what I want to explore. I want to focus on three ready-to-use body parts virtually all characters bring to a story: their faces, their feet, and their hands. Because by focusing on just those three little things, you can give your readers’ imaginations a hand, too.

Double Dog DareInstead of starting with an explanation, I’ll start with an example from Lisa Graff’s middle-grade novel Double Dog Dare. In the midst of a “dare war,” one of the main characters, Francine, had to dye her hair green. When Francine’s mother attempted to speak with Francine about her hair, this is what happened:

Her mother stared into her mug for a long minute, silent. Then she got up, walked to the sink, and poured all her tea slowly down the drain. When she turned around, she leaned against the sink, arms jutting out from her sides, and studied Francine. (p. 116)

What’s going on here? Does Lisa Graff have to tell us that Francine’s mother is trying to figure out what to say? Nope. She’s used the mother’s face, feet, and hands to show us the mother’s hesitation, and she trusts us as readers to accurately infer what’s going on. Let’s examine the excerpt a little more deeply to see how it works:

  1. The Face: Her mother stared into her mug for a long minute, silent.
  2. The Feet: Then she got up, walked to the sink…
  3. The Hands: …and poured all her tea slowly down the drain. When she turned around, she leaned against the sink, arms jutting out from her sides…
  4. The Face (again): … and studied Francine.

The mother’s face sets the scene right away. As she stares at her tea, the slow, deliberate pace of the mother’s actions is established. When her feet carry her to the sink, we already know she’s not in a rush. Then the mother’s hands join the show, slowly pouring the tea down the drain, cementing our certainty about the mother’s cautious approach to discussing her daughter’s hair. And finally, we end back at the mother’s face as she studies Francine.

Sure, Lisa Graff could have written something shorter: “Francine’s mom didn’t seem to know what to say.” But she didn’t. Thanks to her character’s face, feet, and hands, Lisa Graff showed us instead, greatly increasing the vividness of the scene in the process. So the next time one of your characters needs to be angry or happy or nice, don’t tell your readers—show them. Then trust the power of inference to take care of the rest.

Wanna post a comment? How about starting with a one- or two-sentence glimpse at a character’s face and feet and hands? Try to “show” some emotion…and see if others can figure out what you’ve decided not to “tell.”

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Muddling through the Murky Middle

By on July 16, 2012   /   Book Lists  

Although this is my first post for the Mixed-Up Files, I decided to write about middles. What better place than a blog devoted to middle grade books to examine the middles of stories, and specifically, how to muddle through them. I admit, this is a challenge for me, and I think (I hope) for other authors, too. It’s like rowing a boat across a really murky lake. I can see both shores clearly. I know my beginning, and I can completely visualize the end, but then there’s that whole lake to get across. That whole muddy lake, with floating tree branches, weird looking fish, deep water, icky brown stuff, and who knows what else lurking beneath the surface? How do I get from here to there without straying off course, or worse, sinking?

Working on my second middle grade novel, it seemed I was over-thinking everything — from characters to plot to pacing to…okay…the whole point of the story. Actually, I was stuck. In the middle of the lake. Not sure how to paddle ahead. My inner critic was working overtime, and I was getting worn out.

So I did what most writers need to do at some point. I put the novel aside and gave myself a mental break. During this time, I decided to find out: who navigates middles really well? What do they know that I don’t?

I took four of my all-time favorite middle grade books: Holes by Louis Sachar; So B. It by Sarah Weeks; Love, Ruby Lavender by Deborah Wiles; and Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan, curled up in my favorite chair, and did a “middle experiment.” I placed my thumb smack dab in the middle of each of these terrific books to attempt to solve this whole middle mystery. And here’s what I discovered.

In the middle of Holes, Stanley finds out Zero’s real name, plus in the historical part of the story, Sam is shot. Then there are these three amazing sentences. “Since then, not one drop of rain has fallen on Green Lake. You make the decision. Whom did God punish?”

In the middle of So B. It, Heidi meets Georgia Sweet on her bus ride and muses: “I had begun to think that certain things that seem to happen by accident don’t really happen by accident at all.”

In the middle of Love, Ruby Lavender, the Town Operetta is announced and the chicks are peeping and ready to hatch. And, in Esperanza Rising‘s middle, Esperanza, adjusting to her new life, takes a bath for the first time without her servant helping her bathe and dress.

Ta da! All of these “middles,” I realized, have a few elements in common:

1. The reader finds out something important (no rain fell on Green Lake), or gets a clue to a puzzle in the story (Zero’s real name is Hector Zeroni).

2. Something happens that will connect to the ending (the chicks are peeping).

3. The main character has a moment of insight (things don’t happen by accident).

4. There is a turning point (Esperanza finds out she can do something she never did before).

I jotted these words down: important, clue, connect, insight, turning point. But then I realized something else. In the middles of these books, the characters are also lost. On their journeys, searching for answers. Not sure how to forge ahead.

Just like I was, in the middle of my murky lake.

And I thought, gasp, what if being stuck in the middle is a good thing? Maybe it’s okay to be lost for a while. In fact, maybe I need to be stuck in order to figure out how to get to the end. What if not being sure where to head could prompt me to think outside of the box, or, um, water? Are the tree branches, weird fish, deep water, and icky brown stuff supposed to be there; all part of the grand plan? They’re just rough patches to navigate around, bumps along the way, places I need to row a little harder…each one bringing me closer to the opposite shore. When I pictured them like that, they seemed less like obstacles and more like challenges. After all, what would writing — or anything in life — be without challenges?

Now I have a different way of thinking about middles. I’ve decided it’s the perfect place to stop, let go of the oars, rest, look around, and listen to the stillness. And have faith that at some point, the right path will come floating my way, like a lily pad that was there all along.

Michele Weber Hurwitz is the author of Calli Be Gold (Wendy Lamb Books/Random House 2011). She’s happy to report that after floating around for a while, she recently completed draft #1 of book #2. Yay! Visit her at www.micheleweberhurwitz.com.

 

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