Posts Tagged writing tips

For Those Who Write Short: How to Lengthen Your Manuscript

By on July 17, 2019   /   For Writers, Writing  

In online and in-person writing circles, I often hear fellow writers bemoan having to cut down their lengthy manuscripts. “Oh no!,” they wail. “I have to cut 30,000 words!” My problem is a different one. I write short. My first drafts tend to be one-half to two-thirds the suggested word counts. I used to feel insecure about this, but now I think this is my process. I feel a little like a painter—I do the broadbrush outline first, then with each draft add more detail and depth. I’ve come up with a few ways to add, so in case you are my fellow traveler on this narrow road, I share them with you.

Add Physical Descriptions

I’ll can get all the way to the end of my first draft and realize I have never given my main character a physical description. Not a hair color, eye color, even a race. Part of me thinks, it shouldn’t matter! The reader can fill in whoever they want! But it can be distancing for the reader if they can’t picture your character. Not only should you include a physical description, but you probably need to mention that physical description more times than seem appropriate. Do you know how many times JK Rowling told us that Ron has red hair? A lot, my friends. A whole lot. Even in book seven. When reading, I didn’t even notice it, but when I started looking for it, it seemed absurd. All of those reminders, though, make Ron seem like a living, breathing person, whom I might run into at the Leaky Cauldron.

Describe Places

Your main character’s home, school, soccer field, favorite spot in the woods—all of the important places where he or she experiences events–should be described. This is a great opportunity to use the setting to show us more about the character. Does the soccer field feel like freedom or dread? The description should show us that.

Check the Calendar

It is likely that some holiday happens during the timeline of your book. Have you included it? If it’s the start of the school year, you’ve got the major Jewish holidays, and then Halloween. Summer includes Fourth of July. Your character has a birthday, right? Or his or her friends or family members do? Think about writing those up. They might be interesting scenes to play around with.

Give Your Main Character Friends

I heard an editor mention that one of the consistent issues she sees in middle grade and young adult manuscripts is that the main character doesn’t have friends. “You guys, it’s really weird if they don’t have friends,” she said. “If they don’t, there needs to be some explanation for that.” Even if your character is alone on a spaceship, he or she should remember friends from back home, and if you can find a pet or at least a pet rock, that would be good. Side characters in general are a great opportunity to flesh out your character and introduce new conflicts.

Figure Out Where You’re Cheating

Sometimes, the reason my book is short is because I’m gliding over the hard parts. I want to get from A to B, but I’m not entirely sure how it would happen, so I just skip that part. This type of thing drives readers crazy. You have to do the work. But you don’t have to do it alone. This is a great spot to phone a friend. Ask a fellow writer (or anyone, really) to brainstorm with you. “Here’s what’s happening and where I need to go,” you’ll say. “What do you think might get them there?” It’s amazing what people who haven’t been living in the book like you have will come up with. Even if they don’t have the magic bullet solution, their fresh ideas may spark something in you that will get you to the answer you need.

Fix a Problem

There is likely some issue with your manuscript that you’ve identified, or that beta readers point out consistently. Maybe people aren’t connecting with your main character, or the conflict doesn’t seem intense enough, or the pacing is too slow. It may be possible to address that problem through a subplot, or adding another character. Brainstorm solutions; try to come up with at least twenty possibilities. Talk them over with other writers, and get their ideas, too. You’ve got the space! Consider yourself lucky, and use it to your advantage.

 

Finally, maybe writing short isn’t all bad. The book that made me cry most recently (Kate DiCamillo’s Lousiana’s Way Home) comes in at a slim 40k. One of my all-time favorite books, David Almond’s Skellig, is just shy of 34k. You can pack an emotional wallop–and plenty of laughs–without oodles of words. Don’t add text just to lengthen. Say what you need, and trust that it’s enough.

 

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When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit Still Relevant

By on July 4, 2019   /   Curriculum Tie-in, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers  

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

When beloved children’s book author Judith Kerr passed away in May at the age of 95, I’d been about two weeks into reading to my two sons her classic and still relevant middle-grade novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit.

This was a seminal book for me as a child: I read it over and over again and vividly remember parts of it to this day. I had great feelings—and memories— for the book, but never particularly thought about who wrote it. When I moved to London 25 years later however, I discovered that in fact its author, Judith Kerr, is the creator of some 30 picture books. This includes one of the most classic children’s books here in England: The Tiger Who Came to Tea which I had immediately fallen in love with.

Two Sequels

In that first year we lived in London, I made another surprising discovery, at least to me: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit actually has two sequels—Bombs on Aunt Dainty which is more upper middle grade or possibly YA, and A Small Person Far Away, which I would also classify as YA or possibly even adult. They’re all fictionalized versions of Judith Kerr’s own story of being a refugee from Germany as Hitler came to power. 

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit starts when its main character, Anna, is nine, and ends when she is 11 going on 12, which is roughly my own age range when I read this book over and over again. Now an adult myself, it was fascinating to read the continuation of Anna’s life into adulthood. And in essence the three books together are a bildungsroman: the story of the artist as a young woman. But while I greatly enjoyed discovering and reading the two sequels, something held me back from re-reading When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit as an adult. I think I was probably afraid—what if it didn’t hold up to how I remembered it? And when considering a beloved childhood book to read to my kids there is always the extra risk of them hating it, not getting what’s so great about it, or finding it BORE-ING!

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit Still Relevant

But the story in When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, which was first published in 1971 and takes place in 1933-36, seems highly relevant right now and I sensed my sons were at a good age for it —at least to try. In any case, I needn’t have worried. The two boys, ages eight and ten, were enthralled. Every night they would literally beg me to read, and read more! In fact, the book not only holds up to how I remember it, but is even deeper.

There were several occasions on reading it—and not ones that I remembered from childhood—in which I was moved to tears. And reading the chapters each night with my sons provoked great questions and discussions. The story is not only so relevant now because of the refugee crisis, but it introduces children to Hitler coming to power and to anti-semitism—as well as the idea of racism—in a forthright and age-appropriate way. It “talks up” to them in a way that both the ten-year-old and the eight-year-old could handle and appreciate.

Pink Rabbit and Writing Craft

But it’s as a writer now myself that I marveled most.

Children's Book Still Relevant Today

I can’t find the cover image I remember from childhood but I adore this one from the edition I read with my sons

Judith Kerr expertly crafted When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit yet with the lightest of touches so it’s only now that I realize what a feat the book is.

She is telling the story of her life and her family’s experiences, but instead of it being a series of “this happened,” “and then this happened,” it is all harnessed to a cohesive story that has a beautiful narrative shape. She writes in an afterward that although she “filled in the gaps with invented detail” and was writing in the third person about a girl called Anna (because she felt that as a middle-aged English woman she was no longer the same little German girl that had fled the Nazis) she decided early on in the project “that all the important things must be true—the things that happened, how I felt about them, what we, our friends and the places we lived in were like.”

I have recently been reading many books on writer’s craft as I work on a major redrafting of my novel, and I am struck and awestruck at how Judith Kerr accomplished this. For one thing, there is an efficiency to each vignette so that no episode is random (even if it might delightfully seem that way at first) and each comes together in service of the greater story or theme—which is that Anna doesn’t feel like a refugee because as long as her family has stayed together that is her home.

For another thing, Judith Kerr has a way of mining the quiet moments for their drama and humor, while what is truly frightening or deeply upsetting (especially read through the eyes of an adult) are handled with a feather-weight dexterity so that they are not made light of but they are not so scary so as to no longer be appropriate for a children’s book. I think a lot of this comes down to her success at seeing everything through a child’s eye and staying true to that perspective. She doesn’t shy away from depressing moments, that sometimes one feels low, or that bad things happen. But through it all there’s a general positivity and the assurance of grown ups.

Overall, re-reading When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit with my sons, I experienced both nostalgia for how I felt about it as a child, a re-ignition of my love for it, and an all-new feeling of admiration and aesthetic connection. It gave me great joy to read. I wish I could write like her! I will continue to study her novels and figure out just how she did it. Judith Kerr’s work is a huge inspiration to me and children’s literature is richer for her legacy.

 

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STEM Tuesday — Chemistry ROCKS! — Interview with Author Kathy Ceceri

By on June 25, 2019   /   Chemistry, Common Core & NGSS, STEM Tuesday  

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview & Book Giveaway, a repeating feature for the fourth Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

Today we’re interviewing Kathy Ceceri about her chemistry-infused book, EDIBLE INVENTIONS: Cooking Hacks and Yummy Recipes You Can Build, Mix, Bake, and Grow. PickaGoodBook.com says,”this book is such a great source to explore and learn through science and more.”

Mary Kay Carson: How did Edible Inventions come to be?

Kathy Ceceri: I have to credit my friend Miguel Valenzuela, inventor of the PancakeBot, a kind of 3D printer for making cool designs with pancake batter. I had written two books for Maker Media — Making Simple Robots and Paper Inventions — and gotten good feedback from educators and families looking for low-tech projects to help kids learn about STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) concepts. I ran into Miguel at World Maker Faire New York — one of the worldwide celebrations of creativity in tech produced by Maker Media — where I was a speaker, but also casting about for inspiration for my next title. Miguel suggested I focus on food projects, and I roped him into a creating one of them — a hand-powered Lego version of the PancakeBot that lets kids “draw” with icing on cookies. The other projects touch on a wide variety of science and technology, with a heavy emphasis on chemistry, of course!

MKC: What was it like developing all these projects?

Kathy: Like most science experimentation, this one involved a lot of mishap! I spent several days trying to build an edible Rube Goldberg machine that included cucumber slice “dominoes” and a marble run using celery stalks and cherry tomatoes, but in the end it proved too difficult to coordinate all the moving parts. (You can see a test run video here.) More successful was the cardboard box solar oven. After going through several iterations, I finally developed a design that got hot enough to bake a chocolate cake! One of the things I loved about this book (and all my books, really) was learning a bunch of new stuff. For instance, thanks to a tip from another friend, flour expert Amy Halloran, I discovered that housewives used to make their own baking powder from chemicals they got at the local pharmacy. But probably the best part of creating Edible Inventions was getting to eat the results!

MKC: Why do you choose to write STEM books?

Kathy: My background is as a journalist. Over the years, I’ve written for local newspapers, magazines such as Sesame Street Parent, and websites such as Wired.com (where I helped create the GeekMom blog) and About.com (now Thoughtco, where I was the Homeschooling Expert). I’ve covered education, child development, history, art, and science — but I’m not an expert in any of those areas. You could say my expertise is in digging up background information research, finding the right people to talk to, and asking the right questions. My real talent is knowing how to distill what I learn into a form that’s easy for anyone to understand.

Kathy Ceceri is the author of over a dozen books of nonfiction for middle grade readers that teach STEAM along with history, geography, literature, and culture. Her hands-on projects have been used in classrooms and enrichment programs across the country and around the globe. Visit Kathy at Crafts for Learning, and follow her on Twitter @kathyceceri for sneak peeks of works in progress and links to her free online tutorials (including how to make Juicy Edible Gel Dots from Edible Inventions)!

I began focusing on STEAM (the “Art” is an important aspect to me!) after educational publisher Nomad Press asked me to do a book on robotics. Because my then-teenage oldest son was exploring robotics at the time as part of his homeschooling studies, I had spent a couple of years jumping on any opportunity to interview robotics engineers and designers. So I already had a good grasp of the basics, and a contact list of experts who were kind enough to let me pick their brains for topics and project ideas. I discovered I really enjoyed the process and I’m good at it, so I’ve continued writing about STEAM topics even after my kids grew up and moved onto other interests!

Today I teach crafts-based electronics and enrichment programs for kids and teens, and present hands-on professional development workshops for teachers and librarians. I’ve also worked with the Girl Scouts of the USA on their recent line of Robotics badges and their first-ever Cyber Challenge, coming this fall. All of these experiences help me keep in touch with what students and educators want to know about STEAM topics and ensure my writing is fresh and relevant.

MKC: To whom did you imagine yourself writing to while drafting the book?

Kathy: All my books are written for readers with little to no knowledge about the topic. That’s where I am at the start, too. So I can recognize the places where beginners are going to need some hand-holding and encouragement. I always try to relate concepts and techniques to things the reader is already familiar with. With robots, I use familiar materials like cardboard and duct tape. With Edible Inventions, I included a chapter featuring recipes that used standard ingredients and techniques to create unexpected textures and flavors (sort of like Molecular Cuisine, but using things you could find in any supermarket or natural food store). What makes my book different from an ordinary cookbook is that I emphasize the science. How does whipping an egg white turn a gooey liquid into a stiff meringue? Why do juice-flavored gelatin dots change color when you plop them into lemon-lime soda? And what’s the chemical reaction that causes watermelon lemonade to foam up and bubble over when you add a touch of baking soda? Readers get to learn about chemistry while making tasty snacks — what could be better?

MKC: What’s your current project and how are you tackling it?

Kathy: My next book, Bots! from Nomad Press, is an update on my original 2012 book Robotics. It contains several new projects and topics, as well as old favorites. As with every book I write, I try to approach the topic from as many different angles as possible. I firmly believe that showing how science relates to other kinds of creative activities helps bring in people who might not otherwise give it a try. So along with engineering, electronics and programming, there’s a “kitchen chemistry” robotics project that shows you how to make edible, stretchable robot skin! And like most of my projects, it ties into actual research — in this case, researchers who are trying to make inflatable robots that can crawl or slither into hard-to-reach areas. They hope their edible robots could help rescue lost explorers trapped in a cave, for example, and provide nourishment after sending back data about their location. You can see video of my homemade edible inflatable robot here. Bots! comes out in October 2019.

Win a FREE copy of EDIBLE INVENTIONS!

Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment below. The randomly-chosen winner will be contacted via email and asked to provide a mailing address (within the U.S. only) to receive the book.

Good luck!

Your host is Mary Kay Carson, author of The Tornado Scientist, Alexander Graham Bell for Kids, Mission to Pluto, Weird Animals, and other nonfiction books for kids. @marykaycarson

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