Dear Katrina,
I want to write a picture book but I want to do it my own way. I’ve read that picture books should have repetition and I think repetition is boring. I’ve read that publishers like stories where children solve their own problems but life’s not always like that, is it? I have a really good idea for a story about a girl who is lost in the bush and her grandpa saves her. Why can’t I write the book the way I want?
Regards,
Budding Author
________
Dear Budding,
If you have a great idea for a story then I think you should just start writing and see where it takes you. It’s your work. Have fun with it. Write it the way you want and decide what you want to do with it later. Not all children’s stories have repetition and not all children’s stories place young characters at the centre of a solution. However, plenty do and I think this is why.
Repetition
Children learn through repetition but not only that, it makes them feel safe. When you’re little you don’t always know what’s planned for the rest of the week, or even the rest of the day, and lots of decisions are made for you. It’s very comforting to read a book with a reoccurring pattern. If the story has a predictable text then the world in the story feels contained and manageable. Readers feel powerful because they can predict what’s happening next and join in. When children join in they actively engage with the story. Once children know parts of a book they feel successful and personally connected to the story.
Also, repeating a phrase or a sentence can improve the rhythm of a story and repetition of an idea at both the beginning and the end of a text can strengthen the circular nature of a story and create a satisfying ending.
Young Characters as Problem Solvers
If we consider an audience of child readers then of course a story is more exciting, interesting and satisfying when a child character solves the problem. It’s not always like real life but that’s part of the fun. Real life can be a little bit tiresome when adults constantly have all of the power. Children, like adults, often turn to literature for healthy escapism.
Stories that paint children as assertive and successful help to build resilience in children. They show children that everyone has some power over their own life and their own choices. They encourage problem solving and help children to understand that you don’t have to be big to be important.
Stories that show children in control allow children to dream. They transport kids into another world and work in tandem with a child’s imagination to show them that life’s possibilities are endless.
Stories that have children in control can be tricky to write because, well, life’s not always like that. Remember though, solving a problem doesn’t have to mean putting an end to global warming single-handed. (Think of The Lorax – the child has a seed to plant as part of the solution.) A problem may even still remain but the character has found a way of coping with it. Using the lost in the bush example, perhaps the child could think of a way to signal to Grandpa or cleverly stays safe until Grandpa arrives.
If you’re not sure what makes a good picture book try to remember your audience. What do they want to hear? Because writing a story for children is more than just writing what we want them to hear.
Katrina
Katrina Germein is a best selling picture book author published internationally. Her first book, Big Rain Coming, has remained continuously in print for over ten years and her recent title My Dad Thinks He’s Funny was Highly Commended in the 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. The sequel, My Dad STILL Thinks He’s Funny, was published in August 2013. Katrina is presenting as part of the YA/Writing for Children Bootcamp being held at SAWC 2-3 November.
We are all creatures of habit. Sometimes we try to shuck those tendencies—give up smoking, be fitter, become a better friend, learn how to write a bestseller. Sometimes it seems we are offered, if not a miracle cure, then an easy way through. No-one is immune to the temptations of inside information that might reveal a shortcut to that important goal. Now I want to look at some of those pearls of wisdom, but first a little intro.
An SA Writers Centre road-show visit to Moonta on the Yorke Peninsula offered a range of activities, and they all focused on what we read and how we write. The morning included a panel session on ‘Books I Loved and Books I Hated’, and another on ‘Tips for Writing and Publishing’, while the afternoon (after suitable recharging with locally baked
Cornish pasties) was given over to concurrent workshop sessions on writing either poetry or short stories, or on self-publishing.
Those morning talks and some lively audience input offered a great opportunity to revisit some of the maxims that are trotted out whenever writers are asked to advise others. Mind you, some writers don’t need much encouragement to do that.
The essayist Hazlitt famously said, ‘The conversation of authors is not so good as might be imagined; but, such as it is … it is much better than
any other’. I hope he was right. Anyway, when it came to my turn, I trotted out the following, though somewhat more elegantly than recorded here, of course (well I tried):
1. Read a lot, but wisely (maybe that seemed a bit glib).
2. Write regularly, and read it aloud (two for one!).
3. Love your writing but make it tough love, with a willingness to edit hard.
4. Keep a pen and paper handy, always.
5. Seek feedback, but not from your mother or friends.
6. Join the SA Writers Centre or its local equivalent—or, preferably, both.
7. Be persistent; whether it relates to your writing tasks or submitting to publishers, or anything else in your writing world.
Some years ago, I co-wrote a long article for TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses that was entitled ‘How to Write a “How to Write” Book’. That task involved reading a lot of books that set out to help writers find a productive way through the often fraught process of getting their work before readers and, by implication, a publisher. The article had to be a little tongue-in-cheek, too, since it seemed that when some writers had achieved a certain amount of public attention, it was almost inevitable that they would capitalise on it with a book of this kind. It was a little disappointing in a way that writers in the giddy heights of their success would stoop from their lofty craft and explain it to mere mortals, even for money, but all the better for us, no?
The admirable Dr Johnson once said that we’re likely to be disappointed if we go looking for the human being behind the writer, because what you would find is that, ‘the bubble that sparkled before them has become common water at the touch; the phantom of perfection has vanished when they wished to press it to their bosom’. When you look at what writers recommend you do get some strikingly similar advice, but you also get a lot of differences and the odd cranky retort.
They have favourite literary medicines and exercise regimes that they prescribe for the hopeful, though some would rather that you did not ask at all. Writers reveal themselves as less than godly, thank goodness. Well, what do the more sociable among them suggest? After the trip to Moonta, I looked at an article in The Guardian newspaper in the UK, which had approached some 30 writers with that aim in mind. Here is what I culled from the authors’ responses via my own biased filter, and in no particular order:
• Read a lot
• Write every day
• Read your work aloud
• Cut
• Have more than one project on the go
• Stay away from the Internet while writing
• Join professional organisations
• Don’t worry about the commercial prospects of your work while writing
• When in doubt, write
Of course there was more. There were erudite and focused comments alert to the nuances of the writer’s life, and even to domestic politics. Elmore Leonard is on record with quite a list of suggestions, some cantankerous and all pithy. At the end, he reckons that one rule overrules all: ‘If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.’ A bit cranky or just common sense? Responding to a request for his top tips, Philip Pullman said, ‘My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.’ Helen Simpson’s advice, in what I like to think was a little more kindly mood, was to simply, ‘Shut up and get on with it.’
After you have digested all of this, you might be pleased to hear that in the acknowledgment pages of her novel, Primavera, or The Time of Your Life, author Giulia Giuffre thanks David Malouf for telling her not to worry about categorising what she was writing but just to write.
So, maybe the one message that we should all have on the post-it note stuck to our computer screen (or foreheads) is, after all, ‘Just write.’
Steve Evans is a regular reviewer of a wide range of classical, pop and rock performances, both live and recorded, and of books in poetry, fiction and nonfiction genres. He teaches Creative Writing and Literature at Flinders University, conducts writing workshops, is a mentor in poetry and prose (from short fiction to novels, and nonfiction), edits texts of various genres, is the author and editor of 11 books, and has won numerous prizes including the Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship.
This article was originally published in Southern Write in June 2011 and has been republished with the permission of the author.
Thanks to the proliferation of specialised websites and zines, short fiction has become more popular in recent years. Because of the time involved in providing feedback on each other’s work, the writing group I belong to restricts the monthly submission from each member to about 1500 words. We critique no more than 2000 words per person at our monthly meetings, and only stretch to that length if we know fewer people than usual will be attending a particular meeting. We find 1500 words to be a good length for both basic copy-editing and structural editing. We’re not sure, however, if some of our stories are short stories, flash fiction, microfiction or one of the other ‘metric’ fiction lengths.
We do know that the shorter it becomes, the greater the need to provide an energetic, engaging and pithy story. Readers who gravitate to short fiction sites are looking for condensed ideas, fewer words and tighter writing. They seek flash fiction, microfiction, nanofiction and even picofiction.
The prefixes ‘micro’, ‘nano’ and ‘pico’ were borrowed from the metric system, so I had assumed there was similar order in this word count system. Soon after I started exploring, however, it became clear that although the names assigned to each of these categories give some indication of the required length, there isn’t a standard definition for any of the forms.
If you’ve written a very short story and are looking for a publisher, you’ll have to search for someone who wants that exact length. It can be quite confusing, especially if you like to have things precisely quantified. If that’s what you’re looking for, picofiction could be your niche because the length is clearly prescribed, whereas the boundaries between the other forms are quite fuzzy.
My first source said microfiction is under 300 words; the next said under 50. They both agreed it was more implication than explication, more emptiness than extended narrative and texture, and one referred to it as ‘Zen, poetry and prose’. This paragraph is 50 words. Pretty short for a story.
‘Nano’ is smaller than ‘micro’ so the metric system prefix implies nanofiction would have to be under 300 words, and possibly quite a long way under 50 words for some publishers. Sadly, it isn’t that easy. Some nanofiction sites want about 40 words but others want precisely 55 words, which strays into microfiction territory.
If you like to visualise things in a more symbolic, mathematical way, so far we have very small microfiction <50 words, not so small microfiction <300 words, and nanofiction possibly <50 or maybe exactly 55 words. Happily, the next category is precise – tightly prescribed, in fact. Including spaces and symbols you have only 140 characters to play with in this form. I admire those who can create engaging picofiction; as you can see by the next two sentences, it’s hard enough to fit pertinent facts into so few characters.
Picofiction is a story 140 characters long. Some people refer to it as ‘tweetfiction’, but other people would see it as plain ‘nanofiction’.
As I mentioned at the beginning, members of the writing group I belong to generally play at the other end of the short fiction scale, and we write stories ranging between 300 and 2000 words. We usually think of 300 words as flash fiction, whereas a 2000 word tale is considered to be a short story. At these lengths the writer can use more of the classic story elements than is possible in the ‘metric fiction’ lengths. It allows scope to establish settings, provide descriptions and develop characters, and there may be time to engage the reader by evoking sensory responses. There is also more opportunity in a longer story to develop conflict, present obstacles and deliver a satisfying resolution, but the reader still has to fill in the gaps. Because different readers bring different experiences to each story, they engage with the text in different ways and the range of interpretations can be surprising. A common practice in both flash fiction and short stories is to reveal the theme in a twist at the end.
I hope you want to try your hand at creating a story to fit the requirements of the shorter forms, because they are challenging, exciting and fun to read. If you’re a member of the SA Writers Centre and you have had a story published email malcolm@sawriters.org.au so it can be listed on the ‘Member Achievements’ on the website.
PS As far as I know femtofiction has not yet been attempted. I guess it would have to be pixel size.
Jennie Cumming is president of Marion Writers Inc., and as a volunteer at the SA Writers Centre produces their fortnightly e-bulletins and assists in the production of Southern Write.
Continued on from a previous post
Nothing makes my heart sink like an ‘HILARIOUS LoL LoL OMG SO TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ email forward. Guaranteed to fulfil none of the subject line promises, it tends to fall into one of two camps: ‘women are smart and funny, while men are crap at taking directions’ (if it’s from a woman) or ‘why beer is better than a woman’ (if it’s from a man). Thinking of unleashing your own home-grown tellin’-it-like-it-is just-sayin’-insert-painful-and-dated-cliché-here comedy on the world? Then I beg of you: don’t tell gender-based jokes. Look around you. ‘Life coach’ is considered a legitimate career choice, Tony Abbott leads a political party and doggles exist: we live in a very odd world. Surely ‘My husband couldn’t find the milk in the fridge with a map and a sign that says, “Here Be Milk” ’ is not your A-Grade material. While we’re talking clichés, the following phrases should also be struck from your lexicon forever: talk to the hand; I don’t think so; you go, girl!; go [insert name], go [repeat name]; actually, any variant with ‘go’ in it. (And if you’re someone who forwards anything with ‘LoL’ in the subject line, please stop. Your friends may never admit it, but they’re currently deleting your emails without reading them.)
Comedy is not desperate for your approval, and the reason why most amateur stand-up is singularly awful to watch is because the person on stage is dying for you to laugh. ‘I’m wacky! Check out my funky hair! Please, love me! Wait – don’t leave! Did I tell you the thing about how a beer is better than a women?’ It’s the same with the written word. We’ve all seen examples of a potentially perfect punchline ruined by lumpy, heavy-handedness. It’s like riding a wooden cart along a bridge and watching pieces of it fall off, ricocheting into the crevasse below. Throwing more stuff at it (bigger reactions, another layer of hilarity) doesn’t work. ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ the reader thinks. ‘We’re going down!’ Yes, you are, and you’re taking everyone with you. Do not over-explain the joke. Actually, don’t explain the joke at all if you can avoid it. Comedy that goes overboard appeals to five-year-olds and the kind of people who line up to see Big Mama’s House IV: Still Milking A Dead Horse. Presumably, neither of these people are your target audience. Good comedy requires a delicate touch. (I won’t say ‘subtle’ here, as not all comedy is subtle. Again, an essay for another time.) Convoluted circumstances where you force your punchline into existence don’t work. If your humour is dry – in addition to Bryson and Austen, Stephen Fry, Garrison Keilor and Lisa Lutz are very good examples of this style – it’s always better to pull back. Clever humour is organic, and the best kind sneaks up into the work and sucker-punches you. (There’s that violence thing again.) Similarly, use metaphors and similes sparingly. Lately, I’ve been finding writers who seem to have only just stumbled upon the power of the simile and are so excited by it that they’ll use it as a comedic crutch again and again and again. … like (something) on acid! … like (celebrity) on a bender! (Though not a book, pick up any issue of Women’s Health and choose a page at random; I can almost guarantee there’ll be one on there.) When used correctly, a well-chosen metaphor can be devastating. Over-use them, however, and your reader will think they’re the only weapon in your arsenal. Your work will be devalued as a result.
Finding your own voice is really important.Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s deeply irritating if all you can be is a pale copy of the original. Everyone has influences that shape and form their style – your job is to take the best aspects from yours and marry them with your individual take on life. As a character trait, I believe optimism is helpful to comedians (which is odd, seeing as so many of us suffer from depression); the ability to see the funny side in pretty much anything is a boon to the comedic writing process. The mantra, which has gotten me through many difficult moments, is that an awful day today will make an excellent anecdote tomorrow. The trick, of course, is to work out which anecdotes people actually want to hear about, choose your words very carefully, and deliver the joke without expecting applause. Remember: no one likes comedy that begs. These notes are
just a rough guide to what I’ve personally found works – and, more importantly I think, what doesn’t work – in my own pieces. In the end, all I can write is something that makes me laugh, and if someone else finds it funny, that’s a bonus. Plus, there’s nothing more gratifying than someone telling you that you’re funnier than Big Mama’s House. Praise I’ll take to the grave.
Lia Weston broke the three rules of getting published when her un-agented first- ever novel, The Fortunes of Ruby White, was pulled out of the slush pile and published by Simon & Schuster in 2010. She won the Australian Literature Review’s 2011 Epistolary partnership competition and has had her short stories featured in several anthologies. She also writes a monthly blog for the website Writing Novels in Australia. Currently working on her second novel, Lia runs a bicycle shop by day and works as a freelance editor by night. Lia will be presenting as part of the Fiction Bootcamp in December.
This article was originally published in Southern Write in June 2011 and reposted with the author’s permission.
This is a snippet from a brief talk I’ll be giving at the SA Writers Centre this Thursday on the subject of what editors do.
Whenever I tell people I’m a book editor, and the conversation doesn’t swiftly move on, their first question is usually, ‘So what do editors do?’ Their tone is that of a biologist having chanced across a new, unapprehended form of life. As I’m gathering my thoughts for the answer, they’ll often rush to cover my perceived embarrassment by supplying one themselves: ‘You fix all the spelling and punctuation in a book.’
Yes, that’s one of the things editors do, but I think this function springs so readily to mind because people imagine themselves editing a finished book, as in one that has already been edited. From this point of view, the role seems pretty basic. The book reads well and is professionally polished, apart from one or two misplaced commas or typing errors that stand out like a sore thumb. This is where the editor swoops in with his or her red pen. Change ‘stationery’ to ‘stationary’, take that apostrophe out of ‘it’s’: job done.
Editors and authors know that the work of an editor can be much more intensive and developmental than this. Depending on the stage of a manuscript’s life-cycle that an editor is brought in on, and the type of editing that the editor is doing (common types include structural editing and copy-editing), an editor might suggest, for example, changing the age of a character to suit the dialogue, giving a subplot an ending, or a different ending, making certain journeys in the novel possible in terms of real time and geography, cutting down on the overuse of certain words or phrases, introducing readers to something they need to know earlier on in the book, not quoting song lyrics that could breach someone’s copyright if not paid for, placing realistic limits on a first-person narrator’s knowledge, and changing ‘a sack of potato’s’ to ‘a sack of potatoes’. In some cases, editors will not only advise rewrites but also directly make them, always subject to the author’s final approval.
Now, I’m not in any way suggesting that editors supplant the author’s role here. The author’s role is the primary one, originating and mastering the book, and we respect and admire them for it. (The perception of an editor being an embittered, frustrated author is largely untrue and misses the point – which is that every author can benefit from a good editor.*) The editor’s role is secondary, a service provided to the author, to the text, to the publishing company and to the reader. But it takes a long time for a book to reach the stage at which most people will read it, and the editor is an important part of its gestation, helping a book to become the best version of itself it can possibly be.
Exactly how an editor does this, at what stage he or she might do this, and the different types of editing referred to above are things I will be discussing at the Writers Centre this Thursday.
*NB: Any errors you might find in this unedited blog post serve perfectly, of course, to illustrate this point and might even be deliberate.
Kevin O’Brien is a freelance editor based in the Adelaide Hills with over 15 years of editorial experience. For the last ten of these years, he has been working intensively on trade fiction and non-fiction, firstly for Mainstream Publishing, in Edinburgh, then for Random House in Sydney, where he was senior editor for five years, and now across all the big publishers, including Penguin, Pan Macmillan, Hachette and Random House, as a freelancer.
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