Tidbits from CANSCAIP's Packaging Your Imagination 2014

There's nothing like a conference to inspire your writing! Last Saturday I attended the Packaging Your Imagination conference held by the Canadian Society for Authors, Illustrators and Performers. Not only did I get to see my super-amazing MiG Writer friend, Debbie Ridpath Ohi, I met lots of other aspiring writers, illustrators and reconnected with a writer/puppeteer I met last year.  I also got to soak in so much writerly wisdom it will take weeks for me to absorb it all. Some tidbits:




Details: How Little Things Bring Your Writing to Life
Erin Bow, author of Plain Kate and Sorrow's Knot reminded us: "Good details are the heart of good storytelling."

I loved all her strategies for using details to draw the reader's attention to what is important in the story. You can read about how she uses a ladder system to match the level of detail to the emotional intensity of a scene in an interview with Erin for the CANSCAIP blog.

After this session, I decided to add another level to my revision process!



Arc is a Four-Letter Word: Plot Structure for the Architecturally Challenged

Lesley Livingston, author of the Wondrous Strange series, the Never series, and the Starling saga provided another perspective on plotting and how it really all stems from character and setting.

"Make your setting a character. Use that to drive your story and your character's journey through your story."

She highly recommends drawing a map and finding interesting places in your story world to build into the plot.

This was a refreshing approach for many of us who feel overwhelmed by all the pointy triangles in traditional plotting diagrams.





Whose Voice Is It, Anyway?

According to Shelley Tanaka, long time fiction editor of Groundwood Books, one of the biggest distractions when reading children's book submissions is when the narrator steps out of the child's voice. An important question to ask is: "Would a child say or think this?"

She pointed out that adults are often more sentimental than children are and that's one way the adult perspective can intrude into the child's voice.

"Good writing is not random: It involves artistic decisions, big and small, and the decisions you make about voice may be the most important of all."


Lightning Rods, Agents & Book Deals: Building Your Personal Brand

Though I didn't get to attend this session with my writing buddy Debbie Ridpath Ohi, I heard it was very useful! You can catch some of the details on the CANSCAIP blog. Debbie is the illustrator of I'm Bored, Naked! and the author-illustrator of the forthcoming, Where Are My Books? She has also posted her take on the Packaging Your Imagination conference with lots of visuals.




Keynote: Confessions of a Word Nerd

It was so much fun to laugh along with Susin Nielsen, author of the forthcoming We Are All Made of Molecules as well as Word Nerd, Dear George Clooney: Please Marry My Mom and The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen.

She talked about loving reading, emotional memories and perseverance.

"Everything we write, it only makes us better."

Three Key Points for Bringing a Setting to Life

Much of the novel I’m working on takes place outdoors, so lately I’m thinking a lot about setting. I’ve heard some writers talk about treating setting as another character. But what exactly does that mean?

To me, it means settings need to come to life for the reader. They should evoke feelings and moods. It’s not enough to include a few descriptive details about the location or weather. Every setting needs to be integrated into the story and given careful thought and attention, just the way a character would.

Some questions to think about: Why did you choose that setting? What is special about it? What does your character think about it? How does the setting make them feel?

The time you spend on the setting in your story depends on its importance. Like characters, different settings in the story are going to have different levels of importance for the reader. The hideout where the runaway kids hangout for several chapters has a different level of significance for the story than the coffee shop a teen ducks into for a single scene. (Why doesn’t she go back there again? How did she feel in that setting?)

Three key points to remember about the setting:

Settings are multi-sensory. This is a point that comes up over and over again in talking about descriptions, but it’s worth thinking about specifically in relation to setting. What does your character notice about the setting? Does it have specific smells? Tastes? Since I write middle grade fiction, I try to include one or two evocative descriptions, rather than whole paragraphs.

Settings are dynamic. Some elements of the setting can change over time. Sometimes I find that once I’ve described the setting, I kind of forget about it. But the characters are still there, interacting in it like a real place. Some things are going to change. Does the character feel as comfortable in the setting when it’s dark? How does the weather affect the setting? Are there mosquitoes out there?

Whether the character notices these changes or not, and what they think about the changes can help to create a stronger setting (and character). If setting is like a character, than the complete picture of a major setting will continue to develop as the story progresses.

Characters interact with the setting. This is related to the dynamic nature of the setting. I try not to think of the setting as just a backdrop for the action. Instead, I consider how it can shape the way characters act and think. Characters react to the setting. Setting can also create conflict, when a character comes up against an obstacle (e.g. gets caught in a storm, has be in a place they don’t want to be). Think about places where you feel comfortable or uneasy. What is it about the place and atmosphere that makes you feel that way? How does that change your behaviour?

Do you have any tips to help with creating a believable and authentic setting?

 

Links:

My critique partner, Christina Farley, has a great post about Creating Unique Details in Your Setting, with tips on getting inspiration from your own experiences.

Over at Project Mayhem, Dawn Lairamore draws attention to the weather with  How is the Weather in Your Middle Grade?

The BookShelf Muse has a comprehensive 4-part series on Creating Unforgettable Settings.

Jody Hedlund gives 5 Tips for Writing Better Settings and talks about genre expectations for settings and how the right setting details can help build suspense.

 

Memorable Middle Grade Books: Lois Lowry

Lately I’ve been thinking about stories I read as a child that influenced my writing and my life. One that really sticks in my mind is A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry.

Something about this story intrigued me and I read it many times. Maybe it was because it was the first time I read a story with a character that died. Or because the main character had a sister and I didn’t (I have brothers). Or because the story includes a description of the birth of a baby, something that was relatively new to me at the age of 11. There was a lot in this thin book, including lovely writing. The characters really came alive for me when I read this story, no matter how many times I read it.

Kids today might find the pace too slow or the writing too detailed. But I loved details the author included – the painted eggs, the names of the plants (nature again), the photography (not digital, of course), the quilt made of the girls’ baby clothes. [This makes me think of the quote I posted from Molly O’Neill on memorable details in writing middle grade books.] The details in A Summer to Die definitely made an impression on me. Those details helped to build and carry so much of the emotion of the story.

An interesting side note: It was not until I was an adult that I learned that this book was a fictional account of Lois Lowry’s own life and the death of her sister. And it was her first book.

Are there any books from your childhood that introduced you to something you’d never experienced or thought about before? Do you still remember details from books you read as a child?

Revision Tip: Choose the Right Details

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.

 Today's Tip:  

Details add sparkle to the story (and can sometimes cut down your word count).

It's a little weird to think that putting in details can actually make a story shorter. But one of the things I’ve noticed while revising is that sometimes a carefully selected word or phrase can replace an entire sentence.

I think it’s important to make sure the details you choose are ones your main character would notice. For example, my current novel has a lot of smell-related details since my main character has a keen sense of smell. 

Watch for:

 - sentences where the main purpose is to state a description (often starting with "It was..."). These can sometimes be eliminated by using a descriptive phrase or by showing how the character reacts to the description.

 - sensory details that are vague, rather than specific. For example,  It smelled delicious vs. It smelled like the gingerbread cookies her grandmother used to bake.

 Cool Quote:  “Description does nothing to move a story forward on its own. It’s how it interacts with the characters that makes or breaks it.”  Janice Hardy, Description 101: Is Your Description Helping Your Story or Holding It Back?  The Other Side of the Story, April 21, 2011

Over at Chocolate for Inspiration, my critique buddy Christina Farley talks about her revision process – she has one phase of revision that's just for getting the details right.

Cool Blog Quote: Interactive Reading

The process of reading (whether the book is digital or paper) is interactive. As we read, we make guesses and draw conclusions, work out implications and connect what we already know to what we're reading. One of the things I watch out for when I'm writing is to not over-explain or over-describe, so the reader has some space to bring their own experiences to the story.

Earlier this week, Patricia C.Wrede, author of The Thirteenth Child, discussed how you can make a strong impact in your writing by allowing the reader to fill in some of the missing details:

"...if the writer provides a few of the right visual details, plus some sounds, smells, and sensations, plus the viewpoint character’s reaction, the reader will generally fill in what’s missing with his/her own details…and the resulting image will be more powerful because it’s tailored to fit each reader by the readers themselves."

Patricia C. Wrede, Making an Impact.

Revisions: Enhancing the Setting

I'm surprised about how much rearranging happens during the revision process. I thought events were pretty much in the right order, but once I started cutting and condensing, the structure became a lot clearer in my mind. Sections needed to be moved. Some needed total rewrites to make new transitions.

But....I managed to cut about 5,000 words! Even though I got rid of some writing I was proud of, the novel is much tighter and more coherent for having done it.

My next step is to think about details - details that show my characters personalities and details that show the setting. For settings, I've made a scene by scene list of the settings in my novel. This gives me an overall picture of whether there is variety in my settings (because some of the scenes I cut had interesting ones). My plan is to brainstorm sensory details that go with each setting. Then I'll look for places in the novel where I can bring in a few additional details to enhance the setting.