How it’s going: It’s Tuesday.
Count: 135/80,000
Check List:
Writing prep – x
Writing – in progress
Edit prep – o
Revision – o
Query – o
Pitch – o
Agent list – o
Monthly Archives: April 2020
Rhythm: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
One of the seminal alphabet learning books in the last century was, without a doubt, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I have waited a lifetime to be able to write that sentence.
Every year there’s probably around a couple hundred alphabet books or language basics books published in the world. They won’t change. In the USA at least, the alphabet is pretty set.
Each of these books must be different in order to hit the market and that difference is something value added. For children’s books for tiny humans that are such basic building blocks of tiny-human knowledge, there are certain things that can make them stand out:
- Audience participation
- A story
- Playing with the construction of a children’s book in general
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom has all three. While the book has a story, starring kids being daring, silly, and having just a little more hope than sense, it’s 1 and 3 that make the book a classic. By “construction of a children’s book” I mean interesting page turns, something in the illustrations that make the story re-readable (think Where’s Waldo), or a novel rhythm. Years before I was commanded to learn to read music (long story) Chicka Chicka Boom Boom introduced me to the wonderfully unexpected stops and starts of jazz without the complication of a wind section, or my ongoing rivalry with the trumpets (short story but not the place).
As for 1. Audience participation, the title of the work is meant to be read but the refrain is a delight to shout. Usually with a crowd.
Most of us are introduced to music on a bone-deep level, even if it isn’t via formal study. We can read prose and poetry, in the way we can hear the sounds that also have been sung to, or around us.
To mix up your rhythm, listen to music. Steal with wild, respectful abandon. Listen to your words in a voice that is not your own, even if only in the confines of your own head.
Structure: Skin Game
Caution: Massive spoilers
I’ve been following Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files since Summer Knight, which I read on my Nintendo DS. I now own the entire series in physical form, most of the collection in audiobook, and a handful of favorites in ebook. I’m a fan is what I’m saying.
Skin Game has a tremendously simple structure which is the linear narrative with a satisfying amount of action A plot and emotional B plot. We longtime fans get a couple of shout-outs to previous events and reveal around the overarching series mystery. That ending, though.
Those of you who live in a linear timeline like myself, can understand the world as a bit of a sin curve or sometimes a rollercoaster without a loop-de-loop. In fiction, we aren’t bound by the gravity of our daily lives. That means the writer gets to stick in a loop-de-loop and, done right, really stick the landing. You’ll get an ending with wow factor. Or you’ll get an ending with WTF factor.
In our linear experience of time, you might see a betrayal or character reveal as coming out of nowhere. Ever have some loved one swear they’ll go to the store for that one item and it’ll be a quick – I swear, super quick – ten minute trip? And two hours later they walk back in empty-handed. This is the linear rollercoaster.
In reality, if we’re paying attention, our loved one says something two days prior about a friend coming back to town. Maybe they’ll get together. We know our loved one is super helpful, right? So our loved one goes to the store, sees their friend, and helps him with all his shopping and they catch up as they wander aisle-by-aisle and then they’re walking out and your loved one gets in the car and drives home so happy that he saw his old bud. What makes the line turn into a loop is foreshadowing prior to the incident, time and events happening before what was foreshadowed is revealed, and then a quick return to our present timeline.
In writing terms, turning your linear timeline into a loop-de-loop requires foreshadowing and the all-time favorite, a well-executed callback.
Skin Game pulls off one of these with two references to time and while the reader might be a little suspicious, enough word count passes that the reveal jumps up at what we expected to be nearly the end of a climactic sequence. See that? We were innocently hurtling back to the ground, the author reveals that crucial piece of information that was previously alluded to, and we launch back into the air. Without that foreshadowing in the beginning, we get the WTF ending.
For the wow ending in Skin Game, the main character references a time jump within the first few chapters. A little while later, a well-loved side character also mentions the time jump which the main character brushes off. At the end, we get to see the events within the missing time which greatly impact a careening ending.
Titles: Annie Proulx’s Short Stories
Annie Proulx’s short stories make a fantastic use of space in an important way. She completely understands the limitations of the form and uses all available space to work for her, as the writer, and you, as the reader. The titles feed into the story, so that she either gives a hint as to what she wants to you read out of it, or simply kicks off the first part of your mindset before you launch into the meat of the story.
In publishing, works go through a laundry list of titles to ensure that the work is catchy, appealing to the right audience, and dissimilar from either a recent work or a famous one. The short story collection can be titled from a list; the magazine has its own title to appeal to a predetermined audience. In the short story itself, all ink on the page must perform a function.
Pick a short work you’ve titled. Cover the title. Uncover it. I can’t decide. What you can ask yourself is this: Am I repeating myself? Or is the title saying something new that isn’t stated within the work?
Sometimes we want to repeat ourselves. Sometimes we want to clarify. Sometimes we’re just desperate to call it something and be done. That’s okay, too. But you have all this real estate above your name to work for you.
Kick-Off: 100 Day Project
I’m participating in the 100 day project this year (2020) and this post serves as my declaration. From April 7 until they say stop, I’m going to write a mosaic novel in the adult epic fantasy space. The 100 day project is usually a visual art study posted on instagram, but I’m aiming to pin down a very deliberate sort of magic that I accidentally cast last year. After ten years of typing book shaped objects, I created a novel for the first time. My goal is to shorten that ten years to one hundred days.
I’ve spent most of the last decade studying YA and MG, so the audience level of this project is quite a bit different. To check in, I will be posting daily. The big bad manifesto post claimed this space for writing lessons I have learned, and this blog will one day remind me of those lessons when I am staring at that infernal blinking cursor.
As we all know, to be a good writer, you must first be a voracious reader. In this age, we take our creative lessons from all works. Actually, it’s what we’ve always done.
To start us out, I highly recommend taking a look at Roland Barthes’ “Death of the Author”. That isn’t the formal title, and that isn’t what the piece is about on its face. “Death of the Author” is the concept that once you publish a work, you no longer exist. That work goes out to the reader and is consumed into a space without you. You get no say in how your work is viewed.
**A blog is a little different. Just a note, I have a very active spam catcher. If you leave a comment, I have about 2,500 spam comments to dig through to find it. Please be patient and respectful of this space. I don’t tolerate hate, and you certainly shouldn’t have to put up with it.**
The concept is also “we all consume media differently” or perhaps “everything we see, hear, and every person we meet leaves a thumbprint on our minds that shape the way we read and listen and see, that reshape the way we think about the things we have already read and heard and viewed, and the people we have already met.” It’s a little unwieldy, I’m sure someone has said it shorter.
I’m planning to have one work or author per post and a little thing I noticed or something from that piece or person that shaped how I either consume or create media. And through it all, I’ll be writing.
This is a snapshot. The way I view the media I have consumed is affected by the media I have consumed up until this point, all the people I have already met, and all the thoughts I have had. Tomorrow, I may be a different person. In ten years, I may have a vastly different opinion.
There is nothing in this world that does not change; even the dead decay.