A Lesson in Pacing

I'm not big on craft books. Oh, I read a few when I was earning my MFA at Vermont College in which the author expressed something in a way I'd never heard before, and it hit the spot. I found it illuminating. But for the most part, they're one-step removed from actual writing, to my mind. Reading them is like reading books about how to paint with water colors.

One or two, and start painting.

Every writer has his or her own mantra, obviously.

For me, reading an actual book is the best way to learn. And one I read yesterday (yes, in one afternoon because I couldn't put it down, so adept was the pacing, the sentence length, the plot) is a fantastic book to read if you're struggling with the pacing of your novel.

THE FORESHADOWING by Marcus Sedgwick. It's a YA. Wendy Lamb Books. 2006.

How come I didn't hear about it?

Sedgwick is English. He writes like a bomb, as they would say. Everything about this tightly-plotted story of a 17-year-old girl during WWI, and her ability to see the future, which leads to much trouble and distress during wartime, is a lesson about good writing.

The sentence length. Not too long; not gratuitously short. (There's lots of that going around. It's a stylistic thing.) Same with the chapters.

Characterization. Perfectly done with a minimum of fuss. Compelling people we care about.

Pacing. It gallops. It jolts. It moves in more way than one. Like dominoes, one thing leads to another to another to another, without ever giving the reader the sense that they're being manipulated. I have rarely read a book that made me want to find out what was going to happen more.

It's good. It's very good.

Sluggish plot? Pivotal scenes taking a long time to get to? Your characters seem to be talking to much and doing too little?

Read THE FORESHADOWING. Carefully. Read and learn.

A Great Time to be a Male Writer in the Children's Book World

It's a very good time to be a male writer in the children's book world.

I just read an article in PW about a panel of male YA authors at the LA Times Festival in CA a few weeks ago. Neal Shusterman moderated. The authors were Gordon Korman, Pseudonymous Bosch, and PJ MacHale.

I don't know MacHale. I know of Bosch. I had dinner with Gordon Korman in April when we were both making school visits in Alabama. So much talent, I thought wistfully as I read the article, directed at older readers. (In the same PW, I read that Louis Sachar has a new book. The protagonist is 17.)

I'd love to run into Gordon again. I'd say, "Gordon! Direct some of that magic, that humor, that quirkiness of yours, to younger readers. Little boys would be rolling on the floor if you wrote for them the way you write for your middle school readers."

Gordon knows this, I'm sure. He has two boys of his own.

There are few things in life more enjoyable than watching small children (and especially boys, because capturing them through reading, and getting them interested in books, is no small feat) get completely wrapped up in a book. Especially a silly book. They adore silly. They don't hold back. They don't read under cover of darkness. Give them a fart or a pair of underpants and you have them rolling in the aisle.

I recently read my newest book, an early chapter book, to a large group of first graders in Texas. They were the book's first audience. When I came to the word "belly button," there was an audible gasp. Plenty of giggles. I wasn't expecting it. I hadn't planned it. The words worked in the story, that's all.

Now I want to liberally sprinkle all of my books with belly buttons and poop and anything else that'll make them react that way. Because making children laugh is so much fun. More importantly, it goes such a long way in convincing them that books are fun. Coming from me, however, those words could end up sounding gratuitous. I usually don't write that way.

But men do. Some men do. Men who remember how hilarious it felt to be a little boy. Having raised a son myself, I have a great appreciation for a boy's love of silliness; for that sweet and constant desire many of them feel for life to be exciting! and wild! and so much more than just sitting at a desk, being good.

I want that panel of YA male authors to write for the 5 and 6 and 7-year-olds they were.

And then I want to put my name on their books and watch my royalties soar.

Writing groups: the same and different

Sorry, blog. I disappeared. A weeklong Mother's Day visit in Connecticut.

While I was there, I read the picture book manuscript of an old friend of my mother's. My mother is Constance C. Greene. She wrote children's books in the 70s and 80s. I'm very proud of her.

Her friend, Mary Jane, was one of the members of my mother's first, and last, writing group. They started in Darien, CT 50 years ago. To every meeting, they invited an editor from New York. It was one such editor who identified my mother's first manuscript - A GIRL CALLED AL - as the one my mother should pursue.

Writing groups sure have changed over the past 50 years. Imagine getting an editor to come to yours.

Anyway, Mary Jane is 85. She has had breast cancer. She lost her husband and daughter to cancer. Her picture book manuscript is told from the pov of Ellie, a little girl whose father is at war. She and her mother are living with Ellie's grandmother in a very small house.

We know the mother is upset because Ellie tells us, "She threw her shoe at the wall. It left a big mark."

We feel the delirious joy of their happiness when they learn that the father's coming home when Ellie says, "We threw oranges out the window because that's all we had."

It was all about "show, don't tell" in those days, Mary Jane told me. I think those are two pretty fine examples.

I guess some things about writing haven't changed in the last 50 years. Kind of reassuring.