A. LaFaye's Blog: Word Wanderings Rest Stop - Posts Tagged "writing"

What's the best way to convey emotion in writing? My rule of three here is be active, be figurative, and create an echo. When you're showing emotion, allow your readers to feel it by

showing characters act on emotion.

A character isn't just furious; "Garrett smashed the vase of flowers he'd purchased for Chloe until he had a pulp of glass and petals"

using figurative language
Like water dropped into hot oil, the words splattered inside her head. Resisting the urge to spit out something foul, Eve smiled just enough so one could see her grit her teeth.

emotionally charged objects, images, actions, events
When you want to show emotional change emotionally charge an object/action early on in the story, then repeat it throughout the story to show growth. Someone who lost a parent might have something from that parent s/he interacts with throughout the story. Try to write out of the crowd and make it something unique that you wouldn't expect--not a photo or a lock of hair, but a fishing lure, a napkin used to blot makeup, a the gummy ball of gel from the back of a price tag.
Hope this helps!

Reading is an essential part of writing. It always floors me when a writing student says, I really want to write, but I don't like to read. That's aspiring to be a doctor and having a phobia of blood. Reading informs our writing so thoroughly; it's quite tough to do one without the other.

Here are a few things I've learned about reading...it's essential to read as widely as possible, read as deeply as you can, and to teach yourself how to read as a writer.

Many people who write in a given genre only read within that genre or a few books in a broader category. Young Adult fantasy writers tend to ready in that genre, adult fantasy, and a little outside the fantasy genre. On the other hand, you learn so much about world building from historical fiction. Your line by line style will sing when you discover the secrets of poetry. And picture book fantasies are often a tour de force of the imagination. Reading cross-culturally is also a great way for writers to gain insight into writing about/inventing (in speculative fiction) cultures. Reading non-fiction for readers of all ages is also a great way to expand your knowledge. You may not be able to change a windshield wiper, but you might want to create a convincing auto mechanic one day, so read up on car repair or listen to Click and Clack reruns on NPR.

After all, reading doesn't have to be only in print. You can read the news online, in print, on the TV, or on the radio. You can also read films, TV shows, webcasts, and podcasts.

When you do, think about what it says about the topic it portrays. What can you learn about it? What questions does it raise? Where can you find the answers? The more reading inspires you, the more you can inspire your readers.

Speaking of inspiration, it's also helpful to learn to read as a writer, not just to enjoy the text, but to take it apart, see how it ticks and try your hand at the same tricks of the trade. Reading as a writer teaches you how to critique the work of established writers and learns a few new ways to approach elements of craft. It also makes you an excellent critic in a workshop or even in your own office while you’re revising your work.

So read widely, read deeply, and read like a writer. With the new found knowledge and inspiration that brings, you never know what you might right next.

Most of us have exercises in a variety of ways--jumping jacks, yoga, chasing our naked toddlers around the house when they break free after a bath (or is that just me?), but have you done many exercises for your creativity?

How many times have you said or heard, I used to be creative when I was a kid? Well, actually, you still are, you just have allowed that "muscle" in your brain to atrophy a bit. Here are some way to limber up your creativity and get it flowing again.

First off, creativity is just the recombination of known facts in unusual order. The reason kids appear to be more creative is because they don't know or ignore the order of things and mix it all up in their play-- a wooden spoon can be a speaker, you can travel to the moon with cardboard box and a boa, and there's no reason a stuffed hippo can't marry a human princess doll.

So, let's get started.

1. Randomly select five words from a book. Be quick about it, then throw them together in a song as quick as you can!

viejo
sauce
Slinky
rooted
truth

Thank you, Gary Soto for CANTO FAMILIAR and these great words.

Timer on, here's my song:

Oh, oh, it won't go, my slinky's rooted in my sauce,
oh, oh, veijo
This is growing old
I think my Slinky's growing mold
oh, oh, viejo
Time go!

55 seconds.

Okay, now tell a story.

Never play with your slinky on your abuela's front porch. Why? Because if you do, you might get called away for a game of soceer in her by her neighbor Hector, you abuela will come out of her house in her roller blades, catch the Slinky on her way down the steps, try to pull it off, then go careening down the sidewalk, snaring the cat,and swinging around the light post on the corner to go knees first into the row of trash cans on Fifth Ave and you'll have to spend the afternoon cleaning trash off the sidewalk.

2 min 8 seconds.

Now beat my times! Go on, you can do it!
Share your work.

2. Choose a poem, a short story, a song, and reply to it in the same genre or another.

Here's a short poem by Margaret Atwood:

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

a link to the poem

Phew! Am I glad I never met that guy. Or was it a girl, you didn't say, but I know how it goes, you meet someone at a party, or in a coffee shop and you think, Click, click, click, this is the one for me. Like that fella, let's just call him Hamish, who pumped into me in line at The Brewery last week. As I wiped chai latte off my shirt, he actually said, "I think that's a good color for you, it matches your skin tone."
I should've run, right. Or asked him to replace the shirt with the color of his choice, but no, I laughed. we sat down and talked, talked, talked about ...him--what book he's reading, what he did last weekend--hiking and birdwatching--how he is poised to be the lead in the Mixed Blood Theater production of The Dutchman (he's Jewish, so that would be a show to watch). He was true to my renaming all right. A real Ham. Had I been paying attention, I would've said no instead of making a date to see him, waiting at an empty table for an hour before getting tickets to the opening night for a forgetful maitre d'. That'll show me not to get hook in by a guy's line.

You can also do this with a painting.

Just let the first work get you started.

3. Sit down, write the first ten words that come to you. Write a poem, song, or paragraph from a piece of fiction as fast as you can, then choose 10 words from that piece to start another and so on. Anything to get your juices flowing. Here, let me give it a try.

Spoon
table top lazy susan
phone
cap
book
lint
rope
bell
rose
hip

Spin, Scrabble, scramble,
as I turn the lazy susan and watch the words whirl,
wishing the phone would ring
instead my eyes are listing over the book
in my hand as my head longs to hear
the bell tone of my ring
laundry lint makes a lousy rope as I sit
waiting for the phone to ring
tossing bottle caps at the hip of the cat
statue on my desk
Instead of a call, I get your roses
with two tickets to the zoo
I think I'll
make you wait at the gate

Whoever designed those whirling turnstyle gates you see at the zoo and getting into the subway owes me thousands in chiropractor bills. I swear I push out my hip because of those damn things. It doesn't help that I have to book it from my internship in the marine animal lab to make it to my paying job at the diner on 53rd Street four days a week. 4 Aleve later I'm ready to head off to night class. If I don't land the job at the zoo after all this, I think I'm going to move to Maine and work for a fish hatchery.

Well, I've offered just a few creativity exercises that should be helpful, I hope. If you have exercises of your own to share, please do.

But keep in mind, your creativity is like everything else--use it or loose it!

Poetry Tweets @PoetryTweets has been "[e]xploring the power of 140 characters or less" since 2009 and I'd like to spread their work to the younger generation by blogging about writing a poem in 140 characters or less and inviting teachers to join in the fun!

First, let's talk poetry.

Paul Janezcko's Firefly July A Year of Very Short Poems is a great book to share short, concrete poetry with kids to inspire them to write their own. Mentor texts rock!
Here's a great resource on mentor texts and writing poetry from Lee and Low:
Mentor Texts and Writing Poetry

Here are a few pointers for helping kids write great poetry.

1. Teach them to use concrete, specific words. Help them learn when a word is concrete vs. abstract, and to select just the right word to show what they mean.

Soft as cotton is concrete, but familiar.
How about "soft as a couch after school let's out?"
You can start with lists of words that are abstract and have them select concrete alternatives or create concrete comparisons that relate to their lives.

"Sad" becomes Picked last for the team.

2. Help them tell a "story" in as few words as possible. The poet Janet Wong uses this exercise:
My --insert family member or friend--is like--insert comparison--because--fill in the blank.

For more on Janet Wong, please visit her website:
Janet Wong

She usually stresses that the comparison is positive, the following example started off shaky, but ended well. It's from a third grader.

"My brother is like toilet paper. He's always got my back."

Right there you have the start of a tweet poem with characters to spare!

You can also encourage them to share a discovery, an emotion, an event.

Discovery:

Tigers outweigh my fridge, but purr like their making ice.

Emotion:
Cheaters make me want to send them to the end of the line for ice cream. Twice.

Event:
Costume Contest. Itchy make up. Poofy cotton-candy-esque hat. Sweaty cone suit. This tall lick of ice cream claimed first prize.

3. Teach them to edit. Let them draft what they want.

I hate my brother. He puts his buggers in my hair.

Then ask them to revise.

From this poem ask for a figurative comparison based where they started.

My brother is? Why is he that?

My brother's a snot. He treats my shirt like a tissue.

I hope this advice helps.

Now let's talk poetry exchange:

1. Use Twitter to find another classroom in another state.

2. Assign a poem that allows kids to introduce themselves, or their class, or their hometown.

3. Let them do peer workshops to choose their favorites. I'd choose one from each group, then send them to the other class which will send them to your class.
Peer Workshop Guide from NCTE

4. Let the kids respond to each others poetry. Share what they like about the poems and ask a question.

5. You can also do poetry challenges. Send a photo of something cool at your school to the other class and ask them to write a poem about it, then select their favorites and send it back. They will send you a photo and you'll do the same activity.

6. You can also use these poetry exchanges as a launching point for deeper connections across classes. Exchange school mailing or e-mail addresses to pair kids classroom to classroom to share their experiences through letters and journaling-whatever dovetails into your curriculum.

Invitation: Please share your tweeted poems on Poetry Pen Place Place at @PoetryPPPlace

If you try these exercises, share what works, what needs works, and what your students gain from the experience. Tweet away!

A Reader Gets Hooked

Asking me to choose the book that had the greatest impact on me is liking asking me to choose my favorite child – it can’t be done. My mother’s favorite story is that, when I was eight months old, I would sit in my playpen and “read” Reader’s Digest from cover to cover, turning one page at a time and looking over one side and then the other, before turning to the next page. I may have been imitating my parents, who were voracious readers, but my love affair with books began then and continued throughout my life.

When I truly learned to read, I holed up in my room, ignoring my mother’s plea that I needed fresh air and exercise. My reading addiction led to flashlights under the covers and books hidden inside my school desk. I read an average of 20 to 30 books a week throughout my elementary, teen, and young adult years. I read my way through library after library, and my greatest joy was becoming a librarian with access to free ILLs (interlibrary loans) and no fines.



All of this makes it difficult to pinpoint one special book that turned me into a writer. The book I reread from cover to cover until it was tattered was A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. That book influenced my philosophy of life: I wanted to be Sara Crewe, to always be cheerful in spite of life’s hardships, to always look for the best in people, and to use my imagination to brighten any situation. If I had to give one book credit for inspiring my outlook on life and stirring my creativity, A Little Princess would win the award.


From Reading to Writing




The author that I most wanted to imitate, though, was Madeleine L’Engle. When I read A Wrinkle in Time, I dreamed of writing a book that affected readers so powerfully, that immersed them so deeply in a fantasy that they lost track of time and space, and that made them sigh in contentment when they closed the cover, knowing that the ending was not only inevitable, but perfect.

When I began writing, I took Madeleine L’Engle’s quote to heart: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” I strongly believe children have an open-mindedness and a deep, innate understanding of what’s important in life, a knowledge that adults lose as they rush through their days worrying about to-do lists and other people’s opinions. Young readers are storing up knowledge and information they’ll use as adults, so children’s books have the power to influence their life choices.

I still remember the impact Madeleine L’Engle’s quote of Francis Thompson made on my young impressionable mind: “Thou canst not stir a flower / Without troubling a star.” Reading those words made me appreciate the vastness of the universe and the interconnectedness of all life. I realized the ripple effect even tiny acts of kindness can have on the world around me, and to this day, I can’t pull weeds without feeling a vast sadness. I’d rather have an overgrown garden than remove a plant, any plant – even a weed. To touch readers’ lives so deeply that my words positively influence decisions made decades later would be my greatest dream.

I may never approach Madeleine L’Engle’s greatness, but when a teen boy comments on Wattpad about my YA novel Grace and the Guiltless, “I've never been so moved by a book. You honestly made me cry…” or a young teen girl says, “Reading this makes me stick up for myself and teaches me to boost my confidence,” I feel I’m heading in the right direction. Someday I hope to influence readers the way Frances Hodgson Burnett and Madeleine L’Engle affected me. These writers have taught me many things, but the most important is:
"Thou canst not stir a reader
Without troubling a heart.”*



*an adaptation of poetic lines by Frances Thompson "The Mistress of Vision"





A Little More About This Book Loving Author



Laurie J. Edwards is the author of more than 2200 articles and 30 books in print or forthcoming. A student in the Hollins University MFA program in Children’s Writing and Illustrating, she also juggles editing and illustration careers, while writing fiction and nonfiction for children and adults under several pen names. As Erin Johnson, she writes the YA Western series, WANTED, in which her heroine, Grace, has been called “the Katniss of the West.” As Rachel J. Good, she writes the SISTERS & FRIENDS Amish series. Visit her at
www.lauriejedwards.com tand www.racheljgood.com

Thank you so much for this lovely homage to the books that shaped you, Laurie.

Readers,

What books shaped your life?

Summer is often about going light and airy--shorts and a breezy blouse, a salad or a slice of watermelon, a book on the beach with your toes in the sand, so let's take that route through character development. Better yet, let's approach it with another summer pass time in mind, golf-- a character course in nine holes.

We'll take this course one hole at a time, adding a new hole a day!

Hole One: The Clubs You Bring Onto the Course AKA Backstory
In golf, you're swinging to hit the ball into the hole in as few shots as possible using different clubs, judging the lay of land, and doing the legwork to get that ball to the flag. Characters can work much the same way. You to create them in as few strokes as possible using the best tools and covering the distance from first page to last by judging the lay of the land in the fictional world that unfolds as you write it.

For your first tee shot, it's all about the clubs you bring onto the course and the metaphor is apt in more ways than one. In creating a character with compelling backstory, you have to remember that much of that character's story remains "under the rim" of the bag and the surface of the story until you pull a club out to take a swing. And each part of that story as a different purpose in your story like a driver is much different than a putter. With emotional situations that are raw and real and lead your character rash action, they are swung hard and fast like a driver. Emotional issues that are delicate and require diplomacy, you swing slow and easy with great care and aim like a putter.

For me, I come to the course with my bag of clubs aka backstory, but I allow my subconscious to choose the clubs. I just pick the bag--the point when everything that changes, the incident that shapes who the character is at the beginning of the story--the storm that leads to a farming accident that takes away the use of a boy's leg (Worth), the end of slavery that frees a young boy to go find the mother who was sold away from him (Walking Home to Rosie Lee), and the adoptee who is terrified of water has to go live on a lake for the summer (Water Steps). From there, I let the backstory unfold as the events do, asking myself "What would my character do now? Why?"

An understanding of character motivation and life-shaping events is essential here--study it in the books you read, the movies you watch, the people you meet, and consider a course in psychology via a book or an actual class. All of these things will be instrumental in helping you shape your character's past and remember--give everyone a past or the secondary and tertiary characters won't seem real.

Keep in mind, everyone plays golf differently, so everyone creates their character backstory differently. Find the way that works for you!

Here's an article from Rachel Ballon to offer you another perspective on developing backstory:




How do you incorporate backstory?


Hole 2: Swing with Distinction

Making your character unique is an essential of character development. You want your character to be someone your readers can relate to, but that can be as simple as making them a golfer--allowing them to have a hobby, need, or desire that readers in your target audience share.

Stake is an essential for your readers as well. That's the need/want that drives your character through the story aka keeps them on the golf course plugging away that little round ball. It could be a hole in one they're looking for here, but whatever it is, it should be internal and external. The hole in one is an external goal. Internally, the character may be trying to control their temper so they don't wrap their golf club around a tree when they miss a shot.

My dad frequently came home with bent clubs claiming that he was attacked by a heard of buffalo that he had to fight off with his club or get trampled. Let's just say, I came by my ability to spin a tale naturally and my dad was a definitely a distinct character!

You also want your character to have a distinct voice. To speak in a way others do not. Does your character constantly use shopping metaphors? Do they speak in as few words as possible? Run off at the mouth? Use a catch phrase like, "As long as no one swallowed a bug, we're good" is that because he swallowed a bee as a child and discovered he was allergic?

As I said, backstory is important and should be woven in. You can also distinguish characters through the pasts you create, the clothes they wear, the pets who follow them, the things they do every Tuesday at 9:15 AM.

Let your character walk off the page by being a unique individual with layers, voice, and motivations!

But don't just take my word for it, here's
an article on giving your character a distinctive voice by fiction editor, Beth Hill
Variety in Character Voices

How do you make your characters distinctive?

http://theeditorsblog.net/2012/03/15/...

Hole 3