Heather Sutherlin's Blog, page 15

Story Starter Tuesday

Since Camp Nanowrimo is on my mind today, and I just finished telling you all about my week at camp, how about we make our story starter camp themed this week? You can thank me later.

Mom pulled up to the front gates and turned to me with a smile. “We’re here, honey. Grab your things, we’re losing daylight and you’re already late. I leaned out my window to stare up at the old, faded sign that stretched over the gravel drive. It read, Camp Windelmore. I sighed. I couldn’t believe my mom was leaving me at a camp she knew nothing about for three whole weeks!

Heather Goes to Camp

I’ve been away from the blog for a few weeks and for two very good reasons: 1) I have been hard at work putting the finishing touches on my soon to be released novel, Light In The Darkness. And, 2) I went to camp.

That’s right, folks. This thirty-something mother of three went to camp for a week with a bunch of the coolest teens I know. We got dirty, down right stinky nasty running around and playing crazy games in the hot southern sun. We played games like Fish Baseball and Zombie Apocalypse Capture the Flag. We built a giant slip-n-slide. We swam in the river and had a blast. It was a wild and crazy week.

One of the things I enjoyed most about camp was meeting so many amazing kids. I discovered that two of my young friends hope to be writers someday (Hi, Anna and Kaitlyn!) and enjoyed talking with them about books they love and the stories they plan to write. I talked with a few gals who insisted they hate to read and are terrible in school (Hi, Rose and DeeAnn!) and this shocked me because they were so very cool and smart. I wish I could be their teacher for a year or two and share with them all of my favorite books and teach them how very fun and fabulous writing can be.  I hope they will stop by the site to visit once in a while and maybe pick up one of the books I have shared in You Gotta Read posts.

Another awesome thing about visiting camp as a writer is the concentrated look at teen relationships that you get in a week of camp. We saw young love and heartbreak, major girl drama and teen angst.  Mostly I saw a lot of great friendships bloom out of seemingly nowhere. We all arrived strangers and left with friends. What an amazing thing. Those memories will be useful when I am creating new characters in my YA books this next year. You can’t beat the experience of real life when you are crafting fiction.

How about you? Did you go to camp this summer? Did you meet any totally cool kids that you wish you could hang out with all year? What awesome new experiences will you be using in your writing this year?

If you’ve got a fabulous idea for a story, why not go ahead and write it? It’s too hot to do much of anything else, so a few hours at your computer desk or on your bed with a pen and a notebook will keep you cool and entertained. Besides, mom and dad can’t get too irritated when they find you writing a book instead of watching tv, right? Man, I’d give my kids cookies for that!

Here’s a great way to help you get started: Camp Nanowrimo! You can join thousands of other writers around the world who are racing to get their stories written before August 31st.  That’s a whole book written in a month!  Think it can’t be done? It can and its a blast.  The perfect kick in the seat to get you motivated to get that story that’s been bouncing around in your brain for years out and into the open page. Sign up now and scroll through their website to see all the fun and silliness that can be had when a bunch of writers jump into the word frenzy that is writing a book in a month.  It’s a blast.  As a matter of fact, my first very first novel was written during Nanowrimo a few years ago. Now I’m getting ready to share it with the world in just a few short days. You never know what magic can happen when you sit down with that idea and let it all out onto the blank page.

Gotta Write,Heather

Brainstorming Tips with author Brian Clopper

I was delighted to discover Brian Clopper, an author I shared with you earlier this week in my review of his book, Graham the Gargoyle.  Brian astounds me with his clever writing, but my kids are even more impressed with his artwork.  Brian is also a teacher and I bet his 5th grade students are just about the luckiest kids I know.  How cool to have a teacher who is also a writer and comic book artist!  Today, Brian shares with us some fun tips and tricks for creating new story ideas.  Enjoy!

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Coming up with story ideas has never been a problem for me. There are three techniques I teach my students to help them gain confidence in brainstorming. All three are quick, fun and easy to do.

Odd Pairings: Take two or three ideas that are wildly different from each other and put them together. For example, I created MONSTERS IN BOXERS, a book about kids who put on magical boxer shorts and transform into superhuman monsters ready to do battle with evil, by pairing monsters with boxers. How can you go wrong with that?

Here are other examples:

MY BIG TOE TALKS TO ME

MY SOAP, THE COMEDIAN

SNOWMAN SHOPPING TRIP

THE CAFETERIA COW

UNDERGROUND ASTRONAUT

Changing Expectations: this technique has some overlap with Odd Pairings. When brainstorming Changing Expectations, you use animal, professions, and objects and think of where you’d expect to find them or how they would act and turn the expectation upside down. Most of us assume an elephant would be large, clumsy and prone to stampeding first and asking questions second. But what if you change the expectation and imagine an elephant that is graceful and delicate. You have yourself an elephant ballerina and world of story possibilities.

Here are some more:

A gargoyle afraid of heights (sorry, already taken in my series GRAHAM THE GARGOYLE)

A noisy Bigfoot

An angry butterfly

A very well-spoken caveman

A vampire who wants to be a lifeguard (Sorry again, already used that in NORTON THE VAMPIRE)

A mummy who flies

The final idea generator is Randomizing. This was shared with me by a couple of cartoonists who like to get together and use Pictionary cards to help them generate story ideas. That’s exactly what you do. You randomly draw three Pictionary cards and select three or four ideas and string them together to form a story. It’s a lot of fun and is actually another use for Pictionary at parties, especially among the younger set who really love this.

Here’s how it works:

I select scarecrow, race cars and trophy from the Pictionary cards in front of me. Inspiration strikes and I whip up the story of a scarecrow that races cars, but has a natural problem in that when the car goes too fast, he loses his straw due to the excessive winds. He has to win back a trophy to save his farm from going belly up. All the other farm animals don’t have faith in him, and he must dig deep to solve his dilemma.

You can see changing expectations and odd pairings at work in the summary of my word play novel written to inspire young writers, STOMPER REX.

WITH THE OPENING OF A HATCH that appears on his ceiling, a troubled mortal boy, Stomper, is enlisted to save the fractured land of Crawlspace and reunite the magic. Trouble comes from all directions once he sets foot in the magical world of the written word. If Stomper can master alliterations, homophones, rhymes, similes and idioms before they do him in, Crawlspace might just have a fighting chance.

STOMPER REX is a romp through a magical world of dangerous word play. In the vein of THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH, this whimsical fantasy is a tale with lethal homophones, alliteration gone acutely awry and a host of hideous puns let loose that will disgust and confound.

Brian Clopper is a 5th grade teacher who dreams of a day when he too can set foot on a magic ladder and ride his way into a world where when hens fly to turn back time, skewer cougars hunt for unsuspecting children to shish kabob and boxing slugs engage in the rowdy gentleman’s sport of slimy fisticuffs.

Skewer cougars and boxing slugs are odd pairings, while when hens are a changing expectation. Who would think that riding atop a flock of harmless-looking birds would allow you to travel back in time? It’s all part of the magic that makes the world of Crawlspace come alive.

Odd pairings, Changing Expectations and randomizing are excellent ways to fill up your idea journal with tons of story possibilities. So what are you waiting for, get off your tuckus and get creating. There’s a zebra plumber or an ornery unicorn waiting for you to bring them to life.

Just so you know, I loaded a new book, STOMPER REX, onto the Kindle and Nook. It’s a perfect book to engage young writers with how to improve their writing using a variety of narrative techniques. Piers Anthony sung its praises, as he has all five books I’ve sent him over the years, in his most recent newsletter. I’m so proud of what he said, I just feel compelled to share it with you.

“I read Stomper Rex, by Brian Clopper. Bradford, nicknamed Stomper, is a fifth grader who has issues at school. He lives with his mother, his father having walked out. His mother is understanding but firm about his need to shape up. She gets him a tutor, Wanda, a teen girl he has a crush on, so he does pay attention as she reviews the material. This setting is competent, as the author is a fifth grade teacher; the secondary characters are well rounded. Then two odd men descend from his bedroom ceiling to take him to a fantasy land where he is needed. They are Ruffloon and Strivelwunk, who put him on a ladder which then flies into the land of Crawlspace, where there are many monsters, and much of the magic is made by figures of speech. Yes, the very thing he is having trouble with in school. I suspect this novel was a female dog to write, because coming up with relevant figures of speech when you need them can be a challenge, as I have found in my own writing. For example, when he is threatened by multiple snakes, he says “Fake snake!” and they merge into one pretend snake. That’s pretty simple, but others aren’t, such as “Try knocking loose those lox.” That’s homophone magic to make locks give way. It seems he has been summoned to defeat the cruel mistress of this realm, Stigma, a girl who visited but then decided to stay and rule, and they need to be rid of her. They have many adventures, requiring different figures of speech. Naturally there’s a climactic showdown, and strange things happen as they fight with whatever figures of speech they can think of under pressure. This novel represents a kind of course in figures of speech, and fifth graders who read it will surely develop a better understanding and possibly become better students. That may be the hidden agenda. This author continues to be a writer who deserves better attention in the literary world; this novel is anything but mindless.”