Ian Johnstone's Blog
June 16, 2015
Website
In readiness for the publication of Circles of Stone (now just over two weeks away!), I have put together a little website. It is not a particularly ambitious one, but it is a start, and it contains lots of background information about my writing, The Bell Between Worlds and the trilogy as a whole, which I hope might be of interest. Please do take a look and let me know if you have any comments - all feedback welcome!
Yours, Ian
www.ianjohnstone.com
Yours, Ian
www.ianjohnstone.com
April 24, 2015
Rings, Wardrobes and Magic Mushrooms
Here's a little blog post I have just written about creating magical objects. I wrote it for MG Strikes Back (www.middlegradestrikesback.blogspot.c...) - a great new blog supporting and celebrating middle grade fiction - so the whole article is there, but here's a taste...
Rings, Wardrobes and Magic Mushrooms
Magical Objects in Middle Grade Fiction
I am lucky enough to be spending quite a bit of time in schools at the moment, talking to children about creating magic in writing. One of the first things I ask them to do is to shout out their favourite magical object in any book they’ve read. I stand poised to write the answers on the whiteboard and often there’s a hesitation – not because no one can think of an answer, but because they’re wondering where to start. A fraction of a second later, when I hear that first cry of “Harry’s wand!” or "the Wishing Chair!" the flood gates open and the workshop is carried away on a tide of fantastical artifacts.
Often the first in that flood are those from the titles of the classics, like the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the ring of The Lord of the Rings and the Faraway Tree in, well, The Magic Faraway Tree. Sometimes there are other iconic objects from the classics like the magic mushroom in Alice in Wonderland, the grandfather clock in Tom's Midnight Garden and the book in The Neverending Story. Usually there are more recent ones like the Alethiometer in His Dark Materials or Percy Jackson’s sword, Riptide. Sometimes we get lost in the wondrous inventory of a single title, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I’ll be kept busy at the whiteboard with chocolate waterfalls, Television Chocolate, Everlasting Gobstoppers and the like. Of course one title – or set of titles – offers the best hunting ground, and normally the session contains a deluge of objects from the pages of Harry Potter, from the Invisibility Cloak and broomsticks, to the Marauder’s Map and Horcruxes. Very soon I am running out of whiteboard space, and I call for mercy.
And then we look at my scrawl, and congratulate ourselves on knowing an awful lot of magic. I try to make my fledgling magicians feel even more chuffed with themselves by telling them that if I had done the same thing with a room full of adults, the list would be no longer (perhaps shorter), and it would contain many of the same artifacts. Why? Because literature for this agegroup – our very own Middle Grade – excels at magical objects. Middle Grade is the heartland of the fantastical Thing. This is where we find the looking glasses and glass elevators and boxes of Turkish delight that fire our imaginations and refuse to leave us, that create an impression so vivid and fond that they enter our very definition of magic. Try it on your parents, I tell them, try it on your teacher! Ask them to name their favourite magical objects, and I wager that many if not most of them will come from books written for you.
Isn’t that exciting, I say, that it is the books written for you that create some of the most powerful magic. What does that say about your imaginations? Your capacity to create magic in your minds?
And isn’t that exciting for us, we who write some of these books, and work with them, and teach them, and read them with our children. Of course all this raises the question, why is Middle Grade so good at creating these magical objects? And how does it do it?
Read the rest of the post here: http://middlegradestrikesback.blogspo...
Rings, Wardrobes and Magic Mushrooms
Magical Objects in Middle Grade Fiction
I am lucky enough to be spending quite a bit of time in schools at the moment, talking to children about creating magic in writing. One of the first things I ask them to do is to shout out their favourite magical object in any book they’ve read. I stand poised to write the answers on the whiteboard and often there’s a hesitation – not because no one can think of an answer, but because they’re wondering where to start. A fraction of a second later, when I hear that first cry of “Harry’s wand!” or "the Wishing Chair!" the flood gates open and the workshop is carried away on a tide of fantastical artifacts.
Often the first in that flood are those from the titles of the classics, like the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the ring of The Lord of the Rings and the Faraway Tree in, well, The Magic Faraway Tree. Sometimes there are other iconic objects from the classics like the magic mushroom in Alice in Wonderland, the grandfather clock in Tom's Midnight Garden and the book in The Neverending Story. Usually there are more recent ones like the Alethiometer in His Dark Materials or Percy Jackson’s sword, Riptide. Sometimes we get lost in the wondrous inventory of a single title, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I’ll be kept busy at the whiteboard with chocolate waterfalls, Television Chocolate, Everlasting Gobstoppers and the like. Of course one title – or set of titles – offers the best hunting ground, and normally the session contains a deluge of objects from the pages of Harry Potter, from the Invisibility Cloak and broomsticks, to the Marauder’s Map and Horcruxes. Very soon I am running out of whiteboard space, and I call for mercy.
And then we look at my scrawl, and congratulate ourselves on knowing an awful lot of magic. I try to make my fledgling magicians feel even more chuffed with themselves by telling them that if I had done the same thing with a room full of adults, the list would be no longer (perhaps shorter), and it would contain many of the same artifacts. Why? Because literature for this agegroup – our very own Middle Grade – excels at magical objects. Middle Grade is the heartland of the fantastical Thing. This is where we find the looking glasses and glass elevators and boxes of Turkish delight that fire our imaginations and refuse to leave us, that create an impression so vivid and fond that they enter our very definition of magic. Try it on your parents, I tell them, try it on your teacher! Ask them to name their favourite magical objects, and I wager that many if not most of them will come from books written for you.
Isn’t that exciting, I say, that it is the books written for you that create some of the most powerful magic. What does that say about your imaginations? Your capacity to create magic in your minds?
And isn’t that exciting for us, we who write some of these books, and work with them, and teach them, and read them with our children. Of course all this raises the question, why is Middle Grade so good at creating these magical objects? And how does it do it?
Read the rest of the post here: http://middlegradestrikesback.blogspo...
February 18, 2015
Bringing a Fantasy World to Life
Here is a short article I wrote for the brilliant ReadingZone.com about creating a fantasy world. I hope you like it!
Bringing a Fantasy World to Life:
Head, Heart and Sinew
The building of worlds... now there's a big topic for class! But like most things, the creation of a fantasy world has its rules, its dos and don'ts. If we boil all of those down there are, I think, three simple principles of good world-creation, principles worth teaching because they apply to much of creative writing. As we are talking about bringing worlds to life, it might be helpful to think of these principles as head, heart and sinew. Let me explain....
The creation of worlds is so often mentioned in the context of fantasy that you might believe that we fantasy writers are the only ones who do it. But when you think about it, most fictional writing involves world-building. Take for instance one of the most factual genres, historical fiction. Here the author must transport their reader to an entirely different era in which the norms of everyday life have fallen away and been replaced by alien objects, buildings, customs, language and society. The reader must be lifted from the here and now to the there and then and crucially, that transportation will only be successful if the world is plausible, if it contains enough real detail that it is no longer faded and distant but vivid and immediate. Hence the historical author's painstaking research, their immersion in the things and writings of the period, their careful insertion of details that make us BELIEVE.
Real details underpin fantasy worlds too. The wondrous places that fantasy writers would take you to will only feel real if they contain a measure of the familiar, a pinch of the real and a healthy scattering of the plausible. Think of the Englishness of the Hobbits and the Shire, the politics of the great traction cities in Mortal Engines, the boarding school tropes of Hogwarts, the Oxford-like settings in His Dark Materials.
These familiar things provide the firm ground from which to launch our flight of fancy: they lead us by the hand from what we have experienced and what we know to the things of our dreams. By the way, this is of course the particular power of 'portal fantasy' - fantasy that quite literally takes us from the real to the fantastical world via some kind of magical portal, such as Narnia's wardrobe or Harry Potter's platform 9 3/4 or my own bell between worlds. Here the journey is intended to be even more irresistible because the real is a key part of the story - and most importantly, we are shown how it relates to the world of wonders.
So, direct borrowings from reality are not lazy, they are essential. They give the fantasy world its heft. Its muscle and sinew...
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.readingzone.com/index.php?...
Bringing a Fantasy World to Life:
Head, Heart and Sinew
The building of worlds... now there's a big topic for class! But like most things, the creation of a fantasy world has its rules, its dos and don'ts. If we boil all of those down there are, I think, three simple principles of good world-creation, principles worth teaching because they apply to much of creative writing. As we are talking about bringing worlds to life, it might be helpful to think of these principles as head, heart and sinew. Let me explain....
The creation of worlds is so often mentioned in the context of fantasy that you might believe that we fantasy writers are the only ones who do it. But when you think about it, most fictional writing involves world-building. Take for instance one of the most factual genres, historical fiction. Here the author must transport their reader to an entirely different era in which the norms of everyday life have fallen away and been replaced by alien objects, buildings, customs, language and society. The reader must be lifted from the here and now to the there and then and crucially, that transportation will only be successful if the world is plausible, if it contains enough real detail that it is no longer faded and distant but vivid and immediate. Hence the historical author's painstaking research, their immersion in the things and writings of the period, their careful insertion of details that make us BELIEVE.
Real details underpin fantasy worlds too. The wondrous places that fantasy writers would take you to will only feel real if they contain a measure of the familiar, a pinch of the real and a healthy scattering of the plausible. Think of the Englishness of the Hobbits and the Shire, the politics of the great traction cities in Mortal Engines, the boarding school tropes of Hogwarts, the Oxford-like settings in His Dark Materials.
These familiar things provide the firm ground from which to launch our flight of fancy: they lead us by the hand from what we have experienced and what we know to the things of our dreams. By the way, this is of course the particular power of 'portal fantasy' - fantasy that quite literally takes us from the real to the fantastical world via some kind of magical portal, such as Narnia's wardrobe or Harry Potter's platform 9 3/4 or my own bell between worlds. Here the journey is intended to be even more irresistible because the real is a key part of the story - and most importantly, we are shown how it relates to the world of wonders.
So, direct borrowings from reality are not lazy, they are essential. They give the fantasy world its heft. Its muscle and sinew...
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.readingzone.com/index.php?...
February 13, 2015
Facebook, finally
I have launched a Facebook page!
www.facebook.com/ianjohnstoneauthor
It is a fledgling affair at the moment so please be kind to it, but it should be a useful place to announce news about The Mirror Chronicles and to tell you what I am up to, including articles, events and writing. I am also being a good social lad and using Twitter a whole lot more, so if you are interested in following me there, you can find me at @johnianstone.
I will of course make the occasional post here too, so one way or another, I'll look forward to seeing you around!
www.facebook.com/ianjohnstoneauthor
It is a fledgling affair at the moment so please be kind to it, but it should be a useful place to announce news about The Mirror Chronicles and to tell you what I am up to, including articles, events and writing. I am also being a good social lad and using Twitter a whole lot more, so if you are interested in following me there, you can find me at @johnianstone.
I will of course make the occasional post here too, so one way or another, I'll look forward to seeing you around!
February 9, 2015
Interview with Enchanted Books
I am delighted to say that this month sees the long-delayed publication of The Bell Between Worlds in Paperback here in the UK and the hardback publication in the US! It is so exciting to be be taking The Mirror Chronicles to a wider audience and to mark the occasion, I have been doing a few interviews and guest posts on prominent blogs. I thought it might be good to mention some of them here, in case they might be of interest.
The first is with Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books, which does great work in promoting middle grade and young adult writing in the UK and was a hugely supportive of the hardback when it came out.
This is how the interview began...
1. Tell us a little bit about The Bell Between Worlds.
The book tells the story of young Sylas Tate, who lives in peculiar old terrace called Gabblety Row. Between running errands for his peevish Uncle Tobias, Sylas escapes into his dreams, dreams that take him as far as possible from his uncle and from thoughts of his mother, who died some years before. But the world changes beyond his wildest imaginings when The Shop of Things opens in the Row. The shopkeeper shows him three wonderful “Things”: strange, magical objects that seem to prove that there is something special about young Sylas Tate. Before he is able to discover any more he is woken in the middle of the night by the ear-splitting toll of a bell, a chime that seems to shake the footings of the world but that astonishingly, only he can hear. As the sound of the bell rages in his ears, Sylas begins a journey: a voyage of discovery that takes him into a world subtly different from the one he knows, a world where magic replaces science, a world of wonders that will soon unravel everything he has ever known. But he finds answers too, about the fate of his mother, about the two worlds and his own astonishing powers, and about the nature of our very soul.
2. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Well, like any fantasy writer a key preoccupation of mine is wonder – capturing it and evoking it – and I want to share my wonder not only at magical things but also at the endless potential of our imagination and the staggering beauty and power of nature. If that doesn’t sound too high-minded! I would like to take the reader on a magical journey but also show my wonder at the real world – our world. That’s why I chose to write the book as a portal fantasy, spanning worlds of both magic and science and teasing out a correspondence between the two.
The trilogy also explores some basic questions: why is it that we doubt ourselves? Why is it that so much of our potential is often hidden to us? And why do we turn so readily to superstitions and mythologies to find answers? Obviously these are big topics to grapple with (I can only hope I am up to the task!) but they explain why this is a very big story that needs the depth and breadth of a series of books. The resulting trilogy, The Mirror Chronicles, will publish over the next year or two. Book two, Circles of Stone, is out in July!
If you are interested in the rest of the interview you'll find it here:
http://www.mrripleysenchantedbooks.co...
The first is with Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books, which does great work in promoting middle grade and young adult writing in the UK and was a hugely supportive of the hardback when it came out.
This is how the interview began...
1. Tell us a little bit about The Bell Between Worlds.
The book tells the story of young Sylas Tate, who lives in peculiar old terrace called Gabblety Row. Between running errands for his peevish Uncle Tobias, Sylas escapes into his dreams, dreams that take him as far as possible from his uncle and from thoughts of his mother, who died some years before. But the world changes beyond his wildest imaginings when The Shop of Things opens in the Row. The shopkeeper shows him three wonderful “Things”: strange, magical objects that seem to prove that there is something special about young Sylas Tate. Before he is able to discover any more he is woken in the middle of the night by the ear-splitting toll of a bell, a chime that seems to shake the footings of the world but that astonishingly, only he can hear. As the sound of the bell rages in his ears, Sylas begins a journey: a voyage of discovery that takes him into a world subtly different from the one he knows, a world where magic replaces science, a world of wonders that will soon unravel everything he has ever known. But he finds answers too, about the fate of his mother, about the two worlds and his own astonishing powers, and about the nature of our very soul.
2. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Well, like any fantasy writer a key preoccupation of mine is wonder – capturing it and evoking it – and I want to share my wonder not only at magical things but also at the endless potential of our imagination and the staggering beauty and power of nature. If that doesn’t sound too high-minded! I would like to take the reader on a magical journey but also show my wonder at the real world – our world. That’s why I chose to write the book as a portal fantasy, spanning worlds of both magic and science and teasing out a correspondence between the two.
The trilogy also explores some basic questions: why is it that we doubt ourselves? Why is it that so much of our potential is often hidden to us? And why do we turn so readily to superstitions and mythologies to find answers? Obviously these are big topics to grapple with (I can only hope I am up to the task!) but they explain why this is a very big story that needs the depth and breadth of a series of books. The resulting trilogy, The Mirror Chronicles, will publish over the next year or two. Book two, Circles of Stone, is out in July!
If you are interested in the rest of the interview you'll find it here:
http://www.mrripleysenchantedbooks.co...
July 12, 2013
The Mirror Chronicles: An Introduction
When I was about the age of young Sylas Tate I had a thought – what if the reason we can sometimes be so doubting, so unsure of ourselves, is that we aren’t quite whole? As I got a bit older the idea started to develop: what if the other part of us had a world of its own? And what if this other world was in some ways just the same as ours but in others was utterly different, even opposite? Those thoughts stayed with me and over the years they became bolder and bigger: what might those double worlds of dual souls allow me to explore and explain? Myths and legends? Even some of our basic ideas – science, magic, the supernatural?
Eventually I had so many nagging ideas that I knew I had to write them down, so I changed my own world, moving from publisher to writer, and began The Mirror Chronicles. I started by preparing the history and background of this other world and then I moved on to the first book, The Bell Between Worlds. This opening novel takes Sylas Tate into another world of possibilities, imaginings and second souls and brings him face to face with many of the questions I asked myself years before. Happily for Sylas he also finds some of the answers.
As you will see I have found that there is plenty for Sylas to discover. I have written some scenes that did not make the final cut and envisaged plenty of others that I have not yet written. To give a greater insight into the trilogy I thought I would share with you two of these unpublished scenes. The first is a prologue that I have written especially for release to you, which gives a very brief introduction to the first book and a hint of its mystery and magic. The second is a scene called The Bouncing Turnip, which I had originally written for the chapter entitled “The Mutable Inn” and which gives a snapshot of some of the more playful magic of the other world. Finally, I thought it might also be good to share an extract of one of the most pivotal scenes in the book – the scene in which Sylas first hears the chime of the bell between worlds.
I very much hope you enjoy these scenes, and the novel, and the trilogy to come.
With best wishes,
Ian Johnstone
Eventually I had so many nagging ideas that I knew I had to write them down, so I changed my own world, moving from publisher to writer, and began The Mirror Chronicles. I started by preparing the history and background of this other world and then I moved on to the first book, The Bell Between Worlds. This opening novel takes Sylas Tate into another world of possibilities, imaginings and second souls and brings him face to face with many of the questions I asked myself years before. Happily for Sylas he also finds some of the answers.
As you will see I have found that there is plenty for Sylas to discover. I have written some scenes that did not make the final cut and envisaged plenty of others that I have not yet written. To give a greater insight into the trilogy I thought I would share with you two of these unpublished scenes. The first is a prologue that I have written especially for release to you, which gives a very brief introduction to the first book and a hint of its mystery and magic. The second is a scene called The Bouncing Turnip, which I had originally written for the chapter entitled “The Mutable Inn” and which gives a snapshot of some of the more playful magic of the other world. Finally, I thought it might also be good to share an extract of one of the most pivotal scenes in the book – the scene in which Sylas first hears the chime of the bell between worlds.
I very much hope you enjoy these scenes, and the novel, and the trilogy to come.
With best wishes,
Ian Johnstone
