In Search of a Plot: The Making of Spooky Things

Autumn is by far my favorite season. I love everything about it: The brilliant leaves, the bountiful harvest, the cool crispness in the air, hot drinks and rainstorms and encroaching darkness and crackling fires to keep that darkness at arm's length. And of course, Halloween.

So when I decided I wanted to take a break from reimagining fairy tales, writing a Halloween book for kids was an obvious choice. I wanted it to be appropriate specifically for very young children who are just old enough to really start to “get” Halloween (although it’s also intended to appeal to kids up to age 7). This emphasis on spooky-but-not-scary worked well with my cartoon-based illustration style and also led to the eventual title of the book: Spooky Things.

Because of those very young readers, I set a strict word limit: no more than four lines of iambic tetrameter (which is 32 syllables, or typically around 20-30 words) per page.

A picture book with fewer than 500 words can’t have too elaborate a plot. I knew I would need something to tie it all together, but I decided to focus first on introducing “classic” Halloween characters, with the hope that a storyline might evolve organically once I started playing and exploring.

First, I made two lists: One of traditional Halloween creatures (e.g., witch, ghost, spider, bat), and another of spooky places (e.g., pumpkin patch, graveyard, haunted house).

Next, I thought about the characteristics associated with and natural habitats of these beings, and began matching up entries from the two lists. For example, the vampire should live in a castle. The witch needed opportunities both to fly with her cat on her broomstick and to concoct a potion in a cave. My early notes are filled with comments like “the skeleton should lose one of his bones on every page” and “where does the mummy live? coffin in haunted house or in graveyard?”

Then I put the character/location pairs in a logical order, starting with an owl flying through the pumpkin patch at sunset. The ghosts play in the graveyard while waiting for the mummy to emerge from his mausoleum; then they all stop by the haunted house to pick up the skeleton from the basement laboratory. They enter the forest, where they meet the witch and are waylaid by the werewolf, who wants to play fetch with the skeleton’s bones. The ghosts, skeleton and mummy plan to travel by boat down the river, but lose their oars in all the excitement. The skeleton comes to the rescue by offering one of his leg bones as a temporary paddle.

But where are they going?

I chose the vampire/castle pairing as the finale, thinking that the other locations might seem far less grand if they came afterward. I also thought that the castle would be sad and empty without some kind of party in it…. which was, of course, the perfect narrative thread I had hoped to find: The spooky things are all on their way to a big celebration at the vampire’s castle on Halloween night. And just like the famous canines in Go, Dog. Go! arriving at the dog party* at the top of the tree, their destination would only be revealed to readers upon arrival near the end of the book:

The river guides this little boat
Downstream into the castle moat.
Now spooky strains of music play.
A party must be underway!
The dapper vampire greets each guest.
His fangs are brushed. His cape is pressed.
He throws a party once each year.
All spooky things are welcome here!

The book ends with scenes from that fantastic party, and the spooky things vanish at sunrise.

Don’t forget that you can also watch the book trailer here! My last giveaway for Spooky Things ends tonight at midnight, but I’ll be doing several giveaways in November and December for The Golden Ball: The Fairy Tale of the Frog Prince and Why the Princess Kissed Him!

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*P.D. Eastman, Go, Dog. Go! (New York: Random House, 1989), pp. 52-61. (Original work published 1961.)