Advice to Young Writers, from an Increasingly Old One

Do you think it’s a bad sign that you update your blog so infrequently, you essentially forget how to do it and have to relearn all the simple steps every time? I think it might be a bad sign.

Well, it’s been another shamefully long gap between posts, and I have some giant news that I’m STILL waiting to share (it won’t be much longer, I promise!), but I recently got some reader mail that was so inspiring it forced me back into blogging action.

I get lots of notes from young readers and writers. Every single one of them makes me feel lucky, and many of them come with fantastic questions. Last week, a young writer named Alana got in touch to ask for my help with her school’s Passion Project, and I said I’d do my best to answer her questions — and then she sent me an interview that was so insightful and challenging, it took two days’ worth of brain power to complete it. (When your almost-two-year-old has the stomach flu and you’re up half the night changing bedding and deliriously reading Berenstain Bears books, you have a bit less brain power than usual. That’s my excuse.)

I asked her permission to share the result…and here it is. *Note: I don’t consider myself much of an expert on anything, even the things I do obsessively/professionally. But this is my honest advice. These are some of my best tips and tricks. Use or ignore as you will.

Thanks again, Alana.

 

How do you choose or make up names for characters(first and last names), setting, objects, etc.?

For me, it tends to work in one of two ways: Either the perfect name pops into my head right away, almost like the character (or place) already knows her/his/its own name, and is introducing herself to me…or I spend a long time daydreaming, making lists, and trying out different options before I find the name that feels just right.

Obviously, the first way is a lot easier! Olive from The Books of Elsewhere turned up in my head with her name already in place, and the cats had their names from the very beginning too (because their names were stolen straight from three real cats named Horatio, Leopold, and Harvey, who belonged to friends of mine).

The second way, unfortunately, is a lot more common. Often, I’ll know a few important things about a character (or place or object)—things about their appearances or ages or personalities or interests—and then I search for a name that matches those things. With Rutherford, for example, I knew I wanted him to have an unusual, old-fashioned, scientific or historical name. Then I did a bunch of research and list-making, and when I found out that a scientist named Ernest Rutherford is considered the father or nuclear physics, I knew I had found the right fit.

 

How do you hook the readers in right away with your first sentence, paragraph, or chapter?

Ooh, that first sentence is SO important. It needs to be something that will make your readers want to keep reading. As long as it does that, it can be about practically anything.

I often try to create a first sentence that will plant an important question in a reader’s mind, or that will immediately start building a vivid picture—or both. The very first line in The Books of Elsewhere is “Ms. McMartin was definitely dead.” I hoped that this line would immediately make readers wonder who Ms. McMartin was, how she died, why it’s important that she’s definitely dead—and that it would start the book out on the right creepy/odd/mysterious note. The first line in my latest novel, Dreamers Often Lie, is “There was blood on the snow.” I thought this line would create a striking image, and that it would make readers wonder whose blood it was, what happened, etc.

A good first line needs to pull the reader in. Beyond that, anything goes.

 

How do you create characters that seem real and are relatable?

Years and years of practice!