Writing Advice for the Kids

Buy lotto tickets. If you don't win, you still have a little piece of paper. You can use that little slip of paper as a bookmark, and/or to take notes on. Reading and writing is always good advice for any fledgling author.

        Pseudonymous Bosch

Pseudonymous Bosch is the pen name of the author of The Secret Series, a five-book young adult series that breaks most of the rules but succeeds wildly because it knows and understands the one secret (a key word in the series) of novel writing – know your audience and entertain them.

The title of the first book in the series is The Name of This Book is Secret. The author spends the first 15 to 20 pages telling the readers NOT to read the book. It's too dangerous. He's not going to tell reveal the name of the city the story happens in, or the name of the school, or even the name of the characters, because the readers might figure out where it happened and that information could prove fatal.

They're five amazing mystery adventures in which three middle school kids do battle with a worldwide conspiracy that will stop at nothing – Nothing! – in their quest for the secret to everlasting life. The stories are wild, completely implausible, unpredictable. Kids love them.

He interrupts the stories repeatedly with asides, footnotes, digressions and, at one point a five-page comic book showing him writing the novels by dictating them to a pet rabbit while his cat offers sarcastic commentary. He also has suggestions for how to disguise your copies of the book so people won't know you're reading them.

The author also has a website, which is not surprising, called The Name of This Website Is Secret, in which he maintains that he is not the person who has been identified as the author, that the real Pseudonymous Bosch is in hiding in a cave or the rain forest, he won't say which, and that the person going around doing book signings, appearing at middle schools and at writing conferences and workshops claiming to be Pseudonymous Bosch is actually an impostor.

He warns his fans in the UK that bookstores there are about to do a special promotion, selling the five volumes of the series at an amazing discount, which could be disastrous because more people would have them, and urges his readers to rush to their bookstores and buy up all the copies before they get into wider distribution.

The bit of advice to young writers at the top of this post came from the site, part of a longer discussion in which he advises readers that the three rules of fiction writing are "Lie, Cheat and Steal." And makes the case.

Pseudonymous Bosch knows kids. Knows the kind of story they like, knows what makes them laugh, what catches their attention, what keeps them turning pages. The whole thing is a joke – and he and his young readers are both in on it, them against the world.

It works.

WIP UPDATE – Tuesday's total, 1,037 words. Total to date, 12,778 words. I just keep following the story.

Some Days the Bear Gets You

Well that was humbling.

After a great first day, I found myself on day two stumbling and bumbling. Wrote about 600 words, deleted most, tried again. Couldn't come up with anything that worked to get me into the story. Clever? Maybe. But useful? Not at all. So I backed up and tried again. And again.

The problem, I suspected, was that my opening was kind of flashy but didn't get me into the story. Had trouble transitioning. So I started the story in a slightly different place, just a little farther along.

It worked, but I'm not there yet. Took several false starts before I finally got right into the action, in a place that works. By then, the afternoon was over and I had to run around picking people up, dropping them off, the usual.

So my word count isn't impressive. Oh, if you count all the false starts, it's probably good – probably more than 1,000 words. But what I have left after all teh deletions and fiddling, is: 54 words. So what with all the backing up and adjusting and fiddling, the grand (?) total is now slightly LESS than it was the day before: 1,270 words.

But that's better than no words. I'm not happy about it, but at least I kept pushing until I found soemthing that works. And it does work.

Some days you get the bear. Some days the bear gets you. But I'm back at it, a little mauled but pushing on.

Once More into the Breach, Dear Friends!

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

Stephen King, On Writing

And here we go. I'm at the scary moment. I'm going to post this, then I'm going to start writing Who Is Brainiac Kapow? – an adventure for readers roughly middle school age.

I know how the story begins, I know the characters, I kinda know what's going to happen. But of course, they'll surprise me and change my plans, so I can't let myself get married to the plot I think I'm going to be following. At least I sure hope they surprise me. Because if they don't surprise me, they probably won't surprise the readers either, and then what do you have?

So here we go. Same rules as always. Shoot for 1,000 words a day. Don't judge it until I finish the first draft, because it's going to suck. First drafts always suck, everyone's, and that's a gift. Just get it written down, and fix it later. But you can't fix it if you don't write it first.

If it sounds like I'm trying to boost my ego a bit, give myself a "St. Crispin's Day" speech, that's because I am. The question, as I set out, is, can I do it? I mean, sure, I've written three other novels I think are quite good. But can I do it again? When you start the next one, the fact that you've done it before only gets you so far. It is, as Stephen King said, the scariest moment. But as he also said:

"You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”

Detour Takes Me Closer to the Starting Point

Digging through the bowels of my hard drive, I came across the first chapter of the book I haven't quite started.

Let me explain.

This WIP (work in progress) has its roots in something that came to me about a year and a half ago. And at the time, I didn't just file the idea away. I actually started it, then got sidetracked because of our move from the island back to the mainland.

I didn't remember what I had written, and when I found it this week I was pleasantly surprised. There is some really good stuff in those two chapters. And I remember where I was going. But I'm not going there anymore. The story is so different now, what I'm envisioning now, than I'm not sure much of it is even usable. The original story doesn't bear much resemblance to to what I'm now planning. A couple of little things, a sassy computer but not much else.

Once I post this I'll begin plotting the book. Obviously, then, I belong to that group of writers who believe in having a plot in hand when I start the actual writing, as opposed to those who create characters, then plunge them into a situation and watch as they thrash around, writing down what they see. That may seems haphazard to me, but it works for successful writers like Stephen King and Anne Lamott.

I don't have the confidence to just jump in that way. If I'm planning a road trip from, say, from my home here in Louisiana to Seattle, I want to make sure I know where Seattle is, and something about the country between here and there. That doesn't mean I'm a slave to the road map any more than I am to the plot. Because the character-driven writers are correct – if you've created characters who are true to themselves, then they'll jump out and surprise you, they'll resist doing things just because the author wants them to. You either listen or you write a crappy book.

I usually end up revising the plot often, as the story progresses. It takes turns I didn't expect, characters do things I hadn't planned, sometimes characters reveal themselves to be very different people than I'd imagined. When I started Scurvy Dogs! I thought one character was a sort of comical background figure. Two thirds of the way through he shouldered me out of the way and revealed himself to be one of the main villains. And a good thing he did, because it makes the story way more interesting than I had planned.

Just because you're planning to drive from Louisiana to Seattle doesn't mean you're going to take the straightest path. You might end up zig zagging across the map to various scenic detours. You might decide Seattle is completely off the itinerary and end up in Los Angeles or even Fort Lauderdale.

And then, of course, you'll change everything again in the later drafts.

So the plot is a framework to make me feel safe setting out, I guess. But by the time the trip is over, that map will be covered with erasures and ink blots and coffee stains. Because no matter where you think you're going, you really don't know until you get there.

What a ride!

Scribbling Continues as Story Grows

As I scribble ideas in the notebook (and when I say scribbling, I mean scribbling. See photo of my notebook pages.) the story is turning and changing in my hands, becoming more – more layered, more complex, more detailed. Better. Bigger. Stronger. And, I hope, more interesting and entertaining.

It's exciting, no doubt about that. I have had the thrill – a cliched thrill, true, but still a thrill – of sitting straight up in bed, and grabbing my notebook. Sometimes it's just a word or two, but I know what it means when I look back and see "Fern," or "the janitor." Sometimes it's a sentence or two, even a couple of lines of dialogue. And often an admonition – "Be Funny!"

I don't want it to lose the tone and feel that I originally came up with. I want it to be fun, quick, light. I've got a ton of good background material from my research, and now I have to guard against burying the story under too much details, or too many layers, and lose the carefree spirit that I think will drive the book – and then drive the reader through the book.

That's one of things I have to watch for. I don't want to write "too smart." That sounds horribly egotistical, doesn't it? But it's something I've been warned about more than once and by more than one reader.

Serve the story. That's always the number one maxim, isn't it? Whatever you do, whatever you write, whatever choices you make in the story, always be sure that doing it serves the story.

Almost ready to start writing.

It's Starting to Bubble Again

It's been a month since I finished Scurvy Dogs! and I've been at loose ends, not sure where I'm going next. Done a lot of reading, done a lot of work for the Source, toyed with some ideas. But I didn't do much that was really concrete. It was almost as if I was charging the batteries or something.

But I could feel it growing the last couple of days, and yesterday I pulled out my notebook and started jotting things down. And I'm getting excited. This is going to be a good one.

It's not a pirate story. It's actually a story about a character who jumped into my head, almost full blown, more than a year and a half ago. I wrote about it at the time, and thought then I'd be getting to work on it very soon.

"Ha!" said life. Wrote Scurvy Dogs! instead, and I'm glad I did because it's a damn good book and I learned a lot in the process.

I thought I was going in a different direction, but the more I mulled the last few weeks, the more I realized this is the story I want to tell next. It'll present some new challenges, but I think it'll be fun.

For one thing, it'll be for a slightly younger audience than I've been writing for. I think it'll appeal to the kids who loved the Captain Underpants books and have grown a little, are ready for something a bit more. They're not quite old enough for the Alex Rider books. It's roughly the same audience the fans of Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kids books, although my story is nothing like those. Nothing.

The title character for this – and yes, I can definitely see this as a series – is an 11-year-old boy, small for his age, with curly blonde hair, glasses, and a cocky grin that's almost a permanent fixture on his face. He's beyond smart, he's a genius with an intuitive sense of math, but no people skills at all. The fact that he's been promoted into high school, where he's smarter than any of the teachers, doesn't help. He's got two friends, a high school girl who has her own personality issues, and a boy who's been his friend since kindergarten. The friend doesn't have much in common, but he's fiercely loyal, and takes pride in the fact that he's the main character's touchstone with "normal."

Also, it'll be a story with LOT'S of room for killing a dragon in every chapter. And it has some elements I've never tried to work with before, so that's cool.

I know the main character's name – it's the title of the book. Don't know the two friends' names yet. I imagine they'll tell me soon and then I can get to work.

And the story, the adventure is ... Well, I have only a general idea. I've got two or three more days of jotting notes and ideas in the notebook. By the end of the week I will take the notes and start typing them in and organizing them, and will probably begin writing a week or so after that, after I have a general, preliminary idea of the plot.

It's starting to bubble and I'm getting excited about it.

In the meantime – As I mentioned, it's been a month since I finished Scurvy Dogs! Haven't heard from Eddie the Agent yet, other than to acknowledge he's got it. It's nervous time on that front. I know I'm not his only client. I know I'm far – far – from his most important client. Without dropping names, this agency represents some very successful authors, names you know, authors of books you've probably read. So until I can prove I'm one of those guys, I have to take the time he's got left. Because so far I haven't earned a dime for him.

But still, you have these dreams. The one where you send it off by email, the agent gets it and happens to be between meetings or something, with nothing better to do, so he reads the first page or two of your book. He's hooked. He reads more. He cancels his afternoon meeting. He calls you raving, says he knows just who to send this to, with no changes. He calls the next day to tell you that between the book, the sequels and the movie rights, you're rich.

Nice dream. The thing about dreams is, they're great, a lot of fun, and they could come true. But don't waste a lot of time counting on them. Get back to work. That's something concrete.

You either trust your agent or you don't. I do. He's taking care of business, and when it's my turn, I'll be ready. And I'll having something exciting to add to his list.

I'm Not Worthy

I'm 15 pages into Will Grayson Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan and all I can think is, "What made me think I can write?"

David Green I know. I've read a couple of his books and boy, he knows how to write today's kids. Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines are both great YA novels, the kind of book where you feel like you know these kids. If you are that age you want to be those kids, or hang out with them. I'm not familiar with Levithan, but I intend to remedy that in the coming weeks.

My son Max loves Green's work, has read everything by him in the library.

And now, 15 pages into Will Grayson Will Grayson, I suddenly see in a painful flash exactly why I was never able to make headway with my book, The Bones in the Closet. I have a great premise and some really good characters, but that's what they are, characters. The people in Green's books (and probably Levithan's although I don't know yet) are real people. And they write with an abandon I haven't mastered yet, a freedom I frankly am a little intimidated by.

I tell myself, "Well, yeah, but can they write pirate stories?" Because I'm still convinced Scurvy Dogs! is a good book, the one that's going to kick down the door of the publishing world. So I have that over them.

But if I'm going to make a story out of the really good premise for Bones, I've got a lot of work to do.

I've got to raise my game. Because I can write, but I'll have to write better.

Value Given, Value Received

I went to my first critiques meeting of the library fiction writing group Monday, and I was nervous.

Not about my work. I had submitted the first chapter of Scurvy Dogs! and I was confident in it. I'm just finishing up my third revision, pretty much a total rewrite, but the first chapter has hardly changed at all since I first scribbled down the idea in my notebook. I've tweaked a word here and there, but mostly it's exactly as I read it to the kids in Tori's class two years ago.

What I was nervous about was critiquing other's work. First and formost, I didn't want to come off as a know-it-all or an arrogant jerk. I can talk a great deal, I know that, and not everything that was submitted was, shall we say, particularly great. And I'm one of the new guys – They don't know me, and I don't know them. I haven't been there in the past and don't know the drill.

In the end, I decided not to worry about sharpshooting the grammar or spelling. I would focus on the shape of the story, whether it worked for me as a reader and what I thought the author could do to sharpen it.

That's the key, something I learned years ago when I was directing at Albany Civic Theater. It's one thing to say, "That's not good." But that's no help. What's helpful is finding a way to tell them why something doesn't work as well as it should and what they could do to solve the problem. Criticism that doesn't give the recipient something he can act on is just being an asshole.

The other thing I kept in mind was the old maxim that if you're going to say something negative, you have to find five positives to go along with it. Everytime I offered a comment, I made a point of starting with, "I really liked – " that character, or the idea of a story on choices and consequences, or the tone or a particular phrase.

Anyway, it seemed to go pretty well, even though I talked too much. The group moderator would announce the next piece to critique and say, "Anyone have any comments?" And there'd be this silence, and then me or another new guy, also named John, would start. And the discussions were good and people really seemed pleased with the attention we as a group were giving their work. One woman said, "Gosh, you guys are nice. I expected to get ripped up." Apparently some groups are all about ego. This really was about seeing the work with fresh eyes and trying to help.

My chapter was well received, and there were a few helpful suggestions, tweaks, that will make it stronger. Of course no one is obligated to take a piece of advice, but why would you not consider it? If a reader doesn't get what you're doing, no matter how much you like a phrase or thought, obviously that reader wasn't with you. Look at it more closely.

I was particularly pleased when the other John mentioned my use of strong verbs, and likened the two young characters to Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn! The verbs were thanks to Steve Swinburne, and the Tom and Huck – I always try to come up with a five-word pitch for my stories, and my pitch for Scurvy Dogs! is, "Tom and Huck Fight Pirates." So apparently I hit that dead on!

Afterwards, the other John and I happened to go out the door at the same time as two other longtime members of the group. One of them commented, "Wow. You guys give really good critiques." The next day I got an email from the coordinator who said he had almost disbanded the group because no one ever talked during critiques, but that was one of the better discussions he could recall.

So it felt like there was some value given and value returned. I'll definitely comb through that first chapter one more time.

Scurvy Dogs! Update – Monday went well, almost too well. 2,836 words. Unfortunately, that was all one chapter, and I get nervous when my chapters approach 2,000. So the first thing Tuesday, I knocked out 258 – why have them discuss the escape plan if they never actually try to escape? – and, after jiggling to make it all fit, had a more readable 2,597 for Monday's work.

Tuesday I was exhausted, slept until almost noon. Then banged out 1,887 words. Didn't quite finish the chapter because work intervened late in the day. But it's right there.

Then I wrote a thousand word story for the Source and a half dozen crime briefs and called it a night.

I've got the Scurvy Dogs within 200 words of the chapter end, when they find their way out of the tunnel. Then the showdown, the second showdown and the last showdown – you might call it a series of running showdowns. Then wrap it up with the truth about the squire.The story stands at 52,228 words, and I'm right on track.