Save the Cat! Writes a Young Adult Novel - Character

 I've been listening to the audio version of Save the Cat! Writes a Young Adult Novel - even though I don't write for young adults (yet).  I'm intrigued by the "beat" organization... very similar to what I learned in my beloved The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler, which itself is drawn from the works of mythologist Joseph Campbell.

I'm going to try to work on mapping out my story in this blog... just getting the skeleton of the story down.

WORKING TITLE:  I'm Not a Good Dog

Main Character: Lucky, a Cattle Dog/Corgi/who knows what mix.  He's a pup with issues.

PROBLEM:  Lucky's flaw is that he doesn't see the good things right in front of him... his adoptive owner, for example.  He's fixated on being a Bad Dog so they will send him back to Tales and Tails Rescue.  When that doesn't work, he runs away from his adoptive home.

WANT:  Lucky wants to live with his rescuers, not find a home for himself.  Susan and Tom rescued Lucky and his mom after they were abandoned by their previous owner; Lucky loves living at the rescue, and doesn't want to leave.  When he gets adopted, all he wants is to go back.

NEED:  Lucky needs to learn that home is where you are loved for being who you are... where you have a home, no matter how "good" or "bad" you are.

Lucky is physically based on my own pup, Loki... and no, the name is not a one-off.  Lucky gets his name because he was LUCKY to be rescued and wasn't in as bad of shape as his mom.

The Man Who Invented Christmas

 

I don't generally have much use for films made for adults.

Given my nature and my profession, both as a teacher and as a writer of children's books, my preference is almost always for films aimed at families or children.  Entertainment aimed at adults, I often find, is too grim or too disturbing, too vulgar or too focused on romance and relationships.  I just don't enjoy it, regardless of what the critics say.   Oh, sure, I'll go to almost any superhero movie - and fantasies are a safe bet for me, too, but realistic cinema?  Historical?  Biopics?  No thank you.

While visiting my parents for a few days, my son requested a movie night.  He's very congizant of what I like and I don't like, and humors me - at 15, he's got a much wider range of acceptable cinematic entertainment than his mother.  He suggested an old favorite of both of ours - The Princess Bride - but when that was unavailable, we started scrolling through other potential options.

Our wants, as mother and son, were fairly simple - something lighthearted, with a happy ending.  After watching about half a dozen trailers, with reactions ranging from a "meh" from my son to an "I don't think so" from me, we reached the trailer for The Man Who Invented Christmas.  I can't say we leapt with joy at seeing it... but we both agreed that it didn't look half bad, and my parents agreed.  

I loved it.

Now, granted, I know a bit about Charles Dickens from my teaching experience... I've read short biographies of the man, and while I did think the actor (cleanshaven - didn't Dickens have a moustache and beard?) looked rather young for the Dickens I pictured, I was pleased with the casting.  The acting was wonderful, the script had just the right combination of laughs and serious notes, and as an exploration of a writer's process of creation, I found it spot on.

In fact, I loved that aspect of the film above all others.  The notion of a character coming to life and interacting with its creator tickled me silly, since the best characters do just that with their readers.  But yes, they also do that with their creators... and I howled with laughter at the point in the film where Dickens wailed protest to a friend that his characters were refusing to do what he wanted them to.  I've been there myself!  I loved the idea that the characters were physically following their writer around... at one point, he peeked out a window and - hello, dearie! - the characters assembled on the street corner below waved cheerfully up at him.  Scrooge, the old reprobate, even had the temerity to inform Dickens that he felt the book was too one-sided, and had prepared notes to give his own perspective to the story!  I'm not sure my family understood why I was giggling so much, but in many ways, this is a writer's movie, and one that nobody but a writer could truly appreciate.

If you're a reader or a writer, and you're looking for a pleasant way to pass a couple of hours on a winter's night... I'd strongly recommend The Man Who Invented Christmas.  Even if it isn't the holidays anymore.  It's definitely worth a viewing.

Finding ____ to Write

It's not about finding time to write... at least, not for me.  Because my writing-supporting job is teaching, I have two months of free-and-clear writing time each summer where, if I chose to do so, I could write for full 8 hour days if I chose.

But I don't.

Why?  I don't really know.  Maybe it's the perfectionist in me.  Some people advise to write every day, even if what you're writing is horrible.  I can't stomach that.  Forcing myself to write because "it's time to write" is about as palatable as forcing myself to eat because "it's time to eat."  If I'm not hungry, I don't want to eat.  If the words aren't there, I don't want to write.

So how does one fill in that blank?  Finding that... something... to write?  Finding the spirit to write?  The story to write?  The words to write?  All of those seem reasonable to me.  Without them, writing is bland and colorless.  I wish I knew how other writers, prolific writers, do it - get their ideas, keep the words flowing.  I can't even keep my blog updated, for crying out loud!

So... does this make me less of a writer, knowing this?  I surely hope not.

What Goes Into a Picture Book Manuscript?

I've been working on drafting another picture book, and found myself contemplating all that goes into the piece even before it's ready to be polished and sent looking for a home. Like many others, I once thought - foolishly thought - that writing a picture book was easier than writing a novel.  It's certainly shorter, I'll admit to that freely, but easier?  Not really.

It starts with the matter of scope.  Novelists see things in terms of the Big Picture - sweeping settings, complex and developing characters, conflicts and plot twists and story arcs.  A good picture book can have all of those things, of course, but where a novelist has several thousand words or a few hundred pages to allow their story to take shape, a picture book is for the most part bound to the 32-page format, and an ever-dwindling number of words as the hypothetical attention span of young readers diminishes in bits and bytes.  So, easier?  Not really.  Just shorter, which can be its own obstacle to surmount.

But what goes into a picture book, really?  What thought processes are at work?  Well, for my current work in progress, working title Constellations on Vacation, my mental workings looked something like this.

1.  The Title.
The title came to me fairly easily for this manuscript.  Sometimes a whole slew of drafts goes by before I find a title good enough to pin on the piece, but in this case, the title came first.  I was looking up at the sky, thinking of the constellations I might be able to spot, and the rhyming phrase Constellations on Vacation popped into my head, and suddenly I was off and running.

2.  Which Constellations?
When I decided to google it, I was amazed at the wide variety of constellation characters I'd have to choose from.  There are the classical groupings, of which the twelve zodiac constellations are a part - Leo, Aquarius, Pisces, Cancer, and their ilk.  A good many of these are also human in form - Perseus, Orion, Andromeda, Cassiopeia.  Then there are the more modern shapes, which didn't seem all that useful, for the most part, as they're rather obscure.  The Air Pump and the Microscope might be interesting as a possible Jeopardy question, but I really couldn't see them vacationing much of anywhere.  I opted to go with the classical constellations, and focus on realistic-looking animals and people... Cancer the Crab and Leo the Lion were in, Capricorn the Sea Goat and Sagittarius the Archer centaur were out.

3.  Where Would Constellations Go On Vacation?
At first, the story unfolded in a series of mental "screenshots" - constellations lounging on a beach, exploring the plains of Africa, taking a sight-seeing tour of New York City.  But it needed to go further than that... and it needed refining.  Should I go with a general series of locations - beach, forest, city?  Or should I think specific - the Great Barrier Reef, Muir Woods, New York City?  Should I attempt a mixture of the two?  And should I focus on American locations, or try for a more global view of things?  That last question is still bugging me, though my first draft opted for specific American locations.

4.  Who is the Main Character?
This stymied me for a bit.  A book needs a protagonist, or at least a character to focus on.  In the book The Day the Crayons Quit, the story is told via letters written from the crayons to their erstwhile owner.  I'd already decided that the story would be told through a series of post cards from the constellations on vacation... but who would the post cards be sent to?  And why would that "someone" be interested in those post cards?

5.  What's the Problem Here?
And this question, my bete noir, kept hounding me on the heels of the main character question.  I tend towards sleepy, calm, sweet picture books - "going to sleep" books that progress softly from one scene to the next without much, or any, conflict.  Unfortunately for me, that's not what agents and publishers are looking for.  They WANT conflict.  They want the main character, your protagonist, to struggle with something and eventually achieve that goal.  Gone are the sleepy-time books I once dreamed of writing; it's all about the conflict. 

So... what could be the problem here?  I'd tentatively decided that the protagonist of the book would be the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog.  I wasn't so keen on the name, but dogs are almost universally appealing (pardon the pun), and I thought he would make a decent protagonist.  As for the conflict... what if Canis wants to go on vacation, but can't decide where?  What if he's afraid to leave his spot in the sky?  What if he wants to go EVERYwhere, and just can't decide where to go first?  One of those, I thought, would surely fit.

6.  Formatting the Story
As I already mentioned, I'd decided early on that the story would be a correspondence story... a series of post cards to Canis Major from his starry friends as they vacation on Earth.  I still needed to play with that format, however... Canis would need to respond to the reading of each post card, introducing the conflict (that this wasn't the place he would choose to vacation) and move the action along.  I decided that each post card would be followed by a single sentence, showing Canis Major's thoughts on the location.

7.  Time to Draft!
And this is where I am right now... with my prewriting done, I'm free to draft and revise, draft and revise, draft and revise.  This is also where the 32-page rule and the limited word count come into play; I may need to make a dummy copy of the text on the pages to see how this is going to fit together, page-wise, though strictly speaking, that's the job of the editor and art director.  I've also got to keep that word count in mind.  Right now, two drafts in, I'm running at just over a thousand words, a shade long for the modern picture book.  Some trimming will certainly be in order. 

But drafting, editing, and revising is a topic for another blog post!