Why your story might need a Gandalf or an Obi-Wan – Adding in a Sage Character

There is quite a bit of discussion among writers about the role of parents in middle grade fiction, but not so much about the presence of other adults. We know that readers generally want the main characters to drive the action, but sometimes trying to avoid letting your characters have help from adults can make the story fall flat.

I realized this when my daughter and I were listening to an audio version of a recent middle grade book.  I don’t want to mention the book title, because overall the story was well-written and very imaginative. However, I heard the dreaded “I don’t get it” several times from my daughter as we were listening.  She’s a smart girl (says her completely unbiased mother), and it bothered me she wasn’t understanding things. One chapter in particular stumped her. It was a discussion between two adults about a political situation with some very Machiavellian undertones. Now kids early on understand good and evil, and good guys and bad guys, but not necessarily the subtle maneuverings of crafty politicians. I’m an avid follower of political news and I often can’t figure out the actions of real life politicians!

As a writer I tend to analyze other people’s stories to figure out what isn’t working and how it could be fixed. I realized this particular story would have worked better if there had been an Obi-Wan in it, a knowledgeable elder who could have explained the world to the main character, and therefore explained it to the reader as well. There’s a long tradition in fiction of the Sage character. Joseph Campbell describes the wise old man or old woman, the Mentor, as appearing throughout history in storytelling, drama, and mythology.

A recent middle grade book I very much enjoyed that did have a Sage character is the historical The CROWFIELD CURSE by Pat Walsh. The story is set in a medieval abbey, and Brother Snail is the Obi-wan character, who explains some past events to the main character, Will, a boy who lives at the abbey.  I think these sorts of characters are useful in all kinds of books, but particularly in historicals and fantasies, where there may be complicated backstory that needs explanation.

And there’s another good reason to add in some important characters who aren't kids – it can add in a new voice that breaks up the sameness of kid voices. I added in an elderly actor named Cecil to WOLF STORM. He’s not much of a sage, but getting in a different perspective added in more layers to the story, and while Cecil doesn’t know how to do anything practical, he can at least quote Shakespeare and make hot chocolate.

Dumbledore in Harry Potter is a mentor character, in a way, until we discover at the very end of the series he was using Harry for his own purposes. Can you think of any other Sages in middle grade books?

~ Dee Garretson

Winner of the WOLF STORM wolf pack of a giveaway and a surprise 2nd place!

Sorry I missed posting this on Tuesday, but life interferred that day. The winner of the wolf pack giveaway is Nicole Zoltack. Congratulations! I'll be contacting you for an address to mail all the prizes. The winner was selected from my handy dandy prize bucket by my daughter, with attempted help from Collette the kitten.

And because I was trying to do too many things at once, and therefore ordered two of the books a second time after I forgot I already ordered them, my daughter drew a name for a second place winner. It's Mrs. Duff's daughter, who will receive the extra copies of JULIE OF THE WOLVES, WOLVES OF THE BEYOND,  and WOLF STORM, of course. Have I ever mentioned I'm very bad at multitasking?

I hope both winners enjoy!

~ Dee Garretosn

Character Inspiration and a WOLF STORM wolf pack of a giveaway

To celebrate the release of WOLF STORM, and because I think wolves are awesome, I’m giving away a giant wolf pack of books and other wolf-related items. A description of it all is near the bottom of this post.

WOLF STORM is about three kid actors involved in the filming of a space opera-type science fiction movie. They are on location in the mountains of Eastern Europe in wintertime, and since the book is an adventure, things begin to go wrong, very wrong.   There are both trained wolves in the story-I had fun researching the trained wolves they used in filming the Narnia movies-and regular wild wolves. The native wolves are extremely unhappy about the presence of strange canines into their territory.  There is also a pug named Mr. Snuggums who provides a little comic relief. Michael, if you are reading this, maybe you can think of one of the comparisons from the discussion in your last post.

Here's the book trailer:

I thought this would be a good post to talk about inspirations for characters, because the main character in this story was inspired by a specific person. I’ve never wanted to write a character that was like me. I’ve lived so long with me,  I’m bored with my personality. I want to write about other types of personalities.  I think most writers do because it’s fun to dream up characters we aren’t.  When I proposed the idea of the book, I knew I wanted to write a story involving movie-making, because I love movies, especially adventure movies. Here was the problem-I have never had a desire to act, don’t know how to act, and would be a terrible actor.

So, given my lack of knowledge of the sort of personality I wanted to write, I had to find a way to get inside the head of that sort of person. My nephew Matt was the perfect choice.  I tried to find a photo of him at fourteen, the same age as my main character, but since I couldn't, this one works. This kitten supposedly followed him home (actually I think he carried it wrapped in a sweatshirt so it wouldn't escape). He told his parents they had to keep the kitten because it would be a good influence at keeping him and sister from "hanging out on street corners and smoking cigarettes." Actual Matt words. They kept the cat.

Anyway, Matt was very talented at imitating people, including teachers behind their backs, who occasionally caught him at it. He was famous in our family for being able to imitate E.T., and he acted in both community and high school theater productions. All in all, he became the model for Stefan. I needed a kid character from regular small town U.S. suddenly thrown into what he thinks will be a dream situation, only to find it turns into something very different. Matt became the go-to person in my head when I wanted to write Stefan’s reactions to things. Of course, like any character, the MC is not identical to the inspiration. His family is totally different from our own. I don’t have pink hair like Stefan’s aunt, for instance.

Matt is now a responsible adult with an adorable son of his own, though I suspect he still does imitations from time to time.

To enter into the giveaway, just comment after this post. If you would like more than one entry, there are ways to increase your chances. To get an extra entry, tweet a link to this, or post a link on Facebook or on your blog and let me know about it here in the comments. If you do both, you’ll get an extra entry for each. Here's a shortened link you can use: http://bit.ly/qbwXeQ If any bloggers out there would like to do a giveaway of a hardcover of WOLF STORM later in September, I’ll have a few more author copies in a few weeks to do that. Just email me at deegarretson at gmail.com

The giveaway includes:

WOLF STORM by Dee Garretson (signed hardcover)

SECRETS JOURNEYS OF JACK LONDON Christopher Golden & Tim Lebron (hardcover-not in picture)

THE BOY WHO HOWLED Tim Power (hardcover)

LONE WOLF Kathryn Lasky, book 1 Wolves of the Beyond (paperback)

SHADOW WOLF Kathryn Lasky, book 2 Wolves of the Beyond (hardcover)

THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE by Joan Aiken (paperback)

JULIE OF THE WOLVES by Jean Craighead George (paperback)

TO BE A WOLF by Carol Amato (paperback)

A 2012 Wolves Calendar

A stuffed animal Wolf

4 small wolf figures to decorate a desk

Sorry, this is only open to U.S. residents. Leave a comment up until 8:00 P.M. E.T., Monday, September 12^th. The winner will be announced on Tuesday, September 13^th.

Overcoming Writer’s Block – Making the Word Count

I hear rumors that some people do not ever suffer from writer’s block. I also hear rumors that some people actually don’t like chocolate. Hah! For those of us who do battle writer’s block, frequently or infrequently, I’d like to share some ideas. One of the hardest parts of writing and attempting to get published is the mind game involved, the game of winning over the gremlins in your brain who sow doubt at every step.

 When someone first starts writing, a common cause of writer’s block can be the fear that you will fail or that what you write will be terrible. The mind tricks you into thinking it’s better not to try because you are setting yourself up for a downfall. How do you overcome that? I found it was not to have a goal to write a polished, worthy-to-be-published manuscript. Too much pressure! I just had a goal to finish something, no matter how bad it turned out. What a great feeling it was the very first time I typed ‘the end’. If you make that your goal, you can remind yourself no one ever has to read it and that might ease some of the fear. And once the first is done, then you can think about revising it, or move on to something else, but having finished will silence a few of those vicious gremlins.

 So once you have that goal to just finish, whether it’s your first or your tenth, how do you actually manage to get words down? I have several different methods. If I’m really struggling, I just write dialogue, because that’s the easiest part of the story for me to imagine. Sometimes I’ll switch to writing a few paragraphs describing the setting, even though I know I won’t use most of it in the final story. Other times I’ll just write a laundry list of the action, more like stage directions. The important part for me is to actually get real words on the screen, because I can’t revise without anything to work with.

 Another thing I do is to set realistic goals and force myself to keep them, by not allowing myself to do anything else until I'm done. I don’t write quickly, so a maximum word count goal for me is one thousand words a day. On days when I know I will have very little time to make a goal, I lower the word count, sometimes down to as little as 250 words. Once I start writing, I often go beyond that, but the feeling of meeting one goal helps me go back to it the next day. Those 250 words may just be a description of what a character is wearing, or what they like to eat, or a bit of backstory. I don’t care. They are words.

Some people swear by a program called Write or Die. This is a much more drastic method to force yourself to write. As I understand it, you basically have to keep writing without pauses or else your work will disappear. That’s too much pressure for me and doesn’t fit the way I write, but every person has to find their own method. Anyone else have tips to share?
~ Dee Garretson

Writing Middle Grade - Tapping into Childhood Fears of a Shoe Wolf. EEK!

Imagine a partly open closet door in a dark room and a child huddled under the covers watching that door to see if it creaks open. In the shadows it’s hard to tell if it has moved a fraction. Is there a soft noise from inside? Who or what could be in there? Monsters? Ghosts? Aliens? How about a furry shoe, a living wolf shoe from some twist on Little Red Riding Hood? That was what kept me awake at night, that and the belief there was always a gorilla outside my window as soon as it got dark.

Now I was a fairly smart kid and I knew wolves couldn’t be transformed into shoes. I also knew gorillas didn’t roam free in my small Iowa town, but that didn’t stop me from the horrors of imagination. On nights when my imagination raced out of control, I feared the gorilla was actually in my room under my bed. I also knew as soon as I stretched my legs out, it would reach out from the end and grab me, so I would lay there all scrunched up, determined to thwart the creature one more night.

I have no idea where these fears came from, except my mother did have a lot of shoes, but no furry ones beyond a pair of faux cheetah pelt high heels. (Note-I am not my mother’s daughter. I will never own faux cheetah pelt high heels.)As an adult, I have the whole array of normal adult fears of worrying about loved ones and illnesses and finances, but nothing as heart-pounding as those irrational childhood terrors.

Good thing the memories of those are there though, because writing for middle grade means bringing up as many memories as you can, not for the specific incidents, but for the feelings that came with them. In my books, I’ve never been trapped by a forest fire like the President’s son in Wildfire Run or caught in a blizzard like the actors in Wolf Storm, but I can call up the fear of disaster looming over them by remembering how I felt in less life-threatening disasters of my own.

So I’m curious, what fears or memories could you or do you use for writing? And how do you call them up? If I want to remember mine, I absolutely have to be away from people, away from all the chores of everyday life and away from the internet, as much as I love it. Sometimes I even do something I’m afraid of now to bring back the memories of those sorts of fear. After my children were born, I developed a fear of heights, so if I want to call up terror, I go out on a high place and look down. That does it. I’m also afraid of giant squid, though that’s a little harder to experience them first hand. With those giant creepy eyes they have, I don’t even have to run into a squid to get into that fear. It’s heart-pounding just to think about them.

Here’s your chance to confess and to help other writers realize the weird range of kid fear. Spill your childhood terrors!

~ Dee Garretson

Harry Potter and the Rathead Hat – Judging a Book by the Cover

Building on Tim Power’s post about book covers and HARRIET THE SPY (http://bit.ly/aBk0qP ), I decided to do a post of my own because I’m very excited about the cover of my next book, WOLF STORM. What a great job it would be to design covers! I have to admit I’m guilty of judging a book by its cover when I’m browsing in a bookstore. Because I'm so fascinated by covers, I’m been doing school talks on this topic – trying to convince middle graders they shouldn’t do what I do. There is an incredible website, Teachervision, I’ve used as a resource, one that has put together many of the Harry Potter covers from countries around the world as part of a lesson plan. I was amazed to see how different the same book is portrayed in other countries. The link to the site is here: http://www.teachervision.fen.com/harry-potter/lesson-plan/2692.html, but I wanted to post some of the more interesting covers of the first Harry Potter book, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE.

Here’s the one familiar to U.S. readers:

Here’s the original British cover:

When I ask the students if they would have picked up the book without knowing what it was about, just by looking at the British cover, the overwhelming majority say no. I find it interesting that there is no real indication from the cover that there is anything about magic in the book.
This one from Italy is, shall we say, unusual:

I don’t know why Harry is wearing a rathead hat, nor why there is a giant rat wearing a bandana lounging next to him.

Students listening to my talks are largely not fans of the French cover either:

My question- Why does Hermione have her eyes closes on this cover?

Of all the covers I show students, the German one comes in second in popularity:

I would have loved to have been in on the cover meetings in all these countries to hear the reasoning behind why they chose what they did!
After doing these talks, I’m trying to be a bit better about my own book choices. Now that I know how much authors worry about their covers, I’ve vowed to give books a second look, even if the cover doesn’t appeal to me. I can say I am completely in love with my new cover and I’m thinking I need to send a big box of chocolates to the artist:
 
 

Sometimes filming a movie can go very wrong….and turn all too real.

 

WOLF STORM – Coming 9/01/2011 from HarperCollins