Upcoming Webinar and Class

SCBWI Montana invites everyone to participate in their upcoming webinar with author and writing teacher, Darcy Pattison. Darcy has helped whip many an SCBWI WWA writer's manuscripts into shape at past events (Novel Metamorphosis FTW!), so we're excited about another opportunity to learn with her. Learn to see the overall structure of your novel with simple tools. Darcy will help confirm that your major plot points fall in the right places, and events lead to a dramatic climax. A single chapter is easy to write, but to make a novel work, sequence and events are crucial for the reader to stay engaged. Sign up and learn simple exercises to help see your novel from a drone's eye view.

Darcy Pattison

Webinar: A Drone’s-Eye-View of Your Manuscript

By Darcy Pattison

Thursday, May 11, 2017, 5:00 p.m. PST

$15

Learn to see the overall structure of your novel with simple tools. Author and writing teacher Darcy Pattison helps you confirm that the major plot points fall in the right places and events lead to a dramatic climax. A single chapter is easy to write. But to make a novel work, you must sequence the chapters in the right order and with the right events to make readers refuse to put the book down. Come and learn simple exercises to help you see your novel from a drone's eye view.

For more information and to register, click here.

Probably not Al.

And Al Rubeck will be giving a two-part class, May 9th and 16th, at Green River College on writing for children. Find registration information here. Al Rubeck has been published in Teen, Nuthouse, Highlights, and Jack and Jill magazines.

Novel workshop at Highlights Foundation this summer

Darcy Pattison has taught her Novel Revision retreat locally, and thought we might be interested in her Master Class in Novel Writing that she's teaching at Highlights Foundation this summer.

Writing teacher Darcy Pattison will be teaching a Master Class in Novel Writing at the Highlights Foundation on June 14-16, 2016.

Pattison says, “In every craft, the top artists say that they are constantly learning new things, even after they’ve achieved a level of success. Yet in writing, it seems we find fewer ways to do this than in other crafts. I want to challenge successful writers to try something different, to see a technique a different way, to stretch their craft, to go home excited and hopeful that they can at last try the novel they scares them silly, scares them because they worry that they can’t do the story justice.”

More on what Darcy Pattison says about the retreat here:

http://eepurl.com/bXfWbH

The retreat will be held at the Highlights Foundation retreat center outside Honesdale, PA. Prices include workshops, housing, food, and transportation to and from local airports. Learn more here: http://www.highlightsfoundation.org/workshops/master-class-in-novel-writing-2016/

Highlights master class info

Great information, passed along by Joni Sensel:

Darcy Pattison is going to be teaching a Master Class in Novel Writing next summer at Highlights Foundation. In order to attend, writers must be published or have attended one of my novel revision classes. For this first time, the topics are plot and point of view. I'm just contacting some people from previous retreats to start letting them know because the class is limited to only 8 people. Please pass along the info as you like.



Thanks!
Darcy

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Register to revise

It may be in the future, but there are ONLY THREE SPACES LEFT in Darcy Pattison's Novel Revision Retreat, which takes place June 6-8, 2014, in Tacoma. Darcy is the author of Novel Metamorphosis, and has been a teacher at our own WWA retreat not once, but twice.

For information on the retreat, which comes highly recommended by our own Joni Sensel (who attended in the past), click here. For the full details, also click this link. It may only be January, but sometimes planning ahead can be a good thing. With a teacher like Darcy, it can be a very, very good thing!

The Bison v. Woman Skating Contest

Check out Darcy Pattison's new book trailer for PRARIE STORMS, a nonfiction picture book about how animals survive the storms on the prairies.

This new video is an example of a YouTube Aesthetic Book Trailer, an informal, humorous video that only addresses the content of the book tangentially, but nevertheless, creates interest. The humor is meant to be shared! So please send your friends to see it.

Darcy will be speaking at the 13th Annual Winter SCBWI Conference in New York City on January 27 at the preconference Marketing Intensive on the topic of book trailers. Join her in a discussion of appropriate aesthetics for your book trailer and many more practical tips.

How to Make a Book Trailer

A great post on Darcy Pattison's blog Fiction Notes. It's about how to create a book trailer and also celebrates the second launch of WRITING YOUNG ADULT FICTION FOR DUMMIES. A great link to check out. Thanks to Laurie for sending the link!!

How you can improve your characters' epiphanies

Darcy Pattison has a longish post on the art of the epiphany--that moment in a story where your character reveals something vital. Here's the top:
 

“And then, it suddenly dawned on her.”

That phrase is the ultimate cliche for a character epiphany. The term epiphany was originally a religious term referring to the physical appearance of a deity. In fiction, it’s the point at which truth appears before a character; the character learns or understands something.

Elaine Marie Alphin, author of Creating Characters Kids Will Love (Writer’s Digest) and several novels, says, “The epiphany is the moment of self-realization; it’s when the character’s change and growth hits him or her, even if the character doesn’t fully understand it.”

And here's the rest.

9 traits of sympathetic characters

Darcy Pattison has a series up about sympathetic characters (and good villains). Here's the first part of the one on what makes characters sympathetic--something you need to do to keep readers engaged:

Help Your Readers Identify with Your Characters. We tend to identify with characters who are like us in some way. They play certain roles in a family, do certain types of work, are concerned about things we are concerned about. In my story, G is a big brother who is forced to take care of his little sisters, and does it well, almost heroically well. He’s making sacrifices to do this, which helps also. The problem is that G must leave his sisters behind when he goes on a quest. So, I’ve got to work hard after that to keep him sympathetic.

1. Physical Descriptions. We like beautiful people. Graceful. Striking. Attractive. The problem here is not to over do it and not to rely on it.
2. Altruism. Orson Scott Card, in his classic Characters and Viewpoint, describes three levels of altruism, or the unselfish concern for the welfare of others. (BTW, did you know that Card has a new book out in the Ender series, Ender in Exile? If you’re an Ender fan, you gotta read it!)
   • Victim: A character who is the victim of suffering (jeopardy, pain, evil) will evoke sympathy, but also pity for his/her weakness and a touch of contempt for allowing him/herself to become a victim.

Here's the rest.

How to mock up a picture book

If you've taken a class with Darcy Pattison, you know she gives great advice. The author of 19 GIRLS AND ME and two picture books about Oliver K. Woodman explains here why--and how--to make a dummy.

Why Make a Dummy?

Picture books combine text and words in a short 32 page book. The structure is so unusual, that you need a dummy to refine and polish your text. It can tell you which section of text is too long, let you look at pacing of the story across the pages, help you spot needless repetitions and much more.

How to Make a Dummy

* Take 16 sheets of typing paper and staple along one side. You may use either a portrait or a landscape orientation, your choice. Some like cutting the paper in half and using 8.5″ x 6.5″, in a landscape orientation. The late Sue Alexander recommended using brightly colored typing paper to simulate art and text better.
* Number the pages in the bottom corners, if you wish. It will begin with a single right-hand page as page 1, and end with a single left-hand page as page 32.
* Now, get out the scissors! Cut and tape your text into the dummy. Put the title on page 1, but leave pages 2-3 blank, as these are usually front matter, such as copyright page, half title page, or dedication. Now, you have a choice: you can start your text on page 4, for a double page spread, or just on the right-hand page 5. After that, the text should lay out across the full 32 pages.

If you have an author’s note or other back matter (glossary, sources, etc, such as for a non-fiction story), you’ll need to reserve a couple pages for that at the end.

Read the rest.

Note: I do this with picture books, too, although I use PowerPoint to create a slide show. It's not safe at my house to take out scissors and glue--it always causes an eruption of children's craft projects. The PowerPoint method works best if you envision two-page spreads for your text.

More on narrative arcs

Darcy Pattison wrote a second post on how narrative arcs work in picture books. Understanding this is essential if you want to tell a story in this incredibly compressed format:

Very simple picture books still have a narrative arc, even though the word count is extremely small. Yesterday, we looked at an example of a great simple narrative in My Friend, Rabbit. Today, here’s a look at a narrative arc in 80 words (with the help of some illustrations), as it appears in A Splendid Friend, Indeed by Suzanne Bloom. This book was named a Theodor Seuss Geisel Beginning Reader Award Honor Book in 2006.

Narrative Arc in 32 pages, 98 words

Here’s a great example of a narrative arc in only 98 words.
p. 1 Title
2-3 copyright/dedication
4-5 Characters established: Polar Bear and Goose
6-7 1st repetition: Goose wants to be part of what Bear is doing: he is attempting to be a friend.
8-9 Bear says he likes to read.
10-11 Goose attempts friendship by taking over the book.
12-13 2nd repetition: Goose wants to be part of what Bear is doing.
14-15 Bear says he likes to write.
16-17 Goose friendship by saying he likes writing, too.
18-19 3rd repetition: Goose wants to be part of what Bear is doing.
20-21 Goose decides to take it’s own action – get a snack
22-23 Goose brings back a snack
24-25 Goose has a note for Bear
26-27 Goose’s note says Bear is “my splendid friend.”
28-29 Touched, Bear says I like you, too.
30-31 Bear & Goose hug: they are splendid friends.
32 Friends share a snack

Read the rest.

Darcy Pattison analyzes narrative arcs

This comes from her blog:

Very simple picture books still have a narrative arc, even though the word count is extremely small. Here’s a look at a narrative arc in 80 words (with the help of some illustrations), as it appears in My Friend, Rabbit, by Eric Rohmann, winner of the 2003 Caldecott Award for Best Illustrations in a children’s book for the year.
Narrative Arc in 32 pages, 80 words

Here’s a great example of a narrative arc in only 80 words.

rabbit1st person POV from Mouse’s POV, talking about his friend
p 1. Title page
2–3 Introduce Mouse and Rabbit
4-5 Problem establish: Rabbit always gets into trouble
6-7 Rabbit has confidence he can get out of trouble (Characterization_
8-9 Rabbit’s idea begins to unfold (pulling a large beast onto page)
10-11 Elephant is in place
12-13 Rhino pushed forward
14-15 We now see Rhino on Top of Elephant, while Rabbit brings in Hippo.
(start to understand that he’s stacking animals to reach the plane stuck in a tree)
16-17 More animals to stack up, each smaller than the previous
18-19 The stack has failed. But Rabbit is still confident and has a final idea
20-21 Rabbit gets Mouse involved in the idea.
It succeeds – mouse reaches the plane! But there’s also disaster . . .
22-23 . . . and the disaster is going to be bad because everyone is running out of the way. . .
24-25 . . . as animals –big and small–fall everywhere.
26-27 Animals are all mad at Rabbit
28-29 Mouse swoops in with the plane to rescue Rabbit (Rabbit’s friendship–because he means well–endears him to Mouse.)
30-31 Rabbit accidently covers Mouse’s eyes, so he can’t see to fly. . .
32 And they are stuck in the tree again, but this time, they are in the plane and Rabbit confidently says, I have an idea.

Now read the analysis.

3 keys to a successful school visit

Veteran school visitor Darcy Pattison has good advice today on her blog: communicate, prepare the school, and prepare yourself. To get all the details, visit her blog.

Being positive about rejection

Darcy Pattison's blog has a bit today from an ebook called Nail Your Novel (just in time for NaNoWriMo). It's about how to read the rejections you get from editors.

I loved this line:

Persistence. The publishing world is full of tales of how our biggest literary stars just plugged away until they got their break. Persistence is vital. But persist intelligently.

Editors and agents do actually read each manuscript they’re sent – although goodness knows how as every day only contains 24 hours. Rejections are not effectively a lottery ticket that shows your numbers that didn’t come up. They tell you how you can significantly improve your odds.

Be positive about rejection – but don’t be idiotically so.

Read the rest.

Darcy Pattison's retreat wrapup

Darcy Pattision writes: "At the AR-SCBWI fall retreat this weekend, Alexandra Penfold, Associate Editor of S&S took us through a discussion of first pages of our novel mss. She commented on the pages, then opened the discussion for other comments or questions. Here are some observations on the discussions (Note: these should in no way be construed as Penfold’s opinions, but only my observations of the discussions):

- So much from so few words. The first pages of a novel do encapsulate so much of the story and are extremely important to establish setting, character, pace, audience, tone, voice and more.

- Audience. Sometimes, the discussion centered on the intended audience. This means we didn’t even discuss much about the actual writing except what it evoked in terms of audience. Age level (picture book, early reader, early chapter, tween, middle grade, YA or teen) and trade v. education market were the main focuses. From just a few sentences, it was possible to get a handle on the authors intentions for these two crucial things.

Read the rest.

What makes a great book trailer?

Darcy Pattison's blog had a post awhile back about the makings of an effective book trailer, featuring the thoughts of Lisa Gottlieb. She boiled a good trailer down into six words: Economic Focused Editing; Authentic Emotional Entertainment.

To learn more,

visit Darcy's site.

Word-of-mouth marketing

Darcy Pattison had such a great post on word-of-mouth marketing that I'm reprinting a good chunk of it below. Do check out her blog, FictionNotes, for the whole thing (and a lot more excellent stuff about writing and revising).

But first, a bit of my own soapbox. Word-of-mouth marketing is something we can--and should--do for each other. Go to our colleagues' signings. Read their books. Talk about them with other people. This is not only a great way to further your education in the craft and current market, it will also introduce you to people who will do the same for you when your day comes.

The brilliant editor-turned-agent Michael Stearns mentioned at the SCBWI-LA conference in '08 that a picture book could hit the bottom of NYT bestseller list by selling a few hundred copies in a week. In other words, our chapter could put members on the bestseller list if we all bought copies in the same week from reporting stores. (Secret Garden Books in Ballard is working on becoming one; Elliott Bay is--do people know others?)

Think about this for a moment. We are a large and powerful chapter--one of the largest in the world. We can make each other bestsellers. That's sort of exciting to think about, and even more exciting to bring about. It's not the only measure of success, but I don't think there's anyone who'd sneeze at it, either.

Without further ado, Darcy's post:

A great source of information about kids and reading is the Consider this Scholastic study, the 2008 Kids and Family Reading Study (Download the entire pdf or watch a video clip. )

Word of Mouth: Talk to kids!
The Scholastic study on Kids and Reading says:

• Kids overwhelmingly (89%) say “My favorite books are the ones I picked out myself.”
  
• Sixty-eight percent of kids say they love or like reading books for fun a lot (72% of girls/ 63% of boys).
  
• Half of all kids say there aren’t enough really good books for boys/girls their age.

What? Not enough really good books? Surely that’s partly because no one has told them about a special book – and you’re just the one to do that.

Word of Mouth: Talk to parents!
The Scholastic study also says that, “Parents are a key source of book suggestions for their children, but nearly half of all parents say they have a hard time finding information about books their child would enjoy reading, and especially parents of teens age 15-17 (62%).”
Wow! What an opportunity!

Word of Mouth: Talk to booksellers, librarians, teachers, or other professionals!
It’s called industry buzz. The more professionals talk about a book, the more it gets talked about and has a chance to break out into the general public.

Cutting 10 to 20 percent

Darcy Pattison offers four ways to slim down your novel: study the beats, cut scenes, combine scenes and use brisk prose. For the whole scoop, visit her blog.

Shakespeare: a picture book author's best friend?

Here's a classic Darcy Pattison post that can be really useful for picture book structuring:

Sonnets and Picture Books
I think you can compare picture book structure to the structure of poetry. For example, sonnets have 14 lines, picture books can have 14 double-page spreads. So, taking a sonnet as an example of structure, you can imitate one of these sonnet structures.

1.The Italian Sonnet consists of an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines)

Octave:
- Spreads 1-4 Set up character
- Spreads 5-8 Problem stated
Sestet:
- Spreads 9-11 Character tries to solve the problem.
- Spreads 12-14 The payoff

Read the rest of the post.

Character paradoxes by Darcy Pattison

Darcy's blog has this interesting post:

Charlotte was Blood-Thirsty: Character Paradoxes
Charlotte, from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, is remembered as a character of great warmth for her friendship with the unlikely pig, Wilbur. Poor Wilbur, once the runt of the litter and saved only by the whim of a girl, is fattened up and ready for slaughter. (This is a story set on a working farm and, as such, it’s not a story of cruelty, but of practicality.) Only the spelling abilities of Charlotte save him.

Read the rest and see how you can work paradoxes into your characters.