Story Craft: You&#8217;ve Got to Play Fair

[1] 2008 study in the journal Nature on children and fairness

[2] 2011 Washington University study on babies and fairness

Story Craft: I Got Rhythm

M.D. Spenser is the author of the popular 36-book Shivers series and a journalist. In his new column, Story Craft, he will help you improve your writing by sharing his decades of knowledge on the craft of creating stories for children. (Learn more about M.D. Spenser here.)

I got rhythm: Getting your sentences right

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman said she could look around the newsroom and tell who the good writers were: They were the ones whose lips were moving.

She was right. Want to write well? Read your stuff out loud. The same holds doubly true for children’s authors. Children want to be able to hear your story in their heads. And the truth is, good writing not only has meaning – it has rhythm.

Read Dr. Seuss. Remember the refrain in “Horton Hears a Who?” “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” You can tap your foot to that. Four beats to the line, like the rest of the book.

What if it read, “A person is still a person, however small he or she may be.” The meaning would stay but the magic would be gone.

Of course, not every book has four beats to the line. Still, consider the opening of “The 13 Clocks,” by James Thurber:

“Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there a lived a cold, aggressive Duke and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold. His hands were as cold as his smile, and almost as cold as his heart.”

It just begs to be read aloud.

Few of us will ever be in Thurber’s league. But we can still pay attention to how our stories sound, just as we pay attention to plot and character. Read your stuff aloud. If a sentence is too much of a mouthful, if it doesn’t roll off the tongue, recast it. Take out the extra words, change it around, break it in two, do what it takes to make it sound good.

If you get the rhythm right, your phrases will ring in kids’ heads long after they finish the book.

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Story Craft – Don’t Talk Down to Kids

eBook children's book author M.D. Spenser

Author and journalist M.D. Spenser

M.D. Spenser is the author of the popular 36-book Shivers series and a journalist. In his new column, Story Craft, he will help you improve your writing by sharing his decades of knowledge on the craft of creating stories for children. (Learn more about M.D. Spenser here.)

Don’t talk down to kids. They can sense it.

When you’re writing for children, your writing needs to be appropriate for the age group you’re targeting. That’s obvious. But avoid condescension. Kids can smell it. And it offends them just as it would you or me.

Ever sat down and held a good conversation with a six-year-old, maybe sitting on stone wall with your legs dangling off? Listen carefully and you’ll hear some sharp observations.

Children are watching. They’re learning. They know stuff.

One of the things they know is the difference between a story and real life. A number of Roald Dahl books, like “Matilda” or “James and the Giant Peach,” begin with the main character being abused or neglected. Of course, the kids win out in the end. But the point is that young readers understand the difference between a good yarn and something that’s actually going to happen to them.

This does call for judgment, both on the part of the author — and maybe even more on the part of the parent or caregiver. As a 17-year-old camp counselor, I once told a cabin full of six-year-olds a ghost story just as they were drifting off to sleep. Next morning, I found myself changing an unfortunate number of bed-sheets.

Nevertheless, kids don’t need to be treated with kid gloves. Too many people think you have to restrict yourself to saying things like “gumpy-wumpy cuddly-wuddly” to avoid any possibility of upsetting the poor little dears.

I think the poor little dears like to be challenged. Toss in vocabulary that might be a bit above their level, as long as the meaning’s clear from the context: “Bethany was disillusioned – things weren’t working out the way she had expected.” Figuring it out makes your readers feel good about themselves — and about your faith in them.

Make the story suspenseful, too, even if there’s just a bit of fear in not knowing how things will turn out in the end.

Remember the conversation on the stone wall with the six-year-old? Listen carefully and you’ll hear something surprisingly sharp. If you reply, “Hey, that’s a good point. I hadn’t thought of that,” you’re going to find you’ve made a friend.

Writers make friends with kids exactly the same way – by showing them respect.

Previous Column: Show Don’t Tell.

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M.D. Spenser’s Story Craft: Show Don’t Tell

Author and journalist M.D. Spenser

Show, don’t tell

This is one of the cardinal rules of good writing for readers of any age, but what does it mean? I remember first hearing it in a writing class when I was a teenager – and not understanding it at all.

But it’s really quite simple.

Think about watching a movie: You never see a subtitle saying, “This person is sad.” Instead, you see a girl with a tear rolling down her cheek, or a boy holding his head in his hands, or someone burying his face his pillow for hours. Each character will be sad in his or her own way.

Effective writing works the same way. Don’t say someone is poor. Show the house where he lives, where the wind blows though chinks in the wall and the only furniture is some old milk crates he scavenged from behind a supermarket.

In some sense, “show, don’t tell” is another way of advising writers to avoid relying too much on adjectives and adverbs. If you tell me the weather was “bad,” I don’t get a sense of what the weather was really like Sentences like that are not a crime, but make sure also to show me what the weather was like. Instead of adjectives, use nouns and verbs: Lightning flashed, thunder boomed, rain slanted down in sheets, pelting his face and drenching his clothes.

What “Show, don’t tell” really means is paint a picture. Appeal to the senses. Movies can appeal to only two senses – sight and sound. But as a writer you can appeal to all five. A character can feel the roughness of a cabin door, smell the pancakes and syrup cooking in the morning, and taste the tang of lemonade. And it is appealing to the senses –showing rather than telling – that makes for vivid writing.

Next column: Don’t talk down to kids; they can sense it.

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