Writing tip: stop readers in their tracks
If you love books, you can probably think of several times when you’ve been stopped in your tracks by a unique turn of phrase or magical description. “How did the author do that?” you ask yourself. “It’s so simple and yet so profound.”
Authors get involved in the big picture when they create a book, and with good reason. We need to think about aspects of character, plot, setting, conflict, development, and resolution. We need to look at the overall structure to make sure it’s solid. But once the story is down on paper and we know it’s not going anywhere, we can start concentrating on the words. The forest is planted; Now take a look at the trees.
Think back to those experiences that stopped you from reading. What else do you remember from the book? If occasional groupings of words shadowed the story, then the author was struggling to sound like a writer at the expense of plot. However, if the individual words and phrases were melded seamlessly to create a satisfying experience from start to finish, then the words and the story carried equal weight.
As a children’s book writer, how do you engage readers with your words, the essential components of any type of writing, without overshadowing the other elements that make up your book? The answer: Keep it simple.
Skillful authors use everyday language in new and exciting ways. One of my favorite examples of picture books is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Max is sailing across the ocean to meet the wild things for the first time. Rather than tell us that the ocean is “very big” or that Max travels for “a long time,” Sendak taps into young children’s fascination with calendars:
...and sailed through night and day
and in and out of the weeks
and almost more than a year
to where the wild things are
It is a poetic description of time, and it fits perfectly with the poetic tone of the rest of the text.
Memorable description occurs when the writer pairs disparate images to create a new emotional image. Feelings make the place seem familiar to the reader. Here is the opening paragraph of Paul Fleischman’s middle grade novel The Borning Room:
Four small walls, lined with pine, painted white. Window. A door to the kitchen, for the heat. Two chairs. A bed, almost filling the room, like a bird held in cupped hands. Standing by the bed, squire next to the knight of him, a table with a Bible and a lamp. I’m sure you’ve been in many of those rooms.
Even if the reader has never been in such a room, he can see it. The words Fleishman uses are accessible to all readers and invite her in. The text is not complex, most second graders can easily read it, but it is rich and interesting. The unvarnished language reflects the direct nature of the narrator.
The prologue to Natalie Babbitt’s novel Tuck Everlasting begins with a metaphor that sets the stage for the story that follows. Babbitt compares the first week of August to the seat at the top of a Ferris wheel: … The weeks that come before are only a rise from the warm spring, and those that follow are a fall into the cool of autumn, but the first week of August is still and hot. He goes on to describe that moment, his verbs building the tension: sunsets “smeared with too much color”; lightning that “shudders by itself”. And then the kicker: these are strange, breathless days, the dog days, when people are forced to do things they’ll surely regret later.
Surprising the reader is good, and Babbitt snaps the reader out of his dog-like reverie with that last sentence. Cheerful images of ferris wheels and hot summer days are abruptly replaced by the promise of a story about bad decisions. This, then, is what you want your reader to notice about your writing. Not the individual words, not the fancy descriptions, but the overall feeling of being taken for a walk through history. So here’s my writing tip: Pay attention to your words, but don’t let them take over. The only way to prevent words from dominating the story is to always keep it simple.