A Guide to Stepping Out of Your Creative Comfort Zone

STOP PRESS! Nick has just won the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award for his work in Stew Magazine

A note from Candy: Slushpile readers no doubt are marvelling at the sudden rise of activity here on our previously somnambulant blog. Yes, dear reader, we're trying to liven up this unreliable blog (we only blogged 11 times last year). How to do this? Why, find someone more reliable than us to blog of course!

Ladies and gents, please welcome the latest member of Notes from the Slushpile, Nick Cross!

Nick is a winner of the Undiscovered Voices and has written short stories for Stew Magazine. He also blogs (somewhat reliably) on Who Ate My Brain and much more reliably for Words & Pictures, SCBWI's online magazine, for which he is Blog Network Co-ordinator. Here is his first Slushie appearance.
Welcome, Nick!
Thanks, Candy - it's an honour to join the team. My favourite slushie is blue raspberry flavour, but I'll try not to get brain freeze as I launch into my debut post:

Appearing at the Cannes Film Festival last month to promote his 50th movie, Woody Allen briefly discussed the TV series he’s making for Amazon Prime Video. Although he’s no stranger to angst, Woody seemed to be genuinely worried that he’d got in over his head this time – he described the decision to take the commission as a “catastrophic mistake” and predicted the show would be a “cosmic embarrassment.”

(photo by Colin Swan)

Seventy-nine-year-old Allen is famously technophobic – he still uses a typewriter for all his scripts and only adopted the use of stereo sound for his films in 2007 (some 70 years after the rest of the movie industry). He didn’t know who Amazon was until very recently and admits to not understanding how streaming video works. The odds would seem to be stacked against him.

And yet, I’m going to make a wild prediction:

I think that these six half hour TV episodes will be the best thing that Woody Allen has written or directed in years

For too long, Woody Allen has been trapped in a comfortable creative prison of his own making. With no apparent trouble securing funding, he churns out one underwhelming film per year, then moves onto the next without pausing for breath. Occasionally (such as with 2013's Blue Jasmine) he comes up with something halfway interesting, but most of the time it feels like he's rehashing his greatest hits.

It’s my belief that art made entirely within an artist’s comfort zone is at best familiar, and at worst deeply mediocre. In order to achieve something new and surprising, we need to perch on the edge of our comfort zone and work from there. This is not something I’m very good at myself – I prefer the familiarity of routine and writing about subjects that come easily to hand. So, I hope the following activities will give both you and me (and possibly Woody Allen) a nudge in the right direction.

1. Write What You Hate

A great way to stretch yourself is to pick a style or genre that you dislike and try to make it yours. For instance, in the days before Game of Thrones conquered television, I used to hate high fantasy stories. I hated the massive books, the pages of maps at the front and the predictable storylines about lunkheaded male heroes, magical jewels and dragons. So, for my first Stew Magazine short story Princess of Dirt, I felt compelled to find a new feminist angle on the traditional fantasy narrative and subvert as many of the reader’s expectations as I could.

(illustration by Jayde Perkin)

2. Don’t be Afraid to Upset People

The aforementioned Princess of Dirt had a horrifying ending that stretched the reader’s sympathies to breaking point. It upset a lot of people (including my own children), but from an artistic point of view, I’m glad I did it. More recently, I’ve written children's stories about such cheery subjects as child labour, Armageddon and Ebola, and I’ve just finished one about immigration and bigotry that won’t be a big hit with UKIP supporters.

Many writers are, like I once was, far too eager to please. They want readers, other writers and - most especially - agents and publishers to love everything they do. So they bend towards the market, edit out the uncomfortable and change things that were fine to start with.

I had a weird experience recently when I was unexpectedly introduced to an agent. She asked me what I was working on and, despite being caught off-guard, I managed to give her a fairly good pitch for my book. Unlike some of my other work, it’s a pretty uncontroversial middle-grade humour novel. To my surprise, a look of genuine disgust passed over her face. I had a moment of crisis, followed by sudden clarity – it didn’t matter if this woman didn’t like the idea behind my book, because there were plenty of others who would.

3. Don’t be Afraid to Upset Yourself

The strongest writing comes from the things you feel strongest about. Sometimes, these are positive emotions, but they can also be your darkest memories or fears. When you reach down into the dark places, yet also exercise control in your writing, you can make some amazingly powerful things happen.

4. Change Your Technique

Stepping out of your comfort zone isn’t just about challenging what you do, but also how you do it. If you’re a plotter, try pantsing. If you normally fly by the seat of your pants, try plotting whole sections before you write. It will feel wrong - like putting your trousers on backwards – but you may gain a whole new technique for your writer’s toolbox.

(photo by Per Erik Strandberg)

5. Change Your Audience

Some writers are very eclectic about the kinds of age group and genre they write for, while others find one that suits them and stick with it. I’m definitely in the latter group and find myself drawn to middle grade fiction. I will tell myself that this is because I variously find: picture and early chapter books too restrictive, YA too angsty and adult fiction too pretentious. But these broad rationalisations are also keeping me firmly in my 9-12 comfort zone.

Writing for a different audience requires research, different stylistic choices and lots of trial and error. But who’s to say it wouldn’t also be fun, or lead to an entirely different writing career?

6. Make Catastrophic Mistakes

OK, so I’m channelling Woody Allen with the wording of this one. And obviously, you can’t plan to make a mistake. “Nobody ever set out to make a bad movie” as the film industry mantra goes. But you can plan for how you’ll cope when things go horribly wrong with your writing and how you’ll learn from that.

To quote another mantra, this time from the technology startup sector: “Fail early. Fail often.”

7. Keep Pushing Through to the Other Side

I write blog posts all the time, but this has been a particularly tough one. Yet, I’ve kept going and we’re nearly at the end (I promise!) It’s hard to acknowledge that you need to change, especially when it seems that you’ve only just become comfortable in your writing. It’s even harder to push that change through, while confronting the things that scare you. To achieve all this, you'll need flexibility, drive, bravery and tenacity. Luckily, these are also the same attributes that are needed to make it as a professional writer!

Don’t feel that you have to change everything at once, or move so far out of your comfort zone that you don’t know which way is up. Like Woody Allen, maybe all you need is the right challenge to push you into the unknown.

Nick.

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Nick Cross is a children's writer, Undiscovered Voices winner and Blog Network Editor for SCBWI Words & Pictures Magazine.

His latest short story Hacking History can be found in issue 8 of Stew Magazine.

Seven Steps for Plotting and Pacing

by Maureen Lynas

WARNING! If you follow these steps you may never enjoy a book or film ever again. You may even experience marital and family discord. Now read on.

Candy's post on the First Page Panel in Singapore reminded of an activity I attempted (and failed) years ago. I'd just bought my very first 'how to' book - James Scott Bell's fabulous and essential Plot and Structure. The activity was:

Read four of your absolutely favourite novels and analyse them, pull them apart, because these books probably reflect the way you want to write and will give you a structure to follow.

I'm paraphrasing because I keep buying this book, lending this book and not getting this book back!

Great, fantastic advice, except – analyse them for what? For me this was a catch 22 situation. I couldn't analyse them until I understood story and I couldn't understand story until I'd analysed the books. So began a long journey to find out what makes a book tick. The other problem was – which four books? Because the books I loved to read for myself were not the books I wanted to write. I read adult books, but I wanted to write children's books, so analysing The Lord of the Rings, The Time Traveller's Wife or The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency was unlikely to help unless I was about to write about a young Orc detective called Sarumantha who can time hop. Gosh, there's an idea everywhere!

So, one thing I had to discover was – which children's books should I analyse. Which children's books did I want to read? And why? This took quite a bit of time but I eventually landed on - 

'I want to write the children's books I would have loved to read to my children (when they were children) and to the kids in my class (when I still had a class).' And 'It's my job to make kids laugh.'

Having these two statements to keep me focused was a huge help. So now I had some idea on what to analyse and once I started I couldn't stop. I became obsessed with getting to the nitty gritty of an author's skills and would jump with excitement when I'd 'cracked' another one. I would bore anyone who would listen, describing the techniques they'd used to make me laugh, cry, think, in minute detail – as if all of my friends, family and acquaintances were actually interested. Thank you for your patience! 

Eventually I had to accept that not everyone was as nuts as I was about writing and so I grabbed the chance to run the North East SCBWI in York, just so that I had the opportunity to share my obsession through chat, workshops and critiquing together. One day I found myself running a workshop on analysing Horrid Henry. I'm now sharing the notes from that workshop with you; they can be used to analyse any book or film, or used as a planning tool.

Analysing Horrid Henry

H

Henry's Here!

Identify the goal

• Henry's attempt to achieve his goal provides the major event of each book.
• The goal may be achieved during the event and the result will be positive for Henry.
• The goal may be achieved during he event but the result may be negative for Henry.

Identify Act one, two, three.

• Look for the inciting incident – the action that triggers the story. Because Horrid Henry is for young children this may be as simple as Mum saying, 'Bath-time!'
• The doorway in to act two – Henry engages with the story as a reaction to the inciting incident. In adult crime stories it can be as simple as being given a case to solve and the detective starts solving. In other stories there is more of an emotional involvement to the trigger. Do a bit of research – What is it in HH? Is it the same type of incident and doorway in each book? Is HH propelled into the story by outside forces or does he jump in?
• Look for the doorway out of act two and into act three. Does HH always solve his own problems in order to get into act three?
• Cut/mark the book into the three acts.

Now for the real fun 

The Seven Steps of Plotting

These are the seven steps to pacing and plotting that I use in my own writing because they do away with the annoying muddle in the middle. Five steps were found in an article in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing by Meg Leader and Jack Heffron (thanks Geoff) and I've broken down the last one to include some steps from Revision and Editing by James Scott Bell.

The Seven Steps are 

Name. Preview. Contrast. The Event. Reflect. Reveal. React.

It's best to analyse in the following order.

Using coloured pens, identify the following (Just put one straight line from the top to the bottom of each section)

• Highlight the main event of the book (achievement of the goal) in red.
• Highlight the contrast scene (immediately before the event) in yellow.
  • What makes a contrast scene? A contrast scene is the argument before the kiss, the campfire before the battle, the success before the failure, or the failure before the success depending on the tone and genre of the work.
• Highlight Henry's reflection (immediately after the event) in dark green.
• Highlight what has been revealed (immediately after the reflection) in mid green.
• Highlight Henry's reaction/action (immediately after the revelation) in light green.
• Now go to earlier in the story and highlight any previewing of the event in blue.
  • Is the main event (achievement of the goal) shown in another way earlier in the story? Does a similar event happen to another person earlier in the story? Does a similar event go wrong for the protagonist earlier in the story. e.g in the book about the visit to the dentist, Moody Margaret goes into the treatment room just before Henry.
• Highlight any naming that takes place before the previewing. in orange.
  • Naming is very short, e.g. 'Horrid Henry sat in the dentists waiting room' is naming this event will be about HH having a battle with the dentist.
  • Other naming – Mentioning a catapult on the mantelpiece as part of early description means that you can use the catapult later. Or, you can use opposites to name things e.g. 'This won't hurt,' is naming 'This will hurt.' Or in a romantic comedy – 'I'll never kiss him' is naming – 'I will end up kissing him.'

 Of course you will have more than one event in a longer book so the steps can be intertwined. 

You should also analyse for

Cause and effect.

• What triggers movement between the steps. How does the story move on logically.
• What is expected? What would be obvious? What actually happens?

Each scene's emotional dynamic for each character.

• Up – down (happy to sad, excited to boring)
• Down – up (confusion to clarity, failure to success)

And there you have it. For now. Have you noticed - None of the above deals with the words, the language. I'll delve deeper into Horrid Henry horrendous world in my next blog on:

• Conflict
• Tone
• Escalation
• Rhetoric
• Opinion

Back to the apology mentioned at the beginning. If you do this properly – you will irritate people. They don't seem to like it if you watch a film pointing out the seven steps. I have no idea why. After all, what's wrong with a running commentary of , 'Ayup, it's a contrast scene.', 'Nice bit of naming there.', 'Did you see that gun on the mantlepiece? You know what that means, don't you? Don't you, eh?', 'Where was the preview! I can't believe there was no preview! How rubbish is that!' or 'Yay! I know what the event's going to be!'

Good luck.

Maureen

Maureen Lynas blogs intermittently on her own blog which she creatively named - Maureen Lynas
Maureen is the author of
The Action Words Reading Scheme
Florence and the Meanies
The Funeverse poetry site.

Ready to Publish? Are you? Are you really?

 by Maureen Lynas. Illustrations by guest blogger Katherine Lynas 

Are your characters ready to be seen?