We are Liars. And Editors are Just Readers

By  Candy Gourlay

Here's a report from the AFCC's first retreat for writers and illustrators on Bintan Island in Indonesia, which I attended as a mentor.

'I hope this retreat will help you to get to the truth within the lie,' Sarah Odedina told a roomful of writers and illustrators at a retreat in Indonesia last week. 'I think all good literature has message and meaning. But the message and meaning is hidden in the story.'

Sara speaking at the Retreat. From my comic sketchbook.
View more of my notes on my author site

It was an interesting beginning to her talk on publishing. I don't think I'm making crazy generalisations when I say that, while there are exciting developments in children's publishing in Asia, many educators and parents in the region still regard reading and books as educational tools.

Many educators and parents still regard reading and books as educational tools

It was a constant refrain from publishers, writers, illustrators, and teachers I met last week at the Asian Festival for Children's Content that followed the retreat in Singapore. Far too many educators and parents in this region believe that reading for pleasure -- comics, funny books, books with farts in them, magic, fantasy -- should take a back seat to moral and other lessons.

The job of the editor, Sarah said, is to help authors get the story from inside their heads into books. Never mind the moral lessons. Focus on the story.

'Children are our future. Literature can give them confidence about being part of the world around them,' she said. ' Literacy is not just about being able to read the words on the page but being able to decipher the meaning of a story. The message of a story can be immense but expressed in the lightest way.'

Retreat members and faculty in Singapore before boarding the ferry to Bintan, Indonesia

It was the first retreat ever organised by the Asian Festival of Children's Content. It was as diverse a group as I've ever seen - twenty-six people representing Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Canada, Macau, India, the United States, England, Australia and Portugal, ranging from beginners at the craft of children's books to experienced, multi-published authors.

Held at an Indonesian resort just an hour's ferry ride from Singapore, the retreat was led by mentors that included Sarah, illustrator Catarina Sobral and writer-agent Andrea Pasion-Flores and me. Here's the view from one of the lecture rooms, just to make you jealous:

I remember meeting Sarah Odedina more than five years ago at a talk at the Bologna Children's Book Fair. I'm sure she doesn't remember me as I was one of the cowering unpublished then.

At the time she was editorial director of Bloomsbury Children's Books and famously part of the Harry Potter publishing team.

In those days I had no idea about her Harry Potter connection. What thrilled me was the fact that Sarah had edited Witch Child by Celia Rees. A gazillion writers discover the audience they want to write for through books like How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff and The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness and Witch Child was one of those breakthrough novels. I would count it as one of the books that spurred me to write for young people.

More recently Sarah was editorial director of Hot Key books where she published Carnegie winning Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner before moving to One World, where she's overseeing its Young Adult and children's publishing.

Sarah's retreat presentation ranged from tips for aspiring authors to a thorough explanation of genres in children's books.

SARAH'S TIPS FOR WANNABE AUTHORS

• Complement don't mimic a publisher's list. Don't look at the publisher's list and say they published Harry Potter therefore they will want another magical boarding school book. Research publishers, try to get a real sense of what they publish. "What publisher publishes the kind of work you want to be associated with?"
  
• Smaller publishers vs big publishers? Big publishers have clout in distribution and marketing terms but small publishers will be far more flexible.
  
• Get an Agent. Literary agents have their foot in the door. Publishers will look at submissions from literary agents first on the basis that they have already been filtered from the vast sea of manuscripts.
  
• Be Professional. Follow the stated guidelines. If the publisher's website says send the outline and the first three chapters, that is what you do. Don't say, 'I showed it to my grandchildren and they loved it.' Include any practical information that reveals your seriousness and professionalism (eg. you've been a member of a critique group for several years, you are a paying member of a respected organisation like the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators).
  
• Sorry, reading submissions takes time. Send material ... then be prepared to wait. Don't expect an immediate response. Sometimes it could take many weeks. Don't badger the publisher, don't call every week - wait maybe three months before following up. "We can't cope with feeling that we are keeping people in suspense."
  
• Know your genre. It's not enough to write a story and say that it's for a ten year old. Go into a bookshop and see what is being sold on the shelves, and how they are being categorised. "Read, read, read. Become familiar with publishing in the children's book world ... children of a certain age can take information in a particular way."
  
• Think of how you present yourself to the public. Websites. Social Media. Look at how others do it and note when things are done well. Do you have another persona incompatible with your children's work? Create a strong presence.
  
• Take part in the conversation. The children's book world is very conversation driven. Get involved. It would be a terrible mistake to only go out on social media when you're selling books. "On Twitter I have not chosen for you to sell me something. I am there to talk to you."

"The process of getting published involves different levels of commitment at different points of the journey," Sarah says.

Choosing a book involves a team. Commissioning editors will commit first. Then the sales team must commit, having decided that yes, they can sell this book. "Every step of the way, it's about faith. It's about trust. There's no golden rule."

Every step of the way, it's about faith. It's about trust. There's no golden rule

If you'd like to submit to Sarah. Here's what she says about her acquiring philosophy:

• I am looking at books as a reader.
• I read everything that comes in.
• I am looking for a good relationship with an author. 
• It's about not losing faith, it's about us doing our best for you. Like a close friendship, your relationship with your editor/publisher should be guarded.
• I like plot-driven books
• I acquire really simply. If I like it, I will take it to the sales team.

So there you have it. As authors we must be skilful liars, our essential truths concealed in our fiction. Meanwhile editors are just readers who must like our lies in order to publish them.

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Candy Gourlay's latest book is Shine, an atmospheric ghost story whose heroine is a hidden away girl who lives her life on the Internet. Nominated for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2015. www.candygourlay.com @candygourlay

The Devil is in the Detail: Writing Villains

Candy Gourlay chats with author Cliff McNish, whose new book My Friend Twigs is out now.


CANDY: Hey Slushpile people, meet author Cliff McNish. Back in 2013, Cliff talked to us about Deepening Character - it was one of our most popular blog posts of that year. Lucky us, he's agreed to come back to talk to us some more. Cliff, you're known mainly for your creepy teen fantasies and ghost stories but recently, you've written two tender and funny animal stories for 8-12 year-olds. Why the change?

CLIFF: Actually, it all started when my wife passed away three years ago. We’d been together for twenty-two years, and I couldn’t find any peace of mind. I’d been commissioned by my published, Orion, to write another ghost story, and I just felt weighed down by it. I kept trudging on, but day after day I wrote less and less until finally ... I just stopped. I didn’t want to be in this dark place. I had enough darkness going on in my life.

CANDY: What did you do?



CLIFF: For about two months I was just numb, writing nothing, doing nothing. Or at least I can’t remember what I did. The first sign that anything was changing was when I started to get these strange little funny ideas in my head – imagine a rabbit who lost his nose, or a polar bear that got tired of fish. Picture book territory, I guess. I didn't know where this stuff was coming from. But it wouldn’t go away. I kept pushing it back, but sillier and sillier ideas continued coming into my head.

CANDY: Which leads us to your current extraordinary authorial character change.



CLIFF: Yes. My wife, Ciara, had forever been asking me to write a warm story. 'How about one involving dogs stuck in a rescue home,' she’d said many times. 'You know, something heartfelt and funny. You can do that, can't you?'

Since we'd spent over two years fostering rescue dogs I had plenty of stories to use, though I never took the suggestion seriously. Other people wrote those sort of poignant, funny stories much better than me, didn't they?

But now the idea returned. And once I remembered it was her idea the characters took on an instant, vivid life. I could see Ralph, Bessie, Mitch and Fred barking away. I knew exactly what their stories were.

CANDY: I loved Going Home ... it's a real about face to write a book for seven to 12 year olds after your last scary thriller, The Hunting Ground, which has an age warning on the back. And now, you've done it again for the same age group as Going Home, with a mad cockatoo and a girl. What made you write an animal story about a bird?

CLIFF: I was trawling the internet when I came by chance across film of a pet moluccan cockatoo screeching non-stop. Moluccans are huge birds, and so noisy that I wondered how anyone could stand them.

And then I wondered what would happen if a girl ended up having to look after such a bird? What would their friendship be like? And, if that friendship became deep enough, what if her father decided he couldn’t live with the bird any longer? How strongly would she fight for him?

Moluccan cockatoos are fascinating creatures, actually. They’re not suited as pets at all, but many of the ones that get shackled that way end up with characteristics more human than those of cats and dogs. They can dance, for a start. They sing and talk. And, unlike dogs and cats, they live almost as long as us. Even their hearts beat at the same slow steady rate as a human heart. With their endless noisiness, their constant chatter, to me Moluccan cockatoos seem very human indeed. So it was fun to write a warm-hearted and hopefully funny story with a bird at its heart.

CANDY: And here, my dears, is the cover of Cliff's new book: My Friend Twigs. Ready ... steady ... AWWWWWWWW!

Last time Cliff visited the Slushpile, he gave us some great ideas on how to create a really powerful hero or heroine. But what about the VILLAINS?

Cliff’s fiction is full of memorable ones, and I wanted to pick his brains about how to create one. After all that warm-heartedness, here's what he offered me.

Enemies, opponents, antagonists, villains. Whatever you like to call them, we love to hate them! Try to imagine your favourite books or films without the evil guys. How about Harry Potter without Voldemort or Draco Malfoy?

Or Lord of the Rings without Sauron and the orcs? Where wouldTwilight be without the James Coven? Or the Baudelaire children without Count Olaf?



Readers adore enemies in stories because it’s a secret pleasure to explore the darker side of our imaginations. But the reason we DEMAND them is because the nasty things they do to our heroes and heroines help us to love them so much more.

A good villain makes you sympathise with the hero so completely that the reader becomes desperate for them to succeed. Below are 18 top tips on creating great enemies in your own stories.

TIP 1 - Make your villain cause pain and suffering to characters we either like or who are innocent or defenceless.

This is the easiest and most effective way to make your reader hate a character. The more sadistic/merciless they are, the more we despise them. Voldemort attacks the defenceless Harry Potter when he’s just a tiny baby, instantly achieving villain status. Darth Vader destroys an ENTIRE PLANET.



As world-leading novelist Stephen King says: ‘To create a great opponent, make them hunger for other people’s suffering. That way they become the embodiment of pure evil.’

Tip 2 – Make them strongly want something the reader will hate them for.

In the Lion King, Scar wants to be head of the Pride. In Stormbreaker Herod Sayle can’t wait to kill as many school children in England as possible. In Lord of the Rings Sauron wants to enslave the world. We automatically detest him for it.

Tip 3 - Give the enemy control over your hero’s life.

Miss Trunchbull in Matilda locks kids away in the vicious ‘chokey’. Put your own villain in charge where no one can stop them.

Tip 4 - Make them appear more powerful than your hero.

Harry Potter is just a school boy wizard, but Voldemort is a master of the dark arts. The reader becomes consumed with fear for the hero.

Tip 5 – Ensure they break promises.

In Stormbreaker, Nadia Vole pretends she’s going to free Alex – then dumps him into a tank with a giant jellyfish. ‘When a character breaks a promise or betrays a trust, the audience takes that betrayal personally,’ says Orson Scott Card, award winning SF writer. ‘The villain has achieved true villain status, and readers will be longing for their downfall.’

Tip 6 - Make them a coward.

Malfoy’s always hiding behind Crabbe and Goyle or the influence of his family name. A hero never does that.

Tip 7 - Make them stuck up and condescending towards others.

We hate characters who think they are superior to us, people who sneer or treat powerful, influential, rich people better than the poor and powerless.

Tip 8 - Make them boast.

A hero remains modest. When things go right for villains they take all the credit whether they deserve it or not.

From Kids With Children

Tip 9 - Keep them humourless.

A heroine retains a sense of humour. When things go wrong for opponents, have them whine. Or, if they do joke, always make it at someone else’s expense.

Tip 10 - Have them blame everyone but themselves.

When things go wrong, villains always accuse and criticize others. Ensure yours do the same.

Tip 11 – Emphasise their vanity.

We automatically dislike anyone who brags about their looks, strength, deeds or the amount of money they have. Think of Moriarty.

Tip 12 - Make them cheats and liars.

Heroes are honest. Villains can’t be trusted.

Tip 13 - Give them no regard for other people’s feelings.

A hero is self-sacrificing and considers other people. Villains don’t care what happens to anyone else. They only help themselves. Think of the contempt the James clan in Twilight have for all humans.

Tip 14 - Make them petty instead of noble.

When Harry meets Ron on the train to Hogwarts he shares his food with him – he’s generous and warm-hearted. But what does Malfoy do? Cracks jokes about Ron’s poverty and talks about his ‘useless’ family. We despise him for it.

Tip 15 - Make them ugly OR exceptionally handsome.

We tend to distrust both. Think of the lovely but cruel step-mother in Snow White. Or Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.

From Disney via Giphy

Tip 16 - Villains rarely doubt themselves.

In Twilight hero Edward is constantly worried that he cannot trust himself with Bella. That makes him more human. In Hercules, Hades is only looking out for Number One. Himself. Villains just pursue their own interests and don’t question themselves or care who they step on.

Tip 17 - Build up the suspense by not revealing the villain too soon.

Sauron in Lord of the Rings is just a vast eye – and all the more alarming because we never really know what he looks or sounds like. To create real fear, keep you reader guessing for as long as possible. In Toy Story 3, cuddly Lotso Huggin Bear turns out to be a megalomaniac.

Tip 18 – Have people talk about your enemy fearfully.

The importance of this final tip is often neglected, but not by great storytellers. Characters are so afraid of Voldemort that they won’t even say his name. Sauron hardly appears in Lord of the Rings, but when you read the novel you always feel his presence. The reason is that even tough warriors like Aragorn never stop talking about him apprehensively. When great and brave characters like Aragorn and Gandalf regard Sauron as immensely dangerous, readers automatically get nervous. Have your own strongest characters do the same. Use them to stoke up the fear of your enemy. It works beautifully.



These tips come from workshops that Cliff performs at school visits. If you are interested in Cliff's Villains Factsheet, you can contact him on his website and he'll be happy to send you one. Notes from the Slushpile thanks you for this brilliant guest post, Cliff!

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.