Hey everybody! I’m Jon Bard Managing Editor of Children’s Book Insider, the newsletter for children’s writers and Fighting Bookworm-in-Chief at the CBI Clubhouse, our new info and of course, action packed membership site just for children’s book writers.
Today, want to excite an editor? Break out of your story telling rut. If your writing seems stuck in a rut, perhaps it’s time to put that manuscript aside and watch some TV or go to the movies or read a comic book. I’m not suggesting you goof off; rather, by looking at other entertainment art forms, you might discover a fresh approach to story telling. Here are some new avenues to explore courtesy of some other very creative folks. And by the way, don’t be put off by the adult content of these examples. It’s the storytelling techniques that we’re after.
Don’t be so literal. Listen to the lyrics of a Bob Dylan or Elvis Costello song. You maybe hard pressed to figure what the songs are actually about but the words themselves paint such vivid pictures that you can’t help but remember the poetry. While you want to avoid such abstraction in a picture book, novels for older children can benefit for moments of poetic and prose and subtlety that allow the reader to find personal meeting in the story.
Tell a story in a different surprising way. Selective movie watching can give you fresh ideas in how to present a story. The film Dead Man Walking gave equal sympathy to both sides in the death penalty issue forcing the audience to draw their own conclusions. The Japanese film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa tells the same story through the eyes of several different people, each giving their own interpretations of the events. The independent film Slacker by director Richard Linklater follows one character for about ten minutes, then someone walks by presumably an extra in the film and the camera zooms on this new person as he or she becomes the focus of the movie for a short period of time. This technique is repeated throughout the film. In the Godfather Part 2, director Francis Ford Coppola tells the parallel stories of organized crime boss Vito Corleone and his son Michael in a respective era as head of the family. The movie jumps back and forth in time but the scenes are connected because the changes in the father as he rose to power are mirrored in his son many years later. The story telling techniques of these films add more texture to the plot rather than a linear beginning, middle and end would have. Go for the unexpected.
The first half of Robert Rodriguez’s film From Dusk ‘Till Dawn is a classic criminals on the run story until the main characters are locked in a bar with the patrons turned into vampires, while you might find the movie violent and distasteful. You have to admit, there’s no way you could have predicted where the story eventually ended up.
Try taking your story to an unexpected place and don’t always worry about explaining why. Think backwards. Characters are all around us. When you see someone interesting in an unexpected place, ask yourself, how did this person get here? Start at the ending, then back up and show how your character arrived to that point. Many movies used this technique but it’s rare in children’s books.
Expand your storytelling repertoire. Try new things, take chances. Much of what you write will never find its way to an editor’s desk but that’s how it should be. Writing must be viewed as a creative, experimental process. If we sit down with the intent of sending this story in this form to an editor, we not only put undue pressure on ourselves but place limits on our imagination. Look for story telling in every aspect of our culture. Incorporate what you like into your writing and rest assured that those hours in front of a television set can now be considered research. And when you’ve managed to master one of these interesting story telling techniques, you might just find a very excited editor on the other end of your next submission.
That’s it for now. Be sure to visit us at the CBI Clubhouse at cbiclubhouse.com where you’ll find articles, videos, audio, of course the brand new issue of the Children’s Book Insider Newsletter that we’re famous for, the CBI Challenge, our writing course. Our beginning step by step writing course that’s free to all members of the CBI Clubhouse, message boards, chat rooms and lots-lots more. It’s all at the CBI Clubhouse, the home of the Fighting Bookworms.
Until next time, this is Jon Bard.
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