Trans Children and their Books - Cathy Butler

I’m currently at the Congress of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature, which takes place every two years at exotic locations all over the world and this time happens to be in Worcester. For a children's literature nerd like myself this is a wonderful occasion. There are many dozens of academic papers being given, as well as storytelling, performances and readings. This morning, for example, we were treated to the legendary Roger McGough reading from his work. (Thought for the day, courtesy of one of Mr McG: "When one glove goes missing, both are lost".) It's a great conference, but alas the internet is patchy, so I'm having to write this blog quickly in a local Costa (other coffee shops are available). Apologies if it ends up rather undigested…

One of this year’s themes is the body, and when I gave my own paper a couple of days ago it was on a relatively new subject that has emerged in children’s literature only within the last decade or so: books for transgender children and young adults. I was particularly focusing on books about children who had either transitioned from the gender they were assigned at birth to the gender they felt themselves to be, or else were wishing, hoping or planning to do so.

So new is this genre, in fact, that I can list almost every book in it. To give sense of numbers, there were apparently more than 90 children’s books with LGB (lesbian, gay or bisexual) content in 2013 alone, 8 of them in the UK. Here, by contrast, is a chronological list of all the children’s and YA books featuring transitioning child characters published in English anywhere.* So far, as you will see, there is only one from the UK.

Author	Title	Date	Country	Age	Genre
Julie Anne Peters	Luna	2004	USA	YA	Novel
Ellen Wittlinger	Parrotfish	2007	USA	YA	Novel
Brian Katcher	Almost Perfect	2009	USA	YA	Novel
Marcus Ewert and Rex Ray	10,000 Dresses	2009	USA	PB	Novel
Cris Beam	I am J	2011	USA	YA	Novel
Kirstin Cronn-Mills	Beautiful Music for Ugly Children	2012	USA	YA	Novel
Rachel Gold	Being Emily	2012	USA	YA	Novel
Alyssa Brugman	Alex as Well	2013	Australia	YA	Novel
David Levithan	Two Boys Kissing	2013	USA	YA	Novel
Ami Polonsky	Gracefully Grayson	2014	USA	MG	Novel
Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings	I am Jazz	2014	USA	PB	Memoir
Katie Rain Hill	Rethinking Normal	2014	USA	YA	Memoir
Arin Andrews	Some Assembly Required	2014	USA	YA	Memoir
Lisa Williamson	The Art of Being Normal	2015	UK	YA	Novel
Alex Gino	George	2015	USA	MG	Novel

I’ve helpfully listed these books not just by author, date and title but also by age group: YA for young adult books, MG for middle-grade books, and PB for picturebooks. Unlike LGB books, which are naturally primarily aimed at readers who have reached puberty and are exploring their own sexuality, trans issues crop up from a very young age – from the time, in fact, when children first start to understand and articulate whether they are boys or girls. This is new territory for fiction writers, and reading these books it's clear that they are still working out the best ways to approach it. Even within the short time these books have been appearing, it’s fascinating to see how the genre’s developed, from books in which trans people are essentially tragic figures who have to forego their home and family (as happens in Luna or Almost Perfect) through to ones in which they start to overcome the many challenges involved in coming out, accessing medical care, surviving rejection and making a life in their true gender. We have yet to reach the stage beyond that one, in which being trans is seen as simply one aspect of a person rather than as the site of an almighty life-defining struggle, but when society gets there (and it is getting there) then so, I hope, will books about trans people. 

I could say a lot more about these books with my academic hat on, but I’d like to stop for a moment and think about them as a writer for children. Of all the books on my list, there are only three that were written by authors who are themselves transgender: these are the three ones I’ve labelled as memoirs, which were all written by trans teens. None of the authors of fiction have actually transitioned themselves.

Is this a problem? I’m not one to say that (for example) no man could ever write a convincing woman, or that no American should presume to write about the experience of someone from China. No doubt part of the attraction of writing about trans experience lies in the opportunity it offers any writer to explore questions about one’s embodied and gendered condition, about the relationship between self-perception and the perception of others, and about the various ways in which all of us are engaged in "performing" gender" all the time. Fair enough. Empathy, imagination, and other kinds of experience can all be brought to the task by authors who aren't trans themselves.

Even so, just as it would be a strange world in which the only stories about women and Chinese people were written by men and Americans respectively, a situation in which the only stories about trans people are written by people who aren't trans strikes me as… odd.

There are some very good books on this list. For my money (if you would like recommendations), I am J, Being Emily, Gracefully Grayson and 10,000 Dresses are a good selection, for a range of age groups. Most of all, though, I would like to see trans authors find a way to write about trans experience in fiction, in a way that is authentic without being narrowly confessional.

And yes, I’m looking at myself sternly when I say that.

* At least, that I could find before I gave my paper. I've since been alerted to a few more, and I’d love to hear about any others in the comments. Remember, though, to make the list they must be about children or teens who are transgender, and who have either transitioned or are intending to do so. Something like David Walliams’s The Boy in the Dress does not qualify.

Summer Days and Writing Ways by Eve Ainsworth

If I told you that this post nearly didn’t get written, would you be surprised? Those of you that know me wouldn’t. The fact was, I was lying on the beach, having my feet buried in a ton of wet sand when suddenly my brain clicked into gear.

“What date is it?” I asked my husband.

“The 9^th. Why?”

“The 9^th!” I jumped up spraying sand everywhere (most notably in my poor husband’s eyes) “It can’t be! I’m sure it’s only the 2^nd or 3^rd? Oh my god, I’ve got an ABBA post to write!”

“Abba?” He looked genuinely confused. “But you hate that group?”

(NB: I don’t hate the group but don’t I certainly don't love them enough to blog about them!)

“Oh god! Where have the days gone?”

Because that’s the truth of it. Summer comes, my kids are mine again full-time and my brain turns to putty. I no longer have routine. I barely know what day of the week it is, let alone the date - and my diet consists of ice cream and squashed picnic sandwiches. My poor work diary is buried under a pile of kids’ drawings and my Twitter feed is full of amusing kids’ quips rather than interesting writing facts. I’m no longer on writing forums. Instead I’m pleading for help on Facebook, asking where to take two high-energy bickering kids in the rain.

And writing. Huh? What’s that? I managed to squeeze some editing in while they bounced like deranged Tiggers on the trampoline, and I scrawl down ideas where I can. But in the main my mummy-autopilot is on. All I’m capable of saying is “don’t touch that!”, “please don’t hit” and “that doesn’t belong up your nose.”

Just last week I was standing at the cashpoint, one child tugging at my coat screaming “why can’t we put the paddling pool up?” the other child was circling on her bike whining “I’m bored” in a manner that drills insistently into your brain. A woman walked past me and gave me a wry look, “school holidays, eh?” She’d been there. She wore the scars. A day later the same child managed to get himself lost in a shop. After minutes of frantic calling, I found him posing as a shop dummy. I think my blood pressure had gone up a huge amount. I collapsed at home exhausted. I couldn’t bring myself to write Twitter update, let alone part of my novel.

 

 

                                                             (Spot the real kid!)

 

 

But Summer Holidays aren't all bad. I mean, yes the kids do frustrate me with their constant fighting and I do miss the freedom to write at 10am with no Tom and Jerry in the background. But when I do write it's good. And it's kind of more satisfying.  I just have to be more disciplined, like I was when I worked full time. I have to write in the small windows of time when they are eating their tea or are tucked up in bed. It’s smaller time slots, but it helps to keep me focused. I also plan to write a lot when we go to Devon. Long evenings with no TV should encourage me. It’s either that or endless games of Monopoly.

I've also enjoyed weekly trips to the library as my seven year old daughter tackles her first Summer Reading Challenge. Watching her curl up on the grass with another new book is wonderful. Actually it's one of the best things ever. Another reason why our library service is so vital.  

Soon the summer will be over and my writing routine will restart and I’ll miss the time with my kids. Which I guess, goes to show, it’s all about striking that balance.

 And ensuring you make the best of whatever time you have.

 

Eve Ainsworth is the author of 7 Days (Scholastic) a novel about bullying from two perspectives. Crush will be out March 2016.

 

Books fight back

Help! The Wolf is Coming!
by Cedric Ramadier and Vincent Bourgeau
Gecko Press, 2015

Should very small children be using apps? Are they genuinely educational? Or are they meaningless coloured light and movement (to their eyes), with little or no educational value, often used as babysitters and leading all too easily to minimal parental involvement? There will be vociferous claims on both sides of the debate, of course.

I have young grand-daughter, nearly 20 months old. She is not allowed to play with smart phones or iPads as they easily grab too much of her time and attention - they are clearly addictive. This is not a rule set by 30-something, John-Lewis-style parents. My daughter is 20; she had the baby when she was 18. She is a digital native. She knows that she gave up too much of her own adolescence to screen time and is determined that her own daughter will use screen-based technology in moderation and appropriately, as she hopes she will use other things that might be damaging in moderation (sugar, coffee, alcohol, carbon-hungry activities). This baby is one of the first post-digital generation, born to parents for whom the web existed before they did and who learned to read by reading the menus on games programs as much as by reading books. The first generation for whom screen-based technology has no more of a wow factor than does a toy car or a tricycle, and the first with no digital divide between them and their parents.

We don't like uncomfortable truths, and it's an uncomfortable truth that we have raised a generation of screen-addicted - and now touchscreen-addicted - young adults. There have been horrendous knock-on effects, such as the endemic sexual violence, and the pervasive disregard for young women and their rights over their bodies. No one could have predicted that when we were all being amazed by cheesy websites with moving gifs, but it's where it went. I am anything but a technology-refusnik. An early adopter involved in the emergent technologies from the 80s, I was there, designing programs for toddlers in the 1990s. I put my hand up. Guilty as charged. What was a novelty in 1993 is now an all-day, everyday phenomenon. And it's not always good.

Maybe showing your toddler a storybook app for 20 minutes a day does no harm. I doubt it does any good, but not everything has to do us good. But I don't think children who are not allowed touchscreens before the age of three will suffer.

So much for the children. What about publishing? There are picture book publishers who worry about the inroads apps are making into their market, and others who - like Nosy Crow - embrace it and make good products. Apps are not, in general, profitable, though. Perhaps that should be 'yet', but we don't know. To make a good app is expensive and people don't expect to pay much for apps. A lot of investment is needed, and then a good deal of time and faith and holding of the nerve. Can books compete? Yes - as long as parents are prepared to invest time in their children, reading with them. (Children take a lot of investment, a good deal of time, faith and holding of the nerve, too, but for a much more valuable outcome.)

In case you are the keeper of a baby you don't want to expose to too much corrosive touchscreen time, here's a book that is a kind of low-tech app. I found it in Foyles the other day and bought it for my grand-daughter. It is astonishingly innovative. She was a little puzzled at first, but soon got it. A child more used to iPads would get it much more quickly, I think. It's simply interactive, with instructions to turn the page quickly, to tilt and shake the book, to turn it around - the familiar swipe/tilt/shake fare of the tablet app. It's printed on firm board, so it can take all the physical treatment.

It's only £6.99 and it's great; buy it instead of an app. You'll even get some exercise doing the shaking.

Anne Rooney

Writing by hand. Keren David

Finland, it was reported recently, is phasing out classes in cursive writing in its schools. Instead children will be trained in keyboard skills, far more useful in our computerised world.

An essential skill, or an out-dated ordeal? 

I approve of this. It seems to me crazy to spend so many long, dull hours of childhood practising joined up writing, as though preparing for life as a Victorian clerk. Keyboard skills are more relevant, more useful and enable quicker brain-to-page communication.  Most people's need for cursive ends when they finish taking their handwritten exams -  another aspect of our education system that looks backwards rather than forwards.  After that, yes, it's nice to be able to handwrite love letters, or cards expressing sympathy. But in every other way, the computer is king.

At the International School where my daughter learned to write, she started out forming letters separately, then learned cursive, then switched to keyboards in Y4. My son transferred back to the UK in Y3, and was plunged into old-fashioned cursive lessons, striving for years to be granted a pen license. Meanwhile children we knew in the Dutch system missed out the first stage of lettering, and only learned to form letters for joined-up writing, a system that seemed quicker and easier. 

Hand-writing school work affects the way that children are taught to think about writing. I would advise my children to start with a second paragraph, adding the introduction to their essay or story later on. They'd look at me as though I were mad; of course they had to start at the beginning and write down to the bottom of the page.  All the word-processing skills that I use every day -  cutting and pasting in particular -  were unavailable to them.  They reminded me of my first job in journalism, when we were expected to make seven carbon copies of a sheet of A4 paper, and then write 35 lines with no errors. We had to handwrite stories sometimes -  as reporters do now -  when were were out on the road with a deadline pressing. But since the dawn of the 1990s, most of my journalism was done on a word processor or computer.

When I was a child I found hand-writing difficult to master. My hand could never move as quickly as my brain, and sometimes I lost letters or words in the scramble to capture my thoughts on the page. I was often scolded for the untidy presentation of my work. There were no word processors to yearn for, but if they had been invented in the 1970s they would have transformed my schooldays, assuming we were allowed to use them.  

When I trained as a reporter I learned Teeline shorthand, and have been using a scrappy version of it ever since. I moved from typewriter to word processor to laptop with pleasure and appreciation. I have scarcely used handwriting for the last twenty years. When I started an Open University degree, one of the most difficult things to adapt to was those pesky handwritten exams again. 

Some people believe that cursive aids the creative process, giving the writer time to form their thoughts. My experience has generally been the opposite.  And yet. Last week I was clearing a cupboard and found a notebook with my very first attempts to write a book.  I'd taken it to a cafe in a shopping centre and sat and written while my daughter and niece looked around the shops. I started off in third person, past tense for a page and a half. Then I shifted to first person, present tense and found that worked better. I'd written pages and pages. There was something intimate and exciting in seeing those pages, especially knowing six years later, that they were the beginning of a new career and a trilogy of books.

So, maybe I am too quick to condemn cursive. Maybe I should pick up a notebook and give it another try.  Do you think there's something special about joined up writing? Or should we all follow the Finns? 

Why read? A look at the Reading Agency's latest report by Dawn Finch

A quick internet search using the term “reading for pleasure” will bring up almost 39 million hits and a huge range of “evidence” and reports, however many of these are largely anecdotal and on closer inspection often lack robust evidence. Those of us who have been working for many years at the book-face know that reading for pleasure* gives us all benefits far beyond just enjoying the book. The new report from the Reading Agency - The Impact of Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment - has collated and summarised the most robust findings that relate to the non-literacy outcomes of reading for pleasure, and it contains some very powerful messages.

I was part of the steering group for this report, and am genuinely very excited to start working with this data. The report contains some very strong messages about the wider outcomes of reading for pleasure, and it should be an incredibly useful tool for everyone who works with books and reading. The report confirms that people who read for pleasure benefit from a huge range of wider outcomes including increased empathy, alleviation or reduction in the symptoms of depression and dementia, as well as an improved sense of wellbeing. People who read for pleasure also have a higher sense of social inclusion, a greater tolerance and awareness of other cultures and lifestyles, and better communication skills.

For children and young people the evidence obviously demonstrated that children who read for pleasure had higher levels of educational attainment, but what is most interesting is how it improves the overall quality of their lives. Children and young people who read show a significantly enhanced emotional vocabulary and cope better with education and social engagement.

What does the report mean?
A key finding of the report is that enjoyment of reading is a prerequisite for all these positive outcomes: people who choose to read, and enjoy doing so, in their spare time are more likely to reap all of these wider benefits. This shows us that negative attitudes towards reading for pleasure have a much wider negative impact on both the individual and society as a whole, and it’s essential that nationally we create a more positive attitude towards reading. It also shows that schools should encourage an atmosphere of reading for pleasure and that it is not enough to only have reading lessons or guided reading tasks. Children need to have a wide variety of books and other reading material at their disposal so that they can choose things to read that suit their tastes. It is far less likely that a child will become a lifelong reader if the only books they know are those on the reading scheme, and this is another reason why we need to campaign hard to support school and public libraries.

One of the most important things that we can do is exactly what we’ve always been doing – make reading a pleasurable pastime! In our work we do all we can to demonstrate that reading is an enjoyable thing to do, but beyond that we should also do all that we can to ensure that reading is not seen as an elitist pastime. Where possible, have your characters reading or engaging with books just because they want to. Keep on using your social media accounts to engage with your readers, and discuss other books. Authors have an essential part to play in engaging with their readers and supporting a national drive towards a wholly positive attitude towards reading – and that we’re already doing! I have seen first hand the difference an author visit can make to the reading habits and enjoyment levels of children and, in the light of this report, that is something that schools can not afford to disregard.

Use the report, draw on it and refer to it – write about it, share it and quote it. Show yourselves and others reading for pleasure, and push up the “cool” factor (and yes, I realise that just saying that makes me uncool). Encourage people to show others what they are reading and we’ll keep it trending. Talk about the wider benefits of reading, and make sure that the schools that you are visiting are aware of the report and its findings.

A very important point for authors is that the study has confirmed that children’s literature can be successfully used as a model for analysing everyday emotional processes, and it can support emotional development. This in turn demonstrates that reading for pleasure is an important way of combating issues such as social isolation, teenage depression, negative self-image and social and educational disengagement. In short, reading for pleasure can make an isolated and depressed young person feel better about who they are, and can make them more confident about the importance of the place that they occupy in the world.

For writers this gives us an even greater reason to tackle difficult or sensitive subject areas in our work. Not in a preachy or medicinal way, but in a way that normalises all walks of life and shows young readers that they are not alone. It is essential that young readers have the broad range of fiction that they need to enable them to develop a greater sense of belonging, and to enhance their empathetic skills. We owe it to our readers to be brave in our writing, so that we can help them to be even braver in their lives.

We all need to be part of the discussion about reading for pleasure. We can show that every single one of us, from all ages and all sectors of society, have something personal to gain from reading for pleasure that goes far beyond the pages of a great book.

Dawn Finch

Children's author, school librarian, Vice President of CILIP and member of CWIG committee.

Notes and resources

You can download the full report from the Reading Agency website here.

The report has an extensive bibliography should you wish to refer to specific studies mentioned within.

For more information about the project and the steering group please contact me on author@dawnfinch.com and I will reply or redirect your enquiry.

The Reading Agency commissioned this report and compiled it in collaboration with the following organisations:  Arts Council England, Association of Senior Children's and Education Librarians, Book Trust, Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Education Endowment Foundation, National Literacy Trust, Publishers Association, Scottish Library and Information Council, Society of Authors and the Society of Chief Librarians. 

* For the purposes of the report the phrases “reading for pleasure” and “recreational reading” are used interchangeably within the text. We defined this as “non-goal orientated transactions with texts as a way to spend time, and for entertainment.”

The term “reading for empowerment” is (for the purposes of this report) defined as “transactions with texts as a means of self-cultivation and self-development beyond literacy”. For example reading non-fiction material such as craft or self-help books.

Both terms were used to define reading for pleasure and empowerment in all formats and media.

Why write yet more books? By Cecilia Busby

Sometimes as a writer I feel a sense of despair about what I do. Can I really - should I really - continue to add to the vast quantities of books out there already?

I feel this as a twinge at the back of my neck when I read otherwise lovely and welcome posts on Facebook about friends' book launches and reviews and interviews; I feel it when I browse the reviews of new books online, or click through from Twitter to notices in the Bookseller about the latest signing or new shortlist; but most especially I feel it when I walk into a bookshop. What used to be a very pleasurable experience has become tainted by the fog of despair that descends when I stand in front of the bright and wonderful children's and YA bookshelves of almost any bookshop - but most especially Waterstones, which has limited space for kids' books and fills much of it with swathes of Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Michael Morpurgo and Jacqueline Wilson (to say nothing of Beast Quest and Rainbow Fairies).

The despair is a mix of: 'what's the point? there are so many good books out there already - from years ago as well as last week - and more piled on top of them every day' and 'what's the point? you'll never get your books on the shelves anyway because you're not a celebrity/haven't won any prizes/don't have a massive marketing campaign behind you/(and aren't any good anyway)'... (this last said in sepulchral tones by the doubter that sits on my shoulder and criticises everything I do - you know the one I mean, I'm sure...) 

Up to now this despair has been mitigated by the fact that I have to write a book, because I have a contract to do so, and the question of whether or not it's a sensible thing to be doing can be passed off on the publisher who commissioned it. But my latest book, The Amber Crown, was the last in a trilogy, and since my publishers, Templar, have closed their children's fiction list and their sister-publishers (Hot Key and Picadilly) are not currently in the market for MG fantasy, I find myself looking for a new home.

Which means I am considering quite seriously what to do if my current WIP (an MG fantasy involving a box of action figures purchased at a car boot fair who turn out to be the Norse gods) finds no favour out there in the harsh world of children's publishing. Do I persevere? Do I really believe the world wants or needs another children's book? Do I feel a burning desire to fight it out there with all the other excellent MG books in the pipeline or already published, many of them - good ones, too! - languishing unreviewed and unavailable in bookshops, with paltry sales figures and no marketing campaign?

In the UK, according to recent statistics published in the Guardian [here], we publish more than 20 new titles every hour. That means more books per inhabitant than anywhere else in the world. As Jamie Byng, at Canongate, noted:

 “I think we publish too many books ... and I think this impacts negatively on how well we publish books as an industry. It is very easy to acquire a book. Much harder to publish it successfully."

I think that's true in the children's book world as well as the adult. Just how many books can children read between the ages of 5 and 11? (Children, remember, with the competing demands of electronic media, organised activities and much more homework than we ever had to do...) I want them to savour the delights of C.S. Lewis, and Alan Garner, and Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper - as well as new delights from the likes of Frances Hardinge, Garth Nix, Jonathan Stroud, J.K. Rowling. And that's just the fantasy. I also think most kids enjoy Enid Blyton, do get a lot out of Michael Morpurgo, are going to want to try David Walliams or Wimpy Kid, not least because everyone is reading them - and I could go on for pages.

So what arguments could I bring to bear to justify continuing to write yet more books?

Hmm.

I'm not really sure. I am immensely proud of the books I have written, and I love them all. I treasure the reviews and letters from fans I have had, and I get a warm glow when I hear from people that their children have loved my books. The other day, in the library, I was accosted by an eight-year-old boy and his mother - he'd realised who I was and wanted to come and say my books were his absolute favourites but he was so overcome he was unable to speak until his mum had broken the ice first. These are very special moments and I'm so glad I've been able to experience them. I enjoy writing, I love making up stories, I have endless ideas bouncing round in my head, I can sense I am getting better as I write more, and when I'm not lost in the fog of despair, I do want to continue. 

I don't know if that's enough justification - but you know what? I don't care. I'm going to ignore that sepulchral voice. I'm going to hang on in there for a little bit longer. Because when I really think about giving up, I realise that I still love being a writer, and I still get a kick out of the idea that someone, somewhere, is reading and enjoying words I've written. And that's enough for me.

Cecilia Busby writes fantasy adventures for children aged 7-12 as C.J. Busby.

Her first series was the Spell series, an Arthurian knockabout fantasy aimed at 7-9. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published in March by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

Books for young teens by Savita Kalhan

A few months back I volunteered at my local library to start a teen reading group, and I'm happy to say it's going strong. I've got twelve kids in the group from four different schools, five boys and seven girls, and new friendships have formed, as well as lots of book recommendations between them.

When the kids arrive, our table in the corner of the library is covered in library books for them to look at. They all read the blurbs on the back of the books and the opening pages, and then decide which of the books they want to read first. Interestingly, when they return for the next meeting, they have often felt that some of the books have not matched the blurb on the back of the books when they've come to read them. They felt that they were led to expect one thing and the book turned out to be very different to that, which put them off the book a bit.

The teen reading group has been shadowing the Carnegie, but not all the books have been suitable or appropriate for the group - their words, not mine! I don't believe in censoring books. I was never censored or my reading overseen by an adult. Because the reality is, kids will not read something that they feel is too "old" for them. Although the teens in my reading group have really enjoyed some of the books, they have also put down books that they felt were a bit too much for them. It's great that they tried them and I know that they will come back to some of them when they're a little older.

The majority of the kids in the group are aged 13, so they are young teenagers, going from middle grade to teen. Young adult books are a little beyond them at the moment, again this is coming from the kids themselves.

They like all genres and are happy to try any book that I suggest. I'd love to be able to compile a long list of books that have a broader appeal for that particular age group. I do have a list, but I know it can be better, so I'm asking for suggestions and recommendations in the comments section please.

Using Suspense to Mess With Narrative Structure – David Thorpe

So how do you make suspense work?

I'll tell you later.

First, the necessary info:

The #MSWL tag on Twitter stands for "manuscript wish list" and both agents and editors use it and the related website to alert writers to what they are looking for. It is extremely useful and greatly simplifies the process of manuscript submission and selection for both sets of actors.

Now, a flashback:

The other day, when I was monitoring the wish lists for manuscripts aimed at older children, teenagers or young adults I was struck by the number of requests for novels that had an unusual structure or played with the traditional narrative form, or even had unreliable narrators.

Why should it be that editors and agents think that readers in the age range from older children to young adults are looking for something other than stories with a traditional structure of beginning, middle and end, in that order? Perhaps they have had enough of such structures already in their short lives, or perhaps there is something else?

Writers nowadays have to compete with a plethora of other media – films and streaming television, Instagram, YouTube and video games – to grab the attention of teenage readers, who are hungry for an immediate hit and possess a comparatively short attention span.

Diving into the story at the deep end is one way to do this.

The traditional structure means that in act one, known as the set up, the writer takes the time to introduce the context and the characters before coming to the main problem which the protagonists has to solve. Several writers, including myself, on this blog have written about it before.

This takes time and maybe modern readers don't have the patience to plough through all this. They want to cut straight to the chase.

One way around this problem which writers frequently use is to open with a prologue containing high action that is either part of the back story or a flash forward (e.g. the Young Bond stories written by Charlie Higson) before  commencing act one. (This is a device often found in early Spielberg films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark.)

The disadvantage of this approach is that you still have a slow pace in act one. Modern readers are wise to this and the risk is that they may lose patience. For these readers there must be either almost constant drama or humour depending on the genre to keep them hooked.

Yet from time to time as storytellers we have to give the readers information such as descriptions of characters, places, and other incidental but necessary plot information. So how might we be able to do this while playing with traditional narrative structure? Conveying this information can slow the pace unless it is deftly mixed into the narrative flow like adding seasoning to a dish.

When the information is what would have been in the set-up it will seem like a flashback. The flashbacks are dropped into the main chronological sequence to add relevant backstory on an ongoing need-to-know basis.

Now writing courses will tell you that flashbacks slow the pace, but that isn't necessarily true. The key to good storytelling is to maintain the suspense, to get the readers turning those pages. What if we use flashbacks in order to keep the suspense going for longer?

Let's say you're telling a friend about something exciting that happened to you. Some way into your story you realise that they won't understand who a certain character is who has appeared on the scene, so you have to spend a couple of sentences filling in who they are. Then you pick up your narrative.

The listener will be grateful because it helps them understand what's going on but they will keep listening because they know they are going to find out what happens next pretty soon. It's the suspense that lets them do this. Of course if you spent too long telling the life story of this person they will end up forgetting where they are in your main story, or lose interest and walk away. So you keep the insertion as long as it needs to be and no longer.

So the storyline reaches a cliffhanger, which doesn't have to be a big deal, just something you know will make the reader pant a little to find out what happens next, then you drop in the flashback. The more of a deal the cliffhanger is the longer the flashback can be. All the time they're reading this they're also wanting to get to where the storyline picks up again.

That's the key to this form of playing with structure.

So how do you make suspense work?

Told you I'd get to it.

Suspense works on different levels of timescale. A short timescale may be, say: what is behind this door? Will the prisoner reveal the answers to the questions being demanded by their captor? Will the boy tell the girl how he feels about her? The longest timescale for suspense in your story is the one set up near the beginning that you resolve at the end. In between there are other ongoing questions being set up and resolved (or not) over different timescales, not just in your main narrative but in any subplots.

When looking at your structure you should be particularly aware of all of these suspense elements.

Here is a metaphor to illustrate this idea. Imagine a guitar fretboard.

At one end is the beginning of your narrative and the other end is the conclusion. Each fret is a plot point – the tension rises and the pitch gets higher as you move along the fretboard. All of the suspense elements in your book are like rubber bands stretched between nails hammered into the fretboard. (Please don't spoil a real guitar by hammering nails into it!)

These suspense elements (rubber bands) will overlap: some will be short and some will be long. The more you have and the more they overlap, the more of a page turner you have.

So, at each point in your narrative, on every page, you can ask yourself the following questions for each of the narrative strands:

1. What does the reader know?
2. What do they want to know?
3. When shall I tell them?

This will allow you to keep track of the suspense elements.

Okay, armed with this information we can go back and look at the structure of your book. Where are the moments of heightened drama? To keep high both the tension and the attention of the reader, you would need to keep these high drama moments coming thick and fast. But after a high point the reader needs to catch their breath. This is when you can insert the flashback containing the necessary back story information that the reader needs in order to make sense of what's going on.

Of course if these scenes themselves contain drama, so much the better.

This is just one way in which you could scramble the narrative structure. But whatever method you choose there needs to be a good dramatic reason for it, perhaps linked to the journeys of your main characters. It should not be arbitrary.


David Thorpe is the author of YA speculative fiction novels Hybrids and Stormteller.

Not All Moments Are Weighted Equally - Heather Dyer

©Liz West

Time (in novels, anyway) can be condensed or drawn out for effect. Sometimes we might want to use a ‘scene summary’ in which we sum up a large expanse of space and/or time in just a couple of sentences: changing seasons on the farm, a normal day at school, a boring few days during which nothing much happens. Going into more detail when nothing much is happening would bore our readers. Words are expensive, and we need to gauge how many to invest.

Other moments are more valuable because they’re more significant in terms of plot and/or character development. They’re worth spending more words on. Occasionally, a moment that lasts less than a second in ‘real’ time, is so important that, if it was a goal, we would be watching it played out in slow motion.

Look at the famous last paragraph of James Joyce's  short story, "The Dead", and see how a few seconds during which nothing much happens outwardly, is expanded on and explored in great detail:

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Here, the reader can feel the same incredibly complex, almost impossible-to-articulate emotion that the protagonist feels. It’s done indirectly, through showing what the character is looking at and what he’s thinking about.

But can complex emotions also be conveyed indirectly in books for children, where the characters and readers are so much less sophisticated? I think so. Here’s a moment that I’m wrestling with in my own book for 7-11 year olds. Hannah is torn between climbing aboard a magic carpet, or staying safely on her side of the window. Only one second of ‘real time’ passes:

Hannah hesitated. Ever since watching Aladdin, she had longed to ride a magic carpet. Once, she had even sat cross-legged on the oriental rug in the hall, and commanded it to take her to the Taj Mahal. But nothing had happened. Now, at last, she had her chance – but the gap between the carpet and the windowsill was just the wrong distance. Hannah could see the flagstone path below; it would be a long way to fall. 

Getting into Hannah’s head at this precise moment allowed me (and, I hope, the reader) to appreciate how torn Hannah is between security and freedom, bravery and cowardice. These, I realized, were Hannah’s ‘issues’. These issues revealed the theme of the book, and pointed me in the direction of her character development.

1. What a character is looking at can serve as a symbol or metaphor for their feelings or the situation. 
2. A character’s thoughts might recall a previous incident or another subject that throws light on the current situation. 
3. A character’s feelings are best shown by describing the sensations in their body, or by allowing the reader to feel the same emotions by showing them exactly what the character is experiencing. 

If we pause to unpick the important moments, they may reveal (to us and to our readers) the deeper themes contained within them.

Heather Dyer - children's author and Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow

• For enquiries about creative writing workshops for children or adults, or editorial services, go to www.heatherdyer.co.uk
• For enquiries about academic writing workshops, go to:  http://rlfconsultants.com/consultants/heather-dyer/