Author Skype with Matthew J. Kirby

Thanks to everyone who came out for our final Laie Young Writers Club meeting for the year, including author Matthew J. Kirby, who joined us by skype. Mr. Kirby is the author of The Clockwork Three and Icefall, plus several upcoming titles like The Lost Kingdom, Infinity Ring Book 5: Cave of Wonders, and a new series called Quantum League. He wins the LYW Author Medal of Honor for pulling over and finding an internet cafe when he realized that we'd made a mistake about what time zone he was in! We are eternally grateful.

Here are some of the thoughts Matt Kirby shared with us:

• His favorite part of being a writer is the writing process, but his favorite part of being an author is traveling.
• Plot is very important, but you don't need to use a formulaic plot structure. A story needs form, not formula.
• The beginning of a story creates a contract with the reader. If you promise the reader something, you have to deliver.
• The way to get emotional power into a story is to get yourself into a place where you can feel what the characters are feeling. If you can't feel it, how can you write it?
• The most important thing you can do to be a successful writer is to write. So many people would like to be writers, but they're not really working on anything. Get in the habit of writing something every day.  

After a fun and motivational visit with Mr. Kirby, we had chocolate cake and said good-bye to one of our founding members, Amber Carlson, who will be leaving for college next fall.

The Laie Young Writers Club will be signing off for the summer, but we'll be back again next fall. Until then...

Keep writing!

Author Skype with Tim Wynne-Jones

Today we had a video chat with Tim Wynne-Jones, a Canadian author who is just completing his thirty-sixth book. He's written picture books, novels for children, novels for adults, radio plays, and we even found out he wrote songs for the television show, "Fraggle Rock." With all of that writing experience comes great wisdom. He was able, for instance, when asked what the main difference between a novel and a short story is, to say that a short story is short.

When asked if it was better to write in first person or second person (or third person), he said that first person can be fun to write and to read because you're pretending to be someone else, but it can also feel claustrophobic because you're trapped inside one person's head. Third person point of view gives the reader a little more distance and a little more space to watch a character from the outside. Second person point of view, which Tim Wynne-Jones used in his book "Blink and Caution," isn't very common, but in that case the second person point of view took on the role of someone watching the character over his shoulder and talking to him, trying to help him but not being able to.

Tim Wynne-Jones said he usually doesn't outline a story, but instead writes several drafts. For instance, the book he's finishing now took twelve drafts, and at one point it was six hundred pages long. Now it is only three hundred pages, and at his very favorite stage of the writing process. The story is all there at last, and everything is about polishing, making every word be the right word in the right place.

To the question of how do you get emotion into a story, Tim Wynne-Jones suggested that a writer needs to understand what every character wants. The most interesting stories come about when two characters aren't necessarily good or bad, but have different, conflicting things that they want. Even more interesting is when a character gets what he wants, but then discovers that he didn't want it after all!

After studying architecture for three years of college, Tim Wynne-Jones joined a rock band and started writing songs. He found he enjoyed this so much that he wrote more and more, and eventually began publishing books. We'd like to thank him for giving the world so many great books to read, and for taking some time out to visit with us today! Mahalo!

Seeing the Setting Through Emotional Lenses

“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”

    --T.S. Eliot

Translation: when it comes to emotion, SHOW DON'T TELL.

We've all heard that, but HOW IS IT DONE?

When does tell become show?

George was nervous. (definitely telling)

George's heart pounded. (Sort of showing, but still mostly telling. I'm telling you his heart pounded. Why is that different from telling you he was nervous? It's even more ambiguous. Is he scared or excited?)

"Relax. This won't hurt a bit." The dentist held the drill poised over George's face. The drill motor whirred. George stared at the yellow-brown stain on the ceiling and wished he had paid for better dental insurance.

Now I don't need to tell you that George is nervous or that his heart is pounding. I've put you in his head and you're seeing things through his current emotional filter. He's noticing the drill in front of his nose, the sound of the motor, the stained ceiling. How does he feel? Mommy, get me out of this chair!

This is the objective correlative. You've got to choose what your characters notice based on how the characters are feeling at the time, then relate those things to the reader. Paint an emotional picture with objects, situations, and events. Give your reader the facts, and let the emotion come out on its own.

Here's your writing exercise. Get your notebook and write down four emotional states, spacing them out on the page. Then walk into another room in your house. Any room you like. Describe that room through each of your four emotional filters.

Happy writing!