Happy Halloween, all. There's my girl, dressed as a pirate (below), with two of her dear friends. Isn't she swanky and swashbuckly?
Wish me luck, then. Plot. I love ye and I hate ye and yet I cannot live without ye.
I know most of the world posts things like this on Facebook, but since I've managed to abstain from that craziness for this long, I have to share it with you here.
News from the Cockroft house: Soccer practices are winding down, my new office is rather chilly but I am trying to work there instead of at the dining room table for tax purposes; Elspeth won a 25. gift card to a candy store for a coloring contest (her reaction was absolutely charming); after six years, Martin bought new glasses; I have started a new project about five children who are all named after world-famous explorers. It's really fun and (surprise, surprise) I actually have a plot! While I helped my tutoring student map out his short story, I thought, I could really take some notes, here. It pays to have a plot! I don't know why it's taken me so long to reconcile myself to plot. After all, I write for children. What keeps us flipping pages as children? We want to find out what happens next--and it has to be more inspiring than Will Aunt Milly's tea steep sufficiently? Find out in chapter five!
Plot is not plebeian, commercial, or extraneous. Plot makes story. Plot makes lives. Plot makes for excitement. As I told my tutoring student as we drew a line to show building tension, climax, etc., etc, plot is vital. We drew another flat line: no internal or external change from the beginning to end. If you do this, I said, by the end, only your mother will still be reading. Flat line? I'm so sorry, but your story has died.
Pirates, princesses, cyborgs--they're all about plot. And so I remember when I adjust myself yet again from the rather less plot-driven world of adult literary fiction to the middle-grade novel. What did I love to read as a kid? Besides the classics like Little Women and Anne and Secret Garden (which also have plots), I loved the 'popcorn' books, like Famous Five and Secret Seven and yes, even (I admit publicly right now), Nancy Drew. There's no magic in ginger beer and boiled eggs on a clifftop if there's not a man with a gun lurking somewhere below in an ocean cave.
I admit, when I read these same (latter) books to my kids, I want to bang myself in the face repeatedly with an iron skillet. They are all plot-driven, all predictable, all wretchedly fast-paced--and the kids love them. So if I can strike a balance between good writing and character development and a strong plot when I write, I'm doing well. And if, at the end of a chapter, a kid begs Just ONE MORE CHAPTER! PLEEEEEAAAASEEE!--then I have fulfilled my purpose as a kid's writer.
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| Hands off me fair lady! Yer attentions have animated the cyborg at me left. Beware, me hearty! |
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