Migration from Little Language

I'm currently writing a children's book.  The first draft which contains the basic template of the plot has been completed, and therefore it has a structure of sorts. The characters have been created based on the requirements of the story - 5 children all slightly different but sufficiently similar to reflect their age and friendship. I am now going through the story and fleshing out the characters - giving them traits such as idiosyncratic modes of speech, background interests, temperaments, flaws and strengths. This is filling the pages - but proving worthy even if some of it will have to culled. Greater incidence of dialogue is bringing the anodyne script to life. At the moment it can only really be described as a work of progress.  However I have a deadline for next week - not for publishing possibilities but for proof reading and review. My thoughts are that it needs to be the best thing possible within this deadline - even though I concede it will not be the finished article.

These are the things I need to consider for this weeks draft. Language. All the characters are being developed. In many ways they are growing organically in their responses to my string pulling. They each now have their own method of delivery which I think would pass the test of reading random pieces of dialogue and identifying the speakers through usage and tone rather than the he said she said tags.  I would now like to go further by ransacking the dictionary and thesaurus and provide a raft of terminology that would not only reinforce speech differences between the characters but, and here's the motive behind this blog entry - provide sparkle and interest in the way the book is written. Later on I shall have to look at secrets and subplot which are two of the other obvious omissions from the draft, These should be capable of being inserted during subsequent editing i.e after the first review deadline so are therefor less important at the moment.

How to find interesting words for inclusion: one way I could do this is to look through the draft and replace. That is one way and I have done some of this already. However I think a better, if slightly less respected way is to organize a list of interesting words randomly selected for sound and/or meaning  and then look for opportunities to use them.  This can be more efficacious if you remember various scenes and what occurs within them, That should provide a reference point for the words that are generated as to their possible usefulness.

The one and only proviso has to be that they are more heavily influenced by sound impact than anything that might make them too difficult for children such as complexity and length. Here are some examples: skirl, splatter, skeet, scud, splinter, fizzle, fleer, kludge, phat, zing.  That kind of thing.  Nothing children are going to have any trouble understanding because they are mainly representations of sound or are so short as to not matter or be in some way self-explanatory. Makes for better individual writing improving the reading experience also. So lists first then find homes for all or more realistically some of them.

straggle,lagging - flagging, slink - to steal.to be....
foozle means to bungle. Scroop is another word for scrape. if you're corky you're buoyant. a sprat is a small inconsequential person. waxy is pale lustrous. glister is sparkle. Shirr is the gathering of material. Sparge is sprinkle. a skosh is a small amount. skirl is a high wailing tone. skimble skamble: ramblings. peppy is high energy in spirit. splotch is an irregular spot. Deckle is a ragged edge of paper. Slithering - self explanatory. .

Time To Bring Out The Thesaurus Once Again.

I have always prided myself on my knowledge of the meaning of words. I might not be the world's greatest writer, but I have always felt that I could hold my own in any word definition contest, and I always feel I should step forward and make a confidant flourish with the pen whenever the subject of words and meanings comes up at the local pub quiz.  But I don't as I have learnt that the breadth and scope of my vocabulary has planet sized holes.

The reason for this is that quiz masters and writers never ever ask things like; what does anachronistic or pusillanimous or serendipitous or reciprocity mean.  Not particularly difficult or grand words you might think - but I'd put my entire life's wealth on half the people in my local not knowing some or all of them. I know them, and a good many more, but this is not helping. The words that are asked about instead have a tendency to be strange constructions that exist but are hardly ever used outside of specialist writing or thinking. Something like 'what does a funambilist practice (tight rope walking) or what's the name for someone who collects matchboxes? (Filuminast since you ask.)  Weirdly, some of those simple souls at the pub (you know who you are) actually do know some of these aberrations. So I'm here to announce to the world that the words round is not my strength. It might even be my weakness ,(although history,science and geography would all run it close in a race to the bottom of my knowledge cache - Kevin Ashman I aint!)

These are examples of different kinds of words that have never concerned me as they would never have had me looking them up and wondering how i could get away with using them to make me sound clever. Dictionary trawling is certainly something I picked up as a dull child since I was so useless at all other subjects. I thought I could at least impress everyone with my word smitherery. And I did and I have for most of my life. But I'm not getting these darn word questions down at my local and it's really really annoying.

So I'm going to start compiling a few lists. And if I can peg enough of them together I'm going to create a study stack of them for my (and it probably will be my) use.

Free Write Story So Far

I have recently completed what I hope is the final edit of a children's book. I would like to say that writing it has been a delight but it hasn't. Like all other forms of writing for me it has presented myriad challenges along the way - some of which were practically predetermined by the previously written draft I was working on which presented the first of many of those challenges. Instead of doing the sensible and perhaps brave thing and using it as a guide and taking only the substance from it, I have sought to improve it by degrees. This has resulted in the story being too loose in it's point of view structure and tone. 

The template, and I'm happy to call it that, was constructed by a third person, notably the person with the original motivation for the story plot. My job initially was to spruce it up - check grammar, structure, spelling, character traits, continuity, dialogue, plot holes - that sort of thing. But bit by bit employing  a kind of layering process which I have used with my own writing - I have changed just about everything. All that is except point of view in that the story isn't told by any one of the individual characters. Instead I have continued with the god like omniscience of the author knowing all. Many times I have wanted to access the thoughts of some of the stronger more prominent characters and then resisted - pretty much only allowing me, the author that luxury. 

But this has not helped me. Quite why I didn't make the change to the story where it is seen the through the eyes of one of the central characters I don't know. My suspicion is that as a children's stories access to one characters thoughts - almost inevitably a child's - would present structural and stylistic issues and perhaps and interfere with the quality of the writing. My thoughts here are that a child's thoughts would be based on too limited a world view and lacking in the sophistication needed to professionalize the story into something acceptably readable. I may be wrong about this, but for some reason I certainly stayed with authorial control and found it impossible to drop - even though it proved problematic.  

The beginning has caused me loads of problems. I seem to be yoked to the 'look at the little children sleeping in their beds. Should we wake them and tell them there's an adventure about to start' kind of thing. Instead of say: Olivia yawned as she woke and looked out of the window. 

   'great the sun is shining, 'she yelled as she ran down the stairs nearly falling over the cat. 'Out the way buster, she screamed, I've got a date with a dead wizard!' She looked into the kitchen and realized that since her parents were already out she could leave without having her breakfast, washing her face or cleaning her shoes. this will be, she thought, a great day in the life of Olivia Grantchester.

The opening actually gives the impression of a camera focusing on a group of children gazing out of the window at school and wondering what was going on and why they were all due to meet up secretly under the chestnut tree at break time. No ones's thoughts are accessed, the story teller is describing the scene. This seems to have stifled the opening and to an extent the whole book.