Frances ORoark Dowell - How to Build a Story . . . Or, the Big What If

ALSO BY

FRANCES OROARK DOWELL

Anybody Shining

Chicken Boy

The Class

Dovey Coe

Falling In

The Second Life of Abigail Walker

Shooting the Moon

Ten Miles Past Normal

Trouble the Water

Where Id Like to Be

The Secret Language of Girls Trilogy

The Secret Language of Girls

The Kind of Friends We Used to Be

The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away

From the Highly Scientific Notebooks of Phineas L. MacGuire

#1: Phineas L. MacGuire Blasts Off!

#2: Phineas L. MacGuire Erupts!

#3: Phineas L. MacGuire Gets Cooking!

The Sam the Man series

#1: Sam the Man & the Chicken Plan

#2: Sam the Man & the Rutabaga Plan

#3: Sam the Man & the Dragon Van Plan

#4: Sam the Man & the Secret Detective Club Plan

ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

For Caitlyn Dlouhy

~F. O. D.

To Joshua, J. R. Samuel, and Noah-building a story with you is my favorite

~S. E.

IM REALLY GLAD YOURE HERE. Do you have a second to chat?

You do? Fantastic!

Okay, let me say this as simply as I can: a writer is someone who writes. Period. You dont have to publish what you write to be a writer. You dont need a degree, a certificate, or a license. You dont need anybodys permission or to follow anybody elses rules. You dont even have to be that good at it. All you have to do to be a writer is write.

Have you ever written anything? A poem about your brothers weird toes? A paragraph describing the best way to make a peanut-butter-and-marshmallow-fluff sandwich? Four pages of a novel about life on Planet Wonko?

Okay thenyoure a writer.

Are you constantly coming up with story ideas, making lists of great character names, scribbling scenes in notebooks?

Excellent. Youve come to the right book.

Maybe youre one of those people who hate to write. Maybe writing a story or a paper or a three-sentence paragraph makes you feel like youre taking a bath in a vat of bumblebees and vinegar. Maybe the very idea of writing makes your insides shrivel up like a worm on a hot sidewalk.

You also have come to the right book.

I started writing when I was a kid. I wrote lots of poems and the beginnings of novels (I always gave up after seven or eight pages). I never thought of myself as a writer, but I wrote all the time, which is how I eventually ended up writing books like Dovey Coe, Falling In, and Phineas L. MacGuire Erupts! Maybe youve read one of my books. If not, Ill pause here while you run to the library and check a few of them out.

[Pauses. Waits for reader to go to the library.]

Oh, youre back. Good!

So heres the thing: after Id published a bunch of books, I started teaching writing workshops for kids. Some kids come to these workshops because they love to write. Others come because their parents make them. As a teacher, I want to make my enthusiastic students even more enthusiastic about writing poems and stories. My less enthusiastic students? I want them to learn that everybody has a story to tell and can find the words to tell it. At the very least, I want to make the writing process a little less painful. Two-thirds less painful. Okay, 37 percent less painful.

This is a book for writers. Its a book for writers who love to write and writers who like to write and for writers who hate to write. I dont know about you, but that describes me to a T. I love writing, I like writing, I hate writing. I find writing easy, hard, exciting, and boring.

But even on the days when Im bored, or everything I write sounds dumb, I stick with it. Bad days are most often followed by good ones, and weird as it sounds, sometimes boredom is what gets you to the exciting stuff. Whatever kind of writing day Im having, I always remember that every time I sit down to write, I get to make up new worlds. I get to create people out of thin air. I get to write the story Ive always wanted to read.

Who else gets to do all that?

You!

Now, before we get on with the show, I want to share something very important with you. Sometimes I find that younger writers (and some older ones, too) have unrealistic expectations about whats going to happen when they sit down to write a story. I think this is one reason some kids decide early on that theyre bad writers and shouldnt even try. So Ive made a short list of things I think are true for all writers, from the most experienced to the absolute beginner. I call this list

You have a great idea for a story, but when you sit down to write this amazing, entertaining, brilliant epicwell, you cant get the words to come out right. In fact, it seems like the words arent saying what you want them to say at all! Its like youre thinking, Come on words, work with me here! And the words are all watching Netflix and eating nachos.

So frustrating! In your mind, you see the image of a thousand black stallions thundering across the moonlit plains, the Dark Lord of the Cosmos at the lead. But when you try to transfer this image into words, you come up with something like The black horses ran fast and were really loud. Lord Moribunds horse was also really fast and loud. He was in the front.

Somehow this lacks the poetry of your original vision. Its tempting to delete it (or tear it out of your notebook). Dont! Your job right now is to put your story into words, however lame those words might sound. Think of it this way: when youre writing a story, youre creating something that didnt exist until you made it up and wrote it down. In a way, youre creating something out of nothing. And you know what? Thats hard work.

Think about your favorite book, the book youve reread at least ten times, possibly ten million. Ponder the many reasons you love it. Then wrap your brain around the fact that this bookthe absolute best book ever written on Planet Earthstarted out as a worst first draft. Full of clunky sentences. Poorly described settings. Boring characters. Not only that, the author who wrote this book likely has drawers full of other books that have never seen the light of day, thats how bad they are. She has piles of stories that fall apart halfway through. She has written sentences that make her cringe to think about. (Okay, its possible that Im talking about myself here. But I know lots and lots of other writers, and most of them also have at least one drawer full of, well, future compost.)