It's a Dark World

I just finished reading The Secret of Nightingale Wood by Lucy Strange, and I enjoyed it. Or maybe enjoyed is the wrong word since I read most of it with tears in my eyes.

The book had a good rating on Amazon, but a number of reviewers said it was too dark for the 8-12 age group where the publisher had placed it.

I disagree.

Obviously, every parent should monitor his or her child’s reading material and understand what that individual child can handle. But this is a dark world, and children of all ages come across death and mental illness and ruthless people. We can’t protect our children from the dark side of life, but we should prepare them as best we can. And fiction is one means of doing that. Obviously, some novels handle these matters better than others, but The Secret of Nightingale Wood treats the issues sensitively. I certainly would not have objected to my daughter reading it when she was eight years old.

The book is writen by a British author and is set in England just after World War I. As mentioned by one reviewer, it would have benefited from an author’s note putting it in historical perspective. Still, middle-grade readers should be able to follow the story and separate the worthy characters from the immoral ones.

I am reminded of Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, which won the Newberry Metal but was banned from some school libraries because it deals with death (and for some mild language that every child is familiar with). In my opinion, it is one of the best books on death ever written for children.

The Secret of Nightingale Wood isn’t quite a Bridge to Terabithia, and it is far from perfect, primarily because there are too many coincidences for my liking. Fortunately, most have some advance set-up, and the one that didn’t became less of a concern on second glance. I won’t spoil the plot, but when I thought about that seemingly important coincidence (which comes almost at the end of the book), I realized that it wasn’t even necessary to the story, which resolved nicely without it.

But as to not letting your children read it because it deals with dark subjects? That’s not a valid reason. You can’t protect them from life, but you can try to prepare them for it.

So add The Secret of Nightingale Wood to your middle-grade child’s library.

How Much Description is Enough?

I’m following up on last week’s post by reprinting one I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium. It appeared on the IWC blog on May 4, 2016.

How Much Description is Enough?

I don’t use a lot of description in my stories. As a reader, I prefer letting my imagination fill in the details, so I write that way, as well. Still, there are times when some description is necessary.

Genre may also dictate the amount of detail. Romances often include in-depth descriptions of each character, the clothes they wear, and their decorating choices. Thrillers generally don’t.

So how do you find the right level for your work? This rule comes from Description and Setting by Ron Rozelle:

The problem for the writer of popular fiction is to give sufficient description without giving too much. The best solution is to keep your type of reader in mind all the time, and follow what I call the clutter rule: If something isn’t serving the advancement of the story, it needs to go.

His admonition to “keep your type of reader in mind” recognizes the differences between genre, but the basic rule applies to them all. If it doesn’t advance the story you are writing, get rid of it.

In On Writing, Stephen King says, “”For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.” 

So how do we find those well-chosen details? By ignoring the ones that are common to every similar scene and adding those that the reader will translate into the message you want to send. 

Maybe your characters meet in a coffee house. Most readers know what a coffee house looks like, so you don’t have to describe the counter or the room crowded with tables and chairs. But if this particular coffee house is on the verge of bankruptcy, you could mention the empty tables or the cracks in the linoleum flooring. 

Or do you want the reader to know that your protagonist’s best friend is poor? Put her in a faded shirt that is too big for her. You don’t have to describe her outfit again until she suddenly appears in a new dress that fits perfectly. That will peak the readers’ interest more than a constant fashion (or off-fashion) show will. If your protagonist is obsessed with what people wear, however, that’s another matter.

You can evoke a country setting by describing a white clapboard church with a cemetery and surrounded by farmlands. Or you can place your story in an urban setting with a stone church sitting on the corner of two streets lined with brick houses. These few details are enough to paint the picture.

Every reader is different. But if you want to keep my attention, tell me what I need to know and let my imagination fill in the rest.

_________

I took both of the photographs in 2010. The first is the Lund Mission Covenant Church near Pepin, Wisconsin, with a graveyard barely visible on the left. The second picture shows the Old Pullman Church in Chicago.

Changing Tastes

My family lived in Amman, Jordon, when I was young. I was a very picky eater at the time, and Mama was determined to get me to try new foods. One of those foods was halwa (also spelled halva), which is a very sweet paste made with nuts and either sugar or honey. The first time I tasted it, I hated it. The next time, it was just okay. But before long, I was taking halwa sandwiches to school every day by my choice. Unfortunately, when I tried halwa many years later as an adult, my tastes had changed again. I don’t hate it, but I do find it way too sweet to take in large doses.

Reading tastes can change, too.

When I was in high school, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss was one of my favorite books. I loved it for a number of reasons, including the detailed description that helped me see the setting and the characters.

Now jump to 2019. I am currently listening to The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins as I walk for exercise. Although I’m enjoying the story, there are times when the description drags on and on and I just want to tell the narrator to fast forward. Unfortunately, if I tried to fast-forward on my own, I might miss something important. So I’m putting up with it.

I haven’t read The Mill on the Floss for a number of years, and it is on my short list of books to read—or in this case reread—in the near future. Hopefully I will enjoy the description as much as I did when I was a teenager. It may depend on how much is really necessary to the story, but that’s the subject of next week’s post.

The point here is that reading tastes change. Just because you loved something when you were younger doesn’t mean you will love it now. But the opposite can also be true.

So this may be the time to try something different.

__________

The mill in the picture isn’t on the River Floss in England. I took the photo in 2010 while visiting the Bollinger Mill State Historic Site in Missouri.

Don't Lose Your Family Memories

When Roland’s family gathered a week ago for Mom’s funeral, they did the natural thing and spent time reminiscing. But although they remembered their own childhoods, they knew very little about Mom’s.

The same is true of family photos. This one from Mom and Dad’s wedding is the only picture we have of her parents, who are standing next to her. Fortunately, Dad’s side of the family is better documented. One branch has even compiled a written history that includes family stories and a genealogy that begins with the first generation in America.

On my side, my mother made it a retirement project to trace her ancestors back to Germany and to record as many family stories as she could. We also have some genealogy information for my father’s side, and my younger brother, Gordon, is working to enhance it. I’m also fortunate in that my parents wrote memoirs. However, Mama’s concentrates on her childhood, and—except for a very short preface—Daddy’s begins when he was thirty-five (a year before he married Mama). So there are still gaps. I told Daddy that I wanted to know more about his earlier days, but he never wrote about them, or at least he didn’t include them in the memoirs that I have. Gordon thinks Daddy did write some of it but gave up when his sister, who was three years younger, kept disagreeing with what Daddy remembered.

Then there are the stories they told me but never wrote down, which I need to put on paper while I still remember them.

Once the people who live the events pass on or succumb to dementia, there is no way to get their memories back. But pictures, letters, and stories written down or recorded as oral history all bring us closer to understanding what their lives were like.

Record your memories while you still have a chance. And if your parents are still living, write out a list of questions and tape the interview.

Because it is a shame to lose the memories.