Writing Advice from Madeleine L'Engle: Writing for Children is the Same as Writing for Adults

 

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, I have just finished preparing an index of all the blog posts I have written since January 2010. As I did so, I noticed a number of posts that are worth repeating. Since it’s hard work to come up with new ideas each week, I’m going to take a break from writing new material. For the next five weeks I’ll be repurposing articles I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Association blog about writing for children. The middle three were part of a series and the first and last were stand-alone posts, but they all fit together like the pieces of a puzzle.

This post is from May 16, 2018.

Writing Advice from Madeleine L’Engle: Writing for Children is the Same as Writing for Adults

Madeleine L’Engle was a children’s writer who died in 2007. She is best known for A Wrinkle in Time and other children’s fantasies. The advice in this post is taken from Walking on Water, which combines writing advice with reflections on her life as a writer.

The passage below comes from a chapter called “Names and Labels,” where L’Engle tries to dispel the idea that writing for children is different than writing for adults.

Nancy Berkowitz, long a great friend of children’s books and their writers, told me last year that I’d given her the best definition of a children’s book that she’d heard. Having completely forgotten ever giving such a definition, I asked eagerly, “What was it?”

“A children’s book is any book a child will read.”

First my children and now my grandchildren are proof of this, moving from children’s books marketed for their own age range—the girls are ten and eleven years old—to any grown-up novel I think would appeal to them. All they require is a protagonist with whom they can identify (and they prefer the protagonist to be older than they are), an adventure to make them turn the pages, and the making of a decision on the part of the protagonist.

. . .

One summer I taught a class in techniques of fiction at a midwestern university. About half way through the course, one of the students came up to me after class and said, “I do hope you’re going to teach us something about writing for children. That’s really why I’m taking this course.”

“What have I been teaching you?”

“Well—writing.”

“Don’t you write when you write for children?”

“Well—but isn’t it different?”

No, it is not different. The techniques of fiction are the techniques of fiction. They hold as true for Beatrix Potter as they do for Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Characterization, style, theme, are as important in a children’s book as in a novel for grown-ups. Taste, as always, will differ . . . A child is not likely to identify with the characters in Faulkner’s Sanctuary. Books like A Wrinkle in Time may seem too difficult to some parents. But if a book is not good enough for a grown-up, it is not good enough for a child.

So what, then, are the differences?

Most of them are minor, and apparent. A child wants to read about another child, a child living in and having adventures in a world which can be recognized and accepted. As long as what the protagonist does is true, this world can be unlimited, for a child can identify with a hero in ancient Britain, darkest Africa, or the year two thousand and ninety-three.

When I was a child I browsed through my parents’ books when I had finished my own. What was not part of my own circumference of comprehension I simply skipped; sex scenes when I was eight or nine had little relevance for me, so I skipped over them. They didn’t hurt me because they had no meaning for me. In a book which is going to be marketed for children it is usually better to write within the child’s frame of reference, but there is no subject which should, in itself, be taboo. If it is essential for the development of the child protagonist, there is nothing which may not be included. It is how it is included which makes its presence permissible or impermissible. Some books about—for instance—child abuse, are important and deeply moving; others may be little more than a form of infant porno. [Emphasis in original.]

Later in this same section, L’Engle decries the practice of “writing down” to children, which she equates with substandard writing. Then she sums up this way:

So a children’s book must be, first and foremost, a good book, a book with a young protagonist with whom the reader can identify, and a book which says yes to life. [Emphasis in original.]

Walking on Water isn’t for everyone. Madeline L’Engle was a dedicated Christian, and the book is filled with religious and philosophical concepts. However, writers with the same beliefs may want to read it for insight into L’Engle’s view of her calling.

And we can all learn from her comments on writing for children.

Time to Update My Email List

 

I got a notice from Blogger saying that the widget I was using to send email copies of my blog won’t be supported after July. It is unclear whether the emails will continue to be sent, and the instructions for a work-around lost me at the very first step. Since it’s been over ten years since I started the blog, its time to update the list anyway.

The blog address will not change. You can access it directly at http://kathrynpagecamp.blogspot.com or from the blog tab on the navigation bar at the top of my website at www.kathrynpagecamp.com. I will also continue posting the link on Facebook every time I add something new, almost always on Monday mornings.

If you want to continue (or begin) getting posts by email, please notify me at kcamp@kathrynpagecamp.com. Use the email address you want to receive posts at, and put “Email Blog Posts” in the subject line.

Here’s hoping for a smooth transition.

Unreliable Narrators

 

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie or Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier but intend to do so in the future, you may want to skip this post.

Usually, the term “unreliable narrator” is used for a first-person narrator who the author has set up to mislead the reader. The unreliability is always intentional by the author, and sometimes—although not always—by the character.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd uses a narrator who intentionally misleads the reader by leaving out some vital information. Dr. Sheppard is a likeable man, and for most of the book we believe he is trying to give us a neutral picture of both the events leading up to the murder and Hercule Poirot’s attempts to solve it. So the reader is surprised when Poirot unmasks Dr. Sheppard as the murderer.

An example of an unreliable narrator who is not intentionally misleading comes from Rebecca. Rebecca was the first Mrs. de Winter, and the narrator is the second one. When she hears part of Rebecca’s story but not all of it, her overactive imagination fills in the rest.

But this post goes beyond the traditional meaning of the term “unreliable narrator.” I’m taking it literally.

Only omniscient narrators can be completely reliable. Every other type of narrator has human failings and gets some things wrong. Readers should understand that everything they assume is fact might not be.

For example, I’m currently working on a middle-grade historical novel with two third-person protagonists. Will and Meg are twins with a similar upbringing but differing perspectives. Will simply doesn’t view the facts the same way Meg does. Since I use each one’s voice and impressions throughout that person’s point-of-view chapter, any reader who says “I read it in the narrative so it must be true” is deluded.

This comes up even when there is only one POV character or when the POV characters agree. A twelve-year-old girl who is hungry might think of herself as starving even though that isn’t literally true. But that’s how she thinks of it, so that is how the narrative portrays it.

One caveat. Some writers step back from their characters and write narrative that doesn’t match the characters’ thoughts. Those authors might be able to get away with limiting their narrative to “truth.” But I don’t write that way. I write the narrative to match the character’s thoughts, and his or her ideas may be wrong.

So don’t believe everything you read.

Back to Normal?

 

Roland and I celebrated our 42^nd wedding anniversary on Wednesday. Unlike last year, it felt almost normal.

One of our anniversary traditions is to go out to eat at a nice restaurant, and sometimes we get to celebrate in unique locations. We celebrated our fortieth anniversary at a specialty restaurant on the Viking Sea while cruising the Baltic. And the photo at the head of this blog shows us at a restaurant in Florence, Italy, for our 39^th anniversary. Roland found the restaurant and made the reservation before we left home, but the restaurant was practically empty so the reservation was unnecessary. According to the letter we wrote home, the food was good, although the steak was a little too rare for me. The sauce covered up the uncooked taste, however.

When we’re at home, we like to celebrate with a meal at Café Borgia. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible last year. We did eat their food, but we had to order carry-out and celebrate at home.

This year we went back to Café Borgia and ate in the dining room. It’s only the second time I’ve eaten out in months, and it felt good.

Does that mean things are getting back to normal?

I hope so.

There's Nothing New Under the Sun

 

I’m preparing an index of the more than 600 blog posts I have written since January 1, 2010. Actually, I haven’t written quite that many since some of them have been reprints. Still, it’s a lot, and it isn’t always easy to come up with new ideas. So when I came across this one, I decided to reprint it again.¹ It is one of my favorites because of the creativity.

There’s Nothing New Under the Sun

The wind was picking up. Watching the approaching gale from her seat in the cockpit, Anne was grateful that Carousel had reached shelter before the storm hit. But as the sailboat’s bare mast bobbed and weaved with the others in the harbor, Anne prayed for the sailors who were still out on Lake Michigan.

Notice the opening sentence, which I borrowed from Chi Libris. Chi Libris is a group of well-known Christian novelists that include Angela Hunt and James Scott Bell. The group decided to publish a book of short stories with five shared elements: the same opening sentence, mistaken identity, pursuit at a noted landmark, an unusual form of transportation, and the same last line (“So that’s exactly what she did.”). The plots vary widely, however. In fact, the point of their collection, What the Wind Picked Up, is to show that the same basic idea can generate many diverse stories.

That’s one reason you can’t copyright ideas. The idea itself doesn’t make the story. It’s what you do with the idea that counts.

But there’s an even more important reason why you can’t copyright ideas. The founding fathers included copyright provisions in the Constitution to encourage creative works, not to inhibit them. As Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “there is nothing new under the sun.” If ideas could be copyrighted, there would be nothing left to write about.

Here’s one idea that is frequently found in literature. Two young people fall in love but are kept apart by their feuding families, and the consequences are tragic.

You could call Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet a case of mistaken identity in 16^th Century Verona, Italy. The two protagonists fell in love before discovering who they had fallen in love with.

Move the setting to New York City in the 1950s, and you have West Side Story.

Then there is the apparently true story of the Hatfields and the McCoys in the Appalachian Mountains during the late 1800s. Their feud escalated after Johnse Hatfield began courting Roseanne McCoy, and Johnse’s family had to rescue him from the angry McCoy men. Did Johnse escape on a horse or use some other form of transportation that we would consider unusual today?

Or travel back to even earlier times. Legend tells of two Native American lovers from rival tribes. When their chiefs forbade their marriage, the lovers swore that if they couldn’t live together they would die together. Fleeing from their families, they embraced each other and jumped off the landmark now known as Lover’s Leap in Illinois’ Starved Rock State Park.

All of these stories use the same basic plot idea, and one (West Side Story) is still under copyright.

Now think of all the contemporary authors who have used that same plot idea. If you could copyright an idea, those stories wouldn’t exist.

Let’s look at another example.

Miss Read (pen name for Dora Saint) has written multiple books about everyday village life in England. While these books tend to have a main character, they center around an ensemble cast of ordinary, and mostly likeable, village residents. 

Does that remind you of a series by a popular American authoress?

When I read Jan Karon’s first Mitford book, I immediately thought of Miss Read and her Fairacre/Thrush Green books. It isn’t that the writing style is similar—it isn’t—or that the authors tell the same stories—they don’t. But their books have a common theme.

I don’t know if Jan Karon read Miss Read’s books before writing her own. For the sake of my point, however, let’s assume she did. And let’s also assume Jan Karon knew she could use the same idea without violating copyright law.

So that’s exactly what she did.

__________

¹ This post first appeared on the June 27, 2012 Hoosier Ink blog and was reprinted on my blog on January 26, 2015.

Writing Narrative from a Character's Perspective

 

I usually write in a close third-person point-of-view. That means the narrative is coming from inside my POV character’s head using her thought processes, observations, and vocabulary.

Take description, for example. If my POV character is materialistic and tends to notice what people wear and how they furnish their homes, the narrative should include those details. If the character isn’t observant, the description should be minimal or non-existent—unless she has some particular reason for noticing the details in a specific situation.

Or consider this advice: use as much word variety as possible to make the narrative more interesting. I could use “couch” in one paragraph and refer to the same item of furniture as a “sofa” in another. That’s good word variety, but would my POV character really use the terms interchangeably? Some people do, but if my character wouldn’t, I shouldn’t, either. And sometimes the attempt at word variety creates confusion, such as using “cleaner” to refer to a vacuum cleaner even though many readers use to word to refer to household cleaning products such as Pine-Sol. One friend from my weekly critique group tried to avoid repeating the word “corn” by calling it “maize” the second time, but her POV character is a contemporary teenager who is unlikely to think of that word. I suggested just using “corn” twice, but she had a better solution and managed to get rid of the second reference altogether.

The same goes for grammar. If my character isn’t a stickler for it, I shouldn’t be, either. But I can’t stray too far or my readers will assume I don’t understand or respect good grammar, and that doesn’t work, either.

In the end, it becomes a balancing act. Dialogue would be deadly if we put in each “ah” and “um” from everyday life, and the same is true of narrative. Although it should create the impression of reality, it doesn’t have to mimic life.

Still, it’s nice to get as close as possible without boring the reader.

__________

The photo at the top of this page shows “The Thinker” by Auguste Rodin.