Helen Brain's Blog

Posted by Helen Brain

I teach writing for children at an online writing school. Over the course of the nine modules my students write and edit a book for children. One of my tasks is to teach them how to improve passages in their novels that sound clumsy.

Some of my advice is written up in the following articles, which you might find useful if you're learning the craft of writing.

Learn How to Show Not Tell and Learn Ways to Show Not Tell deal with this essential technique for drawing in the reader.

How To Write Strong Characters and How to Build Tension use the same passage of writing to teach these skills.

I hope you find them helpful. Feel free to comment if you're unsure about anything, and I'll do my best to help.

Posted by Helen Brain

British children's writer, Michael Morpurgo's memoir, 'Singing for Mrs Pettigrew', (Walker Books 2007) is a blend of short stories and reflections on what inspired them. He is one of Britain's most successful writers, has published over a hundred books and has won numerous awards. He was also Children's Laureate between 2003 and 2005.

There is one story in the collection that is striking in its masterly use of emotion to make a point without descending into sentimentality or becoming maudlin. 'My one and only great escape' is the story of how, as a young boy, the desperately homesick Morpurgo runs away from boarding school. He is picked up on the road by an elderly woman and her dog. She takes him home, dries his clothes, feeds him buns, and then tells him something so wise that going back to school seems bearable.

She drops him off at the school gates, he is back just in time to not get in trouble and he is able to face the rest of the term.

It's a wonderful story. Morpurgo has remembered in touching detail how it felt to be homesick and alone. I think it's this kind of emotional authenticity that makes the very best writing for children.

ISBN 978-1-4063-0574-6

Posted by Helen Brain

I teach an online Writing for Children course, and I've been writing a module on good beginnings and endings. One of my ways of teaching them is to analyse how successful writers approach these critical elements of their stories.

I came across an old copy of What Katy Did at a fete this weekend. I'd been thinking a lot about the story as my husband is ill, and like Katy with the broken back, has taken to languishing grumpily in his bedroom. I've been longing for a kind but firm Cousin Helen to come along and turn him into a patient saintly courageous sunny upbeat ray of sunshine.

Of course that's not going to happen but I did look to see how Coolidge began her book. It's an example of how not to begin a book for modern children, with a full ten pages of description before any action happens. But she must have got something right, because almost forty years after I read it I can still remember it and think about it. Now that is powerful writing. And to think that Coolidge wrote it in 1872.

Posted by Helen Brain

Yesterday a little girl came to tea with her mother. She is six years old, and her name is Kate. The first thing that struck me about her is that she looks as though she was drawn by Emma Chichester Clark. I have a book of stories about the sea illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark, so my mind went to mermaids. Kate was wearing a hoodie, so I didn't see her hair, but I saw her long, pale face, her dreamy green eyes, her fey, other worldy aura.

'She was born at 29 weeks,' said her mother, who is in her mid forties and only has this one, very precious child. I imagined Kate curled up in utero, so tiny, and then lying in the incubator battling to live. And a story came into my mind about a woman desperate for a baby who finds a new born mermaid under a cabbage in her vegatable patch and raises it as her child.

I began to tell the story to Kate. The fact that she was born in the tsunami year made it all the better. Who knows how many mermaids were washed ashore by the tsunami?

And so another story has begun, a chapter emailed off each evening at bedtime for my friend to read to Kate, complete with pictures drawn with my computer mouse and Paint. Not with the thought of publication, but of finding the story inside me and drawing it out and presenting it to this child, like shells found on the beach. I make much better stories when I do them this way.

Posted by Helen Brain

The hardest part of writing for me is keeping my bum on the chair. As soon as I sit down I start remembering all the important things I should be doing, like cooking a particularly tasty and overachieving family meal, making a grocery list, writing to someone, phoning a friend....

And if I manage to push them aside and really get into my work, as soon as I get stuck the distractions pop up all over again, luring me to do more pressing things that do have deadlines, or to take a quick run around the charity shops.

The answer for me is to play music while I write. I have a huge selection on my PC, and put it on random selection so I never know what song will play next. It seems to keep my distractable brain occupied, while my creative brain gets stuck into my thousand words.

Posted by Helen Brain

I'm in the middle of editing a resource book on housing policy. It seems a strange choice considering that I'm a fiction writer, but the pay is good, and in a strange way its very satisfying.

When you write fiction your creative right brain tells you the story. When you edit your left brain takes over.

Editing a non fiction book on governmental policy is completely left brain and uncreative.

But the nice thing about it is that there is a right and wrong, a beginning, middle and end, and when it's done it's done. It's about as far from the creative process as it is possible to go.

And every now and then its just great to be able to switch off my creative brain and to earn good money tidying up someone else's writing. And the more boring, the better.

Meanwhile, my creative brain is thinking up something in the background. I can feel a story brewing, and a hunger inside me to get writing. That's a great way to build up a head of steam for a new book, and the editing buys me time to concentrate on getting that first draft down.

Posted by Helen Brain

When you publish a book its easy to fall into the trap of trying to control every aspect, from choice of illustrator to the look of the pictures and the cover, to the title and design as well as the marketing plan.

Most editors loathe writers who demand that their word is law. Writers who fight the editor over every suggested text change, who complain about the illustrations and refuse to compromise and resist suggestions made by marketing are impossible to work with.

If you get a reputation for being hell to work with, editors think twice about publishing you again. Word gets around, and you have less chance of being published by other publishing houses too.

Publishing is a collaborative effort. Your publishing company employs experts to ensure the sort of book that will reach the target market and get maximum sales. And all of those experts know more than you probably do about editing, illustrating, book design and marketing.

So be flexible and collaborate. It's to your advantage.

Posted by Helen Brain

I've got two books in production at the moment - one chapter book for 8-10 year olds, which is for the trade market, and 'Dear Miss Winfrey' which is for 11-13 year olds and is aimed at the schools market.

I lived with the chapter book for months and months - it's the fantasy novel previously called 'The Fabulous Phibeas Finn.'

Marketing decided the title was too uncumbersome, so we were forced to think up a new one. We settled on 'Will and Joe and the Great Pirate Rescue'. The cover is fabulous. You can see it at on my website.

The book aimed at the schools market is very different. 'Dear Miss Winfrey' is the story of a very poor rural child in South Africa who is desperate to go to the Oprah Winfrey Academy for girls. She hides in a car that is going to Johannesburg, but is involved in a terrible car crash. In hospital she writes letters to Oprah, and these form the narrative of the book.

It is incredibly sad and has a wonderful ending, and I cried so hard when I wrote it I couldn't see the screen. I wrote it very fast - it just poured out, and was finished and off to the publisher a month from starting.

Seeing your story translated from your head into book form is always exciting and daunting. But the illustrations can take some getting used to. Someone else has drawn pictures of characters and a scene you imagined, and it can be hard to let go and trust that they will do a good job.

Posted by Helen Brain

About a year ago I watched an episode of Antique's Roadshow. A couple brought in a small tobacco jar shaped like an owl. It was odd looking - downright ugly in fact. The expert asked them if they liked it. They admitted it was hideous, and said they'd inherited it. They seemed a bit embarrassed to be bringing such a weird, aesthetically unpleasing object to the show.

Then the expert said, 'if I told you it was worth twenty thousand pounds would you like it a bit more?'

'Oh yes,' they said. 'Actually, looking at it again, it's not that bad. Maybe it's quite attractive...'

It didn't happen quite like this, of course, because my memory has been embroidered by my imagination, but the gist of the story is the same.

I stored the owl away in the back of my mind, and have now pulled it out as I finish a new book called 'The Button Bottle.' How I wish I'd taken proper notes at the time. I had to do a complicated google search to find the details.

I have an ideas file, but I tend to rely on memory. Of course I forget the details and have to spend time researching half remembered facts when I'm writing the story.

So my new resolution is this - when something strikes me as interesting - if it's enough for me to say to someone else, 'Hey, did you read about....?' then I should jot down the facts in my file.

Posted by Helen Brain

I've just reread Margaret Craven's novel, 'I heard the Owl call my name.' I last read it 25 years ago, where I read it in one sitting. I finished this reading yesterday and turned the book over and started again.

It has particular meaning for me right now, as my husband who is an Anglican priest, has just been diagnosed with cancer. But it's more than that.

Craven wanted to write a novel all her life, but stuck to short stories for magazines for almost all her career until, in her sixties, she heard about the plight of the village of Kingcome and wrote the novel in response to the dying of the village and traditional way of life of the indigenous people.

The book is flawed; it's sentimental and would have been improved if the editor had put a red pen through every use of the word 'lovely'. It's too short too, at around 45 000 words. If she'd taken another 15 000 words to develop the characters as well as she has described the surroundings it would have been meatier. But as a treatise on the art of dying gracefully it's unbeatable.

Because of the length and writing style I'm inclined to classify it as a teen novel.

Her next novel was not nearly as successful. It's interesting that she was a one book writer. But she waited to write her novel until she really had something to say to her readers, and although its not great technically, it touched hearts, and because of that made it to the top of the bestseller lists.

Posted by Helen Brain

I've been watching American Idols with great enthusiasm. Here in South Africa we're a bit behind the rest of the world, so on Tuesday Amanda the rock chick went home.

The teenagers I teach all like Ramiele, and it must be the teenage vote that's keeping her in the system. But what is clear is that you have to have a strong personality that grips people, and even if technically you're not as adept as other contestants, you can still make it because viewers feel drawn to you.

I'll be posting an article later this week on finding your voice in writing. It's just as important in writing if you want to be successful as it is in the music world.

Meanwhile, I looked on the website and saw that MY BOY, Michael Johns is going to leave the show. Now there is a huge star in the making. He's got personality and he can sing. His version of Bohemian Rhapsody was fabulous.

So like writing, when you are eliminated, or your book doesn't win a competition, its not the end of the road. Just a little setback in a long long career.

Posted by Helen Brain

Last September a friend wrote that her husband had brought in a bulldozer to remove a huge clump of bamboo from their garden. It left behind a swimming pool sized hole and the seven year old twins were playing pirates in it.

In my head I saw a plank balanced across it, and the twins 'walking the plank.'

I started a story about them, and sent a chapter a day. It starred the family - Will and Joe, the intrepid pirate lads, Saucy Sal, their mother, and their dad, Richard, became Cap'n Dick.

Every day they begged for the next chapter, and 27 chapters later the wild fantasy adventure story was done.

My publisher liked it, and added it to her list for the year, so it was back to the computer to do the rewrite. She saw it as the first in a series, so I had to make sure that I'd laid the foundations for more stories and created very clear characters with long term motivations.

Rewriting wasn't nearly as much fun. There were no eager little boys hanging on every word. I had to examine the fantasy world from every angle, making sure the ends tied up and that it made 'sense.' I had to cut my 'darlings,' which is always horrible.

But last night the fourth draft was finished. It's gone now, to the editor, translator and illustrator and I won't see it again until the first page proofs.

But what a lovely feeling... to wave it goodbye.

Posted by Helen Brain

I love Margaret Mahy. Her picture book, 'The Man whose Mother Was a Pirate' is my second favourite of all time. She's written more about pirates in 'The Great Pirate Rumbustification'.

Not only does she have a completely whacky imagination, she also plays with words, inventing new ones, putting the most unexpected ones together, creating a second layer of story. She's particularly clever because young children love to play with language, and her touch is light and witty.

The biography by Tessa Duder (Margaret Mahy: A Writer's Life; Harper Collins 2005) is a great book if you want to know more about this engaging and unconventional New Zealand writer.

My latest article looks at how she found her inspiration for one of her picture books. You can also read about what writers can learn from her.

Posted by Helen Brain

I'm about a fifth of the way through the rewrite of my new book, The Fabulous Phibeas Finn. I've found it incredibly hard to get into this rewrite, partly because I had so much fun writing the first draft that I'm afraid of spoiling the magic.

But the editor is gnashing her teeth and growling, the illustrator is about to start work, and I have to finish by mid April so it can go to the Afrikaans translator.

The rewrite involves cutting the superfluous material, and expanding what has been understated. And 'decorating' the story.

I needed a title for a recipe book. When I was a kid my mother cooked from a book called 366 Cakes Puddings and Desserts. (Those were the days when mothers made a dessert every night).

I thought of using that, but then I found Donna Diegel's Delicious recipes in Baking.

Her name is so delectable and Donna Diegel's Delicious Desserts has a lovely ring to it, so its gone in, with her permission of course. And as she says, when the book comes out there'll be cupcakes all round.

Posted by Helen Brain

So when do you know if you are a writer?

When can you truly call yourself a writer without worrying that people will think you're a pretentious upstart?

A wise nun witch woman once told me, when I was first starting out, that I was a writer because she told me I was. That she was passing the baton on to me.

I didn't really buy that, although it was a flattering and comforting concept.

Purists would say you're a writer when you've been published.

But the world is full of fantastic writers who have never been published, who scribble away in notebooks and on computers, piling up manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts written in a voice that is uniquely their's. In my book they're writers. A person who has published a book is an Author.

I think a writer is a person whose primary way of expressing themselves is through words.

Personally, I know I'm a writer because I am addicted to the process of capturing the journeys of my imagination on paper. I feel most alive, and most engaged with myself when I am writing.

I also enjoy other creative processes, like making handmade books, mosaic and cooking. But it is writing that I turn to first when I have something to express. And that's why I call myself a writer.