Lesson 3: Casting Your Book.
Specific Level - Junior Chapter Books.
Junior Chapter Books can be just about any length from 1000 words up to around 20,000 words. The length is elastic, which means there are several sub-levels. As you might expect, the shorter books are usually the simplest, in plot, theme, character and vocabulary.
It is very difficult to write a chapter book at the lower end of the scale. The book needs a plot, characters, and theme and yet gives very little space to develop any of them. A picture book is even shorter, but it has two often-overlooked advantages over the JCB. The pictures carry much of the burden of the story (as detailed in the Specific level section in Lesson 2), and most picture books are designed to be read to a child rather than by a child. For this reason, the vocabulary and sentence structure in a lower-level JCB will probably be much simpler than in a PB.
Look at these two brief passages. (A) is from a rhyming picture book. (B) is from a simple JCB.
(A) “David pulled the tails of all the cats, tabby, black and white. He galloped through the puddles, with shrieks of bad delight. He waited till his mother was talking to the phone, clambered out the window, and wandered off alone.”
(B) “The water was cold. I tripped and fell. Through the bubbles, I saw a tunnel in the bank.
‘Help!' I screamed, but the water carried me through the tunnel and into a cave.”
The language in the PB is more complex and more sophisticated.
It is possible to create memorable images using simple vocabulary, but it is much more difficult when you have to avoid stylistic fun and games. Most early readers can sound out or work out longer words such as “screamed” and “bubbles”, but combinations such as “shrieks of bad delight” would defeat them. It makes sense, but it isn’t the construction very young readers expect.
Mostly, when reviewers or readers refer to a book as “predictable”, they are criticising it. In the case of a JCB, the book needs to be predictable in some ways. This doesn’t mean using clichés and tired plot ideas, but it does mean using straightforward constructions and simple syntax. It helps very young readers if they can “predict” the end of a sentence. Using the same structure more than once in a page is helpful, too. Here’s an example.
“I pulled my pockets inside out. Out fell a chocolate frog and some string. Out fell a paper clip.”
When writing a very simple JCB, you need to be aware of syntax all the time, but as the stories go up in length and complexity, vocabulary and syntax can follow.
JCBs of up to 10,000 words or so have room for a single plot, but the longer ones can have subplots added. Characters are usually older in the higher levels, and fantasy becomes more complex and more common.
Fantasy and science fiction at the lower levels must be very simple in structure, which is why it is usually of the simple “domestic” kind. The reason for this is obvious when you think about it. Younger readers have good imaginations but little general knowledge of fantasy “givens”. A talking cat in a garden is easy to imagine, because they are familiar with cats and gardens and so are accepting just one extra element. The concepts of different worlds, alien societies and mythical animals need to be learned gradually.
There is little moral ambiguity in JCBs. Protagonists are usually “good”. They might be mischievous, and they can certainly make mistakes, but they shouldn’t be amoral. Grey areas are difficult to present to less sophisticated readers. If a protagonist does something wrong, like stealing, the reason for the theft has to be clear. Seven-year-old readers will accept a child hero stealing food because he is hungry, but not one who steals for a complex reason such as getting someone else, whose popularity he envies, into trouble. They might do that themselves, but would mostly see it in fiction as the province of a villain.
Events can be dramatic in a JCB, but should not be nightmarish. In “The Orange Outlaw” the thief isn’t violent, and when Ruth Rose confronts him she does so in a prearranged trap and in the reassuring company of two police officers and Uncle Warren.
Subjects such as family strife and bullying, school problems and fear of animals or swimming, are suitable subjects, but should not be left unresolved. For clever takes on stories about bullying, look at “Lady Longlegs” by Jan Mark and an older book called “The Angel of Nitshill Road” by Anne Fine. Both present believable situations, and both show characters taking control of the situation. In “Lady Longlegs” a friendly teacher lends some assistance in negotiation with the bullied and the victim, while in “Angel of Nitshill Road” a newcomer to the school helps other people to take responsibility and to change the atmosphere that lets bullies flourish. Not every JCB has to have an unqualified happy ending, but this is not the level to set up a problem and then not offer any kind of solution or strategy.
JCBs are good vehicles for humour. Funny stories about clever children who outwit blundering villains, or about clumsy dragons or smelly dogs or burned cakes flourish at this level. You could say with some justice that the JCB is less susceptible to changes in fashion than any of the other levels.
