Who? What? Where? Why?

I’ve got an idea for a story!

But I won’t start writing it. Not yet.

There are a few things I have to do before I get to that, like character backstory and setting.

This story will be a middle-grade story, which I have done before, but not in a while. For the two previous middle-grade stories that I wrote, I didn’t create as detailed a backstory as I’m doing now, and that, I now know, was my first big mistake.

I bent the plot to fit an editor’s suggestions in one of those two stories. After a while, the story I’d planned and hoped to tell became almost unrecognizable.

I won’t make that mistake again. I’ll make others; I’m sure of it, but at least not that one.

Once a character becomes generally known, to me, through my exposition, I find that I’m no longer developing their backstory but am discovering it. That the character is, in a way, informing me of occurrences in their past that affected them for good or bad.

This time, I’m also basing the fictional setting of this story on a place I’m familiar with.

I’ve been enjoying visiting the locations for the story’s settings and writing about them through my character’s eyes and ears.

And I’ve been researching things that are important to or will impact the characters. Much like the detailed backstory I’m creating, I won’t use all the information I glean. I hope, though, that it will help to make the story as realistic as possible.

I’ve been learning about interesting things like herbal remedies, foraging, and the particulars of Canadian geese.

Have I piqued your interest?

I hope so.

If I have, then I may be going in the right direction.

Do you have any backstory tips or techniques you’ve found helpful to use?

• Who? What? Where? Why?
• Food for Thought
• Random Acts of Reading
• When You Open a Book
• On Reflection

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The Eye of Storystorm!

It’s the mid-way point of Storystorm 2023! And so far, so good, I’ve been keeping up with this month long picture book brainstorming challenge created by Tara Lazar.

To me, brainstorming is like like taking a journey with a somewhat vague destination in mind, but no set directions for getting there. Since I’m a big LOTR nerd, that idea connects me immediately to Bilbo Baggins’ warning to Frodo about embarking on a journey, “If you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off to.”

Storystorm, in order to encourage participants creativity, provides daily blog posts written by a multitude of picture book creators.

One of the posts that captured my attention, this Storystorm, was written by Kathleen Doherty. Her post was about intertextuality. Though I had never heard it called by that title before, I was familiar with its theory which says that whatever you create is influenced by something you’ve heard, seen or read before.

Kathleen wrote about borrowing ideas from another piece of literature and morphing it’s shape into a new and different text. As I’m in the middle of a manuscript in which I’m trying to do something similar, I found her post inspiring. Click here to read her post https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGrbvFGhGCqFDZDxcjsXwFtnMpp.

Kathleen embraced intertextuality in each of her picture books. Her first, Don’t Feed the Bear, came from her memories of watching Yogi Bear and Ranger Smith’s cartoon high jinx.

It’s a super fun read that demonstrates the power of written communication and it definitely tickles the funny bone.

Kathleen described her second picture book, THE THiNGiTY-JiG, as a reworked version of The Little Red Hen with a dash of creative BFG word-play added to the mix. I think it’s so much more!

The THiNGiTY-JiG has a pleasant repetitive refrain that gets the story going and keeps its transitions flowing. The prose is active, full of onomatopoeia. Each attempt of the main character to achieve what he has set out to do, cleverly builds upon the one before it. Lastly, it has a very satisfying ending. I’d recommend this book to children, as well as to picture book writers in search of mentor books.

There is more Storystorming left to do in the remaining weeks of January, and I’m up for the challenge. I’ll let you know how my efforts pan out at the start of February.

STORYSTORM SUCCESS!

Although we’re already into February I want to take a moment and celebrate January’s Storystorm!

If you’re a picture book writer or if you’re interested in writing a picture book, Storystorm created, coordinated, and hosted by Tara Lazar is the conduit to generating enough ideas to fill your new year.

The premise is to come up with 30 ideas in a month. An idea a day for all but the last or the first day of January, depending on your preference. To guide and inspire you, there are daily blog posts that come right to your email. What a nice way to start the day, or interrupt a day that’s heading south. Some posts are funny, some serious, but all are heartfelt.

I’ve participated in Storystorm for a number of years, even when it was in October and was called PiBoMo. But this year I’ve seen it through, for the first time ever, to come up with thirty ideas in thirty days. Actually, I came up with thirty three!

Now some of them are pretty wonky, but still . . .

Thank you to all who shared their writing journeys, their book journeys, and their techniques for idea-imagination creation via the blog posts. A huge thank you goes out to Tara Lazar for doing it all so well, once again!

Looking forward to pb manuscript weather systems propelling my writing this year!

STORYSTORM 2021!

The StoryStorm challenge created by Tara Lazar and found on her blog Writing for Kids While Raising Them, https://taralazar.com/2021/01/16/storystorm-2021-day-16/ is a fantastic way to generate ideas for potential picture books. Specifically, the challenge is to come up with a picture book idea for every day of January.

This being January 18th means that those participating are a little more than half way to reaching their goal. Are you participating? Is this your first year, or are you a returning challenger? If you are a returning challenger, have you always made it to the end of the month?

The median point of the month has notoriously been the time when work responsibilities gets the better of my attention (Special Education Annual Review Time), and my consistency with following the daily StoryStorm blog posts and brainstorming an idea a day peters out. In fact, I found a calendar template for last year’s StoryStorm and I’d made it until the 16th, so I’m already doing better than last year, and that’s definitely a plus.

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Pexels.com

This year, I’m determined. I’m going to do it. I’m going to make it all the way to the end of January. The featured guest bloggers for StoryStorm have been funny, inspirational, validating; the list of encouraging adjectives could go on and on. It’s amazing how many different ways there are to come up with ideas. Many of the guest bloggers recommend mentor texts which is another great source for inspiration and idea creation. One of my favorite posts was about process over product, written by Kirsten Pendreigh https://taralazar.com/2021/01/10/storystorm-2021-day-10/. Has there been a blog post that spoke to you more than others?

I don’t know if I will come up with a picture book that goes to contract this year from the ideas generated, but it’s more likely that I might, if I keep my word and the challenge. Have you had a picture book come from one of the ideas you came up with in past StoryStorms? If you have, please share in the comments. I’d love to hear about it and I bet other’s would too.