·        My name is Cheryl Klein

·        Editor at Arthur A. Levine Books

·        Theme of this conference, as you know, is “Through a Child’s Eyes”

·        So when Marilyn asked me for the title of my talk, I gave her this:  “Morals, Muddles, and What I Learned:  Journeys for Children and Writers.”

·        And I promised to talk about “emotional points and perspectives, the kinds of authorial and character choices that create a compelling story, and the classical rules of plot (so you can know how to break them)”

·        Well, that was all before I actually wrote this talk

·        So I’m going to cover some of those things, but not all of them.

o       False advertising, I know.

·        And I’m revising my title to: “Muddles, Morals, and Making It Through: or, Plots and Popularity.”

·        Finally, to give credit where credit is due, this talk was inspired and guided by a wonderful lecture by the novelist Zadie Smith about the writing of E. M. Forster, called “Love, Actually”

·        So I’m going to begin by telling you a story. In fact, you can think of it as the opening of a middle-grade novel

·        The setting:  a small town in Missouri

·        Once upon a time (or rather, in 1988), there were three girls named Alyssa, Nicole, and Cheryl

o       Alyssa was the tallest and wisest, the one most likely to come up with a smart solution for any problem

o       Nicole was the prettiest and funniest,

o       And Cheryl was the most solitary and the most bookish, the one most likely to come up with obscure facts or information on any given subject

·        All through third grade with Mrs. Schenck and fourth grade with Mrs. Walton, these girls were best friends.

o       They swung on the monkey bars at recess

o       Alyssa and Cheryl held a joint birthday party

o       And when Cheryl wrote a story for the local young writers’ festival, it was about three girls named Suzanne, Lynn, and Beth—the friends’ middle names—who went on fantastic adventures together.

·        But in fifth grade, things changed

o       Cheryl was assigned to Mrs. Uppman’s class; Nicole and Alyssa to Mr. Ardenn’s.

o       And suddenly Nicole and Alyssa weren’t interested in swinging on the monkey bars. They wanted to play foursquare and tetherball, or sit at the edge of the blacktop and talk to Stacey Smith and Jenny Cooper.

o       When the girls got together outside of school, Alyssa and Nicole scorned the whole concept of “playing.” They read magazines like “Teen” and “Seventeen,” and talked about who was cuter, Doug Ford or Jeff Adams.

o       They found things laugh-out-loud funny that Cheryl could only smile at. They whispered together at lunch and didn’t fill her in, till eventually she sat at a different table altogether.

o       Once, Cheryl thought, they looked at her and laughed, and she immediately worried: Was it her glasses? Her shirt? Her jeans? Something she said? 

o       And thus it went for all of Cheryl’s fifth-grade year.

·        So that’s our opening situation—and I admit, it is a true story. I was ten years old.

·        But let’s pretend it’s a middle-grade novel-in-progress.

·        I’ve set up my characters; I’ve established a conflict of Cheryl vs. Nicole and Alyssa.

o       What do you think is going to happen next? Suggestions?

·        This is, you will have seen by now, the time-honored story of the outsider who doesn’t fit in.

·        Outsider stories usually follow one of two plot structures:

·        One is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

o       Someone who is different is scorned, reviled, made an outsider. “They wouldn’t let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games.” But the outsider sticks to whatever it is that makes him different—usually because he has no choice—and eventually that difference ends up saving the entire community. “Then how the reindeer loved him, and they shouted out with glee—Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, you’ll go down in history!”

o       This is also a Christ story, you’ll notice, someone suffering at the hands of the community and coming back to redeem them all.

o       And at the same time a story about Darwinistic evolution—the community at first resisting an odd mutation and then adapting to and benefiting from it.

·        The other outsider story is the Ugly Duckling—the reverse of Rudolph.

o       Here the outsider is again scorned, reviled, tormented inside and out. But rather than saving his community, he leaves it, to find another group that truly understands him and appreciates his talents.

o       In other words, when the community rejects him, he finds a new community.

·        Now, there are other directions an outsider tale could go

o       The outsider could make direct and declared war on the community—the beat ’em path

o       The outsider could give up what makes him different and become part of the community once and for all—the join ’em route

·        But these latter two stories are not the ones we tell children again and again and again.

·        We tell the Ugly Duckling and Rudolph. And what fascinates me about these two story structures is that they do not offer the option of change.

o       The Ugly Duckling never tries to pluck its feathers out to be like the other ducks in the yard.

o       In the cartoon version, Rudolph paints his nose black—but it washes off again in a snowstorm.

·        These stories say, You can only be who you are. You can change outwardly, you can hide that glowing red nose of yours, you can pretend to be interested in clothes and boys, but the nose is still a nose and clothes are still boring.

·        So when I said the conflict in this novel was Cheryl the Outsider versus Nicole and Alyssa the popular girls, I wasn’t being quite accurate.

o       I wasn’t against Nicole and Alyssa; I still really wanted to be their friend.

·        Rather the conflict was within me:  the parts of me that wanted to keep my connection with them, and perhaps even be popular myself, versus the parts of me that really didn’t give a damn about the same things they did—that wanted just to read and play and keep on being a kid.

·        I wasn’t sure what I wanted or what was the right thing to do; how to behave, or even who I was

·        In other words, I was in a muddle.

·        A muddle is a concept I’m borrowing from the writer E. M. Forster, who wrote Howards End and A Room with a View among many other lovely novels

·        And it’s the point at which your vision of yourself and your purpose in the world is clouded by other things—by other people’s opinions, by the fact that you don’t know who you are or if you have a purpose in the world.

o       An identity crisis, essentially

o       Forster’s characters are all grown-ups, but they spend a lot of time in muddles, trying to figure out how they should live and who they really love.

o       One can enter a muddle at any age.

·        But I would say the prime time for muddle, the world capital, the Mount Everest of muddles, happens in middle school

o       Your body is changing.

o       Your view of the world is changing—you’re becoming self-conscious for the first time, really aware of other people perceiving you

o       And you really care how these people perceive you, because you can figure out who you are and who you should be based on their reactions

o       And everyone else your age is going through these changes too, so there’s very little respite

·        Writers can spend a lot of time in muddles too

o       When we don’t know which direction to turn next

o       What our story should be

o       Whether we should listen to our writing group about that plot development or whether it’s perfect just as we envisioned it

o       And as we become more and more aware of the morass, we sink further and further into it.

·        Muddles are pretty much hell

o       And I don’t think I’ve met anyone ever who enjoyed middle school.

·        But if we’re defining a muddle as not knowing what you want or how to get it—the paralysis caused by infinite self-consciousness, or infinite choices—there’s only one solution

·        And that’s action. Making a choice.

o       Right choice, wrong choice, whatever—it’s going to be a choice, and that gets things started

o       For a writer, making a choice gives you something to work with. You make a choice, get the words on the page, see if it feels right. If it doesn’t, you edit it.

o       For middle schoolers, it’s testing out an identity—am I a Goth? A jock? An art kid? You feel your way into it.

o       In a book, when a character takes action, that not only moves the plot forward, it demonstrates to readers who that character actually is

§        You don’t have to tell us about your character’s fine and upstanding qualities; rather, their actions and choices show us every step of the way.

§        And if they back away from making a choice, why, that’s a choice right there. 

·        John Gardner says, “Real suspense comes from moral dilemma and the courage to make and act upon choices. False suspense comes from the accidental and meaningless occurrence of one damned thing after another.”

o       I love this quote, and this concept. Moral dilemma:  Where a character has to choose between two people he loves; or between two values (honesty vs. loyalty); or between what is right and what is easy, to quote Harry Potter; or between who s/he is and fitting in with the group

o       And once that choice is made, it has consequences that lead to the next choice—not just “one damned thing after another”

·        My moral dilemma in the Nicole, Alyssa, and Cheryl story I set up:  I could choose to keep being who I was, unpretty, uncertain, loving books and school, not really that interested in boys and clothes as yet; or I could choose to try to be part of the popular crowd, pretend to care about New Kids on the Block, attempt to sculpt my bangs into that perfect early-nineties puff.

·        I have to do something. I have to make a choice.

·        I mentioned moral dilemmas, so I’d like to pause and think for a moment about the word “moral”

·        When most of us think of “moral,” we think of rightness or virtue, yes?

o       The Moral Majority, moral values

·        But the first definition of “moral” in Webster’s is “of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior:  ethical”

o       Ethics:  “the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group; a guiding philosophy”

o       And that’s the sense in which you should hear the phrase “moral dilemma” here:  as an ethical dilemma, a choice between two competing philosophies or priorities—what will be the right one.

·        All authors put forth an ethical philosophy through the way they treat their characters, from how much “screen time” they get in the plot, to the author’s attitude toward the characters while they’re on the page, up to of course the fates they all receive in the end

·        In less skilled children’s books, the author’s ethical philosophy gets said outright. And that brings us back to the more common definition of moral:  “a passage pointing out the lesson to be drawn from a story”

o       If you study the history of children’s literature, it begins with morality tales.

§        There’s a set of German children’s stories called “Struwwelpeter” about little Peter, who wouldn’t cut his fingernails or his hair, and Pauline, who burnt herself up by playing with matches

·        But as children’s fiction has evolved through the last 150 years or so, it’s taken on the literary and psychological complexity that adult fiction has had for centuries

o       Away from the moral and heavy-handed, toward the complex, the nuanced, the real

·        Till we’re at a point where most editors and reviewers dislike stories with clearly defined morals, or at least stories that were written to put forth a moral

o       When I see the line “_____ learns a lesson about _____” in a query letter, it’s almost always an X against it, because it sounds so flat and didactic

·        This is not to say I’m opposed to characters learning lessons—in fact, learning is at the heart of most good fiction.

·        In Millicent Min, Girl Genius, by Lisa Yee, Millicent Min is a child prodigy who lies to a new friend about her intelligence. This eventually backfires, of course, and Millicent learns a lesson about the value of brains without heart and the true nature of friendship.

·        But note—the lesson is effective not because Lisa set out to educate her readers about not lying to their friends

o       Rather, it works because we’re interested in Millicent, we care about her, we suffer with her through her mistakes and regrets

o       So when she recognizes those mistakes and learns and grows from her experiences, we learn and grow right along with her

·        The most effective morality in fiction is that which is dramatized in the lives of your characters.

·        I saw a worksheet in a writing book recently that was headlined “Create a Character!”

·        And then it listed a number of categories you could fill in for your character

o       Some factual categories, like name, physical description, family

o       Some taste categories, like their hobbies and favorite foods

o       And then some values categories:  LOVES, HATES, DREAMS & FEARS

·        Now, it’s definitely good to have all this information about a character—what he’d carry in his pockets and all that

·        But I think it’s the values categories that really give a character personality and psychology and life, because they most directly reveal who he is, what he wants, and how he will behave in the novel

·        Aristotle said “Character is that which reveals moral purpose.”

·        And if I were making up a character worksheet, I’d try this:

o       LOVES

o       HATES

o       NEEDS

o       WANTS

o       FEARS

o       And then under each of those categories—WHY?

·        What these things add up to is your character’s morality—her ethical philosophy, her worldview

o       What she wants most in life

o       What she will or won’t do to get it

§        (or what can tempt or scare her into doing something)

o       And how she developed that philosophy, those loves, hates, needs, wants, etc.

·        And that’s a plot right there:  motivation; action, and backstory.

·        We’re going to pause for a little digression on plot now

·        Aristotle defined plot as the “Change from good fortune to bad, or bad fortune to good”

·        And that means simply that things are different at the end than they are at the beginning

·        These changes can be big and external

o       The characters have moved to a new home, they’ve gained a new group of friends, they’ve defeated the evil Dark Lord and saved the world forever

·        They can be subtle and internal

o       They’ve come to understand why their mother ran away, they’ve developed the courage to talk to their crush

·        But there must be some change.

o       If your character isn’t going anywhere, if all the circumstances are the same at the end of the book, you’ve just wasted the reader’s time.

o       Now there are adult books where nothing really changes—often that’s the author’s point

o       But narrative children’s books, I’m going to say, have to show change, have to show growth, to be at all worthwhile.

o       Our audience is experiencing nothing but change and growth, and our books provide models—both good and bad—for how those changes happen

§        There is a lovely quote from Richard Peck:  “A young adult novel ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life left to be lived.”

§        At the end of your book, your main character should be better equipped to live the rest of that life, because of the change and journey they’ve gone through in the course of the book.

·        So the changes could be big and external, or subtle and internal

·        And these types of changes are the two main kinds of plot in your book

o       Action plot: the external change; what physically changes for your characters in the course of the book.

§        In the Ugly Duckling, the duckling’s travels from the farmyard to the cottage to the peasant’s house to the pond are the action plot

§        Action plots usually follow one of three formulae:

·        Conflict—one character versus another character, or one character versus herself

·        Lack—a character needs something to be complete, to live a full life

·        And Mystery—a form of Lack where what the character needs is a piece of information

·        Most action plots will end up interweaving these three elements.

o       The Harry Potter series is a masterful combination of Conflict and Mystery:  The overarching plot of the series is a conflict, Harry vs. Voldemort, but the driving plot of each book is a piece of information Harry must discover:  Who wants the Sorcerer’s Stone? Who put his name in the Goblet of Fire?

o       Plus Harry Lacks a home and friends until he goes to Hogwarts—and then his desire to keep them safe is what makes the conflict matter.

o       So that’s action plot

o       Emotional plot: the internal change; the moral and emotional development of your characters as a result of the external action

§        In the Ugly Duckling, the duckling’s suffering leads him to a point where he just wants to give up. And that’s the moment he recognizes himself as a swan.

§        Emotional plots always involve suffering, in the teeth of an moral dilemma or in the quicksand of a muddle. That’s what gives the happy ending its value—you’ve come at last out of the pain.

·        Going back to that Character worksheet, your action plot will usually be driven by the character’s WANTS, and your emotional plot will usually be driven by the character’s NEEDS.

o       And when those two things have been fulfilled, the story’s over.

o       A warning here:  Your character will usually not be aware of what she truly needs emotionally, and you should avoid at all costs saying outright in the text what she truly needs emotionally

§        Being obvious is the quickest way to be dull.

·        Books with lots of action plot but no emotional plots, or obvious or familiar emotional plots, often get called “flat” or “noisy”—sure, stuff is happening, and the explosions are cool, but it doesn’t really mean anything to anyone. Think any Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

·        Books with lots of emotional plot but little action plot often get called “quiet” or “subtle”—for instance Criss Cross by Lynn Rae Perkins, which just won the Newbery.

·        There are readers and editors for both kinds of books

·        So coming back to the Nicole-and-Alyssa novel. I’m still in that moral dilemma about being popular. I have coke-bottle glasses, terrible hair, no fashion sense, and a body encased in a back brace for scoliosis.

·        You don’t believe me? Take a look at my fifth-grade picture.

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