Comparing and contrasting

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On this single tree, which flowers once a year, you find the smokey-softness of the flower and the stoic-solidity of the leaves and limbs.

After the flower is gone and the tree is simply leaf and limb again you might walk right past it and never notice it.

In writing it is important to show what characters have in common.

It is also vital to show what sets them apart.

Striving for an exquisite simplicity.

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There are times I have endeavored to create prose with the lushness of a summer garden but more and more I am drawn to  less and less clutter in my narrative. Most of us barely notice this very common bird. And yet look at it when the eye and mind are not distracted…behold the miracle of the lowly sparrow.

“Where do you most often get your books–the library or the bookstore?”

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Most of my books come from my local bookstores,

both used and new,

Some come from the library,

particularly when I’m just beginning my research.

And some come from independent bookshops selling rare and out of print titles over the internet.

“To write SPUDS, you most certainly had to know about potato farming. How did you learn about it?”

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I researched potato farming for a few months before writing the text for SPUDS. But the illustrations required more than book research. Wendy knew she had to experience the setting first-hand. So the two of us drove to Northern Maine. Our intention was to scout around, take photographs, and come home with a pictorial archive from which Wendy could “draw”.

But the very first morning in Presque Isle we met a gentle couple at breakfast, told them our reason for being in town, and before we knew it we’d been invited to come with them to the Kenney’s potato farm.

What a rich experience we had in Aroostook county with the Kings and the Kenneys graciously educating us about the hard and rewarding work of potato farming.

“How did those children under the Brooklyn Bridge come to you?”

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While researching in the early 1900s Brooklyn Daily Eagle I came across an article about children living under  the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. The children referred to in the newspaper lived in poverty, with little adult supervision, but they weren’t homeless.

It was my imagination that made the leap from these real children profiled in the paper to the fictional, marginalized children you meet in the interstices of BROOKLYN BRIDGE.

Creating character

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There are as many ways to create character as there are characters to create.

Many times when we’re out in public, we see someone, at a concert, for instance,

or in a restaurant, or a park

and we begin to invent a reality for that person in our imagination.

This young woman had a face that could launch a thousand tales.

“Is there a Newbery Medal? Where do you keep yours?”

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Yes, there is an actual medal.

It comes in a beautifully crafted wooden box lined with deep blue velvet. The medal itself nestles inside a perfect indent of a circle made to fit the medal exactly. A matching deep blue grosgrain ribbon makes it possible to easily remove the medal from its circular housing. One side of the medal shows a man (presumably John Newbery himself) presenting a book to two children. The other side is an open book on which is inscribed:

FOR THE MOST DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN

KAREN HESSE 1998

On the same side, written around the perimeter of the medal:

JOHN NEWBERY MEDAL AWARDED ANNUALLY BY THE CHILDREN’S LIBRARIANS SECTION OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

I keep the medal in the attic where I work.

If your writing is not progressing,

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if you feel as if you’re dragging yourself to your desk each morning,

try changing your point of view.

Perhaps the family dog might have a better perspective.

The camera, sometimes, takes the place of paper and pen.

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And a series of photographs

becomes a visual poem.

Building Character

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To make a character memorable, the writer must show her from all sides and place her in revealing settings. Readers want to know the texture of her hair, want to smell rain on her skin, want to feel the weight of her clothes and how they drape her frame.

If we see her only front-on and in full light, we will never truly see her at all.