Publishing Christmas Shindigs that White People Like

I went to a Publishing Christmas Party on Monday night and it was oh-so chic.

I didn't know it before going but there was a theme for the night, of Mad Men, the TV show which I just happen to have gotten a little obsessed with at the moment (I'm up to season three!) and there were oodles of suits and beautiful sixties styles to be seen. There were also people in jeans, like me. But I was wearing a floral top so it was okay.

I had a chat with and spied across the room fantabulous people such as Steph Bowe, Lili Wilkinson, Gabrielle Wang, Corinne King and Cath Crowley and there were lots of other publishing folk there who I don't necessarily know by sight.

It was lots of fun and the Swing Dance performance by some dancers from Swing Patrol (which just happens to be the school I go to. You know. When I go) was an awesome touch. And then whoever wanted to had a quick lesson in the super-hot Bella Bar which consisted of lots of jiggling around on the spot and sometimes dancing as a girl and sometimes dancing as a guy but just keeping on with the dancing.

Those who know me know that I have a soft spot for swing and this feels like the perfect opportunity to show you all one of my favourite routines from the 2009 Lindy at the Light charity performances in Leeds, UK that I was a part of, though I wasn't in this performance. But I totes thought they were awesome. I got to see this (and a bunch of other routines including the one I was in) once an hour for five hours.

It was winter. And SNOWING in England. This year I have heat and plethora of bugs to contend with.

Anyhoo - enjoy!

Where did I put that...

Okay so um, my notes from the big grand finale of Express Media's YA mini-festival, which consisted of a panel with Steph Bowe, Lili Wilkinson and Penni Russon seems to have gone walkabout.

But I hope it comes back soon.

In the meantime, Lili posted something on her blog that she also talked about in her session, but really, there was so much knowledgy goodness crammed into that session that I couldn't talk about it all in one blog post.

So I direct you to Lili's blog, where she talks about characters and Wanting stuff Vs. Needing stuff. It's good, so go check it out if you're interested.

In the mean time, shall we all look under couches and on top of the fridge for my notebook? Please don't tell me your dog ate it...

Tomorrow I'm going along on an excursion with the first years to sneak a peak behind the scenes and meet the staff in the Junior Fiction and YA department of Allen & Unwin. I'm bummed Eva won't be there (who I have talked about in a couple of posts and look forward to one day meeting because she sounds like a woman of supreme awesomosity and she gave me such great notes on that book that time) but I know it'll be an interesting day.

And then NEXT week I start my two week placement with Black Dog Books. By November I'll be so full of industry secrets I may just die.

Now lets all stop stalling and start hunting. "Heeeerrreeeee notebook!!"

Sairz

YA Mini Festival: Lili Wilkinson - Putting characters in trees and throwing rocks at them

Lili Wilkinson talks Book Structure

Stuck in trees

At the beginning of your book, you should stick your character (let's call him Harry Potter. What, you're saying there's ALREADY a character called Harry Potter? Well THAT'S a coincidence.) up in a tree, and remove the ladder.

This is a problem. Then you, the writer, the bastard that you are, should throw some gravel at him because it's fun. The gravel might take the shape of, oh, I don't know, a troll in the girls bathroom. This is kind of dangerous, but more it's gross because your wand has the potential to get stuck up his nose.

Since gravel was fun for you, evil writer, you might try throwing something bigger - what have you got there? Oh, stones? Yeah, throw some stones at Harry Potter!

Those stones look a bit like dementors to me. They're pretty freaky and more dangerous than that stupid snotty troll was. And they're kind of kissy but in a bad way.

Oh! That WWF wrestler that's in town is walking by, hey wrestler guy, heave those boulders at Harry Potter up in that tree. That will be SOOO funny!

Wow. Those boulders look like Lord Voldemort who is so strong now he just might be able to kill Harry.

But what's Harry doing? Hey, Harry! You can't just 'Accio Firebolt' and get yourself down out of the tree to safety! Oh, wait. You can? Okay. That's cool I guess.

So that is the Sticking your character in a tree and throwing rocks at him method of plot structure. Does it need some more explanation?

Well in a nutshell, it's about making life harder and harder for your character in the book. That gravel-troll at the start, that was a pretty big deal, he was going to be hard to beat, but Harry learned how to beat him which gave him the skills to beat the BIGGER threat, the stone-dementors later. And by working out how to defeat them, Harry gained more skills and more confidence and could beat the super-massive-oh-my-god-how's-he-getting-out-of-this boulder-Lord Voldemort. And in the end, you writer, did not help him down out of the tree, Harry got himself down, thank you very much.

Lili also talks Three Act Structure

This is what the Three Act Structure looks like. Usually a filmic convention, it's now being used more and more in novels too.

The Inciting Incident

Think: Harry Potter (oh, him again?) receives a letter from Hogwarts telling him he's a wizard.

Star Wars: Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle are killed

Lord of the Rings: Frodo gets the ring

This is the beginning of a change to the normal routine for these characters. It's out of the ordinary, and the beginning of something, it incites the action to begin.

Plot Point One

This is the action! Movement toward the goal! Your character wants to do something so he/she makes a choice to do it!

Shrek wants his swamp back. How's he going to do that? He has to save the princess.

Star Wars: Luke sees the hologram from Leia about needing rescue and decides to rescue the hottie.

Midpoint

Lili says this is the point where you need to raise the stakes. Your character will get a much more specific idea of what it is he must do. She says it's a good place to introduce a new character that can shake shake shake things up. I mean you don't want to let your characters coast through the story!

Plot Point Two

This is where you can add a ticking clock, heading toward the climax. Oh, your character needs to paint a portrait in order to enter the contest next month and win the prize and save the town? Well turns out they got the entry details wrong and they need to pain the portrait by TOMORROW. Can they do it? I can tell you're biting your fingernails in anticipation, aren't you? Okay well even if you're not, that ticking clock sure makes for a more interesting story than simply having a month to paint it!

Climax

The final battle! Your hero will win or lose!

Phew, it's over! You can tie up loose ends - but not all of them. Let's not go overboard. Nothing gets wrapped up THAT easily.

Okay, now let's talk Three Act Structure: Cinderella Style.

This is not a graph of the Cinderella story, but it's a good visual aide for what I'm talking about.

On a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being the worst thing to happen ever and 10 being head-exploding happiness, what does Cinderella look like?

Let's begin.

2 - Once Upon a Time...Yes Cindy's dad is dead and she's living with the evil step mother and those feral step sisters, but she has a roof over her head and food so things could be worse.

6 - Oh my God, she was invited to the ball! This is AWESOME!

3 - The Step monster laughed in her face and said she couldn't go.

7 - the Fairy God Mother shows up with all the mice and kittens and twittery birds and help her go to the ball anyway!

8 - She's at the ball and even gets to dance with the hunky hunky prince. Cindy is totes in love, ya'll.

1 - It's Midnight! She has to leave her love forever before her dress falls off and whoa that could be embarrassing hey what happened to her shoe?

10 - The dreamy prince finds her! They're in lovey love love and he sweeps her away to live happily ever after.

2, 6, 3, 7, 8, 1, 10 on the emotion scale. Phew. That was a rollercoaster, right?

EXACTLY.

Next up, Penni Russon speaks of voice and character!

Sairz

YA Mini Festival: Lili Wilkinson talks Writing from your Life

Session One for me was with Lili Wilkinson (author of Scatterheart, Angel Fish, The Not So Perfect Boyfriend and most recently, Pink), in which she talked writing from life, and book structure.

This post is about her take on Writing from Life. (Structure is the next post)

When we're told to write what we know, it doesn't mean getting out of bed in the morning and going to the toilet then brushing your teeth then grumbling hello to whoever you share your home with and going to the fridge to get your breakfast and are you asleep already because I kind of am.

We all have these experiences. What they're talking about, is writing what YOU know. What's unique about you.

We did lots of exercises. She made us write down things we like, we hate, we fear, our worst habits, physical sensations we love or hate and three things that tell people something about who WE are.

My three were:

• I am a crazy dog lady
• Family is very important to me
• I get anxiety about dancing in public.

These are things that make up MY personality and how I interact with the world around me.

If you know three things like this about your character, you can hang your whole book on it.

We were given time to come up with a plot, in any genre. I thought I'd try a thriller, and this is what I came up with.

(We'll call her) Sarah is a 17 y/o animal lover. Her parents are traveling Europe for a month and she's working at the RSPCA. After hours, Sarah sneaks into the RSPCA and steals the dogs that are reaching their expiration date at the pound because she can't stand them being put down just because they don't have a home.

She has a dozen dogs at her house.

Her older brother who's a down and out type, taking odd jobs comes over and spends the night. He's in a lot of debt and has been working with some pretty dodgy people of late.

The next day he has vanished, as has the newest dog that Sarah rescued.

She gets to the RSPCA to find the dog's uber-wealthy owner, distraught. She'd been away, the dog sitter hadn't told her the dog had been lost.

People think her brother stole him. But Sarah thinks the dodgy people he has been working for have him, and for some reason they took the dog too.

...and so it goes on. It's not a stellar plot, but you see how my love of animals and love of my family have made a plot right here? Because "Sarah" is protective of them, I put them in danger to drive the plot and character forward. I feel like I have the beginning of something Veronica Mars-esque. I didn't quite work in the fear of dancing in public, but I'm sure there could be a hostage swap at a charity function for the animals or something. And not only does she have to dance...but with the BAD GUY. Or whatever.

I reckon Lili's really onto something. :) You could turn those three traits into a sci-fi, a fantasy, a romance. You name it.

Two of Lili's personal traits are being an only child, and changing schools a lot, and she has extrapolated these into her books.

For instance, when plotting Scatterheart, Lili thought about siblings. When you have siblings and no parents, you still have people around, you have support. But to be an only child with no parents? The main character, Hannah's mother is dead and father leaves her to fend for herself in Victorian London where young ladies of wealth aren't exactly independent. So she ends up, through misunderstanding, on a convict ship to Australia. Because she lost all of her family.

Lili's experiences of changing schools and the strange feeling of not quite fitting in at the start because what was cool at her old school was completely daggy at her new school, is also expressed in Scatterheart, in which upper class London girl, Hannah, is thrust into the life of a convict, with beggars, thieves and murderers. The change from wealth to convict changes how those around her treated her. She may not have been thinking about how cool she was, but she certainly had to adapt her own behaviour in order to survive among these new people.

What are some things that describe you, or are important to you?

Next up, Structure! But right now I have a dog demanding my attention so I'll go tend to that. It's very important, after all.

Sairz

YA Mini Festival: Steph Bowe Keynote Speech summary

Yesterday thanks to Express Media there was a YA Mini-Festival held at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne which was a fabulous, informative day.

The keynote speech was given by Steph Bowe (author of Girl Saves Boy), a workshop about structure with Lili Wilkinson (author of Pink, Scatterheart and others) and voice and character with Penni Russon (author of the Little Bird, Dear Swoosie and more) followed by an industry panel with all three authors.

For a young lady of sixteen, I have to say, Steph Bowe conducts herself with such maturity beyond her years. She is softly spoken, speaks eloquently and answers questions thoughtfully. It's just an observation, but one I'm finding is shared by others.

What Steph had to say

She writes because she can't stand NOT writing. She goes a bit crazy if she doesn't do it.

She believes that to be an author, you can't get by just on talent. Writing takes practice and perseverance.

Teens often get a bad rap, they're called bad writers. But Steph believes this is probably because they haven't been around as long. They haven't had the same amount of time as adult writers to practice and hone their craft. (Sarah - valid point)

Older people may have had more time than teens, but if they don't practice writing, just being older doesn't make them better writers.

YA is being embraced by more adults now than it has previously and a lot of us are reading it, it's being embraced more openly than it used to be, it's not as looked down upon as "just writing for teenagers" anymore. (Sarah - this is a fantastic thing)

And yes, lots of adults are reading YA, but we as YA writers should remember that audiences are still predominantly teens.

Steph believes that some parents are embracing YA (Sarah - not only because the writing is so good) but because it's something they can do and share and discuss with their teen. Steph believes this is an excellent way to get your parents to pay for books. :)

So there you go, much less eloquent than how Steph put it, but she made some interesting points, don't you think? I also loved how Steph said that "As Generation Y...or X...I don't know...it doesn't matter, (anyway) Google and I are like besties."

Ah, yes. Google is a friend to all.

Still to come: Lili Wilkinson talks book structure, Penni Russon talks voice and character and all three just talk books!

Stupid fan-girl-itis.

I should totally be getting ready to head to class right now, but I have a bee in my bonnet about something and I want to share.

Published authors are people too. I must remember that. They are just people who are a bit further along the publishing path than me. They're totally normal. Many of them seem like really cool people.

In fact I think THAT is why I turn into embarrassing fan girl when I get to meet some in person, because I reckon they're cool and I'd love for them to be my writer buddy maybe.

So what do I do? I linger, I stand, I don't know what to say so I turn into creepy standing linger girl.

Actually no, usually I go along to their talk and think it's awesome and amazing and how much fun is that person and then I leave without having said hello.

Yesterday however, YA author Penni Russon came to my University and spoke about YA for 2 hours. It was awesome hearing her thoughts on the subject, her thoughts on her books, how she ended up as an author and how her books were published (as a work experience girl, she became friends with the editorial assistant and years later the editorial assistant became the commissioning editor and wanted some PENNI RUSSON thank you very much. I think this is awesome. I have more on this story later)

Yeah, so Penni came, she talked and I decided to bite the bullet and speak to her cos she's a real human being. And freaky stalky linger girl happened. Sigh.

But that's okay, cos I'm going to another event soon that she's also going to be at and just maybe I'll be able to pry freaky stalky linger girl off me and try again. Or maybe I'll just say "'sup" from across the room and leave it at that.

Okay, next part of the story, which involves editorial assistant-commissioning editor girl and someone ELSE who will be at the event I'm going to soon, Lili Wilkinson.

Two years...was it two? I think it was two. Two years ago I read a newspaper article about another aussie YA author, Lili Wilkinson. I hadn't actually heard of her at the time, but discovered she was in her mid-twenties and had a couple of books under her belt. I'm a couple of years younger than Lili, but I completely aspire to have her career. Soon.

Anyhoo, in the article it said that she had been commissioned to write a book for a new series, called Girlfriend Fiction.

WELL, I decided. Commissioned? Well maybe I could get mySELF commissioned as well.

So I emailed Allen & Unwin who were doing this collection and told them about a book I had written (okay, not entirely written yet, actually, not at ALL written - I don't reccommend doing this. That could have bitten me on the bum) that I thought would be great for Girlfriend Fiction, how should I go about submitting, if they were even accepting unsolicited stuff.

I sent it to the comments section on the website, not really expecting a response, not expecting anyone but maybe the webmaster to see it.

The ACTUAL editor (hello editorial assistant-commissioning editor gal) replied saying that they were full at the moment, but they'd love to see it at the end of the year.

WHOA. So in my mid-semester break at University, so over 6 weeks I wrote the book. I had so much fun doing it, too. And I polished it up as best I could and I sent it.

She replied with a page and a half of notes and if I'd be INTERESTED in rewriting it, she'd take another look. There were notes about stuff that happens right at the end of the book so I was pleased to see she'd definitely read the whole thing.

I was so thankful for her notes. They made so much sense to me and the whole back half of the book is COMPLETELY different - and for the better. And the climactic conclusion? WAY better than it was.

In the end, she decided it wasn't quite right for Girlfriend fiction. But that's okay. She helped me make it a better a book just by considering it. I never sent her a thank you email for that, which I regret not doing, but just assumed she's a busy woman and didn't need it.

Since then, THAT SAME BOOK got me my kick ass agent and introduction to her other clients, many of which have become awesome writer friends, and some editors are now looking forward to Sarah Billington books. I mean, wow.

I put it down to that article about Lili Wilkinson, and Girlfriend Books. It's kind of a dream now, that I'll write a book for Girlfriend fiction, because to me, that's how my career finally lifted off.

I've been to a couple of events Lili runs, and it's so stupid but because of this history that she has NO idea about, I don't go up and talk to her because stupid scary stalky linger girl will come out.

Maybe she's reading this right now? If so - see you on Sunday. If I'm brave enough. :)

MUST go to class now.

Sairz