Is This the Perfect Planning Tool? by Claire Fayers

 I came across a curious little story-planning tool whilst randomly web-browsing the other day.

It's called Twine, a free, open-source app for non-linear stories, and there are desktop and online versions, which you can find here

It's a very simple planning tool but what I love about it is you can set up different pathways for your story. Great if you're an indecisive semi-pantster like me. 

Here's how it works. 

Open the application and select 'new'. A box will appear ready and waiting for you to fill in the details of your starting scene.

Then, link to the next scene by means of a double bracket. [[Next scene]]

Not sure you want the story to go there? No problem, you can set up an alternative path.

Keep linking scenes together until you've mapped out all the possibilities for you story.

Once you're done, you can test the various versions of your stories by selecting any scene and clicking 'test from here' at the top of the page. A window will appear with a text version of you story which reads a bit like a choose your own adventure.

You can delete scenes, change your starting point, and drag things around on the screen. A very useful feature is the ability to tag scenes with different colours - great for brainstorming or for marking out your finished plan.

You can export the finished story, but only as a html file so I think this is a tool best used at the planning stage when you have a multitude of ideas in your head. It would be a fantastic tool for plotting choose-your-own type stories.

I'm going to play around with it some more. If you give it a go, let me know what you think.

Claire Fayers www.clairefayers.com

The Egtved Girl - by Sue Purkiss

 (Full disclosure: I first posted this story not long after I'd written it. I've had a busy couple of weeks and my date for posting has snuck up on me: so I sifted through some old posts in search of one to repost. This is the one I chose: once you've met the Egtved Girl, you don't forget her.)

A few years ago, I came across the Egtved Girl in Copenhagen Museum. She was buried 3370 years ago, carefully placed in an oaken coffin and laid to rest under a mound. Her grave was discovered near the the beginning of the 20th century, and she was brought to the museum; here's a replica of the chic little costume she was wearing - a mini-skirt and cropped top, and a beautifully wrought belt.

Her story haunted me, and eventually I wrote about her.

The Egtved Girl

Many intriguing things were buried with the Egtved Girl - but the most touching, the one that lingers in my mind, was a yarrow flower, which someone had laid in the grave before it was closed. Someone, I guess, who cared about her very much.

It was the kind of day when the cold winds of winter are just a half-forgotten dream: a day to feel the sun soft on your skin, the gentle breeze riffling through your hair – through her hair, gold and silky, dancing round her dear face like a halo.

            But she wasn’t there. Not any more. All that life, all that loveliness – gone. Snuffed out over the space of a few days. A week ago, she had taken part in the ceremonies at the summer solstice. She had danced as only she could dance. Lithe and graceful – as if she were made of air, not a creature of earth like the rest of them. When it began to rain, she laughed, and shook her hair till the raindrops flew out like glittering jewels, and still she danced. Even when the thunder came, and lightening slashed the heavens, she would not stop: even though people cried out in fear and concern for her – even though he had begged her to. It was as if she were possessed by some wild spirit. And then the sky had truly opened and rain had fallen in gleaming daggers, until at last she had sunk to the ground, shivering, and he had rushed to her with a cloak to warm her, and carried her into her father’s hut, and the wise-woman had brought a warm drink infused with herbs and bound with spells.

            But none of it worked. She hadn’t stopped shivering. Her skin – her lovely, golden skin – had grown hot to the touch. She had tossed and turned, and cried out at visions only she could see. Her spirit had gone wandering, and it had never returned.

            Because she was the chief’s daughter and a priestess, they had cut down a great oak for her to lie in, and filled it with gifts she would take with her on her final journey to the spirit world. They had dressed her again in her dancing clothes, the short corded skirt that whirled when she danced, the top that showed her fine, taut midriff. And she wore the ceremonial belt of her rank, with the great circular buckle engraved with spirals.

            The dance goes on, the wise-woman told him, seeing his grief. She goes on.

            But it wasn’t true – or if it was, it was no comfort. He didn’t want her to be in some distant spirit world. He wanted her here, beside him, now. They'd had plans, dreams. In her short life, she had already travelled far. Together, they would have travelled further, made new stories together.

            He caught the salty tang of the sea. It was a silky blue line in the distance.

            The people were gathered round her oak bed. He climbed the mound to see her one last time. The crowd parted to let him through. There she lay, as if she were just asleep. He bent and picked a flower: creamy yarrow, its leaves delicately feathered. It was a medicinal plant, meant to cure ills. It hadn’t worked for her. Still, it shared a little of her beauty. He placed it tenderly beside her. Then he walked away without looking back. He would go to the coast and join a trading ship. He would travel away from this wind-raked northern outpost, and he would not return. But he would not leave this land behind. It would stay safe in his heart.

            As would she.

ON DAHL AND AUGUSTUS GLOOP, by Saviour Pirotta

 When readers ask me why I think historical fiction is important, my standard and honest reply is 'because we have to know the past to understand the present and shape our future.'

    I'm saying this because I have been following the public debate about Puffin's 'retouching' of Roald Dahl's books to make them more acceptable to modern audiences. As I'm sure all followers of this blog know, Penguin hired 'sensitivity readers' to remove language from his work that they think stigmatise people. Many have come out against this decision, and I am against it too, but for different reasons mostly quoted in the press.  

    One of the big changes is apparently calling Augustus Gloop in CATCF 'enormous' instead of 'fat', even though 'enormous' is still a negative label. At least is hasn't got the guilt associated with 'fat'. As someone who's been fat-shamed most of his life, I abhor that label. At school, it followed me around like a vindictive, whispering harpy, crushing what little self-confidence I had, even - I have to admit - driving me to suicidal thoughts at one point. Dahl was not popular in my country of origin when I was growing up. But there was a very similar character in our Italian primer called Pappo il Mangione, Pappo the Big Eater. In the illustrations he looked very much like Billy Bunter, forever stuffing his face, unable to stop binge eating. More often than not, he was shown with his shirt buttons rocketing off his fat belly. I lived in fear of the same thing happening to me and spent years sitting with my back straight and my tummy sucked in case the buttons flew off my school shirt.

    Words are might powerful things, and when they're given legitimacy by an author, in a book, that power is multiplied ad infinitum. The printed page gives them validity and acceptance. We teach kids to admire and look up to writers. If it's ok for them to label someone fat, why shouldn't the kids? 

    After that little rant, you must be wondering by now why I don't support the changes to Dahl's books. The reason is because Dahl wrote those horrible descriptions. He thought it legitimate to put them down on paper. They were a reflection of his world view, and his readers of the time found them acceptable. Millions still do. No amount of tinkering with text is ever going to change that. 

    Thankfully the world of books (and telly, art and films) is moving on from the likes of Roald Dahl and his privileged ilk (David Walliams, John Cleese etc). There's a plethora of books whose authors choose to celebrate the vibrant rainbow that make up humanity rather than sneer at anyone who's different. Let Dahl and his work be a testament to a world we are hopefully leaving behind. We have to know our past to help shape our future.

    Saviour Pirotta is the author of THE GOLDEN HORSEMEN OF BAGHDAD for Bloomsbury and the WOLFSONG and THE NILE ADVENTURES series for Maverick. Follow him on twitter @spirotta and on instagram @saviour2858.

Too Much, written by Anne Booth, illustrated by Maria Christania, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

This is a wonderfully gentle and kind story that really understands how feeling overwhelmed can affect us.

Bear has been asleep in his cave all winter, but now spring is here, and his friends want him to come out and play with them.

 

‘GO AWAY!’ said Bear. ‘There’s too much of everything out there and I’m staying IN.’

 

But those friends don’t give up on Bear. They lay a trail of tempting things – kind voices, flowers, delicious smelling food – to lure Bear out in his own time. He decides to take a tentative step out into the open, and he acclimatises to be outside so that he’s properly ready for friends and picnic by the time he reaches to them. 

 

I was so pleased that the friends didn’t trick Bear out or loudly greet him coming out. That giving someone the time and space they need is just right. Clever Anne Booth who wrote it. 

 

A very lovely book, with delightful illustrations by Maria Christania. 

Sorry I am late! Please can I ask for advice? by Anne Booth

 I had some lovely pancakes tonight, and I was just thinking about writing, and about how I would like to ask people for some writing advice, and how I might ask it in my next blog post for An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, and I suddenly realised it is the 21st and I should have posted !

So, I am very sorry, and, quickly, please can I ask an urgent question about names?

I am writing a story set in Connemara, a sparsely populated area of Ireland. My mother came from there. I want to use names which are of the region, but I am v scared I will end up actually giving one of my characters a real person's name. How can I avoid that whilst keeping authentic sounding names? One of my characters has a building business, and defrauds people , so I must be so careful!   My book is set in 1996.  I am also thinking of renaming the island my mum came from, so that it has a fictional name.

Sorry again for being late - and I would really appreciate your thoughts!

When is a woof not a woof? by Joan Lennon

Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) 

(wiki commons)

The answer to the question 'When is a woof not a woof?' is 'When it's a wau.' Which it is in Germany. 

Humans imitate animal sounds differently in different places. I grew up in Canada thinking that dogs said bow-wow until I moved to the UK and learned that British dogs say woof woof. And it doesn't stop there. In Bahasa Indonesian, they say guk guk; in Dutch they say blaf; and in Korean they say meong.

What about frogs? In English they say ribbut; in Italian it's cra cra; Mandarin frogs say guō-guō; Thai frogs go op op; in Hungarian they say brekeke; and in Japanese it's something like kero-kero.

Or mice. They may squeak in English, but in Dutch they go piep; in Italian it's squitt squitt; Swedish mice say pip pip; and in Germany they go i i i i.

Cats sound a lot alike in a lot of languages - versions of miaow - except in Korea where they say yaong.

But pig noises are all over the shop, from hunk hunk (Albanian) to noff noff (Swedish) to groin groin (French) to knor knor (Dutch).

So the next time you read or write a picture book rich in animal sounds, spare a thought for any translators. It's may not be just the human words they'll need to translate!

What did animals say where you grew up?

Print in the Edo-Tokyo Museum, Japan 

(wiki commons)

Joan Lennon website

Everyone has a book in them - by Lu Hersey

 These days, it's increasingly hard to get a book traditionally published. While the industry churns out more and more TV chefs, diet books, clearing your house books, or JK Rowling under her other name books, can there possibly be room for anything else?

Yes. It turns out there is. You know that old adage about everyone having a book in them? Love it or hate it, Amazon has given far too many people a chance to prove it.  So for your amusement this month, here is proof that even if you're not the next Richard Osman, you can still get your book published. And yes, all these books exist in the real world...

1. 

Don't laugh. Well, you can laugh - but this book has nearly 10,000 ratings on Amazon, averaging 4.5 stars. Which means A LOT of people have bought it... 

2. 

This masterpiece doesn't have quite the success of the last one - but Melissa Haynes can still boast 48 Amazon reviews with an average of 4.5 stars. Which is, annoyingly, a few more than I have for my most recent book...

3. 

There must be a lot of strippers out there as Eleanor has nearly 250 amazon reviews, averaging 4.5 stars. Though can't help wondering if readers got quite what they were expecting...

4. 

Julian has 78 five star ratings for this. Either he has 78 close friends, or far too many people have an unhealthy obsession with shopping trolleys...

5. 

I'm now seriously worried about what Amazon's algorithms are going to suggest for my future reads. But this book does have 173 ratings (only averaging 2.5 stars), proving that there's a market somewhere for absolutely anything. Even what appears to be dino porn... 

6. I'll save you from a photo of Gay Men Draw Vaginas, despite its 13 five star reviews, because it's probably a step too far. Also, the cover is surprisingly boring. But it's out there, if you're interested. 

Researching this post has led me further and further down a niche book rabbit hole - and fascinating as it's been, enough is enough. 

7. So finally, just in case you thought books for children were exempt... 

Ok. Until next month...

(You're welcome.)

Lu Hersey

Playtime by Tracy Darnton

I’m sharing my latest procrastination task – setting up an escape room for writer friends on our forthcoming day retreat.

This means that I’m looking anew at every item in my house as to whether it can be repurposed as a writing exercise/escape room task. Wooden spoon and mixing bowl? Excellent for the writing an abstract recipe exercise. Tiny objects? Perfect for my six objects in a story task.

Paint colour charts? I’m sucked in by the possibilities of titles like ‘Between Dog and Wolf’ and ‘Invisible Green’ or a detective called ‘Juniper Ash’.

I’ve been reading Michael Rosen’s Book of Play! Rosen’s book sets out all the learned reasons why play has developed and why it matters. It’s full of play suggestions and I realise that many of those, especially the wordplay, have been part of my day-to-day since forever. In fact, the way I play around with ‘What if' scenarios or make my characters do improv. is a big part of how I develop a book idea, especially as I am not a plotter thinking about mid-points and Three Act Structures.

Far from growing out of this once the kids left home, I seem to be liking ‘play’ more and more as I get older. Is it OK to just like playing, even though I am getting on in life? I took part in an ‘adults only’ craft session at the Wellcome Collection based around the In Plain Sight exhibition. That’s always one of my favourite places to visit in London for interesting ideas and a strong element of play and creativity about the way information is presented. And I was the oldest there by a good twenty years. But, so what? (That's a photo of my eye in the middle).

 

This week I’ve also been distracted by making small, woolly wigs for cardboard avocados (Don’t ask!) But, dear reader, I enjoyed it.

Let’s hope that the friends I’m ‘locking’ in the escape room have a similar playful approach. We’ll soon see.

My issue is that once my brain sets off in that direction, I find it hard to rein it back to the task in hand. So diligently adding to my WIP, ticking off every 500 words, is a monumental effort.

Speaking of which, my word target beckons. After I’ve set up some more bookish anagrams and turned a cupboard into a time machine….

 

  

Tracy Darnton is the author of YA thrillers Ready or Not, The Rules and The Truth About Lies. She tries really hard to be a grown up. You can follow her @TracyDarnton on Twitter and Instagram.  

Groundhog Day – with a machete – by Rowena House

This month I restarted the WIP after an enforced break of three months, so this post will honour the spirit of last month’s about the (happily) narrated self by recounting all the useful things that came out of that creative void, while consigning the bits that sucked to forgetfulness.

Good thing, the first: re-reading the first 10K words with fresh eyes.

After three years researching, planning, and drafting, and many more mulling the possibilities of the story, the opening works. MEGA hurrah. We have a solid launch pad in terms of voice, form, and content which, after seemingly endless tinkering, rewriting, and starting again, is progress – and journalist me can stop that eye rolling right now, thank you very much.

Good thing, the second: the main character ‘exists’ outside the specifics of the plot.

Last year’s intensive planning of scenes and sequences driven by the main character’s neuroses have delivered a sufficiently robust outline that it can withstand change. I.e., the emotional and psychological drivers of the story can take the plot wherever it needs to go. Ta, especially, to Story Geek guru Jeff Lyons for that – though, please, Jeff, drop the enneagrams.

Good thing, the third. Darlings to kill? Hand me the machete, mwa-ha-ha. They’re just so 2022. 

Pic: Staples Inn, from C17th witch trial work in progress

Good thing, the fourth. Intuition rules.

For example, certain decisions have been taken without a conscious process. The ‘real’ ghost character, for instance, is gone. Just like that. She’s not my problem any more, just the protagonist’s, and I understand why he believes in her and feel for him. She is as real to him as he is real for me. Like Angelique from The Goose Road is real. Crazy, huh? But true.

Meanwhile, other plot problems have stepped out of the shadows and said, Solve me. Now. Specifically, the kick into Act 2. No matter which way I twisted it, the main character – the person I know – could not step in any self-propelled way into the new world, whatever the rulebook says.

Fair enough, then. Find another route. The antagonist will just have to kick him there instead. And guess what? The story works better for it! Cue more eye rolling, like you didn’t know rules are there to break.

Good thing, the fifth. Some of the stuff that came out of the memory locker makes more sense than what went in last year.

An example. A lot of 2021 (yup, that’s not a typo) was spent – don’t say wasted, this is happy narrative self here – fretting over how to align form, content, and voice. Actually, now I write that I realize it’s not true. I didn’t think of them as a unit. Instead, my experiments with voice were separated conceptually from experiments with form (first person, third, retrospective and framing devices etc) and content (the events to be recounted and the specifics of scenes).

In other words, the what-to-write content, the how-to-put-the-manuscript-together form, and the tone/voice/style of the words had seemed to be different problems.

Now that the opening is finally singing, it’s clear they were harmonies in the same tune. Pieces of a single puzzle. A set of problems only solvable together. [Yeah, yeah. Duh, right? It’s been a tough three months. Anyhow…] Eureka! John Truby’s designing principle pops out of the memory locker as a great planning tool, not just another trick to storytelling I didn’t get.

Here’s what Truby says about the designing principle in The Anatomy of Story: “[it] is abstract; it is the deeper process going on in the story, told in an original way…

“Let’s say you are a writer who wants to show the intimate workings of the Mafia in America, as literally hundreds of screenwriters and novelists have done. If you were really good, you might come up with this designing principle (for The Godfather):

“Use the classic fairy-tale strategy of showing how the youngest of three sons becomes the new ‘king’.”

Yeah, okay, I get it now. Having read the book three times!

To be honest, sifting through all this stuff after a break feels like Groundhog Day, with the half-forgotten only strangely familiar. The slow dawn of recognition is embarrassing. Perhaps our creative selves can get lost in a dark faerie realm where months pass like years. If so, thank goodness for signposts like Truby’s on the route to escape.

Twitter: @HouseRowena 

https://www.facebook.com/rowenahouseauthor/

Website: rowenahouse.wordpress.com

Valentine's Day by Lynne Benton

 Since today is Valentine’s Day, I thought I might investigate how the day dedicated to the spirit of romance first came about.

Valentine’s day, also called St. Valentine’s Day, is the day when, traditionally, lovers express their love with greetings and gifts.  One suggestion is that the holiday was inspired by/originated in the Roman festival of Lupercalia, which was always held in mid-February to celebrate the coming of spring.  Lupercalia, however, was something of a wild celebration, known for its excessive merriment and such distinctive fertility rituals as the lashing of women by men using the hides of sacrificed animals.  At the end of the 5^th century Pope Gelasius 1, perhaps in an effort to end such pagan festivities, inaugurated a feast day to commemorate Valentine on the saint’s execution date.

Valentine’s day wasn’t celebrated as a day of romance until about the fourteenth century, when scholars believe it came about from Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem "The Parlement of Foules", which he wrote in 1380-90, since the earliest letters between lovers referring to St Valentine’s Day began to appear soon after the poem’s publication.

So who was St. Valentine?  There were several Christian martyrs named Valentine, but the day may have been named after a priest who was martyred in around 270 CE by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus.  Valentine, while in prison, allegedly befriended (or in some versions of the story, fell in love with) his jailer’s daughter, whom he also miraculously cured of blindness.  The night before his execution, he is said to have written her a farewell message and signed off with “Your Valentine.”

Or the holiday could have been named after St Valentine of Terni, a bishop,  It is also possible that the two saints were actually one person.  There is another common legend about St Valentine defying the emperor’s orders and marrying couples in secret to spare the husbands from going to war.  This could be why his feast day is associated with love.

Valentines themselves, or messages of love, appeared in the 1500s, and by the late 1700s commercially printed cards were sent between lovers. The first commercial valentines in the United States were printed in the mid-1800s, commonly depicting Cupid, the Roman god of love, along with hearts, traditionally supposed to be the seat of emotion.  Birds too became a symbol of the day, following the belief that the birds’ mating season begins in mid-February.  Traditional gifts include chocolates  and flowers, particularly red roses, a symbol of beauty and love.

The day is popular in the US, where one of the most enduring traditions is the classroom card exchange.  Each year, typically, elementary school children choose a box of valentines featuring their latest favourite superhero, princess, snack or Internet Meme, fill out a card for each of their classmates, and distribute the cards among their peers’ decorated shoeboxes during class time.  While a fun diversion for kids, especially if they persuaded their parents to splurge on cards including stickers or glow sticks, parents have complained about the custom for years, and wonder how a holiday ostensibly meant to celebrate romance was usurped by children.  More importantly, though, they may ask:  why do we give Valentine cards anyway?

 

As well as the UK and the US it is also celebrated in Canada, Australia and other countries including Argentina, France, Mexico and South Korea.  In the Philippines it is the most common wedding anniversary, and mass weddings of hundreds of couples are not uncommon on that date.  The holiday has expanded to expressions of affection among relatives and friends.  Many schoolchildren exchange valentines with one another on this day.  And in February of this year the Indian government appealed to citizens to mark Valentine’s Day this year as “Cow Hug Day” to promote Hindu values, rather than a celebration of romance.

But I think I'd settle for a card.  Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Website:lynnebenton.com

Latest book:

Billy and the Queen

 

Welcome to my site by Sheena Wilkinson

I’m proud. But I’m also embarrassed.   

Proud of my lovely new website, launched a few weeks ago, and the result of lots of hard work from both me and Emma Pass, who as well as being a RNA-shortlisted author, and generally fabulous person, also happens to be a wonderful web designer. Qualities for this last, as well as being able to do Hard Computery Things, include being calm and methodical in the face of Panicking Author. The Panicking Author was, of course, me.

 

So why am I embarrassed? Well, it’s 2023. I’ve been published since 2010 – in fact, if you count short stories and a book of literary criticism, since 2007. And though I have described www.sheenawilkinson.com  as my ‘new’ website, I suppose I mean simply ‘my website’. In other words, yes, it really has taken me this long to get one.

 

I can’t explain why. I’m not a complete technophobe: I manage to blog on here regularly and I promise I am not that Zoom participant who can’t make her camera work. I make good presentations about my books to show at events. I bought the domain name back in about 2011, thinking vaguely that I would get round to building a site one day. Soon. Sometime. People told me it was easy. Every year I put ‘make a website’ at the top of my New Year’s Resolutions. Every year I failed. It became, I suppose, a kind of mental block. I would feel frustrated at festivals or school visits when I was introduced with an out of date or inaccurate biography, instead of the one I had sent, but of course that was largely my own fault: if I’d had a website I would have had more control.

 

Then last year I got my first deal for an adult novel. Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau comes out on 2 March from HarperCollins Ireland. And it would be mortifying not to have a website. My teen readers mightn’t have bothered much, but I knew adults would expect to be able to go to a one-stop shop to find out more about me, especially as they would probably not have heard of me. This is a major development in my career, and I needed a website to reflect that. 

 

The book was due to be announced in January, which gave me a deadline – we all need those. I booked Emma, started writing copy, and gradually, with me supplying the words and Emma doing all the techy/designy things, we went live about ten days ago.

 

It makes me feel so grown up. (I’m 54.) It makes me feel so like a real writer. (I’m just about to publish my ninth novel/tenth book.) I love having the link to it as my email signature. It's great being able to say to people who approach me about school visits, etc. The information is all on my website. 

 

Yesterday I had my first approach through the contact form, apart from a couple from friends to test it was working. And yes, it made me feel like a real person with a website. 

 Sad, maybe, to have been so backward. And of course I’m such a late developer that probably websites are very last decade. But I don’t care. And I’m posting about it to say that if anyone else out there has been reluctant to set up their website, please don’t be. It’s such a lovely feeling to have something online that’s completely your own.

And do feel free to stop by! 

 

 

The Secret Starling by Judith Eagle illustrated by Kim Geyer, review by Lynda Waterhouse

 My selection process for this blogpost was to walk into a bookshop, browse and see what happens….

 I was in Hatchards in St Pancras on the evening of a rail strike so it was pretty quiet when I picked up Judith Eagle’s debut novel. I liked the feel of the book both physically and subliminally; it felt substantial but not overwhelming. The silver stair rods of rain and the two windswept figures on the moors were intriguing as was the title, The Secret Starling, also picked out in silver. Emma Carroll and Hilary McKay recommended it. The book was signed by the author! There were echoes of Noel Streatfeild and I had recently been on a binge of her adult novels including her recently re-issued Susan Scarlett novels (shout out to the Furrowed Middlebrow series at Dean Street Press).

The top and bottom of it was that it felt like it was meant to be chosen by yours truly.

The story is set in the 1970s with orphan Clara Starling living with her cold and aloof Uncle Edward in the crumbling Braithwaite Manor. She has to follow a dull and boring routine with the only warmth coming from Cook and the books her mother had read as child. Then one day her uncle abandons her in the village with a wodge of ‘guilt’ money and a vague mention of going to Cook’s. Clara has other ideas and returns to the now up for sale, Braithwaite.

A visitor the same age as her, Peter, and his rescue cat, Stockwell, turn up unexpectedly to stay and now, with all adults nowhere in sight, the adventure truly begins. There are many mysteries to solve, not least the discovery of the ballet slipper underneath the floorboards.

There are so many classic mystery story elements and twisty plot points in the book that could have made the story clichéd and a mere Streatfeild pastiche but, in the hands of this accomplished author, that is not the case. The story is exciting, the characters all have real heart and the villains are cruel but also believably human with their jealousies and frailties.

Life in the 1970s is handled well with just enough period detail to resonate with those of us of a certain age and also to intrigue younger readers.

I particularly like the Cold War and ballet themes which dovetail around the story of Clara’s mother and also include a guest appearance from Rudolph Nureyev.

In her acknowledgement Judith says,

‘And last but not least, thank you, Reader, for choosing this book. The Secret Starling will be a tiny piece in the rich patchwork of books you will go on to read. I wish you all the best on your reading journey!’ Thank you for writing this Judith and I look forward to reading more.

This a perfect read for half-term.

 

ISBN 978-0-571-34630-1

Faber &Faber

Pandas in the body stream — Adventures in AI (Anne Rooney)

What happens when you ask AI to write a story?

 

There's a lot of chat about ChatGPT at the moment, and a good deal of panic among writers A-eyeing up the possbility of being replaced in their publishers' affections (oxymoron alert!) by something that writes totally for free rather than nearly for free. So I set ChatGPT a little asssignment. And then critiqued its attempt. (Incidentally, this blog also shows why you don't want me to critique your story.)

Don't worry if you can't read the text in the picture, it's here. (ChatGPT chose to use black on red, which any AI worth its salt should know excludes a number of colour-blind and dyslexic readers.) The prompt was 'Write a story about a panda for 5 year olds':

Once upon a time, in a beautiful forest, there lived a panda named Poppy. Poppy was a cute and cuddly panda with black and white fur who loved to play and eat bamboo.

One day, while playing with her friends, Poppy noticed that there were no more bamboo leaves left on the nearby bushes. She asked her friends where all the bamboo had gone, but they didn’t know either. Poppy decided to go on an adventure to find more bamboo

She travelled through the forest, over hills and valleys, until

Error in body stream

OK... Let's take it a step at a time.

Once upon a time…

Come on, are you serious? This is 2023, not 1723.

in a beautiful forest

Banal. 'Beautiful' adds nothing here except trying to make the scene cosy and the line longer. How was it beautiful? Tell us something about the forest. What even is a ‘beautiful forest’? One covered in glitter? One with a bow in its hair or trout lips?

there lived a panda named Poppy

Where to start? Poppy. Pandas live in China. Poppy is not a Chinese name. Please change for reasons of cultural sensitivity. ‘There lived a’ isn’t an engaging active construction. Why isn't the panda the object of the sentence?

This first sentence is better phrased as ‘A panda called Poppy lived in a beautiful forest.’ Now you can see how banal it is immediately, but at least it’s easier for a child to understand. It’s not that we don’t want children to enjoy language or read anything slightly challenging — we do. It’s that we want them to enjoy language used creatively to good effect. This first sentence is obfuscating with the sole intention of emulating the syntax of what the AI perceives to be a children’s story. Nil points. We don't even need to say Poppy is a panda as that's clear from the picture. So far, we could just have a picture of the panda in the forest with the annottion 'Poppy' and an arrow.

Poppy was a cute and cuddly panda

By whose reckoning? Have you seen the claws on a panda? Cuddle at your own risk. Not sure AIs can cuddle anyway. Further, these are attributes of the person(/AI) perceiving the panda. These attributes are constructed by the way we perceive and interact with the panda and are not innate to pandahood.

with black and white fur

As opposed to what? All those peacock-patterned pandas? Also, don’t state things that will be clear in the artwork. You’re wasting your word count and the child’s effort to read the words. Remember, the child is an emergent reader. They might struggle over every word. Make every word worthwhile.

who loved to play and eat bamboo

So, basically, who liked being a panda? Because a panda that doesn’t eat bamboo is soon an ex-panda. Would you write ‘Poppy was a child who loved to eat food’?

This first paragraph has no action; it’s scene setting. We don’t generally do that in picture books. We start with action and the scene emerges. A five-year-old doesn’t need your info dump. Keep it in your head and use it to inform the story as it unravels. Oh, AIs don’t have a head. Sorry, forgot. And also there's virtually no info in this dump; it's a fluff dump.

One day, while playing with her friends,

Banal but harmless. At least it’s moved into some action. You’d be more likely to find this pedestrian stuff in an early chapter book, though. What's she playing? Croquet? Cluedo?

Poppy noticed that there were no more bamboo leaves left on the nearby bushes

What, she just noticed she was going to starve and it was mildly interesting? Or perhaps there were no bamboo leaves on the nearby bushes because bamboo isn’t a bush so there will never, ever be bamboo leaves on the nearby bushes. Bamboo is a type of grass. It does not grow like a bush. It grows with long, unbifurcated stems. But none ‘left’, which suggests there were previously bamboo leaves on the bushes, so perhaps she lives in a genetically-engineered panda-preservation park or an alternative universe? Maybe it’s about to get interesting. God knows, it could do with it.

She asked her friends where all the bamboo had gone, but they didn’t know either

So they aren’t party to this Trueman-show-for-pandas set up, then. But happily frolicking in the face of certain famine because they’re dumber than an AI?

Poppy decided to go on an adventure to find more bamboo

It would be better just to go and look for some bamboo. She’s only deciding, not doing something. We like physical activity in picture books, not mental activity of the vague-intention variety. Deciding to go on an adventure is a pretty hit-and-miss approach to dealing with imminent starvation. I’d say you can’t really decide to have an adventure anyway. You can put yourself in the way of adventure, but pace Malory, you have to ‘accepte the adventur that Godde woll ordeyn’ for you. That might be a good deal more exciting than finding a bamboo plantation. But perhaps less useful as a solution to the problem of hunger.

She travelled through the forest, over hills and valleys, until

Until thankfully the AI crashed. Or maybe she found the adventure, and it involved a panda-eating monster. Hooray! Something innovative at last! Maybe the AI does have a grip and it’s deliberately playing with the tired conventions* to lull us into a misplaced sense of security before…

Error in body stream

No. Before it crashes because its story goes nowhere. We’ve all been there. Don’t worry, AI. The traditional advice is to keep writing and you’ll improve. Maybe. But at least you’ll be occupied. And next time, don't keep using the same sentence structure: bla bla, subordinate clause, bla bla

What does this story say? A panda couldn’t find any bamboo so looked somewhere else. Is your child going to be interested in this story? 

Now, it's only fair to let the student respond to feedback or have another go, so I posted ChatGPT's story back to it with a request for a critique. It noticed the story wasn't finished, completed it and then acurately assessed that its story was shite:

Here's the ending:

...she finally came to a clearing where she saw a group of animals who were hoarding all the bamboo for themselves. Poppy approached them and asked if she could have some of the bamboo to feed her family and friends.

The animals refused and told Poppy that there was not enough bamboo for everyone and that they needed to protect their own supply. Poppy tried to reason with them and explain that they were all part of the same forest community and should share resources. But the animals would not listen.

Determined to find a solution, Poppy decided to plant her own bamboo garden. She worked hard, planting and nurturing the bamboo shoots until they grew into a lush forest of their own. Poppy invited all the animals to come and share in the bounty of her garden.

The animals were amazed at Poppy's kindness and hard work, and soon realized that by working together and sharing resources, they could all live in harmony. From that day on, Poppy became known as the "Bamboo Keeper" and was loved and respected by all the animals in the forest.

I'm not going through all this in the same vein, but you can see at a glance it's modelled on those (usually American) worthy, moral-laden attempts that appeal to (some) parents more than to children. It's lost the concept of language for a five-year-old, too.

And this is what it thinks of its own story:

This story has a good message of sharing and cooperation, but it could benefit from a bit more detail and character development. For example, what did Poppy go through on her journey to find the clearing? What challenges did she face and how did she overcome them? What made the animals finally see the value in sharing resources? Adding these details would help to flesh out the story and make it more engaging for the reader.

Its critique is as bad as its story. How about a glance at the larger picture. WTF is this story about? Which 'forest animals' are hoarding bamboo? In China, the only bamboo-eating mammals are giant panda, red panda and bamboo rat. (And how can it be a clearing if it's full of bamboo? That's a challenge for the illustrator.)

*If you want something that plays with tired conventions, Jon Scieszkahas already done it a lot better in Squids Will Be Squids, 2000.

Anne Rooney

 Out now:

Baby Polar Bear, illustrated by Qu Lan, Oxford University Press, 2022 

 

Window on my World - by Keren David

 I am writing this  surrounded by utter chaos.

My house is full of boxes and bags -  big black rubbish bags destined for the tip and bulging carrier bags for the charity shop. There's dust in the air and the smell of glue wafting around us, and the house is open to the wind and the rain...

And it's all self inflicted. We're having our windows replaced. In February, at huge expense during a cold snap. A freezing cold snap. It's making us very snappy.
 

What's more, at precisely the time that we were moving furniture from room to room away from the window fitters, my daughter moved back in with us. Bringing two carloads of stuff. Re-capturing the room which I've used as my workplace for the last two years while she's been flat sharing. 

But there are many and various silver linings to this dusty, expensive, freezing cloud.

First - We will no longer have 40 year old aluminium framed windows which might as well have been made of  cobwebs. We will be snug as a bug in a double-glazed rug. And hopefully our energy bills might be smaller too.

Second -  I love decluttering. There is nothing that makes me happier than putting things in bags and sending them off to charity shops. I feel generous and benevolent -  I imagine the happy faces of poor but bookish children who will find a complete set of Lemony Snicket in the Marie Curie shop -  and then there are the people who will benefit from the wonderful charity's work. And I get so much more shelf space...it's win, win, win multiplied by win. Squared.

Third -  I have my lovely daughter home again. Sorry, that should have been first. 

Fourth -  When  decluttering  I always find real gems that had got lost. Like  a 1939 book Ann Thorne Girl Reporter, which tells me all about life on Fleet Street way back then. Like a set of photos I took on holiday in Cambodia in 2007. Like my report from journalism college in 1982 ('Keren's obvious flair for journalism...' ). And  the exercise book  in which I sat and wrote longhand the very first draft of the very first chapter of my very first book in March 2008 (later published as When I Was Joe in 2010.)  I find, in other words, the things which make me proud, and which reconnect me with the best moments of my life.   The things which made me me. The rest - goodbye,

Fifth -  By incredible serendipity this was the week that my employer  ordered us back into the office again, So I don't really need my workplace after all.  And our new office is light and airy and has views over Mary Poppins-esque chimneys and after nearly three years of working from home I can tell you that it's better for my mental health to be in an office, laughing with colleagues, even if it makes it a tad harder to stick on a wash mid-morning. 

Sixth - By another piece of incredible serendipity, my husband this week discovered a whole chunk of his family history, going all the way back to the 18th century. The Maybloom family  - forebears of his grandmother, Annie, who died when his dad was seven years old -  originally came from Brody, Ukraine. And what did they do there?  You wouldn't believe it.

They were glaziers! They fitted windows! 

First Contact, by Dawn McLachlan

 

Vulcan Captain "Live long and prosper, here's my card."
Zefram Cochran "Err..sure..but I don't have a wallet, I'm just going to put that...over here.."

Arguably one of the hardest thing to do these days is to stand out from the crowd. First Contact is incredibly important and so is being remembered. We can polish our pitch and get our small talk down to an elegant and practiced piece of perfect prose, but when we walk away what will we leave behind?

When I first started out and my first book was published I got myself a lovely business card holder and spent a pleasant afternoon designing my own cards. I was so excited to hand these out to people and, just out of interest, I made a little note of where I’d handed them out. I have a secret for you – none of those business cards resulted in extra work, but lots of them resulted in me being asked for favours or to work for free. This made me rethink.

I had a think about what I do with business cards in my professional life. As a librarian and literacy campaigner I was given hundreds and hundreds of business cards and I’ll be honest with you, most of those were just dropped into the bottom of my bag and only found again when the handle fell off and I needed to transfer my junk over to a new one. Sometimes I’d find a business card in my purse and spend a baffled moment staring at it trying to remember who had given it to me and when.

With my author hat on I wanted to have a think about where I was spending my hard-earned and whether or not it was good sense. With my librarian and bookseller hat on I had a look around my desk, my files, and my walls and thought about what I kept and what I threw away. For what it’s worth, here’s my two-pennorth…

Business cards are great for industry contacts and I’d say that you should spend a little bit to make sure they are attractive and on quality card. Beautiful ones go in the purse or wallet, cheap ones go in the bottom of whatever tote is being carried around that day. Make sure your business card has a tagline that says what you do (“author of non-fiction”, “YA and children’s author” etc) and that you have your socials listed on the cards as well as your website. Don’t cram it with information, just the bare minimum.

Flyers and postcards are your friends when it comes to contact with bookshops, schools and libraries. I would say that A5 flyers that are designed to look great when folded in half are lovely things. If you can stretch to double sided printing that’s great. One side should look like a little poster (preferably the cover of your book or artwork from the book) and the other has your contact details and a little bit of sales pitch about what you do. Once again, not too much information, just a teaser to take someone to your website or socials to find out more. I didn’t have time to read a whole load of stuff or to work out between the lines.

Personally, I would say that the thing I genuinely enjoyed being given was a postcard. I particularly loved cards that had space to write on and were thick enough to use as actual postcards. These ones I kept, pinned up on my wall until I used them to write notes for people or posted them out to others. Nice looking, cute, beautiful or funny postcards had lives that ran and ran because they went off on adventures beyond me but by then I’d looked at them so many times that I could remember the names of the authors and illustrators on them.

The attractive flyers, small posters and postcards turned into real money for their creators as these were the people who I booked for visits, recommended to others and remembered at events. They were the ones who I said, “hey, have you heard of this person?” because I'd seen their stuff, remembered it, liked it and bought it.

Spend your money wisely, and only on what makes sense, and you can be remembered. That’s what we all want – to be remembered, and with a smile.

Dawn McLachlan (aka Dawn Finch) is a former children's librarian and current author and bookseller.