Poo bum willy - John Dougherty

Forgive the entirely crude title to this piece, but - inspired by the post my friend Tamsyn Murray put up on Wednesday - I've been moved (if I can say that in this context) to pen a few words about toilet humour.

As Tamsyn observed, if you're a children's author there are those who will advise you to put toilet jokes into your books. There are even those who think that this is all you really need to make your book a success.

Are they right? Well - probably not. There's a lot more to writing a children's book than repeatedly shoehorning the word 'poo' into your prose. Otherwise, the top-selling titles would all be books like Pooey McPooface and the Enormous Poo. Which, actually, would get a bit of a laugh.

Once.

But probably only once. Taboo-breaking humour is funny precisely because it pushes at the boundaries of a taboo. But the more you break a taboo the less, well, tabooey it feels. Someone walking naked down your local high street would provoke a reaction - perhaps shock, perhaps laughter, perhaps both. But if you could guarantee the sight of a streaker every time you wandered into town, then - even if the prohibition on public nudity remained, and even if the police were to respond with an arrest every time - the effect on passers-by would diminish rapidly. After a few weeks, a passing exhibitionist would be lucky to get an eye-roll.

So am I saying that you shouldn't bother using toilet humour at all? Well, no. But I am saying that it's not an easy option. Writing a good toilet joke - or a good willy joke for that matter, or indeed any joke that pushes at the boundaries - is no easier than writing any other kind of joke. Or, put another way a poo joke has to contain a joke as well as poo.

This is on my mind at the moment partly because my latest book Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Great Big Story Nickers, contains a poo joke. In fact, if I can say this without being misunderstood, it contains a running poo joke.

And, actually, it might appear to the casual reader that the joke is simply about the repetition of the word 'poo'. But I'd like to think it's a bit cleverer than that. The first time the joke appears, one of the badgers - the villains of the piece - has defaced a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, writing the words 'And then she did a poo' at the end of a paragraph. So for the young reader, there are two taboos being pushed against here: the 'toilet talk' taboo, and the prohibition against writing in books. The scene continues with some of the other badgers getting very silly and giggly about this piece of vandalism, and another getting cross about it even though he secretly thinks it's a bit funny as well - so now the joke is not about the word 'poo' itself, but about how people react to it.

As the story progresses, the badgers get hold of a copy of Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Great Big Story Nickers itself, and discover that by - among other things - writing in the book, they can change things to their advantage. But one of them doesn't quite get what's going on, and keeps suggesting that they write 'And then she did a poo'. So now the joke is about comprehension, and incongruity, and context, and focusing on the trivial at the expense of the bigger picture.

Yes, all right, and it says 'poo' as well.

But - seriously - writing humour isn't the piece of cake it's sometimes seen as. And that goes for writing poo jokes as much as any other kind.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Great Big Story Nickers, illustrated by David Tazzyman and published by OUP, is the latest in John's Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series.

His other new books in 2016 will include the sixth Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face title, his first poetry collection - Dinosaurs & Dinner-Ladies, illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones and published by Otter-Barry Books  - and several readers for schools.

First Draft, the author band featuring John, Jo Cotterill and Paul and Helen Stickland, will next be performing at the Wychwood Festival in early June.

Competitions! - John Dougherty

I love chocolate, don't you? And especially, I love fairly traded chocolate.

I'm also very fond of poetry, so you can imagine how pleased I was when the splendidly-bearded Philip Ardagh suggested to those lovely people at Divine Chocolate that they might ask me to join the judging panel for this year's Divine Poetry Competition.

Before you get all excited - the closing date has passed, the judging has happened, and I've eaten quite a lot of free chocolate. But I thought you might like to see some videos of me reading the winning entries.

Here's the winner in the 7-11 category, by Connor Hellings:

Here's the 12-16 winner, by Lloyd Hunter: 

And here's the winner in the adult category, by Philip Howard:

If I seem a bit tired and emotional as I do any of the readings, it's partly because it was an INCREDIBLY hot day, and I filmed these videos straight after the judging process; and partly because one of the things I was looking for in the poetry was a bit of an emotional kick - and I found that. I was genuinely moved by some of what I read. The line in Connor's poem about riches being clean water and the chance of an education still makes my eyes water a little.

Anyway: I hope you enjoy the poetry - and though I don't normally advertise on ABBA, I hope you'll pop into your local Oxfam and buy some Divine chocolate, too. Not only is it extremely tasty; the company is owned by the farmers who grow the cocoa that goes into it, so it's an unusually fair form of fair trade.

Oh - and keep an eye out for next year's competition!

While we're on the subject of competitions - if you know any children who would like to be an actual character in a real book, I'm currently working on the fifth Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face, and we're running a competition with that as a prize! More details here:

http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/stinkbomb-competition

___________________________________________________________________

John's first collection of poetry will be published by Otter-Barry Books next year.

His latest book, Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Bees of Stupidity, illustrated by David Tazzyman and published by OUP, was published on July 2nd.

The Great OUP Pig Scandal

I expect this is old news. The current affairs cycle has moved on, and the top story now is the fact that “Page 1: lies about poor people; Page 2: boring bit nobody reads; Page 3: woman in her pants” is still considered journalism in some circles.

However, before it all quietly fades from memory, I’d like to say a few words about The Great OUP Pig Scandal.

A pig, yesterday.
Image courtesy of www.publicdomainpictures.net

For those of you who didn’t catch the story - or in case it has in fact completely faded from memory already - here’s a summary. 

Early last week, during a discussion about free speech on Radio 4’s Today, presenter James Naughtie said the following:

"I’ve got a letter here which was sent out by Oxford University Press to an author doing something for young people.

“Among the things prohibited in the text that was commissioned by OUP was the following: ‘Pigs (plus anything else which could be perceived as pork’).

“Now, if a respectable publisher tied to an academic institution is saying you’ve got to write a book in which you cannot mention pigs because some people might be offended, it’s just ludicrous, it is just a joke.”

Some banned pigs, after the ban
Image from www.publicdomainpictures.net

I’ve got an awful lot of time for Mr Naughtie, especially since his unfortunate spoonerism involving the name and title of then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt. However, on this occasion he got it badly wrong.

Firstly, I don’t think it was okay for him to name-and-shame an individual publisher like this, without asking for their side of the story first. The BBC can be quite stupidly cautious about putting both sides of a story, so for it to accuse a major publisher like this without immediate right to reply is quite bizarre.

Secondly, the wording as reported above (source: Huffington Post) doesn’t make it clear that these are not guidelines for general submissions to OUP. These are commissioning guidelines for their reading schemes which are sold across 200 countries. Such guidelines are quite common within the industry, and singling OUP out is simply unfair.

Thirdly, he jumps to the conclusion that the purpose of these guidelines is to avoid causing offence. This is quite simply wrong. Their purpose is to maximise sales. You will sell fewer books to, say, Saudi Arabia if they feature pigs or pork; and not just of the particular books that mention these subjects. Sales across the entire reading scheme will be affected, because who wants to buy a bit of a reading scheme?

An OUP book that contains no pigs,
but quite a lot of badgers.

 Fourthly - and in my view - this is where Mr Naughtie got it most wrong - he selectively mentions only the guidelines that refer to pigs and pork products. And, sure, they’re there. As are for instance, if I remember correctly, guidelines that request the author to steer clear of writing about witches or dinosaurs, because these subjects will affect sales in the good old bible-believing US of A. Where’s the outcry about “censoring” authors in order to not hurt the feelings of fundamentalist Christians? Mr Naughtie should have known that singling out a ‘ban’ on pigs like this would feed the subtle islamophobia that is currently much too common in our culture.

And finally: this ‘ban’ on pigs in books commissioned by the publisher is presented as some kind of assault on free speech. Can I just point out that the principle of free speech entitles a publisher to set their own commissioning guidelines? And also that nobody is stopping any author from writing whatever the hell they want, submitting to any publisher, and - if they can’t get a deal for it - publishing it themselves on the internet?

None of this, of course, stopped opportunistic attention-seekers like MP Philip Davies from calling for government intervention; The Independent reported him as saying, “The Secretary of State needs to get a grip over this and make sure this ridiculous ban is stopped at once.” I tried to engage Mr Davies on Twitter to ask how such government intervention would work, and how he could justify calling for legislation to stop a British business being allowed control over its own commissioning guidelines; but the only reply I got from him was an approving retweet of someone else saying that Mr Davies was not politically correct in any way. I think the word ‘politically’ may have been redundant there.

I suspect the remark that sums this whole issue up best was the one by Francis Maude MP on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions. He began:

“Well, I hadn’t heard this story, and it’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever come across.”

In other words: I know nothing about this issue and now I’m going to pontificate about how stupid these people are being.

Sadly, that’s been about the level of debate. 

_______________________________________________________________________

John Dougherty's latest books, the Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series, are published by OUP. They contain very few mentions of pigs, but could have lots more if he wanted them to. 

He has written reading scheme books for OUP and Harper Collins, and does not believe these books have ever been censored.

His first picture book, There's a Pig Up My Nose, will be published by Egmont next year.

For the first time in his life he phoned Any Answers last week, to talk about this issue, but didn't get on the air.

Letting a story off the leash - John Dougherty

Very often, when I'm talking to groups of children, I'm asked, "How do you plan your stories?" 

Most children in schools in England are taught that before starting to write a story, you have to plan it out showing the beginning, the middle, and the end; and so they expect me to tell them that that's what I do. But the truth is, I don't. Normally I've got a vague idea of where the story's going and how it gets there, but as long as I've got a few ideas and, most importantly, know where it starts, I'm usually pretty confident about sitting down to write.

This is particularly true of my new series, Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face - the first of which, if you'll allow me a quick boast, was The Times's Children's Book of the Week last week. Writing these stories, I suppose I'm really trying to get back inside the mind of a seven-year old me, a child at play without too many worries about "getting it right". So the deal I have with my internal self - that subconscious, creative part of my mind - is that if (s)he gives me an idea, I'll put it in the story. Only if it really doesn't feel right will it get taken out again. Essentially, I'm just letting the story and the characters lead me where they will, and never, ever saying "You can't do that!"

This approach isn't without its problems, of course. The first story came in at around 12,000 words; the third - whose first draft I finished on Tuesday - is closer to 21,000, so I have a lot of trimming to do.

But something that's struck me very forcefully is how much that internal part of me seems to know what it's doing, at least when it comes to stories and structure. 

I noticed it first - really noticed it - whilst writing the second book, Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Quest for the Magic Porcupine. After a short conversation,  I needed to get my characters moving. 

- Better make something happen, then, murmured my subconscious mind. 

- Yes, but what? I replied.

- It starts to rain, came the reply. 

That seemed reasonable. I began to type:

Just then, it began to rain. 

Fair enough. That's a good way to get things going.

It was not an ordinary rain. It was a horrible, inky-splattery, thick wet rain that left dark splodges on the ground and smelled faintly of bananas. 

I sat back, looked at the screen, and laughed. And then I thought, Smelled faintly of bananas? Where on earth did that come from? And what on earth am I going to do with it?

I nearly deleted it again. Only the thought of the internal pact made me keep it. If it doesn't work, I can always get rid of it later.

I kept racking my brains, though. I needed a plan, a way of showing why the rain was horrible, and inky-splattery, and thick, and why it left dark splodges on the ground, and most importantly, why it smelled faintly of bananas. And I kept trying to think of a reason, and coming up with none.

Until, of course, I decided to let it go and get on with the story. And of course, later on, when the children are talking to Miss Butterworth the Ninja Librarian, they mention the smell of bananas - and in doing so they introduce a further complication. But it's funny, so I leave it in, even though I have no idea where to go with it. 

And then we discover where the rain is coming from, but it still doesn't explain the smell of bananas - until much later, when we reach a scene I had begun to plan in my head; but for which I hadn't worked out a resolution. And I remember the further complication, which gives me an idea for a character who up until that point I hadn't even thought of, and all at once there's a great joke and an explanation for the bananas and a resolution for the scene, and everything comes together and moves us neatly towards the climax of the story. And none of it - consciously, at least - was planned in advance.

I might have thought that all of that was just happy coincidence, if it hadn't been for something very similar that happened in the writing of the newly delivered first draft of Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Evilness of Pizza. I needed a solid object, and it occurred to me that it might be funny if that object turned out to be some kind of character; so in comes someone new, someone whom I really only intended to be in that single scene. But then this character mentions that he's expected to appear in another chapter, later in the book; and it's funny, so I leave it in. But then, of course, I have to bring the character back.

And then I need - simultaneously - a resolution to the main problem of the story, an explanation for this character's reappearance, and a way to wrap things up neatly, and my internal self says:

- Here it is!

And lo and behold, the reappearance provides the first resolution, the first resolution leads neatly into the explanation, and the explanation wraps things up neatly. All, again, unplanned - consciously, at least.

Does it work? I think so. In fact, I strongly suspect - no, I firmly believe - that it wouldn't have worked half so well if I'd made sure to have everything planned and pinned down before I started. It's the sense of liberation, of being at play, of not having to worry too much about getting it right, that makes the story fizz and sparkle, that makes the jokes funny, that makes everything come together neatly.

I'm not saying this is the ideal way to write every story. And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to introduce children to the idea of planning. But I am saying that in teaching them that they have to plan, we may be robbing them of something very precious indeed.

Differently similar - John Dougherty

I've got a new book out this month.

Actually, after a gap of over two years, I've got two new books out this month. But I have to keep reminding myself of that, because - to misquote Kermit the Frog - one of these books is not like the others.

The one that's very much at the forefront of my mind is the one I've been trailing at the foot of my blogposts for months. Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Badness of Badgers was published on January 9th, and I'm ever so excited about it. My new publishers, OUP, are sending me on a book tour next week - my first proper one - and they've been sending it out for review and getting it into Waterstones and all that sort of thing. They've even printed posters, and they're doing me some bookmarks as well! Already, it's got more reviews on Amazon than any of my other titles. It's starting to feel just a little bit buzzy, to be honest. Just a bit.

And it feels very much part of what I do, because I did it much the same way I did most of my other titles - I had an idea, I wrote the story, I sent it to publishers, and somebody took a liking to it and decided to publish it. I've been including readings from it in my school visits since September, so I feel very much 'in touch' with it.


The other new book feels very different. It's not a trade book - that is, it won't be in the bookshops. It's part of the Treetops reading scheme, and it all came together very differently. OUP educational approached me (through my agent) and asked me to write a funny book - in fact, as I've just remembered, I blogged about it here. Instead of having an idea and writing a story, I had to propose a number of ideas, of which they picked the one they liked best, and then I had to turn it into a funny book. But not just any old funny book - certain guidelines were laid down before I started writing, which I had to follow.

For instance, I had to write two stories, each of a given length... I won't bore you with detail, but suffice to say, the process was different from my usual one, and not one I'd have chosen. The editing process has been considerably less intensive, as well, so I haven't thought about it for months. It was a bit of a surprise to receive my copies through the post yesterday and realise that it came out on the 9th. It was even more surprising to flick through it and realise that, yes, actually, it is funny; funnier even than I'd remembered. I'm proud of it.

And it reminded me that I really enjoyed the difference in process - in fact, I'd do it again like a shot. Besides, while Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face will probably do a lot more for my profile (especially since a sequel comes out in August, and I'm already working on a third), there's every possibility, given the reach of the Treetops scheme, that Twice Upon a Time will earn me more.

So, what's the point of this post? I suppose it's that even two short, funny books for children can come about in quite different ways, be positioned and sold differently, have different functions... and that, as a writer, I should always be prepared to try something new.