Learning from the other arts - Alex English

I'm a sucker for writing books and like many other ABBA bloggers (Rowena springs to mind!) I have shelves full of guides. Recently, I've tried looking further afield to other art forms to see what I can learn and whether I can apply it to writing. Here's what I've found:

Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash

Screenwriting

There are multitudes of screenwriting books that many novelists use already. Screenwriters are by necessity very strong on structure due to the huge budgets and fixed time-constraints of the screen. In this sense, a screenplay is very similar to a picture book. You can't overrun an episode of EastEnders by ten minutes any more than you can stretch out a picture book story to 17 spreads.

Key takeaways: read about screenwriting if you want to get your head around plot and structure

Recommended reads: Story by Robert McKee, Into the Woods by John Yorke, Save the Cat by Blake Snyder (just to get you started, there are many, many more).

Photo by Nick Karvounis on Unsplash

Songwriting

I somehow stumbled upon reading Pat Pattison's songwriting tips, and I've found them very helpful for writing rhyming picture books. While poetry books often focus on blank verse, songwriting looks more closely at rhyme and rhythm, which is just what's needed for a picture book. I've never really learned how to write in rhyme, and most picture book writing guides don't cover it thoroughly.

Key takeaways: Chapter 4 has a guide to building a 'worksheet' – in brief a sort of brainstorm-on-paper of ideas and rhymes associated with the themes of the song you are writing. I tend to write my story in prose before turning it into rhyme, and now I'm going to try including a rhyme worksheet as a middle step in my process.


Recommended reads: Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison

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Cartooning
I recently took a cartooning course with Neil Kerber, which has been great fun to practise with the kids. Drawing was supposed to be a hobby, but it's actually proved incredibly handy to be able to sketch characters and props for my work in progress. It also saves hours searching around Pinterest for that elusive image in my head.

Key takeaways: Keep it loose. Draw and see what comes out. It doesn't have to be perfect. Have fun!


Recommended reads: Comics: Easy as ABC! by Ivan Brunetti

Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash

Dance

I know nothing about dance, but I recently read The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, an acclaimed choreographer. She talks about her creative process, how she researches a dance piece (fascinating!) and how she actively develops her career. She talks about the importance of teaching/mentoring others to solidify your own knowledge. What would you teach yourself six months ago?

Key takeaways: There's a lot in this book, but I love the way Tharp uses a big box to gather her project material. I've started keeping a dedicated notebook for each project (previously I had a trillion notebooks with notes from different things scattered throughout), but a file box might work even better to collate random scraps of information and objects related to a book.

Recommended reads: The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp   

Photo by Mika Korhonen on Unsplash

Fashion design

On a whim, I borrowed a book about fashion design research and found it a surprisingly enlightening read. Nobody really tells you how to get ideas for a novel, but fashion designers at college have to document a proper research process and show how their ideas came about.

Key takeaways: "Fashion doesn't come from fashion" (i.e. don't take your inspiration from the catwalk). Books don't (just) come from books either. It's easy to feel you have to keep completely up-to-date with reading every new book release, but as long as you have a feel for what a current book is, it can be more useful to look more widely and take creative inspiration from elsewhere, art galleries, museums and maybe even real life!

Recommended reads: Fashion Design Research by Ezinma Mbonu


How about you? Have you ever taken inspiration for your creative process from another art form?


Alex English is a graduate of Bath Spa University's MA Writing for Young People. Her new middle-grade series SKY PIRATES launches in July 2020 with Simon & Schuster. 

Her picture books Yuck said the Yak, Pirates Don't Drive Diggers and Mine Mine Mine said the Porcupine are published by Maverick Arts Publishing. More of her picture books are forthcoming in 2021/2022.
 
www.alexenglish.co.uk

TAKING MY SNAIL FOR A WALK – Dianne Hofmeyr

The last couple of posts have centred around encouraging writing in schools in a more creative way and suggesting that drawing in childhood often forms a basis for writing later.

Like Anna my first love as a child, was drawing. I grew up with the smell of paper and inks and blueprint architects' paper that when soaked became magically transformed into soft, white linen and left a trail of inky, starchy vapour in the house. I had my own miniature version of a draughtsman’s drawing board but I seem to recall that most of my work was done lying flat on my tummy on the floor. (probably why I can still do a good backbend in yoga but nothing else!)

I had black India ink, which is traditionally made from soot but apparently in India the carbon black in earlier times was obtained by burning bones, tar and pitch. I also had every shade of brown ink from peat, through sepia, to burnt sienna and my father wasn’t precious about me using his nibs.

What’s fascinating is how a child tells a story through drawing. My son produced ‘taking my snail for a walk’ at age 3.

One of the hazards of being an art teacher is one tends to analyse your child’s drawings. How well adjusted are they? How do they relate to their environment? What patterns are emerging in their work? And why? So I could easily have panicked. Yet when I look at the drawing now, I wish I had thought to take snails for walks. It must be a wonderfully slow way of looking at the detail of the world and his snail looks pretty perky.

This week I went into a school and spoke on one of my books, THE FARAWAY ISLAND, where a shipwrecked sailor starts to grow exotic plants brought to him by sailors passing his island en route to India or back to Portugal. I opted out of doing a creative writing session and instead we drew the pomegranates and pineapples that began to flourish there. They were 7 and 8 year olds and although they weren’t necessarily telling a story I think the textures they’ve managed and the form and intensity of the drawings are marvellous for children this age.

So when in doubt, let them draw.

www.diannehofmeyr.com 

My latest picture book, THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE is illustrated by Piet Grobler and published by Frances Lincoln