Avi

word craft

blog

Writing Tip: Gary D. Schmidt

I’ve invit­ed a group of top-notch writ­ers to share their writ­ing tips with you this sum­mer. Look for a new bit of learned expe­ri­ence each Tuesday.

Gary D. Schmidt: A Prac­ti­cal Tip

One of the hard­est moments comes when you sit down with your com­put­er, type­writer, pen­cil and yel­low pad, or sty­lus and cuneiform tablet, and begin a sto­ry.  So here’s a tip:  Get your pro­tag­o­nists in trou­ble right away. Put them in a place where some­thing has hap­pened, or will hap­pen, and they have no choice but to respond. That starts the sto­ry off, and that makes the read­er want to know what hap­pens next. 

So when you’re think­ing about that trou­ble, con­sid­er start­ing far away with your ideas, and then move clos­er. Here’s what I mean. 

(1)  Have some­thing hap­pen that is phys­i­cal­ly very far away from your pro­tag­o­nists, but that will soon affect them. Per­haps two aster­oids have just bare­ly touched each oth­er in their jour­ney around the sun, but it’s enough to send the larg­er of the two direct­ly toward a lit­tle town in Mon­tana where your pro­tag­o­nist lives. OR per­haps your pro­tag­o­nist and three of her friends are on a beach along the Cal­i­for­nia coast, while a thou­sand miles away, out in the Pacif­ic, a tec­ton­ic plate slips a lit­tle bit and sends a tsuna­mi rush­ing to the east. OR on the Great Wall of Chi­na, your pro­tag­o­nist’s pen pal finds an unusu­al plant, snips off a leaf, and sends it to your pro­tag­o­nist in upstate New York, not know­ing that this leaf con­tains an ancient DNA that wiped out all the sur­round­ing flo­ra in Chi­na ten thou­sand years ago. Here the sus­pense lies with the read­er try­ing to make a con­nec­tion between the far­away event and your protagonist.

(2)  Have some­thing hap­pen that instead of being very far away, is very close to your pro­tag­o­nist. That sci­ence exper­i­ment in Mr. Fer­ris’ class, it gets com­plete­ly out of con­trol. The house next door is get­ting a whole lot of sud­den vis­i­tors, and under their rain­coats, they seem to have tails. Your pro­tag­o­nist’s sis­ter, who was prac­tic­ing piano down­stairs, sud­den­ly stops play­ing and dis­ap­pears. That dog that moved in next door can fly. The kid that moved in next door can leap tall build­ings at a sin­gle bound. In your pro­tag­o­nist’s home­room, the teacher’s eyes glow. All of these will be close by your protagonists.

(3)  Have some­thing hap­pen that your pro­tag­o­nist caus­es with­out mean­ing to. Your pro­tag­o­nist acci­den­tal­ly awak­ens a ghost that has been dor­mant for cen­turies. Your pro­tag­o­nist wins the Nation­al Spelling Bee, send­ing her best friend into a jeal­ous rage. When the pro­tag­o­nist bor­rows his uncle’s met­al detec­tor, he dis­cov­ers Viking gold—the same gold being sought after by the hid­den lord of the Tem­plars. Your pro­tag­o­nist starts a fire with a Bun­sen burn­er, knocks over the snake cage and lets out a cobra, wins a trip to some amaz­ing place with one friend—and she has to choose who to take—or finds out that he car­ries a dead­ly dis­ease that he is immune to but which has the poten­tial to sick­en thousands. 

All we’ve done here is to find trou­ble far away, or close beside, or with­in the protagonist—and we know as read­ers that with all of these, we can expect the pro­tag­o­nist to respond some way to that trou­ble. And that response begins your plot.

2 thoughts on “Writing Tip: Gary D. Schmidt”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent Posts