About Writing ‘This Boy’, by Pippa Goodhart

It was something real and sad that set me thinking about writing a story about a young soldier whose death was recorded on a war memorial.  There were reports on the news about thieves ripping the metal name plaques off war memorials because they wanted to sell the metal to get some money.  I thought, if you thieves could somehow meet one of the young men whose name you are taking to be melted down and lost forever, you surely wouldn’t do such a thing!  And then I thought, what if you fell in love with one of those dead young men …?

When you have a story idea, it never arrives as a proper story, just as a bit of one.  In order to find the whole story, you have to ask your idea questions.  So I asked myself, how could a modern girl fall in love with a soldier who died a hundred years ago?  And the answer was obvious: that soldier would have to be a ghost.  But why is he a ghost?  Why is he still not settled into death all those years later?  It must be because there is something unresolved in his life.  What is that unresolved something?  He betrayed his little sister, and never had the chance to put things right … until now.  But I wanted the story to be resolved for my modern girl character as well, so I introduced another boy to be a living friend she could move into the future with.

‘It’s too late’ … or is it?

Joe, the ghost, can’t settle because he has left an important task undone: he hasn’t been able to tell his sister Maggie that he had stolen her half-crown coin.

Have you got something particular you wish that you could tell somebody?  Perhaps that somebody is dead, or has moved away, or made different friends, or is an adult you are too embarrassed to say something to, or somebody you’ve only seen on television and couldn’t ever actually talk to?  Maybe you want to confess something, like Joe.  Or maybe you want to tell them something nice.

Write a letter that will never actually be sent, telling something important to somebody particular.

If you are stuck for an idea, then write the letter that Joe might have written to Maggie when he was fighting in France and had just got his first wages.

Writing and editing with Darren Shan

Writing and editing with

The idea for Cirque Du Freak popped into my head one day when I was sitting in a car, babysitting a young cousin who was asleep on the back seat. The question a writer gets asked the most is “Where do your ideas come from?” The truth is no writer can really answer that. Ideas come or they don’t, as and when they please. The rest of the process, on the other hand, is a different kettle of freaks entirely … A few days after getting the idea, I sat down to flesh it out. I knew a few key details – it would be a story about a boy who runs into a vampire in a circus and reluctantly becomes his assistant – but most of it was a blank. I began asking questions, such as how did the boy realise it was a vampire? Why would a vampire want to blood a child? What prompted the boy to agree to the deal?

This is the most crucial part of the creative period. Constructing a story is like solving a crime. The ideas are the “clues”, and as a detective you have to ask lots of questions to link all the clues together. Sometimes answers come very quickly, as they did with Cirque, and I start to write within days. Other times I might spend months or even years trying to determine the story, asking all sorts of questions, wondering what would happen if I went in one direction, what would happen if I went a different way, what if I added a certain type of monster to the mix, etc.

I didn’t write up many plot notes for Cirque. I jotted down the main ideas on a sheet of paper – I only filled about half of it – along with some names that I could use for the characters, and in I dove. That changed as I advanced through the series, and I began writing up very detailed plot notes, describing as much of each book’s story arc as I could.

Generally speaking, I find that the more work I do in advance, the easier it is to write a first draft, although that isn’t always the case. Each writer is different, and some prefer never to work from detailed notes. For others, a clear and thorough plot guideline is a must. I fall between the two camps, varying my approach from book to book.

When I’ve completed a first draft, I leave it alone for several months. Then I’ll do a rewrite. Then I leave it for a few months and edit it. And again, and again. I find the breaks very important. The more time I spend away from a book, the more objective I can be, i.e. I can see what isn’t working and where it needs to be improved.

          After several drafts, I send the book to my agent, who occasionally makes some editorial suggestions. Then it goes to my editor, and we go through it a couple of times. After that a copyeditor checks it, mostly searching for mistakes and typos and making sure that the style is consistent. Then it ‘goes to proof’, where I get sent a copy of how the text will appear. I can make my final changes at that point, although there is usually very little to do at that late stage. 

I also discuss the cover with my publisher while all of the above is going on, as well as the “cover copy”, which is the text that appears on and inside the cover. With my Zom-B books I also have to decide with my editor on the interior art, i.e. which scenes to ask the artist to draw, and then I monitor his work to make sure it accurately reflects the content of the book.

After all that, I’m done. Well, except for touring around the world to promote it. And signing thousands of copies for fans. And overseeing a movie and manga adaptation. And giving interviews. And answering fan mail. And doing blogs like this. And …

I wrote my first draft of Cirque Du Freak in the middle of 1997, and it was published in January 2000, yet I’m still doing work of one kind or another on it all these years later. I guess, in one way, if you write a book that is successful, you never quite finish with it! 

                                                

The Horror Genre: Creating Atmosphere

by Naomi Hursthouse

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What is it about the horror genre that continues to grip teenage readers? Two hundred years ago the young Mary Shelley was so enthralled by the ghost stories she heard that her imagination gave birth to Frankenstein. And now, my students still flock to the horror section of the school library, whether it is to read Coraline, The Knife of Never Letting Go, or Lemony Snickett.

We all seem to be drawn to the ‘dark-side’ for a time, particularly in our teenage years. Being in that liminal stage between childhood innocence and adult world-weary experience, we need to explore the dangerous possibilities of life from a safe place. Horror stories allow us to do this. But these books are not just good for students to pass around as a rite of passage; they are also a brilliant teaching tool.

The horror genre provides many opportunities in the classroom, from creating evil villains to structuring the perfect anti-climax. However, I have found that creating a gothic atmosphere is effective in both challenging able students to write in a more precise and sophisticated way and in inspiring my lower-ability students to 

put pen to paper in the first place.

The key to the perfect gothic atmosphere is not in the setting, as we often assume, but in the  Mary Shelley herself said that she wanted to write a book that would, 'curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart', a decidedly physical sensation. And Darren Shan, in Cirque du Freak, quickly undermines the premise that scary stories 'begin at night, with a storm blowing and owls hooting and rattling noises under the bed.' For real fear to be ignited in the reader, they need to feel the fear of the protagonist. This is clearly done in Cirque du Freak and in Tunnel of Terror and it is created through the writers' use of verbs. 

The power a verb has to transform the atmosphere of a piece of writing is astounding. What a difference using 'crept' rather than 'walked' or 'surged' rather than 'jumped' makes!

So, try it yourself in the classroom. Here is an activity to use in class to get your students selecting the best verbs to curdle the blood of their readers:

Download Naomi’s free Horror Writing class activity PowerPoint[GG1] , and take a look at all the other free resources around our Halloween Book of the Month page!

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Naomi Hursthouse has been teaching in West Sussex for nine years. She has worked as an Advanced Skills Teacher for four years and is currently Head of English at Westergate Community School. She has worked as an examiner for AQA for nine years and has been writing articles and blogs about teaching for Collins Freedom to Teach since 2009. She was born in Dumbarton, Scotland but moved down to the South Coast of England for some sunshine ten years ago. She has finally found it.

 [GG1]Link to Horror Writing_Verbs.ppt

Ready for the new Programme of Study?

Welcome back to a new school year! And what an interesting one it will be, as it’s all change for the National Curriculum. In July, the government announced details of its draft curriculum, including the new statutory Programmes of Study (PoS) which will be introduced from September 2014 for key stage 3, and September 2015 for key stage 4.  The current English curriculum has now been disapplied, which means that schools have some flexibility to prepare for teaching the new one next year. Hence, this is a good time for teachers to try different ideas and resources to find out what works best to meet the needs of their students!

So what changes can we expect from the new English curriculum for KS3 and how can schools start preparing? Firstly, the new PoS is surprisingly short. There are no longer references to ‘key concepts’ or ‘key processes’. Instead, there is a list of subject content which is based heavily on knowledge. Secondly, in addition to ‘Reading’, ‘Writing’ and ‘Spoken English’ (formerly known as ‘Speaking and Listening’!), there is now an additional area: ‘Grammar and vocabulary’. Pupils will be taught spoken and written grammar and will study the impact of grammatical features of texts.

Students will be expected to read and understand increasingly challenging and high-quality texts, with the focus on fiction remaining. This will include two Shakespeare plays in each key stage and ‘seminal world literature’ as well as a range of short stories, poems and plays. There are also a few additional reading skills for students to master, including re-reading books to increase familiarity and make comparisons, and summarising texts they have read. Students will also be taught to develop an understanding how the work of dramatists is communicated through performance.

Teachers looking to refresh their resources to meet these new requirements and help students continue to develop a love of reading should take a look at Collins Readers, the flagship series of popular fiction. The series includes award-winning contemporary novels, such as Derek Landy’s’ Skulduggery Pleasant, and classics, such as Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The series can also support students in studying specific authors in depth, as required in the new PoS, for example by exploring Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse with either Alone on a Wide Wide Sea or Private Peaceful. Each high-quality title even comes with a free Scheme of Work and lesson plans to support their use in the classroom.

As there are no recommended non-fiction texts listed in the new PoS, teachers will find the Collins Read On non-fiction texts a great starting point, particularly for lower ability pupils. The series aims to motivate reluctant readers through engaging topics and texts which provide the right level of challenge. Non-fiction titles include Spies by Mike Gould and The Ice Man by Alan Parkinson. In addition, Read On includes a range of gripping fiction written by well-known teen authors, including Lone Wolf by Alan Gibbons and Liam by Benjamin Zephaniah. The accompanying Teacher Guide provides assessment support and session plans that can be used for guided group reading.

If you would like to find out further details about the new English curriculum, including the Programmes of Study, take a look here.

Natalie Packer is an Independent Educational Consultant who works with primary, secondary and special schools across the country. She has a particular interest in supporting schools to develop their SEN provision and leadership and to develop outstanding teaching. She has previously been a headteacher, SENCO, local authority adviser and National Strategies SEN adviser. Natalie is one of the Series Editors of the Collins Read On Series.

A Skulduggery Success Story

Bridget Young, English and Humanities teacher at The Holmewood School in London, tells us about her class’s rewarding experience using the Collins Readers schools edition of Skulduggery Pleasant in the classroom.

Skulduggery posters had been plastered around the school and in my classroom. The year nine students had many questions about these mysterious posters and little by little, I told them about the book, overstating the macabre.

‘Oh, you wouldn’t want to read that. It’s far too violent and scary.’
After a few days, the students had ‘convinced me’ to let them read it.

Like many teenagers their age, to show such interest in reading a novel is unusual for my students. On top of the regular distractions and reluctance to read, they all have a diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

While they are classed as ‘highly functioning’ on the autistic spectrum, encouraging my students to read something that is outside of their usual area of interest, or anything longer than a Facebook comment, can be a challenge.

I knew that if they weren’t engaged from the very beginning and if their interest wasn’t sustained, all manner of behaviours could manifest in the classroom and I would have lost them. They may have even flatly refused to read the book.

However, the students were hooked on Skulduggery right from beginning. The book works for students like mine because the story is fast-paced, with quick-witted dialogue, and while the language is accessible, it doesn’t talk down to them.

The characters are quirky and their interactions are both humorous and heart-warming.  The students laughed out loud in parts, and often read the story in class using different voices, which is a real achievement for them in developing their social imagination.  

Planning interesting lessons for this unit was easy, with an engaging scheme of work available for free on the Collins Education website.

The students enjoyed the assessment tasks, one of which asked them to write about what they would do with a personal clone for a day. A success criterion was included in the resources and the task was mapped to the national curriculum, which made it easy for me to plan and mark.

There are also many online interactive resources for this novel. The students watched interviews with the author, which helped them connect the story with the writing process. There is even an interview with Skulduggery Pleasant himself! This was great stimulus for our speaking and listening task, where the students were asked to hot-seat a character from the novel.

They also enjoyed creating their own Skulduggery Pleasant characters on the ‘character creator’, which is available on the Skulduggery Pleasant official website. They just loved to imagine that they were part of the Skulduggery world.

The first book ends on a cliff hanger, and the students couldn’t wait to read the next book. So we started a lunchtime book club, so that we could read and discuss the second book together.

Other teachers were shocked when they saw a group of year nine students reading of their own volition during their lunch break! Parents have also commented about how engaged in the novel their children are. It has been so rewarding to see the students develop a love of reading through Skulduggery Pleasant.

Bridget Young teaches English and Humanities at The Holmewood School London, which is a school for children with high functioning autism, Asperger's Syndrome and other specific learning difficulties. She is originally from Brisbane, Australia, but now calls Hackney, in East London, home.

Skulduggery Pleasant is Collins Reading's Book of the Month for July 2013. Take a look for loads of free classroom activities, blogs and planning resources, and a 20% discount on the Classroom Edition of the book during July!

Teaching Skulduggery Pleasant

Compelling characterisation

The exciting action in Skulduggery Pleasant is played out by well defined and, at times, mysterious characters as written by author Derek Landy.

In particular, the two main characters, the skeleton detective, Skulduggery Pleasant, and young Stephanie Edgley, break stereotypical moulds as they defy our existing expectations of 12-year-old schoolgirls and of skeletons.

Landy also creates a suitably dark villain to challenge the duo. Nefarian Serpine, filled with cold malevolence, claims he is a man of peace, yet he will stop at nothing to learn other people’s secrets.

Even away from the magical underworld, in suburban Dublin, malice overflows and confronts Stephanie during encounters with her jealous and vindictive relatives, Fergus, Beryl and their twin daughters, Carol and Crystal. The conflicts and challenges abound for our two heroes.

Encouraging detailed and inferential reading of the novel

Skulduggery’s Pleasant’s comment, ‘Looks are more often than not deceiving ... surface is nothing’, is a great starting point for considering the ways in which Landy explores the themes of magic and betrayal in the book.

The novel provides substantial evidence to underline how fatal it is to make judgements based on first observations. Students could be encouraged to keep an individual record of such findings in the novel, and then produce interesting and varied display material revealing how things are not always what they seem in Skulduggery Pleasant.

A starting point for the activity might well be a consideration of the front cover and the impression it makes:

What do students expect from this dark, skeletal creature? Is he good or bad? What do the suave and snazzy clothes suggest? Does he look like jokester? Is he a hero or a villain?

Studying the writing

The quality of the author’s writing is an essential consideration when selecting a class reader. If you open Year 7 with Skulduggery Pleasant, a good model for students’ own writing could stem from foregrounding Landy’s development of tension.

His presentation of emotional friction, arousal of fear, varying chapter endings to maximise suspense is well worth exploration: some scenes end at moments of high drama and some with no more than a wry observation or pithy phrase.

I would also recommend a focus on Landy’s use of wordplay via understatements and hyperbole that add excitement and fun to the teasing and taunting of the conversational banter between the two lead characters.

The universal themes in this novel have a distinct appeal in study as well:  

• relationships                                                                                  
• loss                                                                                  
• identity                                                                                
• betrayal
• death.

Gaining insight through referencing other texts

Given the fact that fantasy novels are devoured and enjoyed by young teenagers, Skulduggery Pleasant is a class reader that certainly offers a great opportunity for fruitful interaction with similar texts. Incorporating an intertextual activity seems essential to the exploration of this novel. To seriously enhance the reading, I would urge students to reflect on similarities and contrasts between the class reader and other works in this field with a view to opening discussion on one or more of the following:

• the conventions of fantasy narrative
• creation of the extraordinary
• female roles in fantasy
• presentation of good and evil
• misjudged characters
• predictability and surprise in the genre

Download the free Scheme of Work for Skulduggery Pleasant, which includes a classroom activity exploring Landy’s building of tension in the novel, including a look at ‘Appearance vs Reality’.
See also the new free PowerPoint Teacher Lesson for downloading, in which students write their own free verse poem telling a tale of life with a superpower.

Jan Jarrett grew up in the West Midlands. After accompanying her husband Stephen on a two year business contract to East Africa, Jan devoted a number of years to family life and four young children. The family then moved from Birmingham to Norfolk where Jan seriously began her professional career. Over a period of 30 years she has worked as an English teacher, a Head of English, English Adviser, Teenage fiction reviewer and Freelance Consultant. She claims her main focus throughout has always been and will always be generating good practical ideas for the classroom.

Starting a Story - Catherine MacPhail

It’s the simple things that give us the best ideas for stories. I was walking along the street and I heard a boy talking on his mobile phone. All I could hear him saying was, ‘I know, I know, this is my last chance.’

I thought, ‘Last chance for what?’ You think about it:

His last chance to pay back money he owes? How is he going to get that money?
His last chance to get his place on the football team? What if he has a rival who will stop at nothing to keep him out of the team?

How many stories could you come up with using just those words? Last Chance. Here is the one I came up with:

What if you were always in trouble? It was never really your fault, and a school trip was your last chance to prove yourself. What if it was a school trip you didn’t want to go on, to a remote island, dominated by a crumbling lighthouse (I love lighthouses), with your least favourite teacher, and boys you didn’t like? You’re warned not to go near that lighthouse, but in the end, something is going to force you to ignore that warning.

What I have just written is a short synopsis of my book Point Danger.

That is how all my books start. Look at the synopsis. I already have the high points of the story:

The journey to the island (On a boat? Could there be a storm?)
The lighthouse dominating the skyline.
The description of the teacher.
The boys he doesn’t like.
What is going to make him disobey the teacher and go near the lighthouse?
And what is he going to find inside?
And most importantly, I have my hero, the boy who wishes he was anywhere else but here.
And in my head I heard a voice say, ‘I hate school trips.’ It was MacDuff.

I really believe that once you’ve got the voice, the character comes alive. And MacDuff came alive right then. I knew exactly what he would say about his teacher, Mr Hoss.

Perfect name, by the way – with a face like his, he should be wearing a saddle.

I knew what he would say when they reached the ‘hotel’.

‘This is a hut. H-U-T.’ I spelt it out.

In fact, because I could hear his voice, I could put MacDuff in any situation and I knew what he would say and how he would say it.

Here’s something for you to try:

Chelsea (remember, her with the chewing gum hair?) asks MacDuff to her birthday party. I know what he would say. Do you?

Chelsea? Asking me to her party? After what I did to her hair? Oh no, I don’t trust her. She’s up to something.

So go ahead. Write about what happens at the party, in MacDuff’s voice.

Cathy MacPhail has written over forty books for children, as well as plays for radio and short stories. She has a reputation for 'gritty realism’, but loves writing funny books as well as ghost stories. Her first book, Run Zan Run, was inspired by the bullying her daughter suffered in high school. Many of her books have won awards, and she loves visiting schools to talk to her readers. She still lives in Greenock, in Scotland, where she was born.

Click to download the free classroom writing exercise that Cathy MacPhail has written, Starting a Story.

Don’t forget about the free Point Danger activities as well: a classroom speed quiz and a look at plotting tension in the book.