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

---

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!

_________________________________________________________________________________

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.

Comics – the gateway to reading

Every single week when I was a child there was no other experience like holding in my own hand the latest and unread issue of my favourite comic. It was called Boys World, and that feeling of trembling excitement every Friday when it dropped through the letterbox was pure delight. For me and all my friends that feeling bordered on the euphoric. What brilliance! A profusion of stories, funny and serious, heroes and villains and adventures. And it was ALL mine to devour. Now that really is reading for pleasure!

Photo by Johnny Ring,
 0778543698
info@jonathanring.co.uk

The loss of these wonderful publications was and remains a tragedy for the country and its children. The real pity is that we didn’t realise the massive cultural platform they provided. They were, and are, one of the foundations of much of our modern day literary culture. I am a book editor and I would say at least half my story sense, if I have any … came from comics. That’s why so many top authors now pay tribute to them.

"It was as much through The Eagle and Classics Illustrated, those wonderfully evocative comic books of the Classics, that I first came to a love of stories. I loved the speed of the stories, the breathless excitement I felt as I turned the page. I am now a story maker myself, so I owe a lot to my ‘comic beginnings!’ What matters hugely is that children should be excited by stories, in whatever form, whether in books, CDs, comics, movies - it doesn’t matter. For many children comics are a way in, a way to become a reader. That’s what they were for me.”
Michael Morpurgo

“Comics formed a vital and vigorous part of my childhood reading. The Eagle was the main British comic, of course – to anyone born just after the war, as I was, it came as a great burst of life and fun and colour in a rather drab world.. I still feel the thrill that made me tremble with excitement when the weekly comic arrived with the papers. I’d seize it with avidity and retreat to some corner of the garden and fling myself down and devour it like a hyena. There was something so clean and powerful about the storytelling in a comic – so direct, so swift and easy, as if the delight and excitement of the story passed immediately into my blood.”
Philip Pullman

As the founder of The Phoenix I often talk about how reading comics is just as beneficial, if not more so, than any other kind of reading.

According to the research comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of reading, and they produce wonderful things; increased vocabulary, improved comprehension of social, linguistic and cultural conventions, firing of imaginations. Comics offer a particularly flexible, stimulating form of narrative, they allow you to read in a way that nothing else does – you can look back, retrace the visual clues, follow different details. It’s depictive art. They are as complex and as valuable as any kind of reading and excellent for promoting visual literacy too.

When we lost those comics of decades passed, we did not appreciate their almost unparalleled ability to nurture and grow new readers. What a brilliant catalyst comics are for growing readers, and writers, thinkers and creators. Unlike so many reading experiences that children encounter, comics are first and foremost about fun and entertainment. They are relaxed reading. Pure enjoyment. And it’s only through enjoyment that we get a real love of words and stories.

David Fickling is a children's book editor and publisher. He started his career with Oxford University Press in 1977, moving on to Transworld and then on to become Publishing Director of Scholastic UK. Most recently, in January 2012, David founded and launched The Phoenix, the weekly story comic for children.

 Above all, David loves great stories.

David Fickling lives with his wife in Oxford, England.

Drawing Stories with Neill Cameron

A uniquely brilliant thing about comics is simply that they tell a story through drawings. This makes the experience of reading a comic a fantastic collaboration between the creator and the reader, who has to use their own imagination to join those pictures together into a story.

There's something wonderfully immediate and universal about how this works; you can look at a series of images and you almost can't help seeing it as a story; it's something your brain just does automatically.

Obviously text is an important part of comics, too – from dialogue to narration to all the fun and brilliant things you can do with sound effects – but to me the most important thing is telling a story with pictures.

Ideally to me you should be able to look at a page of comics and be able to basically tell what's going on without even needing to look at the words.

HOW TO CREATE A HERO

My OTHER favourite thing about comics is that anyone can make them. Seriously – anyone. You don't have to be an amazingly talented artist. You don't even need to be able to read or write! If you can draw a stick figure, you can tell a story with comics, and EVERYONE can draw a stick figure. Even two-year-olds. Even my MUM.

I've actually come up with a handy rule for creating comics characters, so if you ever find yourself getting stuck, just apply this handy rule:

The Principle of the Multiplication of Awesomeness, or 'Cameron's Law'.

For example:

This is sort of a joke, but also sort of profoundly true. The point is that you want to create a character that is interesting, or funny, and give them different sides to their nature – sides that may be in conflict – is a great way of doing that.

I like to imagine this is what was going on in my friend and co-writer Daniel Hartwell's head when he came up with the idea for our story The Pirates of Pangaea in the first place. Our lead character, Sophie, is a very nice, polite and well-brought-up young English girl from the 18th century who finds herself on a strange and terrifying new continent filled with pirates, and dinosaurs, and pirates riding dinosaurs - and finds that she fits right in. And that riding a Tyrannosaurus Rex is pretty awesome fun.

This is a handy bonus side-effect of Cameron's Law, which is that it makes for things which are SUPER FUN TO DRAW! I love drawing pirates and I (deeply, deeply) love drawing dinosaurs, and in any ordinary story I would be lucky to get to draw either one of those things. But I get to spend my days drawing pirates RIDING AROUND ON dinosaurs. And let me tell you, life does not get much sweeter than that. – Neill

Don’t forget you can download this free comic-writing activity for your secondary school classroom, from beloved author Alan Gibbons. Get students writing and reading!

Neill Cameron is a professional comics writer and illustrator. He is the creator of Mo-Bot High, The Pirates of Pangaea (with Daniel Hartwell) and How To Make (Awesome) Comics, amongst other things. His work can regularly be seen in weekly children's comic The Phoenix. 

Neill also travels the country teaching comics workshops in schools, libraries, museums and really any public space he can get away with it. 

Neill quite likes making comics.

Writing 'The Edge' - Alan Gibbons

Writing about issues such as domestic violence, you always risk sounding preachy. It is easy to let your desire to do the subject justice take over the narrative.

When I started writing The Edge, I knew that the story had to come first. If you overload it with worthy ideas, it can become sluggish and wordy. So how was I going to keep it ‘pacey’ and involving for my teenage readers?

I am a huge movie buff, so the answer was staring me in the face in the form of film’s use of cutting from one character to another. This is a staple of the thriller and horror genres. There is a shot of somebody walking along a dark, rain-swept street. He turns and sees a silhouetted figure. The camera peers at the quarry over the shoulder of the pursuer. You hear their breathing, see the revolver in his hand. Then it is back to the quarry, his quickening pace, his growing panic.

The Edge is a chase, the pursuit of Cathy and Danny by the abusive Chris. That set the tone of the whole novel. The opening chapter begins with Cathy shaking Danny awake. They are about to flee, but Chris is suspicious. From that point on the narrative is developed in a series of mini-chapters – essentially scenes. The emphasis is on pace and the rhythms of flight and pursuit.

There is a second reason for the format of multiple-narration. I had read several novels about bullying and victimisation that I found too black-and-white. The reader empathised solely with the object of terror. The story was reduced to good guy, bad guy. I found that far too simplistic. By seeing through the eyes of Danny, his mother, his grandparents, Danny’s estranged father, even the monstrous Chris, the novel makes demands of the reader. You confront ambiguities. You see the way people justify their actions, even when those actions are terrifyingly damaging. In other words, the multiple narrators allowed me to make the story more subtle and nuanced.

Can one narrative style combine both pace and subtlety? Read The Edge and judge for yourself.
Now, get writing.

Download this free writing activity PowerPoint for your classroom and try your hand at writing the first chapter of The Edge 2: A sequel. 

Alan Gibbons trained as a teacher and through working with young people discovered his literary voice. He started writing fiction for his pupils and published his first novel in 1993. Alan has also appeared on the BBC education programme Writer’s Block, the Blue Peter Book Awards, radio 4’s Front Row, and is a regular contributor to TES, Junior Education, Carousel, Books for Keeps and other journals.

The influence of comics

When I started cooperating with my son Robbie on The Name is Kade and Gladiator, we were both aware that young readers now have a lot more competition for their time than when I was a kid in the Fifties or even when Rob was growing up in the Nineties.

The impact of digital platforms and TV is everywhere. There are social networking sites. There is YouTube. There is Manga and the graphic novel.

That sent us looking for immediate, fast-paced ways of conveying a narrative, forms that combined text and image in a way that swept the reader along.

One of my early influences was the Marvel comics of the 1960s, featuring lots of speech bubbles and an emphasis on colour and dynamic action.

Dialogue is absolutely central to this kind of storytelling. It has to be crisp, sharp and, if possible, funny. This is most evident in The Name is Kade with its updating of the first-person narrator detective story and noirish feel.

The lone hero marching into a hostile pool hall is transported from 1940s America to outer space in a genre that could be described as 25th Century Gumshoe.

The sentences form a short, staccato accompaniment to Eoin Coveney’s strikingly effective illustrations.

The timeslip tale Gladiator uses Matt Timson’s dramatic illustrations to similar effect. We didn’t want anything twee or childish in stories for today’s teenagers. The metamorphosis from boy to man in the story gave Matt free rein to capture the terrifying reality of gladiatorial combat.

I think both illustrators helped us, the authors, to achieve our aim: a robust, action-packed, visual tale that could compete with the many possible distractions in a young reader’s life.
Anyway, that is how Rob and I made our version of the modern comic, but why not design your own?

Download this free writing activity to do in class.

Alan Gibbons trained as a teacher and through working with young people discovered his literary voice. He started writing fiction for his pupils and published his first novel in 1993. Alan has also appeared on the BBC education programme Writer’s Block, the Blue Peter Book Awards, radio 4’s Front Row, and is a regular contributor to TES, Junior Education, Carousel, Books for Keeps and other journals.

How a Book is Made: The Designer

Meet Nigel Jordan, graphic designer.

Nigel designed all the inside pages for the Read On books, include Lone Wolf.
Nigel is going to tell you about how he put the words and pictures together in the pages of this dark and thrilling tale.

Nigel says:

The design of a new book starts with the ‘design brief’ from the publisher. This gives me the basic information I need:
•  Page size
• Whether the book is colour or black and white
• The number and style of illustrations or photos
• The age of the intended reader and
• The suggestions and requirements of the publisher.

In the case of Lone Wolf, making the pages visually interesting wasn’t too difficult.
With Matt Timson’s stunning illustrations providing the main imagery, I had to ensure that the other graphic elements on the page, such as chapter headings and pages numbers, enhanced the look rather than detracted from it.

Nigel’s work station in his home studio, where he worked on Lone Wolf 

Where to start. A read-through of the author’s manuscript showed werewolves figured strongly.
A red and black colour scheme along with the illustration style suggested a ‘dark feel’ to the book.

Claws, teeth, scary eyes and blood, lots of blood – those were my first thoughts. I tried wolf eyes for the chapter headings and a single claw mark for the page numbers. Too fussy. The design evolved through a number stages and in the end both the eyes and the claw marks were replaced with blood spatters.

The author writes the story but sometimes spelling or grammatical mistakes can be left in. My first layout or ‘proof’ doesn’t include the illustrations or the graphics, just the words, so these can be checked.

This is then ‘marked up’ by the proof reader and I make their changes. In this way the text is refined so that it is the best it can be. After each set of changes I supply another and slowly the pages start to look more like they will when printed.

As well as looking at the appearance of the page, I also have to make sure that the text the reader is reading is a good size, using a clear and appropriate style of ‘font’*. There are a number of things which make a page easy to read and these include how many words are on each line and how far apart those lines are.

*There are many thousands of different fonts to choose from. 

These can make text look very different. Compare the chapter headings in Lone Wolf to the main paragraphs. You wouldn’t want all the words on the page to look like the chapter heading – that would be very difficult to read.

When everyone is satisfied with the look and quality of the text, I produce a PDF (Portable Document Format) file, which is sent to the printer to be turned into the finished book.

– Nigel Jordan

Download this blog as an interactive classroom PowerPoint here!

How a Book is Made - The Editor

Meet Cathy Martin, editor.

Cathy is the Commissioning Editor for all the ‘Read On’ books including, of course, Lone Wolf.  This means she came up with ideas for the books and found authors and illustrators to make those ideas a reality!

Cathy is going to tell you about the many parts of the process for putting together Lone Wolf.

Cathy says …

My role as editor of ‘Read On’ involved coming up with and researching the idea of the whole series, and then working with a team of creative people to make it happen.
I first talked to teenagers in different schools about the kind of books they enjoyed reading. Of course, horror was a popular choice. One boy told me he would like to read a story where a bloody heart was ripped from someone’s body!

We were delighted that Alan Gibbons and his son Robbie Gibbons were able to write several stories for us. Here is the email Alan sent me with their first ideas:

The werewolf story sounded like it was just what we were looking for. Robbie wrote a short summary of the story and then the full manuscript of Lone Wolf arrived.

The editing process for Lone Wolf was very straightforward, as the first draft of the story was so strong.  There were just a few corrections to make.

A sample page from the real manuscript

The biggest decision was what to show in the illustrations.

In horror stories, as in horror films, the most scary moments are not when you see something horrible but when it is heard or suggested.

For most of the book we decided to focus on Danny’s thoughts and feelings as a boy, and to let readers imagine the werewolf for themselves. However, Matt Timson, our amazing illustrator, didn’t agree! He thought readers would definitely want to see the transformation on the page.

So, thanks to him, we have this image of Danny turning into a wolf on page 42.

Our designer Nigel laid out the book, we did some final checks and edits to make sure the text was just right, Paul finalised the cover, and then the files were sent to the printer.

The cover

Final pages from the book

Ten weeks later, Lone Wolf was here!

As an editor, nothing beats the thrill of holding a finished book in your hands. It was great to see those blood splashes and claw marks in the design, and the wonderful artwork to draw readers into Robbie and Alan’s story.  We may not have had a bloody heart but we certainly had an exciting and gruesome book ready to share.

– Cathy Martin

Download this blog as an interactive classroom PowerPoint here!