No one should worry about thinking outside the box.

Because THINKING is the box!

Worry about that, instead.

As fiction writers, we needn’t worry personally about the existential angst that “thinking is the box!” might stir up. But we should concern ourselves with how “thinking” relates to the journeys of our characters. And it goes like this:

If we really love our protagonist, we won’t ease up on him/her until they’ve utterly finished with thinking. From opening gambit to the story’s major crisis—thinking reigns supreme.

Thinking reigns supreme

The hero’s goal, her motivation, strategies and actions through the beginning and middle of a story, it’s all a function of thinking. It takes the hero a long way, but (in a good story) never all the way.

Thinking takes our POV character from Page One to the brink of the story heart, but thinking should never be allowed to move her through the heart to the story’s resolution.

This is a basic principle I work with, and it helps me break down the story into two parts.

A super-simple overview

Story One portrays the character operating within his thinking box. It’s a magnificent box of powerful biases and beliefs which, when spent—when emptied utterly—opens the protagonist to “seeing.”

Story One—thinking.

Story Two—seeing.

Is that simple, or what?

I have a habit of devolving into a rant at this point, because, although obvious to me, many story experts don’t grasp the significance of seeing vs. thinking. And yet the difference may explain nothing less than why we’re so addicted to fiction.

We yearn to see truth for ourselves

There comes a time in every struggle—if we’ve fought hard enough and failed—when we lose faith in ourselves. The hero grows tired of the sound of her own voice, and weary of the lies she’s forced to tell herself to sustain belief in her strategies. She rejects herself, her thoughts—the whole freaking box!

This is the moment of truth.

But truth is not served by a fictional character digging once again into her bag of tricks to come up with a last ditch solution. It’s just more box! It’s often called “thinking outside the box,” but as we know now, thinking IS the box!

Audiences get their money’s worth when the hero escapes the box for the freedom of no-thought (a few milliseconds will do) and the “seeing” that is the miraculous consequence. If you want to call that a religious experience, go ahead, please. Because it is powerful enough to give the reader a blast of authenticity. And that’s what’s addictive.

Anyway…

I’m designing a writing course for local writers here on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast. I aim to present a few keys to writing a killer first draft. “Thinking is the box!” is one such key.

Not to overload the writer with rules, these basic principles and overviews will encourage the writer to write the most reckless-but-considered first draft possible.

And you — what are your guiding principles? When you set out, what are those big “story” thoughts without which you would never leave home?

Let me know in the “Comments” below.

Guest Expert: Phyllis Zimbler Miller

Thanks to the ease of publishing books and eBooks today, there are now even larger numbers of books from which you want your own book to stand out.

And thanks to the opportunities on the Internet you can achieve this goal. However, you need to think creatively “outside the box” to utilize elements that relate to your book in order to engage the attention of readers.

Let’s start with children’s books and move along the age continuum:

If you have a children’s picture book, you already have pictures that can be used on t-shirts, caps, cups, banners for book signings, etc.

Then think about what else you can do with your book’s character, stories, location, historical period, etc. to attract attention.

Susan Chodakiewitz, author of the children’s picture book “Too Many Visitors for One Little House,” is also a music composer. She created a mini-musical of the book’s story and assembled an acting troupe to perform the mini-musical. Performances of “Too Many Visitors” have been given at libraries, schools, and stores such as The Gap.

In addition, she created a dance video to teach children the dance performed in the show. Scroll down the home page of http://www.booksicals.com/ to sample some of the exciting activities for this book.

Now it may not seem as obvious for books for older audiences as to how to come up with engaging activities. But all it takes is a little thinking outside the box.

Let’s take the website of my business partner Yael K. Miller for her Middle Grade novel “Jack Strom and New Orleans Hoodoo.” On her website www.HurricaneHoodoo.com she could create a crossword puzzle based on New Orleans historical facts. Or she could create a matching word game, again using historical facts.

And for adult novels? The novel “The Wicked Wives” by criminal attorney Gus Pelagatti is based on a true sensational string of murders in Philadelphia in 1938 during the Depression. The author might develop a quiz about that time period or about the criminal prosecution laws at that time. Or even ask readers what their verdict would have been if they had been on the jury.

Of course for nonfiction books there are all kinds of activities that can be connected with a book. These could include a fun survey to find out whether a reader fits the parameters of a special diet or awarding free eBook copies to everyone who leaves a comment on the book’s review page.

Now it’s your turn to think outside the box to give your potential book fans engaging reasons for visiting your book’s site. Once potential fans have interacted with your site, they should more likely buy/read the book(s) that spurred the activities.

And if you want to share any of your own “thinking outside the box” fun promotional activities along with your book’s website URL, do so in the comments for this guest post.

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Time for another addition to the Thinking Outside the Box List**














Forest Bright, Forest Night
by Jennifer Ward
Illustrated by Jamichael Henterly
Dawn Publications, 2005
Category: Nonfiction Picture Book

This book looks at forest animals, nocturnal (night critters) and diurnal (day critters). Open the front cover that reads, "Forest Bright, Forest Night" and the bright daytime illustrations show day critters doing what forest day critters do: deer splash, woodpeckers tap, squirrels dash, etc. Read to the middle of the book where you'll find instructions to "FLIP THE BOOK FOR FOREST NIGHT". Flip, close the blook, and then open the new front cover---which was the back cover when you first started reading the book---that now reads, "Forest Night, Forest Bright". Ta da! The illustrations are dark night-time images featuring active nocturnal animals.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Night/day. . . a great use of the flip-the-book structure. But wait, that's not what bumped this book onto the Thinking Outside the Box List. Look closely at each night page and you'll see that while the focus is on the night activity of one animal, another animal---one of the diurnal critters---is sleeping somewhere in the background, and in turn, a nocturnal animal slumbers in the background on each "day" page.

But...the very cleverest part is that Ward pairs the same animals together in both parts of the book.

Day page: deer active, owl asleep
Night page: owl active, deer asleep

Day page: woodpecker active, possum asleep
Night page: possum active, woodpecker asleep

and so on, and in a beautiful finesse, the pairings appear in the same order, regardless of whether you start with "Bright" or "Night".

The simple, short and punchy text (verb heaven) are uncluttered, allowing the reader to focus on the lush illustrations and the justaposition of nocturnal-diurnal.

Brilliant. Thinking Outside the Box!

The rest of the Thinking Outside the Box List is here.

**Books that break expectations in delightful ways to wow me with their cleverness. Usually ingenious format causes this step out of the norm, but it could also be an oh-so-perfect-whoda-thunk of that treatment involving approach, style, voice, or some other facet. These books aren't just great books, they're blazing new trails.

Another book to add to the "Thinking Outside the Box" List**



Quack!
by Arthur Yorinks
Illustrated by
Adrienne Yorinks
Harry N. Abrams, 2003
Category: Young Picture Book


Quack! is the simple story of little duck who builds a rocket to the moon, but when he gets there discovers he misses his friends, so parachutes back to Earth. A cute story, to be sure, but the genius of this book is revealed in the teeny yellow printing in the lower left corner of the cover, which claims this book is:

Written in the International Language of Ducks!

...and it IS! [giggle giggle] The text is made up almost entirely of the word "quack", with just a few other words thrown in. The words on the page are various sizes, bolded and not, and move around in ways that give clues as to how they should be read. I'm sure a three-year-old nonreader could "read" this book according to what the quacks on the page look like. For example, on one page a series of quacks grows from teeny tiny font to in-your-face bold font. The reader *knows* to start the series in a tiny soft voice and escalate to excited shouting by the end.

It's hilariously brilliant. Fresh, clever marriage of words and format. Definitely on the "Thinking Outside the Box" List. The rest of the list is here.
**Books that break expectations in delightful ways to wow me with their cleverness. Usually ingenious format causes this step out of the norm, but it could also be an oh-so-perfect-whoda-thunk of that treatment involving approach, style, voice, or some other facet. These books aren't just great books, they're blazing new trails.
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Happy Nonfiction Monday!

As promised on Friday, here's the first entry on my "Thinking Outside the Box" Book List**.

What's Up, What's Down?
by Lola M. Schaefer
Illustrated by
Barbara Bash
Greenwillow Books, 2002
Category:
Nonfiction Picture Book

What's Up, What's Down? begins with a mole in mid-dig:

PAGE ONE: What's up if you're a mole?
PAGE TWO: Loose rich soil sewn together with thread-fine roots. What's up if you're a root?
PAGE THREE: Proud, new grass pushing emerald blades toward the sun. What's up if you're the grass?

The book continues in an upward direction as we find out what's up if you're a toad, wildflowers, a butterfly, tree, bird, the sky and eventually, the pearly moon. Schaefer's language is beautiful, visual, lyrical, powerful---ingeniously brilliant in its approach and simplicity. But aside from that, what bumps this book squarely onto my Thinking Outside the Box Book List is how the physical design and illustration flow contribute to the way the reader experiences the subject. To read this landscape book you rotate it 90 degrees and turn the pages by flipping them down. This provides a generous cross-section that changes with each step on the vertical journey. When readers reach the pearly moon in the middle of the book, a 180-degree rotation of the book launches the journey back down:

What's down if you're the moon?
Feathery white clouds swirling over land and sea.
What's down if you're a cloud?
Rows of ocean waves, swelling, surging, splashing, crashing.


. . . and so on, down, down, down through ocean layers to "the loose mud blanketing the ridges and canyons of the rocky crust at the bottom of the world." Up through land, down through ocean---a fresh way of looking at the world, perfectly supported by the clever physical design. Innovative...definitely thinking outside the box.

Anastasia has the rest of the Nonfiction Monday round-up here.
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**Books that break expectations in delightful ways to wow me with their cleverness. Usually ingenious format causes this step out of the norm, but it could also be an oh-so-perfect-whoda-thunk-of-that treatment involving approach, style, voice, or some other facet. These books aren't just great books, they're standouts blazing new trails.

Every once in a very long while, a book comes along that breaks expectations in delightful ways to wow me with its cleverness. Usually ingenious format causes this step out of the norm, but it could also be an oh-so-perfect-whoda-thunk-of-that treatment involving approach, style, voice, or some other facet. These books aren't just great books, they're standouts blazing new trails.

I've been informally collecting "Thinking Outside the Box" titles for some time now, and would like to formalize the list by recognizing these books from time to time and putting them together in one place. Often "Thinking Outside the Box" books have slipped under the media radar, so I hope by creating this list, they'll get more of the attention they deserve. I'll update this blog entry with each new book I talk about---which should result in a linkable list over time---and will link each new entry back to this one as a kind of index.

If you've come across a children's book that's a great example of thinking outside the box, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at fionabayrock#gmail.com (replace # with @). Please put "Thinking Outside the Box" in the subject header so my spam filter doesn't eat it up. I'll add suggested books that I think are significantly different and outstandingly clever. Yup, it's my quirky list, I get final say. ;^)

Check back on Monday, July 7, when Nonfiction Monday will ring in the first "Thinking Outside the Box" book.
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2.5 x 3.5
Prismacolor! on board
ebay

Well well well. Prismacolors, what a surprise. This was done with a French Grey 90%.
I've never liked Prismacolors all that much. They're too soft. This one broke twice while I was doing this piece (it broke in the sharpener) and I ended up using almost one whole pencil just on this little illustration. I mean, c'mon.
I've come to the conclusion that nothing on earth will ever 'do it' for me like my Polychromos, but I'm still glad to know what's out there.
I do like this color though for a warmer alternative to black.

And I don't know what this bondage thing is I have going on. I don't think I'll analyze it.

To see all the Yarn pieces in this series side-by-side, please go here. Or visit my ebay store to see which are available for sale.
All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.