At a Loss for Words? Try Making a Word Bank by: Barb Rosenstock for Sherri Jones Rivers

I first met Barb Rosenstock several years ago at a summer writing conference. I was fortunate to get a critique session with her on a picture book bio. She was tough, but encouraging, saying she thought it was 100% marketable, but not in the rambling shape it was in at that time. I am still working on that manuscript, and her suggestions made it much better and helped tighten it up. She introduced the conference attendees to the idea of a word bank, showing how she used one for her book Fearless. She graciously agreed to sharing her expertise with readers of the GROG.

                                               

Writers know words...lots of words, way more than the average non-writer, enough to win trivia contests, enough to plead guilty to reading the thesaurus for fun, enough to remember esoteric roots, prefixes and suffixes...words, words, words...ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad mortem. So, why, while writing this week, will so many of us stare at the space where the next sentence should begin and think, "Yep, I'm totally out of words"?

What the world casually calls "writer's block" is, to a working writer, an hour or a day or a week of losing time and money. Not to mention the general fussing, freaking out and feelings of failure that can send creativity packing and self-esteem plummeting for way longer than necessary. We know we're good at words and writing is "just words" after all, so...what's the big deal, why are we making things so hard on ourselves?

Writing for children, and writing picture books in particular, depends intimately on which word is used, when, and why. Whenever you're trying to communicate deeply and authentically, that next sentence is not "just words." It's "just" the right word and the right word after that, and after that until those magic words THE END. And by "right" I mean perfect, or at least as perfect as we know how to be until our editors encourage us to be more perfect. Striving for perfection is necessarily daunting.

     As an un-trained writer, when I was starting out, that "what's the next word" panic used to stop me from a good writing day way more often than necessary. One morning, while working on the manuscript that became The Camping Trip that Changed America,    

I was stuck (again). But that day, for some reason, I stopped beating myself up and realized that of course, I knew the words. I just needed a better way for my brain to access them more easily as I was creating.

So, still in somewhat of a panic, I wound up creating a super simple tool that has worked for me. This is a writer's tool that I've taught to pre-published writers and also to kids as young as kindergarten. It's called a "word bank." And this is how it developed.

Remember now, I was stuck, not actively writing the story. So, just to feel somewhat productive, I started a new document and listed what I thought might be all the major themes of my story. In the case of The Camping Trip (at the time titled "Teedie & Johnnie"), this is the list I wrote that day:

Environment
Trees
Friendship
Leadership
Nature
Parks
Mountains

I got out the thesaurus (today I would use the synonym finder in www.rhymezone.com and if you have a better site than that, please tell me about it!) I don't have the space (and you don't have the patience!) for me to show each theme, but using Environment as the example, it looked something like this:

     Environment: surroundings, area, background, ecology, elements, habitat, pollution, geography, home, environmentalist, ecosystem, climate, atmosphere, conservationist, get away, wilderness, wild, untamed, etc.

It was not a rote copying exercise. I did not list every word I found. I left out what had nothing to do with my story (like the word/name "Marco" which is still listed under environment, and I still don't know why). I also left out words that would obviously never be in a children's book (like the word "gnotobiotics," but on the other hand, you never know!).

Making these lists, I was not instantly hit with a bolt of lightning.

I was not even convinced that the exercise was worthwhile. I ignored the part of me that said (repeatedly) that it was probably a waste of time. It wasn't until I had looked up all the themes and listed all their related words, that patterns started to emerge. Over the next hour or so, it was as if the word bank itself helped my brain work in a different way. I noticed that the word "mood" came up in two or three of my themes, as did ideas of friendship and compatibility. I began to connect my themes in relationship to each other. I realized that relationships can grow in nature, and that those relationships can be transformative. Muir and Roosevelt built a friendship--what did that mean for my story? What did that mean for the country? And the next thing I knew, I was no longer stuck; in fact, I had so many words and inter-related ideas than I could hardly get them all on the page.

Later, for other themes, like Trees, the benefits were different but just as important. In listing related words like "leaf, branch, root, trunk, cones" I realized that so far in my drafting, I hadn't really brought my characters (or my audience) into the trees. I needed to show what it was like sleeping next to trunks, gazing up at pine cones, brushing against branches. The "word bank" helped me specify details and actions. In general, my word listings helped with verb and adjective choice. "Support, steady, bond, respect, trust, spirit, play" were words or ideas that made themselves into the final manuscript from my initial listing in the word bank.

After this first word bank, I made others for the drafts of my next four books. Studying the words that were related to my themes taught me that a picture book is much more complex and interesting when its themes and language interplay. For example, there's a scene in The Noisy Paint Box where the young Kandinsky 

paints a painting and says, "It's music!" But because of a word bank on the theme "music," I later added the very specific action "waltzing his painting around the house." The idea of this child's body movement taking cues from the music he experienced while painting then proceeds throughout the book. The verb choices in that book were entirely driven by the word banks that were created the week I was stuck on a very early draft.

Someone recently asked if I make a word bank for every book now. The honest answer is not always. Certainly, almost never as thoroughly as I needed them initially. Recently though, I did make an extensive list of "claustrophobia" related words for 
Otis and Will Discover the Deep. 

I knew I just wasn't getting the right feeling of adventure/terror/danger, and the list would help. It did. I believe the initial word banks did their real job of changing the way I think about writing a picture book story. The word banks taught me to focus on the ideas in my writing but also on all the alternative meanings and manifestations. I've learned more confidence in my words and the value of spending thoughtful time seeking connections between them.

 But if tomorrow or next month or next year, I find that familiar "blocked" panic setting in, I know I will remember to stop, invest a little time, deposit some words into a simple word bank and watch the benefits accrue. If you think this simple tool might work for you, please give it a try. It might help you turn a work in progress into a work in publication.
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Barb Rosenstock loves stories best. She's the author of award-winning nonfiction and historical fiction picture books, including the 2015 Caldecott Honor Title The Noisy Paint Box, illustrated by Mary Grandpre. 2018 titles include Blue Grass Boy with Edward Fotheringham, The Secret Kingdom with Claire Nivola, Otis and Will Discover the Deep with Katherine Roy and Through the Window with Mary Grandpre. She lives near Chicago with her family and two big poodles.



                                          

The First Fifty Words--Make Them Count

     You've probably heard from different sources how important the first fifty words are, especially of a picture book. In a recent webinar, THE Jane Yolen mentioned that openings are critical. She mentioned having been a Golden Kite judge, and how much she enjoyed doing that. Jane gave special notice to the stories' beginnings. A successful opening, she says, comes within the first fifty words of the book. She enjoys playing around with her own openings until she feels she's got it just right. She suggests we do the same---type up the first fifty words of a number of picture books. Then, type up the first fifty of your own manuscripts. How do yours stack up? What's lacking that you could add to spice things up? How are you hooking the reader with your opening words?
     I decided to type up the first fifty words of four different books. What did it tell me? Did I want to read on? How did it hook me? So, here are my four, starting with Owl Moon by Jane Yolen:

     "It was late one winter night,
       long past my bedtime,
       when Pa and I went owling.
       There was no wind.
       The trees stood still
       as giant statues.
       And the moon was so bright
       the sky seemed to shine.
       Somewhere behind us
       a train whistle blows,
       long and low,
       like a sad, sad song." (53 words)

     The scene draws us in...late at night, wintertime, with a child and her father on a special adventure. Children will love the out-of-the-ordinary nighttime experience, feeling secure with a loved parent. The language is lovely and lyrical, drawing you in to the story. "Stood still as giant statues" brings the poetic use of alliteration as well as "long and low," which evokes melancholy. The use of alliteration of the words "somewhere," "sad," and "song" is lyrical language at its finest. The long vowel sounds throughout slow us down as we read. We are hooked by the sights and sounds as we join these two on their fascinating journey to see what they will find on this cold winter's night.


     The second manuscript is Banjo Granny by Sarah Martin Busse:

     "When Owen's Granny heard he was a baby who went wiggly, jiggly, all-around giggly, and tip over tumble for bluegrass music, she packed her banjo in its trusty old case with the taped-up handle. She put on her thousand-mile shoes. And she started out to cross one river, one mountain, and a desert." (52)

     This story has a totally different feel to it from Owl Moon. You can tell it's going to be a fun romp. Will she make it safely to baby Owen's? What obstacles might she face as she crosses one river, one mountain, and a desert? The language is fun, and who doesn't like a Granny with moxie and determination? Her thousand-mile shoes tell you she's been around a while and is rich in experience, which helps her navigate the three obstacles. The refrain of "wiggly, jiggly, and all-around giggly and tip over tumble for bluegrass music" is used successfully to help move the story along. Not to mention it's so much fun to say!


     The third story beginning is from Take a Picture of Me, James Van Der Zee! by Andrea J. Loney:

     "Deep in the heart of Lenox, Massachusetts, in a white frame house nestled between his aunts' home and his grandparents' house, lived a boy named James VanDerZee. James was the oldest boy of three sons and two daughters. At the Van Der Zee's, the children learned about music and art, and kindness, too." (51)

    What do we learn from the first words of this biography? We learn that family is important, kindness is emphasized, and that the Van Der Zee  children were introduced to a variety of artistic pursuits. How will those facts feed into the story? Of the five "W's", we learn the WHO--James VanDerZee. We learn the WHAT-what he wants is to capture each person's uniqueness through art,(even though his art turns out to be photography). The WHEN is hinted at in that cameras were cutting edge at that time. The WHERE is Lenox, Massachusetts. Kindness is fleshed out in the story as he takes extra pains to portray each person at his or her best when he photographs them. Even when the photography business dries up, there is a bright spot for James when his many photos taken over the years are used for a Metropolitan Museum of Art Harlem exhibit. He has succeeded in his quest.

     The last manuscript is Fearless, by Barb Rosenstock:

     "In those days it was pretty tough to be a girl. You had to follow the rules. You couldn't speak your mind. You had to ask permission. There were games you couldn't play. You weren't allowed at the best schools. You were supposed to stay clean, quiet, and obedient." (49)

     This takes place in a time when a woman was not expected to act like anything other than a refined lady. From this, we get the idea that someone is not going to fit the description of "clean, quiet, and obedient." Who is it, and how does she push the boundaries? In the next sentence we learn her name---Louise.  First, she was not CLEAN when the car she borrowed hit a chicken coop, wood splinters covered the seats, and chicken feathers filled the air. She was not QUIET when she crunched into a troublesome driver, scraped a car into the wall, and va-roomed past all to the finish line. She was not OBEDIENT when she tells her husband (who has told her to never race again) she is going on a vacation, but goes instead to Daytona to race. Louise spent her life fast, faster, flying, free, and FEARLESS!

     I hope you will find this exercise helpful in your own writing. Those first fifty words---make them fabulous and make them count!