I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
Without further ado, short story observations by Beverly Cleary – with a few from myself…
What could Speculative Fiction writers learn from BEVERLY CLEARY?
“She’s just a kid's book writer! What could she know about writing specfic? Ridiculous!”
If I’m not mistaken, the three novels starring Ralph C. Mouse could be considered fantasy, I suppose…At any rate, growing up, I learned to read using programmed readers. Contrary to popular hysteria, it didn’t seem to hurt me at all, and in fact introduced me to a story written by Beverly Cleary that stayed with me since fourth grade. The story was one about a boy named Henry Huggins, and was called “Gallons of Guppies”. Not only do I remember the story, it sparked in me a desire to get my own guppies, which led to a lifelong love of owning aquaria! It also moved me to introduce it to my grandson about “Gallons of Guppies” and gave him the book HENRY HUGGINS.
He finished it and then read all of the other “Henry” books: RIBSY, HENRY AND BEEZUS, HENRY AND THE CLUBHOUSE, HENRY AND THE PAPER ROUTE, and HENRY AND RIBSY in a matter of two weeks – that was in between playing Minecraft, watching YouTubes (“I don’t need to go to college, I’m going to be a YouTuber…”), and playing other online video games. From him, I have in my Messenger queue, a cat singing “Rasputin”, “How Much Do YouTubers make – [A YouTuber’s Earnings Calculator]”, and “Going to the Pet Store For the First Time Ever” by Ging Ging…)
And yet, he devoured Cleary’s HENRY books. Now THAT is longevity and non-historic relevance! How’d she do it? “…the quality that perhaps most distinguishes her is a willingness to let children be who they are. When Ramona Quimby names her doll Chevrolet because she thinks it’s a beautiful word, or squeezes an entire economy-size tube of toothpaste into the bathroom sink because she’s frustrated, or sweats through a school day because she’s wearing her pajamas under her clothes, the reader, young or old, can relate…” Cleary herself noted, “As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.”
How can she reach so far across the “age divide”? She was born in 1916 – yet her words lit the imagination of my grandson and millions of other children who were themselves born just short of a CENTURY later! But she believed that, “…the emotions of children don't change. Their life situations change, but inside they're just like they always were. They want a home. They want parents that love them. They want friends. They like teachers that they like. And — and I think that — that's rather universal.”
She also really listened to children, and could pluck the most memorable phrases from their cacophonous conversations. “…at a public library in Yakima…she had a fateful encounter with a grubby little boy who wanted to know where to find all the books “about kids like us.” A credentialed children’s librarian, she had no answer. And she recalled her own childhood search for books about the sorts of kids who lived in her neighborhood — ordinary kids with ordinary kids’ concerns, like schoolwork and skinned knees and lost dogs and thought, I’ll write them myself.” Another anecdote that led to her most popular book that became a major award-winner after ‘two little boys who didn't know one another asked me to write about a boy whose parents were divorced. And I had never thought about it, but I said I'd — give it a try.’”
That book was DEAR MR HENSHAW. It won the Newbery Medal from the American Library Association Notable Children's Book; the Horn Book Fanfare Children's Book Award; and Children's Book Awards from various states including VT, NJ, HI, OK, and MA. Clearly Ms. Cleary listened VERY carefully!
What about the necessity of being “inspired”? Cleary doesn’t seem to have much patience with that. “Writing is practice. It means writing when you don’t feel the muse or aren’t compelled to sit still enough to piece together a few sentences. More and more, the words persistence and discipline land at my feet when I consider my writing practice. In my office, I hear a woodpecker chipping away at a tree, the staccato beats consistent. The metaphor isn’t lost on me.”
Because of that focus, Cleary was a very disciplined writer. Her daughter remembers: “When she would write every morning, she would sit down after breakfast, my brother and I would go to school, and she’d write, till noon or so. She never waited for inspiration, she just got to it.” Beverly Cleary “is [also] known for her phenomenal memory, her flawless eye for detail and ear for dialogue, her exquisite timing and her economical prose.”
Kirkus Reviews said of the book, “All of this, in Leigh's simple words, is capably and unobtrusively structured as well as valid and realistic. From the writing tips to the divorced-kid blues, however, it tends to substitute prevailing wisdom for the little jolts of recognition that make the Ramona books so rewarding.” In a retrospective essay about the Newbery Medal–winning books from 1976 to 1985, literary critic Zena Sutherland wrote, “Perhaps because Cleary so deftly shows her protagonist changing there seems no need for alternate voices or viewpoints to give breadth to the story. Its immediacy never becomes too intense; its humor never makes light of the seriousness of the theme.”
“Each of her 30-plus children’s books is a master class in effective storytelling.”
So, how might I apply that wisdom to writing SF? It seems to me that there are aspects of her writing for children that I can apply to my own writing:
1) “…let children be who they are…”; SpecFic translation? Let your characters be “who they are” – extension: you have to know your character well enough to let them BE something; then when you write about them, you have to be true to the characters you created – Human; alien; LGTBQIA+; or even inanimate object.
2) “As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.” As writers, it’s not our job to “teach” stuff. That was my job for some four decades. My job as a writer is to entertain. In GRUMBLES FROM THE GRAVE, Robert A Heinlein wrote, “But if a writer does not entertain his readers, all he is producing is paper dirty on one side. I must always bear in mind that my prospective reader could spend his recreation money on beer rather than on my stories; I have to be aware every minute that I am competing for beer money—and that the customer does not have to buy. Applied to 21st Century SpecFic readers? The competition is obvious: YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram…and whatever new social platform grows wings and flies in the future.
3) “…the emotions of children don't change. Their life situations change, but inside they're just like they always were. They want a home. They want parents that love them. They want friends. They like teachers that they like. And — and I think that — that's rather universal.” Applied to SpecFic readers? If you’re writing Human characters – and let’s be honest, most of us want to read about characters we can connect with – you’ll be dealing with Human emotions, in all of their wide, wide range. Don’t always choose the easy way out. Even so, writers branch out and try all kinds of things – Stanislaw Lem’s SOLARIS is an intelligent ocean. I have had trouble at least twice understanding that book.
4) “Writing is practice. It means writing when you don’t feel the muse or aren’t compelled to sit still enough to piece together a few sentences. More and more, the words persistence and discipline land at my feet when I consider my writing practice.” This doesn’t need any translation into the SpecFic world! It’s clear as glass.
5) Unobtrusively structure your story, keeping it valid and realistic.” In DEAR MR HENSHAY, Cleary did this, ‘From the writing tips to the divorced-kid blues…it substituted prevailing wisdom for the little jolts of recognition…’” As a SpecFic writer, I need to keep my Human characters grounded in their Humanity. The setting
6) In a retrospective essay about the Newbery Medal–winning books from 1976 to 1985, literary critic Zena Sutherland wrote, “Perhaps because Cleary so deftly shows her protagonist changing there seems no need for alternate voices or viewpoints to give breadth to the story. Its immediacy never becomes too intense; its humor never makes light of the seriousness of the theme.” Show your characters CHANGING! Lisa Cron, in her book “Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence”, she writes, “It’s the story’s job to poke at the protagonist until she changes.” Again, the application to SpecFic is obvious and needs no translation!
The last comment is an invitation to me to grow my writing skills: “Each of her 30-plus children’s books is a master class in effective storytelling.”
Challenge accepted.
References: https://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/cleary/transcript, https://rudribhattpatel.com/2016/04/12/beverly-cleary-my-love-of-books-and-the-writing-process/, https://www.today.com/parents/judy-blume-shares-piece-advice-beverly-cleary-gave-her-t213217, https://vocal.media/motivation/learning-how-to-be-an-author-from-dear-mr-henshaw, https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/beverly-cleary-has-spent-a-lifetime-telling-stories-for-kids-like-us/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Mr._Henshaw, https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Robert%20A.%20Heinlein%20-%20Grumbles%20from%20the%20Grave.pdf
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