Jan is Jan Fields, moderator of this interview/workshop, and Web Editor of the ICL Web Site. Green shows names or usernames of people and the questions they asked of our speaker.

Jan: First I want to thank Bev. Cooke for sharing her expertise with our readers. It's fantastic to have here here and I have a question first off...

Jan: Your novel Feral stands out from your other work and seems so different. What prompted that novel and has it changed your overall career?

Bev: Hi Jan - thank you!

Bev: Feral was a real labour of love. Not that the other two books weren't, but from the very beginning this book was something special. First, Feral was based (very, very loosely) on a real incident - my brother in law tamed and live trapped a feral cat that lived in a New York subway station. When he told me about what he'd done, something went 'ping' and I knew it could make a book. He gave me permission to use it, but nothing happened except really awful stories until I visited New York in 2004. We saw, briefly, the station Gidget had lived in (passing through on a train) and for some reason, that gave me the idea to write the book from the cat's point of view and it worked. But something was still missing, until on one rewrite, I added some people sleeping in the subway - there was a brown cloth lump curled up near the cat, and he woke up and became "Candlewax", and that's when the story really came alive.

Bev: This story combined several themes - my love for animals, cats especially. I've lived with cats most of my life and they still fascinate me. The need for love and the need to belong, which are major themes in the book, have had big places in my life. I know what it is to be on the outside looking in, and wanting and needing to belong and feeling as though I don't so Candlewax's and Little Cat's loneliness were very real to me - I simply pulled out my old feelings of being the outsider.

Bev: The last theme was something I learned a long time ago - the most special things in your life may be right under your nose, and you may not know it until it's too late, and you've lost them. It's an almost hackneyed theme in some ways, but for me, not taking people or things for granted is very important, and to notice those who are closest to you.

Bev: Has it changed my career? Yes, in some ways - it broke me into the Canadian children's literary market, and that for me was huge. I've been wanting to be published in Canada by a literary press for as long as I've been writing - in fact Orca was my dream publisher. They are highly regarded and their books win a lot of awards because they care about quality and about the writer, and they understand the balance between 'literary' and telling a great story - a balance I strive for.

Jan: Now writing from a cat's point of view in a YA book -- that's pretty risky. Did you ever worry that you'd end up with a book you couldn't sell or did you just forge on and refuse to worry about it? And how did you keep the voice a strong YA rather than skewing younger as so many animal viewpoint novels do?

Bev: The cat's voice was hard, no question about it. Yet at the same time, it was easy to do. Go figgure! The hard part was thinking of how she would think of things and how she would name things, given that she wouldn't have our words for objects. Once she 'heard' our names for things, then I could ease off on her 'language' and use platform and tunnel instead of 'bright lights cold tile' and 'noisy dark shaking ground'. A little of that goes a long way. But I couldn't drop it entirely, or I lost the essence of her voice, so I made the decision (and it took a long time and experimentation to get the balance right, as well as a lot of discussion with my readers and critiquers) to use human terms once she'd 'heard' them, unless she was emotionally distraught, when she'd revert to her own language.

Bev: The other thing was that I made a decision as I started writing from her viewpoint that she would be as feline as I could make her, consistent with the restrictions of making her sympathetic to the reader - so she wouldn't talk at all. She couldn't use her paws as anything but paws, and she couldn't communicate at all, except in the ways that real cats can and do. The one conceit I allowed her was that she could understand human speech, and even that I downplayed, preferring to let her read tones of voice and smells and under tones in the speech. So while the reader understood what the humans were saying, it was never crystal clear if Little Cat did or not.

Bev: It wasn't hard for me to keep her at a YA age - the human characters were all 16 - 20 ish, and so, in a lot of ways, was she. I was writing for teens, not for younger kids, and I was writing a book I would want to read (if I hadn't written it), and I'm not a little kid. I've been heavily influenced by writers like Richard Adams, and CS Lewis, whose animals are mature and adult and act that way consistent with their animal natures (and whose animals can talk) so it wasn't that hard to keep the story level at YA. (I also naturally gravitate to the YA level, so it would have been harder for me to write for a younger audience!)

Bev: Hi llewisdolphins. That's a tough one for a writer. Some of it is just learning by doing, but a good rule of thumb is to think from and try to 'see' from the viewpoint of the character.

Bev: Say your main character enters a room - if it's a room they know, then you don't need much description of it - they, like most people, don't notice what is familiar, unless it's something special to them or they've been away for a while. So you need to simply say 'the living room' and note what has changed (if it's important to the character or the plot) or what is new (again, if it is important to the character or the plot.) If they're moving across a room, you only need to mention what gets in their way, if it's important. If all they do is move through the room to somewhere else, then just say, "He cut through the living room on the way to play with the monkeys." No other description needed.

Bev: It's the same thing when a character meets another character - if they know them, they won't stop to do a mental description "oh, yes, this is Jane - red shoulder length hair, tousled and wind-blown, wide grey eyes over a smiling mouth". They know the person, they don't really notice them anymore unless something is different. And if it is different, there has to be a reason for it.

Bev: As the author, you can throw in a single descriptive fact as you write - "Put the fuse here," whispered Andy, running his hands through his blond hair. Or - "The tattoos on Jacob's face stood out in high relief against the pure white of his face as he faced the giant squid." That does two things at once - it tells us Jacob had facial tattoos, and it says that he was terrified (especially since the squid was chasing him down Main Street! ). If the tattoos aren't relevant for that moment, then don't detail them - save that for later, when you have time and tension isn't high.

Bev: If the character enters a room (or a situation or an area) or meets a person they don't know, then pick up to five things that your character would be likely to notice. Again, if you are building a character who likes books, then they'd notice the presence or absence of books in a room. They would notice chairs that would look comfortable for reading in, or a lamp that was placed exactly right for reading. Same with a person - pick what characteristics your character would notice - if they like red hair, they'd notice how red the hair was. And don't forget, that every person has lots of interests, so the character who liked books would also notice some of the games in the room, because they like games. Or the comfy looking sofa, because they love to curl up on the sofa with a good book. Or the colour of the walls, because it's either a colour they like, or one they hate.

Bev: Another thing to remember is that writing is half an act of telepathy - you need to give just enough description so that the reader can complete the act, but not so much you don't let their imaginations have room to work. So if I tell you that my dining room table has a red velvet under cloth with a white lace over cloth offset on it, your red might be a bright Chinese red, with an arctic white cloth of delicate lace - whereas I saw in my mind something closer to burgundy and ivory Brandenburg over cloth - but that doesn't make the communication any the less - it enhances it because I gave you just enough to let your imagination run free.

Jan: One thing I heard someone say or read sometime that really helped me was to think of description in a book a little like camera panning in a film. If the camera suddenly stops and lingers on a vase -- you're going to expect that vase to be important to the plot. There would be a plot reason why we all had to stop the movie and stare at a vase. Someone was sure to get conked with it, or steal it, or discover a treasure map in it -- something! When choosing description in a story, if you keep that in mind, you won't linger on things that don't mean anything to the plot. Usually, very specific things about how a person looks (if the person looks fairly normal) won't be important but if the person is dressed in dripping rags or wears a set of dog tags or something else unusual, it'll probably be important to the plot too. And that will be important to see.

Bev: Jan, that's a really great metaphor and very true, too.

Bev: The whole thing about descriptions and detail is misleading in some ways, I think. Yes, the physical appearance is of some importance, to give the reader an image to hang the character on, but of far more importance is their personality, their character traits and the little weird and wonderful things that make them (and us) individuals and unique. And the best way to do that is to simply have them act and react on the page. You can say that a character is generous, or sly, or funny, but it has far more impact and relevance if you simply show them acting in those ways from the moment the character appears in the book.

Bev: But to get back to your question - a short, quick paragraph about a character (especially a a major character) while you move the action forward doesn't hurt. Look at the one below - it's off the top of my head, and is based on nothing but what comes out of the end of my fingertips.

Bev: "I watched Mabel hove into sight. Like a galleon under sail, Mabel's appearance on the scene was graceful, rolling and impressive - she was built like the fabled brick outhouse. But even more impressive was her bright red hair, stuck up in the world's greatest afro. I'd known Mabel for almost as long as I'd lived in Brighton, almost 15 years, and she was the greatest friend, but she'd never win any awards for fashion sense, slim build or the most melodious voice. She could warn ships off the rocks by Lews Point with no trouble at all. I winced as she bellowed in her deep foghorn. 'Jemima!' she called. 'I found it for you. Look!' She waved a piece of paper over her head. The sweetie! She'd found the will Mr. Zonk had left. How the heck had she managed it? Where had it been hidden? I could have sworn we'd torn his apartment down to the studs. 'I kept looking after you left,' she said, breathless as she finally came up to me. 'I just couldn't let it go. I knew you and your mom really needed it.' We'd quit at 11 last night. 'How long did it take?' I asked. 'Oh, just till two or three,' she said, shrugging it off. 'No biggie, I didn't have to get up for work till seven.' "

Bev: Wordy, but that's 'cause it's off the top of my head. (Oh, and should anyone object to my using a large person as an object of (affectionate) fun - I'm fat, so I can do it. ) This would be early in the book, and it's probably a mystery - given the need for a will, and the fact they had to tear an apartment to shreds to find it. So, while Jemima knows Mabel, the reader probably doesn't yet. But in this, if I've done my job right, we get three details of physical appearance, with grace notes: Mabel is really overweight, but graceful. She's got the fashion sense of a backwards sloth (get a close look at a sloth sometime. They have entire ecosystems on their fur, including moss and mould.) And she has a loud, deep and unpleasantly booming voice. But more important, she cares a lot - enough to stay up and lose sleep when she has to work the next day to find something of vital importance to her best friend, and then shrugs it off as not a big deal.

Bev: I've given the reader enough to build a picture on, and to show that whatever happens, Jemima has a staunch and true friend on her side, who will move heaven and earth simply because she cares. In one short paragraph.

Bev: Additionally, I've indirectly given the reader some very important information about the main character: Jemima isn't hung up on appearances - if she was, Mabel wouldn't be 'the greatest friend.' She values people - she acknowledges that Mabel has important positive characteristics, and that she appreciates them in Mabel. (the greatest friend.) She's grateful - she notes Mabel is a 'sweetie' for having kept looking after Jemima gave up for the night. And, from here, we can get into the action of the story - how Mabel found the will after all, what the probable implications of finding it are, and some the obstacles in the way of getting whatever it is that Jemima and her mother need from Mr. Zonk's estate. Maybe they lose it. Maybe it's stolen, or maybe someone shows up with a later, forged will. I don't know - I don't know the story cause I just made that up. But we have a fairly good picture of one of the important characters in the book. As the story unfolds, I can add more detail to Mabel's physical description - some comment later on about her clothing would be a good thing, since I do mention it, but don't give any detail at this point. But sparingly and lightly is the best.

Bev: Take a book you like and re-read it with an eye to descriptions and character development - look at any scene in the book and make a list of what is described, and why the author describes it. Look at the character interactions and dialogue and see if you can identify character traits from the action described, the way I've done above. That should also help in identifying when there's enough detail and when there's too much, as well as how to show and not tell.

Bev: Glad you brought that up! There is detail and there is graphic, and the differences are nuanced. And yes, the audience has to be taken into consideration - no question about it. I'd love to see you try and get some of the scenes I've read in some of the more lurid men's adventure stories past even the most liberal children's editor. (Although, some books have managed it!)

Bev: It's interesting that the word 'graphic' is used mostly in writing that contains sex and/or violence, and detailed is used for other kinds of work. I think that graphic is another level of detail down from "detailed." It's the difference between describing a person falling down, and mentioning that the character scraped her knee, and moving another level closer, and describing what the scraped knee looked and felt like.

Bev: I think, for me, the difference between detailed and graphic is that in some situations, the description needs to be detailed - the plot point the description hangs on demands that the character, and hence the reader, pay close attention to what is going on. Graphic is when you need (or think you need) to rub a character/reader's nose in the details of the scene.

Bev: One thing that springs to mind when we talk about detail and graphic and when either are necessary is a passage in Peter Straub's KOKO. A secondary character comes to the door of her lover's apartment and finds it partly open. Straub follows her up the stairs, into the apartment and down the hall into the living room. It's an extremely detailed description and takes a large portion of a page. He then goes into more detail when she steps into the living room (which is darkened) and again, uses a level of detail most writers would be told to cut. It's both detailed and graphic, but in this case, it needs to be.

Bev: It works because he plunges the reader right into Maggie's being, and from the second she sees the slightly opened door, she knows something is wrong, and all her senses go on high alert. She is noticing EVERYTHING as she climbs the stairs - from the worn linoleum that she's never really taken in before to the smell of urine that she assumes is from some tramp having peed in the entry hall. She's wrong - it's the smell from her lover's dead body, but at this remove, she can't smell the blood - that comes when she gets into the living room. When she discovers his body, we get that graphic detail, but again, we need it, since we are so far into her consciousness, and she's perceiving this in a state of total shock where every detail etches itself on her consciousness, and so also on ours. In many ways, the entire scene from the moment of the open door is graphic - the level of detail Straub uses to catch the reader and impress on us Maggie's state of mind and what she experiences is beyond mere detailed description. And it has to be to make the point.

Bev: When we're talking about children's writing, mostly we don't need that level of detail, or graphic detail. Depending on the age of the audience, of course, the illustrator will deal with most of that.

Bev: But, even if you're writing for the men's adventure genre, I think the inner person is always more important than what they look like - because that's what we're writing about, regardless of the genre or the age - we're telling stories about people (even if those people have fur or feathers, scales, or four eyes and come from Arturcus, or are made of metal with integrated circuits) and while people can be any age, skin colour, height or weight, we all share the inner life - the need to love and be loved, the fear of rejection, of being alone, of failing at tasks we take on or that are thrust on us, the need to grow and stretch and be challenged, the joy of accomplishing our tasks, of making a friend, of loving and being loved.

Bev: You speak of 'titillating' - but graphic detail can turn off as well as turn on, depending on what you're describing and how you're describing it - and sometimes less can definitely be more - describing the cleavage on a woman in a low necked dress can be far more titillating than describing the woman bare from the waist up.

Bev: So . . . yes, the audience matters, but the story and what you're trying to do with it, and what it demands of you matters more. Be true to the story, not to what you think the audience needs, or wants.

Bev: That's a really tough one, and I honestly don't think there's a right answer. It depends on the story, and the characters, and what you're trying to do with the story. I've read fascinating books that have almost no dialog in them, but keep me riveted from the first page to the last, and I've read stories that are mostly dialog that do the same. Unless the description is utterly necessary, I tend to believe that it should be kept to a minimum - I don't want to read pages and pages and pages of what the countryside, city block or room looked like, unless it's critical to the plot. And even then, it gets wearing. My kids and I started reading the uncut Hunchback of Notre Dame and we gave up after the first five pages because the author was still describing the crowd in the cathedral and hadn't gotten to even why the crowd was there, never mind having introduced any of the main characters! That's way too much of a good thing!

Bev: But at the same time, pure dialog can be as deadly, especially if there is obviously action going on that needs to be described. It's not for kids to read, but in Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein describes a love scene completely in dialog - no description of any kind and no really informative dialog either. "Oh, that feels good." "Move over here." "That tickles!" was about as informative as it got. As any kind of a scene, it failed miserably. The reader needed to know where the characters were, what they were doing and what the ambiance was for the scene - and not just for titillation. We needed to be rooted in the scene, to have an anchor and a location. Also remember that dialog is not action, so that while Heinlein's characters were very active, the scene itself was static and low energy because there was no description of action, setting or, oddly enough, tension. So, it's not a helpful answer, but it's an organic balance that each scene and each story has to show you as you write.

Bev: Learning is hard, especially when you get a huge amount of new information, and you have to cement what you're learning by practicing it. In this, all we can do is what musicians and new drivers do. Keep working at it, and bit by bit, it will become second nature to you. It's not all going to go in at once - and it will feel as though you aren't making any progress at all for a time. Don't let that discourage you, because you will be absorbing the lessons, and the things to remember bit by bit, and after a year or two, you'll look back on the work you're doing now and be amazed at how much better, how much stronger and how much livelier your writing is.

Bev: What I've found, in anything I've learned, especially the arts, like music and dancing, is to keep going over the material - even after you've finished the course, keep your materials handy and periodically review them with an eye to seeing things you'd forgotten about. When I was studying modern dance and classical guitar, it would feel as though I hadn't gotten anywhere - I still couldn't remember to hold my fingers properly so that the string would sound properly, I couldn't remember to keep my thumb BEHIND the neck, I couldn't remember even to press the string at the fret instead of in the middle. And dance! Cripes, I thought I'd never master a triplet, never mind a triplet turn or a chasse! But after a year, I went back to some of the old guitar lessons, and they were so simple! My thumb stayed behind the neck, the notes rang out sweet and clear, and there was no buzz from having the string pressed down in the wrong place. At about the same time, I realized not only could I do a triplet, I was doing three triplet turns in a row! My chasses, however, didn't come for another year, and I never did master the basic pirouette (I know, it's ballet, but I had a very eclectic teacher). I took three years of beginner dance before I felt ready to move to intermediate, and while I'll never be able to qualify for the advanced or professional class, I sure do know my basics.

Bev: The other thing to be aware of is that as you get close to making a jump in your ability, you may for a time, lose some of what you've worked so hard to learn. I remember getting very frustrated in guitar, because I couldn't do things I'd been doing for months. My teacher calmed me down and told me that I was approaching a breakthrough, and that while my subconscious mind was busy working on the new techniques, the energy and concentration devoted to that mastery was taking away from things I already knew how to do. Sure enough, about a month later, I mastered the technique we'd been working on, and all my lost skills came back. Interestingly, at the same time, I made other major breakthroughs in both dancing and in my writing! The other thing is that you sometimes can see the theory, but your skills aren't quite there to actually DO the work. I'm still trying to figure out how to layer a book the way one of my favourite writers does - to use the physical locations and settings in a story to be a metaphor for the themes and journey of the main character. I can see how he did it - but I can't quite do it myself, yet. But I will! Someday. In the meantime, I work on other things, and do what the story demands of me. You're never going to stop learning and you're never going to stop growing as long as you're writing and working at becoming a better writer. Relax about getting it all right now - the lessons you're reading through won't disappear when you finish the course, and you can always put yourself through a refresher. The most important thing is to both accept where you are now, and continually strive to be better - a hard balancing act, but most rewarding if you can do it!

Bev: I tend to agree with you, but at the same time, I generally have a picture of the character in my mind when I write, and I want that to come through. It's a question of balance, and that act of telepathy (thank you Stephen King! who gave me that). You have to give just enough detail for the reader to let their imagination take off, and not enough to smother them. When I wrote Feral, I didn't have a conscious picture of Candlewax. When I thought of him, all I saw was the brown coat. No face, no height, no hair, nothing but this animated coat. So, I couldn't describe him and didn't try, except by his smell and his behaviour. Then, one day I was over in Vancouver, at a church hockey game (our church against another church, with a pizza party and beer after - great afternoon!). I walked through the kitchen in the hall, and looked in to see, first, the exact coat that Candlewax wore (except it was cleaner and newer), and to my utter shock, Candlewax himself wearing it. I have no idea to this day why this young man "was" Candlewax, especially when I had no clue, consciously, of what he looked like, but there he was - and so when it came time to describe him, I had to use that description.

Bev: I prefer to slip small details in - hair colour and maybe length, skin shading, and one or two stand out features - maybe hands or fingers if they are unusual - long and thin, like a musician's, or big eyes, or a scar if the character has one. A rough approximation of height - I don't translate six feet very well to a visual image, so I don't tend to use heights - more comparative - he was taller than so and so, who was a long, tall drink of water - and let the reader figure it out. The rest of the details the reader can supply - nose shape, mouth size & shape, ears, hair texture, skin texture, proportions. I don't think providing some details interferes with a reader's identification - I mean I can become a male character, so obviously either I'm weird (well, I am, but . . .) or the imagining can get me past that issue. And I suspect other readers are the same - they'll use what details you provide if they want, and they'll ignore what doesn't suit them, and it won't make a difference to their identifying with the main character.

Jan: One thing to keep in mind with physical description is to keep track of what the character looks like. I've seen books (and even short stories) where the character had blonde hair on one page and red on another. Plus, one danger of description is that publishers are bad for not paying attention to YOUR description when they make the cover. Your character might be called "raven haired" a dozen times and still turn into a red-head on the cover -- I've seen that many times.

Bev: Hey - I'll keep that in mind, Kate! But Jan had some good advice - keep in mind or on paper what the character looks like so you don't do those changes partway through.

Jan: Actually I see people confused about this a lot. So, oh guru of detail how do you format book manuscripts?

Bev: Guru of detail - love it! Thank you! Okay - here is the scoop on manuscript formatting in general, chapter beginnings included. If Jan disagrees, then go back to the post about not sweating the small stuff - the one where I compare agonizing over those details to peering at the chicken entrails.

Bev: First - you have two options - for book manuscripts - for your identifying and contact information.

Bev: Option one: the cover page. The cover page contains, neatly centered, the title of the book. Below that is your real name (NOT your pen name), address, phone number, email address and web/blog sites. Below that is the approximate number of words in the book.

THE LIFE OF SMOOCHY'S DOG

Bev. Cooke
1234 A Street
Vantoria, BC Canada V8N 3Z8
1-250-555-5555; bevcooke@email.ca; bevcooke.ca

Approximate number of words: 35,000

Bev: Option two (this is also the standard for articles and short stories): Your contact and identifying information go on the first page of the story. Name (real name) address, phone, email, web/blog are at the top left hand corner of the page, single spaced. In the top right hand corner of the page is the approximate word count.

Bev: Margins all around, for every page in the manuscript should be 1 to 1 1/2 inches - top, bottom, left, right. Any business like font is fine, unless the editor requires a specific font.

Bev: The title of the book is centered about one third (1/3) of the way down the page - in caps. Below that is the byline - this is where your pen name goes, if you're using one. If not, then your real name goes here as well.

Bev: Two carriage returns and you put the chapter heading or number and right below it, the epigram, if you're using one.

Bev: Two more carriage returns and the story begins. Indent the paragraph by 5 spaces and when you break for a paragraph, do not put an extra space between paragraphs - that indicates a change of scene or a break in time. (You may also use *** centered between paragraphs to indicate changes of scenes and times.) The story text should be double spaced. No exceptions, no excuses, no 1.5 spacing. Double. Always. Even Eric Wilson double spaces. So does Rowling, and Kit Pearson and Sylvia Olson and Julie Lawson and Nikki Tate and Jan Fields. If they can do it, so can you. Be brave!

Bev: On the second page (still in the first chapter) - in the header, left hand side of the page should be a shortened form of the title (Smoochy Life, for example) a slash and your last name (Smoochy Life/Cooke) In the center of the header, or at the right hand margin is the page number. Pages are numbered from 1 to the last page in the book - do not use chapter paging - Chapter 2, page 3. Chapter 4, page 8 (2-3, 4-8). That should be on every page of the book. The single exception is if you're using option two for the identifying information location. In that case, you don't need the header on the first page, since your name and the book title are on that page and the page numbering starts on page 2, as page 2.

Bev: Chapter breaks. At the end of the chapter, stop. Start a new page (use a hard page break here, to keep the pages clean and broken from chapter to chapter as you revise. About 1/3 down the page, centered, is the chapter number or title. On a line immediately below it (single spaced) is the epigram, if you're using one. Two carriage returns, then begin the new chapter. The headers and page numbers continue as with previous chapters - consecutively from page one to the end.

(Header) Smoochy Life/Cooke
30

Chapter 4: Smoochy's Dilemma
"A tangled web do we weave when first we practice to deceive."
Some sanctimonous preacher or other.


Smoochy turned from the puppy's longing stare. "I can't bear this, it's just too much. Tanya, take the darn dog out before he drives me nuts!"
Tanya sulked, but did as she was asked. And so on and so on. Pretend this is double spaced, by the way! I can't figure out how to get double spacing on this.

Bev: At the end of the book or story, two returns below the last line, centered, type "THE END" or "END" or "--30--" (I should know why the 30 is used, but I can't remember - Jan, do you know?) And that is standard manuscript formatting.

Jan: -30- was a sign off signal at one time....maybe for telegraph? It's been a long time since someone explained it to me and I've gotten old since then. At any rate, it became traditional for newspapermen and then carried over into novels and articles and such when newspapermen started writing books.

Bev: Right, that's ringing all kinds of (rusty and seldom used) bells for me too, Jan.

Jan: Many of our students who are outside the US, really worry that they're going to go broke trying to break into writing or they really don't have many options. But you're doing great in the great beyond where you live -- so, what encouragement would you offer to other folks trying to build a career in the land up yonder?

Bev: More than anything else, persist. I'm never going to get rich with the markets I've chosen (or, more accurately, which have chosen me!) to publish in. And while I love Americans, and I love New York City especially (we just got back from a three week vacation there), I'm Canadian through and through, and publishing in my native country is more important to me than challenging JK Rowling for the biggest bank account. (Don't get me wrong - if the opportunity presents itself, I'll be there with bells on, but Canada is home.)

Bev: Additionally, Canada has an incredible reputation world wide for our literature, and Canadian children's literature has helped earn that reputation. So it's a really good feeling to know that my talent is up there with some of the best in the world. It's a real confidence builder. But the downside to that is that you have to work incredibly hard to take your talent and develop it to a point where the Canadian publishers (and the internationally owned Canadian branches) will accept you.

Bev: Be prepared not to give up your day job, if you have one, or to edit freelance, teach writing, work for hire, write ad copy, write speeches, do technical writing, write PR, coach writing, wait tables, walk dogs, do daycare or whatever else you have to do to put food on the table and keep the roof over your head - it just doesn't pay well. Of all the writers I know, and I do know a lot of published ones, only one of them actually makes a living at their writing (and he's a kids writer, too!) All the rest are either supporting their families as best they can, contributing financially to the family coffers with other work, or being supported by someone else. And that includes me - I teach, I coach, I edit and on Wednesday I'm starting a part time job as a hotel desk clerk. The fact is, in Canada, especially, you don't have many options. For all it's size, ("Canada's really big!" Arrogant Worms - my fellow Canuks will get this reference) this country is 1/10 the population of the US, and America is right next door - so we have huge competition from the US in almost every segment of our culture and economy. I'm not dissing the US with this information - it's just a fact of life when you live next to such a large and populous country. I'm sure Monaco citizens feel the same way about France.

Bev: Consequently, it's hard on two counts for Canadian publishers to survive - we don't have the population to build a large reader base for a number of publishers, and we have to compete with the big American publishing houses, who do have that huge reading base in their own country. Grants are available, and they are definitely worth researching and applying for. I never have, so I can't give you any advice about applying. But do look and do apply for them. Look on the national, provincial and local level - my city has grants available for the arts, which I didn't know until last year. Wow! So does the province, and I know Alberta, and Saskatchewan also have grants for the arts. Check them out.

Bev: And don't rule out submitting internationally - I didn't - Conciliar Press is US company, and I would submit to other US publishers, as well as British, Australian and New Zealand publishers. It's a real dream come true to be published in Canada, but my plan was always to be a published author, not a failed unpublished CanLit author. If publication happens in the US, or in England, I'm not turning it down! Stick with it, and don't narrow your options by insisting on being published only in Canada - dare to dream of being an internationally famous writer, as well as a beloved Canadian author!

Jan: Can you tell us how paying attention to the details have affected your writing career? Tell us a story...we love stories

Bev: Details about the career - yep. I got two rejections from not paying attention to details. I had two picture book manuscripts - one about a little girl who rode a raven to the moon, and the other about a boy whose uncle was a stage magician who could do real magic. I had my publishers all lined up, I'd written the cover letters, made sure I had the SASEs, the right postage, the US postage (since I'm in Canada, this is important, since for some reason the US postal service doesn't like Canadian stamps on envelopes mailed in the US - can't imagine why! ). And, you guessed it - I got the wrong cover letter with the wrong story. Got those suckers back post haste. Sigh.

Bev: I almost ended up with a published error with my first book. That was not paying attention to detail, too. St. Macrina was very famous in her day, and her grandsons and their friends wrote about her life. When I was doing the research, I read (in translation, I don't read Greek) what they'd written, but when I wrote the actual story, I forgot one major detail. I wrote a scene where Macrina was telling her young grandchildren a story about some of the persecutions they'd faced before the faith was legalized. I wrote that her parents had been present for the miracle she was telling them about, and that she'd been with them as a baby.

Bev: It wasn't until the book was in layout and I had to check another fact that I went back to the original documents. Along with the fact I was checking was the information that actually, Macrina had converted and been disowned and denounced by her family for it. Ooops. We managed to correct the error, but I should have paid more attention to that small detail.

Jan: That sounds like a book with a huge amount of research -- how long do you research a book like that? Does the research take longer than the writing? How do you know you're ready to stop researching and start writing?

Bev: Well. . . not as long as I'd planned, let's put it that way!

Bev: My original idea for the book was threefold. The market I was targeting was the Orthodox Christian market, and while there were a number of picture books for small children, when I first started looking at it, there was nothing for mid-grade and young adult books. And there weren't very many books about the saints of our faith. Lots about the faith itself, and about how monastics (monks and nuns) lived, books about our rituals and feasts and services.

Bev: So I thought I'd start with a picture book, which would take a minimum amount of research, and then expand that as I learned more, to a mid-grade. I hadn't planned a young adult, mostly because I didn't think I could do the amount of research necessary in the time I wanted to write the book - I was looking, originally at a three to five year spread for this.

Bev: The publisher I chose was one I had published with in their magazine, and so I asked the editor of the magazine who the acquisitions editor was, and I outlined my idea for her. Turns out, first, that Ginny was the acquisitions editor as well as the magazine editor (very small press!) and Conciliar had also noticed this incredible gap in the market - and they were very interested in filling it, so would I please send everything I had, and she'd get it in front of the editorial committee post haste. That was in August 2003. In Sept. I sent them the picture book. They came back and said they wanted sample chapters and an outline by Christmas for a young adult. So, from Sept. to December 20, I wrote and researched at the same time. I knew a little bit about Roman life, and a very little bit about the Christian life at that time, but most of it was a matter of writing a sentence, then going to the web, or to my library books to find out the next bit - from the clothing to the layout of their houses to what they ate, to what their jewelry looked like to what they called their bits of clothing, to how much things cost. I submitted the outline & sample chapters in December, and in early January, they came back and said they wanted the full manuscript by the end of June.

Bev: January to June was the same thing - write, research, email my Orthodox experts on early Christian life, call my priest for his knowledge of the time, ask an iconographer (a person who paints holy pictures for churches and for the faithful to have in their homes in their prayer corners) about icons back then, write some more. I submitted the full manuscript in late July (only time I've been late on a deadline) and they came back with a contract offer in early August.

Bev: It's not my preferred way to research. I don't have the depth of knowledge to add those lovely little details that you get when you know an era and its people intimately, and have learned the ins and outs of the politics, culture and beliefs and folkways of the time, but that takes years of study. I'm in awe of a friend of mine who has been interested in post-Roman Britain, and has been reading and researching it for over 30 years. Her work is thick and layered with that detail and it makes for an incredibly accurate and realistic book. Nevertheless, I'm still proud of the job I did do on Keeper of the Light.

Jan: Now, I know a lot of writers obsess about details and have trouble telling important details (getting the right cover letter in with the right manuscript ) and the "editor doesn't notice" details like whether the page number can be put in the middle top of the manuscript or whether you can handwrite addresses on your envelopes. So, what kinds of details would you say are the total obsession details and which as the "don't panic, the editor doesn't care that much" details?

Bev: Funny you mention that - I can remember reading, on a children's writers email list, a question from a newer writer, wondering if the stamp she wanted to use would offend the editor, and cause a rejection. I honestly thought she was joking at first, but no - she was serious.

Bev: I sometimes think that some of the things we obsess about are almost akin to the 'reading of the entrails' that old Roman priests and magicians used to do to let Caesar know if the upcoming campaign against the barbarians would be successful. The difference is that if they were wrong, they usually ended up feeding the lions in the Coloseium. We just lose sleep.

Bev: The little things, like what postage stamp to use, which side of the page to put the page number on, which EXACT font to use, any typos left in the manuscript, are obsessive. You won't get rejected because of those. Use common sense as much as you possibly can! Try to think like an editor. How would you like the story presented, always remembering that you will be looking at, if not actually reading, 20 or more manuscripts in a day. Plain white 20 pound bond paper to start. Coloured paper is hard on the eyes and 20 pound bond is heavy enough to take some handling without falling apart. A plain, business like font. Some editors insist on Courier or Times New Roman, and if they do, give them that, but if they don't specify, any font you would use in a business letter or report, or that you see in a magazine article is fine. Black font, not grey, not purple, not yellow or brown or red. Plain black and white on the page, please. Anything else gives us headaches and makes us cranky. You do not want a cranky editor reading your work, trust me on this!

Bev: Avoid the arty, handscript type fonts - again, they're hard on the eyes. Make the font larger rather than smaller - 12 point works for most editors, 14 is getting a little big and 10 is just a bit on the small side. Use bold and italics sparingly. Again, they are hard on the eyes and it's intrusive - it gets between the reader and the story. Double spaced with no exceptions - not even 1.5 spacing. That's partly to have room for comments, but again, it's easier on the eyes than single spaced. Inch margins give room to make comments, and to hold the paper without obscuring the type on the page. One typo in 25 or 30 pages I can live with - 25 or 30 on a page is too many. Learn to spell. Yes, spell check works, and I use it all the time, but I don't rely on it. When I relied only on spell checker, I maid a lot of mistakes that it didn't catch. Their is the reason to learn spelling right their. (Did you see the errors in the last two sentences? Spell checker didn't catch them.)

Bev: Master your grammar and punctuation. Along with spelling, these are the very basic tools you have as a writer. If you don't learn them, then writing a story is like having a carpenter try to build a bookcase without knowing how to use a saw, hammer and screwdriver. The bookcase might look pretty, if the carpenter has an artistic eye, but it's not going to hold books well. One objection I've heard is that "that's what editors are for! To catch those errors and correct them!" Well, no. That's what a copyeditor and a proofreader are for, and if you don't have a basic grasp of your craft, your story won't make it to them. You won't be seen as a professional, and the editor who looks over your submission isn't going to take your work. As an editor, I've seen enough manuscripts that I know as soon as I see the bad grammar and the worse spelling, that I'm dealing with a new writer, and the story is going to be really hard to edit - partly because of the difficulty in reading through the bad grammar and worse spelling, but partly because the writer is too new to have a grasp of story principles and craft. As the writer improves, so does the spelling and grammar, I've noticed. Either that, or they get out of the game.

Bev: While an editor will overlook a lot of problems on the spelling and grammar level if a story grabs them by the throat and won't let go, remember that those diamonds are very few and far between - even JK Rowling got rejected a number of times, and while she might overuse her adverbs, she knew her spelling and grammar! Don't assume that your story will be the one to rise above its basic flaws. I can almost guarantee it won't.I could go on and on - but those are the basics, the very important details in getting your story ready to submit. If you don't have those, then your story won't be read, even if it is that rare diamond. Editors just don't have the time or the energy.

Bev: I have to preface this by saying that I've never submitted to Highlights, and I haven't read the magazine since my kids were tiny - over 10 years ago - so there's no secret formula I can give you that will unlock this particular door.

Bev: But this is where attention to detail really can pay off. You've studied their website. Have you studied the magazine? Read issue after issue? Analyzed the stories? And when I say analyze, I mean exactly that - not just read the stories, but compared them and tried to find common elements that keep cropping up. Look at the pacing of the stories - how the tension rises and falls and how the climaxes occur, and when in the stories. What about the characters - do they have anything in common from issue to issue and story to story? Are they all really good kids with a problem or are they kids who, through a mistake or a bad decision end up causing their own problem? Are their parents present in the story or not? If so, are they a two parent family or are they single parents? Are they good parents or not so great ones? Do they accept animal characters at all? What about rhyming stories? If so, what are the common elements of those? What about setting - are there any commonalities there? What are the themes of the stories - are there commonalities there? That's the level of detail you need to be looking at. Then compare what you're writing to that, and see if you can adjust your work to what they publish.

Bev: Beyond that, pay attention, as much as you can, to the editors. Yes, they change often, but still, that is important, because what one editor likes another won't. A friend of mine, who writes adult suspense and mystery is looking for an agent. But he's doing it with detailed research - he's not just targeting all agents who place that genre. Instead, he tracks down the books they edit and reads them to see if they're like his writing. He finds out if he can, if they blog and if so, what their tastes are from that. At conferences, he'll buttonhole them and engage them in conversation to learn what their tastes are - not just for what they work with, but in other reading material as well, so he has the best chance possible of sending his work to an agent he knows will be receptive to his work, his voice, his style.

Bev: It's frustrating and it's hard work, but if you're intent on being accepted by Highlights, find out as much as you can about what they publish, and who edits it and what they like. Become a Highlights expert. It also doesn't hurt to go online - either to the Children's writers email list or to Absolute Write Water Cooler and ask questions there of people who have successfully submitted to them, and find out what their experiences were.

Bev: The last thing I can say is keep trying - they will get to know you and believe it or not, they'll be rooting for you if your work has any merit at all (which it does!) There's a story that made the rounds at conferences for a long time about a science fiction writer. You have to know that the SF market is small - all the editors know each other and they talk. They noticed this person subbing to them - he was a rank beginner but he had talent, and he was making the rounds of every single magazine on the SF market. Story after story after story came across their desks, and a slight competition developed among them as to who would be the first to publish this guy - because he was learning - each story was getting better than the one before it. It was only a matter of time. This went on for over ten years, and the competition got fierce, but none of them wanted to publish a bad story. The last story he'd sent on its rounds was "this close" and everyone knew that the story after this would be the one to finally be good enough to publish. But they never got it - he disappeared, he quit just one story before he'd have finally made it. So hang in there, and do the homework. Jan knows far more than I do about subbing to the magazine market, and she may have some additional advice for you.

Jan: Wow, great answer. That's exactly how to analyze a market. Now, there are a few things I specifically know about Highlights and thought I would throw them in...

• No violence (which they mention in their guidelines) extends to violence from a bully, serious verbal fighting, and even things like including pirates in a story or playing at violence like playing cops and robbers. They are very serious about no violence.
• They like POSITIVE examples. So they'll pass on a story quick where a child acts like a brat and gets his come-uppance at the end. Even though kids might find that satisfying, Highlights prefer characters that do not model behaviors that parents would prefer kids not engage in -- so no stories about running away or similar activities.
• They like bright crisp writing, tight word counts, sensory detail -- and a generally up feel to the story.
• No stories where the parents are bad, the teachers are bad, or where the main character is disrespectful towards one of these "bad" adults or authority figures.

Bev: That is tough, no question. You have to be very attentive to the bare bones of your story and make sure you know what exactly it is you're writing about. Sometimes - most times - that takes a lot of rewriting and honing. Very often, we start with an idea and we have to actually get the story on paper before we really know what we're trying to say. So in rough drafts, don't worry about the length too much (I mean, if you're writing to 800 words and you're up to 10,000, then definitely something's not right, but if you're only up to 1200 or so, you can still cut with care.)

Bev: Let the story cool. I can't emphasize how important that is! If you can walk away from the first draft until you almost can't remember it (at least 6 weeks), you get distance and objectivity. Then you can re-read it with an eye to what you're really trying to say, and the story that is trying to be told.

Bev: When you've done that, then read the story over and see if it's saying what you want it to. If it is, then cut out everything that doesn't move the story along the line you want, and be ruthless.

Bev: Look at phrases and clauses in your sentences - can you say the same thing in fewer words? How many adjectives are you using to describe things? Can you use stronger nouns and fewer adjectives to give you more room? Can you cut descriptions down to a bare minimum, just enough to let the reader flesh out the details for themselves?

Bev: Make every word count. If I write that 'the peat fire smoldered on the hearth as Eardward entered the hut', you know a lot about the setting and the character already: you know that it's probably a medieval or earlier story (hearth, hut, the character's name), it's probably in Britain or Ireland (peat fire), and it's cool or cold out (you don't light a fire in a heat wave, at least not inside.) Use strong verbs and nouns and avoid adverbs - it's not only weak writing, it ups your word count - so to say that 'he walked jauntily down the street' takes 6 words, whereas he bounced down the road takes five. One extra word to play with!

Bev: Decide what absolutely has to go into the story and what can be left out - do you really need how long the hair is, or what shade of what colour? Do you have to use 'cedar trees and pine boughs' or can you just say 'trees'? If you're writing a picture book, how much description can you leave out - knowing that the illustrator will be doing most of that?

Bev: One thing a lot of writers want to include is 'how the character got to where the story starts'. Avoid that like the plague. It takes up room you could use for the story, and honestly? The reader doesn't CARE how the story came to be - they want to know the story! If what happened before the story opens is important to the story, then only put it in when it's important, and only enough to illuminate what the plot point hangs on.

Bev: And finally - practice - write, write, rewrite, hone, let it cool, rewrite, cut, hone, redraft some more. Write more - this is something that is learned by doing more than any other way. And good luck!

Jan: I want to thank our guru of detail, Bev. Cooke and I want to thank everyone who took part in this discussion. It's been great!