"Turning Your Real Life into Entertainment" with Stephen Roos

Mel: is Mel Boring, moderator of this chat with Stephen Roos, and editor of the ICL web site.

Steve is Stephen Roos, who, after working for twelve years in promotion at Harper & Row publishers, discovered that he wanted to write children’s books. His first book, MY HORRIBLE SECRET, was published in 1983, and two dozen more books have followed. Steve’s books have been acclaimed in review by magazines. Publishers Weekly noted his "sharp, distinctive wit" in TWELVE-YEAR-OLD VOWS REVENGE (AFTER BEING DUMPED BY EXTRATERRESTRIAL ON FIRST DATE). Horn Book pronounced his THE FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS as "a funny, poignant story, a perfect vacation book." School Library Journal described Stephen Roos’ most recent book, THE GYPSIES NEVER CAME, as "a novel written in a lean and propulsive style that draws the reader in." Steve’s topic this evening will be "Turning Your Real Life into Entertainment."

Pink shows the usernames of the people who asked Stephen Roos questions.

Steve: Hi everybody. It's good to be here.

Mel: Steve, I know you came from a FAMILY of writers, can you tell us about that writing family of yours?

Steve: My mother and father were both writers. My father wrote some plays that were produced on Broadway in the 1940s, and he and my mother wrote almost 30 mystery novels together under the name Kelley Roos. My parents would plot their mysteries very carefully and very noisily and I loved listening to them. They gave my sister and me a dollar every time we came up with an interesting way to kill someone. It was a very nice childhood.

kathyann: At what age did you begin to write?

Steve: I wrote my first play when I was eight. It was produced, too, by me, of course, in our playroom. I didn't turn to straight fiction until I was 10.

Mel: When did you turn to writing for children as a professional?

Steve: Not until I was in my 30s. I was working at Harper & Row publishers in New York. They had a great children's department and that's how I got interested in children's fiction. I left Harper when I was 36, I think, to start writing. And I wrote my novel, MY HORRIBLE SECRET, that first year.

Steve: About that first year, and a little longer.

Mel: What was your job with Harper's BEFORE you became a children's writer?

Steve: I was doing publicity and promotion for the library market for both children's and adult titles. Conventions, catalogue writing, author bios, you name it.

dreammac: What was your first published item?

Steve: Delacorte published MY HORRIBLE SECRET in 1983.

Mel: Steve, last time you did a chatroom, it was how to turn your life into fiction. Why the switch to entertainment?

Steve: Good question. There are a lot of nice, creative writing teachers out there who tell their students to write their lives up as truthfully and as honestly as they can. Unless you're Joan of Arc or maybe Joan Crawford, your real life, no matter how honestly you write it, just isn't going to make it in today's commercial market. You really need to make it entertaining. But it doesn't have to be funny in order to be entertaining. So I'm not saying you have to play everything for laughs.

Mel: So when you say entertaining, you don’t necessarily mean funny?

Steve: Not at all. Very sad stories can be entertaining. So can mysteries. So can action stories. I would say that Harry Potter’s is not a funny story, though there are funny characters in the stories. And I have heard they are doing rather well. J

Mel: Can you give me an example of taking something sad and making it funny?

Steve: In THE GYPSIES NEVER CAME I write about a boy with a disability. I couldn't make the disability funny, but I did make the boy funny.

Mel: What is his disability, and how did you make HIM funny?

Steve: It was an enormous challenge for me. He was born with a stump for a hand. I made him funny by making sure he wasn't a victim in life. His father had abandoned him so it was grim that way. But I made him the town "snoop." He worked afternoons at the dry cleaners and went through everybody's laundry and knew all the best secrets.

gruvnbeats: What was it like working at Harper before you started your own writing?

Steve: It was very exciting. Wonderful authors like Paul Zindel, M.E. Kerr, Jean George, and great editors. Ursula Nordstrom was one of the goddesses in developing the popular children's book as we know it today.

oscar: Was writing for children easier per se for you because you knew the industry?

Steve: It was easier because I read every single book that Harpers' children's book department had published and was still in print. That's over 1300 books. I counted. And that's what gave me a real feel for what went into a kids' book.

t green: Is it better to use childhood experiences, or can we turn our adult experiences into stories for kids? (Like military experience or work experience?) If so, how?

Steve: Good question. I draw my inspiration from my own childhood and sometimes from my friends' childhoods, but when I'm writing, I find I draw on a lot of stuff that's going on in my adult life at the time. Often it's very subconscious. I don't find out until after the book is published.

children: When do you know which of experiences are good for books?

Steve: About two-thirds through my first draft, alas.

kathyann: I have so many ideas for stories that I have a hard time focusing on one at a time. Do you have any suggestions?

Steve: I would focus on a story that has a lot of personal reverberation for you at the moment. In other words, something that touches what's happening to you now. I think that's where you should focus. I think that's where you'll be most creative. But honestly, I do think that the paring down, the simplifying, the cutting-out, is very, very hard. But it has to be done or your story is going to be all over the place.

kathyann: I have lived a true life experience raising a daughter with an eating disorder. I have toyed with the idea of writing about this, but wonder if there would be a market today for this topic?

Steve: Oh, I think it could be a wonderful theme for a story for children. So many children are suffering from eating disorders, knowing they are not alone could really help them. Plus of course, you may have some information that they need to have and you could impart it, through your story. I think, very strongly, that if it happens to children, it belongs in a children's book.

kathyann: In writing my story about eating disorders, is it best to present it in fiction form or nonfiction?

Steve: Fiction. I think fiction can reveal deep truths, personal truths that nonfiction rarely does. I also feel that a child with an eating disorder would prefer to read fiction about another child's similar experiences.

Mel: Do you focus on a narrowed age range in your writing, Steve, or just think YA or other general age range?

Steve: I think the age of my character. I do try to avoid letting my characters get much older than 14 or 15. I think that gets me into Young Adult and it's a trickier market, frankly. I think you are going to have a bigger market writing for middle graders and that means writing about middle graders.

Mel: Entertainment seems to have a different meaning these days. What happened to the pleasant story-stories they used to publish for kids? Everything is so high-voltage? What happened?

Steve: What happened is government funding dried up and teachers and librarians stopped doing the buying. As a result, book publishers appealed directly to children. It was a revolution and it was made possible by cheap paperbacks, of course. Just between us, I think children have the most wretched taste in the world and I think it brought down standards considerably. If you don't believe me, take a look at the series, BARFORAMA. It's just what it sounds like.

Mel: I'd be intrigued to hear you give a short summary of your TWELVE-YEAR-OLD VOWS REVENGE (AFTER BEING DUMPED BY EXTRATERRESTRIAL ON FIRST DATE), which is one I haven't read. What is it about?

Steve: It's my favorite character, Claire Van Kemp. Claire Van Kemp's last stand, another take on her (ongoing, three-books-long!) feud with Shirley Garfield. The milieu is kids' newspapers. I thought it was a riot. The world seemed to like it enough, but no one has asked for another encore.

Mel: I bet they WILL yet!

gruvnbeats: What age group did you say you usually write for?

Steve: Middle-graders.

paige: How has the concept of "popular" changed in the children's market?

Steve: The impact of television and movies has changed children's lives, and let's not forget drugs and crime and all of it. So the popular market is more real than ever, more sophisticated and a lot faster-paced.

kplano: Please elaborate more on the idea of entertainment that isn't necessarily funny.

Steve: Do you know the novel, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA, by Katherine Paterson? It's very moving, very sad but very entertaining, I think. I think a lot about what constitutes entertainment, and my conclusion is anything that appeals to a reader's emotions. So sad is OK, suspense is great, action is great.

Mel: EXCELLENT response, Steve! I think BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA is the first novel I remember that made death a comfortable thing for children to read about.

Steve: JULIA OF THE WOLVES is one of the most entertaining books ever and there's not a laugh in it.

gruvnbeats: Do you ever find it difficult to find ideas for stories?

Steve: I find it harder and harder to find ideas for stories. Partly it's because I got tired of writing about myself. That's when I started to borrow my friends' childhoods.

Mel: So, are you saying that you DON'T draw on your own life for ALL your stories?

Steve: Yes. I wrote three stories for something called THE PET LOVERS CLUB, and it was a bad experience for me. I didn't draw my own life in any way and that's why I feel life experience is so important. If not mine, then someone else's. That's how it works for me. Writers comes in all shapes and sizes. It may work very differently for you. I find I do my best work when I'm writing about something that is real to me.

Mel: Why was THE PET LOVERS CLUB a "bad experience" for you?

Steve: I did it simply to make some money. My editor at Dell wanted me to jump on the series bandwagon and become very rich. I was all for it! But I had trouble coming up with a theme for the series. Finally I came up with pets, and the editor said Peggy Parish was doing a pet series. But then she died and they said I could go ahead. It was a bad experience because I didn't like writing them and no one liked reading them. They just didn't fuel me creatively.

Mel: You're an HONEST person, Steve, to be UNrecommending of your own writing! Thank you, that's very refreshing!

children: What about using a poem as a story, the way Dr. Seuss did it in his books?

Steve: My feeling is you better be an absolute genius if you think you are going to pull this one off. Poetry terrifies me. Writing it, I mean. I can read it fearlessly.

gruvnbeats: Do you have any advice on stories editors are looking for?

Steve: I know they want stories that kids are really going to like. I know that they like genre. I know they like humor. It's my feeling that they want something that's a little different but not all that different.

Mel: Your YA novel, "You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone" is about a teenage alcoholic. Is it okay to ask if that’s autobiographical.

Steve: Yes, it's OK. I did have some trouble with drinking, but not until my 40s. When I stopped I got very interested in the problems teenage alcoholics have. And I knew quite a few. It was an exciting book to write, though it is very bleak, I must say. But it was, at that time, the only book for kids in which the protagonist was himself an acoholic. In all the other stories it's the protagonist's best friend or older brother and the alcoholic experience comes through second-hand.

emi: You have courage, Steve!

izzy: What person do you recommend for a fiction story? What would be the advantage, for example, of first person over third person?

Steve: It depends on which voice comes more comfortably for you. When I started writing I wrote in first person because my mother wrote in first person and she told me I should write in first person. It never occurred to me not to listen to my mother, even when I was 40! After she died I found myself developing a third person voice and I have generally stuck with it since.

halnic: So, don't ever tell the truth when a fib gives it more punch? Is that the essence of making your real life into entertainment?

Steve: Fibs always give my life more punch. Fiction is make-believe. You're supposed to fib.

izzy: That's a good reason!

t green: Is it OK to leave a story open-ended at the conclusion, since life is rather open-ended?

Steve: I think a story needs a satisfying ending. But that doesn't mean that everything has to be neatly resolved. Especially in children's books, where your characters are still at the beginning of their lives and have yet to experience their really worst nightmares.

Mel: Here's what people here are saying about you, and I agree, Steve: izzy: I like this guy, he's real.

Steve: Thank you!

oma: I'd like to write about my hilarious experiences living in the Middle East for 17 years. Would it be better to have the protagonist an American kid living abroad or from the Arab kid's viewpoint?

Steve: What I would love to see you do is BOTH viewpoints. I know we are always telling our students to stick to a single, consistent point of view, but there are times when you want to make an exception. You do know Paul Zindel's PIGMAN. It's an absolute classic. Two points of view. You might want to consider it as a model for your funny Middle East story. What a timely idea! I would go buy a copy tomorrow.

Mel: So could oma have TWO strong characters, one American and one Arab, in her novel? Would that work?

Steve: Oh, yes! Make them of equal importance. Show the Arab through an American kid's eyes. Show the American through the Arab kid's point of view. This is sounding important to me. Please pursue this project. We're so used to the tragedies of that area. We really do need to see the non-tragic side. We need to know these people better so we can get to be friends with them.

emi: I'm doing my Assignment 10 for ICL, a novel for YA’s, about a runaway teen who eventually meets his alcoholic father who had abandoned the family when my teen protagonist was a baby. I'm having trouble with the ending. Right now it's LAME! Can I make it a really sad ending and still not disappoint my readers?

Steve: Sad is OK. Hopeless is not going to work in this market. Also, is your protagonist more in control of his life at the end of novel than he was at the beginning? That's what I mean by hopeful.

gruvnbeats: I think emi's story sounds like a great one!

kathyann: Don't you think that the success of the Harry Potter books means that children of ALL ages have once again become interested in fantasy to escape the real world?

Steve: I think we need fantasy more than ever now. Reality is too hard. We all need fantasy. It's amazing to see hardened New Yorkers reading Harry Potter on the subway. I love it!

t green: That's good imagery you mentioned, New Yorkers reading Harry Potter!

izzy: Yeah, this guy is a New Yorker!

gruvnbeats: Yes, he's very interesting! Any advice for an admitted novice children's writer, Steve?

Steve: Read! Find out what you like to read the most. That's probably what you should be writing.

Mel: I saw in your bio that you wrote four books for R. L. Stine. Why? The only author credit is on the copyright page and it’s in even smaller type.

Steve: Well! I was at a low point in my career. New stories were not coming to me and all my books were going out of print. I was ready to go get a job at McDonalds. Then my agent told me Stine was starting a new series and was using other writers for it. Would I be interested in it? Although I prefer Big Macs to children's horror, I could sit down while I was writing, and I never had to ask if they wanted fries with it. It turned out to be a fascinating experience. I had never worked in such a market-driven environment. They really aimed to please their readers and labored prodigiously over each story's concept and outline. Sometimes it took two to three months to get the outlines right. Then they gave you six weeks to write the damn thing! I was burned out after four of them. My agent told me most writers didn't last that long.

Mel: Why do you consider writing for Stine such an awakening? I read one of them, and it wasn’t anything like the caliber of your regular work.

Steve: When I did my first draft of WHO’S BEEN SLEEPING IN MY GRAVE?, the editor told me I had some serious rewriting ahead of me. It seems that I had my protagonist shaking and quaking and sweating and shrieking all the time. But I didn't have very much description of what it was that made him shake, quake and shriek. So I cut down on his reactions and set about learning how to do more effective descriptions. Until then, I'd gotten away with as minimal descriptions as I could. I like dialogue. I like action. I hated descriptions. But writing for R. L. Stine got me to love writing descriptions. I see how important they can be and how exciting. They are a big challenge for me, and one of my best ones.

kathyann: How is the market today for historical fiction?

Steve: I don't think it's good. Kid's today seem uninterested in the past. So if you are going to write historical fiction successfully, it's got to have a modern feel to it, I think. And that's a challenge because you want the period to be authentic too. I think that there's going to be a swing back to historical fiction soon. I think it's going to center on American themes and history. People are more interested in their history as a result of the Mid-East situation.

izzy: Do you hand write or type your first drafts?

Steve: I type.

t green: I read EVERYTHING, from romance to fantasy to thrillers; can I write EVERYTHING for kids too?

Steve: If you write it from a child's point of view, you can.

Mel: In GYPSIES NEVER CAME, I see on the dust jacket that you have a handicap? Is it like the one your character Augie has?

Steve: Yes. I was born with a problematic left leg.

Mel: How did you transform that experience into entertainment?

Steve: When I was in high school we read Somerset Maugham's OF HUMAN BONDAGE, which is about a boy with a club foot. My teacher told us that Maugham was writing out his own experience with stuttering. And my first reaction was, "Oh, I wonder how I'm going to treat my leg in a novel." And I wasn't even thinking about writing a book about it yet. Amazing to me.

Mel: You went to private schools and then on to Yale. It doesn’t sound like you grew up in a trailer park like George does in RECYCLING GEORGE. How is that drawing on your life?

Steve: I tried to make my protagonist, Augie, a lively, funny, nosey kid. I gave him an antagonist who was even more obnoxious than he was. That way, I kept the story from whininess. That's how I kept it entertaining.

Mel: I thought people liked reading about rich people. Why not stick with rich people?

Steve: It's my feeling that readers are not all that sympathetic to rich people unless they are funny rich people and the story makes fun of their ways. In The GYPSIES NEVER CAME I thought the reader would be more sympathetic to Augie, for instance, if his family was a little on the poor side. So I set him up in the house and the town where my father had grown up.

Mel: A comment and a question about historical fiction, as discussed earlier, Steve:

halnic: Historical fiction should sell if you study curriculum.

kathyann: If historical fiction is going to make a swing back and especially in American History, I love to write about Native Americans and have done a lot of research. Do you think that will be of any interest to editors?

Steve: I think that editors are always interested in Native Americans. The more authentic, the better, too.

Mel: Another chatster and I have similar questions, so here they are together for you:

t green: It's difficult to get into a child's head these days, and my childhood was so different, how do you give it a fresh slant?

Mel: When I write from my own personal experience, it’s so close to me that I freeze up. Any hints there?

Steve: Yes. Here are some hints. Set your child protagonist in a different milieu from the one you grew up in. If you were rich, make her poor. If you were rural, make her urban. If you were the best athlete in school, make your character the class brain. Creating a little distance between you and your character will provide you with the perspective you need. Curiously enough, I tried writing about a friend's childhood once. It went very smoothly and when I was finished, I realized that I had written about myself again.

Mel: EXCELLENT advice, Stephen Roos!

dreammac: How did you learn more about description, as you mentioned earlier? I need help there.

Steve: Reading was my best resource. Someone told me Flaubert was the best in the biz, so I read MADAME BOVARY three pages a day. In other words, I really paid attention to every page. I lived in each page. I absorbed his descriptions. I'm sure you could do the same with any number of great descriptive writers. You can't beat Rowling for description. She creates reality out of thin air.

Mel: You're sure right about that, Steve! I’m concerned about the other people in my life. How are they going to feel if I turn their lives into entertainment?

Steve: They should be flattered, of course. But just to be on the safe side, you should give them made-up names and descriptions that aren't all together after the reality. I wrote about my own sister and not in such a flattering way. And she totally missed it! Much to my disappointment.

izzy: I want to meet this guy AND his sister--shhh...don't tell! J

Mel: How do you make a PLACE entertaining?

Steve: Read a horror story. Haunted houses are very entertaining. That's because they scare you. Rowling's places are so imaginative, they delight you. That's entertainment. Again, the key, I think, is descriptions that appeal to readers’ feelings. Too much description is too show-offy. All the author wants to evoke is the reader's awareness that he is a very erudite, sensitive, poetic fellow. I also think that the description has to be there for a reason, it has to propel the plot.

kathyann: When trying to write a story using your own life experience, what if it is polio? Would this classify it as historical? It happened in the 1950's, which would make it those horrible school years from 1956 on.

Steve: I think it does make it historical. Fifty years ago is several lifetimes ago to a 10-year- old today.

Mel: I’m writing about a girl with AIDS. I guessed you’d call it a downer, but I think it’s an important story. I also think it’s very inspiring. How do I make that entertainment?

Steve: I think that inspiring is in of itself, entertaining. The girl's illness has got to be heartbreaking and that will appeal to your reader's emotions. Emotional involvement is entertainment.

Mel: I’m writing about child abuse. I think it’s very important to stick to the facts. I could make it nonfiction, I suppose, but I don’t want to name names. That’s why I’m keeping it fiction. What do you think I should do?

Steve: You could keep it nonfiction and just change the names and the places. I've seen that done in nonfiction that deals with sensitive issues. I think I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN by Joanne Greenberg was even written under a pseudonym. You have a right to protect yourself, too. But most of the time I think fiction is the route to go.

aquilla: Is autobigraphy harder than fiction?

Steve: Yes, I think it is harder. It demands a degree of self-awareness that fiction may not require.

wendyhaber: I'm so glad you are here tonight and I appreciate your help in writing realistic fiction. I wrote a story awhile back that I care about. It's about a boy who runs. The only thing in his life that works is running, plus he's good in school. I need to look at it again but I don't know what market would work.

Steve: What age is your character? Kids generally read about other kids their age or a year or two older. So if your runner is 12, your reader market will be middle graders. If your runner is in Jr. High School, your market will be young adults.

kathyann: When writing historical fiction, or any fiction for that matter, how important is it that you describe the setting if you are unfamiliar with it yourself?

Steve: Go to the library. Look up the Art Books. Do some reading of period books. Rent a movie set in the period. Do your research. Get a real feel for things. We need the voice of authority. Author/authority. It's our job. Readers expect us to know what we are writing about.

Mel: Can you give me some exercises that will help me be more entertaining?

Steve: Describe what was going on the last time you laughed out loud. Describe a face that was so beautiful that you were stunned. Describe the last time you were so happy that tears came to your eyes. What was going on then? Feelings, feelings, feelings! As long as there is a feeling in it, it is going to entertain. From my own experience with R. L. Stine, I know that horrific things are very entertaining.

Mel: I love tear-jerkers. I think a lot of people find them entertaining too. But for the life of me I don’t know how to make readers cry? Any hints?

Steve: Fascinating question! I wanted to make everyone cry at the end of THE GYPSIES NEVER CAME. So I read a lot of tear-jerkers. The best ones had characters who underplayed their emotions. The brave soldier who doesn't cry when his leg is amputated. The woman who carries on bravely when her lover leaves her. Remember the boy in BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA? He insisted nothing was bothering him when the girl died. In A DEATH IN THE FAMILY by James Agee, the family bursts into hysterical laughter when the father is killed in a car accident. In other words, your characters don't cry, so your readers CAN.

Mel: EXCELLENT advice, Steve! I've heard about an award you received for one of your books from Hillary Rodham Clinton. Can you tell us about that and how it came about?

Steve: It was given by the Arkansas Reading Association, which nominates 10 books or so every year and the kids vote on them. Of course Bill was Govenor of Arkansas at the time. Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea, who was 8 at the time, gave me the award at a dinner. Hillary told me that Bill had read the book to Chelsea the day before but he had laughed so hard that Chelsea hadn't heard a word of it so Hillary had to read it to her all over again the next day. I guess SHE wasn't so overcome with laughter because Chelsea got it this time. These people really knew how to talk to authors. I'd still vote for either one of them no matter what they were running for!

Eigna: What is the name of the book that won the award?

Steve: MY HORRIBLE SECRET.

Mel: Steve, you are such a FASCINATING storyteller that it's easy to see how your books for young readers have been such hits. But it's also not easy to break in here to say that our time is up for this chat. You've been here before tonight, and now tonight as well. If you could come back again sometime, I know our chatsters would be able to continue with even more questions for you. Could you do that, Steve?

Steve: I'd be delighted to come back. Thank you for inviting me. It's been such a treat for me. Thank you, everybody!

halnic: Thanks, Steve, for thoughtful, helpful info and responses!

izzy: Thank you, Mr. Roos, for a most enjoyable chat.

Mel: Two weeks from tonight, we will have the last in our Summer of Refreshment series when Mary Ryan comes to visit us. Mary will talk and answer questions about "Humor and the Middle-Grade Reader." Humor is a very difficult thing to write, especially for children, yet it is in strong demand, and largely because very few of us writers write it well. Mary Ryan is one who is very successful at writing humor for middle-graders, not an easy audience to play to. Come back on August 21 to hear and ask questions of Mary Ryan, another guest back by popular demand.

Mel: THANK YOU again, Stephen Roos, for not only great discussion of our questions tonight, but LIVELY entertainment in the process. You are one VERY entertaining speaker, as well as writer. And I'd wager that you have convinced many of us that our "ordinary" lives might be written into extraordinary stories. We so appreciate all you've shared with us tonight. And Steve and I appreciate all YOU who came to chat tonight. Thank you for coming, and WELCOME BACK two weeks from now!

sissyg: Thank you, Steve, for a very informative forum.