From my reader: “Nobody realizes the bad plots in their life story until they have witnessed them in someone else’s. As soon as I read The Naked Mole-Rat Letters I realized that my plots were the same as Frankie’s…these were not the plots I wanted to have in my life story. I didn’t want to have a poor relationship with my dad anymore; I wanted to build a new strong one, so I decided to make a change. I decided to go and have an open discussion with my dad. This changed my whole life story; in fact it changed my whole family. Families are like baskets, every piece has to be woven together just right, or it will all fall apart. Before reading The Naked Mole-Rat Letters my family was a collapsed basket, however it now stands strong and proud because of you.”

I’m so grateful that this reader shared her story with me. For all of you out there who are writing…remember that you never know who you might touch.

One of the students in my Fiction for Young Readers class asked what she should focus on when she’s reading the novels I assigned.

First of all, I read for enjoyment, of course; but I do analyze books as I read, and I do it on two basic levels. Think of a house. You’ve got the individual planks of wood (those are sentences); and then you have the entire structure (the story). When I’m reading on the sentence level, I’m looking at the quality of the writing: fresh metaphors, rhythm, sentence construction. When I’m reading on the structure level, I’m thinking about whether or not the story works and how it was constructed.

On the story level, I analyze by asking myself questions: What is the heart of the story? If you boil it down to its most basic form, what is the story about? Try to define this in just one or two sentences. Usually, the heart of the story comes from looking at what your main character is yearning for and what gets in the way of him/her. This is basic Aristotle.

Then I look closely at the climax. Stories that work have climaxes that spring forth in an organic and inevitable way from the story’s heart. Identifying and analyzing how a writer moves from heart to climax is a simple and excellent way to get STORY into your bloodstream.

Some great books that emphasize the importance of understanding basic story structure:
William Gibson’s Shakespeare’s Game (yes, plays work the same way)

Darcy Pattison’s Novel Metamorphosis

Kids write the best fan letters. “It made me feel verry alive.” That’s how a fourth grader from Middletown Elementary School described the experience of reading. From time to time I find the same comment, though not always spelled the same way, in my fan mail, and it always makes me stop and marvel about the power of story. Why does reading a story about someone else make us feel alive? Want to explain your theory?

Illustration by Eric Brace for Please Write in This Book by Mary Amato

“Tinker, Tiger, Robot, Spy: Wearing Masks, Children Can Do and Be Anything” by Mary Amato, Mothering Magazine.