MOST of us do it in bed, but some prefer the steamy cosiness of the bathroom. Others have been known to do it in the back of the car. We are talking about — what else? — making up stories to entertain your children. For parents weighed down by the drudgery of childcare it has to be one of the most gratifying paybacks. Unleash your imagination and in return there will be someone to gaze at you adoringly, giggle at your jokes and beg you to tell it “just one more time” .
If you are a natural storyteller it is quite likely that even as you spin your yarns you find yourself indulging in a private fantasy. Children’s authors consistently top the bestseller lists. The number of children’s books sold each year stands at 44 million, an increase of nine million in the past four years. Waterstone’s reports a tenfold increase in the number of new children’s books launched each month. There has never been a better time to sell children ‘s fiction and it’s tempting to think that writing it is a talent latent in all of us.
Tempting, and also dangerous, according to Jacqueline Wilson, the new Children’s Laureate, who has written more than 80 books and recently celebrated sales of 20 million. Delighting your own child with off-the-cuff narratives is, she says “quite different from committing those words to paper in the right sort of way to appeal to children you don’t know”. Every publisher, she says, has a slush pile of manuscripts submitted by the earnest but hopelessly naive.
Waterstone’s and Faber and Faber have just launched The Wow Factor — a competition offering as its prize a publishing and marketing deal that most first-time authors can only dream of. Wilson is a huge fan of competitions. For those who need an entrée or a spur, she believes they are valuable tools. But aspiration needs to be tempered with pragmatism.
While every children’s author is different, Wilson believes there is one unifying thread. “Most authors I’ve met who write for children have vivid memories of their own childhood. Philip Larkin said his passed in a grey blur, and I cannot relate to that at all. People don’t like to think that children have deep emotions and fears, but they do. For me, being a child was a startlingly intense time.”
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Wilson, 59, the daughter of a civil servant father and antique dealer mother, grew up on a council estate in Kingston, Surrey. An only child, she had plenty of friends, but also enjoyed pretend games on her own. She despaired of Enid Blyton’s world, where parents had no money problems and brothers and sisters barely squabbled. “I used to read the problem pages in the back of my mum’s magazines and I ached for more reality.”
All children have underlying insecurities, which is why reading about someone worse off than themselves tends to be such a comfort. From Dickens to Rowling, orphans are a perennial theme. Wilson recalls encountering Jane Eyre, her first classic. “To be truthful, I probably only read the first few chapters, in which Jane is living with her horrible aunt, but I read them again and again.” Women like Charlotte Brontë’s cruel Mrs Reed in Jane Eyre can be found throughout children’s literature and are the backbone of Roald Dahl’s stories. “Most adults in his books are cruel, unfair and unpredictable, and that is the way adults often seem to children,” Wilson says.
Characterisation is always her starting point. “I don’t plan my whole books out, but I do try very hard to think about the people in them. They are totally three-dimensional to me. I play games with them in my head. I have a rough idea of the plot, but I like to give myself the freedom of starting to write and finding out what is going to happen as I go along.”
Pace and structure is, she says, “something we all struggle with. It is important to work out roughly what you want to say in each chapter, but remember that it won’t always turn out that way.” It is also important to get started. “Lots of people give up because they can’t find a dynamic first paragraph. Why not start blandly? You can always go back. Most authors rewrite their first chapter entirely.”
Wilson believes that that first chapter has to hook the reader from the off. “Too much description at the beginning, too much setting up the hero or heroine — you don’t need that. Get on with the story.
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“One of the most brilliantly obvious things to say — something I remember from one of those ‘teach-yourself-to-write’ books I read as a child — is show, don’t tell. Always much better, rather than saying that Sebastian is a foul, spoilt child, to have a scene in which you demonstrate just what a hateful show-off he is.”
Wilson has been storytelling for as long as she can remember. “I do think it is something that chooses you, rather than the other way round. You just can’t help it.” A complete technophobe, she writes as she always has done, in longhand, into notebooks. “Many writers say they work a nine-to-five day, and if that works for them, that is wonderful, but I would go completely crazy with boredom. I much prefer short, sharp bursts.”
It is difficult to imagine an author less grand and more equable than Jacqueline Wilson. But, in the nicest possible way, she is quick to correct those who think that what she does comes easily. “I quite often meet people who think children’s books somehow require less effort — that they are the sort of thing you do, like an apprentice, until you go on to grown-up writing. Few successful children’s authors look upon their work like that. They write passionately for an audience that they feel they really know.”