The Inspiration of Finn's Feather with keynote speakers Rachel Noble and Essie White

A touching observation from Roving Reporter, Shaye Wardrop during the SCBWI 2019 Conference Dinner Dance on the special relationship with US agent Essie White and Australian author Rachel Noble.

Rachel Noble

‘Never ignore the stories that come from your heart,’ says author Rachel Noble as she tells us the story behind the publication of her debut picture book Finn’s Feather.

I don’t think there’s a dry eye in the room as Rachel talks about the heartbreak of losing her darling boy, Hamish, and her passion and determination to honour him through her words.

After exploring different genres and using writing as therapy, the idea for Finn’s Feather came in a perfect moment. After rushing home to write it down, Rachel tells us she found a feather waiting for her on the front step and she knew she had found the story she was searching for.

My throat is full of rocks and tears well in my eyes as I listen to Rachel speak. She is passionate and strong and brave and amazing, and Finn’s Feather is a powerful and special picture book that helps kids understand death and loss in the most gentle and heart-warming way.

“STORIES HELP KIDS NAVIGATE EMOTIONS - AN AUTHENTIC STORY WILL HELP YOU HEAL”

It is a book for every home, every school, every library, and I urge you to find a copy and experience the powerful and magical story for yourself.

Rachel introduces the crowd to her literary agent, Essie White, of Storm Literary Agency, and Essie tells us how she met Rachel and her work.

Essie says, ‘stories can heal’ and ‘the importance of good literature cannot be understated’, and the crowd nods in understanding, knowing exactly what she means.

Essie tells us she ‘believes so much in the transformative power of literature’, that ‘an authentic story will help you heal’, that ‘stories help kids navigate emotions’.

She is so right, and we all sit quietly and ponder on these insightful words as she talks about her experience and extensive involvement in children’s literature over her career, about her love of books and her belief in the power of books to teach and guide children through their lives.

Essie leaves us with one more thought — one more piece of advice I will never forget.

Essie says,

‘this isn’t a profession; it’s a vocation. Do your best work because the best people in the world are waiting.’

Thank you Rachel for sharing your journey with us all, and thank you Essie for your amazing insights and powerful advice.

Shaye Wardrop

#SCBWIsyd

Masterclass F: Conquering the Slush Pile and Crafting Your Story with Diane Evans

Diane Evans – Publishing Director Big Sky Publishing along with, Allison Patterson – Author with Big Sky Publishing and publishing consultant, guide us along the path to publication.

Allison Paterson and Diane Evans

This session was a smooth as they come, the presenters shared valuable information at a good pace and were clearly comfortable in each other’s presence making it a joy to attend.

Big Sky Publishing initially only published nonfiction and books for adults but over the last few years have introduced children’s books.

Diane Evans works across the board of books and all areas of the publishing business within Big Sky Publishing.

Alison Patterson has a teacher-librarian background and uses her knowledge of children to write for children of all ages from picture books to YA.

Big Sky Publishing has a interest in information books with strong messages and links to the Australian curriculum. Diane suggest that authors look for gaps in the market.

It is important for authors to see and position themselves as entrepreneurs.

“Ask yourself why your book is different to the ones already on the market but do this right at the beginning.”

This is to save yourself work, if there is already something like it out on the market, it may be worthwhile focusing on another project.

“We are looking for authors to work with us on more than one book.” And from an international perspective are looking for books that can carry a series. Diane prefers authors to pitch her a series with strong selling points, and advises to include the first book and synopses for the next books in the series.

Allison used images from Ronald Dahl’s writing journal to look at where ideas come from. She also spoke about the importance of listening to the kids’ voices of ‘right now’ to find the ‘authenticity of the child’s voice.’

She talked about the importance of embedding fact in your story, even when writing fiction, and when writing historical fiction to stay a as truthful to the facts as you can.

“It is important to create a detailed backstory for you character, so that you know how a child will feel in any given situation.”

Diane stressed that publishers don’t have time to work on proposals with authors any more. A proposal these days needs to be polished and well researched as you usually only get one go at it.

“PUBLISHERS WANT TO KNOW WHAT AUTHORS ARE DOING FROM A NETWORKING PERSPECTIVE”

Enthusiastic master class delegates learning the secrets to publication success

Big Sky Publishing expects authors to do a lot of their own social media, do school visits and more. Publishers want to know what authors are doing from a networking perspective. It is important as an author to know what your strength is and to leverage it.

Phew. That was a lot to take in, but so invaluable. I can’t thank Diane and Allison enough for this session.

by Yvonne Mes

#SCBWISyd

Masterclass: E How to Hook and Keep Your Reader with Humour with Mira Reisberg

At Mira Reisberg’s keynote presentation at the beginning of the SCBWI Conference 2019 she said a lot of things that were not only true but also inspirational but one piece of advice stuck with me especially – always read picture books (or any kidlit book really) twice. The first time for pleasure and the second time for analysis. When you do this you will discover quickly what works and why.

Images of Mira’s Keynote presentation courtesy of Liz Anelli

A fantastic example for this is humour in picture books or middle grade. Fun and humour, if delivered well, will always make a manuscript better. In her masterclass Mira firstly separated the audience in picture books and MA analysists of humour.

Techniques considered to help induce humour to your writing (or illustrating) are:

- Anthromorphism (eg. A friendly duck doctor)

- Personification

- Dark humour

- Self-deprecating humour

- Irony/ sarcasm

- Hyperbole/ exaggeration

- Contradiction

- Incongruity or surrealism (talking fridge)

- Slapstick/ physical humour (slipping on a banana peel)

- Gross/ potty humour

- Contrast characters

- Parody

- Joke telling

- Mashups

- Surprise/ defiant humour

- Wordplay

- Visual humour

For full details on Mira’s presentation and a copy of the slideshow, click on this link, here.

Attendants were then asked to join an exercise by coming up with or using one of their own texts paragraphs and include the word “no!” as much as possible as an example of exaggerated humour.

Kids love when something they are faced with on a daily basis is incorporated and played with in texts. It hooks them in. The results were fascinating – loveable silly and funny texts that gave the original text a whole different, humorous approach.

The next group exercise was a fun play with fear. Attendants were asked to take an everyday stressful or fear-inducing event for kids and change the characters into Halloween genre characters. This character then had to tackle a fearful event and form a story of less than 500 words which showed the consequences, aftermath or celebration of this event, even including an end with a fun twist. This exercise was supported with a worksheet that introduced certain elements with the help of columns in a very structured way.

As an illustrator, I really enjoyed the exercise for introducing visual humour to a graphic novel excerpt. I chose contradiction as means to add humour and came up with the character of “King Ivan Important” – a tiny king who wants to be as significant as his big wife, the queen. In order to achieve this he buys himself a very long-legged horse and appears quite big now. Very much to the dismay of the queen who starts plotting against him. The play of contradiction between power and tiny body size could be very appealing in a children’s story. (Indeed! Can’t wait to see / read this one, Katrin. Ed.)

Attendants left this brilliant masterclass with a suitcase full of new ideas and worksheet material as well as Mira’s detailed slides.

by Katrin Dreiling

#SCBWISyd