Every once in a while a story comes along that is unlike any other. Dancing Birds, the featured story from our September/October 2015 issue, is such a story. What makes it so special? Yes, the characters and setting are exotic. A Welsh girl named Glas lives with her family in a French-speaking village in Quebec. Glas makes mechanical animals in her attic. She misses her father, who is in Denmark, helping his sick brother. She misses her grandmother, who has gone home to Wales. Then her cousin Maskine arrives, sad and silent. But beyond the unusual characters and setting, the story, by 11-year-old Ayla Schultz, is special for the mood it creates. When we finish reading it, our mood has changed too. We feel the sadness, the loneliness, and the final glimmer of happiness. We are in the world of the story. How does Ayla do it? Read the story carefully, and you will see that it is full of descriptions that engage our senses. We see Glas’s dark blue eyes and her grandmother’s red coat. We smell and taste the cinnamon hot chocolate. The bare trees, icy water, and freezing rain tell us how cold it is. But above all, sounds—and especially silence—set the mood of this story. In the first scene, Glas sits silently atop a sand dune, staring at the chilly scene below, thinking about happier times. When cousin Maskine arrives, she doesn’t say a word for weeks. Finally, she speaks a few words to Glas, then grows silent again. Maskine is deeply worried about her family back in Denmark. Sometimes the silence is broken by a doorbell, a knock, or a slammed door. The postman is chatty when he brings a letter. Then all is quiet. In the story’s final scene, Glas has invited Maskine up to her attic workshop. Glas silently hands her the key to a beautiful mechanical bird. From their one conversation, we know that the girls have a bond. They share a love of birds and the way they appear to dance on the sand. Maskine turns the key and the mechanical bird lifts it legs one by one, just like the birds on the beach. For the first time since she arrived, Maskine smiles. No words are spoken, and the story ends with this perfect moment of understanding. The next time you write a story, think about sounds. Which sounds will you include, and which will you leave out? Will your characters reveal themselves through dialogue or through their thoughts? Sometimes a connection can be made between two people from a shared experience, without any words being exchanged. See if you can create a mood that stays with your reader long after the story has ended.
Writing activity
Taking a Stand Through Fiction
Let’s say you have a strong opinion about something you see happening in the world. You know it is wrong, and you want to speak out. The most direct way to make your point would be through a nonfiction article or essay. But you could also convey your message, perhaps even more powerfully, through fiction. In the May/June 2015 issue of Stone Soup, 12-year-old author Evelyn Chen did just that. Her story, The Voice of the Seal, deals with a serious worldwide problem. Every year hundreds of thousands of ocean animals get tangled up in abandoned fishing nets. Many of them suffer and die. In Evelyn’s story, two cousins, Cordelia and Georgia, are staying at the family beach house when they both have the same nightmare. They are in the ocean, trapped in a net, struggling for air, drowning. The girls wake up in the middle of the night. They hear a voice coming from the beach, calling their names. They don’t know what is happening, but they decide to follow the voice. What they find breaks their hearts. In the blackness of night, they make out a dark shape, thrashing in the water. They splash through the waves and discover . . . a seal, caught in a fishing net, desperately trying to get free. The girls look at each other. The seal looks at the girls. They know what they have to do. For several hours they steadily work at the net, pulling it apart little by little. They are cold and wet, but they don’t care. They don’t stop until the seal is free. The girls head home, exhausted but happy. Were you drawn into this story like I was? Cordelia and Georgia are described so well that we feel like we know them. We can picture the cozy bedroom in the beach house. Artist Teah Laupapa’s illustrations help bring the girls and their summer home to life. When they hear the voice, we hear it too. When they see the dark form struggling in the water, we see it too. We feel the injustice of the innocent seal’s battle with the abandoned net. Why did this terrible thing happen? How can we help? I found myself Googling “fishing nets kill seals” after I read the story. I wanted to know more. Try it! You’ll see that many organizations are working on this problem. Maybe your family would like to donate to one of them. Evelyn’s story is not a true story, but it is a powerful story, based on the truth. Through fiction, she shines a light on a worldwide problem. By focusing in on three characters, Cordelia, Georgia, and the seal, she personalizes the problem and helps us understand it. This is what great writing can do.
It’s All in the Details (engaging the senses)
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, we chose “Leprechaun Rain” as the featured story from our March/April 2015 issue. This is not a complex story. Emma lives with her parents and grandmother on a farm in Ireland. Some of the family’s sheep are missing in a storm, and Emma sets out to find them. When she does, everyone returns home safe and sound. Even a simple story can be special, if the author fills it with little details that make the characters and places come alive. Author Hannah Ogden has done just that. Four of our five senses are engaged as Hannah describes what Emma sees, hears, touches, and smells in the first part of the story. The only light in Emma’s room comes from a flickering candle. Rain hammers on the roof. Thunder cracks overhead. The old farmhouse feels especially cold because of its gray stone walls. And when Emma’s dad comes in from the storm, his clothing smells of wet wool. Hannah includes vivid details in the second part of her story as well, when Emma encounters a band of fairies and leprechauns in the forest. A green haze rises up from their bonfire. The leprechauns wear green, while the fairies wear every color in the rainbow. The fairies’ song sounds like light rain falling on grass. The air is filled with the sweet smell of lilacs and fresh grass, of freshly baked bread and springtime. The lost sheep are there too, and Katie comes up to nuzzle Emma’s arm. These details make us believe this part of the story, even though it is fantastical. Yes, Emma did fall and hit her head right before she saw the leprechauns and fairies, but of course they are real, right? In addition to the details that engage our senses, Hannah has added another little detail that makes her story shine: a special understanding between Emma and her grandmother. They are together twice, once in the barn and once at the very end of the story. Both times, they seem to know what the other is thinking. In the barn, Grandmother Josephine assures Emma that the sheep will be all right in the storm. But when Emma looks into her grandmother’s eyes, she knows they tell a different story. At the end of the story, Emma keeps her encounter with the fairies and leprechauns a secret from her parents. One look at Grandmother Josephine, and Emma realizes her grandmother knows her secret. This bond between Emma and her grandmother brings a very human element to the story. Sometimes two people just click, they understand each other without speaking. The two fictional characters seem more like real people because of their deep connection. And speaking of making things real, illustrator Isabella Ronchetti has picked up many of the little details of the story in her beautiful illustrations (one of them used as the cover for our new edition of The Stone Soup Book of Fantasy Stories). We see Emma’s cold attic room with its stone walls, lit only by a candle, in the first illustration. Emma’s anxious face, with her light freckles and wild black hair, fills the page. In the second illustration, we see the magical clearing in the forest, the ring of toadstools, the colorful fairies dancing around a bonfire, the gold coins on the ground. Even the characters in silhouette are detailed. We see the leprechaun’s beard, hat, boots, and flute. We see Emma and Katie in lifelike detail too. We applaud both author and artist for using detail to create great works of art. Bravo, Hannah and Isabella!
