Podcasts: Video playlist

Presenter Welcome to Ask the Author, the podcast where kids get to ask published authors how they create their stories.

Presenter: Today we’re talking to Jenny McLachlan. We’re asking her about structure and how she plans what happens in her stories.

Jenny: Hi, my name’s Jenny McLachlan and I write books for children just like you. And today I’m going to talk to you about story structure, particularly how I structured a book called The Land of Roar.

Presenter: This story is about a secret world called the Land of Roar, that is hidden inside a folding camp bed.

Presenter: The world belongs to two twins called Arthur and Rose. When they were little, they made it up by playing games in their granddad’s attic. They filled it with dragons, ninja wizards and merwitches.

Presenter: But then they discover something amazing. The world they imagined has actually come to life inside the bed.

Presenter: Let’s hear Jenny read from her book, The Land of Roar.

Jenny: “We turn and run, but we’ve only taken a few steps before we realise our path is blocked. The rock behind us is now packed full of scarecrows. They’re more than I can count, and they are pushing and shoving at each other, apparently desperate to get at us. ‘Where did they come from?’ I whisper. ‘The raven’, says Wyn. Further along the magic road, Crowky’s battleship is tethered to a rock. It must have crept up on us in the mist. And now it’s creaking and groaning as waves smash against it. Crows circle around the sails, their caws sounding like laughter. I see more scarecrows jump from the deck. Then, like a swarm of scurrying creatures, they rush to join the pack standing opposite us. The scarecrows stare through mismatched button eyes. Wisps of straw float off them as they hunch forward, preparing to attack. Some smile, some snarl, their stick fingers twitch. Crowky is behind us, his army is in front of us, and all around us are the waves of the bottomless ocean. We’re trapped.”

Presenter: We’ve got questions for Jenny about how she structures her stories to make them more exciting to read. So, let’s Ask the Author.

Presenter: Is there a secret way to come up with the structure to a story before you’ve written it?

Jenny: The way I tend to structure my books is I begin with a question, and it’s usually a ‘what-if’ question. And I think of something that is so intriguing, so impossible not to want to know the answer to, that the reader is going to have to want to read the whole book to get to the answer, which will probably come towards the end of the book. The ‘what-if’ question that I had for The Land of Roar, I suppose there were two actually. One is, what if the games you played when you were little were actually real and came to life? And the second ‘what-if’ is, what if your grandad was kidnapped by a villain that you’d created?

Presenter: Is The Land of Roar based off real life? When you were little, did you have a mattress that you would pretend to take you to imaginary worlds?

Jenny: I suppose The Land of Roar is based on real life, amazing though it sounds because it’s full of things like dragons, when I was little I used to play in my Nan’s attic with my cousins and there was a folding camp bed up there and we would dare each other to crawl through the mattress when it was folded up. That might not sound very scary, but my cousins convinced me that there was something that lived inside the folding camp bed. So when I’d crawl inside the bed and the mattress would wrap around me and I couldn’t see anything, I used to be convinced that when I crawled out the other side of the bed, I would have gone somewhere else. So when I grew up, I suppose I made my dreams come true, because I wrote down everything I wished had happened when I crawled through that bed.

Presenter: Do you ever, like, change the order of things that happen in your books and is it, like, hard to find the right order? Or do you find it easy when you know the book you want it to be?

Jenny: I always know that my books are going to be told in chronological order from the beginning of the story to the end, because I write in the present tense, so the story has to begin at the start and go to the end, because the character is telling you the story as it happens to him - as it happens to Arthur. But I often decide that I’ve included things that I shouldn’t have included, or I just add things that haven’t been included afterwards. And is it hard? I’d say yes, that’s the hardest thing, is when you know your story isn’t quite working. You really want it to, because you’ve put so much time and effort into it, but it isn’t quite working. And sometimes you have to do quite big things to a story to make it work. And I bet you have a similar thing happen to you when you’re writing. Maybe your teacher suggested you do something or you’ve got a little feeling that you should do something to improve the structure of the story. You don’t really want to because it’s a lot of work. But trust me, those are often the moments when you make something go from being good to amazing.

Presenter: If you’re constantly adding new information into a book, how do you know when to end the book?

Jenny: I think that endings are both my favourite thing to write and the easiest thing to write in the story. So writing a book is a bit like pushing something very big up a hill and then suddenly you get to a point and you realise you’re close to the ending and then it’s like you’re at the top of the hill and the ball’s rolling down the other side and it just tumbles down. So I’ve always known when it’s ending and usually it’s because the challenge that’s been set at the start of the book has been achieved. I like to end my books with a little party. So it could be a real party. They might be on Mitch the Merwitch’s Island, swimming in the lagoon, or they might be in the attic about to get fish and chips. Actually, it nearly always involves food, come to think of it. When I get to the moment where they’re all relaxing and thinking about having something to eat, then I know that the story has come to an end.

Presenter: If you make a series of books, how do you make the reader come back to read the next book if you haven’t got a cliffhanger?

Jenny: You’ve just explained the biggest problem I have writing my books because each book on its own has to end in a satisfying way. But if it’s ended in a satisfying way, why would anyone want to read the next book? Because everything’s sorted out. So what I do is, I make sure there are enough loose ends in the book that’s come before, that I can then take them and form a brand new adventure in the next book. And one thing I do in The Land of Roar is the twins never explore the same geographical part of The Land of Roar. They always go to a new place or they create a new place or they set sail and they find something new. So because The Land of Roar is endless, the stories can be endless too. But it does mean the hardest thing I’ve had to do with this is create new villains. Because once a villain has either been sorted out or redeemed, they’re not a villain anymore and you need a new one.

Presenter: Thanks so much, Jenny. We just have one final question for you.

Presenter: Do you have a top tip for us about how we can structure our stories?

Jenny: My tip about structuring would be to think about four things. You need to open your story and you’re going to put your characters in a setting, so you’ll have some characters in a setting. Then you need to create a problem for one or more of those characters, then the next thing you do, and this will be the main part of the story, is show your characters resolving that problem usually they triumph, but hey they don’t have to and then an ending. And actually to write that in a story is really challenging so I would suggest you just practise writing notes for those four stages just practise the planning and that is easily as important as actually sitting down and writing the story. I spend I would say as much time planning as I spend writing and a lot of that planning time is in my head, and one thing I’d really recommend you think carefully about is that starting point. You don’t need to start when a character wakes up, gets out of bed, throw them right into the action - start as they’re about to be eaten by a dragon.

Presenter: Today we learned about how an author structures her stories.

Presenter: And how planning can make your writing even better.

Presenter: I’m going to ask what-if? To help me develop the structure the next time I write a story.

Presenter: There are lots more Ask the Author episodes waiting for you on the BBC Bitesize website. Just head to Bitesize Primary English to find them. Thanks for listening.