Guest Author - Michelle Anne Cope

Where is the Bathroom?
One of my favorite authors is Beverly Cleary, and one of her characters, Ramona Quimby, is the perfect little girl when it comes to questions. Ramona is very creative, energetic and curious. In one of Cleary’s stories, Ramona’s teacher is reading Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel written by Virginia Lee Burton. Ramona interrupts the teacher to ask where Mike uses the bathroom. Good question, right? Ramona knew that being in a hole away from a bathroom may cause some problems. Ramona’s teacher tries to assure Ramona that all is well in the matter, and that bathrooms aren’t really part of the story – it’s not important. Finally, she just says the author left it out.

Cleary did a great job here. The explanation of the author just leaving the bathroom out is a good one, but Cleary stayed true to her character. She couldn’t just let Ramona accept a no-bathroom answer. That’s not who Ramona is, so Cleary allowed Ramona to speculate because, well – using the bathroom is one of the most important things there is when you are five and in kindergarten.

As an adult, I might have just accepted the explanation, however, a child hearing the story or reading the book can really relate to planned bathroom breaks and the forever question of “Do you have to go?” as part of their lives. Cleary was true to Ramona and her personality. In this way, she kept a bond with her readers and their feelings and questions about the matter. As an adult reader, it gave me a true picture of a child, and I’m sure as a child, it would make the best of sense because bathrooms are indeed important. Children probably cheered Ramona for asking.

How Can We Be Real?
What about us? What about our fiction writing and the plots and settings we use. We probably can leave out the hygiene habits of our characters, but we have other things that could cause questions. How real do we have to be and what kinds of things could cause us some unanswerable questions?

Don’t worry; let me assure you that I’m not trying to discourage you from building magic kingdoms or making giraffes juggle or frogs jog. By all means, create, create and create more. You can make all kinds of lands, animals, and castles. What I’m talking about is staying real in the world you made as well as keeping the characters you’ve created true to their personalities and settings.

Let me say it simpler: don’t make someone or something one way and then change it to another way without an explanation or process.

Animals Talk and a Princess Can’t Swim
Pigs, rats and spiders all talked in Charlotte’s Web, in fact they talked so well that every time I read the book, I often forget that animals can’t talk, or *wink* at least I can’t hear them. However, E. B. White was perfect in his portrayal of each character and he stayed true to their personalities. Wilbur was never able to save himself. He was actually a little timid, and White kept him true to that trait, only letting Wilbur get braver and finding more self-confidence as the story evolved. It was believable because White showed us the process, it didn’t just happen.

Remember the rat? Templeton didn’t easily agree to help Charlotte with her search for words for her web. He was grumpy and mean in the beginning and it took Charlotte pointing out why he would benefit before he agreed to find magazines as well as look for leftover food on his nightly dump raids at the county fair. We would have been a little thrown off if Templeton had suddenly turned all nice and helpful after being a little “ratty” throughout the story.

I think that sometimes, when we write, we know what we want to happen, and we want to get there or make a change and we forget that we have to be true to the character’s abilities and personality. We also may forget to stay true to our settings. We can’t have a princess “just” escape from a castle if in the previous chapter we surrounded it with giant princess eating toadstools. We have to stay honest and find a way to get rid of the toadstools. Also, if the princess couldn’t swim across the lake that surrounded the castle before the toadstools were there – because she doesn’t know how – we can’t expect her to suddenly swim across the soda pop lake in the forest once she’s rescued. She’s going to need to ride on that handsome prince’s shoulders. Or, take a magic swim pill.

We have to take our time and write real. We need to really think about the characters, things, and places we create. We need to make sure they are consistent and real in “our” fiction worlds.

Who knows when we might have a “Ramona” reading our stories?

Read, Write, and then Write Some More!
Chel