What do you call a bunch of librarians?  A pack?  A mob?  I hope it’s not a murder (it is for crows, you see).  Next month I’m presenting at the UELMA (Utah Educational Library Media Association) Spring Conference, where I’ll begin the session by pointing out that Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and R.L. Stine’s Welcome to Dead House are essentially (in terms of archetype) the same story.  I’ve never known any books to generate such antipathy in elementary educators as the Goosebumps books, so I’m a little worried that the session will end prematurely in some violent episode. 

If it doesn’t, I’ll claim much more than a foundational sameness between Great Expectations and Welcome to Dead House; I’ll argue for the following texts being riffs on the same elemental story: Pride and Prejudice, The Harry Potter Series, The Graveyard Book, Holes, Much Ado about Nothing, Fablehaven, A Wrinkle in Time, The Tale of Despereaux, Last of the Mohicans, Dracula, Dune, Little Women, The Illiad, and the books of 1 and 2 Samuel from the Old Testament (the story of King David).  And just for the record, I am NOT making a comment on the veracity or lack of such of scripture.  Archetypal theory is about narrative, not fiction; it addresses the structure humans apply to everything, including facts and events, in order to construct meaning.

Sound implausible, all those books being the same story?  Well, if you’re not a librarian you may have to figure out how and why this is true on your own.  Then again, once I have a presentation in my toolbox I’m not one to let it rust in there.  If things go well I’ll see about doing the presentation other places.  Then the world can share in the wonderful knowledge that Mr. Darcy is Darth Vader, Japanese Kabuki is only technically and cosmetically different from classical Ballet, and not only do all the world’s great religions believe very similar things, but that these things are taught using the same story that undergirds life.

I’ll let you know how things go next month, as always.  But next on the docket is LTUE!

Okay, as promised, some basics on my SCBWI workshop on May 6th from 7:00-9:00 P.M. The SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) holds a local group meeting on the first Wednesday of every month at the Downtown Library in Salt Lake City. Attendance is free for members and non-members alike. (On that note, if you write for children you really should join. The organization has different membership levels for published and unpublished writers, and it’s a great way to network and start traveling in serious writing circles. I believe they even have a mentoring program, where aspiring writers can be paired up with pros to work on their material. Not sure if they’re still doing that, but it’s worth checking. If you’re interested, go here.)

The workshop I’ll be presenting is on Conflict and the Narrative Mechanism. Basically, I cover why conflict IS story, and how different narrative elements (characterization, plot, POV, etc.) work together to form a complex, well-functioning machine. All too often, we storytellers conceptualize our work in partition; we sculpt our compositions element by isolated element. That’s like trying to build a car based solely on knowledge of how a piston works or the function of a spark plug. Specializing on a component can’t create a powerful machine; you have to understand the whole. Most writers, even published writers, don’t understand the whole narrative machine very well. Here are a few questions to help you determine if this workshop will be helpful:

1) What is story? I mean exactly that–what is story and why does it exist?

2) How does a story function? There is a specific blueprint to narrative, so what is it?

3) Why is story conflict–not narrative contains conflict, but narrative IS conflict?

If you know the answer to these questions then there’s no reason for you to come to my workshop (other than to experience my ebullient charm in person). If not, come. Really. Writing stories is, when you get down to the nuts and bolts, very simple. Not easy, but simple. In this two hour session, I can teach you the tools that comprise probably 80% of my own writing methodology. If you master the concepts of this workshop, you can write publishable stories. Period. Anyone looking for an undergraduate-level storytelling foundation will find this workshop useful–at least, I do my best to make sure this is so.

*****

If anyone tried to find Hasting’s on Saturday and discovered (as I did) that they’d moved the store on us, I’m so sorry about the mix up.  It truly wasn’t my fault, though.  Blame Google maps.  Or Hastings.  (Or Stanley’s no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather, if you’re a Sachar fan–and you should be.)  The store did not ask my opinion before deciding to move, darned ambitious retailer aspiring to impersonate a Barnes and Noble.  If they’d been satisfied with the hole-in-the-wall original location, I would not now be so put out. 

Despite the confusion, I think we made it (at least most of us).  L.T. Elliot, Scarlet Knight, my friend Sherry, and I enjoyed talking writing and critiquing each others’ work for a few hours after the workshop.  It was a very fun time.  As for the workshop, I think it went well.  Tried a group storytelling exercise or three, and we ended up with the following: a horror story about a demonic icon seeking to hide its own murderous sentience by misleading an investigation; a comedic satire about an arrogant writer who, rather than writing, acts like a total ass to “provide fodder for other ambitious writers who aspire to be like him”; and a paranormal romance about a woman torn between her spectral husband–confined to a particular window in a bed and breakfast–and a new suitor while she endures the matchmaking of her interfering aunt.  It was my first time working with Josi, which was great.  Walt wrote a book about a neighbor’s wife leaving him for a polygamist, which reminded me that I did, indeed, know Walt and it merely took that to remind me.  (So if I meet you some time and later can’t remember you, please understand that it’s because you haven’t written a book on polygamy, or cannibalism, or something else sufficiently jarring.  This is how I differentiate individuals, which may explain why I think there are only about fifty people in the world–though there are billions of models of these fifty people.  In fact, the only person who is a unique person and not a casting of a person is Neil Gaiman.)  

So to anyone who went to the workshop, I hope it was worth your time and effort.  As always, I love to hear from people about my teaching.  If you think the Spring Workshop was the most edifying experience of your life, please comment and tell me so.  Maybe comment twice, or three times.  If you found it vomit- or labor-inducingly painful, tell me that (though once is enough for comments of this variety).  Suggestions and requests for future workshops on similar topics are always welcome, as are follow up questions not answered Saturday.  So bring it on!