Monster Hunter

by Anthony Pearson

Jackie scrambled behind the couch.  She checked The Beast Menagerie.  (her favorite book.  She’s read it like a million times).  The hairy foot.  The long curling toe-nails.  The scraping sound on the floor as it shuffled through the house.

It had to be the Ancient Gray-Footed Troll.  (favorite food: goldfish.  sleeping habits: nocturnal.  Magic Powers: None).

“Jackie, what are you doing back there.”  It was mom.  With breakfast.

“GAH!  You let him get away!  Can’t you see when I’m trying to catch an Ancient Gray-Footed Troll?”

“Sorry, dear.  I made you toast.”

Jackie ate breakfast.  But her mind was on the day.  Today was THE DAY.  The day where she finally, FINALLY, caught her first monster.  She was going to be the youngest monster hunter in the history of history.  They’d probably even put her picture in the back of The Beast Menagerie, right next to all the other famous monster hunters.  (Her favorite was Artimus Finkle.  He had caught 9 monsters in one year!)

The basement was another great place to catch a monster.  The Squid-Tooth Crunchbone (likes: crunchy animals, favorite food: porcupines) was known to lurk in dark corners near musty old clothes.  There were no clothes mustier than her dad’s yard clothes.

She heard it.  She heard the low grumble of the Crunchbone’s stomach.  The womp womp womp of it chewing through old power tools and the sewing machine.  “This is it,” She whispered to herself.

It was Michael.  He was home from college.  Washing clothes.

“Hey squirt.  Whatcha doing?”

“You aren’t the Squid-Tooth Crunchbone!  You scared it off!  Thanks for nothing!”

She moped her way to her room.  This wasn’t going to be easy.  The life of a Monster Hunter was not easy.  Jackie couldn’t give up.  That’s not what the next great Monster Hunter would do.

Where to go next?  Where would a monster put it’s lair?  She flipped through The Beast Menagerie.

Ah-ha!  That’s it!  She pulled the cord in the hallway.  Thump.  She pulled down the ladder.  Clomp.  Dust trickled and must stenched it’s way down the ladder.

Jackie smiled as she stared up into that dark space.  Of course!  Why hadn’t she thought of the attic before?  It would be a perfect place for the twitchy-legged, bug-eyed, Marmalark (sleep habits: never, favorite drink: coffee).

The Marmalark was quick.  It was twitchy.  She knew it was no time for lurking.  Sneaking was out of the question.

CHARGE!

(next pages in total darkness except for the small light from the attic entrance)

“I GOT YOU!”

No!  It was getting away!  She crashed around in the dark.  There was pushing and shoving–she couldn’t see a thing!  Booms.  Bangs!  Crashes!

The light flipped on.  Jackie had not caught the Marmalark.

Dad asked, “Jackie, please tell me you have a good reason for destroying the attic in the dark.”

Jackie let go of the coat tree.

She explained it the best she could.  “The only way to catch the Marmalark is to move fast.  I didn’t want to break everything.  I’m sorry.  I’ll clean it up.”

A million hours later, Jackie was in her tree house.  What a terrible day.

Then a sound drifted in…”Ma-Scree!  Ma-Sckaw!”

Ma-Scree?  Ma-Sckaw?

She called back, “Ma-Scree!  MA-SCKAW!”

And there, perched on the chimney of her house, was a Flying Wombus (Habitat: Dirty places.  Favorite Food: Soot).

She slowly walked out of her tree house.  She slowly went and got the ladder.  She slowly made her way up the chimney.

All the while talking to the Flying Wombus.

“Ma-Scree!  Ma-Sckaw!  Ma-Scree!  Ma-Sckaw!”

This was her chance.

One…Two…THREE!

(image of her leaping, grabbing the Flying Wombus’ wing, but then it spins and flies away.  Jackie falls into the chimney)

This was bad.

Her mom and dad had many words for her. (image of dad and mom fussing and yelling at her, Jackie is sitting at the bottom of the chimney covered in soot, a la Mary Poppins)

Michael  had to fix part of the chimney she broke.

She was in trouble for a billion years.

But worst of all was the fact that she never caught her monster.

That night after dinner she went to bed.  An awful day.  A terrible day. she was the worst monster hunter ever…

(image of a note on her bed with a large colorful feather taped to it)

“Hey Squirt,

When I was fixing the chimney I found this.  Never seen a feather like it.  Is it yours?

love,  Michael”

(image of Jackie smiling, laying on top of her bed, holding the Flying Wombus feather, her Beast Menagerie flipped open next to her)

But no one ever said Monster Hunting was easy.

In Part 1, the conceptualization happened when daughter decided that she was done playing.  Here in Part 2, we’ll be focused on Pre-Writing and the Rough Draft.  With pre-writing, I’ll be jotting down some notions that I’ve had in my mind for the story.  Pre-Writing is also where I set some of the direction for the story.  In the Rough Draft part, I’ll actually put some of those notions into action.

Pre-Writing–have an idea about the conflict

So I’ve got this concept.  A little girl is hunting monsters, but life keeps getting in her way.  I like the concept because the plot of the story seems ready for launch.  For those interested in writing (or writing picture books), it’s important to know where to find the conflict.  You’ve got around 1000 words to tell a story from beginning to end.  Each word counts!

The conflict as I see it, is between the girl and nature (or reality).  She really wants to find this monster.  It should go smoothly if it weren’t for: her mother, the weather, her rotten sister, etc.

Also during pre-writing, it’s a great time to compare what might be similar. There are millions of picture books out there, so it’s important to see what has been done and how it was done well.  Note: this isn’t to say, “That story is already been done.  Think of something new!”  In life, there are VERY FEW new stories.  Comparing your story to other stories is a way to see what that other author did well, what “mechanics” (if you will) work for the story.

Since I’m going to be playing around with Reality vs. Fantasy, there’s a huge selection of picture books to consider.  One quick comparison that immediately comes to mind to me is “There’s an Alligator Under My Bed” by Mercer Mayer

The main character is out to catch an alligator (my main character is going to try to catch a monster).  His parents can’t find it, so it’s up to him.  This little story plays up the idea of what is real and what is not.  Is there REALLY an alligator under his bed?

What is even more interesting, in my opinion though, is how main character doesn’t care about proving there is an alligator, he KNOWS there is an alligator and he wants it GONE.

I think it’s how fast the main character jumps toward solving the problem that I find inspiring.  It’s something I’ll be thinking about while I write.

As for the truth about the alligator?  The reader never gets to know.  I like that too.

The Rough Draft

Oh boy.  Here we go.  So in the rough draft, I’ll be trying to stay focused on simply getting the story from start to finish.  There’s going to be A LOT of re-writing, but I want to keep a couple things in mind.

1)Keep pushing through, even if I feel stuck–even if I write myself into a corner, I can just come back later

2)Be aware of the word count, but don’t be married to it.–the very first rough draft should be about getting the ideas down.  Word choice is essential in picture books, but it’s important first to see how the story flows.

3)Keep in mind, this is the first draft!  Try to keep focused on what I see in my mind, but don’t be so locked in that the story can’t breath and improvise.

Ready?  Ready.  On your mark, get set…GO!

Hi everyone,

As a fun exercise, I decided that I’ll share with you all the way that I come up with a picture book story, to writing the draft, to going through editing, to then looking around for publishers and agents where it could possibly be a fit.

Lots of people share a lot of ideas about the “writing process”, but I thought it would be interesting to actually show my work in progress as I chug along.  Hopefully this will be as interesting for you as it is for me.  Who knows, I might even get a neat little story out of this.

So let’s start with CONCEPTUALIZATION

In my previous post I talked about Rory’s Story Dice and how that is a great way to get the creative juices flowing.  But of course, like anything else, there is no one way to “discover a story” that rests inside your mind.  Many times, life will also just kind of hit you over the head and say, “THERE!  THERE is a story!”

And such a thing happened to me today.

We live right near a civil war battlefield and my wife and I took the kids for a walk through it this morning.  Right near the entrance of the walking path, there was part of an old brick sidewalk. Most of it was covered up with asphalt, but there was some you could see.  It was only about three feet in diameter and kind of oval shaped.  I’m not sure why the park people decided to cover up the brickwork, but it seemed like they did so a long time ago.  Not that this mattered to my daughter.

Ella said, “Look!  A clue!  It’s a brick monster’s footprint!”  And she wouldn’t stop talking about our search for the brick monster.  As we walked through the park she would run over and look at trees, rocks on the ground, or even dead bugs–all in the name of discovering this brick monster.

When it was time for us to go home, I asked if she wanted to draw a picture of the brick monster.  She did and this is what she drew (which is now taped to our front door–should the brick monster show up)

Which is not exactly what I thought a brick monster would look like.  I kind of pictured the Thing from the Fantastic Four.  But of course, we’ve been reading Korgi (by Christian Slade [which you should go buy!]) and in Book 3, the bad guys look like this:

Anyway, Ella and I kept up this brick monster hunt for most of the morning.  I hadn’t been thinking about picture books in particular; I just wanted to enjoy her creative play for as long as possible.  It felt like one of those mornings where life was great as a dad.

We were wandering around the backyard.  She had a plastic baseball bat.  I had my cup of coffee.  When all of a sudden, we walked out of the shade and it got a bit hot.

Ella said, “I’m tired.  I’m going inside.”

I found this incredibly funny.  Here we are, exploring the backyard for the nefarious brick monster, she’s wielding a magical bat (dipped in the “power water” from the purple dinosaur kiddie pool), and a bit Georgia heat caused the entire story to come crumbling down.

That, to me, had the rumblings of a story in it.  So much so, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  How kids play.  How their imaginations work.  How kids can swim in and out of these amazing fantasy worlds and then run to their parents when they need a snack.

It seems like a pretty fun idea to play around with.

So with play time having come and gone, here’s what I came up with for my story:

1. The main “gimmick” is going to be the interplay between a grand adventure and small events that bring everything back to a mundane reality.

2. The main character is going to be a girl.  She’s going to be on a monster hunt.

I have no idea how the story is going to end.  I’m not really sure what the events will be.   I’m not even sure if I’ll go for a sweet funny story or something just a bit bizarre/zany.

That said, my mind is now rolling ideas around with my concept.  In my next post, I’m going to take my 2 “knowns” and put together the first draft.  After that, I’ll be taking that draft to my critique group to see what they think.  Then we’ll head into rewriting (and rewriting and rewriting).

Stay tuned!

Anthony