Arts & Entertainment, Writing

In the Unlikely Event Case Study - Part 2

Lesson time 19:53 min

Judy calls her notebooks her security blankets. Take a peek inside them to see how she bridged information with imagination to fictionalize a story she personally experienced.

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Topics include: Keep Notes • Pull Details From Real Life • Brainstorm Names and Titles • Ask Yourself Questions • Round It Out With Imagination • Make the Connection

Preview

In going through the notebooks, I just pulled some pages from one of them, because I really wanted you to see what goes into it. This doesn't mean you need to do it this way. Why would you? But this is what's worked for me for so many years. And this is just one example. And in this case, I thought that I knew the whole story. So in the notebooks-- I don't know-- I found how much I didn't know and how much I wanted to put in the story. And that's what the notebooks helped me find. Example for you. This is now April 2011. And I think it was 2009 when I actually got the idea. And this is what it says. "Oi! Ugh! I read what I have. I have next to nothing. I have to start from the beginning. Help!" With a lot of exclamation points. It also says, "Who are these characters?" This is a really important note for me because it means I read what I had, and I didn't know the characters. And that was my job, to make you know the characters and care about the characters. So I had to dig deeper and deeper into who were these people. Because there was just an idea of them at the beginning, not the reality of who are they really. So I think those two notes-- I don't know. They mean a lot to me now. And I hope they mean something to you. The reading what you have and finding out, oh, I have next to nothing, what do I do? I go back. I go back to the beginning. And I try to go deeper, more layers, more complexity, more story. I have another page here that is shocking to me, that if I hadn't seen this, I would have told you that I knew all the characters on that day in 2009. And yet this note says, "Question. Could somebody be a reporter? Maybe Benny's uncle?" Now Benny became Miri. Name was wrong. She became Miri. And she has a young uncle. I thought from the beginning I knew that Uncle Henry was going to be one of the most important characters in the book. He certainly turns into one of the most important characters in the book. But on this day, I didn't know that. I wrote myself, "Question. Could somebody be a reporter?" And of course, Uncle Henry became the reporter that has all the by lines. And these are his stories. And he is essential to this book. But I didn't know it. And I surprised myself by finding that out. (WHISPERS) What else do I have? I have a note here about Natalie. And it says, "Dentist, privileged, siblings, housekeeper, eat dinner promptly at 6:00 so the housekeeper can go home, laundress in basement all day on Monday. No one tells Natalie anything about anything." This becomes Natalie's family. Her father is a dentist. They are a privileged family. The mother comes from money. She has siblings. She has a six-year-old sister, Fern, who is a very important character. In telling this book, I'm using a lot of young characters, from Fe...

About the Instructor

Judy Blume broke the rules. Her refreshingly honest children’s books were banned by hundreds of libraries and loved by generations of readers, who bought 85 million copies of classics like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Superfudge. In her first online writing class, the award-winning author teaches you how to invent vivid characters, write realistic dialogue, and turn your experiences into stories people will treasure.

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Judy Blume

In 24 lessons, Judy Blume will show you how to develop vibrant characters and hook your readers.

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