World Book Day: Writing tips from Cressida Cowell and Charlie Higson

Cressida Cowell's tips for thrilling adventures

Setting

I often say that writing is like telling a really big lie – the more detail you put into that lie, and the more you base the lie on something that is true, the more the reader "sees" the story in their own mind’s eye.

When I begin a new book, I always draw a map of each new setting.

(If I was a film director, I would have a location manager to do the same thing, but an author has to be the director, location manager, cameraman, actors, continuity people and art director. They have to do every single job in a book.)

Once I’ve drawn a map of, for example, the Isle of Berk in my How To Train a Dragon book series, I know how large the island is, how many mountains there are, and exactly how long it takes to get from Wild Dragon Cliff to Hooligan Village. Imaginary places have to be consistent to feel real.

Then I describe the setting in a way that is startling, vivid and precise, so that the image of it sticks in the reader’s mind. (Your teacher or somebody clever like that will probably say I use "metaphors, similes and personification".)

After I’ve written the description, I stand back and I say to myself: "Will the reader be able to see that place in their head?"

Character

As with the setting, if you use interesting and striking language to describe your characters, they will come alive in your reader’s head.

The witch Excellinor is the most frightening character in the How to Train Your Dragon series, and so when I describe her, I try and scare myself as much as possible.

In the same way as with the setting, I then look back at the description and I say to myself: "Is that the scariest witch I can possibly dream up? Does she feel as if she’s about to leap out of the book and strangle you with her long bony fingers till you squeal like a piglet?"

If the answer is "no", I go back and re-write the description with added scare factor. I have to say I think I do succeed - the witch Excellinor just terrifies the toenails off me.

Of course, not all the characters are intended to be scary, but they are all intended to move the reader in some way. The description of Fishlegs as "looking a lot like a Daddy-Long-Legs with asthma and a squint" is intended to make you feel affectionate towards him, and the description of Gobber the Belch as being a "six and a half foot giant in teeny-weeny hairy shorts, who had leg muscles so enormous they had muscles of their own, and a beard like a hedgehog struck by lightning" is supposed to make you laugh.

Whenever I write, I am going back and re-reading, and asking myself questions.

"Does this description sum up the character in the briefest and most vivid way possible? Do I have characters that can make the reader feel the full range of emotions, so some can make you laugh, and some can make you cry, others scare the daylights out of you, and most important of all, characters like Hiccup, who make you think and reflect on what is going on?"

Again, if the answer to any of these questions is "no", I go back and re-write.

Dialogue is also important for building the picture of the character in the reader’s mind. Good writers are great at "noticing" things. It is really important to listen to the way that people really do speak to one another, and then your dialogue will feel real.

Motivation

Motivation is about the reader understanding why characters behave as they do. The How to Train Your Dragon books are written from the point of view of the hero of the book, Hiccup, so readers are almost living inside Hiccup’s head, and aware of Hiccup’s motivation, and Hiccup’s thoughts and feelings, right from the beginning.

Hiccup wants to impress his father, he wants to protect Fishlegs and Camicazi, he wants to train Toothless and not let everybody down. If he has to be a Leader (Hiccup isn’t really sure he wants to be a Leader at all, quite rightly, for being a Leader is a terrifying responsibility), he wants to be the kind of Leader who does the right thing and makes the world a little better than it was before he entered it.

But for the first 10 books, Snotlout, Hiccup’s cousin, is presented to the reader as just the bully and the thug who terrorises Hiccup and Fishlegs for no apparent reason other than that he likes to be a bully. So it is an interesting moment at the end of book 11, when the reader is suddenly and unexpectedly invited to consider Snotlout’s motivation. By the end of the sword fight between Snotlout and Hiccup, the reader feels completely differently about Snotlout.

The motivation of the characters, their thoughts and feelings, are what make us care about what happens to those characters.

Reading and writing stories are a way of making you consider what it might be like to walk around in someone else’s shoes.

Challenge or obstacle for the characters

The Hero always needs a challenge to overcome, and it concentrates the excitement if you add in some sort of time constraint. For example, in book four, How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse, one of the characters has been bitten by a Venomous Vorpent, and Hiccup has to find the antidote, the Vegetable-That-No-one-Dares-Name (a potato), that most unfortunately can only be found in the-Land-that-Does-not-Exist (America), before that character dies.

As you can see from the above, I took an already difficult challenge (finding an antidote before someone dies), and made it even more impossible by making the antidote something that can only be found in America – because Hiccup can’t possibly get to America and back again in time. This means that you take that excitement and you double it. The more pressure you put on your poor Hero-character, the more exciting the book is to read for your reader.

I often do this. I try and invent the most difficult obstacles for the characters that I can possibly dream up as a sort of challenge to myself, to see whether I can come up with a solution. So I’m often in the same position as Hiccup, sitting there thinking: "Ok. How are we going to get out of this one, guys?"

It’s a bit like playing oneself in a fiendishly difficult game of chess, in which I am Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriaty rolled into one.

"Ha! Ha!" I say to myself, in my Professor Moriaty mode, "Let’s see how clever you really are, Cressida Cowell…Can you get him out of that one?"

I then have a rather tricky couple of months when I start writing the next book and I have to actually think of the answer.

Sometimes I get a little cross with myself at this point.

But I have never been beaten…

So far…

Climax

The climax is where everything comes to a crisis point, and my own tip for this is, take it as far as you possibly can – and then take it too far. This is the moment you’ve been building up to for the whole of the book, so you owe it to the reader to make it as climax-y a climax as it can possibly be.

Taking things too far not only makes for a very satisfying climax, it also means that the reader feels that they might be in the hands of the kind of lunatic-author who lets anything happen.

And that’s kind of exciting.

It’s also a bit nerve-wracking, because the reader knows that things could get emotional.

If the reader feels that nothing sad or unpredictable could ever happen to the characters, then why would the reader worry about them?

Resolution

The resolution is the moment when everything comes right in a satisfying way. But you don’t want it to be too easy, too predictable, otherwise the reader will be bored.

Be unexpected. If your plot looks like it’s going in a predictable direction, make a sudden, unexpected lurch to the left at the last minute.

Ending

Ah, endings. Well, you see, we do not yet know the ending of the Hiccup books.

But endings are always sad things, even in happy books, because saying goodbye is always sad.

And I really, really wish that the Hiccup books never had to end.

Charlie Higson's tips for scary stories

Setting

What makes a good setting for a scary story? I think there are two types of setting and they are opposites of each other.

The first type would be a very ordinary and familiar place – your own home, your school, your local shops, say, or even a nice place you’ve been on holiday - and then have something weird or spooky happen there. Maybe aliens attack, or giant insects from under the ground, or zombies, or a nasty ghost starts haunting the place… It’s easy to imagine a story taking place somewhere you know, and it’s creepy to think that somewhere safe and ordinary could become dangerous and scary. Plus, think what fun you could have destroying your school with rampaging monsters.

The other idea is to set your story somewhere extraordinary, so that the setting itself becomes part of the story and part of what makes it scary. This type of story could be set on an alien planet, or a big, empty spaceship floating in space, or a dark and spooky old castle, or an isolated cottage in the middle of the woods, or maybe a monster’s lair deep inside a cave. Being somewhere weird and unfamiliar can be very scary and unsettling.

If you’re feeling really clever you could combine the two ideas, so that maybe some kids discover a secret portal to a demonic realm in the back of their classroom.

Character

If you want your reader to be properly scared you need to make them imagine that they might be in the story and it’s happening to them. So it helps if the main character is somebody the reader likes and feels sympathy for. It is good to have a hero or heroine who we really don’t want to see get hurt. Also it’s good to have a character who will get scared so that we will get scared for them, and you need to make the character as real as possible to make them come alive. Put the reader inside their mind, let them really know what your hero is thinking and feeling. Make the reader care about them. To make a character like this believable it might be best to make it someone of your own age, but if you want to make your hero a macho monster-hunter, an 70-year-old exorcist, a teenage witch, or an alien who’s scared of humans, then go ahead.

The other type of character that works well in a horror story is someone who’s not very nice at all. Someone we want to see get freaked out. Maybe they’re a show-off, or a bully, or a thief, or someone who has done something awful like murder a load of people. Then the reader will enjoy watching them being terrorised and getting what they deserve. This type of story is perhaps not as scary, but it is very satisfying and you can think up the nastiest, grossest death imaginable for this type of unpleasant character. You will have loads of fun chasing them around and then watching them being eaten by a monster.

And don’t forget monsters are characters too. Very important characters. What will your monster be? A weird kid with sinister powers? An alien with three tongues? A zombie headmaster? A teacher without a head (if you see what I mean)? Some intelligent slime? The ghost of a cat that’s been run over? A sinister green fog? A sinister green frog, even? Or a human-sized talking cockroach with bad breath?

Try to think of something new and original and a bit different.

And while we’re talking about monsters, another idea is to tell your story from the monster’s point of view. If you can get inside the creepy, disgusting mind of a monster you will really scare your reader.

Motivation

What does motivation mean? Well, it simply means – why do your characters do the things they do? Why, for instance, do they go to the spooky castle at the beginning of the story? Has the bus broken down on a school trip and it’s the only place to stay? Or perhaps your hero is a monster-hunter who has heard that there’s an evil creature there that needs killing? Or maybe they’ve been invited for tea by the vampire count who lives there? Or have they been told that the castle’s haunted and they’re going there to prove that ghosts don’t exist?

It’s always best if stories aren’t random. Events should happen for a reason and people should do things for a reason. Of course, one of the most important types of motivation for a character in a scary story is that they’re simply trying to protect themselves and stay alive. If your story started in a maths lesson and the teacher suddenly revealed that they were a flesh-eating ghoul and attacked the class, your main character’s motivation would be to try not to have their guts munched on and get away from there.

You must also look at the motivation of the "monsters". This is very important in scary stories. Why has a ghoul got a job as a teacher? Why exactly is the ghost haunting the castle? (What happened to them when they were alive? How did they die?) Why exactly is there a monster in the dungeons? Why have the brain-sucking aliens come to planet Earth? What are they after (brains, I guess)? Why are the dead rising from their graves, and what do they want?

As I say, a scary story is much better if it’s not just random.

Challenge or obstacle (for the characters)

A scary story is all about challenges and obstacles that are put in the way of your main character, each one getting bigger and nastier and scarier. You wouldn’t have much of a scary story if your character simply turned up at the spooky castle and killed the monster on the first page with a magic sword and then went home… (although, how about when he got home he discovered that there was something much, much worse waiting for him?)

You’ll probably want to build up towards your big scary scene, the climax of your story. So, before you get there, you’ll want to unsettle your reader and get them in the right mood, so you’ll need to think of some smaller scares and frights and jumps you can put in along the way. Build up the tension, add mystery and suspense, so that the reader isn’t sure what’s going on and what might happen next, but hint that it’s going to be something terrible! You can think of your story almost like a scary fairground ride – a Ghost Train or a House of Horrors type of thing. A ride you mustn’t let your reader get off.

Just a quick note on suspense and shock. Two useful tools for the horror writer. They are different to each other but are both good techniques to help you put obstacles in the path of your hero.

When you use suspense, you let your reader know more about what’s going on than the characters in your story. “A boy walks into his local shop…” That’s boring. There is no suspense. But what if we have just been told that a monster has got into the classroom and eaten the shop owner? Now, when the boy approaches the door we are shouting - “No, stop, don’t go in there…” That is suspense.

Shock is when something happens completely by surprise. This is much harder to pull off in a novel. It’s easy in a film - you simply have a loud bang and a screech and your monster jumps out of nowhere, filling the screen, and the whole audience screams. It’s never quite the same when you write it down. “Suddenly there was a loud bang and a monster appeared….” But give it a go anyway and see how you get on.

Climax

If you’ve been clever you will have studied the section on "obstacles" and written in a lot of different scares along the way, and maybe a few red herrings - scenes where we think something awful is going to happen, but it’s just the pizza delivery boy turning up, or a cat jumping out - but all the time you will have been building up to the really big scare at the end, the climax of your story. The climax can be anything, as long as it’s something big. Your biggest scare, your nastiest death, or the moment when all is revealed. Maybe we finally meet the main monster in all its disgusting glory. Maybe it’s the battle to the death with the vampire count, the ghost finally showing itself, or when our brave space troopers finally enter the alien camp and find the mother alien and her eggs…

Remember, scary stories don’t have to have a happy ending. Maybe your story builds up to the death of the main character. This is particularly good if you’ve chosen an evil character who gets what they deserve, but it’s a very, very scary climax to a story if the character is someone we like. Oh, no, they just can’t escape the curse… Mwuh-ha-ha-haaaaargh!

Whatever it is, always work out your climax before you start work on your story. It’s something to look forward to when you’re writing (and writing a story can be a long and sometimes boring thing to do). So, what’s the biggest, scariest part of your story? What’s the big reveal? What’s the surprise solution to the mystery that nobody was expecting? In a way you’re asking yourself the question, “what is my story about?”

Resolution/Ending

Lots of people have a really great idea for the opening of a story but don’t know where to go from there. I like to start at the end and work backwards. How does the story end? This way you always know where you’re going when you write your story. You’ve got a destination. It’s like going on a long journey – it’s always much easier if you’re heading somewhere. You can make detours along the way and take a different route to the one you first planned, but as long as you have a destination you’ll always feel that you’re moving forwards.

Endings are very important. The way a story ends - what happens to the characters - is how a writer tells the reader what the story was about. What the point of it was. And all the best stories have a point to them. You can’t just have a horrible monster come along, do horrible things to people, kill everyone and go home… unless you are trying to tell the reader that it’s a horrible, meaningless world… and that’s it.

It’s better if your reader has learned something, or if your characters have learned something. What was the terrible curse on the family? Why was there a ghost in the house? Why was the mad axe-murderer chasing the girl? How could that seemingly invincible monster be stopped? Maybe if the evil businessmen hadn’t dumped all that poisonous nuclear waste in the Thames they wouldn’t have accidently created the mutated monster that trashed London. Maybe if Billy had listened to everyone he wouldn’t have gone into that old dark house…

So – your ending should try to do at least some of these things:

1. Finish the story in a satisfying way.

2. Explain all the mysteries.

3. Leave your main character(s) changed in some way.

4. Teach us some lessons about life.

Here is how I like to end my books…

THE END

For more information about World Book Day 2014, go to the World Book Day website. To read the complete versions of these essays, and to see the rest of the writing tips from 50 children’s writers, go to the Storycraft website