My All Star Team Of Characters

Hi, Chris Grabenstein here.

Writers have a lot of strange rituals. Sharpening pencils -- over and over. Putting together iPod playlists to write to. Burning incense. Eating Cheetos. Eating M&Ms. Eating everything in the refrigerator.

Me? Well, when I get done writing my 2,000 words every day, I give myself a treat: I play one game of NCAA 2012 Football on my Playstation 3. For the guys out there, I play Dynasty Mode. You know what I'm talking about. Boo-yah.

My cat Parker likes watching the little men running around the screen so much, he usually comes into my office the minute he hears the guy say "E-A Sports. It's in the game!"

I'm not sure if Parker is into football or just flashing, moving things. The game screen probably looks like a jumble of giant laser pointers to him.

These days, my team is Stanford. I didn't go to school there (I'm not that smart). I just like the fact that, at Stanford, every time a player does something good, like score a touchdown, he gets a sticker on his helmet. Hey, who doesn't like getting gold stars for a job well done? We're all really first graders at heart.

Also, I named my coach Stan Ford. (Yes, it takes very little to amuse me after writing 2000 words).

One of the fun things I do when playing my daily game of football is name the players after characters I'm working with in books. For me, it's a way to give those characters a life outside the confines of their stories. But, I always try to keep my guys in character when they play football.

For instance, Riley Mack, the uncommonly clever star of my upcoming HarperCollins title RILEY MACK AND THE OTHER KNOWN TROUBLEMAKERS has to play quarterback.

The guy is a natural born leader. In the book, he heads up a "Mission Impossible" type team of 12 year old troublemakers who right wrongs and defend the weak. He's sort of a new Robin Hood. His buddy, Hubert Montgomery, who everybody calls "Mongo" is a seventh grade so huge he looks like he has seven other seventh graders stuffed inside him. Mongo plays middle linebacker. Or Defensive Tackle.

Their new fifth grader friend Jamal Wilson is a flashy running back. Jamal is a bit of a showboat in the book and on the field. But, like they say, it's not bragging if you can do it. Jamal has already won the Heisman Trophy three times, including when he was a Freshman, which, in the real world, has never, ever happened.

The hero of my Haunted Mystery series, Zack Jennings, is still a bit of a loner when he grows up and goes to Stanford. So he plays wide receiver. Last week, he set a new record for passes caught and touchdowns scored. His pal, the super intelligent brainiac Malik Sherman, is a cagey cornerback and leads the league in interceptions.

Sometimes, the characters from my adult mysteries show up on the roster. John Ceepak likes to play for Army. Danny Boyle for Notre Dame.

But, usually, it just me and the guys from my middle grades books.

Writers need diversions that don't involve food, I guess.

And the characters? Well, they need to hop off the page from time to time and just play.

And, it's amazing how much more vividly alive the characters become in your head after you've won the BCS National Championship together.

The Dickens You Say!

Hi, Chris Grabenstein here.

Chances are, sometime over The Holidays, you encountered one of the most adrenalized authors of all times: Charles Dickens. His ghost story “A Christmas Carol” could become its own Holiday TV Network it’s been filmed so many times. Great actors such as George C. Scott, Jim Carrey, Mister Magoo, Yosemite Sam, and Oscar The Grouch have all played the character of “Scrooge.”

And, at its core, it’s a spooky tale about a man being visited by three other-worldly creatures. (Today they'd probably all be zombified vampires with issues).

One of the cool things about living in New York City like I do is being able to hop on a subway and head down to places like the Morgan Library. If you ever saw the movie Ragtime, it’s the building the Harlem musician Coalhouse Walker Jr. is holding hostage with a stack of dynamite.

This year, the MorganLibrary has an exhibit called "Dickens at 200." Britain’s first true literary superstar (there were riots on the docks when the next chapters of his serialized novels reached America) was born in 1812.

At the Morgan Library, I was ableto lean over a glass case (until the security guard informed me that such glass case leaning was verboten) and examine Dickens’ hand written manuscript for A Christmas Carol.

Here’s what it looks like.

So what great secret of writing do you see revealed in the great man’s hand?

It’s right there. Under the scribbly loopy ink.

Yep.

The rewrites.

Because the secret to all writing (even 200 years ago) is re-writing.

When I visit schools to talk about my Haunted Mystery books, the students do not want to hear about rewriting. They want to write their story down once and call it quits. It is perfect.

Usually, when students show me their work, one of the first things I say (after, of course, telling them what I like – and there is always a lot to like; you guys have wacky creative minds) -- is something along the lines of “You should do all your writing with a space between the lines.”

“Why?” they ask.

“So you'll have room when you go back to scribble out weak words and put in stronger ones. So you can scratch out or rewrite whole sections.”

I remember in Journalism school, we had to type all our news stories with triple-spacing. That’s so we could go back and edit in all that open space.

Of course, word processors make the rewriting much easier. You can delete, insert, undo the insertion and the deletion, cut, paste, and move chunks of copy all over the place.

What you can’t do as a writer is write it all perfectly on your first pass. Even if you’re Charles Dickens.

Another neat thing I learned at the Morgan Library was that before Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol" he wrote a story called “The Story Of The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton.”

A sexton is the guy who digs graves in churchyards. You probably know what goblins are. This Christmas tale was published in 1836 as part of Dickens' series The Pickwick Papers. A Christmas Carol was published eight years later in 1843.

In the “Goblins/Sexton” story, a gravedigger, who refuses to make merry at Christmas, is kidnapped by Goblins who convince him, overnight, to change his ways.

Hmmm.

Sound familiar?

Kind of like Ebenezer Scrooge, who refuses to make merry at Christmas, becoming a changed man after spending a long winter’s night with the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to come.

The moral of this story about those two stories?

Never throw out your old ideas. You never know when you might be able to change them up a little, do a major rewrite, and turn it into something better.

Years ago, I wrote a 120,000 word ghost story for adults about an evil tree that stood at the intersection of two roads and all the spirits trapped in that spot because of an incident that took place back in 1958. The book was rejected by all the best publishing houses in town. A few years later, an editor read it and said, “You know, this would make a great ghost story for middle grades readers…if you can cut it down to 50,000 words and make some major changes.”

Several re-writes (okay, about a year’s worth) later, that book became The Crossroads, which went on to win the Agatha and Anthony awards for best Children’s/Young Adult novel.

Now you see why I always double space all my manuscripts.

You have to leave room for some serious, Dickensian rewriting!