Clio is living at the Workshop
Mister Skye is sad, overworked. He wants to send Clio to live with Misha and Sorcha Wintar in Littleshire so that she can have a regular home life with someone to be a mother to her.
Clio takes this a personal affront and is angry and hurt. She hides in the attic to cry/collect her feelings/ be alone and finds an old puppet theatre. She watches the first part and it shows young Mister Skye meeting a beautiful, feisty mysterious Greylander, named Kit Ashlyn. Clio gets totally engrossed in the story when Mister Skye finds her. He is furious and shuts the theater down and locks it away.
The next day Clio tells Patrin how she feels and they enlist Mook’s strategy skills to find a solution. They come up with a plan to get Mister Skye’s girlfriend back from the Greylands. They figure that then Mister Skye will be happy, and that Clio can be part of their new family.
They find out where Kit Ashlyn is living and rent the house next door. Enlisting Mrs. Hogar to be their token grown-up. Mrs. Hogar goes along because she doesn’t trust Greylanders. Clio, Patrin and Mook concoct a plan to get to know Kit. They promise Hogar that if Kit isn’t a nice person and unworthy of Mister Skye that they will return home.
First, they see that she goes for a walk every morning. Clio sets up a lemonade stand hoping that she will stop and chat. A group of thuggy high school kids come and bully Clio. They first steal lemonade, then put dirt in it and are going to try to make Clio drink some. One kid is really psycho. Kit comes and intervenes.
Clio and Kit chat. Kit is an art teacher and is off for the summer. She is having classes in her garage. Clio says she’ll sign up. Kit is funny and super nice.
Things are going well although Kit sees Patrin and Mook dressed in their old fashioned Toymaker suits and asks about it. They make up a story about how they are working on a juggling act. Kit then says that she is making some signs for a local kid’s talent show carnival and that they should be in it.
Mrs. Hogar is trying to teach Clio to defend herself and Kit comes over. Kit and Mrs Hogar spar and it turns out that Kit is a really good martial artist. Kit and Hogar become friends.
Kit invites the gang for dinner at her house. At the table is a guy friend that is obviously into her. The guy is an events planner that is putting on the carnival. He’s a douche. He invites the gang to perform in the Kid’s carnival. Kit goes to the kitchen to get her potluck dish.
Just then Mister Skye comes in. He is dressed in street clothes and looks almost normal. Awkward. Clio watches Kit’s face. She knows Mister Skye and says hello. They shake hands. Guy Friend asks if Skye is part of the act. Clio jumps in and fills Skye in about the juggling gig. Skye covers and says yes he can juggle. He juggles some silverware, glasses, lit candles, amazing.
They have an interesting dinner. Kit and Skye spar and dance around each other.
When the gang gets home everybody talks all at once trying to explain what they are doing to Mister Skye. At first he is angry, then Clio tells him her plan about having a family. He says that Kit doesn’t like him any more but Clio says that’s not true that Kit obviously REALLY likes him.
The next day they practice for the carnival. Skye is shy around Kit. Clio is despairing. There are people dressed like clowns, which doesn’t help anyone’s mood. One of the acts is the group of psycho kids. They do motorcycle tricks and spew dirt on Clio.
Night of carnival. Clio does her act but mean kids have sabotaged it.
Then Patrin and Mook juggle the mean kid pulls up a metal cage around them and up into the air as a joke. The bike slips, Clio shouts out solutions. Hogar runs up the rope like a boss. Kit and Skye secure the rope. Crowd thinks that it is part of the act and goes wild. Mook and Patrin are saved.
Back at the house everyone is dejected. They think that the mission failed. Then Clio looks outside. Mister Skye and Kit are walking and talking, She takes his hand and smooch. Clio knows that everything is going to be okay.
Perhaps Clio loses Wilber for a while.
“Everything was in danger, everyone that I loved or cared about, my woman, my family. They would have been killed or sold to the mines. So I hid them, erased their memories and sent them to places where I hoped they’d be safe.”
Patrin looks at me like I’m five kinds of crazy.
“You know my dad?” I try hard to remember my parents. I’ve been living with Otto for so long that the memories are worn out. I remember sitting in mom’s lap, her reading to me at night. I remember riding on dad’s shoulders feeling like the queen of the world. There’s a shadow memory of my mom being sad, perhaps because my dad left.
roof, heck, I could buy five farms.
What if Clio went back to the Greylands and her adoptive family was very rich and nice?
-
I lost my family a long time ago.
“What kind of stupid are you made out of?”
“Do not mistake my caution for ignorance, young miss.”
Favorite trick
Learned from Joseph Conrad, the trick of comparing something abstract to something concrete. If we remember any of his phrases it is likely to be one of these images: “silence like a thin rain”, or a brothel madam’s kindness mislaid like a pair of spectacles.
The 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar
On Twitter, Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats has compiled nuggets of narrative wisdom she's received working for the animation studio over the years. It's some sage stuff, although there's nothing here about defending yourself from your childhood toys when they inevitably come to life with murder in their hearts. A truly glaring omission.
#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
#2: You gotta keep in mind what's interesting to you as an audience, not what's fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won't see what the story is actually about til you're at the end of it. Now rewrite.
#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like you're losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
#8: Finish your story, let go even if it's not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
#9: When you're stuck, make a list of what WOULDN'T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you've got to recognize it before you can use it.
#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you'll never share it with anyone.
#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it's poison to the audience.
#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What's the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That's the heart of it.
#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don't succeed? Stack the odds against.
#17: No work is ever wasted. If it's not working, let go and move on - it'll come back around to be useful later.
#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d'you rearrange them into what you DO like?
#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can't just write ‘cool'. What would make YOU act that way?
#22: What's the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
“It doesn’t matter if your lead character is good or bad. He just has to be interesting, and he has to be good at what he does.”
— / David ChaseBarnaby Conrad: On Writing
6 rules for writing a great story
1. Try to pick the most intriguing place in your piece to begin.
2. Try to create attention-grabbing images of a setting if that’s where you want to begin.
3. Raise the reader’s curiosity about what is happening or is going to happen in an action scene.
4. Describe a character so compellingly that we want to learn more about what happens to him or her.
5. Present a situation so vital to our protagonist that we must read on.
6. And most important, no matter what method you choose, start with something happening! (And not with ruminations. A character sitting in a cave or in jail or in a kitchen or in a car ruminating about the meaning of life and how he got to this point does not constitute something happening.)
Hone your opening words, for just as stories aren’t written but rewritten, so should beginnings be written and rewritten. Look at your opening and ask yourself, ‘If I were reading this, would I be intrigued enough to go on?’
And remember: Always aim for the heart!
Conrad is the author ofThe Complete Guide to Writing Fiction.
“First, find out what your hero wants. Then just follow her.”
—Ray Bradbury