Paper Boys

Whitby paper boy delivers the Toronto Daily Star circa 1940's courtesy https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Toronto_Star_paperboy_Whitby.jpg.

My Dad delivered both the Toronto Daily Star and the Toronto Telegram as a boy in the 1940's.  As part of the research for my picture book The Hockey Stick, I delved into the life of the paper boy. Henry Petroski's Paper Boy gave me a new appreciation for the job.  He delivered the Long Island Express, a New York paper, in the 1950's.

At one time, hundreds of thousands of paper boys delivered the news to neighbourhoods across the United States and Canada.  Many a paper boy rose before the sun, hopped on his bicycle to meet at the press office to collect his papers.  He would roll each one into a tube, an art form in itself, then stuff it in his sac.  He would sling the overfilled sac over his shoulder, mount his bicycle, and start pedalling down the street, a careful balancing act.  He would flip each paper onto the customer's porch, aiming not to get it in the garden, all the while avoiding vicious dogs.  He raced the clock, not only to be on time, but also to keep ahead of any approaching storms.  Often, he moonlighted as a meteorologist, always trying to stay one step ahead of the weather.  Occasionally, he moonlighted as a bicycle repair man after hearing a nagging squeak or losing a part.

Tired after completing his route, he would arrive  home where he cleaned and dressed his blister ridden hands.  Sometimes his parents would relay a message from the press office reporting a complaint of a soggy or late paper.  Saturday was collection day.  Some customers were prompt with their payment and some even gave a small tip, while others were always late paying their bill (or not at all).  The job carried quite a responsibility for a boy as young as 9 or 10.

U.S. postage stamp circa 1952 courtesy http://www.theswedishtiger.com/1015-scotts.html.

Six Ways to Establish an Electric Atmosphere in Your Story

The atmosphere is the mood or tone of the story.  It should draw the reader into the story.  It should enable the reader to imagine the world the writer is creating.  It sets up the expectations for the story.

A novel like Harry Potter is suspenseful and whimsical.  Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities is bleak.  Alice in Wonderland, on the other hand, is both sensible and nonsensical according to blogger Angela Gentry (http://study.com/academy/lesson/atmosphere-in-literature-definition-examples-quiz.html).

How do you, as an author, establish atmosphere?  Here are six ways:

1.  Set the mood for the story through an object, according to Angela Gentry.  She gives the example of a Terry Tempest Williams story in which a piece of fruit helps to set a dangerous tone.

"We smother the avocado with salsa hot chiles at noon in the desert.  We look at each other and smile, eating avocados with sharp silver blades, risking the blood of our tongues repeatedly."

2.  Establish atmosphere through setting.  Angela Gentry quotes the book A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

"It was a dark and stormy night.  In her attic bedroom, Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind."

3.  Description is also a tool you can employ to establish setting.  Use powerful adjectives and adverbs, suggests Esther Newton (http://www.writersbureau.com/e-zee-writer/august-2012/page3.htm).  She gives the example of a hotel.

"She eagerly hurried inside, her eyes soaking up the sumptuous sofas, gleaming floors and dazzling chandelier taking centre stage."

The reader imagines businessmen in suits and women in elegant dresses walking the halls of such a hotel.  Ms. Newton puts forward a second description which creates a very different atmosphere:

"She gingerly stepped inside, her eyes widening at the sagging sofas, the filthy floor and dull flickering lights."

The reader imagines a very different clientele at the second hotel.

When describing your scene, don't neglect all five senses.  Authors tend to centre on sight and sound, sometimes glossing over smell, touch and taste.

4.  Use weather to establish the atmosphere of your story.  Contrast a "cornflower blue sky with a bright sun" to a "grey sky with menacing clouds charging across it".

5.  Use the time of day to establish the mood.  If you are penning a ghost story, make it at night to darken the tale.  The season is also important.  If your story is about hope, make it in the spring, the season of renewal and rebirth.  O'Henry's The Gift of the Magi is set during the Christmas season, for obvious reasons.

"The Magi, as you know were wise men -- wonderfully wise men -- who brought gifts to the babe in the manger.  They invented the art of giving Christmas presents."

6.  Don't forget point of view.  Ms. Newton recommends the first person which enables the reader to feel like he is part of the story.  However, third person allows the reader to see the situation from the viewpoint of more than one character.

"It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived." (To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee)

http://www.collegehumor.com/post/6252353/this-is-so-funny

How Setting is Crucial to Your Story

Setting is the time, place and social background of your story.  Setting helps set the mood or atmosphere of the story.  It can also influence characters' behaviour, affect dialogue, foreshadow events, invoke emotion and reflect society, according to The Writing Place (https://thewritingplace.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/story-elements-importance-of-the-setting/).

As a writer, you can show setting by:

1.  Dialogue

A teenager from Chicago speaks differently than one from rural Kentucky.  Someone who orders a caramel mocchiato might be of a more sophisticated social class than someone who orders an orange soda.

2.  Weather

A hurricane might suggest that you are in New Orleans whereas a blizzard might suggest you are in New England.  Fragrant flowers infers springtime whereas swirling leaves infers fall.

3.  Foreshadowing

A dark, gloomy house foreshadows danger.  Flickering candles foreshadows romance or a religious ceremony.

4.  Behaviour

A story set during 9/11 would be a good place for heroic behaviour.

5.  Society

If our protagonist lives in Victorian era London, the customs are quite different than current day New York City.

6.  Emotion

Victorian era London, its streets filled with wide eyed orphans with rumbling tummies, evokes more emotion than present day London.

Darcy Pattison suggest turning the familiar into the unfamiliar.  For example, Where the Wild Things Are starts in the protagonist's bedroom but ends up in a jungle.  King Bidgood's in the Bathtub transforms a nightly bath into a wild adventure.  You can do the reverse as well.  Turn something unfamiliar into something familiar as Brinton Turkle does in her story about a Quaker family called Rachel and Obadiah.

No matter what setting you choose, make sure you have a working knowledge of the locale and time period.  If not, do thorough research before you start writing.  Here are some picture books and chapter books whose authors have done an excellent job of setting the scene:

Picture Books

1.  Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Judi Barrett)

2.  The Lorax (Dr. Seuss)

3.  Thundercake (Patricia Polacco)

4.  Ghost's Hour, Spook's Hour (Eve Bunting)

5.  The Hockey Sweater (Roch Carrier)

6.  One Splendid Tree (Marilyn Helmer)

Chapter Books

1.  Summer of the Gypsy Moths (Sara Pennypacker)

2.  To the Mountaintop:  My Journey Through The Civil Rights Movement (Charlayne Hunter-Gault)

3.  The Impossible Rescue:  The True Story of an Amazing Arctic Adventure (Martin W. Sandler)

4.  Crow (Barbara Wright)

5.  The One and Only Ivan (Katherin Applegate)

6.  Making Bombs for Hitler (Marsha Skrypuch)

https://www.papermasters.com/setting.html