I absolutely LOVE writing the middle grade series for my daughters. One because they’re books for my daughters. How cool is that!?
But also because they offer the opportunity to get truly silly in a way that doesn’t usually work in my adult fiction. Here’s an example of recent first draft writing from The Pharaoh’s Curse…
“Freddy waited in the car while Dad, Ben, and I headed for the nearest dilapidated container building. Dilapidated means old and run down and junky. I haven’t confirmed it yet, but I think it came from the phrase “Dila pidated.”
Like some girl named Dila who only liked fancy things ended up going to a grosscious place and she pidated. Which I’m guessing means made an awful shocked sound and then passed out from how horrible it was.
She got so famous that everybody knew about her and how she reacted to things that weren’t fancy. And pretty soon, any time someone went somewhere old and junky, they’d tell the story about how Dila had been there and how she saw the thing and promptly pidated. Even if she’d never actually been there and never pidated there. They’d still tell it like it was a true story and everybody believed it because they knew how she was.
And after hundreds of years, people shortened the long story of what happened to just saying “Dila pidated”. Then a few hundred more years passed and everyone forgot all about Dila and who she was and just remembered that old junky stuff was dilapidated.
Like I said. That’s a working theory right now. I’ll back it up with research later someday when I have more time.”
Yeah, my mind can be a wonderfully weird place to hang out!
Now, that’s really clever, as well as educational…
Hahaha. I’m always trying to sneak in educational value! 🙂