How to use a door in fiction

According to Andy Griffiths, Maeve Brennan, Suzanne Leal and Magda Szabó

A writing exercise from Once Upon a Slime by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton

Part of the package of being a children’s author is doing school visits. As soon as your debut novel hits the shelves you may find yourself — with no training, unless you were a teacher beforehand — in front of anywhere from a handful to hundreds of students. The expectation may be that you’ll either talk about being a writer for 45 minutes, leaving 15 minutes for the audience to interrogate you as only children can (“How famous are you?” “How much money do you make?” “What’s the meaning of life?”), or that you’ll deliver a creative writing workshop. Even though I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve worked in schools and have an easy rapport with young people, I often feel the weight of this expectation. Me, tell anyone else how to write a story? Me, who exists in a perpetual state of struggle and strife with the written word, give instruction? What if I break something?

Early on I decided that a sensible thing to do was to consult the greats, so I read the creative writing manual Once Upon a Slime by the all-time bestselling Australian duo Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton. One particular writing exercise, Twelve Doors, stood out to me as something I could adapt to explain to children how I begin stories. It goes without saying that I always introduce my exercise as being adapted from Andy and Terry (I find this in itself builds trust with students since they’ve always heard of Andy and Terry and often don’t know me). Instead of twelve doors I have eight, and I use it as a method of building character from the core out by asking students to come up with four heartfelt desires and four fears.

I share my own first, a mixture of potentially funny phobias, fears that have a story behind them, wildest dreams and fundamental values. This is always a successful warm-up. The door is the perfect symbol: when we’re at the beginning of a workshop, everything we need to write meaningful stories is behind closed doors. Some students struggle to get going on their fears, insisting that they don’t have any. Their doors won’t budge. Others find the desires more challenging. But with encouragement they’ve soon busted down or gently unlocked the first door and then the next is easier. Pretty soon, the place will be buzzing: doors opening, fears and desires flying around the room. They catch each other’s, examine them, and either discard or add them to their list. And now we’re cooking with gas.

My reading this month has had a book magic quality to it and the theme has been doors and how to use them. It’s had such an influence that when I look back to the end of March, to what I was planning to write in April, I find that my reading has derailed me in the best way. I love being possessed by that kind of book magic.

It all started with the New Yorker fiction podcast.