Interview with Stories for Children Copyeditor Neysa Jensen

Neysa is the SCBWI Regional Co-Director for Southern Idaho and Utah, a copyeditor at Stories For Children magazine and a writer in her own right. Welcome Neysa!

What's Your Pet Peeve:

There are so many. But I'd have to say my biggest pet peeve is when there is not a real story. A real story is more than a series of events. It has a plot. The characters have to be proactive, rather than passive things tossed about by circumstances. Characters have to take a stance and act upon their circumstances.

A corrollary to this is a story that "really happened" or is from the author's childhood 40+ years ago. So often, real events do not make great stories. It's fine to base a story on real events, but to make it a good a story, usually you have to add conflict, trim down the timeline, elminate the mundane, do away with much of what was really said, and let go of how it "really" went to create an intriguing story. Authors love to tell stories of their childhoods, but most children today live in such a different reality that they can't relate to the story. Historical fiction is great, and kids usually love it. But not when the story could be told in a contemporary setting by an author willing to share the important features of the story with a new audience.

What are some easily avoidable mistakes you see often:

Grammar. I know the English language is not an easy one, but the rules are easy to learn and understand. It boggles my mind that human beings who work with words as authors so casually abuse the rules of our language. I'm all for breaking rules when the situation warrants it, but most of our language's rules are there to set a standard so that we can all understand one another. If you're going to write, you should respect the grammar.

What's more likely to get accepted: a perfectly polished piece or a story that grabs your attention, errors and all?

That depends. (A phrase my lawyer husband taught me.) A perfectly polished piece in terms of grammar and usage that is a boring story is not likely to grab anyone's attention. (After all, my aforementioned lawyer husband writes perfectly polished pieces all the time, but I doubt the general public is interested in reading them for entertainment.) On the other hand, a really great story that is incomprehensible because it has so many errors and flaws is not likely to get noticed either. Obviously, the ideal situation for both authors and editors is a story with riveting characters, an intriguing and surprising plot, dialogue that really means something all perfectly polished and neatly presented. Given my choice, however, I'd rather work with a flawed, but great, story than a perfectly polished piece of pathetic prose (just had to get some alliteration in there somewhere). It's easier to correct errors than it is to try to pull a good story out of nothing.

If you could live in any fictional book world, which would you choose?

What a great question. I'm a wimp, so although it would be exciting to live in a world with pirates or scandals or danger, I would be too scared to live in those places. I guess that's why I love reading books: all of the adventure and excitement in the safety of my cozy chair.

That said, Avonlea (the setting for Anne of Green Gables) seems like a nice place to me. I would adore being Anne Shirley's kindred spirit. I wouldn't mind being a permanent guest of Elizabeth Benentt's after she marries Mr. Darcy. I could get used to that.

And the classic Idaho question...Fries or Tots?

Hmmm, both so enjoyably potato-based, good with salt and ketchup. I love really good fries, but I'm not opposed to tots. However, homemade fries beat them all, so I'll have to go with fries.

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