Koala Lou: "She Loves Me. She Loves Me Not."

Creative Writing Tutorial No. 1.  This is for Quincy and everyone else interested in creative writing. There is no age limit.

Koala Lou: "She Loves Me. She Loves Me Not."

 

Sometime in 1990, I attended  a Creative Writing Workshop led by the award-winning Australian author Jackie French at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.

            I adored Jackie French and I savored every word she said. But we had a conflict!

            I couldn’t see eye to eye with her regarding conflict. She told me in no uncertain terms that conflict there must be between my main characters. Stubbornly, I maintained that there wasn’t any conflict between them because they loved each other.

            How naïve of me!  How stupid!

            Just to be polite to Jackie French, the guest facilitator from Australia, I half-heartedly threw in a contrived conflict into my workshop story.

            Let’s fast-forward to 2013. My grandson asks why there’s always an antagonist who makes the life of the protagonist miserable. By way of a reply, I ask him questions.

            “If Harry Potter didn’t have an unloving and mean foster family – the Dursleys - would you emphathize with Harry as much as you do?

            “If Harry Potter didn’t have mean classmates and professors at Hogwarts School, would you have rooted for Harry as much as you have?

            “If Harry Potter didn’t have the meanest meanie of them all – Lord Voldemort – making his young life exteremely dangerous, would all of us have continued reading all seven books in the series?”

            Conflict, not love, makes the world go round.

            Having invented Harry Potter, the protagonist, and Lord Voldemort, the antagonist,  J.K.Rowling has made herself richer than the Queen of England.

            Conflict is a gold mine.

            What if it’s just an innocent picture storybook for children? Does it need conflict?  Very young children learning the alphabet and the numbers one to ten  don’t need conflict yet.

            But soon enough, conflict rears its ugly head into their young lives. It makes them appreciate conflict in the picture books read to them. (Sometimes, they ‘read’ the pictures by themselves.) Isn’t conflict the glue which holds together fairy tales? Don’t Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters make us love Cinderella more?

Let’s take the case of Koala Lou, written by Mem Fox and illustrated by Pamela Lofts. Koala Lou, the bear, was the first-born of her parents.  Mommy K loved her baby bear so very, very much. She always said, “Koala Lou, I do love you!”

Everybody loved Koala Lou. She was the superstar, the megastar, the diamond star. She was the center of the universe. She loved being loved by everyone, especially by her Mommy K who said all the time, “Koala Lou, I do love you!”

In Frame 5 of the book, conflict suddenly happened between Koala Lou and her Mommy K. How could that happen between mother and child? Between two people who loved each other?

Well, new baby bears had been born. Koala Lou had siblings and Mommy K had no more time to say, “Koala Lou, I do love you!”

Did Mem Fox, the author, put Koala Lou and Mommy K toe-to-toe like bulls in a bullfight?  No, Mem Fox didn’t. Aware that she had only 15 frames in which to develop her story, Mem Fox kept the spotlight on her main character, Koala Lou.

It was necessary to do so in order to develop the character of Koala Lou. How did Mem Fox make Koala Lou an interesting character to her readers? How did Koala Lou solve her problem? Did the conflict give her an opportunity to grow up? To shine? To discover her hidden talents and skills?

Koala Lou didn’t hate her Mommy K and her siblings. Instead, she resolved to make herself more lovable. She felt that if she could win in the Bush Olympics in the Bear Universe, she would become the center of the universe again for her Mommy K .

So Koala Lou trained long and hard for the Bush Olympics. On the day of the championship in gum-tree climbing, Koala Lou exerted every ounce of energy which she had. But it wasn’t good enough. She was only second best.

Koala Lou’s strategy to win back her mother’s love was a failure. Koala Lou was heart-broken. She went off somewhere to cry and be alone.

Surprise!  When Koala Lou crept home, Mommy K who had been waiting gave her a long, long hug and whispered, “Koala Lou, I do love you!”  

 

                 This surprise ending was in the last frame, of course. It is the most important frame because it shows the theme or message or moral lesson of the story without preaching.