Six Lessons from Six: The Musical

Tell history from different perspectives and make it fun

Much like when Vicky and I saw Ali Wong’s standup show, I picked up a lot of lessons about writing from seeing SIX: The Musical recently. If you don’t know what SIX is, here’s a bit more about the show:

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

From Tudor Queens to Pop Icons, the SIX wives of Henry VIII take the microphone to reclaim their identities out of the shadow of their infamous spouse – remixing five hundred years of historical heartbreak into a Euphoric Celebration of 21st century girl power! This new original musical is the global sensation that everyone is losing their head over!

So here are six (of course) things I learned from watching the show (and listening to the soundtrack many, many times. I’m listening to it right now in fact!).

1. Write the story beyond the history books: As the song goes, everyone knows they used to be six wives, but is there more to their story? In the show, the wives sing their stories to demonstrate to the audience that they had the worst time of it at the hands of their mutual husband. The “winner” will become the lead singer of the pop group, Six.
   
   Apply to this to kidlit: Delve into stories behind those told in history books. Who wrote those stories? Who else is important to the story? See Kate Messner’s History Smashers series for an example of how to tell history in a new way.

2. Make every word count: SIX is only 80 minutes long and they pack a lot of history into that time—Katherine of Aragon was married to Henry for 24 years but the next five wives lasted less than ten years in total. Even so, that’s 34 years of history to cover.
   
   Apply this to kidlit: Especially with picture books, you have limited words to tell a story. Decide what to include and what to leave out. Which facts support the story you want to tell?

3. And employ fun wordplay: The writers of SIX used a lot of fun word play in the lyrics to add humor to the story.

   Ignore the fear and you'll be fine
   We'll turn this vier into a nine
   So just say 'ja' and don't say 'nein' - from Haus of Holbein

   There are examples from every song so listen or read the lyrics and see how many you can spot.
   
   Apply this to kidlit: Write a word bank of words that relate to your story. For example, when I wrote Evelyn the Adventurous Entomologist, I included lots of insect words like swarmed, spun, and inched and used them verbs to describe people’s actions. Have fun with your word choices and your readers will have fun too.

   

4. Change the pace: In SIX, we’re treated to several big pop performances in a row and then the pace changes and we move into a beautiful ballad full of heart.
   
   Apply this to kidlit: It can’t all be action, after action, and then more action. Take a beat and bring us back to a quiet moment. It lets the audience catch their breath and reflect on the heart of the story.
   

5. What’s the heart? On the surface it might seem that SIX is about feminism and “girl power” (there’s even a Spice Girls reference). But at the heart of the show is the question of who gets to tell the stories from history and how that skews our impression of events and people.
   
   Apply this to kidlit: What are you trying to say with your story? What’s the heart? Read more about heart in our writing weaknesses post.
   

   Our Writing Weaknesses

6. Play with structure: Instead of being a straightforward history retelling, SIX is a pop concert with a competition element to pull together the six wives’ stories. In between each song there is dialogue in which the queens explain that they definitely deserve to be lead singer as they had the hardest time as Henry’s wife. Then they sing their song to prove it.
   
   Apply this to kidlit: How can you structure your book to bring together the narrative elements and have a cohesive story while making it fun for your readers? Here are some picture book structure examples but maybe you can come up with your own innovative idea.

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Have you seen SIX? Or has other media influenced your kidlit writing?