Where I've been lately. Also, YA fiction

Trapped under something heavy.  Actually, several somethings.

 I'm teaching two new classes this year and have taken on several new editing clients, four within a week of each other. I've got my eye on a sweet DSLR camera that goes off special at my local Costco the end of the month.  And some of my pet political projects keep e-mailing me, asking for money. I keep obliging them because my future and the future of my children and grandchildren are very important, and I have definite ideas how that should be brought about. So I take on more work. And my students keep writing essays. And I neglect this blog because sleeping, eating, taking care of my home and family can't be put on "pause" and made to wait till later. Also, watching an occasional "Grimm" or "Supernatural" episode helps keep me sane. Judgers to the left.

I am working on a huge tirade on Young Adult / Teen / whatever they're calling fiction aimed at 11 to 18-year-olds this week, because this ball keeps rolling since the Joel Stein column appeared in the NY Times back in March. I'm not expecting you to read all 400+ comments, but some of them are a scream. I've read some of the of the supposedly "adult" authors touted by some of the commenters.  Just because the protagonist is over 18 and has naughty sex with anything that moves doesn't make a novel, its story, its subject matter, or its author "mature." In fact, I've read some very "juvenile" fiction supposedly aimed at adult audiences. David Brin? Tom Clancy? E. L. James? Holy triple crap! So, Stein, talk to the hand.

And I'll be back with more on this later.  I hope.

Just when you thought the publishing world couldn't sink any lower or become any more ridiculous

First , we read about authors who create sockpuppets (here and here) or simply enlist friends, fellow writers, and relatives to either write rave reviews on their books or to defend the books from particularly negative (or insightful) reviewers.

Then, we read that, in order to be a successful author in today's dog-eat-dog online and self-publishing world, where so many more authors are getting their work known without the help of an agent or a bricks-and-mortar publishing house, you need to have a "brand." Doesn't matter if your stuff is any good--this could be a zero draft you're hitting the "publish" button on; a logo, a tagline, catchy cover art, will get your name known, and the aforementioned sockpuppets and friends who are willing to post raves for you on Amazon and Goodreads will "build" your brand. It's just good business sense.

But why go to all that trouble?  Why enlist friends and family, promise them brownies with extra frosting or free copies of your book, and create multiple accounts to post positive reviews of your own work when you can.. .

. . .wait for it. . .

Buy reviews for your books online? No, I am not making this up. You can find these services online, and they are growing in number. The business referred to in the linked Times article has gone bust, but a quick Google search to the effect of "book reviews for sale" nets some interesting results.

Yes, aspiring writers, gone are the days of honing your craft, refining your art, sweating over multiple drafts of your work, earning honest reviews by people who actually read your book. Skip all that attention to craftsmanship or the goal of telling your audience a great story and giving them characters with whom they actually want to make the journey. Pay a professional hack and don't worry about having worked for and earned positive reviews.

Happy Belated 113th Birthday, Jose Luis Borges

The last two weeks have been for me a flurry of activity, with the start of a new school year and the hours of preparation; the finding of my sea legs is still in progress. Also, a huge editing job landed in my lap, so the weekly post didn't happen last week. I even overlooked all my Google Reader feeds, which I manage to check, if not daily, at least every two days or so.  I don't share much poetry here, because I don't want to fall into the trap of the quick-and-dirty copypaste blog post. But this week I'm making an exception.

So, happy belated 113th birthday (August 24) to Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.

You Learn

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,

And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,

And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure…

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth…

And you learn and learn…

With every good-bye you learn.

This poem was inscribed on the inside cover of many a girl's notebook in my high school. Before the interwebs, this was our version of "going viral."

"The Great American Novel": My humble (of course!) opinion

A couple of years ago, the question, "Which American novels would you recommend to a European who is trying to understand American literature and the American experience?"  was asked on a message board of an online book community. Suggestions were for the usual touchstones--Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, Steinbeck,  Vonnegut, et. al. One person suggested some dystopian fiction. Some even suggested Ayn Rand. Though she wasn't born here, she resonated, and continues to do so, with American narcissists and pseudo-intellectuals.If there is an afterlife, I'm betting Sartre, Descartes, and Socrates aren't inviting her for coffee. "Life's too short to read bad books." Unless you get huge giggles from trashing them.

So, here are my picks for Great American Novels, by time period, using the criteria above:

Can an artist and a brand co-exist peacefully in the same writer?

Once upon a time, aspiring authors were advised to simply hone their craft, work hard, try and try again, rewrite, submit their manuscripts, deal with rejection, dig deep to find the great story ideas, and eventually they'd get an agent, a book deal, an audience. In the past few years, however, they have also been advised to work on creating a "brand" so people will buy their books. The reasoning behind this is that an author is like a small business, and with so many options for being published, with so much competition among writers, creating a logo or a theme, and, in some cases, sticking to a specific genre as part of your "brand" is going to increase your visibility in a very crowded marketplace.

There are authors who publish under several names, creating a "brand" for each one:  giving their romance-writing persona a lyrical name like Lydia des Rosiers, their historical-fiction writing one a German or Anglo-Saxon or Celtic or name like Michael McCorrigan, their suspense-writing persona something similarly laden with plosives. Their mystery/suspense/thriller persona might even have a Balto-Slavic surname full of Z's and K's. They finally write a memoir or literary fiction under their own name.

The idealist in me wants to believe that if my writing is good enough, I won't need a logo or a tagline: "Creator of deep and poignant literary fiction"  "Author of thrilling mystery-suspense"; I think a good one for me might be"Welcome to my weird world" Or something.

There are so many articles out there, I can't possibly digest them all for you, so here are a few.  Read and weep--or take heed.  Your choice.

Here's one from the NY Times.
And one from a blog stating how essential branding is.
One from Writer's Digest.
And. . . .Cue my snark machine:  Building your brand in FIVE EASY STEPS! (can I get a Whoo Hoo!) (sorry folks-- I can't believe it could be this easy, okay?)

Finally, a dissenting opinion and apparently in the minority.

Is Bruce Springsteen a brand? I don't think so. Kurt Vonnegut?  No way.  In fact, I think I just heard him turn over in his grave. I'm sorry, but I still want to believe that someone who works hard to create great stories and pays his or her dues can succeed without hiring a marketing consultant. Or is that crazy talk? Should I wake up and smell the corporate coffee?

Tropes, dopes, formulae: The "love triangle" part II

Last week's post dealt with the disturbing trend to force a love triangle into every new YA novel or series of novels. I stated there that readers deserve better than to have their emotions manipulated, and that often these storylines distract readers from the main plot. It's a cheap, easy way to ramp up the drama or conflict, but it's quickly becoming formulaic. Don't be "that writer."


****Spoiler Alert for Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games****


Back to The Hunger Games and why the "love triangle" in the series actually isn't. 


Katniss and Gale have a best-friends-and-hunting-buddies relationship.  Gale may or may not be in love with her, but we do know for certain that Katniss isn’t at all sure how she feels about Gale.  Her main concern is that Gale will marry one of the other girls in town and she’ll lose her best friend. Nor is she interested in exploring her feelings. She doesn’t want to be seen as somebody who “needs” a love interest. This is one of the few areas in her life where she has control.  If you choose not to marry and have children, it’s for damn certain that you won’t have to watch any of them fight to the death on national television.  It’s all she can do at age sixteen to keep food on the table and help raise her younger sister while her mother tries to manage depression and put her life back together after the death of her husband.  

Katniss hardly noticed Peeta until they were both sent to The Capitol and Peeta announces his unrequited love for Katniss on live television, knowing one or both of them were going to die and it would come to naught anyway, so, why not declare it. Readers and critics have called this move “manipulative.”  If they weren’t about to enter a battle to the death, I’d agree, but the circumstances change everything.

Peeta and Gale never confront each other. Neither of them ever confronts Katniss, nor does either one of them try to coerce her into choosing between them.  Katniss is left to make her own choice, a healthy beginning for a relationship. The reader is left to speculate that, if the situation had been different, would Katniss have chosen Gale?  Or, even if the Games and the revolution had not occurred, would Gale and Katniss still be too much alike to be able to achieve a relationship that has balance and staying power?  In Mockingjay, Katniss herself concludes: “On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.”

Maybe Gale would have come back from District #2 at the end of Mockingjay if Katniss had asked him to. Maybe they simply missed their moment, both having been too altered by their experiences to get back that innocent camaraderie they experienced before the Games and the revolution turned their world upside down. But Peeta, even after all they went through together, is “the dandelion in the spring,” the boy who loved her from afar and sneaked bread to her at the risk of his mother’s harsh punishment when he knew her family was starving. He gives her hope and represents rebirth rather than destruction. We are left with the impression from Katniss’s internal monologue that she would have chosen Peeta anyway. No phony destiny or soul-matedness, just a calm assurance that Peeta is what she wants and needs.

So, readers, please stop putting this book series on your YA Romance shelf, and stop referring to the Katniss-Peeta-Gale subplot  as a “love triangle.”

And authors and prospective authors, please think twice about forcing yet another formulaic, predictable “love triangle” upon your characters and readers.

Tropes, dopes, formulae: The "love triangle" part I

 ****Spoiler Alert:  If you haven’t read The Hunger Games series, proceed at your own risk.****

I love it when kids get engaged with books, when they relate to the characters, dress as them for Hallowe’en, all that. My school must have had a dozen or more Katniss Everdeens walking the halls last October 31; some in Arena gear, some in dresses with sewn-on “flames” of gossamer material. Students are still showing up in Hogwarts gear as well. I'm delighted that such deserving stories as Harry Potter or The Hunger Games are such big hits with my students. Both series contain engaging plots and multidimensional characters, any of whom would be worthy of fandoms and the accompanying T-shirts.

Some of these T-shirts read “I Only Date Bakers,” “I Only Date Hunters,” or, borrowing from the recent blockbuster popularity of a certain vampire romance series, “Team Peeta” or “Team Gale.” It makes the fandom fun. However, to reduce The Hunger Games, a book series which depicts a future North America as a dystopian society with huge disparities between rich and poor, to a story of “a girl who has to choose between two hot guys” is like saying Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is about a kid and an escaped slave who bond over their favorite sport of river rafting.

Unfortunately for the world of YA literature, too many authors are now resorting to adding a “love triangle” to their book because it’s a fairly easy way to ramp up the drama, the emotion, and the conflict.  It worked extremely well for Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series.  Unfortunately, too many readers lack the sophistry to realize they’re being played. Twilight could best be categorized as paranormal romance, completely different in tone and intent from the dystopian Hunger Games, a story that makes statements about war, violence, the media.  And therein lies the problem. A forced love triangle may be completely irrelevant in certain genres, distracting from the original story rather than enhancing it. Instead of a developed or developing character working through an internal struggle or questing for the Magic Thingie, our hero/heroine is reduced to a character who is validated or invalidated by how attractive they are to potential love interests. Readers deserve better.


Next week: some characteristics of "love triangles" and why The Hunger Games's "love triangle" isn't.

Collaborating across timezones: Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan on their new novel

Team Human is a new novel, a collaboration by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan.  At this link you can read a live chat, moderated by Justine's husband Scott Westerfeld, about the book and what it was like to collaborate by e-mail from time zones several hours apart.

Among the highlights:

Justine believes outlines are EEEvil; Sarah makes outlines of her outlines.  The two were able to find a middle ground as they worked together.  It may have helped that there was no disagreement between them on how the book would end; therefore most of the major plot points must have been agreed on as well.

Both writers were able to keep the book a secret from their public and from their agents.  No mean feat, considering the lack of privacy in the era of Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere.

Being in time zones so far apart -- Justine in Australia, Sarah in Ireland -- actually worked well in some ways. When one was asleep, the other was working.  Thanks to technology, they could be sort of a tag team. Sarah got to write the first make-out scene.  If that sort if thing is important to you, make sure you pace the writing with your partner so it's your turn when that chapter comes up.

Sarah gave the following advice to writers who want to co-write a book:  Be considerate of each other, be determined to compromise and (I'm sure she was tongue-in-cheek wen she wrote this) draw up an agreement.  Justine's contribution was, of course, be willing to compromise and remember it's not YOUR book, it's a SHARED book. My suggestion:  have an idea where you want to take your story, make sure you agree on the big stuff, and just be a grownup about the rest.

After some discussion, the "floor" was opened to fans with questions. One was about handling criticism. Justine's advice was handle it OFFLINE and IN PRIVATE.  This makes her a class act. See this post and this post if you want my opinion on that.

It's a fun read.  Go and check it out.  And maybe buy the book.

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012

Yet another tribute, but he deserves it.

The past couple of months have been sad ones for readers; first Maurice Sendak, now Bradbury.  We kept seeing him on PBS, kept reading new, insightful articles from him in newspapers and magazines, and somehow began to wonder if he'd found some magic elixir that would help him live forever. It would seem perfect for a writer of speculative fiction to somehow magically become a character in one of his own stories.  

But Bradbury was indeed mortal, but unlike most of us, he left so much insight on beauty and creativity that his words and the images they created will live forever.

First, there's Neil Gaiman's tribute. Imagine reading an author, idolizing him or her, and then becoming an author yourself and ending up not just meeting your idol, but actually becoming friends. Hanging-out, going-for-coffee friends.  

Bradbury had wide-ranging influences.  Something Wicked This Way Comes is dedicated to actor/dancer/director Gene Kelly. An entire treatise on writing was influenced by the character of Snoopy in Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strip.

So, in an attempt to cobble together some cool stuff without this post turning into a 50,000-word tome, here's just a small sampling. From a program that aired on PBS in 2008:

Love what you do and do what you love. Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life.

On reading as a prerequisite for democracy:

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country — we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Sadly, this isn't as true as it should be.  Because people a) don't read or b) don't think about what they read, there are all kinds of misconceptions about history and science being perpetuated on social media and in viral e-mails.In the interest of keeping this blog as apolitical as possible, I'll say no more.

On creativity and the myth of the muse, in Zen in the Art of Writing:

That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.

 I understand that creating is often an organic process, that sometimes our creation takes on a life of its own or goes in a completely unexpected direction, but I also believe the creative person should always remain in control of his or her creation. To use the excuse "[fictitious character's name] wouldn't let me change [whatever it was about him or her]" is, in my not-so-humble opinion, too often used as a copout or an excuse for sloppiness on the part of the writer.

 The best  conclusion to a Bradbury tribute would be these words from Fahrenheit 451:

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

Thanks, Ray, for leaving us so many pieces of your soul.

New addition to Characterizations tab

My take, part the second, on creating strong female characters. There are four articles; scroll down for the more recent  ones.

Not dead yet. Also: Middle readers deserve better

I'm still in school, attending workshops to prepare for the new Core curriculum, and I have been working on two editing jobs, so, apologies again for my inconsistency.

I've recently discovered websites where I can go to get free books for my Kindle e-reader, so I'm trying to broaden my horizons with more middle-grade books as well as some mystery-suspense and women's fiction. The middle-grade books are in anticipation of my new responsibility teaching 7th and 8th-grade reading next year.  I would love to find some good stuff to recommend to my students.  Unfortunately, that's turning out much more difficult than I'd anticipated.

The last two middle-level books I read were shockingly bad.  Great story ideas that completely fell apart in their execution. Somebody explain to me how this crap gets past editors and publishers.  The books I've read so far have been published hardcover at a couple of major big-box publishers.

Is it because authors, editors, and publishers all perceive 9-12-year-olds as being completely indiscriminate as to prose, pacing, and character development?  Are they thinking that, as long as they're entertained, kids don't care about quality writing?

To which I reply:  How are young people to appreciate or even demand quality writing when they haven't been exposed to enough of it to tell the difference?  If anything, they are the group of readers that are the most deserving of quality, as they are forming their own tastes and exploring a wider world.

*steps off soapbox*

I leave you with a quote from Madeleine L'Engle, one children's writer who respected her young audience:

"You have to write the book that wants to be written.  And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."

Thanks for stopping by.  See you next week.

Inspiration and the best explanation of "show don't tell" ever

Still sounding the drumbeat of "show don't tell" and "trust your readers," I give you this, one of the best and most concise explanations I've ever read:

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."  ~Anton Chekhov


Or the glint of light in a puddle, or or through the leaves of a tree, or even, less romantically, off the roof of a car or the blade of a knife in the hand of a character.



I have editing and grading to do, so over the next two weeks, I'll be posting shorties shamelessly borrowed from great writers.


Thanks for stopping by.

Don't bother to "Pardon my French"

You call them swear words. Or profanity. Or vulgarity. Or simply “bad words.” Mr. Spock, ever democratic and unemotional in his assessment of human behavior, called them “colorful metaphors.” 

I, however, like to call them “sentence enhancers.”

Briefly:  Both my parents were from blue-collar immigrant backgrounds. Rough lives spent in the military, working in coal mines and oil refineries, coupled with--in some cases--lack of education or English skills--made my grandparents and my great-grandparents expert users of these often-effective words.  My parents, both white-collar and college-educated, still remained close to their roots during my early childhood, using fluently (though, in my mother’s case, a bit ashamedly) the strong words they’d heard from their roughneck fathers and grandfathers. We children, of course, got our mouths washed out with soap for using such words. Which obviously made the words all the more tempting and delicious and ourselves all the more sneaky about their use.

If you're feeling brave, read on:

Hanging out my shingle

After years of helping people polish manuscripts, I've decided to open a small side business.  I help with all phases of the writing process, from zero draft to sending the query letters, or any stage of the process at which you find yourself.

I used a template and didn't do anything with a lot of "bells and whistles," but I plan to get my own logo in the next few months and will be updating the site often.

Come visit!

Lynne's WordNerdy Editing

Google Crome leaves off one of my backgrounds.  Until I get it fixed, please use Firefox.

My business e-mail:  lynne@wordnerdyediting.com

Anne Tyler interviewed on Goodreads

To mark the release of her 19th novel, The Beginner's Goodbye, the usually-shy Anne Tyler did an interview with NPR last week--her first NPR interview in 35 years--and another on Goodreads, which made the site's April newsletter. In the interview, she talks a bit about her writing process, which I always find fascinating. She writes with a Pilot gel ink pen (I'm guessing her pen preferences have changed since she started writing, as gel inks weren't around in the 1960's) on unlined white paper. I actually know of some twenty-and-thirtysomething writers who hand write at some point in their process as well, so it isn't just a generational thing. At a certain point in her process, she reads aloud into a tape recorder. I believe I've suggested reading your work aloud or having somebody you trust read it to you (see Revision Strategies tab, the article "What if I can't find any problems in my writing?"). There are free digital recording programs such as Audacity that will enable you to record yourself or somebody else reading your work. A ten-dollar mic would do just fine for a voice recording that doesn't have to be stellar quality.

Every Tyler novel is about ordinary people in fairly mundane situations, but it's the quirks she gives them and the sometimes unconventional ways in which they deal with these situations, their search for transcendence--and the subtlety with which Tyler writes--that take her work up a level from "popular" fiction.

For the first time in her career, Tyler has tackled a subject I never thought I'd see her try.  In The Beginner's Goodbye, a grieving widower is visited by the spirit of his dead wife. This subject matter could turn maudlin or didactic in the hands of a less skilled author, so I'm eager to see how Tyler handles it. If you're waiting to find out what her personal views are on the subject of an afterlife, you'll have a long wait.

My personal favorite Tyler novels and which would I recommend?  Glad you asked.  Saint Maybe, Back When We Were Grownups, and Breathing Lessons. Among her more difficult, darker reads are:  Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Amateur Marriage, Celestial Navigation, A Patchwork Planet. I have also read and appreciated A Slipping-Down Life, If Morning Ever Comes, Digging to America, and Ladder of Years. A Slipping-Down Life and If Morning Ever Comes are two of her earliest novels; it's interesting to see how her writing has evolved.  She admits that she wouldn't recommend any of her first four novels to anyone to read. That kind of modesty is refreshing and rare these days, and my personal opinion is that she's better at her worst than many authors are at their best.

Thoughts on Book-to-Film Adaptations

No jump cut in this post; sorry for the length. But: thoughts, I have them.


If you’re about to use one of the following criticisms of a film adapted from a book:

“_______[setting] wasn’t what I pictured.”
“______ [character] isn’t supposed to have a beard/be tall/be short/be blond/be black.”
“They left out___________” [a character? an important character? or an incident where a character blows his nose on a dirty hankie or passes by a cottage with a mean, barking dog outside?]

Please consider the following:

-Films and novels are different art forms. If it’s a book told from first-person point of view with a lot of internal monologue, in order to remain really true to the book, you’d have the character sitting or standing or walking around while a voiceover tells the story. Film gives the possibility of opening up the landscape. So instead of a montage and a voiceover, we are treated to a flashback of Katniss Everdeen with her dead father, and scenes from the Capitol where the gamesmakers are pulling the strings and talking about how to mess with the tributes and keep the audience at the edge of their seats.

- The visual medium is much faster at establishing character and setting.  Nevertheless, in the interest of character development, some characters may be omitted or combined. See the bit about "establishing scenes" below.

-The POV of the book may not translate to film very well.

-Not everyone who is seeing the movie has read the book.  Filmmakers have to consider a wider audience when adapting a text.

-“_________[character] was too short/ too tall/ not hawt enough.” If a male character described as tall is being portrayed by an actor who is only five-foot-six, please consider: would you rather have an actor who captures the character’s essence, personality, etc.; in short, one who plays the character well, or someone less talented who fits your daydreams? And “hawt” is certainly in the eye of the beholder.    

Small rant on casting: Occasionally, and unfortunately, the most “bankable” actors are chosen regardless of talent or whether they fit the character. I grant you permission to complain about that one. Case in point:  Tom Cruise as Claus von Stauffenberg in “Valkyrie.”  The rest of the cast were perfect in their roles; Cruise, however, felt like a big blank spot to me. Tom Cruise in an American Army uniform circa 1867 (“The Last Samurai”) was also Tom Cruise in a Nazi uniform in 1942; rinse, repeat. I wasn’t at all convinced.  Cruise has done fine work, especially in “Rain Man” and in “Born on the Fourth of July,” but this performance felt phoned in. My personal opinion is that Jim Caviezel would have been a much better choice, both for his physical presence (Stauffenberg was over six feet tall and so is Caviezel--physical presence is extremely important to a visual medium) and, more important, for his personal religious conviction. Stauffenberg was a devout Christian, and when the atrocities of the Nazi party began to conflict with what Stauffenberg considered his first commitment to a power higher than Hitler, he put himself on the line and spearheaded an assassination plot which failed, resulting in arrest and execution for treason. Caviezel is a devout Christian.He certainly could have used that to inform his performance--and my personal opinion is that "Claus" should have been given some dialogue to that effect. It could have been done without coming across as preachy.

-A book or book series that takes place over several months or years is going to need paring down to make it fit into a reasonable two-to-two-and-a-half-hour time slot--and again, make sense to an audience that hasn’t read the book.  The events of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird take place over more than three years; the film based on the book condensed it to a year.  Because Atticus Finch was the moral center of the book, there was much more face time for Atticus in the film than in the book, and a good bit of time spent in the courtroom.  No complaints here, as we get amazing performances from both Brock Peters as Tom Robinson and Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. I admit I was disappointed at the combining of the characters of Miss Rachel Haverford and Miss Stephanie Crawford into the character of Dill’s “Aunt Stephanie,” though I understand the necessity for what the filmmakers intended. For me, the biggest disappointment was the POV shift to Jem. But back to my point: What filmgoers may not understand is that characters in films need “establishing scenes.” The same for The Hunger Games: Prim gives Katniss the Mockingjay pin instead of Katniss’s friend Madge from the book. I had to explain to my students that, for an audience who hasn’t read the book, Madge would have needed an establishing scene--the two girls passing notes in class, walking home from school together--and there were more important elements, such as showing the bond between the two sisters, the scenes with Katniss’s father, that were more important for the first film.  Madge gets more face time in Catching Fire; we’ll see what the filmmakers decide to do with her then.

The 1940 film version of Pride and Prejudice featured costumes that looked like they were left over from “Gone With the Wind,” moving the setting from the early 1800’s to the mid-1800’s.  The dances in the movie were mid-1800’s rather than Regency-era as well. Greer Garson was 36 when she played 21-year-old Lizzy Bennett. Lady Catherine comes as Darcy’s ambassador at the end rather than as an antagonist, which was a complete departure from the book. Yet I love the adaptation for its fidelity to the spirit of the book--the social satire and the madcap all-girl Bennett household are quite faithful to the book’s portrayals, as is the depiction of Mrs. Bennett, anxious to the point of neurosis, to see her daughters settled and secure. Plus, you have wonderful Edmund Gwenn as Mr. Bennett. Best of all, it was the catalyst for my reading the book and starting me down the path of near-obsession with Jane Austen’s work. (haters to the left!) I’ve seen other adaptations and liked different things about each one.  How awesome is a literary work that it can be done and redone so many times and still be fresh?

My students have complained about the film adaptation of Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief. Their complaints range from change in characters’ hair color/ complexions to more principled complaints that scenes from the other four books were included in the first film. I asked if those changes were helpful to someone who hadn’t read the book.  Many of them admit they were.  “But what are they going to do for the other four movies?” was the question that arose.  And they had a point.  Since I haven’t read the books (yet) the movie was all right, but given the alterations made, I may have actually been unable to give the filmmakers a pass on what they changed. Perhaps there are some books or book series that are better left unadapted to film, even the ones with high action and adventure.

So. . . movie or book?  Which one to go to first?  My response: Look! A meteor shower! *runs away.*

New stuff added to "Pages" tabs

"Plot Points and Pacing and Getting Unstuck," which I wrote for A. C. Grant's Creative Writing Toolbox, has just been added to my Revision Strategies page.  About two weeks ago, I added "Female Characters and the Readers Who Love Them" to the Characterizations page.  The characterizations page has pictures now as well, mainly because the one of Agatha Heterodyne was too good not to include, so I had to add the ones of Gregory Peck and Alan Rickman as the characters Atticus Finch and Severus Snape.

The characterizations posts were sort of a tangent for A. C.'s blog, and once I got started, it was like a runaway train.  If only my fiction writing went so smoothly.

I've found a couple of interesting articles on female characterizations.  Give me some time to write a decent post on them.

See you next week.

I got nothin'

I'm currently blocked.  But Neil Gaiman isn't.  I can't wait to read whatever it is he's working on.

Full post here.

An excerpt:


It's a weird thing, writing.


Sometimes you can look out across what you're writing, and it's like looking out over a landscape on a glorious, clear summer's day.  You can see every leaf on every tree, and hear the birdsong, and you know where you'll be going on your walk.


And that's wonderful.


Sometimes it's like driving through fog. You can't really see where you're going.  You have just enough of the road in front of you to know that you're probably still on the road, and if you drive slowly and keep your headlamps lowered you'll still get where you were going.


And that's hard while you're doing it, but satisfying at the end of a day like that, where you look down and you got 1500 words that didn't exist in that order down on paper, half of what you'd get on a good day, and you drove slowly, but you drove.


And sometimes you come out of the fog into clarity, and you can see just what you're doing and where you're going, and you couldn't see or know any of that five minutes before.


And that's magic.


The rest of the post goes on to say that his current project is taking a different direction from where he'd originally planned.

It's exciting and scary to stare into the abyss, even if you see the other side. How awesome to trust the magic.

I'm not there yet.  But after some research and a few outlines, and a cure for insomnia, maybe I will be.

Thanks for stopping by.

Commonly-Confused Words: Don't Be Discreet When Citing a Site

Saw some really messed-up usages on Yahoo! this week, so I thought I’d share with you how to use these words correctly.

discreet/discrete:  
Unfortunately, they’re both adjectives, so there’s no easy memory gimmick to help you with these.  Discreet is judicious, decorous, modestly unobtrusive.  Taking somebody aside to tell them they botched the assignment is much more discreet than yelling at them in front of their coworkers. From the same Latin root as our modern word “discern.”  To use discretion is to be judicious or thoughtful when making a choice. Discrete, on the other hand, means detached, separated, as in:  “The students were in discrete groups for the mythology unit:  some groups researched Greek myths, some Roman, and some Egyptian.” From the Latin discretus, meaning “separated.”

site/ cite/ sight:
Site is a noun, and only a noun.  It is used as a synonym for place. “The photographer was shown the dig site where the pottery shards were found.” “The new site for the store has excellent freeway access.” It’s been compounded into the word website, which is, simply, “a place on the Web.”
Cite is a verb, and only a verb. It means to quote, to mention or support, or to call attention to.  “Don’t neglect to cite your sources in your research paper.” “The candidate cited her experience with a local Board of Education when listing her qualifications for State Board of Education.” “The soldier was cited for bravery on the battlefield.” Equally, “My brother was cited yesterday for going 45 in a 30 zone.”
Sight can be noun and verb and its past participle can be adjectival.  As a noun, it can simply refer to vision: “I’m angry with you and I need you out of my sight for awhile.” Or as a metaphoric reference to a firearm: “You obviously cannot be trusted, so be warned I have you in my sights.”  As a past-tense verb: “She was sighted coming out of The Coffee Cave yesterday.” It’s a little silly and pretentious to use it instead of seen, but at least it’s used correctly; I’ve seen sited used in that context. The past participle sighted is also used as an adjective.  “All but one of the Gleeson’s children were sighted; the youngest lost his sight to diabetic retinopathy.”

Why there was no post this weekend

This is my talented husband playing a Native American style flute on stage with Nino Reyos at the Moab Arts and Recreation center, for a flute festival which took place over President's Day weekend. I've been trying to have some kind of predictability to my posting, usually timing them to hit on either Sunday or Monday every week, but I dropped the ball this weekend.  I was making new friends and renewing some old friendships, basking in the music and talent and positive energy of the people who make flutes and the beautiful music of those who play them. And I was blissfully off the grid, only checking the computer once to see if we should be trying to cross Soldier Summit in a snowstorm at 2 in the morning (we didn't--it turned out to be a wise choice).

When I write, I agonize over every word.  I edit and re-edit and often end up completely scrapping things I'd spent a good deal of time on.  In other words, my process is pretty slow and I'm hard on myself. There are times I'll go back and re-read some of these posts and think, "jeez, everybody knows this.  Why do I bother?" There are times I feel like taking down everything I've ever written online and crawling back into my cave of relative anonymity.

Especially when I read something like this. It's Neil Gaiman's praise for Jonathan Carroll and other writers who inspire him, put so eloquently that it makes me want to bury my own keyboard and never write again.

Here's a snippet, but I encourage you to go and read the entire post:

There are millions of competent writers out there.  There are hundreds of thousands of good writers in the world, and there are a handful of great writers.  And this is me, late at night, trying to figure out the difference for myself.  That indefinable you-either-got-it-or-you-ain't spark that makes someone a great writer.


And then I realise that I'm asking myself the wrong question, because it's not good writers or great writers.  What I'm really wondering is what makes some writers special.  Like when I was a kid on the London Underground, I'd stare at the people around me.  And every now and again I'd notice someone who had been drawn - a William Morris beauty, an Berni Wrightson grotesque - or someone who had been written - there are lots of Dickens characters in London, even today.  It wasn't those writers who accurately recorded life:  the special ones were the ones who drew it or wrote it so personally that, in some sense it seemed as if they were creating life, or creating the world and bringing it back to you.  And once you 'd seen it through their eyes you could never un-see it, not ever again.  


There are a few writers who are special. They make the world in their books; or rather, they open a window or a door or a magic casement, and they show you the world in which they live.

As much as being in the presence of talented and loving people inspires me, it also brings all my insecurities to the surface. The comfort zone isn't very interesting, but it is safe.

Sorry for the personal wangst.  I'll be back to my critical analytical wordnerdy self next post.

Genres and Tropes: Historical Fiction

Or, “Everything I Know About History I Learned From Literature”

This is one of the most difficult posts on genres and tropes I’ve written yet, probably because it’s mostly “genre” and not much “trope.”  

Historical fiction deals with fictional characters placed in a historical setting.  You have practically limitless possibilities here, as long as you’re willing to do the research necessary to do justice to your subject.

You could choose a “major historical event” such as the Nazi Holocaust, the Russian Revolution, or the American Civil War and place your characters in or near the action.  Your characters can be “ordinary” people caught up in extraordinary circumstances or they can be friends or acquaintances with some major historical figures of the time in which your story is set.  Most authors opt for the “ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances” trope because this presents much less difficulty (both of fact and of logistics) than, for example, creating a character who’s a BFF for Eva Braun.  

Some final (I hope) thoughts on reader reviews

In my past two entries, I’ve ranted about author shenanigans in response to online reviews by readers. There are writers who create accounts under assumed names, aka “sockpuppets,” in order to praise or defend their own books.  They go on Twitter and encourage their friends, relatives and fans to vote down negative reviews and vote up positive ones, or to join a dogpile to criticize a negative review or attack the reviewer.This week, I turn to thoughts on amateur book reviews.

Once we've bought or borrowed a book, spent time reading it, succeeding or failing to relate to it, we feel a certain ownership. For this reason, I believe that readers have every right to call an author out for not doing research for a historical novel or for one set on the other side of the world.  A writer giving a novel a present-day setting has no excuse for not checking an atlas or Google Earth to verify whether Istanbul is located in the middle of a desert or not. A writer who presumes to write about an ethnicity or culture about which they know very little deserves any criticism she gets for not accurately portraying those people, their culture, their history or folklore. I personally consider it disrespectful and arrogant to co-opt a culture without their knowledge and consent. A writer writing historical fiction has to remember that he is placing fictional characters in an historical setting and treat that setting with appropriate respect. This includes anything steampunk, science fiction, or presented as alternate history. Whatever your alterations, we readers can tell if you know your stuff or not.

More Authors Behaving Badly and a few thoughts on amateur book reviews

And the fun continues. . . This time an author calls the reviewer a b*tch and encourages her fans, via Twitter, to go to this reviewer's Goodreads page and "like" all the four and five-star reviews. She didn't have to tell them to leave a few flames while they were there.  Here's the link to the original GR post and the ensuing crapstorm. I'm sorry to be devoting two entire posts to this, but it's like I just landed on Mars or something.  I knew there were whiny authors out there; Anne Rice has been famous for complaining about negative reviews for at least the last 30 years. I just had no idea there were writers, supposed professionals, who would go to such great lengths to trash people who didn't like their books. My concern is not for myself as I step hesitantly into authorland, but more for the utter lack of civility and maturity that exists in the publishing world. It makes it hard to know whom to trust as one makes connections and forms friendships with other writers. It seems to me that an author this petty and childish isn't somebody I can trust, nor would they be somebody I'd want to have coffee with. How can I know that some of the vitriol directed at a reader wouldn't also be directed at myself? I don't really want to be walking around the publishing universe worrying about where the next knife in my back will be coming from.

I have written far harsher reviews than "Wendy"'s and have been flamed a couple of times by other GR posters, but I have, thankfully, managed to fly under the radar of any authors. I admit I keep a pretty low profile over there, though. I thought "Wendy"'s objections to Cass's book were thoughtfully written, and she supported all of her assertions with passages from the book. After struggling valiantly through 168 pages, she was criticized for not finishing.  Most readers give up after 20 or 30 pages; "Wendy" only continued reading so she could write a more objective and thoughtful review. A book this poorly thought out, with dialogue and description this *facepalm*ingly cheesy for the first 168 pages isn't suddenly going to become awesome at page 169, so the flames for not finishing the book were completely groundless.

That same week, another Amazon review gets some underhanded treatment (brief explanation here) from the author and her fans. There are references to the author having apologized in the OP's comments, but one gets the impression that it was a less than gracious one, justified, in the author's mind, by having had her feelings hurt over a negative review. Call the waaaaaambulance.  EVerybody gets bad reviews.

My problem is with sockpuppeting and flaming of dissenters being treated by authors as if it were perfectly normal and justifiable as they invite family, friends and fans to join the dogpile. Again, I refer you to the final paragraphs of this article from the UK's Guardian.

Here are two much more balanced views on the subject:  one from Veronica Roth at YA Highway on the ambiguity of the dynamics of the author-reviewer relationship, and a very contrite one from Hannah Moskowitz, who is obviously embarrassed at the nursery-school behavior of her fellow writers.  Hannah's post contains sentence enhancers, so consider yourself warned.

Finally, a few words from Neil Gaiman:  Scroll past the top paragraphs about The Venerable Bede to get to the advice on how to reply to bad reviews.  Among other things, he writes: "I suspect that most authors don't really want criticism, not even constructive criticism.  They want straight-out, unabashed, unashamed, fulsome, informed, naked praise, arriving by shipload every fifteen minutes or so." 

And:

"When you publish a book -- when you make art -- people are free to say what they want about it.  You can't tell people they liked a book they didn't like, and there is, in the end, no arguing with personal taste.  Different people like different things.  Best to move on and make good art as best you can instead of arguing." In other words, how to reply to bad reviews?  Don't.  How to react to bad reviews?  Here's help from Kingsley Amis: "A bad review might spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't let it spoil your lunch."

Next week:  Thoughts on the writing of reviews.

Go Google Yourself: Authors, The Web, and its Dark Side

Back in September of 2010, a reviewer on Amazon.com called into question an author’s credibility because of some extremely sloppy (or even nonexistent) research he had done for his latest book, which was set in modern-day Turkey. The reviewer, a Turkish woman, called him on several inaccuracies, from getting the capital of the country wrong to giving Turks the wrong ethnicity to mistaking Turkey, whose government is secular, for an Islamist nation.He also placed Istanbul in the middle of a desert. The author happened to be Christopher Pike, known for his teen horror stories. I’m not a horror fan, so I’ve never read any of his books--teen or adult. I have, however, read The Da Vinci Code.  Dan Brown places Versailles north of Paris and makes intersections of Parisian streets that actually run parallel to each other. Unless your book is an alternate reality, look at a damn map, why dont’cha. If Brown’s potboiler prose weren’t already enough to turn me off, his sloppiness as a writer/researcher would have been.

I don’t know why authors do this.  Do they think every American is an ignorant hick who has never traveled outside the country and who doesn’t care about accuracy?  Do they have any respect for the people and the place they’re writing about?

Anyway, somebody calling himself Michael Brite, ostensibly Pike’s editor, showed up to justify the inaccuracies and tell the reviewer she, who had lived in Turkey for 10 years, knew less than the Almighty Pike, who had taken a taxi ride through Istanbul (mistakenly identified in his book as the country’s capital--heh). Turns out “Michael Brite” was Pike himself, who admitted later that he frequently goes incognito onto the Web to defend his books, as if that were quid pro quo. His rant against Caligirl was xenophobic and childish. And it turns out he’s not the only one pulling such stunts. This link contains an encapsulated synopsis of some of the fun. The original Michael Brite reply was deleted from the Amazon post linked above.

Trust Your Readers: Infodump versus Sensory Detail

Writers face these questions all the time:  How much detail is necessary to my story?  When do I introduce these details?  When is it description and when is it an infodump?

Let’s try some examples from some actual unpublished writings:

“Hey, Otteson,” Jared said to the boy standing at a locker in the boys’ changing room.

“Hey, Steadman,” Otteson replied.  Guys on the basketball team never called each other by their first names.

Ask yourself if that last sentence is necessary. Can your reader figure out from context that guys on sports teams call each other by last names? Certainly you’ll be having them talk to each other on occasions apart from this one.  

    Havliki and Kerrick greeted each other by butting heads because that’s how people from their home planet of Lurp greeted each other--with head butts.  Instead, how about:  Havliki and Kerrick greeted each other with the traditional Lurp head-butt.

Here’s another, a little longer:

    “How are things going, Lindsey?” the guidance counselor, Mrs.Green, asked.  Her desk chair squeaked as she sat down in it.  

Lindsey shrugged and pushed her straight, blond hair out of her eyes.

“I’ve been tracking your grades, Lindsey,” Mrs. Green said, looking at two computer printouts in her hand, “and I’m seeing marks that used to be A’s dropping to D’s and F’s. And a couple of your teachers are reporting serious changes in your behavior in class.”

“What’s their problem?  I just sit there. It’s not like I bug people like Jeremy Ellis does.”

“That’s what’s concerning them, Lindsey.  You’re usually eager to learn and share new ideas, but over the past month or so, you seem to have lost all interest.”

Lindsey sat up straight, looking Mrs. Green in the eyes. “Okay, here it is.  Don’t bug me after this, okay?  My mom’s dumping my dad and we have to go live at my grandparents’ because my mom can’t afford a house payment by herself,” she finished angrily.

Mrs. Green looked like she’d been kicked in the gut.  Kids Lindsey’s age usually had to be coaxed to tell what was bothering them.

“Can’t your dad help with the house payment?”

Thank God Mrs. Green hadn’t asked her “How do you feel about that?”  Lindsey might have thrown something.

“He’s buying a new house for the slut he cheated with.  My mom is only getting the legal minimum child support. She dropped out of college to help put my dad through law school, so now she can’t get anything better than minimum wage. Are we done now?”

Her desk chair squeaked as she sad down in it. Is this good sensory detail or completely unnecessary? Or do we need to break up the dialogue with sensory details like this?

Lindsey shrugged and pushed her straight, blond hair out of her eyes. Same question--good sensory detail or unnecessary? Do we need to know she’s blond or does that actually help the reader to visualize Lindsey better?

Lindsey sat up straight, looking Mrs. Green in the eyes. Was she slumping in the chair before this?  

Should Lindsey’s explanation of why her dad can’t/won’t help with a house payment and her mom’s difficulty making ends meet be broken up or interrupted by the guidance counselor? Or should it feel like Lindsey’s doing a practiced speech and anxious to get it over with? Do we need to know if Lindsey is speaking more rapidly, angrily, or loudly here?

These are the dilemmas careful writers face as they’re crafting their stories. My advice:  be aware of the difference between info-dump and sensory detail.  Sensory detail helps the reader see the scene and the people in it better; infodump just treats the reader like he or she can’t figure things out for him/herself.