I knitted hats and caught up with Stargate Universe and Bones last night, which was totally awesomely fun of course! And one is done and another is 3/4 done, again with the awesomeness, rock!
But both shows are giving me THOUGHTS. And the thoughts are pestering me and so out of my head they must go, so I can do all this paper grading that's 14 inches high on my desk. I so wish that was an exaggeration.
Stargate Universe seems more and more like a soap opera for men. It's clearly about the men, no question--the women are peripheral in every way, either supporting or sleeping with (or not sleeping with) the main characters: Rush, Young, Eli, Scott.
I don't have a problem with that, for real. It's a great show. It's just really male-oriented in a way that Battlestar was not and that's what's completely fascinating to me, because on paper the two are strangely similar, but in practice they're polar opposites. Battlestar has utter equality built into its fabric from the beginning, but SGU has inequality.
There are no female figures of strength or power in SGU at all. The closest I can come is Lt. James, who we meet having sex in a broom closet, which made me think she would be a strong and amazing character, but then she's relegated to set dressing.
It's a very weird effect, like watching a community theater production of a play that the director doesn't really understand. They put a couple of women in the show, but then they aren't strong characters with arcs and motivations of their own. They ask permission and get told no, put down, put off, pushed away. By the end of last night's episode ("Life") all three main female characters had been reduced to crying on the floor or in the shower.
It's odd because there's no reason for it. Why do that? Battlestar didn't do it. Battlestar gave us Laura Roslin and Starbuck and Sharon and Six and Three, but here we get all Dualla, all the time. (I loved Dualla, until she became a doormat.) At least there's no Cally yet. I could see Lt. James becoming a Cally.
I don't understand why you would leave out half the color palette, that's all. A good chunk of the tension of Battlestar came from that military/civilian conflict embodied in Adama and Roslin, which SGU could so easily do with Young and Wray, but Wray is relegated to nothingness. She's the HR person, so again, much insight and power and people-power and understanding of how they work, but they've completely neglected any of that and left her as just nothing. Sobbing in the shower.
Here's what you should do with Camille Wray, SGU: she needs to be the rallying point for all the unhappy people on board, who have legitimate complaints about being treated like cattle or worse. Align her with complainy Marine Sgt. Spencer, the scary drug fiend who makes everyone do a million pushups and has run out of pills. (See, even HE has more going on than Wray and he is completely peripheral!) They would hate each other (yay!) but would be an incredibly formidable team. They could stand up to Young, who's pretty much a thug with a gang right now, and try to make things better for the people on the ship. Lots of fights! Woohoo! At worst she ends up executed in a launch tube for insurrection but it's a fantastic story on the way out.
TJ is lovely and a nice character but like Wray, she doesn't have her own story at all. We get hints that she and Young had a thing and that's why she was dropping out or transferring away or whatever.
Slap me with an alien slug creature and call me Alison Bechdel but I HATE seeing female characters who only exist to be in orbit around some male character, especially when it's Forbidden. TJ is the medic on board! She could do so much more. She needs a story of her own and a background and a life! Jeez. And now we find out Wray exists in orbit of her own person back home.
Characters ought to have so much more going on than Wray and TJ do.
Don't even get me started on Chloe, who has absolutely zero going on also. Her deal is that she's young and pretty and everyone likes her. She did lose her father but somehow on the show that's treated like this slight inconvenience, like she should be OVER it by now, jeez Chloe, man up.
Here's my solution: give Chloe a job. Hello! I don't know what, put her in charge of supplies or something--someone has to do that. There, Chloe is supply sergeant and knows how many of everything there are and what we need and all that. ANYTHING.
Give Lt. James something awesome to do, too. Give her as much backstory as Spencer because it is lazy and insulting to have these two very similar characters and give the man an interesting and dangerous situation and give the woman nothing but She Likes A Boy. Though I suspect they're going to have her turn up pregnant. Betcha. That is lazy man's writing right there. What can we do with this character? What kind of person is it? Well, it has breasts--put them prominently on display at every opportunity, in a tight t-shirt. And it has a uterus--fill that up, it'll make a great story for SCOTT.
Oh, I'm kind of mad now, aren't I? I was hoping Lt. James would be Starbuckian. She's tough and strong and lusty and could be just amazing and I'm going to be furious if she turns out to be a plot point for Lt. Scott. Furious!
Look at all the good stuff they've given Scott, okay? He's the only pilot, so he's mighty. He has this excellent backstory with the lost parents and being raised by an alcoholic priest who died on him, and then the girl he got pregnant (busy man, that's three women in eight episodes) back in high school or whatever. And he is our action hero, so he's always out doing the hero stuff. Of course he and Chloe are together because that's obvious, they're so pretty and stuff, right? He has the best bond with Eli and he's Young's right hand man. They've done such good work with Scott!
Rush is one of your classic sci-fi brilliant scientist guys. We don't quite trust him because he's too smart for us to understand (ooookay) and he might have his own agenda but we need him. And so on. He's the best actor of the bunch by a hundred thousand miles, but you can actually see the others learning from him and getting better episode by episode. Hurray! I like Rush. He is full of mystery and you never know whether to trust him completely. He's what Baltar would have been if Baltar hadn't been sort of played for laughs sometimes.
Rush isn't quite a human being, or something, though. I mean he's more Spock than Kirk. No one--including Rush--seems to think he has any of the usual human needs, or should be treated normally. He never even finishes his bowl of rationed goop! It's kind of a weird dynamic. But at least it's interesting!
I can't be rational about Greer because the actor is so ridiculously awesome and brilliant and does so much with so little that I'm beyond smitten. Look, he's written as a classic gun-toting grunt who's loyal to the Colonel and Scott but he surpasses that in every conceivable way and steals every scene he's in. That man is brilliant.
Young is the weakest of the main characters, mainly because his mind is still back on Earth, because he's always visiting via the blue stones of magical body-switching. So he has an interesting story about screwing up back home and still trying to fix it, but he has to be in Telford's body to fix it, which has added another whole layer of badness to the situation. He's weak as a person and cheating on a spouse never endears a character to me.
Young is also always going off on away missions with his gimpy leg, which stretches my credulity quite a lot. I mean, the man can't walk down the stairs without using a rifle as a crutch. Let's put him in a spacesuit and make him walk miles on ice to haul pieces of glacier back home! Then heroically (yet in a stupid manner) save Scott from an icy doom! (Why didn't he use the dang hover sled to brace himself and pull Scott out with that? If it can haul all that weight, it could easily do that. Plus it carried Scott home, so there you go.)
Telford is a new twist on the old Stargate IOA kind of administrator who wants things done his way and undermines Our Guy. I'm amazed how much I appreciate that character. Given his thankless role, Lou Diamond Phillips has done amazingly great things with Telford. Also, it's a brilliant twist to make Telford and Young's wife (another character with NO DAMN LIFE except about him) become friends and possibly more.
Which answers the question: why keep going back with those stupid stones when every time Young does, Telford tries to take control of the mission again?
Eli is the most fun of the whole bunch, of course. He's all cute and funny and cuddly and gets all the best lines. He's super smart but no one takes him seriously, which is pretty great right there. His nickname is "math boy" and he's a massive underachiever and never gets the girl. Also Young is using him to spy on Rush, which is pretty awful and undermines the one mentor relationship he might have had. So much that's good going on there!
Okay. See? They can do great stuff. It's not like they can't do it. WHY is it all reserved for the men? Why, why? You are doing it wrong, Stargate Universe. You have to give good stories and good arcs and whole interesting inner lives and plans and directions and goals and machinations to the women also.
Maybe this really is how some men see the world (is it?) as a bunch of important people (all men) and some women who they can maybe sleep with or yell at or ignore, but that doesn't mean it's the way the world IS. It's not. I can attest, because of how I live in it. Women have power and lives and ambitions. Get used to it. And it's not even how television, or even sci-fi television, has to be. Laura Roslin, people. Kara Thrace. Sharon Valerii. Ellen Tigh. They have giant major stuff going on that has nothing to do with their relationships with men.
Stargate as a franchise has a pretty terrible record with women characters, but before they were pretty terrible with men, too. They have a habit of casting wonderful actors in one-note roles and writing action stories around them, peppered with brilliant one-liners. And of course it has worked great for years. But their female characters were always appalling, even by sci-fi standards, from Samantha Carter to Teyla to poor Dr. Elizabeth Weir. I guess I should see a step forward in one area as a positive and just hope they catch up in the other area too, but it doesn't feel that way, because if you can do it right, you need to do it for all the characters, not just the men.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Pick one
I had one of those sudden revelations again. Aha!
I like to consider social metaphors in the sense of trying to fit an imaginary segment of society into our real society.
So, what if witches are like plumbers? What if they're like academics? What if they're like the gay community? What if they're like the post office? What if they're like the NBA? What if they're like symphony orchestras?
I always thought that was sort of poorly imagined in Harry Potter, the way that the magical world interacts with the real one. She didn't so much gloss over it as whistle and look the other way.
Suppose you find out you're One Of Them. Like a super tall athlete, or a gifted violist, or a boy attracted to boys? How do you join that community? How do you build (or fight) that thing in yourself? How does it change your life, your family, your choices for the future?
What if you're a gifted violist from a family of plumbers? Or vice versa? What if you have to get hired by an orchestra to support yourself as a violist, and teach lessons, and carry your viola everywhere, only your viola is witchcraft?
I'm trying to decide which metaphor to use. Don't you think that's the hugest question you can possibly ask in modern urban fantasy? It affects EVERYTHING.
If being a witch is like being gay, it's innate, it's something she knows and others recognize if they have witch-dar too. Then it might be more accepted now but still subject to persecution. You can't join the Army (if they know) and certain things will be very difficult. And what about passing? It's a fun metaphor, huh?
If being a witch is like being a symphonic violist, then it takes a huge amount of work from a young age, and a lot of people are going to think you're out of touch and elitist, plus what you do will seem esoteric, but when people actually experience it going on, they are always blown away. You can do something magical and awesome but the utility is not obvious to everyone. Plus you have to have a viola! Expensive, fragile, personal.
If being a witch is like being a mailman, it's prosaic and reliable and you will work in one particular community, where you know everyone and take care of specific things for them, in exchange for regular money. It's a day job. Anyone can do it if they learn how. You go there, you do stuff, you go home. Maybe you know more about people than you really wish you knew! Maybe that gets you into certain situations. Maybe you can transfer to another district with other problems!
I guess I'm trying to decide which one serves me best.
I could certainly imagine someone suddenly discovering this skill and having a community try to adopt her into it, and seeing her dig in her heels and refuse to do things on anything but her own terms. The violist who joins a punk band, right? Can you be in the NBA without being part of the culture? I always think of Adam Clayton, being part of U2 all those decades without buying into their whole Christian thing. I really admire that strength of character.
Personally, I really hate being offered a whole lifestyle along with any life choice. You are a professor? You must drive a Volvo (now an Outback) and vote this way, exhibit a certain style, behave a certain way! You like this music? You must wear a big ugly hat! I mean, come on. We don't HAVE to shop for our lives as a package deal. What a gross idea!
Oh my, I really am writing YA, aren't I? Well, there you go.
I like to consider social metaphors in the sense of trying to fit an imaginary segment of society into our real society.
So, what if witches are like plumbers? What if they're like academics? What if they're like the gay community? What if they're like the post office? What if they're like the NBA? What if they're like symphony orchestras?
I always thought that was sort of poorly imagined in Harry Potter, the way that the magical world interacts with the real one. She didn't so much gloss over it as whistle and look the other way.
Suppose you find out you're One Of Them. Like a super tall athlete, or a gifted violist, or a boy attracted to boys? How do you join that community? How do you build (or fight) that thing in yourself? How does it change your life, your family, your choices for the future?
What if you're a gifted violist from a family of plumbers? Or vice versa? What if you have to get hired by an orchestra to support yourself as a violist, and teach lessons, and carry your viola everywhere, only your viola is witchcraft?
I'm trying to decide which metaphor to use. Don't you think that's the hugest question you can possibly ask in modern urban fantasy? It affects EVERYTHING.
If being a witch is like being gay, it's innate, it's something she knows and others recognize if they have witch-dar too. Then it might be more accepted now but still subject to persecution. You can't join the Army (if they know) and certain things will be very difficult. And what about passing? It's a fun metaphor, huh?
If being a witch is like being a symphonic violist, then it takes a huge amount of work from a young age, and a lot of people are going to think you're out of touch and elitist, plus what you do will seem esoteric, but when people actually experience it going on, they are always blown away. You can do something magical and awesome but the utility is not obvious to everyone. Plus you have to have a viola! Expensive, fragile, personal.
If being a witch is like being a mailman, it's prosaic and reliable and you will work in one particular community, where you know everyone and take care of specific things for them, in exchange for regular money. It's a day job. Anyone can do it if they learn how. You go there, you do stuff, you go home. Maybe you know more about people than you really wish you knew! Maybe that gets you into certain situations. Maybe you can transfer to another district with other problems!
I guess I'm trying to decide which one serves me best.
I could certainly imagine someone suddenly discovering this skill and having a community try to adopt her into it, and seeing her dig in her heels and refuse to do things on anything but her own terms. The violist who joins a punk band, right? Can you be in the NBA without being part of the culture? I always think of Adam Clayton, being part of U2 all those decades without buying into their whole Christian thing. I really admire that strength of character.
Personally, I really hate being offered a whole lifestyle along with any life choice. You are a professor? You must drive a Volvo (now an Outback) and vote this way, exhibit a certain style, behave a certain way! You like this music? You must wear a big ugly hat! I mean, come on. We don't HAVE to shop for our lives as a package deal. What a gross idea!
Oh my, I really am writing YA, aren't I? Well, there you go.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Other books
One of my biggest problems in writing is that I want to write something else. No matter how much I love my current book, other ideas intrude. Of course at the time they seem like the greatest idea that's ever been had, like it would be an absolute crime not to go write them right away, now now now!
I am trying not to do this. I'll go write excited notes about a thing, but then ideally come back to my current one true love. No cheating on your book!
Today BLDGBLOG just wrecked my ability to do that by posting about two different books that are such great inspiration for that book I've put on the back burner that I'm hopping up and down to go write that right now. Jeez!
I don't usually use other books when writing MY books. Is that weird? I don't really do research except for bits of information--where is this town, and are there mountains nearby? what is the law on x?--and I don't like to let other fiction have too much to do with my own because of my chameleon nature.
But these! One is Camus's The Plague. The other is The Last Town on Earth. Both deal with walled and quarantined cities in ways that are absolutely right exactly about what that sad neglected book is about.
It's not that I haven't tried to write it. It just never quite worked, whatever I did. I wrote it as a comic book! Didn't work. I wrote it as a novel several different ways! Got a couple chapters in and it was apparent each time that that wasn't working. It's SUCH a great idea, I know this. I know it's going to become something amazing at some point. But I have some kind of problem with it and I'm not quite sure what it is.
The Plague might have given me a clue, though. And The Last Town on Earth gave me another piece of the puzzle.
I wonder if books that aren't working are missing pieces, like engines that will work for a bit then sputter out if they're missing something they need. You can duct tape a metal disc over that hole in your carburetor (I have done this and driven a thousand miles that way) but probably it's not the way to get there with your sanity intact.
The images these books gave me, the insights into how to solve my story problems, are making me completely wild to write it RIGHT EXACTLY NOW, so I'm going to do it anyway even though I'm sort of against that or whatever. And I have seven papers to grade. But I can grade them later on, sheesh, when this book isn't whanging on the inside of my brains, trying to get out. Sometimes you have to let the other book get its turn even when it's not next in line!
I am trying not to do this. I'll go write excited notes about a thing, but then ideally come back to my current one true love. No cheating on your book!
Today BLDGBLOG just wrecked my ability to do that by posting about two different books that are such great inspiration for that book I've put on the back burner that I'm hopping up and down to go write that right now. Jeez!
I don't usually use other books when writing MY books. Is that weird? I don't really do research except for bits of information--where is this town, and are there mountains nearby? what is the law on x?--and I don't like to let other fiction have too much to do with my own because of my chameleon nature.
But these! One is Camus's The Plague. The other is The Last Town on Earth. Both deal with walled and quarantined cities in ways that are absolutely right exactly about what that sad neglected book is about.
It's not that I haven't tried to write it. It just never quite worked, whatever I did. I wrote it as a comic book! Didn't work. I wrote it as a novel several different ways! Got a couple chapters in and it was apparent each time that that wasn't working. It's SUCH a great idea, I know this. I know it's going to become something amazing at some point. But I have some kind of problem with it and I'm not quite sure what it is.
The Plague might have given me a clue, though. And The Last Town on Earth gave me another piece of the puzzle.
I wonder if books that aren't working are missing pieces, like engines that will work for a bit then sputter out if they're missing something they need. You can duct tape a metal disc over that hole in your carburetor (I have done this and driven a thousand miles that way) but probably it's not the way to get there with your sanity intact.
The images these books gave me, the insights into how to solve my story problems, are making me completely wild to write it RIGHT EXACTLY NOW, so I'm going to do it anyway even though I'm sort of against that or whatever. And I have seven papers to grade. But I can grade them later on, sheesh, when this book isn't whanging on the inside of my brains, trying to get out. Sometimes you have to let the other book get its turn even when it's not next in line!
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Power
I just reread The Witch of Blackbird Pond for the first time in about, oh, say 30 years. And what struck me suddenly 24 hours after I got done was: power. People who accuse other people of being witches are afraid of their power. And the characters in this thing I'm writing who are just perfectly normal humans who sort of pathetically *want* to be witches, they WANT power.
Isn't it cool how a position that was persecuted for its power is now sought for its power? I think that is so interesting. Is that what's behind all the vampire fanaticism?
It also gave me a terrific new character to complete my trio. Except I might have just suddenly changed her to a boy, and not just any boy but the object of affection of our heroine. That gives us three main characters who are doing stuff and one that is going to get the metaphorical axe to the head for being tremendously awful in those understandable, sympathetic, selfish teenage ways. Oh yes.
I also added in some excellent estranged fundamentalist grandparents, because once I realized it's all about the power of the position, I realized exactly how these different conflicting forces need to be fighting over it, or for it, or about it, or against it.
Honestly, that's one of the most useful revelations I've ever had while opening a box of Annie's mac and cheese. As if inside my head suddenly there is a house where there was no house before.
And...it could all be taken as a big metaphor, if you wanted to look at it that way. The older mother trying to get this power, the fundamentalists not wanting her to use it at all, the young adult character just coming into her power in the first place and not sure how it's going to change her life or what kind of person she's going to be.
Something about all this fixed what my story is ABOUT. And I even made a list of Threats and Goals, which is my personal writing strategy. Do you do this? Probably goals should come first, but I go with Threats first, though honestly I can't do any of it until I've been thinking and writing about a story for a while. Everyone has to come to life before I can really figure out what threatens them the most.
My very favorite part of the story idea so far is that this girl raised by wannabe witches joins the swim team because she's always been told that enchantment can't cross water.
Doesn't that seem like a peculiar rule, though? Like, what about water pipes? They're everywhere! So can you undo things by simply stepping across the house and crossing that pipe that leads to the upstairs bathroom? And do pools even count? It's supposed to be running water, like a stream or river. I would think submerging yourself should cure whatever it is, though, or a shower. Right? Wait, maybe the metal pipes counteract it or something.
I can already tell that the magical material is going to have to be worked out in detail for my OCD brain to be able to handle it. I cannot stand flaky artificial worlds. They have to WORK.
The part I LOVE about that (to get back to the swim team) is that even though she doesn't believe in it and it manifestly does not work at all in her mother's household, and she's a sort of magic agnostic, she was raised with enough of it to go for the largest body of water around and dive in. She's afraid of the power even though she doesn't believe in it. I think that's awesome. And you know that her fundamentalist grandparents are going to want to do an immersive baptism on her at some point, right?
This book is coming to life! It's just complicated that I have another one coming to life at the same time. Can you have book twins? Is that allowed? They are so very different, maybe it would be okay.
Isn't it cool how a position that was persecuted for its power is now sought for its power? I think that is so interesting. Is that what's behind all the vampire fanaticism?
It also gave me a terrific new character to complete my trio. Except I might have just suddenly changed her to a boy, and not just any boy but the object of affection of our heroine. That gives us three main characters who are doing stuff and one that is going to get the metaphorical axe to the head for being tremendously awful in those understandable, sympathetic, selfish teenage ways. Oh yes.
I also added in some excellent estranged fundamentalist grandparents, because once I realized it's all about the power of the position, I realized exactly how these different conflicting forces need to be fighting over it, or for it, or about it, or against it.
Honestly, that's one of the most useful revelations I've ever had while opening a box of Annie's mac and cheese. As if inside my head suddenly there is a house where there was no house before.
And...it could all be taken as a big metaphor, if you wanted to look at it that way. The older mother trying to get this power, the fundamentalists not wanting her to use it at all, the young adult character just coming into her power in the first place and not sure how it's going to change her life or what kind of person she's going to be.
Something about all this fixed what my story is ABOUT. And I even made a list of Threats and Goals, which is my personal writing strategy. Do you do this? Probably goals should come first, but I go with Threats first, though honestly I can't do any of it until I've been thinking and writing about a story for a while. Everyone has to come to life before I can really figure out what threatens them the most.
My very favorite part of the story idea so far is that this girl raised by wannabe witches joins the swim team because she's always been told that enchantment can't cross water.
Doesn't that seem like a peculiar rule, though? Like, what about water pipes? They're everywhere! So can you undo things by simply stepping across the house and crossing that pipe that leads to the upstairs bathroom? And do pools even count? It's supposed to be running water, like a stream or river. I would think submerging yourself should cure whatever it is, though, or a shower. Right? Wait, maybe the metal pipes counteract it or something.
I can already tell that the magical material is going to have to be worked out in detail for my OCD brain to be able to handle it. I cannot stand flaky artificial worlds. They have to WORK.
The part I LOVE about that (to get back to the swim team) is that even though she doesn't believe in it and it manifestly does not work at all in her mother's household, and she's a sort of magic agnostic, she was raised with enough of it to go for the largest body of water around and dive in. She's afraid of the power even though she doesn't believe in it. I think that's awesome. And you know that her fundamentalist grandparents are going to want to do an immersive baptism on her at some point, right?
This book is coming to life! It's just complicated that I have another one coming to life at the same time. Can you have book twins? Is that allowed? They are so very different, maybe it would be okay.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Silver on the Tree
I remember loving these books as a child but I had forgotten how much I skipped over. Re-reading childhood favorites is dangerous, but in the case of the Dark Is Rising books, you really should not do it.
What I loved was the Drew children, because Stone Over Sea is a wonderful book and I kept reading to get more of them. But everything having to do with Will Stanton was so outrageously irritating, I nearly didn't finish the fifth book, Silver on the Tree. Good lord. He magically gets all these outrageous powers with no effort, goes through all this pointless contrived rigamarole, then is a rarefied Old One and crucial to the survival of the world. He's all smug and humble and knows more than everyone. I just could not stand Will Stanton.
First off, I hate it when people get superpowers without any cost. Second, Will is boring. He just is. He doesn't have to fight for anything and he gets all the credit, whereas the Drew kids are way more fun and do much more of the work. Third, his powers are awfully convenient, or inconvenient, and that's just annoying. Every E. Nesbit book is infinitely more careful about powers and rules and costs than these books.
Silver On the Tree was the worst offender, followed closely by The Dark Is Rising, for being full of convoluted and nonsensical challenges and mysterious labyrinths of guesswork. And staring wisely off into the distance while looking grim and sad. Gack. About fifty pages of Silver on the Tree, the part in the Lost Lands, could have been cut out with no discernible loss.
I went back to read these because of my own writing in YA, and I did learn a lot, but I never expected so much of it to be what not to do! I learned a tremendous amount about writing terror in children. Stone Over Sea is completely terrifying, Barney and Jane and Simon constantly in situations far beyond their understanding or capabilities. But that is nearly always human danger, danger from recognizable human sources, even when those are driven by the Dark.
When the danger is oversized and silly, it's impossible to grasp, like the absurd Tethys and the bellowing Greenwitch, who just become bizarre and almost laughable in Greenwitch, after a very promising beginning with an extremely frightening figure made of branches and leaves. Whereas by far the most terrifying thing to me in the whole series was the farmer who shot Bran's beautiful dog. I'm still in shock from that.
So when I write YA with supernatural elements, I want to be sure to keep my evil and my danger located firmly in the human. The supernatural is always a metaphor, somehow, isn't it? The supernatural Dark should stand for the darkness within us, not the other way around.
It doesn't matter to children (possibly not to adults either) whether someone is driven by a supernatural force or just a twist in the brain to do something evil to you. It's not a distinction that makes any sense. It's like trying to explain to a kid that the shot you're getting will make you not get sick later on. It just doesn't mean anything.
That whole area of adult life might even just be rationalization, I'm still not sure about that. When we start talking something away, something bad that someone did, we bring in psychology and a dark past and brain chemistry and he was on drugs and all, but it's all just to say: it wasn't him, it wasn't what a person would do, it was EVIL. It was THE DARK.
Well, take that away and you're left with humans who do terrible things for unfathomable reasons. They just ARE that way. It's a frightening and unpredictable world that children live in and we're always just one failed rationalization away from it. Lose that safe logic and you're into a terrifying land.
I still want to punch Will Stanton in the head and I said out loud about a hundred times while reading Silver on the Tree, "This is a terrible book," oh good golly, all the stupid convoluted tests and secret poems and depressed kings and magical trains and criminy, not to mention the most ridiculous anti-racism blurb ever inserted into a book for no narrative reason whatsoever, plus the worst ending ever, but I learned a lot from these five books and that is very far from nothing.
What I loved was the Drew children, because Stone Over Sea is a wonderful book and I kept reading to get more of them. But everything having to do with Will Stanton was so outrageously irritating, I nearly didn't finish the fifth book, Silver on the Tree. Good lord. He magically gets all these outrageous powers with no effort, goes through all this pointless contrived rigamarole, then is a rarefied Old One and crucial to the survival of the world. He's all smug and humble and knows more than everyone. I just could not stand Will Stanton.
First off, I hate it when people get superpowers without any cost. Second, Will is boring. He just is. He doesn't have to fight for anything and he gets all the credit, whereas the Drew kids are way more fun and do much more of the work. Third, his powers are awfully convenient, or inconvenient, and that's just annoying. Every E. Nesbit book is infinitely more careful about powers and rules and costs than these books.
Silver On the Tree was the worst offender, followed closely by The Dark Is Rising, for being full of convoluted and nonsensical challenges and mysterious labyrinths of guesswork. And staring wisely off into the distance while looking grim and sad. Gack. About fifty pages of Silver on the Tree, the part in the Lost Lands, could have been cut out with no discernible loss.
I went back to read these because of my own writing in YA, and I did learn a lot, but I never expected so much of it to be what not to do! I learned a tremendous amount about writing terror in children. Stone Over Sea is completely terrifying, Barney and Jane and Simon constantly in situations far beyond their understanding or capabilities. But that is nearly always human danger, danger from recognizable human sources, even when those are driven by the Dark.
When the danger is oversized and silly, it's impossible to grasp, like the absurd Tethys and the bellowing Greenwitch, who just become bizarre and almost laughable in Greenwitch, after a very promising beginning with an extremely frightening figure made of branches and leaves. Whereas by far the most terrifying thing to me in the whole series was the farmer who shot Bran's beautiful dog. I'm still in shock from that.
So when I write YA with supernatural elements, I want to be sure to keep my evil and my danger located firmly in the human. The supernatural is always a metaphor, somehow, isn't it? The supernatural Dark should stand for the darkness within us, not the other way around.
It doesn't matter to children (possibly not to adults either) whether someone is driven by a supernatural force or just a twist in the brain to do something evil to you. It's not a distinction that makes any sense. It's like trying to explain to a kid that the shot you're getting will make you not get sick later on. It just doesn't mean anything.
That whole area of adult life might even just be rationalization, I'm still not sure about that. When we start talking something away, something bad that someone did, we bring in psychology and a dark past and brain chemistry and he was on drugs and all, but it's all just to say: it wasn't him, it wasn't what a person would do, it was EVIL. It was THE DARK.
Well, take that away and you're left with humans who do terrible things for unfathomable reasons. They just ARE that way. It's a frightening and unpredictable world that children live in and we're always just one failed rationalization away from it. Lose that safe logic and you're into a terrifying land.
I still want to punch Will Stanton in the head and I said out loud about a hundred times while reading Silver on the Tree, "This is a terrible book," oh good golly, all the stupid convoluted tests and secret poems and depressed kings and magical trains and criminy, not to mention the most ridiculous anti-racism blurb ever inserted into a book for no narrative reason whatsoever, plus the worst ending ever, but I learned a lot from these five books and that is very far from nothing.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Not in a hierarchical way
But I DO have standards. And by "not hierarchical" I mean, my standards are not higher than someone else's, or lower, or whatever. They're just mine, see?
For instance I'll never read a Dan Brown book because a Trusted Resource told me they are incredibly badly written, along the lines of the Left Behind series, one of which I actually read once but it was because I was teaching a class called Heaven and Hell, okay? It was for work!
Oh good golly those books are so very very badly written. YIKES.
So anyway.
On the other hand, I read and adore a lot of things that your standard judger of literary quality wouldn't maybe find so very high on the list. Also I might punch out a judger of literary quality who said bad things about Meg Cabot or, I don't know, Stargate Atlantis. Which I realize is a tv show, but it's the same thing, see?
Here are my standards:
1) Things have to happen. I cannot stress this enough. There has to be a STORY. You have to be able to tell WHAT THE STORY IS. In Everything Is Illuminated, there is *definitely* a story. Chaucer rocks the story. (Shakespeare, not so much. Story-challenged, that guy.) In Stargate Atlantis episodes, there is definitely a story. Meg Cabot is an absolute master of the story. And so on!
2) The language/writing/style can't HURT. By which I mean, the writing style doesn't have to be elevated or fancy--I am a huge fan of accessible style--but it can't be bad. BOY is that a hard thing to get across to people sometimes. Left Behind? Accessible, yet so bad it hurts. Everything Is Illuminated? Accessible, glorious, rich, delicious, beautiful. Meg Cabot? Accessible, hilarious, fast-paced, sharp-tongued, brilliant. Stargate Atlantis? Accessible, funny, stressful, dramatic, heartbreaking, sarcastic, fantastic.
3) Characters you love. Even if you love to hate them, or want to smack them upside the head. You engage with them, one way or another. If your character is defined by his or her clothes, just stop right there. Yikes.
4) Ideas! Big ideas that you can really wrestle with and think about. If the author can wrap up the big idea with the story itself, oh boy, brilliant! As in, you are forced to decide what you think about the big idea because that is tied up in what you want to happen in the story. And the jackpot is when you really care about the big idea because it's what the character you're totally engaged with has to decide in order to resolve the big story. With awesome writing style! Yeah! Wooooooo!
There. That's all I want. Is that so much to ask?
Actually I came here to post a link to Maureen Johnson's play by play of the latest Dan Brown book, because it's so good and so brilliantly funny I couldn't NOT share it with someone.
You can tell just from the outline that this is a terrible, terrible, terrible book. Good heavens. But as soon as I thought that, I had to go and define what makes a GOOD book, or how much of a cheat is that? You can't just barge around making huge judgy statements like that without explaining yourself and backing it up. Hello!
So there you go!
Soon I will come back and stomp around and yell about Little, Big, the book that is making me so mad right now. Because a) there is no story whatsoever, and b) fairies and elves and mystical whatnot, man. If I'd known, I never would have cracked this cover open. Sure it's full of gorgeous writing but that is NOT ENOUGH.
Oh, I started stomping early. Well, sometimes it can't be contained. Raaaaaar!
For instance I'll never read a Dan Brown book because a Trusted Resource told me they are incredibly badly written, along the lines of the Left Behind series, one of which I actually read once but it was because I was teaching a class called Heaven and Hell, okay? It was for work!
Oh good golly those books are so very very badly written. YIKES.
So anyway.
On the other hand, I read and adore a lot of things that your standard judger of literary quality wouldn't maybe find so very high on the list. Also I might punch out a judger of literary quality who said bad things about Meg Cabot or, I don't know, Stargate Atlantis. Which I realize is a tv show, but it's the same thing, see?
Here are my standards:
1) Things have to happen. I cannot stress this enough. There has to be a STORY. You have to be able to tell WHAT THE STORY IS. In Everything Is Illuminated, there is *definitely* a story. Chaucer rocks the story. (Shakespeare, not so much. Story-challenged, that guy.) In Stargate Atlantis episodes, there is definitely a story. Meg Cabot is an absolute master of the story. And so on!
2) The language/writing/style can't HURT. By which I mean, the writing style doesn't have to be elevated or fancy--I am a huge fan of accessible style--but it can't be bad. BOY is that a hard thing to get across to people sometimes. Left Behind? Accessible, yet so bad it hurts. Everything Is Illuminated? Accessible, glorious, rich, delicious, beautiful. Meg Cabot? Accessible, hilarious, fast-paced, sharp-tongued, brilliant. Stargate Atlantis? Accessible, funny, stressful, dramatic, heartbreaking, sarcastic, fantastic.
3) Characters you love. Even if you love to hate them, or want to smack them upside the head. You engage with them, one way or another. If your character is defined by his or her clothes, just stop right there. Yikes.
4) Ideas! Big ideas that you can really wrestle with and think about. If the author can wrap up the big idea with the story itself, oh boy, brilliant! As in, you are forced to decide what you think about the big idea because that is tied up in what you want to happen in the story. And the jackpot is when you really care about the big idea because it's what the character you're totally engaged with has to decide in order to resolve the big story. With awesome writing style! Yeah! Wooooooo!
There. That's all I want. Is that so much to ask?
Actually I came here to post a link to Maureen Johnson's play by play of the latest Dan Brown book, because it's so good and so brilliantly funny I couldn't NOT share it with someone.
You can tell just from the outline that this is a terrible, terrible, terrible book. Good heavens. But as soon as I thought that, I had to go and define what makes a GOOD book, or how much of a cheat is that? You can't just barge around making huge judgy statements like that without explaining yourself and backing it up. Hello!
So there you go!
Soon I will come back and stomp around and yell about Little, Big, the book that is making me so mad right now. Because a) there is no story whatsoever, and b) fairies and elves and mystical whatnot, man. If I'd known, I never would have cracked this cover open. Sure it's full of gorgeous writing but that is NOT ENOUGH.
Oh, I started stomping early. Well, sometimes it can't be contained. Raaaaaar!
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Outline
Okay, I got the outline done at least in large strokes for the cozy mystery. It involved a lot of talking out loud to the computer and then petting the cat, who comes running if I talk out loud.
Also I invented the Bryson Grant, which sends people to travel around the world recording oral history, or in this case, oral mystery. I'm way too tickled about the Bryson Grant. Also, I totally want one!
Mostly I got things done because I was ranting and raving about how happy writing makes me, like happy in a slightly deranged way, like somehow I got cross-wired and writing presses the endorphin button and leans on it. Seriously, it's not normal. And then my friend said, "So what are you writing now?" and I gave the thumbnail, and then said, "But I'm stuck on the outline."
Then I decided I HAD to whack it into shape this weekend, before I get students turning in paper drafts on Monday. I need my road map!
It turns out I was trying to throw everything into the story at once and caused a giant bottleneck. Also I had not worked out exactly why the villain was doing the villainous thing. It's very odd because all the pieces were there, but I'd never drawn those last two tiny lines that connected everything.
This makes me very impatient with myself. GET GOING!
But now I have an outline I can stick to the wall and stare at when I get confused about what's what.
Next I just have to convert the many versions of this thing into...well, nothingness. Delete them, I guess. I should admit right here that I will never delete them. They're full of ideas I'm going to want later. But what I mean is, start over without them. It's a little crazy because there's at least 60K words but it's a mess, different false starts, massive changes to the story, all kinds of junk.
The main character's aunt changes names about a dozen times, for instance.
Now she's Aunt Adelaide.
From that and the Bryson Grant you can deduce not only what book I'm reading but which chapter I'm on. Don't you think Aunt Adelaide was very staid and then had a wild exuberant period and then settled down to become prosperous and respectable?
Never mind that there's a character named Melbourne in the last book. That book's main character misheard everyone's names and gave them the names she heard, so Melbourne's name wasn't actually Melbourne. Also she (the main character) lied about her own name to about the first seventeen people she met in the book, so you're not sure what her name really is until her cousin shows up.
Secretly of course I can never, ever remember characters' names, unless they're also names of towns or cities. There was a Macon in that book too, one of three leads, so to speak. Top billing! Macon was actually his name, though. I guess she heard that one right.
This current main character is named after a color of oil paint, abbreviated to a word I associate with chickpeas, though I'm not sure what language. Probably Spanish since it's on the can, though there's a cognate in German, which I remember from my German host family's daughter's art teacher's son.
That little boy went on and on about Kichererbsen and how they were giggle peas until his mom, possibly to shut him up, told him I was American, after which he sat perfectly still and stared at me wide-eyed until we left, because his father was an American soldier but he'd never met him. Only he was very confused because I wasn't black like his father clearly was, so how could I be American?
Anyway it's from cicer arietinum, the Latin name of chickpeas. Cicer/kicher/ceci and there you go.
Originally my character had all these aunts and siblings, but I got rid of everyone except the one aunt. Not *just* because I couldn't keep anyone straight, but because what an unholy mess! Also a big family made the story implausible.
So I'm pleased with my outline and ready to have this book settle down and become the thing I do every day instead of a big tangled knot of confusion. I can't believe it took this long, but then again our man Orson Scott Card says in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (which this isn't) that you're not ready until you're ready and if you write it before you're ready, it'll suck. I may be paraphrasing.
Rosemary & Thyme has me completely excited about the cozy mystery. I feel like staging a denouement in the drawing room over sherry. I feel like drawing maps for the frontispiece!
Also I invented the Bryson Grant, which sends people to travel around the world recording oral history, or in this case, oral mystery. I'm way too tickled about the Bryson Grant. Also, I totally want one!
Mostly I got things done because I was ranting and raving about how happy writing makes me, like happy in a slightly deranged way, like somehow I got cross-wired and writing presses the endorphin button and leans on it. Seriously, it's not normal. And then my friend said, "So what are you writing now?" and I gave the thumbnail, and then said, "But I'm stuck on the outline."
Then I decided I HAD to whack it into shape this weekend, before I get students turning in paper drafts on Monday. I need my road map!
It turns out I was trying to throw everything into the story at once and caused a giant bottleneck. Also I had not worked out exactly why the villain was doing the villainous thing. It's very odd because all the pieces were there, but I'd never drawn those last two tiny lines that connected everything.
This makes me very impatient with myself. GET GOING!
But now I have an outline I can stick to the wall and stare at when I get confused about what's what.
Next I just have to convert the many versions of this thing into...well, nothingness. Delete them, I guess. I should admit right here that I will never delete them. They're full of ideas I'm going to want later. But what I mean is, start over without them. It's a little crazy because there's at least 60K words but it's a mess, different false starts, massive changes to the story, all kinds of junk.
The main character's aunt changes names about a dozen times, for instance.
Now she's Aunt Adelaide.
From that and the Bryson Grant you can deduce not only what book I'm reading but which chapter I'm on. Don't you think Aunt Adelaide was very staid and then had a wild exuberant period and then settled down to become prosperous and respectable?
Never mind that there's a character named Melbourne in the last book. That book's main character misheard everyone's names and gave them the names she heard, so Melbourne's name wasn't actually Melbourne. Also she (the main character) lied about her own name to about the first seventeen people she met in the book, so you're not sure what her name really is until her cousin shows up.
Secretly of course I can never, ever remember characters' names, unless they're also names of towns or cities. There was a Macon in that book too, one of three leads, so to speak. Top billing! Macon was actually his name, though. I guess she heard that one right.
This current main character is named after a color of oil paint, abbreviated to a word I associate with chickpeas, though I'm not sure what language. Probably Spanish since it's on the can, though there's a cognate in German, which I remember from my German host family's daughter's art teacher's son.
That little boy went on and on about Kichererbsen and how they were giggle peas until his mom, possibly to shut him up, told him I was American, after which he sat perfectly still and stared at me wide-eyed until we left, because his father was an American soldier but he'd never met him. Only he was very confused because I wasn't black like his father clearly was, so how could I be American?
Anyway it's from cicer arietinum, the Latin name of chickpeas. Cicer/kicher/ceci and there you go.
Originally my character had all these aunts and siblings, but I got rid of everyone except the one aunt. Not *just* because I couldn't keep anyone straight, but because what an unholy mess! Also a big family made the story implausible.
So I'm pleased with my outline and ready to have this book settle down and become the thing I do every day instead of a big tangled knot of confusion. I can't believe it took this long, but then again our man Orson Scott Card says in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (which this isn't) that you're not ready until you're ready and if you write it before you're ready, it'll suck. I may be paraphrasing.
Rosemary & Thyme has me completely excited about the cozy mystery. I feel like staging a denouement in the drawing room over sherry. I feel like drawing maps for the frontispiece!
Saturday, September 5, 2009
New story from Sarah
Go and read! You don't have to have read The Demon's Lexicon to read this, but the characters are mentioned or appear in it at a much later date.
This is a gorgeous, heart-breaking story. Sarah knows how to do it right!
This is a gorgeous, heart-breaking story. Sarah knows how to do it right!
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Meg says
Not to force kids to read anything they don't want to read, right here.
I'm not sure everyone resists the books that are forced on them, but no doubt it's extremely common.
Since I just got done making up, oh, my syllabus, I've been kind of thinking about this anyway. The classes aren't literature, fortunately. But even with rhetoric and composition, it can be really hard to get students past "I hate this" about any given piece of reading, to get to the interesting analysis, or even to the point where they can extract the content.
"I hate this" is where resentment of the process carries over to the subject itself. I don't know if any of us ever grow out of that. There are movies I've hated purely because I was on a hideously uncomfortable plane when I saw them. How is that any different?
So at that point I lose a movie that I might have liked otherwise, no great loss. But when it's my own writing I have to work on, dear oh dear. Editing, man. I hate it. And then I hate the writing because I hate the process.
Objectivity. I need some. I would love to hear how Meg deals with editing, which is homework, which is reading forced on you. Because that process is exactly what gets you to like To Kill a Mockingbird when it's assigned in class.
I never had that problem, actually. I like reading pretty much anything, so books they assigned in school were no big deal. Some of them I hated--Billy Budd, yikes--but mostly I liked them just fine. The only problem was that I'd read them the first night and then be four books down the line two weeks later and the teacher would think I hadn't read them at all, because I was thinking about other things already.
It only happened once, with Wind in the Willows, because it smelled funny and my mom kept pushing it at me until nothing on earth would have made me read that book on my own. She finally took away all my library books and grounded me until I read it. I really don't understand why anyone would go to such lengths. And I really disliked that book, as you might expect after all that.
Isn't that an odd story? I read constantly, everything, all the time, so why push that one book? Well, it was one of her favorites when she was that age. That's the big danger when you're making up a literature syllabus, thinking about what you loved instead of what would work for that class. You get waves of this, people assigning Catcher in the Rye because it meant a lot to them when they were in high school. But that's irrelevant. It's not a universal book, seriously. I promise you! I've had multiple classes of freshmen shake their heads in bewilderment and ask me what "you guys" see in that book.
Then again, one of our jobs teaching is to show them the awesomeness of any book. If you can't show a class what's wonderful about a book you love or hate or feel ambivalent about, you really shouldn't be teaching. They still may not like it, but they'll GET it.
So maybe that's my job with editing, right? Look at the book clearly. Figure out what's awesome about that book I'm trying to edit, hold it at arm's length while examining it with a microscope, and be able to explain to myself exactly what's so glorious there. Get past that day-one-freshman thing of going "I love it!" or "I hate it!" or "I don't wanna!" and analyze and think and study and really figure it out.
Good plan.
I'm not sure everyone resists the books that are forced on them, but no doubt it's extremely common.
Since I just got done making up, oh, my syllabus, I've been kind of thinking about this anyway. The classes aren't literature, fortunately. But even with rhetoric and composition, it can be really hard to get students past "I hate this" about any given piece of reading, to get to the interesting analysis, or even to the point where they can extract the content.
"I hate this" is where resentment of the process carries over to the subject itself. I don't know if any of us ever grow out of that. There are movies I've hated purely because I was on a hideously uncomfortable plane when I saw them. How is that any different?
So at that point I lose a movie that I might have liked otherwise, no great loss. But when it's my own writing I have to work on, dear oh dear. Editing, man. I hate it. And then I hate the writing because I hate the process.
Objectivity. I need some. I would love to hear how Meg deals with editing, which is homework, which is reading forced on you. Because that process is exactly what gets you to like To Kill a Mockingbird when it's assigned in class.
I never had that problem, actually. I like reading pretty much anything, so books they assigned in school were no big deal. Some of them I hated--Billy Budd, yikes--but mostly I liked them just fine. The only problem was that I'd read them the first night and then be four books down the line two weeks later and the teacher would think I hadn't read them at all, because I was thinking about other things already.
It only happened once, with Wind in the Willows, because it smelled funny and my mom kept pushing it at me until nothing on earth would have made me read that book on my own. She finally took away all my library books and grounded me until I read it. I really don't understand why anyone would go to such lengths. And I really disliked that book, as you might expect after all that.
Isn't that an odd story? I read constantly, everything, all the time, so why push that one book? Well, it was one of her favorites when she was that age. That's the big danger when you're making up a literature syllabus, thinking about what you loved instead of what would work for that class. You get waves of this, people assigning Catcher in the Rye because it meant a lot to them when they were in high school. But that's irrelevant. It's not a universal book, seriously. I promise you! I've had multiple classes of freshmen shake their heads in bewilderment and ask me what "you guys" see in that book.
Then again, one of our jobs teaching is to show them the awesomeness of any book. If you can't show a class what's wonderful about a book you love or hate or feel ambivalent about, you really shouldn't be teaching. They still may not like it, but they'll GET it.
So maybe that's my job with editing, right? Look at the book clearly. Figure out what's awesome about that book I'm trying to edit, hold it at arm's length while examining it with a microscope, and be able to explain to myself exactly what's so glorious there. Get past that day-one-freshman thing of going "I love it!" or "I hate it!" or "I don't wanna!" and analyze and think and study and really figure it out.
Good plan.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Read this and this
Read this and this.
But I have to argue with Sarah's argument about character A and character B in The Demon's Lexicon. Because one of them is a deeply awesome person in complete control of his environment and the other is a wannabe (nothing wrong with being new to something, but it's intrinsically less awesome than having mastered it) who switches her affections from one person to another person and seems to toy with both of them and hurts at least one, yet somehow without any panache, which might excuse it.
Sarah argues we don't like the second one because she's a girl, but actually it's for the reasons I just stated. So there you go. Except she's ABSOLUTELY RIGHT about everything else in the whole article, especially Harriet Potter. Writers punish and/or undercut awesome girls. It's a fact.
There is also a scene where the other three all mock that character for her admittedly silly outfit and laugh at her and put her down, and she gets embarrassed, which is part of my whole giant ongoing argument that we learn how to see people (and characters) because of how other people treat them. I think that scene right there caused all of the backlash against her. No one else gets mocked or ashamed. Just the girl who's among four boys. I don't think she ever recovered from that.
Which teaches me something about writing, like maybe people can knock down your character but if the character *believes* the badness then we believe it too. I sort of wonder whether if our girl had come out of that scene being mighty instead of abashed, we'd have been on her side.
Sarah is allowed to be a little myopic about her own characters, though. It's impossible to be objective!
You've bought the book now, right? Because hello, BUY THE BOOK! The Demon's Lexicon! So very very good! It's so good I got all Holden Caulfield calling authors up and emailed Sarah to say "YER SO AWESOME!!!" then turned bright red and ran away.
I think I've read it six or seven times already. That book is brilliant. Brilliant!
But I have to argue with Sarah's argument about character A and character B in The Demon's Lexicon. Because one of them is a deeply awesome person in complete control of his environment and the other is a wannabe (nothing wrong with being new to something, but it's intrinsically less awesome than having mastered it) who switches her affections from one person to another person and seems to toy with both of them and hurts at least one, yet somehow without any panache, which might excuse it.
Sarah argues we don't like the second one because she's a girl, but actually it's for the reasons I just stated. So there you go. Except she's ABSOLUTELY RIGHT about everything else in the whole article, especially Harriet Potter. Writers punish and/or undercut awesome girls. It's a fact.
There is also a scene where the other three all mock that character for her admittedly silly outfit and laugh at her and put her down, and she gets embarrassed, which is part of my whole giant ongoing argument that we learn how to see people (and characters) because of how other people treat them. I think that scene right there caused all of the backlash against her. No one else gets mocked or ashamed. Just the girl who's among four boys. I don't think she ever recovered from that.
Which teaches me something about writing, like maybe people can knock down your character but if the character *believes* the badness then we believe it too. I sort of wonder whether if our girl had come out of that scene being mighty instead of abashed, we'd have been on her side.
Sarah is allowed to be a little myopic about her own characters, though. It's impossible to be objective!
You've bought the book now, right? Because hello, BUY THE BOOK! The Demon's Lexicon! So very very good! It's so good I got all Holden Caulfield calling authors up and emailed Sarah to say "YER SO AWESOME!!!" then turned bright red and ran away.
I think I've read it six or seven times already. That book is brilliant. Brilliant!
Friday, August 21, 2009
Understatement
Okay, so, yesterday I wrote a whole giant batch of book and I am VERY VERY pleased about that. I'm doing all my usual things wrong, of course. Understatement is the worst. Would you have predicted that was a writing flaw of mine? Well, it is. I'm a criminal understater in third person.
I'm not entirely sure I know how to write at all in third person, though I think I've got it pretty well in first person. Blah! In third I go back and look at it later and think, "Oh, that's nice, except I left out everything important because I didn't want to bonk you over the head with it."
Must learn to bonk you over the head with it! Okay!
But I'm still extremely happy with what I wrote. You can't fix it until you do it in the first place. I mean, criminy.
Essentially everything turned out awesome and great except you have not the slightest idea what the main character is thinking or feeling about anything, or what motivates her, or what she wants or plans or is going to do.
Like I said, it's not perfect. Heh.
I was always trained that (this was some screenwriters who had left Hollywood and were teaching at a large state university, for perspective, which I have now but did not have then) you're not supposed to SAY any of that stuff. You should be able to tell everything from what they do and say.
That is wrong. I've been fighting that training ever since. Ask my patient and long-suffering readers and mentor type people. It's like Soviet bread line sparseness. See, that writing wouldn't even contain something like Soviet bread line sparseness because that's too vivid.
Basically I have to learn how to write people better, such that you know what they're all about.
Nothing BIG or anything. Ahahahahahahahahaha. I cry now.
Oh well, you can't fix it if you don't know what's wrong. It's easy enough to think of exercises for working on this. It's not that I don't know how to do it. It's that I scrupulously avoid doing it.
I was taught to put two spaces between sentences, too, and learned not to do that. I learned to type with the Dvorak keyboard. Surely I'm trainable?
I'm not entirely sure I know how to write at all in third person, though I think I've got it pretty well in first person. Blah! In third I go back and look at it later and think, "Oh, that's nice, except I left out everything important because I didn't want to bonk you over the head with it."
Must learn to bonk you over the head with it! Okay!
But I'm still extremely happy with what I wrote. You can't fix it until you do it in the first place. I mean, criminy.
Essentially everything turned out awesome and great except you have not the slightest idea what the main character is thinking or feeling about anything, or what motivates her, or what she wants or plans or is going to do.
Like I said, it's not perfect. Heh.
I was always trained that (this was some screenwriters who had left Hollywood and were teaching at a large state university, for perspective, which I have now but did not have then) you're not supposed to SAY any of that stuff. You should be able to tell everything from what they do and say.
That is wrong. I've been fighting that training ever since. Ask my patient and long-suffering readers and mentor type people. It's like Soviet bread line sparseness. See, that writing wouldn't even contain something like Soviet bread line sparseness because that's too vivid.
Basically I have to learn how to write people better, such that you know what they're all about.
Nothing BIG or anything. Ahahahahahahahahaha. I cry now.
Oh well, you can't fix it if you don't know what's wrong. It's easy enough to think of exercises for working on this. It's not that I don't know how to do it. It's that I scrupulously avoid doing it.
I was taught to put two spaces between sentences, too, and learned not to do that. I learned to type with the Dvorak keyboard. Surely I'm trainable?
Learning to teach writing to SF novelists
Isn't that a miraculously apropos subject to find?
This article was pretty eye-opening.
I don't know how anyone can generalize about teaching writing--this author doesn't, by the way--because it's all so very specific. What one person needs is completely different from what another person needs. And even if they need exactly the same thing, you might have to use completely different techniques to get there.
I remember a student who wanted to write novels, who already had a contract to write for some kind of cookie-cutter series of fantasy novels. He was doing great, right? But he had not the slightest idea how to do anything more. Fortunately he knew that and came to me for answers, so we had a semester-long running battle over it because he was so utterly frustrated.
It sounds absurd now, but he couldn't see what made one book better than another and wanted to know how to tell the difference. It was like teaching color to the color-blind. And then to try to do that in his own writing at the same time. Brave young man. I give him all the credit in the world because that is insanely difficult, and he was just beside himself the whole time, but he kept coming back.
We had days where I'd say, "Okay, well, one of the traits English professors like me tend to like is vivid imagery." Him: "What's that?"
Go ahead, try to explain imagery. I think I got out my Margaret Drabble book, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, and found him a clear definition, because all my hand-waving wasn't going to cut it.
I still feel like I kind of failed that student in the end. (Not in the sense of failing the class, obviously.) He got everything, but it was like trying to explain the buffalo joke to the Japanese exchange students in my History of the English language course. It was so much work for so little payoff.
Jacob loves the buffalo joke. I got it from a mathematician friend. Here's the sentence: Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.
[These large bovines][who are flummoxed by][those large bovines] [then flummox] [other large bovines][who are flummoxed by][yet more large bovines.]
Except the order is off in the translation.
Also I'm not entirely sure buffalo are bovines.
ANYWAY.
Teaching is hard.
The larger point being, I don't know what I need to learn as far as writing, I don't know what techniques they're going to need to get it through my thick skull, I hope I can be as patient and persistent as my student was and come back for more every week like a boxer who doesn't know when to stay down, and I hope I can GET BETTER, because that's what I want. Eyes on the prize.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Lucky Break
Reading Roald Dahl's book The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, which I read a million times when small and which of course had me staring into candle flames and trying to see what was on the other side of playing cards. I got pretty good at it, too!
As far as I remember.
The book ends with the first story he ever wrote, but right before that is his novella (or something) called Lucky Break, the story of how he became a writer. Basically he had not the slightest intention of doing so, was flying fighter planes and all but got injured and sent to some embassy, but one day C.S. Forester walked into his office to ask questions about the war, and they went to lunch and couldn't eat and write things down at the same time, so Roald Dahl offered to write up notes for Forester to use in his story. Easy, right?
C.S. Forester gave him only these directions:
"Please, let me have plenty of detail. That's what counts in our business, tiny little details, like you had a broken shoelace on your left shoe or a fly settled on the rim of your glass at lunch or the man you were talking to had a broken front tooth. Try to think back and remember everything."
R.D: "I'll do my best."
The story he wrote is outrageously brilliant, but it's also kind of not a story. It tells of several flights he made as an airman in WWII and about getting shot down and being rescued and then recovering in delirium at a hospital. Finally he comes back to consciousness.
Is that a story?
I don't think I know what a story is. My definition tends to be kind of more Robert McKee, with the big changes and the character arcs and the first A then B.
But I don't know how to write a short story AT ALL, or maybe I'm too tangled up in my brains to do what is actually the simplest thing. Just tell what happened. Even if you're making it up.
Are you really allowed to do that? Just tell what happened? About things that actually happened? Because if that's the case, I'm full up with stories. I just don't think of them as stories.
I tend to think: would someone sitting across from me at a table, each of us with a beer, want to listen to this all the way through? Or would we get diverted 1/8 of the way in with their story about a road trip to University of Michigan? Maybe that can be part of it, come to think of it.
Maybe I spent too much time studying medieval exempla, these sort of fables with a giant moral imposed on them. They're actually kind of hilarious because they don't mean anything--I mean, it's not like Aesop, it's just weird little stories about a king and his daughter and he ended up getting run away with by a donkey and lived on bitter aloes at the well and when he came home his daughter had married the shoemaker and had twin boys. And at the end there's the moral: the daughter is the united church, see, and the twin boys are the Eastern and Western church....
Maybe you're not supposed to know what point your story is making until it makes it. I'm sort of afraid they are all going to mean LIFE IS SAD or WHAT CAN YOU DO BUT TRY? or other grim existential themes that will make you want to stab yourself in the eye. Oh well, I guess if that's what we find, then that's what we find.
I've also spent my life listening to someone trade stories with people. That person's are always about How She Triumphed Over Some Cheater or how she Knows Better Than That or how She's Meaner And So She Won. I mean, the overall picture is really not pleasant once you step back for a second.
The stories you tell and how you tell them reveal an awful lot about you. That is the whole entire point of the Canterbury Tales.
Speaking of C.S. Forester, how cool a story is that? The man calls his start in writing Lucky Break, because it really was. I think that's completely awesome.
I think the secret is to shut up and tell the story. Want to tell about all your road trips? Tell about your road trips. Tell about the one with that stupid girl I brought along to share gas (who ended up having no gas money) who told all the chemistry PhD candidates at Caltech that it was great to see people get excited about science for once. Want to write the saga of the horrible fiance from hell? Totally do it.
I also think it clears out your brain. And then you can read all that later and either it's cheap therapy OR you find something awesome you can use for something else. It's making quilt fabric, right? Later on you might cut it up for quilts, but you have to make the fabric first.
I never, ever do this. I don't write this way. Never ever ever never. Anne Lamott says to do it, I think Roald Dahl just said to do it, certainly C.S. Forester said to do it.
Maybe all you need to do is start out, "Here's an interesting thing that happened one time..." Remember all the detail, every bit. Write the beginning, middle, and end. See what happens. It's crazy but it just might work.
As far as I remember.
The book ends with the first story he ever wrote, but right before that is his novella (or something) called Lucky Break, the story of how he became a writer. Basically he had not the slightest intention of doing so, was flying fighter planes and all but got injured and sent to some embassy, but one day C.S. Forester walked into his office to ask questions about the war, and they went to lunch and couldn't eat and write things down at the same time, so Roald Dahl offered to write up notes for Forester to use in his story. Easy, right?
C.S. Forester gave him only these directions:
"Please, let me have plenty of detail. That's what counts in our business, tiny little details, like you had a broken shoelace on your left shoe or a fly settled on the rim of your glass at lunch or the man you were talking to had a broken front tooth. Try to think back and remember everything."
R.D: "I'll do my best."
The story he wrote is outrageously brilliant, but it's also kind of not a story. It tells of several flights he made as an airman in WWII and about getting shot down and being rescued and then recovering in delirium at a hospital. Finally he comes back to consciousness.
Is that a story?
I don't think I know what a story is. My definition tends to be kind of more Robert McKee, with the big changes and the character arcs and the first A then B.
But I don't know how to write a short story AT ALL, or maybe I'm too tangled up in my brains to do what is actually the simplest thing. Just tell what happened. Even if you're making it up.
Are you really allowed to do that? Just tell what happened? About things that actually happened? Because if that's the case, I'm full up with stories. I just don't think of them as stories.
I tend to think: would someone sitting across from me at a table, each of us with a beer, want to listen to this all the way through? Or would we get diverted 1/8 of the way in with their story about a road trip to University of Michigan? Maybe that can be part of it, come to think of it.
Maybe I spent too much time studying medieval exempla, these sort of fables with a giant moral imposed on them. They're actually kind of hilarious because they don't mean anything--I mean, it's not like Aesop, it's just weird little stories about a king and his daughter and he ended up getting run away with by a donkey and lived on bitter aloes at the well and when he came home his daughter had married the shoemaker and had twin boys. And at the end there's the moral: the daughter is the united church, see, and the twin boys are the Eastern and Western church....
Maybe you're not supposed to know what point your story is making until it makes it. I'm sort of afraid they are all going to mean LIFE IS SAD or WHAT CAN YOU DO BUT TRY? or other grim existential themes that will make you want to stab yourself in the eye. Oh well, I guess if that's what we find, then that's what we find.
I've also spent my life listening to someone trade stories with people. That person's are always about How She Triumphed Over Some Cheater or how she Knows Better Than That or how She's Meaner And So She Won. I mean, the overall picture is really not pleasant once you step back for a second.
The stories you tell and how you tell them reveal an awful lot about you. That is the whole entire point of the Canterbury Tales.
Speaking of C.S. Forester, how cool a story is that? The man calls his start in writing Lucky Break, because it really was. I think that's completely awesome.
I think the secret is to shut up and tell the story. Want to tell about all your road trips? Tell about your road trips. Tell about the one with that stupid girl I brought along to share gas (who ended up having no gas money) who told all the chemistry PhD candidates at Caltech that it was great to see people get excited about science for once. Want to write the saga of the horrible fiance from hell? Totally do it.
I also think it clears out your brain. And then you can read all that later and either it's cheap therapy OR you find something awesome you can use for something else. It's making quilt fabric, right? Later on you might cut it up for quilts, but you have to make the fabric first.
I never, ever do this. I don't write this way. Never ever ever never. Anne Lamott says to do it, I think Roald Dahl just said to do it, certainly C.S. Forester said to do it.
Maybe all you need to do is start out, "Here's an interesting thing that happened one time..." Remember all the detail, every bit. Write the beginning, middle, and end. See what happens. It's crazy but it just might work.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
How science/magic works
I like figuring this out. You have to know exactly how the science/magic works in your SF or you are going to make incredibly stupid mistakes all the time and also nothing will make sense or hang together.
I like it when it costs. I mean in the sense that if your spaceship flies from point A to point B, somebody has to foot the bill. Fuel costs, maintenance costs, there are cranky people at the docks, there are taxes and inspectors and all sorts of annoyances.
I like when magic costs. If kayaking knocks me flat for a day, then surely exerting any other kind of force should also. And it should change you, just like kayaking, which builds certain muscles (no, I'm not wearing linebacker shoulder pads, that's just me) and supposedly burns off other things (I see no evidence of this but what do I know?) and you get sunburned and there's sand in the car and now you have less Jungle Juice and sunscreen and your hat is icky.
I am a big fan of the consequences. Maybe that's why I'm so in love with Season 6 of Buffy, which is all about this exact thing. You can do really huge good stuff or bad stuff but it totally changes you and has major lasting repercussions.
In retrospect, wouldn't it have been awesome if the thing that got loose when they brought Buffy back had turned out to be harnessed by the Trio and ultimately turned around to be the thing that kills Tara at the end? Though of course I LOVE that it's just a dumb gun. I love that!
I am thinking a lot about S6 because I'm in magic school right now.
Also reading Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy again. It's about...okay, that's a joke.
It's an excellent book. He has a great section on how science/magic should cost, which is no doubt where I got all my strongly held beliefs on the subject.
I really don't like it when these things come for free. I don't even like it when they kind of just make you tired. They should take something away to give you something else.
Most of the very best science/magic does this.
So I'm working out my systems and rules and what it gives and what it takes. This will sound facetious but between the constant bangs on the head that I get (someone should really examine my head one of these days, I've had so many--it hasn't been x-rayed since I cracked Nancy's skull with mine, but I've had dozens of very hard whacks since then) and a silly thing Bill Bryson wrote in passing, where he hit his head so hard he suddenly remembered where he'd put the coal shed key last winter, I decided to start the story with a really hard bang on the head.
I mean, fictionally. I'm not hitting mine again. Not on purpose, anyway.
Also a good hard crack on the head means that we're not sure whether the strange things that happen next are really happening. And neither is our character. Like!
I love how in fairy tales it always works out that if you get something very cool, you'll end up paying for it later. You can make promises now to get out of a situation, but later on you'll have to pay up, and you really might not like what you have to pay.
So I'm looking at those laws that govern physics and all that in order to figure out what laws govern this world. Is there an exchange rate? Can you actually buy power? Or is it always intrinsic and earned? What if buying power twists it somehow? What if there's something like blood money, power that you wouldn't actually want? Can you cut a deal with any of this stuff or is it fixed and immutable? How does your essence change when you mess with this kind of thing? Can too much magic give you cancer (or cure cancer) or does it function entirely on some other level besides the physical?
I like thinking about it in terms of how it functions in the world, though that might be kind of like thinking, "How do Matchbox cars function in the world? How do jukeboxes function in the world?" Or is it more like, "What does the lymphatic system do and how can we learn to use it better?" Or whatever. I actually have no idea what the lymphatic system does except make glands in my neck swell up when I get allergic to things. Like after kayaking two days ago. Why? I DO NOT KNOW.
There are so many lazy ways of writing magic, but I think that tracks back to a fundamental failure to understand how things work--or to believe that the systems behind the workings of all things are comprehensible deep down. You trust your car even though you may not grasp how the internal combustion engine works. (Oh please learn. It is not hard. If I learn what the lymphatic system does, will you learn the basics of internal combustion? It's a deal.)
People who don't believe that physical processes they use every day are comprehensible terrify me. And write really, really bad magic. They write magic like it's a bill no one has to pay. Or like it's some kind of inexhaustible natural resource, whereas we know none of them are. It's careless and irresponsible and ultimately doesn't work because it's so very sloppy and lazy. Things cost. Causes have effects. There are ramifications to everything.
I think magic is more like giving blood. You can lose a pint with no harm done but you should wait the appropriate amount of time before doing it again, or you're going to get anemic and weak and sick. I think anyone just learning how to use it or control it is going to get mistaken for a drug user, with the crazy highs and lows she's going to go through--which comes with another whole set of problems.
I know the usual metaphors for learning to use magic are drugs and puberty and learning a musical instrument, but surely there are more? More interesting ones?
I've put my girl trying frantically to keep a sinking ship afloat (not literally) and given her a severe bang on the head and a lymphatic system that leaks green from the scab. Oh and a whole story that's screaming to get written so I should shut up and go do that right now.
I like it when it costs. I mean in the sense that if your spaceship flies from point A to point B, somebody has to foot the bill. Fuel costs, maintenance costs, there are cranky people at the docks, there are taxes and inspectors and all sorts of annoyances.
I like when magic costs. If kayaking knocks me flat for a day, then surely exerting any other kind of force should also. And it should change you, just like kayaking, which builds certain muscles (no, I'm not wearing linebacker shoulder pads, that's just me) and supposedly burns off other things (I see no evidence of this but what do I know?) and you get sunburned and there's sand in the car and now you have less Jungle Juice and sunscreen and your hat is icky.
I am a big fan of the consequences. Maybe that's why I'm so in love with Season 6 of Buffy, which is all about this exact thing. You can do really huge good stuff or bad stuff but it totally changes you and has major lasting repercussions.
In retrospect, wouldn't it have been awesome if the thing that got loose when they brought Buffy back had turned out to be harnessed by the Trio and ultimately turned around to be the thing that kills Tara at the end? Though of course I LOVE that it's just a dumb gun. I love that!
I am thinking a lot about S6 because I'm in magic school right now.
Also reading Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy again. It's about...okay, that's a joke.
It's an excellent book. He has a great section on how science/magic should cost, which is no doubt where I got all my strongly held beliefs on the subject.
I really don't like it when these things come for free. I don't even like it when they kind of just make you tired. They should take something away to give you something else.
Most of the very best science/magic does this.
So I'm working out my systems and rules and what it gives and what it takes. This will sound facetious but between the constant bangs on the head that I get (someone should really examine my head one of these days, I've had so many--it hasn't been x-rayed since I cracked Nancy's skull with mine, but I've had dozens of very hard whacks since then) and a silly thing Bill Bryson wrote in passing, where he hit his head so hard he suddenly remembered where he'd put the coal shed key last winter, I decided to start the story with a really hard bang on the head.
I mean, fictionally. I'm not hitting mine again. Not on purpose, anyway.
Also a good hard crack on the head means that we're not sure whether the strange things that happen next are really happening. And neither is our character. Like!
I love how in fairy tales it always works out that if you get something very cool, you'll end up paying for it later. You can make promises now to get out of a situation, but later on you'll have to pay up, and you really might not like what you have to pay.
So I'm looking at those laws that govern physics and all that in order to figure out what laws govern this world. Is there an exchange rate? Can you actually buy power? Or is it always intrinsic and earned? What if buying power twists it somehow? What if there's something like blood money, power that you wouldn't actually want? Can you cut a deal with any of this stuff or is it fixed and immutable? How does your essence change when you mess with this kind of thing? Can too much magic give you cancer (or cure cancer) or does it function entirely on some other level besides the physical?
I like thinking about it in terms of how it functions in the world, though that might be kind of like thinking, "How do Matchbox cars function in the world? How do jukeboxes function in the world?" Or is it more like, "What does the lymphatic system do and how can we learn to use it better?" Or whatever. I actually have no idea what the lymphatic system does except make glands in my neck swell up when I get allergic to things. Like after kayaking two days ago. Why? I DO NOT KNOW.
There are so many lazy ways of writing magic, but I think that tracks back to a fundamental failure to understand how things work--or to believe that the systems behind the workings of all things are comprehensible deep down. You trust your car even though you may not grasp how the internal combustion engine works. (Oh please learn. It is not hard. If I learn what the lymphatic system does, will you learn the basics of internal combustion? It's a deal.)
People who don't believe that physical processes they use every day are comprehensible terrify me. And write really, really bad magic. They write magic like it's a bill no one has to pay. Or like it's some kind of inexhaustible natural resource, whereas we know none of them are. It's careless and irresponsible and ultimately doesn't work because it's so very sloppy and lazy. Things cost. Causes have effects. There are ramifications to everything.
I think magic is more like giving blood. You can lose a pint with no harm done but you should wait the appropriate amount of time before doing it again, or you're going to get anemic and weak and sick. I think anyone just learning how to use it or control it is going to get mistaken for a drug user, with the crazy highs and lows she's going to go through--which comes with another whole set of problems.
I know the usual metaphors for learning to use magic are drugs and puberty and learning a musical instrument, but surely there are more? More interesting ones?
I've put my girl trying frantically to keep a sinking ship afloat (not literally) and given her a severe bang on the head and a lymphatic system that leaks green from the scab. Oh and a whole story that's screaming to get written so I should shut up and go do that right now.
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