storytelling

Farscape. You knew that was coming, right?

Watched episode Green-Eyed Monster on dvd last night, listening to the commentary by Ben Browder, who plays John Crichton and also wrote this particular episode. Listening to storytellers talk about the creative process is something that I could do forever. This particular episode is interesting because it's mostly about the drama that goes on around the triangle of John, Aeryn and Crais, the slightly-off-center former PeaceKeeper commander who lusts for (as Ben Browder puts it) John's girl. It's this episode where John and Aeryn both make the decision to pursue the relationship, and it's handled beautifully.

Another movie/dvd to watch again and again, with or without the commentary, is Sense and Sensibility. I have great respect for everyone associated with this adapation, from Ang Lee (the director) to each and every minor character. But I'm in awe of Emma Thompson's work on the screenplay, and I recommend her commentary on the dvd very highly.

I've been writing very little, but thinking a lot. And reading constantly, about islands in the Caribbean just now.

I'm aware that many of my readers don't like it when I take the action outside of upper NY state, but I hope they'll stick with me. Most of novel five takes place in New Orleans and environs, with occasional peaks back at what's going on in Paradise. New Orleans in 1814 was an incredible place, and I hope I'll do it justice. Certainly I know my characters are all wound up about it.

Another problem I should mention: since there's such a long gap between the time I finish a novel and the time the readers get to see it, I forget sometimes what they know already and what they don't. I try very hard not to let spoilers into my discussions, but I may slip in a small way sometimes.

I have to go now and draw a map. Luke is requesting it.

And here's the opening page of Thunder at Twilight, something I've been promising the members of the discussion board at yahoo for a while. See the "continue reading" link at the bottom of this post.

Excerpt: Thunder at Twilight. Forthcoming Bantam Books. Copyright Sara Donati. All Rights Reserved: no part of this text may be reproduced in any way without express written permission of the author.

Prologue: Jennet

Late Spring 1812
Carryckcastle, Annandale, Scotland

Set free by the death of a husband she had not wanted nor ever learned to love, Jennet Scott Huntar of Carryckcastle left home for the new world on her twenty-eighth birthday.

Jennet told her mother and her brother and her husband's grieving family that she had chosen Montreal for practical reasons, and she ticked them off on her fingers: the family's extensive holdings, the many friends and business associates to look after her, and the fact that Montreal was the closest city to the Bonner cousins in New-York State. These reasons, so rationally presented, fooled no one, not even herself: in a clan of men and women to whom reserve and restraint were as natural as breathing, Jennet was an oddity, unable to hide what she was feeling or even to try.

It was true that she was eager to see the cousins who lived deep in the wilderness of the endless forests in the state of New-York, but the first and most important truth was this: Jennet went to Montreal in pursuit of Luke Bonner, a distant cousin and the man she should have married instead of good-hearted, timid, practical and predictable Ewan Huntar, who had gone to sleep one spring night and died as neatly and quietly as he had lived. Of a bleeding on the brain, the doctor had announced firmly, to stop any rumors or speculations before they could start.

And there was another truth, a crucial one. Jennet had not seen Luke Bonner in ten years, but in all that time he had never married. A handsome young man from a well-respected family, with a quick laugh and a considerable fortune, all of his own making; he could have married fifty times over, and yet he had not. It was both an invitation, and a challenge. One that Jennet could not ignore.

Posted by at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

... that's the wrong term. There's a period when the story is coalescing, coming together in strange ways in my head. I think about details and snippets of dialogue and ask myself questions: what is it Hannah wants here? why is this character so persistant? what does the air smell like just now?

I keep myself busy with research and reading, reading, reading (a study on the history of the British army called Redcoat just now). Making notes to myself, and losing them and spending an hour looking for the notes and then starting all over anyway. Studying maps. Maps are great for helping the process along (for me personally).

Somebody asked on the discussion board at Yahoo whether or not plot comes first, or how that works. I can only answer for myself, and here it is: yes and no. I have the greater historical framework to pay attention to, and that is a kind of mega-plot I can't change. Or not much, anyway. From there, it's a fairly organic process for me. I have an overall knowledge of what's going to happen (at least, I think I do; sometimes big things change half way through because a character just refuses to go along with what I had planned). While my conscious is busy thinking things through (okay, in this next chapter Jennet will have to...) my subconscious is getting up to tricks, and will spring surprises on me at the oddest moments. While I was writing Into the Wilderness I had no idea that Julian had seduced Kitty until she came around the corner in the middle of the night and ran into Elizabeth. Then it made perfect sense. Julian was a healthy male without female companionship and with a terrible habit of acting out on his worst impulses, what else was he going to do? That's the way my plots develop: by hook and crook.

Just now the whole fifth book is simmering, and I'm jumpy and will remain jumpy until i get the first chapter nailed down. Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitutude) once said that it takes him forever to write the first sentence, and everything flows once he's got that down. For me it's a whole chapter. I have thirty pages written that I will rewrite and rewrite until I'm comfortable that I know the setting and the characters and where they're headed (at least at first).

If you know Márquez's work or any of the authors who are known for magical realism, you might notice that I actually lean towards such things myself once in a while, in a small way. Think of Treenie.

Posted by at 6:25 PM | Permalink

As a little girl I would walk two city miles to the public library on Lincoln Avenue on Chicago's north side, no matter what the weather. I think I checked out every book in the children's section before I was ten. If the building hadn't been converted to condos (I should hate this idea, but then I can imagine what a great place that must be to live) I could show you still where certain books sit the the shelves because I checked them out so often: A Wrinkle in Time or Up a Road Slowly or Our Year Began in April.

I have a great respect for libraries and librarians of all kinds. Here in my small town the public library gets almost no public funding, but they provide wonderful services anyway. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, where we lived for ten years, there was a fantastic public library with every possible service, as well as the university's top-ranked research library. I was spoiled, then. Now I have to make due with interlibrary loan, the internet, and buying lots of books I would ordinarily check out for a few weeks and take back.

There's a ranking of public libraries (of course, we love to rank things). Like any ranking it is flawed, but it does establish one thing: In the big city category, the Denver Public Library ranks first. Now, I have nothing against Denver, really, but this seems to me a case of gluttony. Denver already has The Tattered Cover Bookstore, my favorite bookstore in the whole world. And it's got a good university library too. Really. I ask you.

So if you have a good public library, count your blessings. If your public library isn't quite so wonderful, maybe you could help them out a little, eh? Especially when it comes to public funding. One other thing, because I ran into this book on my shelf today and whenever I do I want to sit down and read it all over again.

The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton.
Publisher: Bantam Books; Reprint edition (December 1984)
ASIN: 0553244221
sadly out of print

I first read this book in German when I was living in Austria. I loved it so much I tracked down the original English, and ever since I've been re-reading it on a regular basis. Whenever I see a copy in a used bookstore I buy it to give away. This is the story of a farm family in Missouri, set in the early part of the last century. Each section is told from the perspective of a different family member. This is a beautifully written, carefully constructed story that I have never tired of over the years. I gave it to my daughter to read this summer. She was doubtful (the cover of this particular edition was particularly awful, I admit) but she read it on my recommendation and we had long talks about it. The really sad thing, she says, is that Jetta Carleton never wrote another novel.

JETTA LYON , 86, of Santa Fe died Tuesday following a stroke. She was a writer. Her major work, written under her maiden name, Jetta Carleton, was 'The Moonflower Vine,' a novel from her childhood in rural Missouri. The book was published by Simon and Schuster in 1962 and became an immediate best-seller in both hardback and paperback. It was a selection of the Literary Guild and the Readers Digest Condensed Book Club. She was a graduate of Cottey College and the University of Missouri. She taught school briefly, wrote for radio in Kansas city and for television and advertising in New York. She and her husband lived in Hoboken, N.J., and Washington, D.C., before building a home in Santa Fe in 1970. They founded The Lightning Tree press in 1973, publishing nearly 100 titles. The Rocky Mountain Book Publishers Association honored them in 1991 with its first Rittenhouse Award for lifetime contributions to regional publishing. She was preceded in death by her husband of 50 years, Jene Lyon. She is survived by a sister and grand-nephew in Wichita, Kan. Friends scatter her ashes at her home in the Santa Fe foothills at 1 p.m. on Sunday. Santa Fe Funeral Options.

Posted by at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's the thing: I can't fake it. Or to be more exact, I can't live with faking it. Writing a short scene set in a place I've never been, really, how hard can that be? Just... gloss over the fuzzy details. Who cares what this particular place smells like? What color the sea is? How long it takes to get from one place to another?

The answer: my characters care. They are uneasy if there's insufficient data for them to work with. So today, reading over the first chapter of Queen of Swords the characters tapped me on the shoulder and said, you know you can't get away with this. Hit the books.

I don't live in a big city, or anywhere near a good research library. I love our local library; they work really hard to provide good services on an almost non-existant budget. In fact, I'll have to write a little about libraries, I think, straight away.

Posted by at 4:27 PM | Permalink

There are some very astute commentators out there, such as Diane Werts, a staff writer for Newsday.com. In her 21 September 03 article about the Emmys she notes:

And "Farscape" had three strikes against it: the sci-fi genre, SciFi Channel and being shot in Australia. Plus alien makeup-heaven forbid voters look past it to realize those weird galactic creatures offered some of the tube's most deeply human psychological insight.

Here's a case in point, the character Ka D'Argo, acted by Anthony Simcoe.

Werts' article brings up another interesting topic: there are a lot of people out there writing about Farscape. Not just fan fiction (although there's a lot of that, and much of it very good). People are also writing at length about the series itself. For example, there's Clare Sainsbury's opinion piece at Flakmag, which challenges the mainstream media's tendency to classify certain kinds of fandom (sports and music, for example) as acceptable, while others are deemed suspect. She writes:

One recurrent criticism of fan campaigns is that fans should be expending this time and energy on something more socially productive. But, as fans are eager to point out, many of us already do. My "day job" is as a campaigner for the rights of children and adults with autism. A life? Already got one, thanks.

And despite the cliché of science-fiction fans as teenage boys, viewers of "Farscape" are mostly adult professionals. Almost uniquely among science-fiction shows, it draws equal numbers of men and women. And a roll call of fans online turned up plenty of doctors, fire-fighters, counselors, teachers and so on — in addition to the predictable number of software engineers.

Posted by at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Someone asked in a comment how reading science fiction and crime novels contributes (if at all) to my own writing. It's a good question, but I think the answer is fairly simple.

It seems that people who write well are people who read a lot. I don't know anybody who writes for a living who doesn't need to read constantly. It's like... gassing up the car, you gotta have fuel to tell stories. Now this might seem like I'm saying that you take stories from elsewhere, but that's not what I mean at all.

It has more to do with the fact that storytelling is a community endeavor, something that can't exist in solitude. If you tell stories you have to listen to them too, or your ear for the rhythms starts to deteriorate.

So I read widely, all kinds of fiction and non-fiction. Pretty much across genres. There are those corners of the storytelling universe where I don't go often (I'm not a big fan of traditional whodunnits, for example). But I love the needle sharp prose of quality crime fiction, the tight plotting, the strong characterizations (when it's well done, of course). I read Dennis Lehane, John Sandford, Stephen Hunter (he's got a new _Earl Swagger_ novel coming out, be still my heart), Lee Child, Andrew Vachss and half a dozen more writers in this genre with great enthusiasm.

Dan Simmon's Hardcase and its sequel, Hard Freeze, typify why I like this kind of story: the opening chapter is hair raising, and I defy any reader to put down the book once Joe Kurtz has made his first move. _Here's a hint:_ it involves, first, a garbage disposal and second, a third story window.

As a writer, I often find it hard to just read for enjoyment. I'm too busy observing how the author did one thing or another, thinking about process and alternates and word choices. If a book draws me in to the point where I forget to pay attention to those details, then the story really works for me. Then I read it a first time for story and a second time in order to observe process. This is especially true when I'm reading crime fiction, because the characterization of the kind of man who populates these stories (hard, hardened, cynical, often sad, almost always with a big simmering lake of anger right at the surface) is a challenge for me in my own work. I think, huh, that's interesting, how Joe or John or Reacher reacts to this; I wouldn't have gone there first thing.

So reading outside my genre, reading widely, is an important part of my process. Science fiction feeds into my work in a different way; I'll try to talk about that sometime soon.

Today I did do some writing of my own. There's a new male character who shows up for the first time in Thunder at Twilight (I'm fully aware that you haven't read it yet, I won't give much away here, don't worry). He's a career soldier in the British army, a veteran of the Napoleonic wars in Spain, with some twists that are just being revealed to me as he has jumped feet first into the beginning of Queen of Swords. Uninvited, I might add. There he was, wanting to tell the opening scene from his point of view, so now I'm following him around while he observes, and talks to himself, and tries to convince himself that he's not neck deep in something that's threatening to drown him.

Posted by at 6:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been struggling to get this weblog into shape, which meant changing software, which meant a bit of a wait and a lot of experimentation... but here it is, finally, and I believe the format will stay this way. Note there is now room for comments, if you'd like to make them. Play nice.

Now that I've got this blog running the way I want it too, I will try to write a little tomorrow about Queen of Swords and where I am in the creative process.

Oh and, Farscape was on tonight. The episode from season four: A Prefect Murder. On a ten point scale I'd rate this episode a six, except it focuses a great deal on Aeryn, so it gets an extra point for a total of seven. It did move the overall story arc along, especially regarding the relationship between the main characters.

Posted by at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I finished the fourth novel in the Wilderness series at the end of August and it arrived on my editor's desk at Bantam on September 1. 1,200 manuscript pages. Yeeehah! It always feels like giving birth, but then you have to wait a couple weeks until the doctor tells you about the infant's health. Or name. I really want to hold onto my original title this time: Thunder at Twilight.

So Wendy (my editor) calls this morning and... she's ecstatic. Very, very happy, which makes me very, very relieved. Apparently Nita Taublin (the publisher) loves it too, and I had a long talk with my agent Jill this morning, who was also in raptures... some part of me just refuses to believe them, but the biggest part is just plain happy to know that it looks as though I pulled it off, yet again. Now I should go write a little (got the first chapter on the next one started) but I'm kinda jumpy after those phone calls.

By the way: Last night's episode of Farscape was pretty damn good. I Shrink Therefore I Am, from season four. Shouldn't you be running out to the video store to rent the Premiere, just to see what I've been raving about?

Posted by at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I did try to keep a writing journal once, and here's the proof: an entry from four years ago while I was writing Lake in the Clouds.

I really did mean to write ten pages today but instead things got away from me; it felt as though I had been transported into one of those 60s novels about harried housewives: Please Don't Eat the Daisies or Eight is Enough.

I did manage to find out pretty much everything I need to know about scarlet fever. In addition to the medical sources, it turns out that my favorite late 18th century midwife, Martha Ballard, dealt with a scarlet fever epidemic one summer, although she didn't call it that, of course. A series of cases of "canker" (strep throat), infected wounds, childbed fever, all stemming from the same strep bacillus. This will suit my story line very well.

A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Vintage Books; [Reprint edition (June 1991)] ISBN: 0679733760.

There is a fantastic website which explores Martha Ballard's diary online, and provides information on everything from folk medicine and midwivery to how historians use primary sources. Have a look.

Thinking of Martha Ballard and Ulrich's study reminds me of some of the very best historical fiction I have ever read. Margaret K. Lawrence's Hearts and Bones, which is clearly based loosely on the life of Martha Ballard. There are four novels in the series, and I cannot recommend them highly enough, although I'll admit that the first and the last were my favorites.

Hearts and BonesMargaret K. Lawrence, Avon [reprinted September 1996]. ASIN: 0380973510

In spite of the running around I did manage to finish the abstract mixed media fiber piece I'm calling Constellation Blue this evening. Of course I don't like it very much right now but I'm hoping it will grow on me.

Posted by at 8:43 PM | Permalink

First of all, Farscape is in fact on television tonight, on the Sci-Fi channel at midnight (east coast) and at nine (west coast). The folks at Sci-Fi seems to get great enjoyment out of frustrating the faithful, and yet we still manage to find Farscape no matter where they hide it. Tune in.

Now, something I've been wanting to say for years. Have said many times to friends. This is about The Godfather (not the novel; I'll say something about that someplace else). The movie attained cult status long ago. Men love to quote from it; whole movie plots have been built around that fact (You've Got Mail is a case in point). Poke the average Joe on the street and he spits out 'take the cannoli. leave the gun'. Italian Americans, especially men, adore this movie. I won't go into the psychology behind that, because it's exhausting.

But here's what I want to say: in two crucial cases, the movie was horrendously miscast. You know it's true. Think about it. Think about the Corleone brothers sitting around the table at a birthday party. Look at these actors. James Caan, tall and blond and curly haired, as the brother of Al Pacino and John Cazale? Uh-huh, not unless Mama Corleone had some secrets of her own.

Personally I think they would have been much better off giving Sonny's part to my great uncle Luigi Alfonso -- now that's Italian.

Posted by at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've never been able to keep a journal. Over the years I've tried, reallly I have, and I always fail miserably even when I give myself a specific task. For example, I tried, at one time, to keep notes on my thoughts as I worked on a novel. I thought it would be interesting to try to follow the characters around in my head. But they didn't much care for that, and as any novelist will tell you, an unhappy character makes writing really hard. So I gave it up. However. I have been thinking about this blogging business and it seems to me a good way to keep track of my thoughts on storytelling. Along the way if my thoughts are useful to other people looking for a book to read or a movie to watch, then maybe I'll feel motivated enough to keep doing this. I love a good story, on a screen (small or large), told over dinner, or in the pages of a book. I think it's pretty safe to say that I'm addicted to storytelling from both sides -- I need stories as much as I need food and shelter -- and I also need to write them. This isn't unusual; in fact, it seems that storytelling is a basic human need. It's how we make sense of our world and our own role in that world.

I have had some success writing novels that are heavily plotted, and I like to think that I know a little bit about what makes a story work. Wherever I can, I try to promote excellent storytelling. I tell friends about books that I really loved and enjoyed (have you read any Dennis Lehane? run to the bookstore or library!). We talk about movies endlessly (disappointed in Open Range, disappointed in Le Divorce), about older movies worthy of watching again (Bull Durham, When Sally Met Harry, Sense and Sensibility). I talk to friends a lot about television.

When I was in graduate school it was very, very bad politics to admit that you watched television (with a few exceptions: for some reason, Cheers was okay, as were reruns of Gilligan's Island).

You were supposed to be reading higher literature and criticism; you were supposed to be slaving away, losing sleep over great philosophical debates, and in general you were supposed to submerge yourself in the university culture and drink therefrom until you were converted, or you floundered.

But I rebelled. I decided that I didn't need to buy into everything they were selling, and one of the big ticket items that I passed up was this: they wanted me to believe that old-fashioned storytelling was plebian, and those who liked narrative were woefully undereducated. Plot? A four letter word. Really good writing had to do exclusively with character. It started with character and ended with character and in the middle there should be, if at all possible, a character in the throws of an epiphany. Stream of consciousness was neat-o, too. Plot was secondary and really, if you could figure a way to do without it, all the better. You think I'm joking? I wish I were.

But I like plot. I always have, and I didn't want to give it up, not in the stories I wrote and not in the ones I watched or read.

This is not to say that it isn't possible to have a good story (i.e., a well plotted, well told story) that spends a lot of time on developing complex, interesting characters. I don't see, I never will see, why the latter should be more important that the former, but I also don't think you can do without good character development. The novels I like best are the ones that have both. I really loved The English Patient both for the incredible beauty of its prose, but it was the story that moved me beyond words. I like the movie version too, for different reasons. I hated the movie About Schmidt because it seemed to me pretentious blathering about shallow, unlikable, two dimensional characters who bounced around dull scenes until their ninety minutes were up. I love A.S. Byatt's Possession because it's intellectually challenging, beautifully written, has characters I dream about, and because there are multiple engaging plots. I am in awe of Baine Kerr's novel Wrongful Death for a hundred different reasons, but right up at the top is a plot that had me thinking really hard, and rewarded me for that.

So I'm going to start this blog business off by pitching a television show that I truly admire and love, and one that needs support because it's hanging on by the skin of its teeth. It's called Farscape. I have a whole page on this website dedicated to it alone, and here's the link: Sara Sez Watch Farscape. Please have a look (and be warned that the first part of this blog is repeated on that page. If you generally steer clear of sci-fi and prefer a good love story, believe me, you need to watch this show. I should say that Claudia Black, who plays Aeryn Sun (seen here) would make a perfect Elizabeth Middleton Bonner, if the Wilderness novels ever make it onto film.

Posted by at 7:41 PM | Permalink