storytelling

ARCs are very hard to come by, as they are expensive to produce and mostly go out to reviewers; however, I will wrestle at least a few more out of Wendy (my editor).

I am still planning some kind of contest/give away for a signed ARC, details forthcoming when I've figured it all out and actually have more copies in hand.

If you end up with this or any other ARC, you have to remember that these are uncorrected page proofs. That means there are typos, inconsistencies and any number of small infelicities that most probably have already been corrected, but not until after the galley proofs were bound for the review process.

Finally, if you're going to ask me if I like the cover, please don't. Whether or not I like it doesn't really matter, as I don't have any control. The marketing people like it, which is, in the world of publishing, the main thing.

Posted by at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

1. It seems as if the outline you mention at the beginning undergoes some fairly heavy changes as it evolves into a book (characters getting killed off, or not, as the case might be), which leads me to believe (perhaps wrongly) that you write the outline before getting down to the nitty-gritty of a, b, c and d?

... in any narrative, the parties in conflict have to be on equal footing in terms of power and control, even if that doesn't seem to be the case on the surface. This is how tension is created, and you keep the reader interested. Power takes many forms. A woman incapacitated in a wheel chair, unable to feed herself, hardly able to talk, can be a poweful presence in the life of a young, healthy daughter. With this idea in mind, have a look at this simple schematic of how tension and story arc work together. It's adapted from Janet Burroway's classic text on writing fiction, now in its sixth edition. If you study it (click on the image to enlarge), you'll see how power moves back and forth between the forces of good (Cinderella) and evil (the Stepmother). Kinda like capture the flag, but without the flag. You can take any novel or movie or play or episode of television and look at it in these terms to figure out how it's structured (or where the narrative begins to lose its rhythm).

2. Also, wouldn't you have to have the characters ready and waiting to jump into the plot if you work in this manner? Of course, in the Wilderness series you did just that (I gather), but what about minor characters? Do you just thread them in as you go along, or do you develop them first, in order to make them fit better into the pattern?

Characters who are going to be fairly pivotal, even for a short period of time, I will stop and think about in more detail. For example, there's a trio of women in Queen of Swords, a middle aged daughter, her mother, her mother's servant, who are going to be quite important to various plot developments. As I was thinking about them in relationship to each other and to the rest of the characters I realized I was going to have to stop and make notes, which I did. I constructed a brief backstory and timeline, which I'll refer to now and then when they come into the story.

Posted by at 6:21 AM | Permalink

THREE COLLECTIBLE BOOKS by Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland": the first illus. by W.H. Walker with 8 in color, 42 in black & white, London: John Lane The Bodley Head, illus. blue cloth cover, dust jacket. Second, illus. by Harry Riley, first edition thus, London: Arthur Barry, 1945, dust jacket; third, 28 illus. & colored frontispiece by Thomas Maybank, London & N.Y.

Someone gave me an edition of Sense and Sensibility (or maybe it was Persuasion; I can't find it just now, of course, although when I went off searching I found a few other books that had been eluding me. I'm convinced that my books hold meetings in the middle of the night to predict which one I'll need next and thus, whose turn it is to hide)... but the point is, this particular edition, paperback, really struck me for its artwork: a close up, detailed painting of the sweep of a highly embroidered skirt. When I do run across this book, I always think I have to look to see what publisher put it out and go see if the other Austen books are done in the same style.

I don't read these editions I collect for their physical selves; when I do sit down to re-read, I always go back to the same hardcover critical edition, which is full of bits of paper and stcky notes.

Enough, I think, of obsessing about books, for the moment.

Posted by at 5:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

First, for every novel I've written so far I have had to provide my publisher with an outline. Which means that whether I want to or not, I have to do some plotting ahead of time. Now, I'm not obliged to stick to that outline, and I never really have. So why ask for it? I think they just feel better knowing that I can put a series of ideas together before they hand over an advance. Nobody has ever said to me, once the manuscript is handed in, hey! you said that Mr. X was going to kill Mr. Y, and he didn't.

The outline aside, I usually start by writing down lots of stuff long hand. I'm very visually oriented so I get out maps and big pieces of paper. I sit down and think through

(a) where my characters are at a given point (I'm talking about plotting the Wilderness novels, of course, which come along with a complicated backstory);
(b) where they want to be (what their individual goals are);
(c) where I'd like them to be by the end of the novel;
(d) what's standing in the way of (b) and (c).

Which is to say, I set up goals and complications. I make lists and spider charts and draw lots of lines to connect people and ideas. While doing this, things jump out at me, usually big questions. Like: what in the heck are these people doing in New Orleans in the first place? I write that in big red letters, and then I think about that for a while. Someplace on the main piece of paper I write a couple of things I have to keep reminding myself about:

-- happy people leading easy, uncomplicated lives do not make a good story, or: bad things must happen to good characters;
-- bad guys have to be interesting if they can't be likable;
-- one step at a time

By the time this part of the process is done, I have a lot of scribbled notes and odd drawings that don't make sense to anybody else. I try to distill those down to some major plots points, of two types:

(A) actual historical events I can't skip, or don't want to;

(B) the pivotal character-specific events or scenes I know will have to happen someplace in the course in the novel.

(1) character X has been lying about something important in order to get Y and Z to go with her to Timbuktu, and she's going to have to come clean at some point, which means a confrontation;
(2) He and She have been dancing around each other and are finally getting to the point where the relationship has to be acknowledged, that will be a series of scenes, and a lot of dialogue
(3) Character Y is going to come down with (pick one) malaria, cancer, blood poisoning.

Then I make notes and diagrams about how (A) and (B) might intersect.

Are you still with me?

With all this material, notes, research materials, drawings, ideas, questions, I then spend a lot of time thinking about the opening paragraph and scene, which will set the tone for the whole novel. The first paragraph takes a long time to get right, the first scene even longer. I probably rewrite these few pages more than any other part of the whole novel, because I can't really take off until I get them down to near perfection. Once I move beyond that point, I almost never go back and change anything substantive in them.

Still awake?

At this point, I feel my way, very slowly. The first scene/chapters have set up the primary conflicts, if I've done my work. I move forward from there, in order. I don't write bits and pieces and then rearrange them and string them together. I know some people can work like that, but I depend on a sense of building something very measured and balanced, one piece on top of the next. Very rarely I'll skip over a part of a scene because of technical or research questions and move on fast because the rest of the bit is right there, waiting to be spat onto the paper. But that's pretty rare.

If I come to a dead standstill, it's because I've forced the narrative in the wrong direction, and I never get very far. Usually my subconscious stops me right at that point, and won't let me go on until I fix it.

So I proceed this way, chapter by chapter, stopping after every one to re-read, figure out where I am, and where the characters are going next. Often I get the sense that one character or another needs to be heard, and I'll switch to that POV, which is a little bit like filling the tank and changing the oil and cleaning the windshields to roar off, full of energy, on a new morning of a very long road trip.

I think this pretty much covers my plotting methods for the Wilderness books. I can talk about the contemporary, stand alone I'm working on, too, if you're interested in that.

Posted by at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

On the bad side is, first and foremost, the saloon owner Al Swearengen, who is so consistently, awfully awful that I have to admire Ian McShane's ability to add some depth to an otherwise fairly flat character. There's no low where Al won't go, including ordering the murder of a little girl who threatens to expose one of his subsidiary ventures -- the ambush and slaughter of pioneer families to grab the little bit of money they might have, with the added touch of making sure the whole thing gets blamed on the Sioux. This little girl, the sole survivor of one such attack on a Norwegian family by Al's henchmen, has thus far survived Al's attempts to see her murdered. Right now she is the pawn around which the central conflict is being built.

On the other side of Al and his cronies are the doctor, who is neither a drunk or an addict for once, Calamity Jane played here on the fine edge of hysteria by Robin Weigert, the former lawman from Montana Seth Bullock and his partner Sol Star who have come to Deadwood to set up a legitimate business, the fatally flawed Wild Bill Hickok and his friend Charlie Utter.

There are a number of subsidiary plotlines that haven't been woven into this central bit yet, but that can't be far off. Tonight we saw the first face to face confrontation between a paranoid Al Swearengen and an edgy Seth Bullock, in a scene so tense and tightly played that it sparked. I have to admire the pacing and complexity of the plot and the performances, although I'm hoping that as one of the few female characters Calamity Jane will break out of the fairly predictable range of emotions they've set up for her.

Posted by at 9:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Readers who want to support midlist authors should buy new, not used, copies and donate their used copies to people who can't afford books instead of selling them online. Alibris, the used and rare bookseller that is going public this year, has revealed that it earns some $30 million in commissions alone on used and rare book sales. Imagine how much Amazon, which markets used copies aggressively, cuts into publishers' sales.

It's a different matter completely when you're talking about readers who can't afford a book, but then that's what the public library system is for. I am not upset when somebody tells me they got my novel out of their local library before deciding whether or not to buy it; that makes sense, certainly. On the other hand, if somebody tells me with great glee that they got all of my softcover books off of ebay for a total of twelve bucks plus shipping, I start to run numbers through my head. How much of a profit is the used bookseller making on my novels? Is s/he actually pocketing more from the re-sale of those three books than I did when they were first sold? Sometimes the answer is yes. And this is, to put it simply, frustrating. No wonder it's hard to make a living at writing.

What to do about it? Nothing. We live in a free market, and some things can't be legislated, but sometimes I wish people would think a little about what it means when they buy used books. Most especially I think about a used bookseller I once saw interviewed on television who said, very proudly, that his goal was to resell every book so many times that he put publishers out of business. Is this the height of stupidity, or greed, or some wondrous combination of the two?

I try to follow a few simple rules that make me comfortable in my own purchases. (1) I never buy an ARC before a book is published; (2) I never buy a used book unless that book is out of print; (3) I try to buy all my books from independent booksellers; (4) I buy hardcover copies of books by authors who I admire and who are struggling to make a name for themselves -- I think of this as a professional courtesy; (5) I donate books that are still in print and I can't use any more to schools and non-profits who don't resell them. I do use Alibris and Abebooks quite a lot, but only for stuff so old and musty it's not available anywhere else. That's what the online used booksellers excel at, and that's what I use them for: finding esoteric books on particular research topics, old newspapers, and oddities.

There was one other letter to Salon's editors that really got my attention, and not in a good way. It made me so spitting mad that I had to go walk the dogs to cool down. More about that, maybe, another time.

Posted by at 6:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Posted by at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It’s such a fine and mournful and elevated sentiment—Emmeline Grangerford herself couldn’t have done no better—that you almost don’t want to tell him that by our best calculations, using every scrap of reliable data we can lay hands on, at this very moment more people are reading more books, reading a greater variety of books, continuing to read them later in life, et cetera and so forth, than ever before in the history of civilization.

PS just to have it on record yet again: I dislike chain bookstores, too, and I support my local independent bookseller.

Posted by at 11:21 AM | Permalink

Two nights ago we had our first Niccolo discussion over dinner, which I cooked for them out of gratitude, and with real delight.

First, I was worried that they would not like Niccolo. My tastes are eclectic, my appetite for history boundless, and I couldn't be sure they wouldn't just run in the opposite direction because as I've said before, these novels are not for the faint of heart. The story is consuming, the characters tremendously complicated and intriguing, but Dunnett does not coddle her readers, and you've got to be up for a challenge. Then Audrey came in and said, I'm in love with these books, I can't put them down and Cheryl came in and said, I think Niccolo Rising may be the best book I've ever read (this from a woman who has read everything, and knows The Name of the Rose amost by heart), and I felt like I had found long lost sisters.

So we ate well and luxuriated after dinner with truffles and strawberries and talked and talked and talked about Niccolo, his motivations, his intelligence, the world he lives in, the people he loves and the people he doesn't love. When they left I felt like a seventeen year old girl after her first real, successful date.

Next week we meet to discuss book two, Spring of the Ram. When we are all done, we are thinking, a trip to Bruges would be in order.

Posted by at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Of course you also have to decide for yourself what's really going on here, if these people are being playful with each other or if there's some underlying feud. I haven't even given you names, because that makes a big difference in how you might proceed. This could be a couple, or an elderly father and a son, or two sisters watching their mother, or old friends observing one of their aunts. The crucial thing to remember is that if this scene is to stay in the story, it has to actually (1) move the characterizations along or (2) contribute something important to the tension and plotting.

If this exercise really takes your fancy and you want to post it on the discussion board, please feel free to do so. Maybe you'll get a conversation going.

"She wanders around the garden like an old witch."
"A good bitch or a bad bitch?"
"I wish you'd do something. That's not what I had in mind."
"So bossy so early in the morning. I wonder why I never noticed that before--"
"Before what?"
"Oh look, she's digging a hole. I wonder what that's for. Treasure to bury?"
"You're not taking this seriously. I wish you'd do something, I really do."
"Hand me the telephone, I'll alert the media."
"You know there's a word for this behavior, don't you? It's not a very nice word, either."
"I do so love word games. Let me guess."

Posted by at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

At any rate, all this newest discussion has been sparked by an anonymous essay on Salon called The Confessions of a Semi-Successful Author (you don't have to subscribe to read it; you can get a day pass by agreeing to deal with the advertisements; oh and, Robyn pointed it out to me first). The gist of this article is that the author has four books published which (1) won prizes and (2) got good critical reviews but (3) made little or no money and (4) got her no lasting recognition so that (5) she had to get (gasp) a day job.

My problem with her essay is this: she never addresses the crucial question: do these prize winning books of hers actually contain a good story? Because, as she notes so mournfully, other, less well written books are selling like hot-cakes; what she fails to realize is that there's a simple reason for that. People want a story. They will put up with awful writing at the sentence or paragraph level as long as you give them a reason to turn the page.

Really, I hadn't planned to write about this here but then I caught scalzi.com's reaction to the Salon essay, which made me laugh and cringe at the same time with statements like this: "Of course the article is also running in Salon, which has a history of chronicling the 'misfortunes' of unfathomably privileged people who by all rights should be beaten in a public square for their heedless lack of clue."

Scalzi had a longish entry earlier this week with advice for writers which I liked a lot. The highlights:

1. Yes, You're a Great Writer. So What.
2. I Don't Care If You're a Better Writer Than Me.
3. There is Always Someone Less Talented Than You Making More Money As a Writer.
4. Your Opinion About Other Writers (And Their Writing) Means Nothing.
5. You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop, You Know.
6. Until You're Published, You're Just in the Peanut Gallery.
7. Did I Mention Life's Not Fair?
8. Don't Be An Ass.
9. You Will Look Stupid If You're Jealous.
10. Life is Long.

Scalzi's main point -- and it's a good one -- is that you can't go into this business expecting to make a living from it alone. Many published novelists teach creative writing while they are pecking away at their next book. You have to take a day job as a given; if by some chance you get to the point where you can write full time, that will be the metaphorical icing on the cake. And it may not last. I have every expectation that some day I will have to go find an employer, and I'm prepared for that. In some ways, it will be a relief.

In the meantime, I'm not planning on divulging what kind of advances I get or how much I clear each year, because those numbers would have no substantive value to anybody else, at all.

Posted by at 4:27 PM | Permalink

A clumsy metaphor is like a slap in the face (that's a simile, of course). Even a cliche (and most cliches are metaphors) is preferable to a bad metaphor; cliches register as nothing at all.

Before going any further, it's probably a good idea to have a look at this website by Ronnie Manalo Ruiz which summarizes the various types of metaphor. With those distinctions in mind, if you start paying attention to metaphor in your fiction reading, you'll notice how prevalent they are.

The simplest way to look at a straight-forward metaphor is A=B. This applies to simile as well, of course. I'm going to use some less than wonderful metaphors [note addition (thanks, Ed): and similies] to demonstrate and hope you won't find it necessary to shoot the messenger. In these examples the first term in parenthesis is A, the second, B.

It must be said that writing about romantic relationships and strong attachments produces some of the most awkward metaphors, maybe because it's just hard to write about the mania that goes along with falling in love, or lust. Which brings me to the next point.

One mistake novice writers seem to make a lot, in my experience, is stretching so hard for the right metaphor that they forget whose POV they are writing from. The way one character perceives Sam's smile will be (should be) distinct from the way the next character sees that same smile. To his little sister, his smile might be (forgive me, I'm making a point) a ray of sunshine while his landlady sees it as sputtering neon. The metaphor webpage I've referred you to puts the point very clearly:

a metaphor provides...a cue to what kind of thinking should be done...Metaphors act as a shepherds to lead the audience onto the correct path of thought and mindset.

This is a longer bit from Byatt's Possession, which I quote here as an example of a number of things, foremost among them a well done scene about sex, subtle and still evocative and distinctly poetic in its use of imagery and metaphor (click to open in a new window, large enough to actually read):

Posted by at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Two things which bothered me enough to note: first, enough of pigs. Three books and/or films in the last few years have featured bad guys who toss their victims to the pigs: Hannibal, Snatch (which I loved, so I'll forgive the pigs), and now Deadwood. The second thing is the nature of the cussing. I'm not prudish; no problems here with the way fuck is tossed around on shows like The Wire. Realistic dialogue is not always pleasant. But language evolves, and word taboos evolve, and it's only in the last thirty years that fuck has made its way out of the absolute taboo into the daily use category. That kind of anachronism really bugs me. Next thing you know, somebody will tell Wild Bill that he's being neurotic.

Posted by at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (2)

Posted by at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Have a look at the Nonverbal Dictionary, because it's bound to give you a new appreciation for the way you can use body language in your writing.

In the meantime, it's useful to see what other authors have managed to accomplish, through a combination of concrete descriptive details and short-cuts.

'We also have many wounded.' He touched his own bandaged shoulder. 'And no hope of reinforcements.' Julian, Gore Vidal

The glare in Felix's eyes was replaced by a look of normal exasperation. His shoulders slackened. He said, 'I told you. You shouldn't have jumped in after it.'

A slight movement of the fat man's shoulders appeared to constitute a bow. "Then continue, Madame Katelina, with your lively history," said the vicomte.

'Why?' asked the Dame de Doubtance, and settling herself in her chair, smoothed out her thick skirts with one bezelled claw. 'Dear Francis. Do you wish to ask me something so private?'

Nicholas embraced his knees with one hand and waved the other. "Well, tell him!"

"I don't know," Alessandro said, waving his arms in the air as if to indicate confusion. "It just came to me."

He proudly pointed at his own chest. "Not me. Never. I never shed my own blood."

"I didn't say I would." Orfeo cocked his arm and made a fist. "Will you fight?"

"Were you in the army?" Alessandro asked Arturo. Arturo bowed slightly and blinked. When he bobbed up he said, "I was an armorer in Trento."

The scholar touched his glasses. "What did you do before the war?"

A useful exercise is to take a scene with dialogue from a favorite novel and strip out everything that isn't between quotation marks.

More tomorrow on this.

Posted by at 9:12 AM | Permalink

Update: I believe the problem has been solved. If you tried to post a comment and got this message:

Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: ss

Posted by at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I'm not talking about describing hands in a general way. How the old man missing three fingers manages to tie his shoes may turn out to be an interesting and well done paragraph, sure. But what I'm talking about here is using hand motions as a layering technique in dialogue/scene.

If you think about all the things hands can do, it seems pretty much impossible to make a list. I did a search through my own novels and came up with the things that I use (and sometimes, if I don't watch myself, overuse):

• "Not another war story! What a bellicose young nation you are. No dinner party seems complete without a discussion of one revolution or another." Her hand made a long corkscrew in the air. "A most untidy business."
• She turned her hand over on the table and wiggled her fingers.
• Elizabeth ran her knuckles over her brow.
• With great deliberation she put down her fork and folded her hands in her lap.
• ... one hand raised in a peaceful gesture.
• She came closer, one long bony finger poking at his chest ...
• Nathaniel rubbed a finger over the bridge of his nose.
• He jerked a thumb toward Anna ...
• ... his great splayed thumb packing down the tobacco ...
• She pressed her palms hard together
• ... she fluttered her hands at them all ...

Before you make comments on how to write dialect, you might first want to make sure you have written a book that's sold a tenth as well as the one you're detracting. Writing dialect is tricky, but you picked an example that works, at least according to world wide sales of the book. In future, choose an example that helps novice writers, not one that simply identifes your own likes and dislikes. Posted by: Johnn Gualt at March 20, 2004 12:15 PM

Actually I'm surprised it took this long for somebody to jump up and cry foul -- you don't have to look very far to find some very acrimonious discussions about Gone with the Wind on the web, courtesy of the two major camps in this controversy: Those who dislike the book (and the movie) because of the way it glorifies racism and slavery, and those who have decided that GwtW is perfection and must not be criticized for any reason. I belong to the first camp; Johnn, to the second.

There's a lot of material on the web about GwtW, including an interesting essay by Ruth Nestvold which deftly summarizes the novel's primary flaw:

there is one point of criticism that remains no matter how you look at it: even if this popular classic is perhaps informed by a feminist impulse, even if it is not as apologetic as it is made out to be, it is unremittingly and unforgivably racist. With the exception of Mammy, the personification of the earth mother, and Uncle Peter, the exemplary father figure, "darkies" are almost always children in need of a guiding hand or children gone wrong. Gone With the Wind may not simplistically recreate the moonlight and magnolia myth, but it does argue that Southern society, complete with slavery, would have been a fine institution if uncultured, ignorant Yankees hadn't come along and ruined it all.

I am very interested in the way language is represented in dialogue, because it's an integral part of characterization. I will continue to write about it now and then. As to presenting my opinions here in the process of trying to be helpful to novice writers: of course. This is my blog. I would argue that my opinions are informed, given my academic specialization and publications, but of course people who stop by here are free to take what they need, and leave the rest.

Finally, if you'd like to look at some of the Unconditional Love arguments about GwtW, have a look at Mr. Cranky's movie review, which sparked a sharp debate by means of this statement:

this film probably single-handedly set back Civil Rights a full ten years.

Posted by at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"'Eli-eh-eli,' it was wheezing, its tiny, ugly baked apple of a face contorted by fear or frustration or hunger or something else that Skip couldn't understand. " Blessings: A Novel, Anna Quindlen

"Jodie's face fell apart, her jaw sagging, her eyes widening." What Ever Happened to Janie? Caroline B. Cooney

"She had a happy, helpless expression on her face, which was flushed and hot." Middlesex : A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides

"Calvin's face lit up with hope, and his eyes, which had been somber, regained their usual sparkle." A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L'Engle

"Her face, matching her voice, was chilled and rigid." Niccolo Rising, Dorothy Dunnett.

"His expression was blank and without dimples, and his mouth occupied less of its line than was normal." Niccolo Rising, Dorothy Dunnett.

I'm hoping to write a little about body language and hands, then about metaphor and simile, and then I'll see if I can construct a few dialogues that need to be layered, to show how that can be done. Bear with me a while longer.

Posted by at 9:56 AM | Permalink

So, if you are studying the way emotions are telegraphed in fictional terms, you'll have noticed that either you get concrete descriptions or (what I'm calling) short-cuts.

his mouth drooped at the corner
a double groove appeared between her brows
Sam's eyelid twitched convulsively
Maria's nose wrinkled

The answer to that is: no. Maybe Toni Morrison can experiment with cliche and make it work, maybe Alice Munro could pull it off, but the average college student? Nope. So concrete detail works, if it's finely observed without being overwrought or cliched. And note, I haven't yet got to the point where metaphor or simile are added to the mix.

Sometimes the concrete is joined by an observation (either yours, or another character's); that is, you start with show and then you tell):

Maria's nose wrinkled in disgust.
George's lower lip curled disdainfully.
Mr. Brown's cheeks puffed out in surprise.
Dr. Langacre's chin shivered with suppressed delight.

But mostly you'll be more concerned with getting past Minerva's smile to the dialogue (which is where everything really important happens, after all; forget all that stuff about epiphany), because this is the bit where Minerva tells Susan, oops, I forgot I was supposed to feed your cat this past week while you were in Oslo, but he was really kinda portly anyway, wasn't he? So you'll take a shortcut in describing the emotion on Minerva's face, that odd, eerie, edgy smile that means she's got something difficult to say. Shortcuts look like this:

A look of surprise (anger, confusion, disgust) came over her (his) face.

Posted by at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by at 7:14 AM | Permalink

But mouths can give a lot away, both about the person who owns the mouth and the person observing the mouth. From A.S. Byatt's Possession, this lovely phrasing:

...his mouth pursed, but pursed in American, more generous than English pursing, ...

In this next example there's Stephanie Plum's POV in Evanovich's Hot Six. Morelli is Stephanie's on-again, off-again boyfriend, and she doesn't like what she sees when his mouth twitches. We get that very directly, in her first person POV.

The corners of Morelli's mouth twitched up ever so slightly. Jerk.

Frasier combines authorial observation (he is the one telling us that there's no irony or bravado in the condemned man's smile) with actually showing us Prangle's actions. The result is a very powerful, vivid and unsettling set of images.

"Now another thing," Mrs. Kevorkian said. "About that rodent you call a dog."

Sam dropped his head, but not before Jean saw him suck in his upper lip, a sure sign that he was about to burst into laughter.

Posted by at 6:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

What do eyes do, anyway? It's a fairly short list I've come up with. Eyes or eyelids squint; narrow; roll; sparkle; flicker; skitter; jump; dart; flutter; tic; close; wink; go round, moist, teary, dry, wide. Note that I'm not talking about describing the eyes themselves, but the movements they are capable of.

So now you've got a character, call him Sam, and he's involved in a discussion with another character, Mrs. Kevorkian, and a third character, Sam's little sister Jean is watching Mrs. Kevorkian lecture Sam on the right way to raise a little girl. So it's Jean's point of view. We're hearing what Sam says, but it's Jean who is interpreting his facial expressions. From her we'll know if Sam is trying to be polite but is really angry, whether he's secretly or not so secretly amused, confused, embarrassed, surprised, affronted, disgusted. All this (in this exercise, at least) from what he does with his eyes in conjunction with what he says.

"I know a thing or two about raising girls," Mrs. Kevorkian said.
"Because you brought up six of them. Good girls, every one," said Sam.

"Because you brought up six of them," Sam said, his gaze jumping between his watch and the door. "Good girls, every one."

"Because you brought up six of them," Sam said, his eyes glazing over. "Good girls, every one."

"Because you brought up six of them," Sam said, his left eyelid flickering. "Good girls, every one."

"Because you brought up six of them," Sam said, both eyes perfectly round and just a little too bright. "Good girls, every one."

Of course, Jean might not notice at all what Sam is doing with his eyes; instead she might take note of his mouth and jaw, or his forehead, or his posture, or what he's doing with his hands. I'll see what I can do with the rest of his face tomorrow.

Posted by at 4:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by at 4:03 AM | Permalink

Every face is the same in its major features, unless there has been some accident of birth or fate. Two eyes, two ears, a nose with two nostrils, a mouth, a chin, a forehead. At the same time, every face is distinct in a million small ways, not only for its physical characteristics -- is the jaw weak, or strong? does the forehead slope? are the eyes wide or close set? -- but for the wide range of muscular play that results in what we call, so inadequately, expression. Paul Ekman, the psychologist who is best known for his research into the way the human face contorts itself, has found that there are seven basic emotions that are recognizable across cultures: enjoyment, fear, surprise, sadness, contempt, anger and disgust. Of course, it's far more complicated than this for reasons having to do with everything from ethnicity and race to cultural training.

And that's the problem. Pick up any novel and pull out ten facial expressions. Most of them will repeat themselves very quickly. She smiled, frowned, wrinkled her brow, pursed her mouth. The same is true of body language, on a bigger scale. He drummed his fingers, pulled at his ear, scratched his jaw, tapped his foot.

Most writers feel the need to pass along physical hints of what the character is feeling as she talks by means of facial expression (often from the POV of another character) and/or what she does with her hands and body. Sometimes this is part of the characterization, and sometimes it's a way to break up dialogue or make a scene more vivid, but whatever the intent, It's actually very hard to do it well. Take a minute, look at yourself in the mirror, and try to describe what your face does when you are happy.

This is a very big topic, and a difficult one. I've never seen it discussed in any detail in any book on writing-- probably because people who write those books are wiser than I am -- but I'm going to try to sort out some of the issues involved.

To get started, I've provided a number of quotations from novels, each of them dealing with facial expression or body language. What I'd like to do is to try to isolate what the intent was as far as the narrative or characterization goes, in as much as I can interpret that. There are some very well known authors and books in this list, and some lesser known. Some authors are really good at this kind of background characterization (for lack of a better term), and I've got some examples here of their work. I haven't included anything from Gore Vidal, though I think he is the master of this technique. I've decided to save him for later. So, the quotes. Tomorrow I'll start in on this in more detail.

Posted by at 6:09 AM | Permalink

Posted by at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hi Sara, It's Win again, It's some time now, since I last wrote, infact 13 months to be exact. I'm hoping to encourage you into more writing. I last wrote saying how I had enjoyed the 3 books I have so far. I was 73 at the time and had asked the Dear Lord to grant me a few more years to enjoy your books, Well he must have heard my call, as the past 6 months, has seen me in and out of Hospital with heart problems, but I'm still here ( must have been the vitamin tablets you advised me to take ) ( smile ) I am now 75 years old, and have just been made a great grandmother for the 16th time. How proud I am. A lot of my time now is spent reading, and I love my books dearly. How are you going with THUNDER AT TWILIGHT???????I have been into the shops a few times looking for it, but to no avail. I hope everything is going well your way, and your health is good I think I'll have to start on the first book again INTO THE WILDERNESS, that's the best thing about getting old, one can often pick up a book and read it a second time, not quite remembering everything the first time So just look what you have to look forward too. All the best with your work and take care
Regards
WIN [d].

Posted by at 8:13 AM | Permalink

Click on the thumbnail for a bigger version.

Posted by at 11:54 AM | Permalink

Unit Coordinator and Medical Computing Skills

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Advise: ABE 2071
Practical skillls and techniques in transcribing and processing of medical orders; maintaining chart forms; requisitioning diets, therapy, laboratory tests, and medications; and admission and discharge of patients. Emphasis on communication skills pertinent to patient care.

AHWC 9188. Medical Computing Skills (90 hrs)
Instruction in a variety of computer applications related to the health care technology field and utilized by the Health Care Technology Department. These programs are Microsoft Word 2000, Corel WordPerfect Suite 7, Nutrition Interactive, Delmar’s Administrative Medical Assisting, and Delmar’s Medical Terminology for Health Professionals.

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Posted by at 11:54 AM | Permalink

The first question is about process, which can be answered if somebody really is interested in the mechanics. I can talk about my close relationship to my powerbook laptop, the green chair in the front room where I write best these days, the fact that I need certain blankets and pillows and other crucial implements, like a glass of ice and a can of Diet Barqs rootbeer. That I work best when one dog is on my legs but things get distracting when both of them decide they belong on the green chair with me. I could go on with these details. Some people seem to really be interested, because the process seems to them a little magical.

Then I could talk about the mind games I have to play to get myself to sit down and get started every day. How just at that moment when the green chair seems the only choice, I notice that the bathroom sink needs cleaning, or the dogs need cuddling, or I remember that I haven't checked email in, oh, five minutes. That's all part of the process, too. Of the thousands of quotes about writing my favorite still remains: "Writing is easy. You sit down at the typewriter and open up a vein." (I don't know who said this, but I like this person.)

The harder question is why I write. Every successful (in critical or commmercial terms) writer gets asked this, sooner or later. The clever answers are legion, but I think the one that probably comes closest to a home truth is: because I can.

In general people do that thing that combines the greatest amount of ease and personal comfort with the greatest degree of reward. I can tell stories, and so I do.

Like every writer, I worry that tomorrow I'll find that I can't anymore. I'll sit down in the green chair and look at the words on the page and realize that it's over, I'm done. Sometimes I look at the job listings in the paper and think what it would be like to be a legal secretary, as I was once, in the two year long break I took in my undergraduate education. I could pursue a lifelong fascination: I could learn to be a ward clerk in a hospital. Don't ask, because I can't explain the appeal, just that it's a constant in my life. An organized day, a start time and (most important) a stopping time. An evening where I don't feel guilty because I haven't done enough.

For me, one of the great motivators is a book contract and the deadlines that go along with it. Maybe it's my Catholic school background, but I can't stand the idea of not fulfilling a contract, of being late or handing over something awful. Right now I have three novels under contract, and even putting that idea down in words is enough to make me jittery. The green chair beckons.

Posted by at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by at 7:05 AM | Permalink

You'll need Flash 6, and if you're on a dial-up connection it probably won't work well for you, so I've done a single-cell story called "Woman's Woe" which is meant to be a gentle critique of the storytelling apparatus itself. For technical creativity and visuals (you can see the stitching on each and every figure, and on the background itself), I give it a five out of five, though.

Click to enlarge.

Posted by at 7:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I found myself gulping with homesickness, just reading the titles. It's been a long time since I lived there, and I doubt I'll ever move back. Nor do I get back to visit very often. But someday I may write about growing up in Chicago and/or about my maternal grandmother's parents and grandparents, who came to Chicago in the 1860s from northern Europe. Certainly there are some books on this list I should read.

Posted by at 10:26 AM | Permalink

Posted by at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is a hurry up and wait business, no doubt about it.

The reason they feel it necessary to remind me to read them carefully is this: it does get old quite quickly, reading the same sentences again and again. Especially as I wrote them, and in the process, rewrote every single one of them someplace between three and ten times. That's how I work, editing as I go along. However, the first pass page proofs aren't so hard to concentrate on because everything looks very different once it's typeset.

It's from this set of proofs that the bound galleys will come. Don't have a date on that yet, but I'll advise when I do.

Posted by at 12:31 PM | Permalink

here's the thing. There's a column at Poynter Online (news for the journalism community) called Book Babes, written by two women. It's supposed to be, as I understand it, about the publishing industry, for its insiders. But TEV decided that they weren't doing a good enough job as so he started a petition to have the column handed over to somebody else. Who? He doesn't say, but he wants somebody more literary. More in tune with his view of literary, at any rate.

Let me be clear: I don't particularly like the Book Babes column, and I don't think they helped matters with the column in which they responded to the petition (nor did Mark with his response to that column). In this back and forth, a lot of very complex issues got jumbled together, things to do with gatekeeping (and that is the issue here, no matter what the LitCrit Police would like to claim); elitism (which I admit, pushes all my buttons; and yes, I have a Princeton PhD -- that's precisely where I learned to hate the pompous academic oriented literature types); censorship; reading as a cultural experience; definitions of good and bad in storytelling; and the nature of the publishing industry.

I never have read the Book Babes and I won't be starting. It's not my claim that they deserve a huge readership, just that they don't deserve to be dumped on by the self-annointed LitCrit Police, who I won't be reading anymore. However, if and when one of them has a novel come out, I'll read that. And you'll hear about it here.

Postscript: someone who wishes to remain nameless sent to a link to this article ("It's a Little Too Cozy in the Blogosphere") by Jennifer Howard (dated November 16 2003 at washingtonpost.com). Note this memorable paragraph:

What began as the ultimate outsider activity -- a way to break the newspaper and TV stranglehold on the gathering and dissemination of information -- is turning into the same insider's game played by the old establishment media the bloggerati love to critique. The more blogs you read and the more often you read them, the more obvious it is: They've fallen in love with themselves, each other and the beauty of what they're creating. The cult of media celebrity hasn't been broken by the Internet's democratic tendencies; it's just found new enabling technology.

Posted by at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I have been advised to watch this series many times, but I certainly could use some direction on which episodes to start with. Please advise, if you have an opinion on this John Sheridan business.

Posted by at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

it's like walking through a very dark room that you think you know but you're not really sure about; you move slowly toward where you believe the windows are, feeling the floor boards creak under every step you take, feeling a draft in the room and there's a strange smell, faintly mildewed, a little lemony, and what else are you going to do? Sit down right there and stop being? So you take another step with your arms stretched out in front of you, head turned to one side partly to help you hear and partly because you'd rather not run into the wall that might be there with your nose. And there's a glimmer, it's appeared so suddenly you're not sure how long you've been seeing it. A faint line in the darkness, and then intersecting that line, another one. A corner. A window, or a door. You hope for a window because you could pull open the curtains and look out into the world that's been contorting and heaving into continents in the back of your mind, but then it may look out onto a brick wall or an airshaft. Like the one outside your bedroom window on Lincoln Avenue when you were a little girl, a high rectangle of stagnant space, hazy light, going nowhere. Or it may be a door that opens into another dark room. And so you start forward again, but you're really hopeful this time, the window's there, it really is, and outside you'll see them, the ones who have been avoiding each other, too afraid to talk, uncomfortable with their anger, each of them turning to you for a solution that you can't give them. You'll pull back the curtains and they'll be standing there, feeling their way toward each other in small, tentative steps, half phrases, courtesies like stones, perfectly round and plain, to pave the way. And her shoulders are so white through the thin fabric of her gown, why is it you never saw that before? Because he has. He sees her white shoulders and he's touched by the slope of them, the curve where they meet her neck, the fragility of her. Touched and aroused and frantic with wanting to protect her, because he's failed at that once too often. So you follow the line of her shoulders and that's the start. It's like that.

Posted by at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Viable Paradise has a darn good collection of plot hints and work-arounds which is also quite amusing. It's geared primarily for the sci-fi/fantasy writer, but is useful for anybody. For example, under the heading If I am Ever the Hero.... there's this bit of wisdom:

5. When the Evil Overlord is hanging on the cliff by his fingers, I will not try to help him up. If time and means are available, I'll kill him then and there.

Which I used, almost literally but quite unaware of this particular formulation of the rule, in Into the Wilderness. If you can call Billy Kirby an Evil Overlord, of course. And another one:

11. I will never assume that an enemy is dead unless the remains are available for examination, and will keep in mind the possibility of cloning technology or resurrection magic.

Which is a relevant to most historical fiction, as well (although without the cloning and magic, for the most part). It's certainly worth puttering around Teresa's many pages of suggestions. They sparked some ideas for me, and I also laughed a lot, particularly at the helpful hints for evil overloads, like this one: 10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

Posted by at 7:42 PM | Permalink

how-to guides for writers usually spend some time pounding on the adverb (as they pound on adjectives, something I've talked about elsewhere). More recently it seems like some pundits have held out a truce flag. Adverbs, it seems, are not all bad.

But we knew that, right? We didn't need Arthur Plotnik (The Elements of Editing, The Elements of Expression, The Elements of Authorship) to tell us that if used carefully, the adverb can be quite a spiffy tool. But there's even a formula:

(1) take a 'strong' adverb (scornfully, fervently)

(2) sidestep and find an unlikely adjective with which to pair it (devout, modest, thoughtful)


and you'll end up with witty, unusual turns of phrase: Jessie had a fervently modest mother who specialized in surprising us with elaborate afterschool snacks. At least, that's the idea. To me it seems forced and, well, formulaic, much like authors who go into such contortions to vary the way their sentences begin that they end up with oddities like Putting on her coat, Gina thought about asking John for a loan.

So I'm going to resort to my one and only adjective rule and expand it to adverbs: go forth, and be profligate no more.

Posted by at 4:49 PM | Permalink

last night I saw a commercial that made me mad, and so it's stuck in my head. Is that a successful marketing ploy? Not in this case, because I'm not going to mention the company that produces this product. Which is, in a word: false hope.

Imagine a classroom filled with a crowd of twenty-something students. The professor, about fifty, in stereotypical Ivy-league tweed, careworn, is lecturing them on why most of them will never be published. Close up on disappointed, disbelieving faces as he tells them the reason: money. Publishers have to invest too much money and hence they are more likely to reject a new writer.

Now a young man jumps in with an interruption. That's not true! He tells the class. It's not a matter of money anymore! Not with on-demand publishing, no siree. One book at a time, if need be -- no big storage problems for the publishers. It's all digital these days, sez he. It's all changed. The professor looks slightly dazed, and offers no counterargument.

Got snake oil? How about real estate in Florida? Haven't found a publisher interested in that novel? You've invested two years of your life, now invest your money-- publish it yourself.

There's so much more to the business than the printing end of it: editing, book design, distribution, advertising, marketing, the review process, all of those awful details. Forking over a thousand bucks to have a hundred copies of your novel printed is akin to renting studio time to record your own sitcom premiere -- unless you do your homework ahead of time and you're willing to take on all those jobs the publisher would have done for you.

I'd like to say also, very clearly, that hundreds of books that deserve publication, really good novels, never make it and the authors of those novels have every right to be put out about it. A few of them will decide to self-publish, and if the fates are kind and their timing is good, they might have some success with it. Unfortunately, the odds are against them.

Now in the spirit of disclosure, I'll point out that I actually wrote a blurb for a self-published book. I hate writing blurbs and almost never do it, but in this case, I made an exception. Because I liked the novel a lot and thought it deserved to be read. This is what I wrote in my blurb about David Karraker's Running in Place (1stBooks Library; April 2003 ISBN: 1410716880):

"As a nation addicted to nostalgia, we like to think we remember and understand the sixties... Karraker...gives us a multilayered story set at the dawning of those times. It is the tale of a young married couple on a middle American college campus, told with a clear eye and beautiful but deceptively accessible prose...This is a compelling and deeply felt story, and one that deserves a wide readership."

Posted by at 2:57 PM | Permalink

Once I had a collection of writing-related cartoons that made me happy. How I lost them isn't important, and there is some good news: Robyn has come to my rescue and she doesn't even know it. She sent me a link to the absolutely essential Philosophy Comix website, and on that page is a link to a repository of lost masterpieces, the Cartoonbank.com site. By plugging a few words into the advanced search screen I found my all time favorite cartoon by Tom Cheney. In case you can't read the caption:

This is going to be a tough fix. He’s completely obscured the main character’s plausible motive for revenge by overdeveloping the setting and peppering the entire chapter with irrelevant flashback narratives.

Posted by at 8:35 AM | Permalink

here:

The Infography

Professors, librarians, and other scholars recommend the best sources of information about their subjects of expertise. http://www.infography.com/

Posted by at 8:16 AM | Permalink

Although I do have an idea for a movie in which a very rich, very conservative Catholic sets up a pre-Vatican II utopia on an island somewhere... and then things go very wrong. Mwah-ha-ha-ha. A Boys from Brazil and Jurassic Park meet Stepford Wives kinda thing. Armed nuns, herds of little boys with very blue eyes lining up to walk across water. You get the picture. Click here to see more.

Posted by at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In blossom in the garden: evergreen clematis, crocus, camellias, vinca. Greening or shoots coming up: perennial clematis, tulips (includes species), columbine, foxglove, tree peonies, all the roses, poppies, daylilies, hydrangeas, lady's mantle. No sign of: veronica, sages, hostas, gauras, perennial geraniums and many other things I didn't label.

Posted by at 12:49 PM | Permalink

The only place where I don't mind reading very much is at our own independent bookseller here in town. I know many of the people who come and the owners and the booksellers and it just doesn't feel like such a big deal; it's just me, and them, and a half hour of noise. They ask questions and laugh at my answers. I sign books and set off for home, ten minutes later I'm there.

another confession: I'm not even comfortable going to somebody else's reading. I only go very rarely, if it's a close friend who's reading. In fact, the more I'm interested in the author's work, the less likely I am to go listen to him/her read. It feels too awkward. Should I go up afterwards and get my book signed? Do I identify myself, if this is somebody I've had some indirect contact with? Will that feel intrusive? A word of praise, perhaps? No, that would be condescending. So I generally stay away, although I'm often tempted.

Guy Vanderhaeghe (what a great name) will be here soon to read from his new novel The Last Crossing. I do intend to read the novel -- it's historical, after all. Will I attend the reading? Probably not. I'll let you know.

During this year's competition, broadcast over the [..] five days on CBC Radio and CBC TV, five panellists each championed a work of Canadian fiction as the one that all Canadians should read.

Posted by at 6:06 PM | Permalink