Patrice Sarath's Blog, page 6

The Sisters Mederos and a theory of magic

Update11/21/20: In my semi-regular series of posts for NaNo, I’m reboosting my post on magic. Usual disclosure: This is my theory of magic in fantasy. There are other points of view. I personally do not find magic systems with rules to be particularly appealing, but many authors and readers clearly think otherwise.

The reviews are coming out about A Wrinkle in Time,  and they made me think about The Sisters Mederos. Not just, “damn, I wish I could write a world-changing novel or best-seller and have it turned into a movie,” but more specifically, special effects. Or, as we fantasy writers call it, magic.

I am one of those authors who writes fantasy but who doesn’t do magic. The magic in my books is scaled back and subtle and doesn’t take center stage. My fantasy novels are specifically about the intersection of magic with our world (Gordath Wood), or about an alternate or secondary world much like our own, which has certain magical elements in it (The Sisters Mederos). And then the magic sits there and does its thing, percolating or humming or informing the world and the characters who interact with their environment, and it doesn’t call attention to itself. It’s like weather. Well, not even weather. It’s like air.

A Wrinkle in Time, for all that it is a time- and space-traveling science fiction story, is magical in exactly that way. The Mrs are magical and very powerful gods, and they can perform amazing acts of science and magic, but A Wrinkle in Time is about Meg and Charles and Calvin and Meg’s mom and dad. The most chilling scene in A Wrinkle in Time is when all the kids are bouncing their balls in front of their houses in rhythm, and the reason it’s chilling and powerful is because the children see it and they see how wrong and horrifying it is. This has nothing to do with FX and everything to do with story telling.

Yet as soon as I saw the trailer, I could see that the fabulous Ava Duvernay had decided to focus on the magic and not the story. To try to make the magic in our minds real in front of our eyes. But every story teller knows, the most powerful magical bond is between the reader and the book — and it’s the bond the reader creates, not the author. Duvernay went the exact wrong way.*

True confession: I haven’t seen the movie yet. I’m sure it’s marvellous. I have already heard, however, reviews that confirm that it’s kind of … cold. Soulless. As the saying goes, this is a book about the ineffable, and they effed with it.

In contrast, take a look at The Fellowship of the Ring. The LotR was widely considered to be unfilmable. With Fellowship, Peter Jackson created Middle Earth that brimmed with magic and yet the magic was just there, humming along under the surface, the land steeping in it. Characters interacted with their environment, both magical and mundane, in equal measure, as if the magic itself was mundane. The FX weren’t overlaid on top in a “look at me!”  way as the special effects were in later installments. I have all the movies on DVD, but The Fellowship is the only one I rewatch.

Magic as mundane. I think that’s what I mean by the kind of magic I do. Not that the magic is ho-hum — it’s not — or that it’s not very magical, but just that it doesn’t call attention to itself. It might even, as in The Sisters Mederos, exist ambiguously, just as magic does in our world.

I know that this theory is not to everyone’s taste. I love fantasy, but I’m not in it for the magic system. When I read a good science fiction or fantasy novel, I want to sink into the world and be immersed in the story. Same with the movie — I don’t want to constantly be noticing the special effects. After all, when it comes right down to it, the real special effects happen between the reader’s ears. The director — or the author — interferes with that magic at his or her peril.

*The last time Hollywood tried to film A Wrinkle in Time, the same thing happened. I think it’s a case of, well, we have all these cool toys…

The Sisters Mederos comes out in a few weeks, readers! Here’s a box of books and a few buy links:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Waterstones

BookPeople

Writing a novel? Don’t do NanoWriMo

It’s another Throwback Thursday! And it being November, it’s time for the classic “Don’t Do Nano” post that made waves years ago. The funny thing is, ha ha, guess what I’m doing this year? Yep. I evolved. But this is the post that started it all, including a mention on TIME’s website and an interview on NPR.

I  reread this post and I think, boy, I was all about prescriptivism back then.  I look at my writing practice and really, while I have done what I call “writing with my eyes closed” thing, my work has been really about routine, steady, writing. Writing is a muscle — it benefits from daily exercise. 

This year, as I said, I’m doing Nano. It’s for a very specific project, in which I am working on a writing team, so to speak, and we decided to use Nano as a way to be accountable. It’s working, but I’m not trying to get 1,500 words a day, and I’m doing what I always have done — routine, steady writing. 

Are you doing Nano this year? Good. Happy writing! (But remember to write in December too.)

November is coming and that means NanoWriMo is closing in fast. If you are interested in writing a novel and have never tried, you probably think NaNoWriMo is just the ticket to give you the jumpstart you need.

Don’t do it.

Writing requires steady, consistent effort. Blasting through a novel at over 1000 words a day means that you will get a lot of crap and at the end of the experiment you will have 50,000 words, far too short for any market today. 

Some writers liked the sense of cameraderie they can get from NaNoWriMo. Most cities host writing events and there’s plenty of fanfare as people kick off their novels in coffee shops and bookstores.

Don’t get sucked in. Writing is a solitary effort that pays off when you pay close attention to what you are doing. Guaranteed that a lot of those attendees busily typing away for the cameras are not concentrating on the words but rather are thinking, “hey wow! I’m doing it! I’m really writing a novel!”

So you want to write a novel? Bag NaNoWriMo. Instead, use the Jim Van Pelt method:

250 words a day.

That’s it. If you write 250 words a day, at the end of a year you will have over 90,000 words. In other words, you will have a full-length novel. Now, if you are a beginner, that novel might not be any good. But you will have thought about those 250 words and done your best to make them count. Those 250 words will, if you are consistent about writing every day or on a regular schedule, out-do any day’s work on a NaNoWriMo binge.

250 words a day gives you room to do research. It gives you time to read the authors you love so you can look at how they line words up and get to the root of what you love about their work. 250 words a day will give you breathing room and let your writing improve.

250 words a days is all you need. NaNoWriMo? Just hype.

Writing lessons — beads on a string

It’s another Throwback Thursday! Because when it comes to plotting, it’s not just one damn thing after another.

Let’s say your work in progress has a lot going on. Lots of episodes, lots of scenes, a complex plot, many characters. Things happen. Your character goes places. More things happen.

How do you put it all together?

A novel isn’t just a a bunch of stuff happening over several pages. As a writer you have to create a narrative. Your scenes aren’t just things happening. You are the author and you must tie scenes together.

One way to look at this is to look at stringing beads. You have a bunch of beads and you have some string, and you start stringing beads. Maybe you pick out an order, so you start with certain beads and keep stringing and stringing and then you tie things off at the end when you are done.

And what do you have?

You have a string of beads.

Now, think like a novelist. Select your beads. Put them in order. The string becomes part of the necklace, with loops and special stitches. The beads create a narrative pattern. Instead of a string of beads, now you have a narrative whole.

Now you have a novel.

So beaders have their tools to create patterns — beads, string, needles, patterns. A novelist has a couple of tools to help create patterns. Those are foreshadowing and serendipity.

Foreshadowing is when you have something happen in one part of your novel that pays off down the road. Foreshadowing takes a couple of different forms. Sometimes it’s a clue. Sometimes it’s a bit of sleight of hand (a red herring). The payoff is usually an epiphany. But be warned that if your main character has the epiphany, the reader has to have it too. Make sure your MC earns their epiphany and that it doesn’t come out of the blue.

Serendipity is trickier. I just told you to plan out your patterns, inserting elements where they need to go.  However, leave room for serendipity, so that your characters are not just moved from point to point like mannequins. Serendipity (or inspiration) lets the patterns create itself, and you the author are just following where it leads.

You need both to write an engaging novel or short story.

Have fun creating!

Note: necklace is by my creative and talented mother-in-law, Carol Putnam, who I think you will agree makes gorgeous creations.

Writing lessons — to fan fic or not?

Note: It’s Throwback Thursday! For this week’s episode, to fan fic or not to fan fic? In these times of AO3, it seems like a silly question, but in 2009, it was a thing. And yes, back then? It was often a gendered distaste. Despite fan fiction creating a line of best-selling Star Trek novels, despite fan fiction basically dating back to Jane Austen if not earlier (what is Northanger Abbey if not YA fan-fic?), fan fiction never got the respect it deserved. Then, that is. Now, it’s way different. 

 At ConDFW, David Weber, creator of the Honor Harrington series, said that aspiring writers should avoid fan fic. Now, David Weber has countless books to his name and an illustrious career as a military SF writer.  I’ve sold two novels. So I know whose advice I would take. But if you want another opinion, read on. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I get his point. Fan fic is easy. All the hard work of worldbuilding has been done by someone else. Who needs a muse when you’ve got someone else doing the heavy lifting for you? But it’s also unsavory, and I’m not just talking about slash. People who write fan fic are getting away with something, even if they aren’t charging money for their work. They are taking ownership of someone else’s imagination and toil. Write too much fan fic, Weber might be saying, and you only think you are writing. It’s counterfeit. Gilt, not gold.

But I think the approach might be a good one for writers who are writing original work: Treat your novel as if it were fan fiction.

If you find it freeing to write fan fiction set in someone else’s universe, capture that feeling by pretending that’s all you are doing in your own original work. It will take the pressure off. It’s just fan fiction right? I think it was Steven Brust at Apollocon who pointed out that writing a sequel is basically writing fan fiction, it’s just your own work. I would go one better and say every novel you write is fan fiction.

Give it a try. All that can happen is you have some fun with the world and the characters you yourself have created.

Beowulf — my precious….

Look, I know you’ll get it. Yes, you. You’ll get it because you wrote Beowulf fan-fic too (about Wiglaf and also Scyld Scefing), and you translated Beowulf in college, and you have written about how the Old English poem The Wanderer and the folksong Wayfaring Stranger are doing the same things, just one thousand years apart.

You can’t have too many Beowulf translations. That’s just common sense.

So yeah, you get it. When a new translation of Beowulf comes out, you read it with great relish and it joins the collection.

Untitled Novel Experiment

In 1984, I had just graduated with my BA in English from Marist College (Go Red Foxes!). I was ill-equipped for setting out in the world, to say the least. A shy, plain English major, who didn’t want to be a teacher (at the time, whenever someone asked me my major, the follow up question was, “Oh, so you want to be a teacher?”), who didn’t know what she wanted, I entered the world with a degree, some commendation or another, and no plan.

The college career counselor to whom I timidly said that I wanted to be a writer, smirked and told me no one could make a living as a writer and therefore I should think about a career and write as a hobby. He told me that his brother was a lawyer or some such and wrote screenplays on the side. Now I wonder which successful screenwriting lawyer that was – God knows a law degree seems to be the route to Hollywood success — and if he ever reminds his brother how he didn’t believe in him.

Regardless, being a lawyer sounded like a lot of work. Also, I didn’t know it then, but nowadays I’d be diagnosed with anxiety, OCD, and depression. I was riddled with so many problems it’s surprising that I went ahead and did the things I ended up doing.

Coxswaining and then rowing on crew. Some of my favorite memories were early morning on the Hudson River, with the sun coming up and fog on the water.

Spending my junior year abroad in Iceland, and working the summer on a sheep farm.

Traveling alone in the British Isles.

A newspaper reporter in my home town.

Applying to grad school in Austin, Texas, which changed my life. Grad school didn’t stick, but Austin did.

Working full time as a reporter, editor, computer features writer, business writer, etc.

Marrying, raising children, writing in my spare time, and sending out stories and novels and getting plenty of thin envelopes back.

I white-knuckled through post-partum depression, which I don’t recommend. I do remember fearing that if I told anyone what I was going through, what I was thinking, they would take my children away and then I would just have to kill myself. Please, young mothers, if you take anything from this long tale, please please please get help. They won’t take your babies away. If you’re healthy, you can take care of your children better than anyone.

But this was 1984, and I had graduated in the spring, and then had driven back to P’town for the first reunion. Couldn’t find any of my friends and was too anxious to go to our usual haunts to find them. So I sat in my cheap hotel room with a yellow spiral notebook, stress-eating Oreos and writing a novel. That was my way to soothe my anxiety, and it was a pattern that I held to, even as I managed to create a reasonable facsimile of normalcy.

I remember the joy of writing this, the absorption in it, the fast-flowing muse, the words pouring out. But I also remember the shame of being too frightened to go and look for my friends, once again cancelling plans because I was too anxious to carry through. It was a pattern I followed often, and each time I canceled on my friends I felt the shame again of being too cowardly, too frightened, to intransigent to be loved or liked.

So this novel is more than just a first novel, although I’m pretty sure that’s what it is – I remember writing plenty of short stories and have quite a few of those from my tween and teen years, but I do think this was my very first novel attempt. There’s a little Easter egg at the end of this notebook that I’ll share when we get there. I smiled when I saw it.

When I look at this novel I think of the girl I was, brave despite everything, undermining myself at every turn, and yet never giving up.

I want to recognize her bravery and honor her pain, and if I could do anything, I wish I could go back and say, you aren’t broken. You aren’t a danger to your children. You have things to say and lots to learn, and you keep going, and that counts for everything.

And in turn, the memory of myself at age 22, forgotten until I found these notebooks, gives me the … courage? No, more like sheer bullheadedness, to just keep going. Because she didn’t give up then, and I won’t give up now.

Here’s the link. Thanks for reading.

Long-lost treasures, found once more

They don’t look like much, these notebooks and that battered white book. But they hold treasures. The notebooks hold an early novel draft. The white book contains poetry written when I was 10 or 11, and then up to my early twenties. The purple notebook, with the hand-written pages — that, my friends, is the record of my daughter’s birth, recorded by the attending midwife.

In that tattered blank book, given to me by a friend in high school, is some of my poetry written from elementary school on to my twenties. I thought I had lost it. To the right, the first page of the midwife’s notes on the home birth of my daughter, more than thirty years ago.

And then there are the Breyers, long-cherished models that I played with forever and ever. I did check their value, and with the exception of the white five-gaited stallion, their only worth is sentimental. In fact, the palomino is held up as the standard of Breyers that have no particular value.

Freshly washed and shined up, my babies trot again. These beauties date back to the 1960s and 1970s, although the foal may be from the 1990s. The palomino is held up as the standard of Breyers that have not increased in value, but he is the first one I bought with my paper girl money.

Except to those of us who loved them then and still do now.

So what happened? How did I lose track of these treasures? More than ten years ago a lot of our things went into storage. Maybe even 15 years ago, I don’t know. I carefully set aside my stories and essays and art from my early days, all the juvenalia that I’ve saved as part of my writer’s journey. And somehow, these notebooks ended up in a different box. And the Breyers were in a box of my daughter’s things. And the midwife’s diary — ditto, a separate box. I’ve looked for them over the years, and had to resign myself to their loss.

Lately we’ve been culling our storage space. No one wants to leave a mess for their grown children. First I found the Breyers, then a mystery box. It had all sorts of things in it, but I saw the wires of spiral notebooks underneath, and I pulled them out, and there they were. The handwritten novel. The blank book. The purple notebook with my daughter’s birth notes.

I sat on the floor of the kitchen and just felt an overwhelming feeling of relief and fulfillment.

Lost treasures. Found again. All the more loved for having been lost.

Coming soon – “Spider”

I am so happy to tell you that my novella, “Spider” will be coming out this summer in The Way of the Laser, a future crimes anthology from Vernacular Books. I’m so excited to be part of this anthology.

“Spider” is a prequel to my short story, “Murder on the Hohmann,” which appeared in Futuristica Vol I, for those of you who would like to see what I do with a “Murder on the Orient Express” inspired mystery. I had so much fun with that one, I decided to go back to the characters and see what got them on that ship in the first place. The answer, of course, is shenanigans. But “Spider” went deeper than that — my cop, Shane Harris, is dealing with her own demons.

Shane is the most autobiographical character I’ve ever created while at the same time being nothing like me at all. Here’s a snippet of Shane, and what she’s going through:

Station security police Shane Harris pushed herself through the Bifrost Main Concourse on her way to the Security Station on Alpha Arm, orienting herself “up” toward the station central complex by making a mental shift in her perspective. She was shaky and frazzled, a knot of anxiety in her stomach. It had been a bad night. When Shane first came to Bifrost a year before, her hind-brain had panicked at the approach to the spider-like structure. It took powerful anti-anxiety drugs, biofeedback techniques, and station-made vodka to prevent her from waking up screaming every night. If anything, the obsessive thoughts had gotten worse, and Shane fretted that the governor on her brain wouldn’t hold much longer.

Shane pulled herself inside Security HQ. Ray was already at his post with a bulb of coffee. Ray was Shane’s foil — blond where she was dark, short and stout where she was thin and stringy. Calm and balanced where she was an explosive mess of nerves and energy.

Ray nodded at her and pointed at the screens that showed a steady stream of everything happening on the station in all the public areas. Black squares showed where workers had turned off the cameras in their quarters. It was a constant game, fixing cameras and hiding them, resourceful workers finding cameras and breaking them, and so on and so forth.

Shane didn’t like the cameras, but the station was run by a registered Corporate Citizen Entity, and employees were told up front that their right to privacy was forfeit when they signed up.

She strapped in. “What am I looking at?”

“You know how I queried the AI to identify who blanked their cameras with a cross-reference of everyone they were in contact with on the station?” She nodded. “Last night Meredith Hawkes entered Evangeline Martinez’s quarters with Asa Delacort. We couldn’t see what they did, but they weren’t online, according to computer records.” He tapped the screen and slid the image sideways. “And look at this.”

Shane leaned in closer. There were in quick succession still images of Hawkes, Martinez, Delacort, and the brother miners Carter and Rose Goucher. Carter and Rose sitting next to Hawkes at the bar. Carter and Asa Delacort in mining tech, where Asa worked. Evangeline and Rose in the infirmary waiting room. Evangeline sagged in her chair; Rose sat on the other side, his hand wrapped in a cloth. He had been fighting again. The Goucher twins were always starting fights, always in trouble. Ever since Shane had arrived on the station, the twins ran roughshod and always got away with it. She had asked Ray about it once, but he was evasive and Shane was the rookie, so she didn’t push.

All of it could have been coincidence. Shane knew that you could take any of Ray’s interactions and find patterns, but if you put the data back in with all of the background noise, these interactions wouldn’t rise to the level that pinged any alarms. Nevertheless, Shane felt a tingle raise the hair at the nape of her neck. Hawkes was a prickly loner. She did her job, but she didn’t go out of her way to be friends with anyone. Shane looked at Ray. “How did you get the computer to come up with these interactions?”

He looked smug. “Once you train the AI to identify patterns it starts to come up with them on its own. I gave it Hawkes, and it fed me Evangeline; I gave it Evangeline, and it opened up the rest. Here.” He swung the screen toward her and she saw the interconnected lines showing relationships between all the characters. “I hadn’t even realized that Evangeline knew Rose.”

Shane looked closer at the infirmary image. Evangeline wasn’t looking at Rose, but the way their bodies were angled, it was as if they had just stopped talking to each other.

Shane sat back, calculating. “What could it be?” She was more thinking out loud than anything, but Ray answered anyway.

“Doesn’t matter what it is. They’re up to something. And before you tell me that’s not enough to base an investigation on, you know it’s true. Everybody’s hiding something, Shane. That’s true back on Earth and Mars, and it’s true here. Especially here.”

It’s the only reason anyone came to Bifrost. He didn’t have to say it out loud. They both knew it. Her stomach clenched, and reflexively she tapped at her wrist, releasing a dose of meds. If Ray noticed, he didn’t give a sign.

“Just talk to them. Use your cop instincts,” he said, with a reassuring smile.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

Shane’s got a lot going on — she’s a cop on a mining station out near Jupiter, where she’s supposed to keep the peace, but some of the residents have other ideas. And the station itself has been keeping its own secrets…

I love when I think I’m writing one story but my subconscious has other ideas.

Coming soon – “Spider”

I am so happy to tell you that my novella, “Spider” will be coming out this summer in The Way of the Laser, a future crimes anthology from Vernacular Books. I’m so excited to be part of this anthology.

“Spider” is a prequel to my short story, “Murder on the Hohmann,” which appeared in Futuristica Vol I, for those of you who would like to see what I do with a “Murder on the Orient Express” inspired mystery. I had so much fun with that one, I decided to go back to the characters and see what got them on that ship in the first place. The answer, of course, is shenanigans. But “Spider” went deeper than that — my cop, Shane Harris, is dealing with her own demons.

Shane is the most autobiographical character I’ve ever created while at the same time being nothing like me at all. Here’s a snippet of Shane, and what she’s going through:

Station security police Shane Harris pushed herself through the Bifrost Main Concourse on her way to the Security Station on Alpha Arm, orienting herself “up” toward the station central complex by making a mental shift in her perspective. She was shaky and frazzled, a knot of anxiety in her stomach. It had been a bad night. When Shane first came to Bifrost a year before, her hind-brain had panicked at the approach to the spider-like structure. It took powerful anti-anxiety drugs, biofeedback techniques, and station-made vodka to prevent her from waking up screaming every night. If anything, the obsessive thoughts had gotten worse, and Shane fretted that the governor on her brain wouldn’t hold much longer.

Shane pulled herself inside Security HQ. Ray was already at his post with a bulb of coffee. Ray was Shane’s foil — blond where she was dark, short and stout where she was thin and stringy. Calm and balanced where she was an explosive mess of nerves and energy.

Ray nodded at her and pointed at the screens that showed a steady stream of everything happening on the station in all the public areas. Black squares showed where workers had turned off the cameras in their quarters. It was a constant game, fixing cameras and hiding them, resourceful workers finding cameras and breaking them, and so on and so forth.

Shane didn’t like the cameras, but the station was run by a registered Corporate Citizen Entity, and employees were told up front that their right to privacy was forfeit when they signed up.

She strapped in. “What am I looking at?”

“You know how I queried the AI to identify who blanked their cameras with a cross-reference of everyone they were in contact with on the station?” She nodded. “Last night Meredith Hawkes entered Evangeline Martinez’s quarters with Asa Delacort. We couldn’t see what they did, but they weren’t online, according to computer records.” He tapped the screen and slid the image sideways. “And look at this.”

Shane leaned in closer. There were in quick succession still images of Hawkes, Martinez, Delacort, and the brother miners Carter and Rose Goucher. Carter and Rose sitting next to Hawkes at the bar. Carter and Asa Delacort in mining tech, where Asa worked. Evangeline and Rose in the infirmary waiting room. Evangeline sagged in her chair; Rose sat on the other side, his hand wrapped in a cloth. He had been fighting again. The Goucher twins were always starting fights, always in trouble. Ever since Shane had arrived on the station, the twins ran roughshod and always got away with it. She had asked Ray about it once, but he was evasive and Shane was the rookie, so she didn’t push.

All of it could have been coincidence. Shane knew that you could take any of Ray’s interactions and find patterns, but if you put the data back in with all of the background noise, these interactions wouldn’t rise to the level that pinged any alarms. Nevertheless, Shane felt a tingle raise the hair at the nape of her neck. Hawkes was a prickly loner. She did her job, but she didn’t go out of her way to be friends with anyone. Shane looked at Ray. “How did you get the computer to come up with these interactions?”

He looked smug. “Once you train the AI to identify patterns it starts to come up with them on its own. I gave it Hawkes, and it fed me Evangeline; I gave it Evangeline, and it opened up the rest. Here.” He swung the screen toward her and she saw the interconnected lines showing relationships between all the characters. “I hadn’t even realized that Evangeline knew Rose.”

Shane looked closer at the infirmary image. Evangeline wasn’t looking at Rose, but the way their bodies were angled, it was as if they had just stopped talking to each other.

Shane sat back, calculating. “What could it be?” She was more thinking out loud than anything, but Ray answered anyway.

“Doesn’t matter what it is. They’re up to something. And before you tell me that’s not enough to base an investigation on, you know it’s true. Everybody’s hiding something, Shane. That’s true back on Earth and Mars, and it’s true here. Especially here.”

It’s the only reason anyone came to Bifrost. He didn’t have to say it out loud. They both knew it. Her stomach clenched, and reflexively she tapped at her wrist, releasing a dose of meds. If Ray noticed, he didn’t give a sign.

“Just talk to them. Use your cop instincts,” he said, with a reassuring smile.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

Shane’s got a lot going on — she’s a cop on a mining station out near Jupiter, where she’s supposed to keep the peace, but some of the residents have other ideas. And the station itself has been keeping its own secrets…

I love when I think I’m writing one story but my subconscious has other ideas.

The New Moralists: Anne with an E and Little Women

Watching the third season of Anne with an E, I had a ton of mixed feelings. The first season felt like a betrayal, and I made that clear in my blog post here. The second season, I felt like I got what the creators were doing – creating literature for queer children, literature that told them they were more than okay, they were going to be okay, that there was kindness and a place in the world for them too. Oh, Aunt Josephine, I adore thee. I fell in love. (And there were scenes where I cackled with joy, such as when our intrepid heroes line up to jump on a train, and Anne says with delight, “It’s a caper.”)

This third season is a bit of a mess, but I think I get it. That moralizing? The grown-up speeches in the mouths of children, espousing 21st century concepts and kindness and affirmation? Anne with an E is new moral literature, much like the original Anne of Green Gables was, or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, or Five Little Peppers, or Little Women. It’s famously said that the Victorians invented childhood, and North American children’s literature was a genre in which imparting religion and morals and politics (the Little House books) was job one.

Whether Anne would be an ally of today’s children or not, is
not the point. Anne with an E has a moral viewpoint and states it loud and
clear: children have rights, they have bodily autonomy, they have the right to sexual
education, they have the right to follow their hearts and dreams and to know their
true selves.

Greta Gerwig’s Little Women turns the original on its head in much the same way. Sure, we get the same set pieces – giving away their breakfast, burning the hair with the curling iron, limes, falling through the ice. But even as we go through the book’s usual paces, what we see is the truth behind the jolly story. We see ambition that is not punished, we see talent that is not squandered, and we see women who do not apologize for financial independence.

If anything, the 2020 Little Women makes me wish that Louisa May Alcott had written that book and not the one that she did. Because where the movie fails is where it runs along the well-worn paths, and shows how threadbare they really are. When Beth dies, it falls flat – even Joey would not have needed to put the book in the freezer.

By revising the story and telling it out of order, Gerwig
has gotten at something deeper, something that the original book kept hidden.
Her story honors Louisa May Alcott and honors the story both.

Anne With An E goes deeper and farther, upending the original and going far beyond where it meant to tread. L.M. Montgomery wrote several books about Anne, and as is famously noted, she gets quieter and more placid the older she gets. I read the books, even the ones where Anne gives up her dreams and becomes a housewife, but only ever loved the first one. I didn’t know it as a kid, but L.M. Montgomery had a pretty sad life, and maybe she wanted peace and comfort and love for Anne because she didn’t have it for herself.

As of this writing I haven’t finished Anne With An E. The most recent episode I watched ended with Anne at the schoolhouse running the press for her broadsheet, much as Yvienne Mederos does in The Sisters Mederos. Yes, there is a reason I write about plucky young women, and those reasons include L.M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott.

I’m very glad both productions went in the direction they
did. Because we need new stories for children that impart some very necessary
morals – kindness, inclusiveness, and caring are never old-fashioned.