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Poetry Thursday: Maxwell Bodenheim

Another poet I’ve never heard of, as far as I know. I picked this one because I thought, well, it’s been a long time since I chose a free-verse poem. I like this one.

To One Dead

Maxwell Bodenheim

I walked upon a hill
And the wind, made solemnly drunk with your presence,
Reeled against me.
I stooped to question a flower,
And you floated between my fingers and the petals,
Tying them together.
I severed a leaf from its tree
And a water-drop in the green flagon
Cupped a hunted bit of your smile.
All things about me were steeped in your remembrance
And shivering as they tried to tell me of it.

***’

Here’s another one:

***

Friendship

by Maxwell Bodenheim

Grey, drooping shouldered bushes scrape the edges
Of bending swirls of yellow-white flowers.
So do my thoughts meet the wind-scattered color of you.

A green-shadowed trance of water
Is splintered to little, white-tasseled awakenings
By the beat of long, black oars.
So do my thoughts enter yours.

Split, brown-blue clouds press into each other
Over hills dressed in mute, clinging haze.
So do my thoughts slowly form
Over the draped mystery of you.

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Getting inside the Villain’s Head

A post at Writer Unboxed: Do You Really Want to Get to Know the Villain?

The author of this post, Natalie Hart, describes the plot of a book I emphatically do not plan to read. Then she says this:

I had such a visceral reaction to that [the author thinking of giving the most awful villain of the story pov scenes]: I did not want know Pappy or spend even one second inside his head. Because that would mean that I’d probably develop sympathy and understanding for him. And I just wanted to hate him.

Then she asks: Do we always develop sympathy for POV characters?

And the rest of the post is about this question, but I paused right here, because I’m somewhat flummoxed by this question. I mean, I too have a visceral reaction to the idea of being forced into the villain’s point of view: I recoil in revulsion. But this isn’t remotely because I would “probably develop sympathy” for the villain. The chance I would develop sympathy for someone this unpleasant is quite low. I don’t really care if his mom was mean to him when he was a child, or someone killed his puppy, or whatever his backstory might comprise. I don’t care what his motivations might be right now in story-present either. They’re ugly motivations or he wouldn’t be this kind of villain.

I guess I should add that as always, I’m talking about villains, not antagonists. I’m fine with knowing more about the backstory and motivations of an antagonist who is not really a villain. BUT, if the villain is self-righteously torturing innocent people to death, I don’t care about his hard life or his twisted moral sense or how he got that way. NO, we most certainly do NOT “always develop sympathy” for POV characters, and I can’t believe you’re actually asking this question.

So, The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop. This author of the linked post doesn’t mention it; I simply thought of it in this context. This book offers (a) one of the most obvious “plot twists” in the history of literature, plus a protagonist who is so dense he does not catch on to this ridiculously obvious thing for an astoundingly long time. But, bonus, this book also offers (b) POV sections where we get to watch a reasonably normal young man decide to become loyal servant of evil and a torturer and then stick with that decision through thick and thin.

Possibly the reader is supposed to find this character sympathetic. The reader is certainly provided with the backstory and motivations that lead to this character becoming evil. I don’t know, it’s conceivable, I suppose, that SOME readers did find this character sympathetic. I bet you can guess that I am not among those readers. I skimmed those sections lightly.

BY THE WAY, it is silly, generally, to put the reader into the head of the villain, reveal the complete nefarious plot to the reader, and thus utterly destroy any surprise about what’s going to happen. I’m not sure why Anne Bishop thought ANY of this was a good idea, but, well, I’ll just say I don’t understand these decisions and let it go at that.

My point is, no, obviously we don’t “always develop sympathy for POV characters,” and I’m still totally flummoxed anybody would think that would happen.

The author of the linked post then describes her own book, where she says she found that as the author, she sympathized more with her villain than her hero. She’s describing a classic tragedy, where the villain is destroying himself but can’t stop. I could actually sympathize with that character, to some extent, depending on whether he was trying to stop. But I would not like an author who prevented him from getting out of a downward spiral and I probably wouldn’t read any more books by this author.

However, I do feel that if the author of the linked post thinks that just making any villain a POV character automatically leads to reader sympathy, then she’s buying into the idea that understanding always leads to sympathy, and no, it doesn’t. I bet if she thought for a few seconds, she would manage to come up with both fictional and real-world villains where, if you knew every single moment of their whole lives, you still wouldn’t feel any sympathy to speak of for the person they are now.

People aren’t robots that get programmed to be villains at the factory prior to purchase. That character, Pappy, in the story she described, made the choices that put him where he is, torturing an innocent person to death. (I’m guessing from the vague description.) (But it has to have been something like that.) By the time we see that character in story-present, it’s too late for him to get me to be sympathetic to him and forcing me into his head would only have one result: DNF.

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The Crystal Cave

As you probably recall, I recently picked up the Merlin quadrilogy – no, I don’t consider the fifth associated book to be truly part of the series – during a Chirp promotion.

I’ve just finished listening to the first book, because as I’ve mentioned before, listening to audiobooks of books I already have practically memorized turns out to be something I like to do. I’ve read these books quite a few times, and though I don’t know how young I was when I read The Crystal Cave for the first time, I do remember – I’m not making this up – reading the part where Merlin’s uncle gives him a poisoned apricot and Merlin says, “I don’t want it. Look, you can see it’s black inside,” and his uncle gets spooked and tells Merlin to stay away from him. If you’ve read the book, you probably remember that scene.

My point is, the first time I read this book, I remember reading that scene several times, trying to figure out what was going on. I didn’t understand that the uncle had poisoned the apricot. (This is made explicit, but either I hadn’t read that part or I still wasn’t sure. I know I wasn’t sure whether Merlin was seeing something real (“It’s black inside”) or something figurative. THAT is how young I was. And even then, I loved this story, for the language, the description, the way you can sink into it because the pacing doesn’t drag you along at breakneck speed. The characters too, though I’m sure a lot must have puzzled me if I wasn’t sure what was going on with the apricot.

Anyway, consider this scene:

***

“Merlin? Merlin Emrys?”

The echo died away to an ordinary voice. The vision faded. I was sitting on my stool in Ambrosius’ room, looking at my hands clasping my knees. Ambrosius had risen and was standing over me, between me and the fire. The servant had gone, and we were alone.

At the repetition of my name, I blinked and roused.

He was speaking. “What do you see, there in the fire?”

I answered without looking up. “A grove of white thorn on a hillside, and a girl on a brown pony, and a young man with the dragon brooch on his shoulder, and the mist knee-high.”

I heard him draw a long breath. Then his hand  came and took me by the chin and lifted my face. His gaze was intent and fierce.

“It’s true, then, this Sight of yours. I have heard, and now – beyond all doubt, it is true. I thought so that first night by the standing stone, but that could have been anything – a dream, a boy’s story, a lucky guess to catch my interest. But this … I was right about you.” He lifted his hand from my face and straightened. “Did you see the girl’s face?”

I nodded.

“And the man’s?”

I met his eyes then. “Yes, sir.”

He turned sharply away and stood with his head bent. Once more he picked up the stilus, turning it over and over with his fingers. After a moment, he said, “How long have you known?”

“Only since I rode in tonight. It was something Cadell said, and then I remembered things, and how your brother looked tonight when he saw me wearing this.” I touched the dragon brooch at my throat.

He glanced, then nodded. “Is this the first time you had this – vision?”

“Yes. I had no idea. Now, it seems strange I never even suspected – but I swear I did not.”

He stood silent, one hand spread on the table. I don’t know what I had expected, but I had never thought to see the great Aurelius Ambrosius at a loss for words.

… … …

[Ambrosius explains how he met Merlin’s mother, why he never went back to bring her away with him, why he never realized she had borne a child. It’s a good explanation. There’s little or nothing to resent in any of this.

Also, the author, with two precisely constructed sentences, reduces the tragedy of this backstory:

And then the other long love stepped in to supersede [the memory of her lover], and the priests took over, and the winter tryst was forgotten. Except for the child, so like his father, but once her duty to him was done, she could go to the solitude and peace which – all those years ago – had sent her riding alone up the valley, as later I was to ride out alone by the same path, and looking perhaps for the same things.]

… … …

I jumped when he spoke again. “How hard a time of it did you have, as a no-man’s-child?”

“Hard enough.”

“You believe me when I say I didn’t know?”

“I believe anything you tell me, my lord.”

“Do you hate me for this, very much, Merlin?”

I said slowly, looking down at my hands, “There is one thing about being a bastard and a no-man’s-child. You are free to imagine your father. You can picture for yourself the worst and the best; you can make your father for yourself, in the image of the moment. From the time I was big enough to understand what I was, I saw my father in every soldier and every prince and every priest. And I saw him, too, in every handsome slave in the kingdom of South Wales.

He spoke very gently, above me. “And now you see him in truth, Merlin Emrys. I asked you, do you hate me for the kind of life I gave you?”

I didn’t look up. I answered, with my eyes on the floor, “Since I was a child, I have had the world to choose from for a father. Out of them all, Aurelius Ambrosius, I would have chosen you.”

Silence. The flames leapt like heartbeat.

***

And what I thought, listening to this scene, was: I could have written this. I mean, I remembered this scene clearly, including the essential lines of dialogue, but even so, this thought struck me clearly, perhaps because it’s been a while, maybe because audio slows down the experience of reading.

Regardless, this is really close to how I would have written this scene – how I would have handled the dialogue and the bits of description, the adverbs, the give and take. But beyond that level of style, if I wrote this kind of scene, between a twelve-year-old bastard and his father, this is exactly how that scene would go. Including the decision to be retroactively kind to Niniene, to gentle the tragedy, to make sure there is no reasonable foundation for resentment in this backstory. All of this. Everything.

This really struck me. As far as I know, I have never, not once, named Mary Stewart as an important influence on my writing. But I think, next time somebody asks me about that, I’ll remember her name.

This also makes me wonder what other books I might have read – maybe read over and over, starting when I was … Twelve? Ten? I don’t know. The publication date offers no clue because when The Crystal Cave was first published, I was probably just about reading Dick and Jane books. All I know is, I first read it when I was really young, apparently during the period when I was absorbing elements of style and developing strong opinions about how relationships should work in stories. I’ve always thought that I (and most people) absorb that sense of style and the deep foundation of taste in novels at around the age of fourteen. Now I think maybe the novels you choose to read at that age express the foundation that has already been formed, even earlier than that. At twelve, or ten. Maybe by novels sophisticated enough that they’re a little out of your reach, something to stretch toward.

This was just something interesting that I had never noticed before.

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Update: Several steps forward, sudden step back

You know what’s annoying? If you write the penultimate chapter and then change your mind about something fairly trivial, but also somewhat fiddly to change.

So I’m fiddling.

However, I’m going to do something different: I’m going to cut the manuscript into two parts: The big part that constitutes 85% of the story and the little part that constitutes 15% of the story. Then I’m going to send the big part to the the earliest readers, on the theory that before they get to the mildish cliffhanger at the end of chapter 27, I’ll be sending them the rest of the novel. That is, I think I will be ready to do that no later than the end of this week.

I’ve had early readers whip through a long book in one day before, but still, I’d like to get moving because as soon as I get feedback from the earliest readers, I’ll be able to estimate release dates and put the book up for preorder, and I REALLY want to do that.

In the meantime, it’s raining AGAIN, and while I like a cool spring, this is kinda ridiculous. However, it really is spring:

My favorite Calycanthus. I think this is Aphrodite. Google, show me pictures of Calycanthus Aphrodite … Yes, this is definitely Aphrodite. I highly recommend this variety of Carolina Allspice / Carolina Sweetshrub / whatever other common name. It’s Calycanthus florida ‘Aphrodite’ if you want to ask for it properly at a nursery. I do appreciate authors doing Latin names properly in novels, too, because generally speaking, they don’t. Genus name capitalized, species name lower case, both italicized, single quotes for a variety name, that’s the correct form.

Aphrodite is, I will add, a giant shrub, eight feet tall and wide, say. Much bigger than the wild type, and much more showy in flower.

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A Long Look at a Short Passage

The meadows lead down to the shores of the mere, and the nearest fields melt almost insensibly into the green margin of the water, for at the edge it is so full of flags, and rushes, and weeds as at a distance to be barely distinguishable there from the sward. As we approach, the cuckoo sings passing overhead; she cries as she flies is the common country saying.

I used to imagine that the cuckoo was fond of an echo, having noticed that a particular clump of trees overhanging some water, the opposite bank of which sent back a clear reply, was a specially favourite resort of that bird. The reduplication of the liquid notes, as they travelled to and fro, was peculiarly pleasant: the water, perhaps, lending, like a sounding-board, a fulness and roundness to her song. She might possibly have fancied that another bird was answering; certainly she cried much longer there that in other places. Morning after morning, and about the same time – eleven o’clock – a cuckoo sang in that group of trees, from noting which I was led to think that perhaps the cuckoo, though apparently wandering aimlessly about, really has more method and regularity in her habits than would seem. …

There was a superstition that where or in whatever condition you happened to be when you heard the cuckoo the first time in the spring, so you would remain for the next twelvemonth; for which reason it was a misfortune to hear her first in bed, since it might mean a long illness. This, by-the-by, may have been a pleasant fable invented to get milkmaids up early of a morning.

–Richard Jefferies, The Gamekeeper at Home, 1890

***

There are a fair number of cuckoo species, most of which are nest parasites, so that’s not as pretty as the bird itself. Brown-headed cowbirds are also nest parasites and there are lots more of them around where I live; I haven’t seen a cuckoo in years. I don’t think I’ve heard one either, but I’ll have to pay attention and see if I do hear any this spring. The call really does sound a bit like “cuckoo,” though to me it’s more like “coo-coo.” They sound something like doves, but not really.

Image from Unsplash

Let’s take a closer look at this passage, which I chose mostly because I enjoy that last paragraph. Well, and the first paragraph. How often have you seen anybody use “mere” in a sentence? Or, for that matter, “sward?” Anyway, take a look at this —

***

The meadows lead down to the shores of the mere, and the nearest fields melt almost insensibly into the green margin of the water, for at the edge it is so full of flags, and rushes, and weeds as at a distance to be barely distinguishable there from the sward. As we approach, the cuckoo sings passing overhead; she cries as she flies is the common country saying.

I used to imagine that the cuckoo was fond of an echo, having noticed that a particular clump of trees overhanging some water, the opposite bank of which sent back a clear reply, was a specially favourite resort of that bird. The reduplication of the liquid notes, as they travelled to and fro, was peculiarly pleasant: the water, perhaps, lending, like a sounding-board, a fulness and roundness to her song. She might possibly have fancied that another bird was answering; certainly she cried much longer there that in other places. Morning after morning, and about the same time – eleven o’clock – a cuckoo sang in that group of trees, from noting which I was led to think that perhaps the cuckoo, though apparently wandering aimlessly about, really has more method and regularity in her habits than would seem. …

There was a superstition that where or in whatever condition you happened to be when you heard the cuckoo the first time in the spring, so you would remain for the next twelvemonth; for which reason it was a misfortune to hear her first in bed, since it might mean a long illness. This, by-the-by, may have been a pleasant fable invented to get milkmaids up early of a morning.

***

There: that’s all the adverbs I spotted on a quick glance. Adverbs should be as rare as a solar eclipse, says James Scott Bell, and I will just point to this passage and wonder where people get these notions. I am aware that writing styles were possibly somewhat different in 1890 than they are today. The shift has not largely been toward better writing, so the argument that now there is something wrong with adverbs is not going to carry much weight with me.

Let me look once more at the first paragraph of the passage, this time noting a different part of speech.

***

The meadows lead down to the shores of the mere, and the nearest fields melt almost insensibly into the green margin of the water, for at the edge it is so full of flags, and rushes, and weeds as at a distance to be barely distinguishable there from the sward.

I just noticed the use of conjunctions, that’s all, and thought this was worth noting because of my recent post about the use or non-use of conjunctions – asyndeton, remember that? A neat word, though of limited utility in daily conversation. Anyway, I like the use of all these conjunctions here. Personally, I think the use of all these comma-conjunctions gives that first sentence a delightful lazy feel, as though you’re ambling along the stream.

I haven’t seen a cuckoo for a long time, which is regrettable, because they are beautiful birds.

But back to the passage. How about this:

***

The meadows lead down to the shores of the mere   ,   and the nearest fields melt almost insensibly into the green margin of the water  ,   for at the edge it is so full of flags  ,   and rushes  ,   and weeds as at a distance to be barely distinguishable there from the sward. As we approach, the cuckoo sings passing overhead   ;    she cries as she flies is the common country saying.

I used to imagine that the cuckoo was fond of an echo  ,   having noticed that a particular clump of trees overhanging some water, the opposite bank of which sent back a clear reply, was a specially favourite resort of that bird. The reduplication of the liquid notes  ,   as they travelled to and fro   ,  was peculiarly pleasant  :   the water   ,  perhaps  ,   lending  ,   like a sounding-board  ,   a fulness and roundness to her song. She might possibly have fancied that another bird was answering  ;   certainly she cried much longer there that in other places. Morning after morning  ,   and about the same time – eleven o’clock – a cuckoo sang in that group of trees  ,    from noting which I was led to think that perhaps the cuckoo   ,  though apparently wandering aimlessly about  ,   really has more method and regularity in her habits that would seem. …

There was a superstition that where or in whatever condition you happened to be when you heard the cuckoo the first time in the spring  ,   so you would remain for the next twelvemonth  ;   for which reason it was a misfortune to hear her first in bed, since it might mean a long illness. This  ,   by-the-by, may have been a pleasant fable invented to get milkmaids up early of a morning.

***

This would be a nice passage to use when demonstrating almost anything about punctuation or nested clauses.

I used to imagine that the cuckoo was fond of an echo, having noticed that a particular clump of trees overhanging some water, the opposite bank of which sent back a clear reply, was a specially favourite resort of that bird.

You can wander through that sentence for a while, trying to figure it out. Where is the subject, the main verb, the object? This sort of sentence would be good for teaching children how to recognize all that. Diagramming that sentence would be fun.

Or, you could de-complicate that sentence by rearranging the clauses:

Having noticed that a particular clump of trees overhung some water, the opposite bank of which sent back a clear reply, was a specially favourite resort of that bird, I used to imagine that the cuckoo was fond of an echo.

What do you think? I think this new structure clarifies who noticed the thing, whereas in the original, this was ambiguous.

How about this version:

At one location along the stream, where a particular clump of trees overhung the water, the opposite bank sent back a clear echo of any sound. This was a specially favourite resort of the cuckoo, so I used to imagine that she was fond of an echo.

This is significantly simpler to understand.

Which you’d prefer depends on why you’re writing the passage and whom you imagine your reader to be. If you write the first version, you are demonstrating confidence that your reader will have sufficient skill to unravel the clauses without effort, and will, moreover, enjoy your elliptical writing. The last version imagines that the reader might have lower competence at reading, or perhaps be too impatient to figure it out. This is a less generous view of the reader. On the other hand, I mean, this version really is easier to understand. I can hardly say it’s unreasonable to prefer clarity.

***

This might have jumped out at you, but if not, look at it now:

There was a superstition that where or in whatever condition you happened to be when you heard the cuckoo the first time in the spring, so you would remain for the next twelvemonth; for which reason it was a misfortune to hear her first in bed, since it might mean a long illness.

This sentence is 53 words long. Of course the semicolon means it’s actually two sentences. Still. Both independent clauses are quite simple in construction – only one comma each.

Did you notice the fake subject “There” at the beginning? English throws fake subjects into sentences all the time: There was, it is. This is because English REALLY likes subject-verb-object word order and invents fake subjects in order to put sentences into this order, when otherwise they might be awkward.

English instructors will sometimes tell you that fake subjects are weak or indirect or some such term, and – possibly surprisingly, given the various nonsense English teachers sometimes espouse * – that can be true. Generally speaking, I would tend to rephrase a sentence to avoid this kind of fake subject. On the other hand, I wouldn’t obsess about it, and the above sentence demonstrates why. I mean, it’s fine.

If you did want to rephrase that sentence, how would you do it?

If you knew where or when you were, you could say, “In the county of _____, a common superstition held that …” Or else you could say, “When I was a child, a common superstition held that …”

Suppose you didn’t want to start with a prepositional phrase or a dependent clause of any kind, not that there is anything wrong with dependent clauses, but you could say, “People in the county of _____ commonly held a superstition that …”

Would any of those be better? Not really. They’re just variations, all about equally as good. That’s what I think. The final version obviously introduces yet another adverb, which doesn’t bother me.

When helping students write clearly, I often say, “Put the grammatical subject in the front and alllllll sorts of problems automatically shake themselves into proper order.” Of course, since students today are taught absolutely nothing about grammar, as a rule, they can’t identify the grammatical subject, so this may lead to a longer digression about grammatical subjects. (What is a verb? What is the verb in this sentence? That is not actually a verb; it’s a noun disguised as a verb. You can tell because it is doing noun things in the sentence. What is actually doing verb things? Yes, there, that’s the verb. Okay, now who or what is doing the verb? That is the grammatical subject. And if you have a dependent clause, the comma goes in front of the grammatical subject. You keep emphasizing “grammatical” in front of “subject” because you need to make it clear that here, “subject” does not mean “topic.”)

An English instructor – or an editor fond of super-tight, stripped-down writing styles – might also say “You should take out for which reason and put in so because concise writing is better.” You could certainly do that. Would that be better?

For once, the answer is clear. That would be much less good, because there’s already a “so” in that sentence. You could use “therefore” instead, but that would change the tone a little bit, plus “therefore” would be doing the same job as “so” in the same way, so it would produce a repetitive feel even though it’s a different word with more syllables. I prefer for which reason here. Of course, super-tight, stripped-down styles aren’t really my jam anyway.

*Don’t start a sentence with “and” or any other short conjunction even though long conjunctions are peachy at the front of a sentence; don’t repeat “and” in a list; don’t use “it;” don’t use “be” verbs; don’t use “get” in any form; don’t use passive voice; don’t use semicolons, my child, because that’s too complicated for your tiny brain. On and on, I’m not making any of this up except I doubt any English teacher ever explicitly says the part about the tiny brain. That’s simply implied.

Should you or your child be taking any multiple-choice test that includes questions over punctuation, such as the ACT, it might be worth knowing that semicolons do exactly the same job as periods, except with an added implication that the two sentences linked by a semicolon are related somehow. Why is this a handy bit of trivia? Because, on a multiple-choice question where two answers are exactly the same except one has a period and one has a semicolon, both those answers must be right or else both must be wrong, which means, on a normal standardized test, they’re both wrong. This semicolon = artistic period also makes it easier to decide which is right: semicolon or comma? If a period could be right, the comma cannot be right, but the semicolon could.

However, really, the point of this post was to linger over a few nice paragraphs.

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Poetry Thursday: GK Chesterton

Okay, did you know Chesterton wrote a ton of poems? I knew he wrote those mystery stories, the Father Brown stories. I’ve got the collection somewhere. I read The Man Who was Thursday at some point, though I confess I don’t remember much about it. But I somehow seem not to have noticed that he also wrote lots of poems. Here is one of those — it’s the wrong season for it, but I like it —

Gold LeavesLo! I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold;
Grey hairs and golden leaves cry out
The year and I are old.

In youth I sought the prince of men,
Captain in cosmic wars,
Our Titan, even the weeds would show
Defiant, to the stars.

But now a great thing in the street
Seems any human nod,
Where shift in strange democracy
The million masks of God.

In youth I sought the golden flower
Hidden in wood or wold,
But I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold.

***

Oh, here’s one — very suitable, since I’m still listening to Mary Stewart’s Merlin quadrilogy.

***

The Myth of Arthur

O learned man who never learned to learn,
Save to deduce, by timid steps and small,
From towering smoke that fire can never burn
And from tall tales that men were never tall.
Say, have you thought what manner of man it is
Of who men say “He could strike giants down” ?
Or what strong memories over time’s abyss
Bore up the pomp of Camelot and the crown.
And why one banner all the background fills,
Beyond the pageants of so many spears,
And by what witchery in the western hills
A throne stands empty for a thousand years.
Who hold, unheeding this immense impact,
Immortal story for a mortal sin;
Lest human fable touch historic fact,
Chase myths like moths, and fight them with a pin.
Take comfort; rest–there needs not this ado.
You shall not be a myth, I promise you.

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The Universe is Entertaining

I realize that the value of diamond is artificially maintained through manipulation of the supply, and also the value of natural diamonds is falling because of the availability of lab-grown diamonds. I don’t care, since … quick check … yes, looks like zero of my net worth is tied up in the diamond market.

I mean, if someone handed me the Hope Diamond, I wouldn’t turn it down. I suppose I’d sell it back to the Smithsonian for a fraction of its estimated worth.

However, it looks like the Hope Diamond, plus all natural diamonds, plus all lab-grown diamonds, are merely a tiny grain of diamond compared to … get this … a layer of diamond ten miles thick below the surface of Mercury.

Mercury’s surface is scattered with graphite, an allotrope of carbon, indicating that the planet’s crust once floated atop a carbon-rich magma ocean. As this ocean cooled, lighter carbon materials floated upward, while denser carbon sank deeper into the planet. Under pressures exceeding 5.5 GPa and temperatures approaching 3,600°F, researchers showed that this submerged carbon could convert into diamond at Mercury’s core–mantle boundary.

This is just an entertaining note in the continual story of new discoveries about planetary science and astronomy.

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Voice, Revisited

Okay, as with the previous post about voice, the question is, do these excerpts demonstrate the quality of “voice” – the feeling that the protagonist is a real person rather than a cardboard façade propped up by the author, going through the motions of being the protagonist. Based on comments regarding the previous post and thoughts about the samples here, I’m going to add to that definition of voice.

Voice: The feeling that the protagonist and other characters are real people, not façades. What’s another way to put that? Okay, the feeling that the protagonist and other characters are real characters, not Everyprotagonist and Everysidekick. The first requirement is dialogue that could not be recited by puppets programed to say Good morning and have a banal conversation about nothing. The second requirement is evidence that they have unique internal experiences; that they have unique and coherent reactions to the world and events.

But also –

Voice: The feeling that the author is a real person with a real style, not a souped-up autopredict AI setting words in order according to probability algorithms. This means details are surprising or cute or interesting or something other than predictable; wordchoice, phrasing, and punctuation is at least somewhat interesting rather than cliched; dialogue tags are not super-cliched or “trying too hard, getting silly,” as is characteristic of a lot of AI-generated fiction (and also some bad human-generated fiction); similes are not weird in the specific nonsensical way that seems fairly typical of generated fiction.

And maybe—

Voice: is it reasonable to suggest that a sense of setting also contributes to voice? That if the voice is strong, part of that comes from making the setting a real place, not a totally generic Everysetting? I’m starting to think this could be part of voice. Everysetting could be “every space opera” as well as “every contemporary small town,” so just writing an SF novel doesn’t mean the setting has anything much going for it. But even if it’s a small town, it should really seem like a specific small town, not Everysmalltown.

Besides voice –

Setting aside voice, are these excerpts good? Catchy? Both? Because they’re so short and always taken from the top of chapter two, an excerpt can wind up heavy on description, and then it’s hard to judge voice, especially if you’re thinking more about the characters being real people and less about voice including the author’s style and the setting. But no matter how you define voice, it’s still relatively easy to judge quality.

Catchiness is even easier because it’s so personal. By “catchy,” I mean are you engaged, would you turn the page. Or actually, for these excerpts, would you go back to the beginning and start the story properly. That’s not wholly independent of quality, but it’s pretty much orthogonal because a lot of catchiness has to do with tone.

I think that readers who skim through a novel without really noticing much about the writing, the style, the cliches, the characters, or anything else probably find a much larger proportion of all books catchy than, say, I do. These are the readers who may put more into the story than the author did. I think most commenters here are going to notice style and tone. Some of you are even more picky than I am, at least in some dimensions.

Anyway, what else, if anything, is notable about these selections? Comments below.

Once again, I’m going to put these in order from best to worst. And again, one of these excerpts is a generated fake. Which one? Can you tell? My personal guess is: You aren’t going to get it right. I can see things that give it away, but I still think it’s going to be hard to spot, even if you recognize a few of these and can therefore eliminate them as potential fakes. You might get it just because I’m indicating so clearly that it’s hard to spot. I’m going to do my very best not to give it away by the way I treat it in the comments.

I got all of these (except the fake, of course) from my Samples folder on my Kindle. A couple, some of you might recognize. I deleted about half as soon as I typed in the excerpt, so in that sense this was a useful exercise, because thinning the TBR pile is always useful. However, this does mean a fair number of these didn’t work for me, for one reason or another. You can see what you think …

***

1.

Tennal didn’t go back to his new room that night. The noise of the party swallowed him, and later, the drones moved across the windows like stars. His head was mercifully quiet for a few hours.

The next day, Tennal found himself waking up in a mostly deserted penthouse with a hangover and an architect. Again.

The bed moved as the architect from last night climbed out. Tennal made a wordless noise and unstuck his eyelids. The man didn’t say anything to him but started to pull on a set of clothes folded beside the bed: expensive cuts and fabrics, plus and encrypted pod comm on a flashy lace-gold chain. Tennal should probably have memorized his name.

“You look like shit, sweetie,” the boss said. “I’ve got a call to take care of. You go have a shower.” He put an architect’s command behind shower, a mental flare of light, but it brushed past Tennal light a breeze sliding against glass.

A familiar disappointment settled over Tennal. He’d popped some neuro-enhancer tablets last night to bring down his defenses, but the effect had worn off. “Yeah, yeah. You going to bring me breakfast first?”

The boss chuckled. “Y’know, most readers who do jobs for me have more tact. I wouldn’t even believe you were one if I hadn’t seen you party. Later.”

Tennal levered himself up on his elbows as the architect disappeared.

Voice: Tons. Heaps. Oodles.

Quality: Good, but I have to admit I’m a little confused. On the other hand, that kinda goes with picking up at the top of chapter two, without reading chapter one, so I can’t blame anyone but myself. So, good.

Catchiness: High. I would definitely go back to the beginning and read this properly.

***

2.

Isaveth had finished boiling the potatoes for supper and was doggedly mashing them when the front door creaked and she heard Annagail’s step in the hall.

Oh no. Was it that late already? Isaveth had spent only a few minutes talking to Morra, but she’d gone on writing for a good while after that, even while the dinner was cooking. Isaveth shot a guilty glance at Anna, about to ask if she minded fetching the other girls from Aunt Sal’s. Then Lilet and Mimmi burst in, squabbling and jostling each other, and she let out a thankful sigh.

“You were supposed to get us half an hour ago,” said Lilet accusingly. “It’s a good thing we spotted Anna before Aunt Sal started moaning. Ugh, potatoes again?”

“There’s plenty of air if you’d rather eat that,” Isaveth retorted, moving quickly to stop Mimmi from poking at the basket of spell-tablets she’d left by the back door. “Don’t touch those. I’m going to sell them.”

“They look like candies,” said Mimmi with a wistful glance at the basket. Isaveth had torn up some old tissue to wrap the tablets in, hoping it would protect them from crumbling. “What are they?”

“Spells,” said Isaveth. She almost added, “Like Mama used to make,” but Mimmi stilled teared up when anyone spoke of their mother. “Now come and help set the table.”

Voice: Yes, clear.

Quality: Good lord, all those names! Names piled on top of names! The author is very confident or very misguided to try to handle a family with this many people. Quality is good.

Catchiness: Good.

Other comments: Again, I like this. I would read it.

***

3.

The morning after the funeral, I awoke with that peculiar weight behind the eyes that follows too much thinking and not enough sleep. Outside, the Georgia sky had turned the color of old tin, low and expressionless. The air was thick with the early onset of June heat, and somewhere beyond the back porch, a mourning dove called out like it had something important to say and no one left to say it to.

I moved through the house barefoot, the pine floors cool against my soles. Mama’s house—mine now, I supposed, though the thought still landed strange in my mouth—was quiet except for the rhythmic tick of the old Seth Thomas clock on the mantel. It ticked the same way it had my entire childhood, steady as judgment. The smell of coffee had not yet touched the air. That was telling.

It had been three days since they pulled Robert’s body from the Oconee, his skin gone blue as river stone, and still no one had come forward with anything worth believing. Sheriff Cade had asked his questions, clipped and perfunctory, like he already knew the answers and didn’t care for the details. I knew better. Cade never did like details; they had a way of unraveling his version of things.

I stood at the kitchen sink and looked out over the back field, now nothing but scorched weeds and bent fence posts. In the distance, a figure moved—a slow gait, almost hesitant, like he was waiting for someone to wave him off. I squinted against the light and caught the glint of a badge.

“Morning, Ms. Bell,” he called when I stepped onto the porch. Deputy Langley. Too polite by half and not half as simple as he pretended to be. He removed his hat, the way Southern men still did when death hung in the air.

I crossed my arms. “You here official, Deputy?”

He gave me a look that wasn’t quite sorrow and wasn’t quite curiosity. “Depends how you answer what I’m about to ask.”

That’s how it always starts in this town—not with a body, not with blood. With a question you don’t expect, from someone you thought you could trust.

Voice: Good. I like this.

Quality: Some quibbles, but also good.

Catchiness: Still good. This isn’t an author I’m familiar with, but I’d be inclined to go back to the beginning and start it properly.

Other comments: The tone seems possibly a bit dark for my taste.

***

4.

With a hiss of displaced air Esther reappeared miles away from where she had started. She stood in a graveled parking area in front of the living quarters of the Keep.

The humble plantation-style cottage was raised up off the ground on a post-and-pier foundation with a lanai – a covered porch – in front and back. The lot was tucked away out of sight off a paved road ascending a leeward slope in the Ko’olau Mountains. Even in daylight she would barely have been able to identify the grassy lane that led through forest and bamboo past the main part of the extended family compound and on to the road. At night a heavy darkness swallowed the surroundings like an inky black cloak. Much of that weight was the magic that concealed the Keep from curious hikers who might wander down an unofficial trail looking for a route to the falls. The rest belonged to the Keep itself, whose footprint was pressed partly into Earth’s soil and partly into the Beyond in a way that made it easy to overlook, as if it wasn’t quite fully present.

The front door of the cottage was cracked ajar. She listened for signs of trespassers or intruders. The work-shed to her right was padlocked. One of the swings in the swing set creaked as if pushed by an invisible set of hands. Otherwise she heard nothing from the clearing that wrapped around to the back of the house except the delicate tremor of a spider’s web stirring in the breeze and the respiration of leaves. The dogs hadn’t come to investigate. That was definitely concerning.

Voice: Yes, but not much.

Quality: Decent.

Catchiness: Decent.

Other comments: This strikes me as okay, but not super engaging. The most engaging details by a mile is that the protagonist hears the tremor of a spider’s web and the respiration of leaves. ?!???

***

5.

Madeleine d’Aubin, alchemist of House Silverspires, had seen more than her share of prone bodies brought in at the dead of the night: she slept little these days in any case, spending her nights in her laboratory, remembering the past and what it had cost her.

She arrived in one of the largest rooms of the admissions wing of Hôtel-Dieu, the House’s hospital: row after row of metal beds, all unoccupied save two. Two doctors in white blouses hovered by the new arrivals’ side, and her assistant, Oris, was waiting for her, leaning against the wall and trying to appear casual; though his face was sallow in the dim light.

She nodded at Oris and went to his side, pulling a chair so she could sit. Madeleine dropped her heavy shoulder bag onto the floor and settled to wait in silence.

The room was dusty and the air dry, and her wasted lungs wouldn’t take it: a cough welled up. She desperately tried to quench the trickle that was going to become a cough, but it was never enough. The bout that followed racked her from head to toe – she was going to choke to death, never finding fresh, wholesome air again.

At last she sat back, wrung out, enjoying the sweetness of uninterrupted breath. One of the doctors – Aragon, surely – was looking straight at her with disapproval. Madeleine waved a hand, letting him know it was nothing. She’d lied about it; told him it was too much breathing the Paris air, of the areas around the blackened flow of the Seine – he’d seen so many combatants with the same problems that he’d been all too ready to believe her. She was not proud, but she was safe. The last thing that’d occur to him, prim and proper as he was, would be to question her; to realize how wasted her lungs were, and the true cause of such extensive and fast-progressing damage.

Voice: Pretty strong.

Quality: I could quibble, but probably the actual quality is better than the one above.

Catchiness: This one is the reason I wanted to separate quality from catchiness. I think this is good, with a caveat or two, but I don’t like it. The tone seems possibly too gritty for me.

Other comments: I would bet this rings a bell for some of you. It’s been on my radar for quite a while. I think I may take it off my radar based on the tone, but your comments could change my mind.

***

From here on, the samples seem less good, and this is true whether or not they also seem possibly generated. This raises a series of questions:

What makes the samples above better than those below? Not just voice, although these samples have fair to great voice.

I would say: Smoothness, with nothing or not much pushing the reader away from the story. Smoothness of sentences and phrases. Style, too. Just nice sentences. Smoothness of dialogue tags. Also, clever details that evoke surprise or amusement or some other reaction that contributes to engagement. If there’s dialogue, also liveliness; the dialogue evokes surprise, amusement, sympathy, interest.

All five of those above seem a lot better than any of those below, however. This has to do with voice, style, smoothness, details, liveliness.

What makes a sample seem less good, but not generated? What makes a sample seem bad in the way generated text generally seems bad? Have you figured out what cues you’re using to decide whether something seems generated? I know some of the cues I’m using, but I bet there are other things I’m also using, but haven’t consciously noticed.

***

6.

I was hoping to get out of town by noon, but by the time I packed everything, fielded another half-dozen phone calls from each of the brides, and ran all the resulting last-minute errands, it was well into the evening rush hour. Needless to say I was late arriving at Steven and Eileen’s. Eileen, bless her heart, didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she didn’t even seem to notice.

“Guess who’s here,” Eileen said as she met me at the door wearing a dress of purple tie-dyed velvet, spattered here and there with flour. “Barry!”

“Really,” I said, with considerably less enthusiasm. Ever since December, when I’d broken up with my boyfriend, Jeffrey, various friends and relatives had been trying to set me up with their idea of eligible men. Steven and Eileen’s candidate was Steven’s younger brother, Barry. Barry had taken to the idea immediately. I had not.

“The minute we told him you were coming, he came right up,” Eileen burbled. “Isn’t that sweet?”

“I really wish you hadn’t done that.”

“Why, Meg?” Eileen said, wide-eyed.

“Eileen, we’ve been over this half a dozen times already. You and Steven may think Barry and I are made for each other. I don’t.”

“He’s crazy about you.”

“So what? I don’t happen to like him.”

“I don’t see why not,” Eileen said. “He’s so sensitive. And such a deep thinker, too.”

Voice: Maybe? But I think the protagonist seems kind of like she’s a jerk?

Quality: Okay. The sentence that rescues this for me is the last line. I think that’s funny.

Catchiness: Okay. I’m not super in the mood for a cozy mystery, which is what this looks like to me. I think Jennifer Crusie might have spoiled other mystery-adjacent stories for me.

Other comments: I think every line of dialogue is boring except the last line, which is not boring.

***

7.

Detective Aaron Remalla studied his phone, wondering where to take the next turn. The farther he drove, the worse his cell phone connection became, and he cursed his partner. The woods were thick and the roads were narrow, and despite his ability to handle the most violent of criminals, at the moment, nature seemed far more dangerous. He’d take a cabin within a thirty-minute drive of a decent restaurant any day, but this was different. He’d driven through a small town about twenty minutes earlier that he’d almost missed entirely if not for the gas station on the corner. He’d stopped to fill his tank but had only filled it halfway when the creepy attendant with long, uncombed hair, dirty clothes, and stubbled face started to stare at him from the door of the station.

His partner had told him the place was rustic, but Rem would obviously have to explain to him the definition of rustic. There was civilization rustic and there was the movie Deliverance rustic, and this was borderline Deliverance.

Coming to a fork in the road, he cursed again and pulled over to the side. He shook his cell phone, hoping for reception. He thought he was supposed to go right, but he couldn’t be sure. The house had to be close, but he had no desire to get lost. He’d rather face a gang of armed street thugs. Visions of being stranded and spending the night in his car made him break out in a cold sweat.

He hit a button on his phone, hoping it would connect. He heard a click, and then nothing, and almost hung up, when he heard a static-filled “Hello?”

Rem didn’t mince words. “What the hell have you gotten me into? Do you know I am driving through wilderness right now? A Bigfoot probably has me in his sights and he’s anticipating dinner. I thought you said this place was near humans?”

Voice: Maybe?

Quality: I mean, kind of okay?

Catchiness: Not high for me. Lines like this – The woods were thick and the roads were narrow, and despite his ability to handle the most violent of criminals, at the moment, nature seemed far more dangerous. – strike me as stupid. He’d rather face a gang of armed street thugs than get lost, seriously? That’s just silly. The line about Deliverance is funny, though.

Other Comments: Are we sure this is chapter two? Why are we introducing the pov character by full name and title here? Is this the first time we’ve seen him? If so, this is fine. If not, it’s strange.

“Near humans” suggests a surprising twist as we find out this is an SF novel instead of a mystery novel. Do normal people say, “Located near humans” when they mean “Near people” or “Near civilization”? I’m voting no, and I think this usage instantly reduces catchiness to a don’t-bother level.

***

8.

The Gabriella’s systems shut down forty-four minutes later.

Throttle floated near the conference table, holding the edge to keep from drifting away. All six crew members were in the room with her. All war the black chime suits like the one Throttle now wore. Chime suits, nicknamed that because of their variety of warning alarms that tended to go off at random intervals, were advanced spacesuits. They could provide full life-support features through batteries that recharged from kinetic energy as well as from power stations. Newer suits also had solar absorbers in the fabric to recharge the batteries, but none of Throttle’s crew had those.

Most of her crew currently had their magnetized gravity boots on and “stood” on the floor or walls – or in Eddy’s case, the ceiling. Throttle found herself as comfortable, if not more so, in zero g. There, here useless legs weren’t nearly as much of a detriment as they were in gravity.

Portable lanterns, clipped on the walls, cast shadows over the crew’s faces. They all had the good sense to know what they faced, and therefore, all bore the same expression she felt within herself.

Dread.

Over the past fifteen years, she’d played out this scenario a thousand times in her head, with a thousand different ways of dealing with it, but every time had led to the same outcome. There was no way to save the eight hundred and sixty-two colonists in cryosleep on board her ship without outside help.

“Usually something big, like space debris or solar flares, cases cat fails. Any idea what caused this one?” Birk, Throttle’s right hand and co-leader of the mission, asked while he slowly treaded air.

Voice: Nonexistent.

Quality: Not great.

Catchiness: Downright low.

Other comments: Do not name your protagonist Throttle. Even if you think you’ve got a clever reason for it, don’t do that. Ugh. I can’t be the only reader who is seriously turned off by stupid names.

Also, don’t explain why chime suits are called chime suits. If you must explain that, slip that detail into the story, don’t just announce the explanation to the reader. Ditto for all the technical details. Dave Weber can get away with this, but I don’t suggest this aspect of his writing as a model to emulate.

***

9.

The Velvet Lounge was a somewhat more upmarket affair than Randall’s. For one thing, the spirits came out of branded bottles and didn’t taste like more than two glasses would send you blind for a week. For another, it had actual upholstery instead of bare boards, although you’d need a thing for velvet to consider it tasteful. For a third, instead of being buried deep in the warren of tunnels beneath the crust of Caarmella II, it was on the surface, actual stars visible in the sky alongside the winking lights of the atmo-scrapers that towered around them like some sort of glittering fungal growths. Jenna McIlroy kept finding her eyes drawn to them as they flashed in her peripheral vision, occasionally mixed with the running lights of some cargo freighter or passenger liner. She tried to stop herself from wondering what the ships were, where they came from, what their purpose was. There was too much galaxy for her guesses to be anything but wild, and it was a good way to make herself paranoid.

“You’da thought they’da made the atmo safe by now,” Apirana Wahawaha opined, nursing his solitary beer and scratching the dark whorls of the ta moko on his cheek. “Big A” was without doubt the most immediately intimidating member of the crew of Keiko, the jack-of-all-trades interstellar ship that had been Jenna’s home for the last four Standard months; he was huge in many ways, from build to voice to personality, and the tribal tattoos that covered much of his skin lent him an alien air, even out in this galaxy of wonders. However, he rarely drank alcohol and never had more than one even when he did, so he sipped quietly and slowly. “Seen’ stars is all well an’ good, but I like to take a walk outside every now an’ then, know what I mean?”

Voice: Yes. “You’d need a thing for velvet to consider it tasteful” strikes me as a line with personality. Pushing back against paranoia, ditto.

Quality: Okay.

Catchiness: Lowish.

Other comments: For me, a little of that you’da, they’da stuff goes a long way. Put this into the mouth of a character with ta moko tribal tattoos and it becomes off-putting.

In the literary world, there are just a lot of comic relief sidekicks and Wise Sages who get weird speech patterns, and a lot of readers are probably going to be put off the second they see this kind of self-consciously exotified speech.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a good time to remember that accents are hard to do well and that toning that way down and indicating speech differences with syntax, vocabulary, and overall style – not including apostrophes – might be something to consider.

***

10.

A bright sun crept over the Everstone Mountains, the peaks of Endin Keep casting long shadows over the Alchean city streets. Winding walkways crisscrossed between home and shop with the exception of Beryl Boulevard, a wide, well-groomed street leading from the western borders of Alchea proper directly to the archway of Endin Keep. A straight fixture amidst a city filled with unplanned growth.

The view from the highest tower of Endin Keep was breathtaking, with sweeping, panoramic views of the landscape. Yet Chrys sat staring into a book. He’d been there for hours, a melted candle flickering in the dim light of morning. Hundreds of notes written down meticulously onto dozens of parchment papers, stacked in ordered groups, surrounded him. Charts and diagrams and sketches. His eyes were filled with exhausted passion, but he was driven by a profound thirst for knowledge. Never again.

“Good morning, General.”

Chrys started. He hadn’t noticed the Great Lord Malachus Endin entering the briefing room. “Good morning, sir.” He gathered his notes, arranging each of them meticulously, and placed them in the sleeve of the leather book.

Malachus approached him. “How long have you been awake?”

“A while, sir.” Chris sat up straight. He adjusted the book so that it was lined up with the edge of the table.

“Is this about Iriel? I hear she is recovering well.”

“She is, sir. We were very fortunate.” Chrys looked up and met eyes with Malachus. The bichromatic gaze of the Great Lord never ceased to unnerve. One deep cerulean blue eye and the other a bright minty green. The colors were accentuated by the long, black hair falling on both sides of his bronze face. Light rays brushed carelessly across a well-trimmed beard. Malachus reveled in eye contact, knowing well how it reminded people of his dual threadweaver nature, and he respected those who were willing to keep his gaze when he spoke.

Voice: Amazingly low considering how much dialogue there is here. The problem is, it’s boring dialogue without personality. This, to me, is a good example of the author setting façades of characters into the story and pretending they’re real characters.

Quality: Low. I actually like the first paragraph here, but boring dialogue is a specific problem for me. Good morning, how long have you been awake, a while, when is someone going to say something worth saying?

Catchiness: Low.

Other comments: I don’t like this at all, and there are lots of reasons why not. I dislike the names. I think there are word choice and phrasing problems. His eyes were filled with exhausted passion, but he was driven by a profound thirst for knowledge doesn’t work for me. Never ceased to unnerve doesn’t either. Light rays brushed carelessly doesn’t either. A lot of people might be willing to hold his gaze, but unable to do it, so is willing the right word here? Keep isn’t.

*********

***

********

Here’s where those selections came from:

1. Everina Maxwell, Ocean’s Echo. That stuff about architects is delightful. There was zero chance anybody would pick this as generated. There are plot elements that have pushed me away from this book so far, but I do want to read it.

2. RJ Anderson, A Pocket Full of Murder. I think RJ Anderson is a fine author. I’ve liked others of her books, and I should read this one.

3. THIS is ChatGPT. Anybody guess that? I told ChatGPT: Generate the beginning of chapter two of a murder mystery set in Georgia. This is not the opening scene; the story is underway. Use first person AND A LITERARY STYLE. This is what I got. This is the first time I ever told a text generator to use a specific style, such as a literary style. I think it did an (appallingly) great job! Look at this line:

Outside, the Georgia sky had turned the color of old tin, low and expressionless. The air was thick with the early onset of June heat, and somewhere beyond the back porch, a mourning dove called out like it had something important to say and no one left to say it to.

This is really good!

What gives this away, if anything?

though the thought still landed strange in my mouth –> The normal line would be “tasted” strange in my mouth.

I crossed my arms. “You here official, Deputy?” –> This is the only dialogue plus tag that looks generated to me. Also, it should have been “officially,” not official — and an author writing in a literary style wouldn’t get that wrong.

With a question you don’t expect, from someone you thought you could trust. –> A good line, but the question hasn’t been asked yet! You can’t think the question is unexpected until the question has been asked! This, to me, is possibly the biggest tell in this excerpt.

Overall, though, it’s amazingly good on the sentence and paragraph level. I can now honestly believe someone could use ChatGPT to generate sentences and paragraphs, even if text generators can’t stick to the topic or remember what kind of story they’re telling. If the human person editing the fake text doesn’t have the skill to realize that “official” is wrong, that it should be “officially” — that it should be “tasted,” not “landed” — that crossing the arms looks a bit cliched and silly here — then the person isn’t going to be able to turn this into a decent story. But if they DO have that skill, I think they could.

MOVING ON

4. Kate Elliot, Keeper’s Six

Kate Elliot is a fine author, but this doesn’t especially grab me. Did the word “respiration” pull anybody toward thinking this was the fake? I thought that might happen. However, respiration is a perfectly fine term for stuff going on within a leaf. Gas exchange happens through the stomata; most importantly, CO2 diffuses into the leaves so photosynthesis can occur. Water evaporates through the stomata too, thus pulling more water up through the plant from the roots and for that matter into the roots from the soil. Cellular respiration is also taking place in the leaf, in the mitochondria, as glucose is broken down to make carbon dioxide and (the actual point) ATP. The process requires oxygen, hence calling the process cellular respiration. Same exact process is why we inhale to get oxygen and exhale to get rid of carbon dioxide.

5. Aliette de Bodard, The House of Shattered Wings

6. Donna Andrews, Murder with Peacocks

7. JT Bishop, Haunted River

8. Rachel Aukes, Black Sheep

9. Mike Brooks, Dark Run

10. Jack Argyle, Voice of War

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The Tomorrow series

I wrote this post a long time ago, looks like back in 2011 (HOW can it have been THAT long ago???), but someone referred to this series recently and I thought of it again. This was someone from (I presume) Australia, who commented that this author isn’t well-known outside Australia and he’d never seen a reference to this series from anyone outside Australia. Well, I’m guessing part of that is conformation bias, because my impression is, it’s pretty well known. On the other hand, this series has been out for a good long time at this point, so maybe it has faded from view.

Oddly, and I mean this is EXTREMELY odd, two of the seven books in this series appear to be in KU — but not the first book. Two RANDOM books from the middle of the series. The ebooks are pretty pricy, the prices are WILDLY variable throughout the series, and imo the ebook covers are not at all appealing. All of this makes me wonder who the heck the publisher is. Ah, it’s Clarion. Who does that imprint belong to? Harper Collins. Well, Clarion has done a crappy job with this series and if I were the author, I would be ticked off. The paperback are better presented. Nevertheless, this is exactly the sort of thing that makes big publishers look idiotic about marketing.

However, onward! Here is the cover of the paperback version I have in my library:

And here is the post, almost unchanged from the version I wrote back in 2011 —

The Tomorrow series is a seven-book YA series by John Marsden, starting with Tomorrow, When the War Began. Sort of post-apocalyptic. Well, really more of a war story. I’d never heard of it until I saw a reference to it here. Then it was like, where has this been all my life?

I see the first book is supposed to be a “major motion picture.” Says so right on the cover. I have my doubts. Can the movie version possibly begin to approach the quality of the book? I don’t think I’ve ever liked the movie version of a story half as well as the real book — except for The Hunt for Red October. But that was at least half due to Sean Connery, of course. What an actor! What a voice!

And, of course, it’s voice that makes the Tomorrow series, too — well, and good plotting and excellent writing, too. But the whole seven-book series is told in Ellie’s tight-focused, not-quite-objective point of view. Ellie grows and changes so much through the course of the story, not always in positive ways, but always in believable ways.

Believability is the key to the Tomorrow series. What a job Marsden takes on, getting us to believe that Australia really has been invaded and these kids really are acting on their own, pushing back against the conquest of their home and country.

Here’s why it works:

First, Marsden never explains who the putative invaders are, which is important because there just aren’t any real-world candidates for a country that both would and could conquer Australia. He’s such a good writer you barely notice the care he’s taking to avoid naming the bad guys.

Second, the tight pacing keeps us hurtling forward, so we don’t have time to worry over implausibility — but there’s not much implausibility to worry over, either. All the action really is believable, and you know what I was particularly impressed by? In one of the books, nothing the kids try to do actually works! They try to help a group of New Zealanders take out this super-important airfield, but the Kiwis fail and disappear and the kids have no idea what went wrong. They never find out, either. Then the kids try to hit the airfield themselves, two different ways, and both methods fail,and the kids barely get away, and the book ends with nothing accomplished. And I thought that was great! You know if you’re really taking action against an occupying force, you’re going to have weeks like that.

Though when they actually do get the airfield later, I mean, whoa. Quite a job. I loved it!

Third, the tight focus on a small group of kids is also very important: we don’t get an omniscient view of Australia. We see only what Ellie sees, know only what she knows. Everything’s colored by her reactions. That enhances believability AND heightens the tension. ARE her parents still alive? She doesn’t know and neither do we. Marsden does such a great job keeping the kids on their own — it’s not like there aren’t any adults around, but the kids really CAN’T let the adults take over making the decisions because — well, read the books! It really works out that way and it’s all totally believable.

Fourth, the characters carry the story way more than clever plotting could ever do on its own. Ellie and Homer, Fi and Lee, Robyn and Kevin, Corrie and Chris — they are really, really believable kids. Far from perfect, but so very real. I particularly love Homer — what a guy! Nearly a juvenile delinquent when he’s bored in normal times, but in a good-natured sort of way. Then suddenly he’s got an enemy invasion to face and man, he can really pull it together! The tension between Homer and Ellie is perfect: neither one can stand to let the other be the unquestioned leader. I loved Homer’s “Stand back and let a MAN through” attitude, and the way Ellie would roll her eyes and let him through because he had a crowbar and could get the door open — but then take over again ten minutes later.

And the relationship between Ellie and Homer is perfect, too — not romantic, and yet Ellie can hardly stand to watch a romance develop between Homer and Fi because she nevertheless feels so territorial about Homer, except she knows she’s being mean and jealous and tries so hard to get herself out of the way between them.

That’s what I mean by not perfect but very real. I mean, I have a new model for Perfect Teen Characters now. I mean, I feel I ought to take notes.

I kind of like the occasional perfect character — think Ender in Ender’s Game, for example — but Marsden’s aware he’s putting his characters through a ringer and he doesn’t back off from what that does to them. Like, the small and large nervous breakdowns suffered by various characters — well, I should think so, given what they’re all going through. And the hardening we see in Ellie and Lee as they both do pretty grim things and are hurt by that, in different ways.

In fact, about the only quibble I have is the on-again-off-again relationship between Ellie and Lee. I think it should have been on and then stayed on and deepened. I mean, twice we get moments when Ellie is looking at Lee and she thinks: He will never let me down. When the going gets rough, he will always come through. And yet then then she’ll back off from their relationship. Well, at first that made sense, what with one thing and another, but by the end I couldn’t see it. Steadfast loyalty and competence and the nerve to go right to the wire when things go bad? And she’s at least mostly in love with him, at least some of the time? Well, why is that not all the way in love with him all the time, by the end?

Oh, well!

I think actually there is one more thing besides great characters and clever plotting and great writing that makes these books sink into your mind and heart to stay. That’s the touches of philosophy we see, mainly but not exclusively in the epilogues. Like this, in the first book:

“Loyalty, courage, goodness. I wonder if they’re human inventions too, or if they just are … We’ve got to stick together, that’s all I know. We all drive each other crazy at times, but I don’t want to end up here alone, like the Hermit. Then this really would be Hell. Humans do such terrible things to each other that sometimes my brain tells me they must be evil. But my heart still isn’t convinced.”

And from the second:

“Sometimes you just have to be brave. You have to be strong. Sometimes you just can’t give in to weak thoughts. You have to beat down those devils that get inside your head and try to make you panic. You struggle along, putting one foot a little bit in front of the other, hoping that when you go backwards it won’t be too far backwards, so that when you start forwards again you won’t have too much to catch up. That’s what I’ve learned.”

And, from the last book in the series:

“The old stories used to end with “They all lived happily ever after.” And you’d often hear parents saying: ‘I just want my kids to be happy.’ That’s crap, if you ask me. Life’s about a hell of a lot more than being happy. It’s about feeling the full range of stuff: happiness, sadness, anger, grief, love, hate. If you try to shut one of those off, you shut them all off. I don’t want to be happy. I know I won’t live happily ever after. I want more than that, something richer. I want to go right up close to the beauty and the ugliness. I want to see it all, know it all, understand it all. The richness and the poverty, the joy and the cruelty, the sweetness and the sadness. That’s the best way I can honour my friends who died.”

That’s Ellie. And it’s so in character: these are exactly the sorts of big ideas that teenagers struggle with, and there is so much in the story to prompt a touch of philosophy. I think it adds such depth to the Tomorrow series. I wonder if it’s possible the “major motion picture” captured that. The story would be incomparably lessened if it was turned into nothing but an adventure flick, where things blow up with with huge fireballs but where nothing that happens really touches the characters and, in the end, all the sound and fury signifies nothing.

So I may or may not bother to find the movie … [Note: I didn’t] … but the books are definitely keepers.

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Update: Ongoing Revision

Okay, so primary revision is an ongoing thing, I’m sure that won’t surprise you.

The big news, sort of, is that I have now cut … let me see … about 45,000 words total, counting the stuff I trimmed when I removed characters and reduced the roles of other characters and so forth. ALL at the sentence and paragraph level. It’s kind of amazing!

Still ongoing: I have a good many notes. I’m going through the notes and doing the things. Some of this is ultra simple. “Make sure Character A is plainly physically competent from the beginning,” say, because Character A does something important in chapter 27 that depends on physical competence of this type, so it’s important that this doesn’t come out of nowhere. Other things are more complicated. “Build Character B into a real character” is simple to say, but obviously it’s not quite as simple to make it happen. But it needs to happen.

Personally, I do the easiest, most straightforward revision first and then the more demanding and annoying revision. It will be a few days … or a week … before I get to the annoying stuff.

However, by this time NEXT week, I hope I will be able to report that I’ve sent the full manuscript to the earliest readers.

Meanwhile! Cool Genetics Weirdness:

I planted these two trees myself. I collected the buckeyes from a specific little red buckeye tree in town about, I don’t know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, a good long time. This parent tree looks basically identical to this one here. I planted these buckeyes I collected, and they grew. Take a look:

This red buckeye is about two feet high. It is a sprawling unkempt shrubby thing. It is indeed twenty or twenty-five years old, so this is the actual mature form of this “tree.” It is a sister tree of this one:

This tree was grown from a buckeye collected at the same exact time, from the same parent. It was planted at the same time. It is the same age. I am not making this up. I grew both these trees myself. I do suspect — but I don’t know — that these two trees have different male parents. There’s a white buckeye in town about a mile from the red buckeye from which I collected the seeds. Buckeyes do hybridize rather freely, like many trees.

So … if you want a red buckeye, wow, I suggest you buy one from a good nursery, because heaven only knows what you’ll get if you collect a random buckeye and plant it. BUT, should you collect a buckeye and plant it, I bet it will grow, and you can have the excitement of not having a clue whether you’ll get a 24-inch tree or one that grows, slowly, to 40 feet — which is probably going to turn out to be the final height of my bigger tree.

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