Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 207

Protagonist/Conflict/Antagonist

AG wrote:

“I was musing with a friend over why [Sense8 was cancelled), and it occurred to me that the best shows can usually be summed up with a very simple “subject verb object” statement that encompasses both premise and plot, so audiences near-immediately know what they’re getting into. (This doesn’t apply to books, this is just what kinds of shows more easily ensnare new browsing viewers) Consider:

“A teenage girl slays vampires.

“A vampire fights supernatural crime.

“A crew of thieves swindles bad guys . . .”

I think the idea behind the one-sentence premise does apply to books, too, but I think it’s more complicated than subject/verb/object.  (Of course, I do.)

I’d start with protagonist/conflict verb/antagonist, which gives you AG’s “A teenage girl slays vampires.”  (I’d swap out “fights” for “slays,” but that’s a quibble.)

The problem is that there’s not enough there to be interesting.  That’s probably because Buffy spawned a slew of teenagers whose stakes are sharp, so the original twist (wait, the little blonde isn’t the victim?) has been co-opted into the mainstream.  But I think there has to be more in the basic premise, something that lifts it above “X fights X,” that answers the question, “Why should I care?”

Go to another one of AG’s examples: “A crew of thieves swindles bad guys.”   That’s your vintage “biter bit” plot, and it intrigues because it’s bad guys vs. bad guys.  It succeeds because it’s really interesting thieves who form a family bond and fight those who make the Evil Speeches of Evil, stories with clearly drawn moral lines even though both sides are on the wrong side of society’s moral line (that would be Sterling, most of the time).  (Implicit in all of this is that the stories are well-written: good writing can save a bad premise, but bad writing will sink a good one every time.)  So it’s “A family of thieves, grifters, and hackes fights rich people who prey on the helpless.”  Now we got ourselves a premise.

That’s why “eight telepaths fight a sociopathic doctor” isn’t as strong as “Eight telepaths who have formed a psychic bond fight the sociopathic doctor who is trying to lobotomize them.”  That’s not “telepaths fight doctor,” that’s “family fights lobotomizer.”

Of course, as i said above,  no story premise is a guarantee of success;  that lies entirely in the execution plus a whole lot of industry stuff that’s just depressing to talk about.  But I agree with AG that the ability to state the premise simply is key to writing a story that holds together.  When I teach conflict, I teach the central question that must be answered by the end of the story:  “Will the protagonist defeat the antagonist and get the goal?”  The answer does not have to be “yes,” there’s nothing wrong with the protagonist failing unless it breaks the contract to the reader (see Moonstruck as an example of the protagonist failing but the contract being fulfilled for the romance reader).  Then you use that stout stake to govern the  rest of the novel.  Go anywhere you want in the discovery draft, but once you have that main question/premise/statement, that’s your stout stake that the rest of the story is tethered to, the party you invited that reader to, your contract with the reader.

So to go back to AG’s original point, Sense 8 had premise problems from the beginning, not because it didn’t have a great premise, but because it kept wandering from it.  The parts of Sense8 that were enthralling were the places where the sensates connected: Will, Sun and Capheus saving Noni in the beginning, the karaoke scene, Lito and Wolfgang partnering up, Will and Sun standing with Capheus, and so many more.  Whenever they focused on the sensates fighting for each other again evildoers, the show was mesmerizing.  Whenever they wandered into side plots or were deliberately opaque about what was going on–Sarah Purcell comes to mind here–the show was annoying.  Sense8’s second season was really good because I got to see these characters again, but as far as the plot goes, it was a lot of promise and very little pay off.  There are a lot of bad vibes around Lito’s new acting gig but I do not know why.  Sun’s on the lam with her evil brother after her, and I don’t know what’s going to happen there.  Kala’s marriage is taking a bad turn but I don’t know why.  There are other clusters trying to kill our cluster and I don’t know why.  I’m okay with mystery and expectation, but I’ve seen the entire second season, and I still don’t know why.   The final episode was the worst in this respect: the sensates are finally all together except for Wolfgang and I don’t get to see that meeting, the meeting two whole seasons have promised me.  The season ends, Wolfgang’s still in big trouble, everything’s up in the air, and I’m feeling frustrated and cheated.  Sense8 is not fulfilling my viewer contract because it’s not sticking to the main premise: I don’t get to see these eight people safe at the end having defeated the Bad Guy.  Will the Sensates defeat Whispers and the BPO?  Who knows?  The series is over.

So my advice is, after the discover draft, figure out your premise/central story question/promise you made to the reader on the first page/reader contract, and then as you revise, paste that sucker at the top of your computer screen and make sure everything attaches to it so at no point will your reader say, “Why am I reading this?”

That seems draconian, I know, but it’s the glue that will hold your story together.  

Now I must go cogitate on this for Nita because I’m definitely wandering in Act Two.  I’m still in discovery draft, so that’s okay, but knowing my stout stake can only help. 

 

The post Protagonist/Conflict/Antagonist appeared first on Argh Ink.

Cherry Saturday 6-3-2017

Today is Repeat Day.

You’re supposed to do something you like doing again.  

I can think of many things . . . 

The post Cherry Saturday 6-3-2017 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Good Book Thursday 6-1-2017

So what have you read that everybody else should read this week?

The post Good Book Thursday 6-1-2017 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Antagonist Monologue: Trish

TRISH

I’m telling you, I don’t know what this country is coming to!  We used to have standards, there were rules, people knew their places and it was peaceful. Everybody was polite and everybody was happy. And now look at us: Rudeness and violence and division, no respect for the things that made our country great.   We’re just going to Hell, that’s all there is to it! Except here on my island, it’s the other way around: Hell is invading us! I’m sorry, but I am not going to accept demons on my island. You know you’ve crossed a line when people like me start to speak up! There are standards, and I’m going to defend them!

I want to make it clear that I’m not a racist. I’m fine with blacks and Asians and the rest of them, they have some very good-looking people. But I’m not fine with green. Well, who could be? That’s not what God intended when He made the people for this world! No He put demons in Hell where they belong, and they need to go back where they came from!  

My island is infested with these things! They come over from Hell and settle in here and pretend to be just like us, but they’re not! They’re evil. They commit crimes and rape our young girls and leave their half-demon spawn to contaminate humanity.   Yes, I know our country is a melting pot, but you don’t put cat dirt in the soup. I apologize for the crudeness, but there’s no lady-like way to describe demons. They’re just cat dirt, one more thing that’s stinking up a country that used to be made up of gentlemen and the women they respected. We had rules. Now anything goes, even the spawn of Hell on our doorsteps! I don’t mind the Amusement Park and the other theme stores, that’s just make-believe—the gift shop at the Church of Satan is bigger than the nave, that tells you all you need to know right there, plus the Rev is the president of the WPG so obviously not a Satan-follower—but real demons, real evil? Absolutely not!

I was shocked when the Rev told me the Mayor knows about the demons, but it just goes to show what happens when you keep electing a liberal. The Mayor told him that as long as they’re abiding by the law, he doesn’t care, and if they’re not abiding by the law, they’ll be punished just like everybody else. And then he said that since they’re here illegally most of them are more careful about the law than the humans on the island. He says you don’t break the speed limit with a body in the trunk. But the point is that they’re evil and they poison our island just by breathing our air, they’re contaminating our breeding stock, they don’t belong here! Plus they have bodies in their trunks, according the Mayor.

That’s why I belong to the WPG—that’s the White Power Group–on Demon Island. I know, I know, White Power sounds racist, but one of the founders told us some facts at our first meeting, like more non-white babies are being born than white babies. More white people are dying than are being born. Whites will be a minority thirty years from now. White people are disappearing from our culture. If that was happening to minorities, there’d be a telethon, colored ribbons all over the place. But whites? It’s like we’ve had our turn. Well, people don’t get turns, we get what we deserve, and we deserve a country that’s not polluted by demons! We’re a country founded by white people, ruled by white people, dominated by white people, it’s what made this country great.   (That does not mean I think minorities don’t belong here: there are a lot of good ones who aren’t white, although I think they should marry each other, not us, not that I’d throw that Denzel out of bed, but you know, not children..) Our government is for the people, by the people, of the people, do you see demons in that sentence? No, you do not! That’s because they’re just evil! So we have to get rid of them. And white people have to start having more babies.

Thank goodness, there are some people who agree and are doing something about it! That’s the WPG, the White Power Group. We meet secretly after the Stitch and Bitch at the Historical Society on Wednesdays—it’s really kind of exciting–and talk about the demon problem. That new homicide detective, Lily Jones, has just joined us, and I wasn’t sure at first—frankly, she dresses a little slutty, bless her heart—but I think she’s going to be a great help. She says she wants lots of children, and with those hips, she shouldn’t have any trouble—I don’t think she could get her thigh in one of my skirts, but then I’m a 2, she must be a 14, at least in the butt area—she could have plenty of babies what with all the men she has around her just begging for it. She did ask a lot of good questions, like how you can tell if somebody is a demon, which is a problem, I admit.   Demons are crafty.   She also suggested we call ourselves the Human Power Group because White Power sounds a little racist, and we’re going to vote on that at the next meeting.   I’m not sure about that since we’ve always been the White Power Group and tradition is important. But she pointed out that we might get more members if our name didn’t have “white” in it. After all, she said, people of all colors hate demons. So there is that. Plus if Sandy down at the diner joined, we’d get better food at the meetings. I’ll say this about black people: they can cook.

That was at our last meeting, which was a real barn-burner!. First Lily joined, and every man in the group was all over her, even the old ones. Yes, I’m looking at you Stephen Kelly. What is it about men, always wanting younger women? That’s one of the reasons I joined the Stitch and Bitch Club, just to get away from men.  It’s our Women Power group, although we don’t call it that, we just call it Stitch and Bitch. (Thank God my mother taught me to embroider. Which Lily Jones can’t do, Steven, you old fool. Lily Jones knits. That’s really all you need to know about Lily Jones: she makes sweaters. Probably big ones to cover her boobs, which are not real. Bless her heart.  I’m sure it’s somewhere under all that plastic.) I think Women Power is almost as important as White Power because just look at how things are: Women are valued as long as we’re young and our boobs are high but the minute we pass fifty, we’re invisible!   I’m really angry about that, but I don’t know what to do. I mean, short of a face lift again, and then you get to looking all dead anyway because your face doesn’t move, so that’s no solution. That’s the problem with Stitch and Bitch: we do crafts and complain but we don’t do anything about the problems. I need some action on this. If this keeps up, I might become a feminist! (That would settle Stephen Kelly’s hash.)

Then after the big fuss at the WPG meeting over Lily, we talked about the Green Doughnut Project, which we designed to identify the demons on the island. WPG is more than just talk, you know! And it was wildly successful, except two people died. Well, not people, demons, but the police think they were people, so now we have murder investigations. The good news is, Lily is our new homicide detective, and she’s promised to protect us. She says racial purity is more important than justice, and really, that’s true. It’s for the Greater Good!. Anyway, the Doughnut Project was a real eye-opener! Four of the oldest families on the island, just riddled with demons!   This is what happens when you’re not vigilant about demons: they contaminate the best breeding stock. But at least now we know who got sick and we can watch them. The ones who died? Those are the pure demons, so they had to go. We decided to discuss the ones who only got sick next week.   Lily volunteered to head up the DRS (Demon Removal Squad). Stephen says she’s going to be a great asset (but of course he lingered on the “ass’ part. Not that I’m jealous, but could that skirt have been any tighter? Not a lady, but if she kills demons, I’ll put up with her.)

But the big discussion was about the new man living over Hell Bar, the one everybody says is the Devil. Well, he’s a good-looking devil, I’ll give him that, but then he’s a demon so he’s a tempter.   Not that I’m tempted! They do say demons are great in the sack. Well-endowed, you know? (Listen, do you know? Because I’d love to talk about that if you do.) Anyway, about the new man, Nick, all I can say is I know evil when I see it! (Although, you know, evil can be very attractive, and if I was younger or he was older, although that’s so unfair because if he was a woman and I was a man we’d be all over each other, age wouldn’t matter.  Really so unfair!)   But the rumor is that he’s seduced the Mayor’s daughter, Nita Dodd, and that’s bad because she’s also a police officer. (Jason Witherspoon asked her to marry him and she turned him down, if you can believe it! Thinks she’s too good for a Witherspoon! I thought that was a real shame because they’d have made beautiful babies, but then I found out the doughnuts made her sick. She Hellish.  You know, I’m really not surprised. That Mitzi Dodd will sleep with anything that moves, and Nita doesn’t look a thing like her brother or sister. And her brother’s her twin! But now Lily Jones seems to like Jason, and say what you will about her, that woman will make big, healthy babies. And with Jason, she won’t just have healthy babies, she’ll have magnificent babies, the master race! That’s not anti-Semitic, I have nothing against Jews. I don’t think everybody should be blond or anything. I know a lot of very attractive dark-haired people.) Anyway, Lily Jones said she’d go talk to this Nick as part of the homicide investigation into the doughnut deaths and see if he’s just another human pretending to be a demon—we get a lot of those—or if he really is a demon. That’s when she asked how she could tell.  

But then Lily brought up another good point: Nita Dodd will make a fuss about the two deaths. Nita used to be the homicide detective here with Jason before Lily took her job, so she’s against murder, and of course now it turns out that she’s at least part demon, and Lily says she thinks Nita’s going to keep looking into things. I suggested back in the fall that we try to recruit her because having the Mayor’s daughter with us would be a good thing, but Stephen had tried to feel her out (not that way, although knowing Stephen I’m sure he thought about it) and she was pretty sharp with him; she’s one of those liberals who thinks she sees racism everywhere! He tried to tell her about whites becoming a minority and how that was reverse racism, and she said that since racism was about prejudice because of race, reverse racism was about no prejudice because of race, so she was in favor of reverse racism, in fact he could call her a reverse racist any time he wanted, and that that he should stop obsessing about the color of people and do something about the color of his wardrobe because his tie was a crime against humanity. (He seemed quite upset about the criticism, but the truth is, his ties are terrible; the one he was wearing at the meeting had a pin-up girl painted on it, we should have put “Dirty Old Man” on his nametag. And he used to be so handsome, too. Terrible lover, but so nice to look at. I know men are supposed to age better than women, but Stephen is just not keeping up his side of the game.) So we’re going to have to watch Nita, especially if this Nick turns out to be a demon and she’s sleeping with him because if there’s one thing this island doesn’t need, it’s more demon children. Anchor babies from Hell, that’s what they are!

And then Marvella stood up and said that she had some wonderful news that might help with the Nita Dodd problem because Nita’s new partner is a Button! That caused quite a stir, even Lily Jones looked startled. We had to explain to the new people that Buttons had been fighting demons for centuries, real heroes, and we thought they’d died out, but now here comes a young one right onto our police force, and she’s working with our Problem on the Force. So that’s wonderful!

So we’re keeping an eye on Nita Dodd and this Nick. Even if Nita’s only part demon, she’s still a danger because she’ll probably side with the demons. It won’t be a problem to get rid of them; we still have a lot of iron sprinkles, but I’m hoping we don’t have to because you know how the Mayor gets about his children, even the Hellish ones, I guess! (And if this Nick isn’t a demon, I may discuss the advantages of older women with him.   Because I’ll say this, he is a fine piece of work, even if he is probably all full of himself and bad in bed. You can’t have everything. Needs must when the Devil drives!)

So that’s where we are. It’s an uphill battle, but we have God on our side, and I’m sure if He came to Earth He’d be MUCH more attractive than the Devil.   The important thing is that we’re saving the country, putting things back the way they belong. Or at least we’re saving Demon Island. Somebody else is going to have to save the rest of New Jersey, I just don’t have the energy for that kind of heavy lifting.

Also we need more appreciation for mature women. Stitch and Bitch really needs to get on that.

The post Antagonist Monologue: Trish appeared first on Argh Ink.

Cherry Saturday 5-27-2017

Today is Cellophane Tape Day, or as everybody else calls it, Scotch Tape Day. 

I’m a big fan of tape–any kind of tape–because so much in my life keeps falling apart, so I have a whole bin of different colors of duct tape and different widths of masking tape, along with adhesive tape for bandages and crafts and electric tape for cords that get damaged and washi tape just because, but my go-to is always Scotch tape, especially since there are so many great looking tape dispensers these days.  None of this will come as a surprise to any office supply junkie, which I presume is pretty much everybody here.  

So let’s lift a glass for tape and the many things it can do, but mostly for the way it holds our lives together.

Google “cellophane tape hacks” for more suggestions
Do not google weird cellophane tape unless you want to see what people do to their faces with tape (temporary but still off-putting).
I do not recommend the hack that uses scotch tape to put your eyeliner on.  If you ignore this, do not blame me for loss of eyelashes.

But these I can recommend (although the puppy is a little light weight)::

The post Cherry Saturday 5-27-2017 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Antagonist Monologue: Mammon

I blame Satan.

Of course, I blame Nick Giordano, too, but if he’d just known his place, I’d have kept him on once I became Devil.   As they say in Hell, he made the trains run on time. (Do you know what other human made the trains run on time? Mussolini. That should give you an idea of Nicolas Giordano.)

Satan was an okay Devil, and we were doing fine, and I had no problems waiting until his term was up to take over. Okay, maybe not fine, things were a little disorganized, but that gave us room to breathe, to be creative, to thrive.

Then Satan decides we need organization and talks to that damn Rodrigo Borgia and here comes the Pope’s dead bastard to sort things out, in skeleton form, no less, because Satan takes that from the grave to give him corporeal form, and if you think that didn’t make office visits uncomfortable, those empty eye sockets telling you to pay your fine and not break the rules again, let me tell you, you weren’t there. Especially early on when there were still parts of him . . . rotting. Thank Hell he finally learned to façade. Even then, same dark, flat, dead eyes. The guy is creepy.

And unnecessary. Things were fine unsorted. Things were good unsorted.

But no, we need this human to catalog us so Satan always knows what’s going on. You know what they call that on Earth? Big Mother. And God knows Satan is one, that’s why She sent him in to clean up after Beelzebub, who I admit was a disaster.   A damn good time, but Osiris wept, he almost wiped out the Earth because he wanted to see the dinosaurs scatter. There’s flair and there’s just puerility and Bub has that with a side order of crazy. So yes, fine, we needed Satan. I certainly wasn’t going to clean up that mess.

I feel compelled to mention that Satan is not a demon. We are world of demons, we should be ruled by a demon. It’s not like we don’t have candidates. Me, for example. I’m one of the oldest demons here. I know how things work. I’m perfect for that office. But no, God brings an angel down from Corporate. It’s like She doesn’t trust us.

So okay, we’ve got Satan, but I can roll with that for five hundred years (five thousand Earth years, like anybody counts in Earth years), five hundred years is nothing. Plus the whole angel/demon thing is just classism; we’re the same beings under the skin. Well, they’re not green unless they get thrown out and end up under our sun, more a minty blue, look like they were all born on glaciers, but now you’re talking racism.

Green is FAR superior. That’s why Bub and I founded the Green Power movement. Only don’t call it a movement in front of Bub because that’s just asking for some stupid joke. When the women’s movement started on Earth, I thought we were going to have to gag him to get him to shut up.

Green Power was popular right from the start. Moloch joined right away and then Thanatos came in although I’m still not sure he has any idea of what’s going on; I think he just likes the beer at the meetings (Bub’s idea). Well, Thanatos lives with a bunch of dead spirits and he’s stoned on the Dreamtime air most of the time, so his comprehension is not great, but a good guy. And Ashtaroth came in because Ashtaroth will join anything that makes him feel superior to somebody else.   We had hundreds join the first year. Now we have more hundreds. The problem is that although we were all upset when Satan brought Nick out of the grave, he did make life easier. So recruiting for the group hasn’t been quite as fast as we’d hoped, but now, NOW we have a cause.

Satan’s going to make Nick Devil.

That is just not acceptable. Satan was bad enough, but at least he’s Hellish. Nick’s a human. Yes, I know he’s dead, I don’t care. He’s a human. You know what those people are like. They’re animals. And they think we’re the bad guys. Have you see what they do to each other? Torture, war, poverty, terrorism, disgusting, they’re disgusting.

And Satan’s going to put one of them in power over us?  Not while I’m in Hell, he’s not.

But this has to be done carefully. I was hoping Max would help, Max is excellent at devious action, but he seems to think that Nick’s some kind of superhero and opposing him can only lead to grief. I may have to fire Max. I will admit that he’s pulled me out of some close calls, but now that he’s throwing a tantrum if I even think about crossing that pile of bones, I might have to do this without him.

Which is where Demons First comes into play. We’re a subset of Green Power which, frankly, has degenerated into a lot of support groups and geneology classes. The last time I checked in, they’d started woodworking. I mean, great, celebrate demonity and your place in it, form demon bonds, but action is needed, not ceramics.   We have a goal, damn it.

We have to bring down Nick Giordano.

People whine about how much good he’s done. He hasn’t done good, he doesn’t know good from bad, he has no values, he’s dead, he’s an ossified robot. And yes, the fact that Hell now runs as efficiently as Heaven is good, but that organization is done. The human has outlived his usefulness. Yes, I know he’s dead. He’s so damn annoying, he can outlive something after he’s stopped living. In fact, I want him to start living again because then we can turf him back to Earth. And put him under the turf where he belongs.

That’s why the four of us went to Earth awhile back, and we have this secret cell now, getting ready to overthrow Nick before he can become the Devil. Demon Island was a brilliant idea on my part—we could slip out for an hour, make plans for ten hours, and come back nobody the wiser—but I’ve just found out that that baph-brain Moloch decided we need servants and snatched humans to live there. And of course they died because humans are idiots.   Okay, yes, also because there was no food, water, or heat, but come on, demons would have improvised. Humans. They’re worthless.

But as Max is my witness, I did not know Moloch had done that. I don’t like humans, but I wouldn’t kill them. Although I’d make an exception for Nick Giordano if three humans hadn’t got to him first.

And then Moloch figured out how to keep the colonists alive and of course they bred like rabbits—they’re a lot like rabbits, actually, except you can’t eat them, and for the record, they do NOT taste like chicken—so now the island is full of them. I rarely go back there. Place is a mess.

But now Moloch’s doing something horrible there again, and Nick’s looking into it, and it’s not going to take him much longer to find the Demon First cell there. I need to warn Richiel to lay low; if Nick gets near the cell there, well, I’ll just kill him outright.

Yes, I know he’s already dead.   I’m working on that. The big problem is that if my plan works, he might notice he’s coming back to life. Here’s hoping there’s something on the island that’ll distract him until I can get him breathing again and then get him not breathing again.

It’s a shame he’s dead, it really limits my scope.

The post Antagonist Monologue: Mammon appeared first on Argh Ink.

Wear the Lilac and Don’t Forget Your Towel for This Good Book Thursday 5-25-17

[image error]

So it’s This Is a Really Good Book Thursday, but so much more because this is also the day we remember the glorious Terry Pratchett and the fabulous Douglas Adams.  If you haven’t read them, you must, if only so you know why you must carry your towel and wear the lilac.

Then tell us the title and author of something delightful to read, fiction or non-fiction.  The weekend is coming and we need good books!

The post Wear the Lilac and Don’t Forget Your Towel for This Good Book Thursday 5-25-17 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Food and Fiction

I’ve been thinking about food a lot.  About how we think about it, talk about it, choose it, prepare it, enjoy it or feel guilty about it, but mostly how it works in story.   I’ve always said that setting is time, place, and people.  Now I’m thinking it’s time, place, people, and food.  

Here’s what I think about food in fiction.:

It establishes character

The way characters think about food–as a pleasure, as something to be avoided or controlled, as a way of relating to others, as a comfort and escape–can be a great way to characterize them.   In Bet Me, Min’s old boyfriend was always watching calories and paying too much for expensive meals because he liked to control the way things looked; Cal just enjoyed good food because he liked to experience pleasure.  Min was caught between them until Cal seduced her over to the butter side of things.  There were people who objected strongly to that, which I think reinforces the food-is-character theory: they didn’t like Cal because he kept sabotaging her diet.  

And there’s another thing about fictional food: The kind of food makes a difference because it characterizes the people eating it.  For example, hot carbs are comfort food.  In my first published book, long before I was having deep thoughts about food and character, there’s a scene in which the Wrong Guy tries to take the heroine’s mashed potatoes away from her, and she stabs him with her fork because he’s clearly the enemy.   I’ve been using carbs as love ever since–Agnes feeds Shane (and everybody, really) pancakes, Andie makes banana bread for Alice, Nita shares her French toast with Nick, and god knows, people eat thousands of potstickers in my books.  The whole idea of comfort food is a natural match for people in relationships who want to make each other feel warm and loved.  It has nothing to do with calories and everything to do with how good food can make you feel.  It wasn’t until I started thinking about this that I realized I have a protein things, too, with the sausage and ribs that Agnes slings at her men and the eggs that Nita shares with Nick, even before we get to the garlic chicken and mu shu pork later, not to mention the Chicken Marsala that Cal teaches Min to make.  Solid, practical food for solid practical people. 

It shows relationship growth

I pretty much built the relationship between Agnes and Shane on food and sex, and after awhile, Shane collated them because they were both intense pleasures associated with Agnes.   That aligns with research on the dinner date as the first move in a relationship.  Cautious people meet for coffee first; if somebody turns down a love interest’s invitation to dinner, that character is saying no to a lot more than food.  And once people begin eating together regularly, they begin to know each other’s habits and tastes.  One of my favorite food scenes in any movie is from Two Weeks Notice, when, during a business lunch, George puts his ice cubes in Lucy’s drink and then takes her beets.  These people have a relationship, and it’s shown through their assumptions about each other’s food.

But food doesn’t just build romances, it builds all relationships.  In Maybe This Time, Andie knows the kids are in a bad place when she sees the food they’ve been getting.  Alice lets Andie in as her foster mother when Andie makes her banana bread and then shows her how to make it, too.  And it’s not a coincidence that Alice knows the woman who looks like Andie isn’t her when she gets banana bread wrong, it’s one of the cornerstones of their relationship.  

Food is also a good way to show community by showing people who are comfortable sitting down to eat together on a regular basis.  Agnes does that, of course, but I’m also building that deliberately in Nita’s book: Nick and Nita start with breakfast on their own, have dinner with her family and Rab and Dag that evening, have breakfast with Rab,  Dag, and Button the next morning, and end up with Rab, Dag, Button, and Max at dinner that night.  There are plot reasons for all of those meals, but there are character and team reasons, too: eating together builds a fictional family.  

It demonstrates social power 

The person who controls the table, controls the interaction.  My fave example of this from my own work is the dinner scene in Strange Bedpersons because it’s arranged by the wealthy parents of the hero’s best friend to humiliate the blue-collar best friend of the heroine in order to break up her romance with their son.  The heroine gets angrier and angrier and eventually takes over the dinner to defend her friend, using the swanky restaurant as a weapon against the parents.  But there’s also the table scene in Fast Women (“Drink to me, I’ve slept with everybody here”) and the rehearsal dinner in Bet Me that Min controls even though her mother thinks she’s in charge, and the endless breakfast scenes in Agnes where she makes Shane accept Garth and where Lisa Livia meets Carpenter,  finishing with the late night leftover dinner she makes everybody eat when she finds people pointing guns at each other in her kitchen.  I love a dinner scene when my heroine’s in charge.

It reinforces setting (time, place, and people):

It’s probably no secret to anybody here that I love a good diner, and that’s because I love the people who go to diners.  They aren’t people who are trying to impress anybody, they just want to eat good, hot, simple food.  My kind of people.   I also like people who like take-out; these are people who like eating where they live, like inviting others into their spaces to share food without making a big deal out of hard they worked to prepare that meal.  “I ordered Chinese; who wants potstickers?” One of the reasons I’ll never write a historical is the food: there are certain foods I cannot live without and neither can my characters.  

But food also says a lot about place.  We workshopped a story once in my MFA program about a girl who lived in Appalachia and who brought a casserole to the home of somebody whose relative had died.  And the prof, who was brilliant, said, “Couldn’t you think of anything less cliched than a casserole?”  That was one of his less brilliant comments because the fact that it was a casserole was important.  There’s a reason people in middle class and poorer communities bring casseroles: they’re cheap, they’re easy, they freeze really well, and everybody likes them.  Beyond that, they’re a tradition.  It’s what you do in that community unless you’re trying to stand out, make a statement, and this character would not want to stand out, she wants desperately to make sure nobody notices her.  So hell yes, she’d bring a casserole.  That’s part of your time/place/people setting: at this time and in this place, that’s what people do.   

The key to food scenes  is that they have to serve a purpose in the story, eating that food in that time and place with those people has to make a difference to the characters and the plot; so that if you took that food, that meal, out of the story, it wouldn’t work.  Any food scene (like any other scene) must be necessary.

And now I’m starving and must go find food, so it’s your turn..

 What’s your favorite food scene in a book or movie?  Most important, WHY did you like it so much?

 

 

The post Food and Fiction appeared first on Argh Ink.

Cherry Saturday 5-20-2017

 

Today is Be A Millionaire Day.   

Given the obscenely uneven distribution of wealth in this country that resulted directly in our current mess, I’m all for everybody being a millionaire and nobody being allowed to spend it on politics.  Or Opposite Day.  

Still, it’s nice to think about being a millionaire.  I could buy things like a new septic tank.   And chocolate.  Wait, I can buy chocolate now.  

I could save a lot of animals.  And people.  Food banks and homeless shelters.  The ACLU.  Planned Parenthood.  Wait, I can do that now.

Okay, I could buy an RV and make it into a gypsy caravan and travel around with the dogs and my laptop.  I’d really like that.  Except I’d probably stay home anyway.  Too much work to do.  

You know what?  It’s also Quiche Lorraine day, which I used to make all the time  and that I haven’t had that in YEARS.  Let’s go with that.  I might even make one later if I can remember how.  I know eggs are involved . . . 

Yep, that’s the ticket: Egg Pie Day.

The post Cherry Saturday 5-20-2017 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Good Book Thursday 5-18-17

Hey, it’s This Is a Really Good Book Thursday.  Tell us the title and author of something delightful to read, fiction or non-fiction, old or new.  The only requirement is that you loved it.

The post Good Book Thursday 5-18-17 appeared first on Argh Ink.