Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 256

Revisions

I’m going to see this image every time I revise now. Also, Patrick Warburton.

Ah, creepy, sinister man.

Cherry Saturday 3-7-2014

Today must be the dullest day in history; there are NO holidays that I can find, and I consult lists that include things like Ugly Rug Day. Clearly this must rectified. We are now accepting nominations for a March 7 holiday in the comments. Knock yourselves out. Or wait until Sunday which is Be Nasty Day.

Sherlock and Elementary: I’ve Changed My Mind

When Sherlock debuted several years ago, I was dazzled. I’m still dazzled by a “A Scandal in Belgravia.” Then somebody on here (can’t remember who) said, “Oh, try Elementary,” and I did, and I thought it was fine but it wasn’t Sherlock. Which I’m now thinking is a good thing. I’ve just finished watching all of Elementary in a two-week binge, and I think it’s just as good as the British Holmes and in some ways better. Some of this is, of course, tinged by Season Three of Sherlock because it was terrible, bad enough that I’m not terribly interested in a Season Four. But I’m also coming over to Elementary because seeing all the episodes together emphasized that this show has what Sherlock lacks: characters I care deeply about who change over time.

The biggest problem I have with Sherlock is probably also the thing I like best about it: its immense, flamboyant style. It’s fast, it’s clever, it’s visually stimulating, the characters rage across the screen (great actors across the board), it’s just so . . . smart. Writing all of that now, it occurs to me that that’s the kind of guy I’ve always been drawn to, which explains why all of my relationships tended to not just end but crash spectacularly with musical accompaniment. Sherlock is, if you will, a doughnut of a TV series. I loved watching all the characters–they’re all so clever–until Season Three when Sherlock, the linchpin of the whole shebang–turned sadistic and stupid. He’d always been insensitive, that I could get behind, but somebody who deliberately is cruel to somebody who cares about him because he thinks it’s funny? At that point, the cleverness left a bad taste in my mouth, and it wasn’t helped by all the latent homophobia and not so latent we’re-not-gay jokes that they drove into the ground. It was like going out to dinner with somebody you liked who was rude to the waiter and then left a 10% tip. That’s not something you’re going to forget because it’s so indicative of a mean spirit, but more than that, afterwards you see that everything that drew you to that person was superficial. Style not substance. Okay, that’s too harsh for Sherlock which is exemplary storytelling, acting, and production, but when Sherlock the character showed a mean spirit, it tarnished all the cleverness of the show for me. The same thing happened to me last year with Arrow, which I loved until Oliver turned into a hypocritical jerk and the whole candy-colored show went down in flames. I don’t need my protagonists to be likable, but I do need them to be somebody I can stand to watch without loathing. Most of all, I need them to stay in character. A Sherlock who’s practically autistic should not turn into the guy who terrifies his companion with the knowledge of his certain death just to laugh at his despair. After that, I’ll take less style and more substance, less flash and more slow character growth. I’ll take Elementary.

Elementary’s Sherlock is not likable, but he’s fascinating, and so far he hasn’t done anything unforgivably out of character. The show is on CBS, so you’re not getting a lot of flair, but what you are getting is beyond-solid characterizations, a deep and well-developed bench of players you really want to see again that are new versions of old characters, new wine in old bottles or at least new wine with old labels. What this show has done with Captain Gregson (he’s smart), Mrs. Hudson (transgender professional muse and kept woman, and that’s Ms. Hudson, thank you), and Moriarty (I won’t spoil that one but it’s marvelous) is inventive without being clever; all the changes are there because they serve the story. Even the characters who show up for just one episode are faceted and well played. The mysteries aren’t always inspired, but the characters are, and what I’ve found in my two-week binge is that the characters matter more that mysteries anyway. Their struggles, their wins and losses, matter to me because they’re developed slowly over time. It’s not just Sherlock dealing with addiction and Watson trying to find her place in the world now that she’s not a doctor, it’s Gregson trying to cope with the guy who abused his daughter, and Detective Bell struggling with physical disability after being shot, Lestrade in meltdown, and so many more. There’s a sense of a coherent world there populated by people who don’t quip and snark, but instead do things that make sense and still get in trouble. I care about those characters, so the dud mystery now and then doesn’t matter. I want to know what Kitty’s doing now, if Mrs. Hudson has found herself with another married man, if Harlan is still doing math without his shirt, who the Captain’s new girlfriend is, and why the hell Watson hasn’t had painters into that damn brownstone. She’d better paint the basement, that’s all I can say. I’m invested.

All of which brings me back to what I already knew: It’s character. The style and the flash and the snark will get me every time for the first time I encounter a narrative, but if I’m going to settle into a relationship with a story, it’s going to be character that does it.

Note: There are probably going to be spoilers in the comments. Proceed at your own risk.

Faux Druids, Fallen Monks, and Feisty Heroines

The amazing Anne Stuart has two books on sale this month. Faux druids for $1.99. How can you resist?

Anne Stuart has two phenomenal (or so she tells me) books on sale at Amazon for the entire month for $1.99 each. The first is NIGHTFALL, arguably her darkest, best book, and the second is PRINCE OF MAGIC, a historical complete with faux druids, fallen monks, ghosts and a feisty heroine.

Cherry Saturday 2-28-2015

Today is National Tooth Fairy Day.

Brush twice.

Questionable: Emotional Shorthand

Suzanne said:

In my first draft, I’ve got characters grimacing, smirking, scowling, smiling, and laughing. In every subsequent pass, I work hard to go deeper into the character’s POV to figure out what he’s actually experiencing. But it’s hard because that leads to a lot of teeth grinding, gut clenching, and hands curling into fists (not literally, but you know what I mean). And that’s not good, right? I’ve been told not to do that–but isn’t that showing what they’re feeling viscerally? It’s overdone, for sure, but…? So how do we show/express a character’s emotions without being clichéd or…dumb? How do you do it differently for men and women?

The best thing anybody ever told me about emotion in fiction was from Ron Carlson’s class: “Emotion lives in the body.” Words lie, physical reactions don’t. So your instinct to show emotion physically is the right one. The mistake a lot of people (not necessarily you) make is to forget that description is like salt, it’s there to wake up the taste buds, not overwhelm the rest of the dish. Since we’re talking about emotional description, I’ll go back to the key to description: Not Every Detail, Just the Significant.

So you have two angry people. One of them curls his hands into fists. If that detail is in there just to show generic anger, it’s not effective and it’s even distracting because most people do not curl their hands into fists during an argument. But if this is a specific abusive husband, and the scene is told from the wife’s POV, then those incipient fists are Significant Detail. The key is always “What significance does this action have in this story with this character?” The abusive husband with the fists is easy; what does it mean when his toddler son throws a temper tantrum with his hands balled into fists? What does it mean when his wife curls her hands into fists, too, for the first time? A guy in barroom brawl using his fists to fight isn’t significant; the same guy using the same fist to punch down bread because he’s learned that kneading bread is a way to defuse his anger is interesting. If the detail is generic and not specific to that character in a way that illuminates him or her, it doesn’t belong.

Your “gut-clenching” is a different problem. People don’t choose to clench their guts, their bodies do that for them instinctively. That is, even if you’re unconscious of the fact that you’re clenching your fists and grinding your teeth, once you recognize that you’re doing those things, you can stop. The knots in your stomach, however, are still gonna be knots because that was an involuntary response, like blushing, sweating, swallowing because your throat tightens, going cold from fear or warm from shame, or fainting from shock. There are hundreds of things our bodies do that are out of our control, and they all betray emotion in some way. Some people get stomach cramps when they’re very upset, some people get headaches, some people’s chests hurt, some people lose their breath, and all of those people only have those reactions when something of great emotional significance happens because they’re all reactions that the body produces in reaction to perceived threats. That means an ordinary argument, even one that makes the character really angry, isn’t going to produce an over-the-top reaction. The key, again, always, is significance. If you establish that this character represses her emotions and as a result gets stomach cramps and because of that eats Tums like candy, then that “gut-wrenching” become part of the story: an enemy can steal her Tums and leave her in agony; you can show her home alone after a bad event that’s she’s handled, curled up on her bed and crying from the stomach pain; she can hit with a blow that’s so devastating that she throws up in front of people. It that case, “gut-wrenching” is significant. I’m asthmatic, so when I did an asthmatic heroine, her shortness of breath reaction to shock was significant because if she didn’t get to her inhaler she was going to pass out from lack of oxygen. So the key to instinctive physical reactions is “How is this specific to this character and what impact does this reaction at this time have on the story?”

So significant detail, but jeez, you just want to show the emotion this character is feeling using physical cues, you can’t set up every character as an asthmatic with stomach ulcers. Okay, what’s the scene detail? Is your gut-wrenched character at an expensive dinner with important people? Then maybe instead of gut-wrenched, the character starts to feel seventy bucks worth of prime rib begin to rebel within. That carries with it the added threat of throwing up at dinner, which has the symbolic danger of throwing a gift back in the faces of people the characters needs, none of which is on the page but which is packaged in the “seventy-bucks worth of prime rib.” That’s all about money. But maybe it isn’t about money, maybe she’s having dinner with her perfect sister, and Sis drops the bomb during dessert, and the stomach-churning becomes the potential of decorating Sis’s Armani with a projective-vomited hot fudge sundae. Bottom line: ask yourself the significance of this detail for this character in this scene. If there is none, if it’s just generic, then it’s not specific and probably not useful.

So here’s my recommendation: Write the first draft as always with no restrictions. Put in all the gut-wrenching and teeth-clenching you want. Then in later drafts go back and look at what’s going on in that scene and what kind of physical reaction would be likely for that character. If she’s abrasive and confrontational, maybe she steps forward or leans forward. If she’s retiring and hates confrontation, maybe she crosses her arms over her stomach and leans back or steps back. If she’s cautious, maybe she goes very still, alert to danger. If she hates showing emotion, maybe she looks away because she knows she’s about to cry. If she feels overwhelmed, maybe she takes a step back toward the door. If she’s had it with whoever is arguing with her, maybe she picks up her phone to end the conversation or picks up a crowbar to end it a different way. If anger is making her turn warm and red-faced, maybe that makes her even angrier, that she’s betraying herself. If fear is making her cold, maybe she pulls her sweater tighter around her. In the rewrite, you know who the character is, so you can write the reaction she’d have, not the generic.

Short version: Emotion lives in the body, but it is specific to the body it lives in. What you’re going for is specific emotional cues that support characterization and move plot.

Happy “Crap, I Forgot It’s” Cherry Saturday, “Again” 2 – 21- 2015

But I remembered because now I have heat and my brains thawed out.

So how cold are you? (If you’re not cold, how’s that drought coming?) (If you’re not cold or in the middle of a drought, what horrible things are happening to you because of the weather?) (No, wait, that’s depressing, what’s GOOD in your life?)

Good in my life: Working heat. And you?

ETA:

Also, it’s World Pangolin Day:

http://io9.com/theres-still-plenty-of...

They’re endangered, so enjoy ‘em while we got ‘em.

Agency

I’m still brain-frozen, but there are interesting things being talked about on the net about women in stories and agency. I first heard “agency” as part of characterization a couple of years ago and had no idea what it meant, so for those of you in the same boat, here’s Chuck Wendig’s definition:

Character agency is… a demonstration of the character’s ability to make decisions and affect the story. This character has motivations all her own. She is active more than she is reactive. She pushes on the plot more than the plot pushes on her. Even better, the plot exists as a direct result of the character’s actions.

His post on agency and Ada Hoffman’s series of tweets made some of brain cells thaw. (Well worth reading; definitely follow both of those links.) In particular, it made me think of negative goals.

The Negative Goal Problem happens when your protagonist’s goal is to keep something from happening. “I don’t want to be hurt again.” “I don’t want my life to change.” I don’t want to move.” They can masquerade as positive goals–“I want to stay in the house I’ve always lived in,” but they’re not because the goal is about not changing, not moving. You can write the Save-the-House book, but the goal needs to be about doing something active and positive–“I want to defeat the developer who is trying to destroy my neighborhood”–not reactive and negative–“I don’t want to lose my house to this developer’s plan.” Sounds the same, completely different.

I think the negative goal problem may be a subset of the agency problem. Story is action, character is action, and if the actions of the female character have no effect on the story, if you took her out and the plot would still unfold, if all that strength and bravery and intelligence isn’t used, then she has no agency. In the same way, a strong goal in a story not only drives people to action, the story itself is driven by the character who has that goal and who actively pursues it. So an emotionally resonant goal that immobilizes a character can be as weak and meaningless at that strong, brave character who has no agency. In fact, I’m thinking that a negative goal may strip a character of agency by immobilizing her; if she doesn’t want to change, she can’t move.

I could be wrong about that. As I said, brain cells are frozen, synapses not firing. But if you’re interested in character and agency and in particular female character and agency, read those two links. They’re short and heated enough to thaw out at least a corner of my shivering brain.

Cabin Fever

I’m trapped inside a cottage with four dogs and some miscellaneous wildlife–mice I think–that have decided that four dogs is less of a threat than the sub-zero temps and no food. I’m okay with that; chasing screaming after the skittering in the next room is the only exercise these guys are getting since once they get outside the snow is taller than they are. The good news: If they can make it up over the edge of the shoveled walk, they can run all they want because the snow is covered with ice. Yes, that’s the good news.

The rumor is that temps will be above freezing in two weeks which means some of this stuff will melt, but I don’t know if I can make it that long. In the meantime, my brain has shut down completely. I’ve started a couple of different blog posts, looked at the text, and thought, “That makes no sense and my fingers are cold,” and gone back to bed. All of which is to say, there will be real posts here again someday, but right now, we’re all sticking close to the electric mattress pad although some of us gaze hopelessly out the window and wish we could run. Or shop. (That’s not Mona below, that’s a stock photo, but trust me, that’s how we all feel inside.)

Hope wherever you are, you’re warm and dry and not breaking a hip on the damn ice that appears to be covering the entire East Coast.

Happy Cherry Valentine’s Day

Eat more chocolate.

(Okay, I really want to make these. They’re mini cupcakes decorated with Valentine’s candy; the truffles are chocolate covered marshmallows. Which means I have to get to the store before the candy is all gone. Back later.)