Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 300

Anybody Interested in Who Sundays?

We’ve been talking about motif and metaphor in the McD course on unity, and I referenced “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” episodes of Dr Who. There’s so much to talk about in the Who-verse: some of the episodes are works of art and some of them are abysmal (I hate “Love and Monsters” with the passion of a thousand firey suns) but they’re all worth taking apart for character, structure, conflict, metaphor, all that good stuff. The problem is, we don’t have time in the McD classes. I offered to do it on the class blog as an option, not a requirement, and then I said as an afterthought, “Or we could do it on Argh.” They voted for Argh on the more-the-merrier principle, so I’m running the idea by all of you now.

My plan, which can change depending on the comments, would be to take one Dr.Who episode a week, selecting stories that I think would generate good craft analysis. We’d concentrate on the new series–Doctors Nine, Ten, and Eleven, aka Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith–and I’d choose a couple of stories from each year (there are seven years, we’re not going to do them all) to see the arc of the new Who. I think the change of showrunners between ten and eleven (Davies to Moffat) does interesting things to the stories, too. So I’d choose a show (feel free to nominate in the comments) and then I’d put up a post on Sunday with a short intro and a starting discussion question and let the rest of you take it from there, talking about whatever you wanted to in regards to the storytelling (I bow to no one in my ability to squee over Eccleston, Tennant, and Barrowman, but it’s not terribly fun or helpful to read that stuff, so let’s stick to the writing).

As an experiment, let’s do “Rose,” the first episode in Season One of the new Who, free on Amazon Prime. (I’m ambivalent about Amazon in general, but Amazon Prime is a great deal.) If it works, we’ll keep going, picking at least three stories per season (some stories are two-parters so we’ll do both parts) and taking them apart to see how they work, the good and the bad. Three times seven is twenty-one so that’s about four months of Who Sundays if we decide to go for it. If we start and then it turns out to be a dud, I’ll pull the plug, but it could be a good time.

So is this something you’d like? What would you want the series to cover/concentrate on? (I’m thinking writing craft, but I’m open.) For those of you who are already Who fans, what episodes must be covered? (“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances,” “Blink,” and “Let’s Kill Hitler” are already in as far as I’m concerned.) Feedback please. And then we’ll do a trial run on “Rose” on Sunday.

So what do you think?

Kindle Daily Deal: Anne Stuart’s A Rose At Midnight

Get your vintage Stuart at Amazon right now for $1.99 as a Kindle Daily Deal: A Rose at Midnight.

Name That Heroine

One of the dumber articles I’ve read recently was called “Fifteen Female Names We’ll Never See Again.” For the record, they were Blanche, Myrtle, Ethel, Barbara, Mildred, Agatha, Phyllis, Beatrice, Marge, Ruth, Gretchen, Gertrude, Martha, Opal, and Rose. (Rose? Really?) Setting aside the inanity of anybody saying “never” about anything, this particular subject is especially dumb because parents are going the extra mile these days to give their children names nobody else will have, which means all of these names are up for grabs. I would use any of these names for a heroine, and in fact I’ve already named one Gertrude (“Hot Toy”). Another list began with the name Jezebel, and now I really want to write a heroine named Jezebel. Now that I think of it, some of my favorite heroines that I’ve written had names that would hit a longer list: Matilda, Zelda, Agnes, Minerva, Maybelle, Prudence, not to mention Mariposa, Sharrat, and Andromeda. I LOVE odd names.

But some readers don’t. (I had a complaint about “Andromeda.”) What’s your take on names in books? (Don’t feel you have to stick to heroine names, not that you would.)

Cherry Saturday 4-20-2013

Yes, I am going to post again. As soon as I get the McDaniel curriculum done–I could post on that–and start on getting the yard here cleared up (see post on ReFab), and work on Liz and put in some kitchen cabinets and get some exercise . . . I’ll post, I really will. But in the meantime, thank you all for the recommendations (I loved Flipped) and keep them coming. Also, what’s new with you?

Cherry Saturday 4-12-2013

It’s spring. No, really, I can see tulips coming up and the daffodils are out. How’s your week been? Also, Jill W. wants more good book recommendations if you have any left.

Cherry Saturday 4-12-2013

It’s spring. No, really, I can see tulips coming up and the daffodils are out. How’s your week been? Also, Jill W. wants more good book recommendations if you have any left.

Where To Start

Something Laura brought up in her comment on the previous post reminded me of another problem with episodic fiction or series books: the damn set-up. Like Laura ad her Esther books, I want people to be able to read the Liz books in any order, but I don’t want to spend the first pages saying, “Previously in Liz’s life . . .” Although now that I think of it, putting a Note at the beginning that says, “Previously . . . to mimic those TV shows is something to consider. Not for very long, of course, I’m very tetchy about my beginnings. You should start at the beginning, where the conflict starts, and go on until you get to the end. Which means no damn prologues. Another lousy beginning: starting in media res to hook the reader and then backtracking to the beginning of the novel. If you don’t have any more faith in your craft than to start with a cliffhanger and then retreat, work harder. Cliffhangers are awful no matter where you put them.

Of course, that’s my opinion. What’s your take on great beginnings?

Previously in this Novel . . .

I’m taking the Reality Truck stuff seriously. The old way I was doing things wasn’t working. So we’re trying new things. This morning I took out a wall with a sledge hammer and a crowbar:

I enjoyed it immensely.

But now I want to talk about writing. Structure. I’ve been cogitating on a new form for awhile,it’s been appealing to me for months, but I kept ignoring it because it’s not the way I’ve written in the past and I have to get a book done. Except I’m not writing. But I am thinking about this new structure (new for me, anyway). So I’ve been cogitating. Then I took out the wall and thought, “Fuck cogitating, this is the way I’m going to do it.” Every writer should have a sledgehammer and a crowbar.

It’s been a tense several months (hell, it’s been a tense several years) and one way I cope when it all gets too much is to crochet while watching TV series, all the episodes at once. I can see an entire series in a couple of weeks which makes it seem like a very long novel, divided into chapters. Anybody who’s ever heard me speak knows what I think of chapters–hate them because they’re not narrative units–but in a TV series, the chapters are episodes and they are narrative units. That is, depending on the series, they’re stories in and of themselves while exploring an overarching plot that lasts the entire season.

This appeals to me as a structure. I’ve been using the four act structure which has served me well, but now that seems overwhelming to me. I don’t want to write short stories, I like the depth and breadth of the novel, but watching all this episodic TV has given me a new appreciation for the little payoffs along the way. Another big plus for me in episodic plots: each episode moves the community closer together because each episode is a victory or a defeat for them all. And it gives me as a writer a lot of little victories along the way, places to stop and say, “Look! I ACCOMPLISHED something!”

Liz was already structured like this on the grand scale, each book a mystery episode in a four-book long love story. But when I looked at Lavender’s Blue again, I realized that I could restructure it so that each act was an episode. I’ve always seen each act as its own story, but one without a climax, just a turning point. If there’s a climax, there’s a danger that the reader will stop reading, but as long as the overall plot is strong, I think she’ll have to keep going. I think I can make that work.

I’d structured my solo FTL book as eight short stories that taken together made a novel, so that one’s already in place, but I’m looking at You Again now, and thinking hard about what happens to it if I turn it into four episodes. Structure is meaning; change the structure and you change everything about the story, but I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing with You Again.

So I’m cogitating. I still have a lot of clapboard to knock off the house and there’s a closet upstairs that is definitely coming out, so I’ll have no shortage of sledgehammer time to think. I just have to figure out if an episodic approach is a creative sledgehammer. And if that’s a bad thing.

Cherry Saturday 4-6-2013

Sorry. Slept late. ARGH. Have at it, Cherries, tell us what’s new.

Oh, and Deb Blake just sold a book!

The Reality Truck

Saturday, I was on the main drag in this little town I live near, in stop-and-go pre-Easter traffic, and I was thinking about Liz and her little town, and about how frustrated she’d be in that kind of traffic, and I looked off to the side and saw that there was a hot dog stand open, and it was all glass so you could see all the people inside, and I thought, “That would be interesting,” and was thinking about how that would affect things, to be eating hot dogs on display to everybody around you, your conversations a big mime for the world, and I looked back and there was A FREAKING TRUCK RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, and I slammed on the brakes and hit the accelerator instead (because I was not in the same world with the truck) and plowed my Prius into the back end so hard, the tow truck had to jack up the truck to pull my car out from under it.

So first, I’m fine, no worries.

Second, do not do discovery for your book in heavy traffic, no matter how slow it’s going (the book or the traffic).

Third, I think the whole thing is a metaphor for what happened to my life last year. I’d been going along, getting along, distracting myself from the slow motion of my life, when I plowed head on into the Big Truck of Reality. And much like my car, my life got totaled, entirely my fault, because I wasn’t paying attention to it.

As a wake-up call, the Reality Truck has no peer. You can’t deny it, it’s sitting right there, practically at your windshield, while your life leaks brake fluid onto the highway. And while you sit there in shock, trying to figure out HOW THE HELL YOU COULD HAVE BEEN SO STUPID, you’re hit with the realization that now you’re going to have to get a new life. And that’s not going to be easy because if you were any good at life, you wouldn’t have driven the old one into the back of the Reality Truck.

And then you realize that you have to get out of that old life, that it’s not just leaking brake fluid, it’s leaking everything, and that doesn’t turn out to be as easy as you thought because the door buckled and you have to push it open with your feet just to get a big enough space to squirm out of. And even after you’re out of it, you stand on the edge of the street and stare at it. It was in fine shape a minute ago and now it’s totaled. You totaled it. Because you weren’t paying attention.

I’m a big fan of paying attention in small doses. In fact, just the day before the accident, I’d posted about moments on ReFab, and I still believe in the power of the moment, absolutely. But sometimes you have to look at your life and your work in total, with no illusions, pay attention to the whole thing and realize that it’s time to kick the door open and squirm out. That old life is a tangled wreck, and it’s time to get a new one.

Except there were many things I liked about that old car. It was an outstanding car. It got me a lot of great places. And when the whole thing crumpled around me, it protected me; I walked away without a scratch. I’m getting another car just like it if I can afford it. But maybe this time I’ll get one in red. I’ll keep all the things that I loved about it, but with improvements.

I feel the same way about my life. I’m keeping the people in it, they protect me and keep me warm and I love them, and the place where I live (for much the same reasons), and the dogs (also for the same reasons, I’m seeing a pattern here), so I’m going to be driving the same life but different, this time I’m going to pay attention while I drive. Because there are things that I keep telling myself I can’t do because I have too much WORK, there’s too much else to be done, I can’t afford to follow my bliss because I have to be practical. That’s dumb. Maybe if I’d been following my bliss instead of following an endless you-should-have-done-this-a-month-ago list, I wouldn’t have hit the Reality Truck.

I think the big takeaway, though, is that that car is probably done. I need to let it go. I can profit from what I learned from it–always buy a Prius–but I need to move on. And pay attention to the Reality Truck. Because hitting that sucker is EXPENSIVE.