Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 310

The 12 Days of Liz: Day Two: The Problem of the Antagonist in the Dining Room Scene

So I have a scene in here that I can’t get a grip on. I firmly believe that every scene needs a protagonist and an antagonist. Without that tension, you get a lot of information transfer with no story. But I have a scene where the protagonist/antagonist tension is, uh, iffy. The premise is that Liz gets stuck in her hometown just at the moment that her old high school boyfriend is about to get married to the most beautiful woman in Burney, Ohio, and since all of his friends dislike the bride, they’re hoping Liz will do something that will stop the wedding. Liz is not interested and just wants to get out of town. Her cousin and best friend, Molly, is at the bride’s house for a bridesmaid’s dress fitting, and Liz goes to pick her up. She meets the bride, Lavender, at the door and has a very short conversation with her in which she tells Lavender that she has no interest in breaking up her wedding. Lavender is polite about it and takes Liz to the dining room. Which is where the story falls apart. Long scene ahead:

We went into an oval-shaped dining room with big windows that looked out onto the drive where the Porter’s truck was still sitting front and center. Patsy knew how to park to annoy. There were three women and a little girl at the end of the long table. One was Patsy, looking flushed and angry. The second looked like she was still a teenager, twenty tops, her thick dark hair falling in her hot dark eyes, the raw kind of beauty that comes with too much youth and too much libido, with a strong little chin that looked like it did a lot of leading. She had to be the disliked younger sister Skye. The other woman looked to be in her late twenties, baby-faced, pretty, sad, and a little vague looking over the drink she was clutching for dear life, so I pegged her for Margot, the pregnant schoolgirl/widow. The thin little dark-haired ten-year-old leaning on her leg and glaring at me with the famous Blue violet eyes pretty much cinched that guess since she had to be Navy’s daughter, Peri, except that she was alive where her mother was sad, sharp where her mother looked fuzzy, alert where her mother seemed not to know exactly where she was.

The kid scowled at me. “Who are you?”

They all turned to look at me, and I remembered that everybody had probably already heard about the plan to bring me in as a wedding destroyer.

“I’m Liz, and I’m not staying,” I said to the room in general. “Leaving tomorrow. Just in town to drop off a bear, then I’m out of here. Will not be at the wedding. Best wishes to all. Where’s Molly?”

“A bear?” Peri said. “You brought a bear?”

“Oh, no, you should stay,” Skye said, her smile curling like a cat’s. “I bet Cash would love to see you again.” She lifted her glass and toasted me, and I realized she was high. Not reeling, but definitely loose.

“What bear?” Peri said again.

I started to answer her but then Lavender said from behind me, “Have a seat. Molly’s in the library getting her dress fitted.”

I took a step forward and hit something soft. I heard a tiny yipe and looked down and saw a kind of blonde floor mop, shaking next to my foot as it slunk under the table. “What’s that?”

Peri went down on the floor on her knees. “That’s Veronica,” she said, giving me a look that said, You’re an idiot. “She’s a dachshund.” She made kissing noises, and I crouched down to look under the table. In the shadows, I saw a long narrow nose separating two tragic close-set dark eyes flanked by long fur-stole ears.

“They make blonde dachshunds?” I said.

Veronica shook harder.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s just nervous.” Peri made more kissing noises, and I looked at Veronica again.

Okay, here’s a secret: I like dogs. I can’t have one because I’m always on the road, but I love them—all sizes, all shapes, all breeds—and of all the dogs I’d ever seen, this one was the most miserable. So I bent down and pulled her out from under the table and picked her up, and the poor thing almost had a coronary right there in my arms. “Shhh,” I said, patting her, and her eyes peeled back until they were like little black golf balls. I switched from patting to stroking, trying to soothe her. She had a tight little dog body under all the platinum fur, the softest dog I’d ever touched and evidently the most neurotic, too. I wondered if that was from inbreeding or the tension in the room, but I didn’t much care. I just wanted out of there, and I was pretty sure Veronica felt the same way. Kinship.

The fitter came in, Sharon Ways, a harried little woman I remember from the sewing machine shop in town because she’d given me so much advice when I was a teenager trying to learn to sew. She had four hangers in one hand, holding them up so the purple skirts of the dresses on them weren’t touching the floor. One of the dresses was a little girl’s party dress with a big lavender bubble skirt, but the other three were long and looked to be empire, probably chosen when Margot was pregnant, and they weren’t awful except for the clusters of lavender flowers that were sewn over the bodice. Behind her was Faye Blue, Fay Banky that was, looking like her daughter would if Lavender spend the next twenty years drinking too much and laughing too little, an assumption helped along by the fact that she had a drink in each hand and a folder under her arm. And behind her came Molly, thank you, God, so we could go.

“Was the dress as awful as I thought?” Skye said to Molly.

Faye turned on her. “You just shut up. It’s because of me you’re the goddamned maid of honor.”

“Picture me thrilled,” Skye said.

“It was fine,” Molly said, and the way she said it made me pretty sure it was as awful as Skye had thought.

Margot ignored them all and drained her glass. Faye put a fresh drink in front of her, and she grabbed onto it like salvation.

Peri watched her mother slam back a third of that glass with flat eyes.

Don’t drink in front of your kid, I thought, and definitely don’t drink before you drive her home.

Margot looked up and saw me watching her and flushed, and then she glared at me, so obviously I’d now alienated somebody else in Burney, but once your drunken mother has driven you into a tree, it’s really hard to look at any woman drinking in front of her kid without scowling.

Lavender spoke up from behind me, startling me because I’d forgotten she was back there. “Take Peri next, Sharon.”

“No,” Faye said, “she’s going do Patsy next. Patsy has an early day at the garage tomorrow, so she should go next.”

I don’t think it was my imagination that she stressed “garage” with a sneer in her voice that didn’t bode well for the marriage. Cash wasn’t always faithful to the women in his life, but he’d go to the wall for his family every time. Lavender had a lot to learn about the guy she was marrying if she was going to let her mother treat the Porters like dirt.

Then Lavender said, “That’s enough, mother,” in a voice that could have cut glass, and Faye shut up. “Do you mind waiting, Patsy?” Lavender said, politely, and Patsy shook her head, refusing to meet Lavender’s eyes, her strong little chin set hard.

I was starting to think I might be Team Lavender after all.

At the end of the table, Margot drank again, and I watched Peri watch her, her little body still and tense, and I thought, Put that glass down, you’re driving that kid home.

Veronica whined in my arms and I patted faster, annoyed with everybody in the room.

Sharon the fitter said, “Peri?” and Margot stood up, taking her glass with her, and I thought seriously about grabbing it as she went past.

But then Lavender reached out and pulled the glass from her hand, patting her on the shoulder at the same time. “I’ll get you a Coke,” she said quietly, and Margot looked at the drink with longing and then followed Peri out of the room.

“Was that really necessary?” Faye said to Lavender when they were gone. “Margot isn’t a child.”

“Margot’s fine,” Lavender said. “Are those the seating charts?”

Faye looked at the folder under her arm as if she was surprised to see it there. “Oh. Yes. But don’t you worry, I fixed them.”

Lavender held out her hand, and her mother’s jaw tightened but she handed them over. Lavender sat down and opened the folder.

“We should get out of here,” I said to Molly, and she nodded and started to say good-bye to her hostess, good manners 24/7, but Faye was leaning over Lavender, haggard and insistent.

“Now listen,” Faye said. “I’ve been thinking, and we gotta have those little bags of rice. The bridesmaids can make them and tie them with little lavender ribbons.”

“We’re not going to have homemade bags of rice,” Lavender said, frowning at a seating chart in the folder. “We’re not going to have rice at all. It’s bad for the birds.”

“Oh, like you care about birds,” Faye said, listing a little.

“I care about the bad PR a bunch of birds dying at my wedding would cause. Cash is going to be a senator. The environmentalists would be all over him. We’re going to have rose petals.” She frowned down at the charts. “This isn’t right.”

“People can’t throw rose petals,” Faye said.

“We can leave now, right?” I said to Molly.

“Yep,” Molly said and picked up her purse.

“If you’d just listen to me,” Faye whined to Lavender. “Your mother knows best. Don’t you think?” she said, swinging around to look at Molly and me. “Shouldn’t she take her mother’s advice about something so important?”

Molly said, “We really have to go now, thank you for having us,” and I said. “No.”

“What?” Faye said, blinking at me.

Molly sighed beside me, but I’d been a victim of maternal micromanaging too damn often not to fight back.

“You had a big wedding, right? Well, that was your turn. It’s over. This is Lavender’s. If she doesn’t want bags of rice, she doesn’t want bags of rice.”

Faye’s eyes narrowed. “I am the one with experience.”

“Right. And now it’s Lavender’s turn to get some experience.”

Faye drew herself up. “Who do you think you are?”

“I think I’m one of the people you asked about Lavender taking your advice. I say no.” I looked at Molly. “How are you voting?”

“No,” Molly said.

“Well, I never.” Faye straightened with difficulty. “I’m just trying to be a good mother.”

“You’re trying to hijack my wedding,” Lavender said flatly. “You got your answer. It’s my wedding. Now go drink yourself unconscious.”

Faye looked at her with such absolute loathing that I was startled, but Lavender was oblivious, looking back at the seating charts now. “You’ve put Aunt Violet and Aunt M.L. at the same table.”

“So?” Faye said.

“They hate each other,” Lavender said. “They should be across the room from each other. These charts are going to have to be done over again.”

“Well, it’s your wedding,” Faye said, sounding sloppy and snotty at the same time, and then she toddled out, probably convinced that had been a snappy comeback.

Lavender sighed and picked up her pen. I put Veronica down—the ungrateful little beast immediately streaked under the table as if I’d been torturing her—said, “Best of luck on your marriage” to Lavender, and beat feet outside while Molly was still saying a polite good-bye.

I got in the van and watched Molly come out of the house, but I was thinking about Lavender, who’d ignored her sister’s snotty comment about her bridesmaid’s dresses, taken the drink away from Margot, and stood up to her mother without yelling. Clearly, there was good stuff there. Burney had it wrong again.

Molly got in the van. “Thank god we’re out of there. I need a drink.”

“Well, you know where to go,” I said, and we headed back down the hill.

So here’s the problem:

I think Lavender is the antagonist in that scene. I think Liz goes in expecting to dislike her and through observing Lavender’s actions decides she likes her after all. But Lavender is an unconscious antagonist–she doesn’t know she’s battling for Liz’s approval and wouldn’t do it if she realized it–and that makes her a weak antagonist because she can’t escalate the conflict. Plus there’s the stuff with Peri and Veronica that’s not linked in there yet. So I think this scene is a mess, but I’m not sure how to fix it. I THINK I have to make Lavender Liz’s doppelganger here, not wanting to like Liz, either, but I don’t want her to be hostile. So somehow, I’m going to have to rewrite this so neither Liz or Lavender wants to like the other but they’re drawn to each other just the same, while being polite, incorporating Peri and the dog. Which is a fairly major rewrite once I figure out how to do it. But it has to be done. This scene is too sloppy to publish as is.

The 12 Days of Liz: Day One: Kill Your Darlings

I’m in a full-court press on Liz while doing about twenty other things, but I have not failed to notice that the last three posts here were announcements. I don’t have time to do decent, thoughtful posts right now, but I can do a 12 Days of Liz and dump whatever I happen to trip over that day on you. Today it’s about cutting lines you love.

This is in the first scene in Liz:

The cop wasn’t anybody I knew, which meant I wouldn’t get any “Well, here’s trouble back in town” crap, although he did fit the general description of “Burney Guy”: a good old Midwestern boy with more chin than forehead, eyes narrowed in suspicion over a nose that had been broken at least once. If you’d asked me to put money on it, I’d have bet that his knees were gone, too. We like our high school football rough in Ohio, so we tend to maim our young.

I smiled up at him, cheerful and innocent as all hell.

He didn’t smile back, but he didn’t look particularly upset, either.

I really love that football line, but it completely slows the action and puts too much space between seeing the cop (that would be Vince) and her reaction (the smile). So that line that I love? It has to go. Faulkner said, “Kill your darlings” and he meant to get rid of anything you especially love that’s in the story pretty much because you especially love it and not because it’s necessary. Which brings us to my favorite bit of Strunk and White:

Omit needless words.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Along with Elmore Leonard’s “I try to leave out the parts people skip,” this is the best writing advice I know.

So that section now reads:

The cop wasn’t anybody I knew, which meant I wouldn’t get any “Well, here’s trouble back in town” crap, although he did fit the general description of “Burney Guy”: a good old Midwestern boy with more chin than forehead, eyes narrowed in suspicion over a nose that had been broken at least once.

I smiled up at him, cheerful and innocent as all hell.

He didn’t smile back, but he didn’t look particularly upset, either.

Story first. Always, always story first.

The 12 Days of Liz: Day 1: Kill Your Darlings

I’m in a full-court press on Liz while doing about twenty other things, but I have not failed to notice that the last three posts here were announcements. I don’t have time to do decent, thoughtful posts right now, but I can do a 12 Days of Liz and dump whatever I happen to trip over that day on you. Today it’s about cutting lines you love.

This is in the first scene in Liz:

The cop wasn’t anybody I knew, which meant I wouldn’t get any “Well, here’s trouble back in town” crap, although he did fit the general description of “Burney Guy”: a good old Midwestern boy with more chin than forehead, eyes narrowed in suspicion over a nose that had been broken at least once. If you’d asked me to put money on it, I’d have bet that his knees were gone, too. We like our high school football rough in Ohio, so we tend to maim our young.

I smiled up at him, cheerful and innocent as all hell.

He didn’t smile back, but he didn’t look particularly upset, either.

I really love that football line, but it completely slows the action and puts too much space between seeing the cop (that would be Vince) and her reaction (the smile). So that line that I love? It has to go. Faulkner said, “Kill your darlings” and he meant to get rid of anything you especially love that’s in the story pretty much because you especially love it and not because it’s necessary. Which brings us to my favorite bit of Strunk and White:

Omit needless words.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Along with Elmore Leonard’s “I try to leave out the parts people skip,” this is the best writing advice I know.

So that section now reads:

The cop wasn’t anybody I knew, which meant I wouldn’t get any “Well, here’s trouble back in town” crap, although he did fit the general description of “Burney Guy”: a good old Midwestern boy with more chin than forehead, eyes narrowed in suspicion over a nose that had been broken at least once.

I smiled up at him, cheerful and innocent as all hell.

He didn’t smile back, but he didn’t look particularly upset, either.

Story first. Always, always story first.

Books for a Good Cause

Brenda Novak does an auction every year for diabetes research, and this year we’ve got two auction packages. From Brenda:

Join me help my son and all the others out there who suffer from diabetes, which is the 5th deadliest killer.

This year, the money from my efforts will be donated to The Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami.

The Diabetes Research Institute (DRI)is a recognized world leader in cure-focused research. Since its inception in the early 1970s, the DRI has made significant contributions to the field of diabetes research, pioneering many of the techniques used in islet cell transplantation. From innovations in islet isolation and transplant procedures to advances in cell biology and immunology, the Diabetes Research Institute is now harnessing the power of emerging technologies to develop new cell-based therapies to restore insulin production.

By bidding you will not only win some exciting and unique items and/or opportunities, you’ll be supporting a very worthy research-based organization. To find out more about the Diabetes Research Institute, visit their website at www.DiabetesResearch.org.

There’s a lot of good stuff going up, but the Crusie items up for bid are:

The Jenny Crusie COMPLETE NOVEL COLLECTION (20 Books, Autographed)

Seven Latest Crusies & Tea Set from NYTimes Bestselling Author Jenny Crusie

Free Book Until 3AM ET May 29

From now until 3AM ET, you can get Lani Diane Rich’s Time Off for Good Behavior for free if you follow this link.

New From Writewell: Basics of Character

Lani Diane Rich’s Basics of Character Lecture is up at WritewellAcademy.com now:

The 201 Lecture is divided into four major subjects:

• Sacredness of Character

• Character Triangle

• Naming Your Character

• Character Discovery

The Lecture Package has four components:

• The Slideshow Lecture with voiceover

• The Audio of the voiceover alone.

• The Lecture 201 Notebook (pictures of the slides with quad-ruled spaces for taking notes)

• Supplementary material with exercises

Yes, I know I said I’d get my structure lecture up, but then I looked at the scene structure lecture that was next and realized I needed to do them both at once because of the overlap. Coming soon . . .

Edited to add:

The Writewell thread is up at the new Cherry Forums so if you’ve been wanting to ask questions and talk about the lectures, that’s here.

Random Writing

Thinking about writing may be like dancing about architecture, but I’ve been doing a lot of it lately. Not the cohesive “how do you revise a scene” kind of thinking, although I’ve been doing that, too, but the random stuff that floats to the top when you’re working on one book and thinking about other stories and generally dealing with Stuff. So this is just Stuff I’ve Been Thinking About My Writing. No point will be made. Questions will be asked. A general lack of sophistication and polish will be revealed. Also I’m eating carrot cake so I’ll probably drop out in the middle with a sugar coma. It’s been that kind of day.

It’s been a good day. We went to Newport Aquarium (“we” being Lani, Krissie, and I) to research our newest play project. It’s part of the Fairy Tale Lies world which is getting more and more exciting. We decided we’d all take the same fairy tale and write our own versions of it in short stories or novellas and then compare to see what we got. We picked “The Little Mermaid”– Krissie is Danish so she’s an Andersen fan with reservations–and then we had to invent an entirely new kingdom since it was under the sea. Fortunately we already had a river so we just made it really deep, really wide, and really long. And then we went to the Aquarium to get an approximation of what it was like under there. The Newport Aquarium is one of my favorite places–Krissie bought me the ticket and then Lani upgraded me to the annual whatsis so I can go for free any time, and let’s hear it for generous friends–but it was different looking at it today, thinking that this is what Mel sees every day, this is what she’ll leave if she asks the Sea Witch for the lungs to stay on land (she has legs; we decided the Nixies were human, too, just aquatic mammals). There’s such grace and beauty underwater, although it’s treacherous, too, like the Crown of Thorns sea star that has neurotoxins in its spine (there’s a plot point for you). There were giant Japanese spider crabs that live for a hundred years, which made me think that somebody might etch a map or a code in the shell of a young one and then a hundred years later somebody else would find it . . . And there were cardinal tetras like tiny neon lights. Just amazing.

I also had a minor meltdown at the restaurant we went to afterward (Mitchell’s Fish Market because we are insensitive). I’d gotten stuffed animals for the grandkids and a small stuffed otter for me because I wanted Mel to have a pet, and I kept looking at him in the bag and finally I said, “Mel’s going to have a pet otter. Know what I’m going to name him?” and Lani said, “Lyle,” and I said, “Yes,” and burst into tears. Gee, lunch with Jenny Crusie is sure a good time. I asked Krissie if it would be weird if I put some of Lyle’s ashes in the little stuffed otter and she said, “No,” but then she has some of her sister’s ashes in a locket around her neck, so possibly she was not the person to ask.

The thing about writing your version of a fairy tale is that it has to be new or what’s the point but it has to tie back to the original or what’s the point? So that’s a narrow line to walk. Then add two other people who are writing their own stories to be part of the whole and you have to do some negotiating. We agree on the world, and the name of the people (the Nix) and we’re negotiating the rules–Krissie wants them to be shapeshifters but I think that’s too easy so I suggested that her guy be a shapeshifter, but my girl just has some Riven blood in her (people on land) so her lungs are better developed than most (which leads me to my hero saying, “Nice lungs” but probably not) and I think Lani’s girl is half Riven/half Nixie, so we’re all playing with the norm right off the bat. Krissie wanted them to be blue with scales so tiny you don’t notice them at first, and I’m good with that. And she found some legends she wanted to incorporate so we’re talking about those. But it’s interesting trying to find common ground because the things that make my stories juicy to me don’t have much interest for Krissie, and the things that make stories inrresistable to Krissie I’m not interested in at all. I’m not talking about the things in the actual story, I’m talking about the aspects that haunt us and keep us thinking about the stories we’re going to write.

I’ve fallen into this story world without wanting to–I HAVE to finish Liz–and now it’s all around me. We hit Hobby Lobby and JoAnn’s yesterday because Krissie wanted to go, and I already have pretty much everything I need for the short stories I want to do and the Fairy Tale Lies novel we’re doing but now there’s this new world, and this new heroine who’s older than most fairy tale heroines–in her thirties, I think, although who know how long Nixies live–and she has a career, she’s a weaver and a designer and her designs are very popular on land because fashion is going through a Nixie obsession, the way fashion went Goth for awhile here, and because she weaves and knots the most amazing shawls and tunics, so everywhere I went, I saw the stuff Mel would work with, the colors and the textures, she’s just so alive to me because of what she does, what she touches, what she makes. I bought fabric and grommets and sea glass, and found big cheap chunky glass beads that look like the necklace the Sea Witch gives her, and I was just lost in that world.

It’s both wonderful and awful to be seized by a story like this. It’s wonderful because it’s more exciting than reality, all that beauty and passion and conflict, but it’s awful, too, because there’s so much to research, so much to do, and because I do not have the time to play in this world. I have Liz to finish. But I know how Mel meets her guy, I know what their conflict is, I know the trouble heading their way, not just the Sea Witch and the Nixie in the Woods, but biology and breathing and the problems of putting two people together who are obsessed by their work, work that pushes them apart.

But I love this world. The story possibilities are endless here. Plus I don’t have to worry about being out of date; it doesn’t matter because this is a different world. I just have to do something new and different with very old forms. And make things. And maybe put some ashes in a stuffed otter, although that may be too weird even for me.

I think I’ll just quit for the night –it’s about 1AM which is usually the shank of the evening for me–and dream of Mel and Lyle and the Guy–still trying to find a name for him although Mel calls him ‘Skipper which is short for Mudskipper which is the Nixie equivalent of Yankee in the south–and then get up tomorrow and be practial and work on Liz, which is moving again–she has a concussion because somebody threw a rock at her, following the good advice that if you don’t know what to do next, throw a rock at your heroine–and maybe think straighter for awhile.

Because this random thinking, while amazing and lovely, does not get things done.

Ta Da! Crazy People, Now Available for Download

Finally, something new . . .

As I’ve been telling you since November (argh), I wrote some short stories when I was in grad school that became the prequels and sequels to the 1991 novel, Crazy For You, and now you can buy six of them in a collection called Crazy People, on the Kindle, Nook, and iTunes for all countries that those platforms service (print option to come soon). Mollie is thorough.

The six short stories are:

• “The Day My Sister Shot the Mailman and Got Away With It, Of Course”

• “Sleep Cure”

• “Meeting Harold’s Father”

• “Necessary Skills”

• “Just Wanted You To Know”

• “I Am At My Sister’s Wedding”

But wait! There’s more! (No, you don’t get steak knives.)

Appendix A has the ABC writing exercise that was the precursor to “The Day My Sister Shot the Mailman” so you can see how a twenty-six sentence exercise turns into a full short story.

Appendix B has the shortened version of “Just Wanted You To Know” that appeared in Redbook Magazine. My agent said she was going to hire me out to do Reader’s Digest Condensed books after I cut half the story to meet the magazine’s word count.

Appendix C has the first chapter of Crazy For You from the proposal that St. Martin’s Press editor Jennifer Enderlin bought the book on. (It was called Dog Days in the proposal).

Appendix D has the published first chapter of Crazy For You, which is significantly different from the proposal chapter, showing how far off the mark my beginnings always are.

Crazy People, available for a computer or e-reader near you. Thank you.

And oh yeah, we gave the blog a facelift.

The Telling and the Tale

Krissie and I were talking about writing the other day (well, e-mailing about writing), and I’m still thinking about what we were talking about. So I thought you all should be part of this conversation. Excerpts from the e-mails below:

Krissie: There was basically a rave review of Dark Shadows in the NYT today, and there was a fascinating line. In the midst of all the praise, it said that Burton had never been big on narrative, he was more interested in the telling, not the tale.

I found that a fascinating concept. What do you guys think?

Jenny: Isn’t “telling” what narrative is? Narrating? Are they saying he’s more style than substance?

Krissie: He’s saying the journey, not the destination, I think. Which I think is extremely interesting in terms of narrative. It’s the way to live your life, to write your books, concentrating on the journey and taking joy in it.

It just fascinated me that such a notion could be applied to fiction. The narrative lines in some Japanese movies are like nothing Joseph Campbell ever thought of.

Read the review. Makes the movie sound divine. If you can’t get it, I’ll see if I can cut and paste.

Jenny: I think that’s the reason his Alice in Wonderland failed for me. Gorgeous, gorgeous movie but no there there. It was all about the show and not the story.

But there are other things I think he’s done that are fabulous. Beetlejuice had a great narrative. The Corpse Bride was very tightly told. Nightmare Before Christmas.

I don’t trust the NYT critics. I think they’re all about show and not substance.

Krissie: Here it is. As for the NYT, it depends on the reviewer. This sounds like someone who understands Tim Burton. It’s a very thought-provoking review.

Jenny: Huh. Seems a long winded way of saying, “He was an art major, not a drama major.”

Krissie I was thinking more about the telling and not the tale. In a way, that’s what romance writing and my writing (and most genre writing) is. We know where the story is going to go, that the hero and heroine will meet, have conflicts, resolve them and live HEA. It’s the telling of the story that makes the difference.

I don’t know why I was so struck by that.

Jenny: I think you’re right about romance writing and the telling not the tale. I think what I object to (if I’m interpreting that right) is that this is what literary fiction uses too often to excuse the fact that there’s no damn plot and nothing happens, and it’s also what’s at the basis of so much bad romance fiction. But then to me, fiction is storytelling and that’s an almost sacred calling. Telling the tale beautifully is important, but if there’s no solid, lasting tale in there, it’s the emperor’s new clothes.

Krissie: I agree with that, completely. But I’ve read a number of romances with nothing new in them, but the characters are so delightful and the writing so charming that I’ve loved the books. And when you said storytelling I was again thinking it was the telling. Not the punch line.

Jenny: I agree, not the punch line. But I think sometimes people coast on delightful characters and how much fun the romance is, and forget that there has to be something underneath there. Not theme, that just gets in the way, it has to emerge organically, but solid story, somebody in trouble fighting back. I think the great stories of the world all have that, I think great storytellers always know that. I think that’s why people who aren’t particularly good at beautiful writing are more popular than the people who really can write. Stuff like Bridges of Madison County, or The DaVinci Code or Twilight (although I haven’t read either of the last two so they might be really good writing, I’m just going on what other people have said), I think that stuff hits big and sells like crazy because there’s story in there. I don’t know much about Bella from Twilight, but I know there’s a story there.

The best of all possible worlds is beautiful writing AND story, but I think if you can only do one, it’s story. I was ANNOYED by Alice in Wonderland. It was visually enthralling, but I didn’t give a damn about it because the visuals overwhelmed the nightmare it should have been. Everything was so stylized that the story went.

So taking as a given that the best stories are both great writing and great storytelling, if you can only choose one, which do you go with?

Small Rant About Bad E-book Proofing

You know how often you find bad typos in e-book reprints? I’ve discovered why. Somebody scanned them in and then didn’t proof them. Look at this paragraph that was scanned from the thesis:

“Times are t-.ard,” Darla said. “-;\nd of course you get all the football and baseball games fr‚Ǩe. There’s a pius.” She’d stuck out her tonguP to show how much of a plus she thought that was, and Quinn had laughed and told her how nee Bill was. And the sex ‚Ä¢.vas goo:!, she’d told Darla, deafl, healthy, athletic, coach-like sex. At the time, she’d really thought it was a plus. Three years latÙÄǧr, he was beginning to seem like a curse, but it was hard to complain at Ytt a man who was unfailingly generous, considerate, protective, under

I wrote that paragraph and I have no idea what some of those words are. Fortunately I have the original scans so I can check, but I can’t believe publishers are just scanning books and then throwing them out there without at least a read through, knowing that this is what happens. This thing is practically hieroglyphics.

Small rant over. Back to translating.