Molly O'Keefe's Blog, page 60

Characters you love to hate... or just plain hate.

I recently watched the Fighter. (I know… very late to the party). It was good of course and Christian Bale's performance came singing through. Totally worthy of his Academy Award.

I also tried to appreciate Melissa Leo's performance of the mother I really did… but WOW I hated her. The character… not the actress.
I hated the way she treated her sons differently. I hated her selfishness which was evident throughout the film. I get the actress was trying to accomplish this but when I spend time with characters I hate so completely I find it difficult to enjoy any element of the film.

Conversely the sisters, who I'm not sure if we're meant to hate or not - I loved. They were in the background spouting out a line here or there making me laugh. They were endearing. Even Dickie was endearing. As awful as he was I was always rooting for him. The mother, however, like nails on a chalkboard.

I had the same problem with the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce. The daughter throughout this series is so horrible, so spoiled, so nasty and churlish I eventually had to stop watching. I couldn't stand it. I needed to transport myself into the television and spank that kid. Again the actress (both child and grown woman) did this with intent, but I found the part too hard to watch and that's not good.

I know we regurgitate the same information about writing all the time. But part of blogging about it and talking about it is so we can reinforce it. Creating a villain isn't easy. Drawing someone who is selfish, evil, manipulative whatever… and still making them watchable and compelling is no small feat.

I love to hate the King from True Blood. I love to hate Nicky from Big Love. I love to hate the Queen most recently in Game of Thrones. Loving a nasty character is fun. It's like taking a walk on the dark side with them for that hour or two.

Hating a character… well to me it means something was left out. The thing that makes the character human enough or vulnerable enough so although we know they are meant to be the villain we can still empathize with them enough to stay in their world for a time.

Working on Ideas

Developing an idea for a new book is both the most exciting and most terrifying part of the writing process for me. Not quite as bad as going on submission, but close.

Since I started writing in the urban fantasy/sci fi world I tend to come up with the concept first, then the characters, then I often have to change the concept to fit my characters, or vice versa, a few times before I start to think I have something. Then part way through writing the book or even during revisions I usually realize I missed some great opportunity and have to rethink it all.

I wish I could be more efficient than this, but I'm not. And I also wish I were more open to other people's ideas at this early stage. I really wish I were. But I'm not. I feel like it would really help me, but for whatever reason as much as I want to get other people's thoughts, as much as I want to bash around ideas with someone else, it never works.

Poor Molly tried to talk about my latest shiny idea last weekend (at my invitation) and then I rudely shut her down. I need to learn this about myself. Cannot listen to other people's take on my ideas until I know what *my* take is. At that point I'm okay if someone else's idea is better (which it usually is) but I need to think it through first. And I'm terrible at articulating my ideas when I'm at this stage. Everything that sounds good in my head starts to sound stupid as it's hitting my tongue. I need to write it down, not say it.

Speaking of process, yesterday I blogged about the process of updating traditional fairy tales and coming up with the structure for the reader interaction for my Twisted Tales series at the Indigo Teen Blog. Here's the link if you're interested.

I was pretty excited when they invited me to do this blog. For those of you not living in Canada, Indigo is the largest (really only since they own the other two) national bookstore chain in Canada.

On a totally different topic. Has anyone else seen The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills? Hilarious. Scary. Cannot look away. I have avoided getting sucked into any of those other Housewife shows (the women are so horrible) and they are mostly horrible on the Beverly Hills one, too, but I got sucked in when I recognized one of the women as a former child actress who did tons of Disney movies when I was a kid. (Kim Richards) After Jodie Foster, this girl was the next most famous of the young Disney actors of that era, from what I can remember. And boy, is she a messed up mass of nerves now...

But the really obnoxious one is Kelsey Grammer's wife. She alternates between bragging about how rich she is or how hot she is, talking about how hard she works (while being seen doing nothing), name-dropping her husband's name, then getting angry that people don't recognize she has any value beyond being married to a famous rich actor. Oh, and I did I mention she has four full time nannies for her two kids? Sinead will love that one. Really, their lives are so similar they could be best friends. (not)

National Readers Choice Finalist!

I'm pretty sure I had something cooking in the back of my head for this post, but it all completely flew away when I got a phone call yesterday afternoon telling me that Don't Kill the Messenger is a finalist in the Paranormal category for the National Readers Choice Award! Now I'm mainly sitting around smiling.

I know I should be content with my inner knowledge of a job well done, but, let's face it, outside validation rocks. It's awesome. When it comes from one's peers, it's double awesome.

Happy Easter Weekend

Sorry, no blog post this Good Friday, but have a wonderful Easter weekend, and may the Easter bunny bring you calorie free, delicious chocolate.

Genres and Expectations

I've been doing a lot of thinking about genres lately, mostly because I've been trying to cross them up with little success. And I realize how important it is to live up to people's expectations. I'm not saying you can't cross them up – but making two groups of people happy with the result of what you are doing isn't easy.

Perfect example… Game of Thrones. Anyone see this? It's the new HBO show and I'm going to give away just a little snippet of what happened in episode one to make my point.

Brother wants to reclaim his throne and basically offers up his beautiful winsome sister to a savage warlord so he can claim the warlord's army and take back his crown. The man/beast is 6 ½ feet tall. Dark hair down his back. Painted face. And about as fabulous a body as I've ever seen on a man. (Sorry Eric from True Blood… but I haven't seen you in months!)

The wedding happens. The savage beast leads off the poor girl. We see him strip her of her dress. She's crying and trying to stay brave, we see the man kneel her down and…. Cut.

And I thought this is perfect. This is really going to showcase the difference between what is true fantasy sci-fi vs. what would be a romance novel.

Because let's face it… in a romance novel – the savage warlord has some change of heart. Or maybe he only meant to scare her. Or his conscience gets to him. As a romance reader/writer my expectation of how this seen ends is that he'll eventually stop before he rapes the girl. Then sometime soon in the future they'll develop feelings for one another and eventually the warlord will have his way with the girl – but by then we'll all know she's totally down with that. Warlord guy is HOT after all.

But this isn't a romance. This is fantasy sci-fi. And I have to believe that my expectations might not be met. I don't know – because we never see the conclusion of the scene and maybe we won't. Maybe we're just supposed to assume it happened and that the warlord is an unfeeling caveman. Maybe the story is the girl just suffers through her marriage and some other result takes place between them. I don't know. I don't read enough in this genre to know if there is any particular pattern here.

It just really highlights that some things are absolutes. And making sure you know what those absolutes are is really important if you're going to attempt to mix them up and make both groups happy.

When is a YA not a YA

Clearly we all have passover/Easter fever or something. I almost forgot to post, too, and really don't have anything worth discussing.

And the one thing I have been thinking about, I want to wait to fully discuss, until after Molly and Sinead have seen the movie...

But as a teaser, I saw Hanna last week. It's a pretty great film, I think. Definitely a story I wish I'd written. Totally up my alley in terms of the kinds of stories I'm trying to write writing right now....

But it got me thinking about what makes a book or movie Young Adult vs adult. It's not just about the age of the protagonist. I've seen discussions on the topic before that made sense to me and if memory serves the differentiations had to do with the themes explored etc. but I don't think there are any obvious answers. It might be "you know it when you see it" and it might simply be a marketing decision. Some books, like the Harry Potter series and Twilight and The Hunger Games are clearly YA in my mind, but they get read by a ton of adults. But not all YA stories appeal to adults.

And I think with this current "hot trend" in YA a lot of books/stories are being released as YA that five or so years ago would have been published as adult books, regardless of the age of the protagonist.

Some books that come to mind that have kid protagonists but feel more like adult books to me include, Room, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, and The Book Thief. I recently bought a new YA, Between Shades of Gray, that I'm really looking forward to reading, and I suspect it might fall into that category, too. Certainly the topic feels adult to me, even though it was on the teen shelf at Indigo. (Thanks to new writer friend, Angela Cerrito, for pointing me to this book. Angela's debut novel The End of the Line has just been released, BTW. And it has a thirteen y/o protagonist but an adult sounding subject. Cannot WAIT to read.)

As for movies... I did post before about True Grit and how I thought it was kind of crazy that it was being marketed as an adult Western with Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon as the stars, when clearly, to me, it was a young adult story with Hailee Steinfeld as its star...

Another book and movie that just sprang to mind is The Lovely Bones. I loved that book. LOVED it. And although the main character was young (and dead) I thought of it as an adult book. But I'll bet if it had been first released now, instead of in 2002, that it would have been released as YA. And they marketed the movie as YA, and it kind of bombed. I admit I haven't seen it, which is shocking because I see a lot (a ton) of films and was really looking forward to that one, until I started hearing negative things. Did they tame it down while trying to make it more of a teen story??

And then there's Hanna, with the same wonderful lead actress as The Lovely Bones, Saoirse Ronan. And while this story is clearly about a teen girl, and has fairy tale elements to it... To me it was completely an adult story.

Not sure I fully understand why I think this. Can't wait to discuss.

Anyone else seen Hanna? Thoughts?

Happy Passover

I've had way too much to drink tonight to put together a cogent post. We had 20-some people at my house eating matzoh, drinking wine, singing and laughing. So just let me say, Yom Tov to you all and tonight while we celebrated freedom, I did contemplate how lucky I am to be able to write the stories I want to write.

Here's to freedom of speech (one of my faves)!

Decisions

Have you ever noticed, out in the real world, that a lot of people hate to make decisions, more so in the workforce, because what if you make the wrong decision? If you never make a decision, then you can't be held accountable, right?

I'm paralyzed by this sometimes when I'm in the depths of a book. What if I make the wrong decision? What if deciding to have the heroine confront the villain in chapter twelve leaves me stranded with no where new to take the story in chapter fifteen, and with another 100 pages still needed to write?

If I'd added another element in chapter three would I have increased the tension in chapter ten?

There's an element of humility and ego to most writers. Ego in the sense that if we didn't believe we could create a cool, interesting world populated by involving characters, then we would never start writing, but at the other end, most writers question everything they put on paper, almost from the first word.

Because a wrong decision could have me completely re-writing the second half of the book, I think pretty carefully about how I set up my books and whether or not each decision has dramatic consequences, but it never feels like enough.

Does anyone else have this problem. Can anyone write a draft without having their internal editor nagging at them all the time?

Element Theft

I'm guilty of it. I steal them ALL the time. I should probably explain what I mean by elements because I think it's really a story term I made up. It's not a theme. It's not the hook. It's… an element.

For example in my last book I stole an element from the Temperance Brenan on Bones. I loved the idea of having someone – very smart – but with a deep seated fear that kept her separate from the world around her. My Camille wasn't Bones. But she had a Bones like element to her that I wanted to explore.

I recently re-read the Iron Duke. In trying to break down what I loved so much about this book I realized there is an element to the hero that I love. The Duke reacts instantly to Mina and pursues her relentlessly. There is never any question whether or not he's going to shag her. He's going to shag her. It's just a question of when. And for the me - that driven pursuit of something you want - is an element that I would also love to explore. So I will steal it.

Now I'm not going to lie, sometimes I do feel guilty about my thievery. I mean if I were a great writer (which obviously I'm not) I could develop elements that other people would like to steal.

Instead I let people do all the hard work and then I just pick and choose and mix and match and explore all the sides of the element the way I want to.

I know – it doesn't seem fair. But then again I'm a thief and therefore fair doesn't really enter into it for me.

What about you – anybody ever steal the made up thing I call an element? Go on. Confession is good for the soul.

Owning your ideas

I'm working on developing new ideas right now. Pulling out the idea file, parsing through them combining them, twisting them, trying to come up with my next project.

I  love this time. Usually. For most of my past books this pure creative development stage has been a joy. But it feels as if the more experience I get under my belt, the more pressure there is at this point. I hate thinking I'm being derivative or that the idea isn't big enough or interesting enough or deep enough. I know how much work and blood and sweat and tears it takes for me to do a book and so I want to feel confident that THIS IS THE ONE. (Even though I know it's impossible to know that.)

I started to read this post last week and it helped. It's titled "How to Steal Like an Artist". I need to go read it again. It is full of wisdom and words that make me feel better about myself. Nothing wrong with that.

But the other thing that's struck me while working on these new ideas is how important it is to own your ideas. Some people are better than others at taking someone else's idea and running with it. I'm not. I wish I was. Molly gave me a very cool idea on Saturday night when we were talking about our ideas. A twist on what I was doing that I hadn't thought of. But the more I try to expand on it, the more I try to imagine turning that idea into a story, the less it works for me. And it's a great idea. So here are the possible reasons why it's not sparking: 1) I'm dumb, 2) I'm too stubborn/proud to work on something that's not my idea, or 3) I can't make it come to life because I don't own it. It's possible, with more work and thought, I could own it. But I don't now.

I know another writer who has had this problem with a few books. At least that's my opinion of why she had problems with a few books. Stalling on coming up with her own ideas, she took sparks of ideas from others and then had a hell of a time forming them into her own story. Owning them.

So, I'm back to the drawing board, I think. Faking it until I make it. I hope.