Marian Allen's Blog, page 466

Friday Recommends – What The Cool Kids Like

First, I have a short story up at the #amwriting web site today. It's the seed for my next Spadena Street novel, NONE of which are completed yet.

My cool Second-Oldest Grandson likes to play on the computer when he comes to visit, and his go-to site is Physics Games which is, you know, "online physics-based games". He got Youngest Grandson playing it, too. They were particularly taken with Dummy Never Fails, which seemed to consist of dropping things on crash-test dummies and making them bounce. The dummies, as well as the dropped things. But perhaps I don't understand the game. My personal favorite physics game is bumper pool, but that's just me.

Here are some more game sites they like:

GamesXL

FOG (Free Online Games)

Free Games

And, OF COURSE, LEGO!!!

Tomorrow, Youngest Grandson is coming over. We might play online, but he also said he's going to make up a two-player game for us. I went out and bought receiving media for my digital image enhancers (coloring books for my crayons). Because I've played with this kid before, I know two things: (1) This game of his will be structured so that he will always win and (2) Whatever picture I want to color, that's the one he'll want to color. So I (1) am prepared to lose graciously as an object lesson for him and (2) bought two copies of the same coloring book.

Speaking of coloring books, here's a link to the Google search for online coloring pages.

And here's a link to a cool thing called Crayon Physics Deluxe. The game costs, but you can download a demo.

So have some fun. All the cool kids are.

WRITING PROMPT: What would your main character build–or try to build–with Lego?

MA

The Nut Doesn't Fall Far

Charlie and I watched two of the grandsons yesterday: Youngest Grandson (6) and Second-Oldest Grandson (10). They play pretty well together, although each of them want to control the action and each of them wants to win. Can't imagine where they got those traits. Who're you looking at?

And Youngest Grandson, after rejecting what he thought was Jello, flew back to the table when he found out it was chocolate pudding and said, "I canNOT resist chocolate!"

Second-Oldest Grandson, when he got bored playing, curled up with a book.

It made me nostalgic for the days when Oldest Grandson and I would spend all day building things with Lego, or the summer we watched all the Star Trek (TOS) movies and episodes we could find and made our own tribbles.

Folks, these guys' moms are my step-adopted daughters. Is it possible to inherit by osmosis?

WRITING PROMPT: A character who doesn't generally interact with kids (either ever or currently) spends the day with kids.

MA

Eggplant For Mr. Lee

Believe it or not, I've had a request to post pictures of my eggplant. My eggplant is of absolutely no interest to most people, I'll admit, but there are certain eggplant connoisseurs and cognoscenti who know a really classic eggplant when they see one. Those select few request private viewings on special occasions, and I oblige them. Sometimes they have to share. I mean an eggplant has its limits, am I right?

On this occasion, Leslie R. Lee asked me to post pictures of my eggplant online. So here it is.

Okay, let's all drag our minds out of the gutter and get back to reality.

Mr. Hambley brought some of the little tender eggplants I like and stashed them in the car until I showed up, to be sure I got a couple. I took one, washed it, cut off the top and bottom, split it in two, rubbed it with garlic-infused olive oil (Did you see that, Ardis? I said "infused" just like the big-boy chefs!) and sprinkled it with Jane's Crazy Mixed-Up Salt, which ought to pay me for touting them so much. But they don't.

I popped those babies onto my indoor grill for about 10 minutes, more or less. This is actually less well-done than we like them. We like them WAY done, so they're kind of crackly on the outside and mooshy soft on the inside. But that doesn't look very pretty and this looks all fancy and all.

Along with this, we had broccoli salad. This is raw broccoli, mayonnaise, walnuts and a ready-made mix of dried blueberries, cranberries and cherries. It was most tasty.

WRITING PROMPT: Have a character develop or discover a way to make an unpalatable food delicious.

MA

Postcards from Around and About

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As I said in today's Fatal Foodies post (recipe for Stuffed French Toast included), some friends and I went to Toast on Market the other day. While we were there, this young man came in–a young teen–with his proud mother. He's going for the world's record Mohawk length, and I think he's well on his way. He and his mother gave me permission to take his picture and post it here. Yes, it really is magenta.

I like to go to Louisville, and a couple of days ago I went to where I could have a panoramic view of a bit of the downtown area. Here are some pictures I snapped. Most of them didn't come out well because, as Floyd Hyatt said yesterday, a lot of what we see is our perception of what we see. I would see a cool building in the distance, and the camera would see ppphhhhhttt.

I think this little detail may come through. I have no idea what this building is, but I think it's gorgeous. Isn't that a pretty little building?

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Then there's this contrast between old and new — typical Louisville.

Finally, here is a picture that is probably no good, but I like it. You can see the blue hills of Indiana in the distance and, if you look carefully toward the right, one of Louisville's bridges. And the sky looks JUST LIKE a watercolor wash of a sky. It was amazing!

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Then it got freakin' HOT up there in the sunlight, so I got in the air conditioned car, drove around on the roof for a couple of turns just because I could, and came home.

A good day.

WRITING PROMPT: Go someplace nearby and take some pictures. Look carefully at what you're taking the picture of and remember (or note down) why you want to take that picture (the cow looks so sweet, that building over there is interesting). Compare the pictures to your notes and/or memory.

MA

Guest Floyd Hyatt on Illustrating Perceptions in the Novel

This is the second in a series of posts by author Floyd Hyatt. I'm so fortunate to have his generous contributions and advice.

Illustrating Perceptions in the Novel

Building imagery for a story has several aspects. Aspects complicated in the sense that usually the views are pulled from more than one perspective. There is the narrator's perspective of what is seen, and also the visualizations sponsored by the lead and other characters that inhabit the story.

Human perception is, in some respects, a matter of focus. The mind interprets reality, and codifies it. We cognitively "see" largely what is considered important by this process. It is a seamless process, cognitively invisible to us. A tire lying on its side in a driveway appears round to us, for instance, even though in reality, the image of it on the retina is an ellipse.  We may, or may not recognize, or "see" the tread pattern on the tire, depending on length of our view time, depending on what we are intent on looking for in the scene, what occupies us at the time, many things. The mind also fills blanks in our perception, inferring similarities provided by visual cues, that may not even be present in the current image – the basis for many "optical Illusions".  It is quite likely the extent of variation between what is "seen" as opposed what is demonstrably "there" in the world may be even greater than we currently understand.  These fine discriminators aside, it is a concept of use, and important to a writer.

Narrative description:

This largely applies to third person point of view narration. The author can choose to use narrative descriptions to paint a picture of the general stage upon which the story is told, or only identify those aspects of it important to the story or scene. Both work, because the reader is familiar with the inherent process of human visualization. It is not a stretch of imaginative process for a reader to accept either a scan of the "set" or to focus on specific aspects of importance.

The thing to remember is, the narrator is not, in this case, a character in the tale. The description should avoid a focus that would be better attributed to a story character. That is, to keep in straight third POV, the narrator should not suddenly acquire the persona of a character or the character's viewpoint, without attribution.  Often, the general narrative scene, and the character's view of it, may differ, and that difference may even help to define the character, be used as a device within the story.

General advice would include keeping your illustration detail to what sets the scene and only such details as highlight it to the story's purpose. This mimics human perception, the picking and choosing the mind naturally does, and actually increases the internal visualization of the reader. Juggling too many details in print places a great interpretive burden on the reader, who now must juggle and fit many elements together before he can internally build the image, which can slow reading, and in some cases even keep the image from gelling at all.

The author is interpreting on paper an image he already has, the reader struggles to build an unknown image from what is presented. There are no hard, fast rules for this; it is a process writers struggle with and through. Consider the following narrated scene, built by Fred Saberhagen in Dominion:

Snider, Lieutenant of Homicide, was occupied at the moment with lighting a cigarette. Match flame glinted orange on his dark face, pale on the pink of his cupped palms. There were a couple of patrolmen in the alley also, one standing just on either side of the bright circle cast by the lamps that had been brought in to help with the photography.

Saberhagen delineates the detail of the hands of what we now know to be a detective of African ancestry, draws attention to match-light, and reflections which tells us it is dark out, lamp lit, and only mentions enough about the others there, to place them in the "set".  But the image is built; we can easily imagine the scene, the details mimicking, perhaps, those features to which the mind would naturally be drawn. The prime character's perception of the scene is avoided, and is, as yet, undisclosed. Had the author tried to include a list of smaller objects, further details of dress, the body before him that is later described, within this single passage, we would be left to take it all in at one stroke and reorganize it in our mind before attempting to build an image. By which time, we would have been left with only a cerebral sketch, and not the image achieved here.

Perhaps the character later adds to it. Smells something, is irritated by something, etc. This would be non-narrative or character-driven description, in my book, even though still part of Third POV. Such description would be character-driven, -attributed description.  Attributive description clearly is there to tell us something about the character as about anything else, and carries his/her personal stamp, not the narrative neutral view.  

While a matter of taste, I appreciate this division in a story.  It is, in essence, part of show versus tell, as I interpret that distinction to be. Tales are "told" by definition. We are, in fact reading them, after all. Thing is, a story must carry on the tale in words, that must be taken in one at a time, or in groups, and interpreted. They must tell that tale in such a way that my persistence of memory carries my focus on through the flow if it to its conclusion. Too many asides, or wandering detail, or unnecessary description, interferes with that journey, slows it, loses my sense of continuity inside the world presented.  So for me, it is best the author give me a focus, and choose his details deliberately. 

F.A.Hyatt 

WRITING PROMPT: Describe a scene from the third-person neutral narrative point of view and the same scene from the character's point of view.

MA

Free Sample Sunday – The Day The Dog Ate Popcorn

This bit of almost entirely true flash fiction appeared in the Southern Indiana Writers Group's very first anthology in 1994. The anthology is no longer in print, but here is the story.

THE DAY THE DOG ATE POPCORN

by Marian Allen

 We moved from Louisville in search of a clean environment and got chickens. Go figure.

It was what you might call a minimalist flock–three. The smallest was Hennessy. The middle one was Chickabiddy. The biggest, most aggressive one, was Popcorn. Open the henhouse door, and Popcorn would be there, alert, balanced, beak and claws loose in their sheaths. "Go ahead," she seemed to cluck. "Make my day."

We had two dogs. Honeybunny was a big dumb blonde; her hobby was rolling in compost heaps. Lizzie (officially, Lizzie Diggumsmacks Allen), was a Cairn Terrier; her hobby was growling.

There were six of us: Myself, Charlie, and the kids (Annie, Beth, Ruthie, and Meg). Six people, five critters. That should have given us the balance of power. How was I to know Mother Nature had her thumb on the scale?

~   ~   *   ~   ~

Now, we raised the chickens in a cloistered henhouse, but a day came when we remitted their vows, and they roamed free.

As the day passed, Lizzie studied the chickens, and apparently concluded that these were creatures she could do business with. She shook herself, as a man might roll up his sleeves, and moseyed toward the hens.

"Lizzie's going after the chickens," Ruthie warned me.

"She's not going fast enough to be after the chickens."

Lizzie began to pick up speed.

"There she goes!" Beth shouted.

Ruthie snatched up a switch: long, slim, whippy, and more suited to elevating impressionable young minds than to driving off determined carnivores.

The terrier struck. Popcorn, surprised by a rear attack, tore herself from Lizzie's jaws.

I was raised in the inner city; I wasn't accustomed to the random violence of the barnyard. I screamed. Little Meg, in my arms, tried to climb my head for a better view.

"Charlie! Lizzie's killing the chickens!"

Popcorn streaked around the edge of the cleared land. Lizzie was right after her, her mouth foaming with feathers. Ruthie began to gain ground.

Lizzie caught Popcorn and Ruthie caught Lizzie. Ruthie thrashed at the terrier while Popcorn flopped, like a boxer saved by the bell.

Charlie pelted around the corner of the house, brandishing his weed-cutter.

The new cry rose: "Daddy's going to kill Lizzie!"

Charlie dropped his tool and went at the dog hands-on.

Lizzie bit him.

"You bit me, you dog!"

Lizzie knew when to fish and when to cut bait. Now she ran, dribbling feathers and a drop or two of the Master's blood.

Popcorn yet lived.

~   ~   *   ~   ~

"How do you treat a chicken who's been bitten by a dog?" I asked the vet.

He didn't answer. He didn't quite laugh.

"You don't get many calls about chickens, do you?"

"Not chickens with dog bites, no. Most people–if there's enough left after the dog finishes–most people turn the chicken's legs over its head and stick it in the stew pot."

How practical. How robust. How impossible.

We healed Popcorn's wounds, but perhaps her heart was broken. Perhaps the shame of being outmaneuvered, then taken in retreat, was too much for her code of honor. Popcorn passed away in her sleep one night and was mourned by all who knew her.

Sic transit gloria chicken – so passes the glory that was Popcorn.

WRITING PROMPT: Your character has a "food animal" for a pet.

MA

A Satisfying, Frustrating Day

I met my friend Jane at the Shiraz Mediterranean Grill for lunch. #4 Daughter joined us, which was extra nice. This was the one on Frankfort Avenue, at the Clifton Apartments or whatever they are. Near Sister Dragonfly.

–Oh, this is in Louisville, Kentucky, in case you don't know.

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#4 Daughter got one falafel and the Shiraz salad and was surprised by this treat, the scraping from the bottom of the rice pot. Listen, I'm not being sarcastic: that stuff is HEAVEN! She was very kind and shared it with us. It made me glad I raised her to be generous.

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Jane and I ordered steak kabobs (Yes, I know, but who can be vegetarian when the beef at Shiraz melts in your mouth? Not I, that's who.) and sides. Hers were, um, tabbouleh salad and quinoa salad, both of which are very nice however I got some other kind of salad and eggplant. The orange bit is the eggplant. The guy said it was his grandmother's recipe, and that she made it for him for breakfast in Iran. It has eggplant and egg and spices and who knows what all and it is delicious!

We also had basmati rice, which I suspect was chello. If you want to know what that is and how it's cooked, say so in the comments and I'll post my recipe.

So that's my review of the Shiraz Mediterranean Grill. I think I've reviewed it before. If so, I loved it, and I loved it again today. Here's a link to the address and stuff, but don't expect to find a web site for it. That web site link is bogus. I don't know if they lost track of it or it got hijacked or what.

We had a great day, as we always do. The frustration came from my having such difficulty doing the welcome tab for my Facebook Author page. I think I may have gotten it down, but then I decided I didn't want to just do a tab, I wanted to do an image map, so that's a whole raft of other nested projects. Not a big deal for people who know how to do it (of which I hope to soon be one), but a real head-scratcher for me.

I love a challenge, don't you? Yeah, me neither.

WRITING PROMPT: Give a character a challenge which he or she would rather not be given.

MA

Increasing Your Facebook Impact

I've been all about Facebook this week, although I haven't made much progress. Nothing is ever as easy as the experts make it look. That's why they're the experts and I'm not.

I do have a Facebook Author Page (I refuse to call it a fan page, since most of my Likes have come from friends and fellow writers). I'm trying to make it fancy, but it isn't very fancy just yet.

A couple of experts are trying to help me fancy it up. Social Media Examiner is not just about Facebook, but about Twitter and Google Plus (to which I have not yet been invited–hint, hint) and the web in general.

Jo Barnes of the Social Networking Academy is also in everybody's corner. I like Jo's enthusiasm and kindness.

Aditya of Hellbound Bloggers claims I can set up a Welcome page for Facebook in two minutes. He lied. Or perhaps I should say, "He doesn't know me very well, if he thinks I can do anything in two minutes." It takes me longer than two minutes to sneeze, okay?

On another note, I've also been enjoying Pat Bean's travel blog. She's hunkered down in one spot this summer, so she's revisiting a trip she took to Africa, complete with the most gorgeous pictures you ever saw! A great way to start the day.

And TOTALLY watch this video of the world's first animated tattoo!

Have a great weekend! See you tomorrow.

WRITING PROMPT: Have a character try to do something supposedly simple that turns out to be very complicated.

MA

Making a Literary Will

Neil Gaiman posted about this in October of 2006, and asked people to pass it on. Typically, I just read his post this morning. But, since I think Neil Gaiman is brilliant, I'm complying.

Here is the link to his post, which contains a PDF download of a literary will drawn up by a lawyer. The lawyer was American, so folks from other countries would need to print it out and take it to a local lawyer and have it okayed or altered. That's a good idea, anyway, since 2006 was a while ago by now and it's best to be sure everything is watertight.

Thanks, Mr. Gaiman!

WRITING PROMPT: A character dies without a will. What surprising thing causes dissension?

MA

We Can Do This The Hard Way Or The Easy Way

Anthony Stemke, he of Grits and Groceries, posted a recipe for English Trifle the other day, along with some history and a gorgeous picture, which I have ganked. Courteously.

Okay, that's the hard way.

A middling way is to be found with this wonderful mix-and-match list at Chowhound.

Here's the MomGoth way:

Leftover cake from the freezer crumbled in the bottom of a glass bowl, canned peaches in raspberry syrup, syrup and all, French vanilla pudding and packaged whipped topping.

Sometimes I like to take a whole day making something complicated and exacting.

Usually not.

WRITING PROMPT: Have a character who plan something meticulous and then have him or her have to do it on the fly.

MA