Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 215
November 7, 2012
Revision: Scenes
In my last writing post, I talked about some things to look for when you're revising a book. Those were big-picture things that mostly have to do with fixing the overall structure and plot of a book. You'll probably need at least two more rounds of revising and editing, especially if you're a beginner. An experienced author may be able to combine phases, but until you get a really good sense of how a book comes together, I recommend doing one pass that covers the structure of the book and the plot, another that drills down into scene structure and then another that deals with the words.
Once you think the plot as a whole works, it's time to make sure you've got the right scenes to tell your story. You may have corrected a lot of problems in that big-picture pass by eliminating the scenes that don't contribute to the plot, making sure the scenes aren't repetitive, or combining scenes to tighten things up. For the scenes that remain, here are some things to look for:
*Is there conflict in each scene? That doesn't mean fighting or bickering, just some sense of tension or struggle, either external or internal. In each scene, some character should be trying to get or accomplish something, and that shouldn't be easy.
* Have you set the stage? I'm really bad about forgetting physical details, so this is something I usually have to add in revisions. Where is the scene taking place? How does this place look, smell, sound, feel? How does that affect what happens? For instance, if the scene takes place in public and the characters are talking about something that should be a secret, that should affect the way they behave -- furtive glances to see if anyone's eavesdropping, keeping voices low, reacting if the other person speaks too loudly, etc. Are there any environmental conditions affecting the characters? Are they hot, cold, wet, smelling something nasty, bombarded by noise? That will affect the way they behave -- acting grumpy because of discomfort, rushing through things because they're eager to get away.
* Do the characters have emotional reactions to what's happening? This is another thing I usually have to add in revisions. Unless your character is a robot, there's probably going to be some emotional response to everything that happens. The level of response will depend on the magnitude of the event. Quite frequently, the emotion will trigger a physical response -- heart rate speeds up, hands shake, that sick feeling in the stomach forms. There can also be an emotional response to a setting -- is it a comfort zone or something that makes someone edgy, like a claustrophobic person in an elevator. Think of the traits and background you've given your characters and make sure they're responding in appropriate and consistent ways. Doing this can add tension and conflict to a scene.
* Are you using subtext? This is really tricky but can be incredibly effective. People don't always say what they really mean in conversation, and the more emotional or important the subject is, the less likely they are to address it directly. For instance, a lot of fights in relationships are over seemingly petty things, but the fights really aren't over who took out the trash last. They're about underlying issues. There may be a contrast between the dialogue and all the nonverbal communication like body language, tone of voice and positioning, and then the emotional response may also tell the story. You get a more interesting scene when the characters aren't directly saying exactly what they mean and convey their real meaning some other way. The point-of-view character may or may not pick up on the subject, but it should be there for the reader.
Once you think the plot as a whole works, it's time to make sure you've got the right scenes to tell your story. You may have corrected a lot of problems in that big-picture pass by eliminating the scenes that don't contribute to the plot, making sure the scenes aren't repetitive, or combining scenes to tighten things up. For the scenes that remain, here are some things to look for:
*Is there conflict in each scene? That doesn't mean fighting or bickering, just some sense of tension or struggle, either external or internal. In each scene, some character should be trying to get or accomplish something, and that shouldn't be easy.
* Have you set the stage? I'm really bad about forgetting physical details, so this is something I usually have to add in revisions. Where is the scene taking place? How does this place look, smell, sound, feel? How does that affect what happens? For instance, if the scene takes place in public and the characters are talking about something that should be a secret, that should affect the way they behave -- furtive glances to see if anyone's eavesdropping, keeping voices low, reacting if the other person speaks too loudly, etc. Are there any environmental conditions affecting the characters? Are they hot, cold, wet, smelling something nasty, bombarded by noise? That will affect the way they behave -- acting grumpy because of discomfort, rushing through things because they're eager to get away.
* Do the characters have emotional reactions to what's happening? This is another thing I usually have to add in revisions. Unless your character is a robot, there's probably going to be some emotional response to everything that happens. The level of response will depend on the magnitude of the event. Quite frequently, the emotion will trigger a physical response -- heart rate speeds up, hands shake, that sick feeling in the stomach forms. There can also be an emotional response to a setting -- is it a comfort zone or something that makes someone edgy, like a claustrophobic person in an elevator. Think of the traits and background you've given your characters and make sure they're responding in appropriate and consistent ways. Doing this can add tension and conflict to a scene.
* Are you using subtext? This is really tricky but can be incredibly effective. People don't always say what they really mean in conversation, and the more emotional or important the subject is, the less likely they are to address it directly. For instance, a lot of fights in relationships are over seemingly petty things, but the fights really aren't over who took out the trash last. They're about underlying issues. There may be a contrast between the dialogue and all the nonverbal communication like body language, tone of voice and positioning, and then the emotional response may also tell the story. You get a more interesting scene when the characters aren't directly saying exactly what they mean and convey their real meaning some other way. The point-of-view character may or may not pick up on the subject, but it should be there for the reader.
November 6, 2012
Revising the Revisions
I've done my civic duty and voted today. With the increasing popularity of early voting, you start to feel like some kind of procrastinating slacker if you wait to vote on election day. But in my case, voting on election day is actually more convenient. The polling place is closer to my house (about two blocks away), and since there are just two precincts in the polling place, there are likely to be fewer people there. With early voting, you can vote anywhere in the county, and there are only two sites in the city. I went to the library (the early voting location) during early voting, and the line went all the way through the library and out the door. They were saying it was nearly an hour wait. Today, it took me maybe 20 minutes, including walking to and from the polling place. They had a constant, steady flow of people, but the only waiting was to wait for them to deal with the person ahead of me. I discovered that I am the very last "S" entry in my precinct's voting register.
My polling place is an elementary school, and as I drew near, I thought there must be some election-day slaughter going on. There were all these horrendous, high-pitched screams. Then I got close enough to see that it was recess. Apparently, you can't have fun without screaming at the top of your lungs. I don't remember screaming like that when I played.
I continue to inch my way through the revisions. One of the difficulties of revising a book is divorcing myself from what I've already written. It's so tempting to want to just fix the words when what I really need to do is scrap a scene entirely. It usually takes at least three passes. First, I fix the words. Then I admit to myself that I need to change things, so I try to change things within what's already written, keeping some bits and scrapping others. Then I finally admit that it actually needs to go in a totally different direction, which means throwing it all out and starting over. I'm down to about a hundred pages to rewrite/revise, but I don't know how much of that will be starting from scratch and how much I can just edit and modify.
There was some minor distraction yesterday in that I felt compelled to clean my kitchen thoroughly. You see, I saw an ant. There was a picture going around Facebook a while ago that showed a house fully engulfed in flames. The caption said, "There was a spider. I panicked. I think it's gone now." This was like that, only with bleach-based cleaning products instead of fire. It's not that I'm afraid of ants. I just don't want them in my kitchen. It seems that this may have been a lone wanderer because I haven't seen more, and they definitely aren't in any of the obvious places for ant infestation, like the sugar bowl. On the up side, my kitchen is now mostly disinfected and scrubbed, and that makes it less likely that other ants will wander by.
I'm getting house cleaning urges, and some cleaning is necessary, but I must get this book done.
My polling place is an elementary school, and as I drew near, I thought there must be some election-day slaughter going on. There were all these horrendous, high-pitched screams. Then I got close enough to see that it was recess. Apparently, you can't have fun without screaming at the top of your lungs. I don't remember screaming like that when I played.
I continue to inch my way through the revisions. One of the difficulties of revising a book is divorcing myself from what I've already written. It's so tempting to want to just fix the words when what I really need to do is scrap a scene entirely. It usually takes at least three passes. First, I fix the words. Then I admit to myself that I need to change things, so I try to change things within what's already written, keeping some bits and scrapping others. Then I finally admit that it actually needs to go in a totally different direction, which means throwing it all out and starting over. I'm down to about a hundred pages to rewrite/revise, but I don't know how much of that will be starting from scratch and how much I can just edit and modify.
There was some minor distraction yesterday in that I felt compelled to clean my kitchen thoroughly. You see, I saw an ant. There was a picture going around Facebook a while ago that showed a house fully engulfed in flames. The caption said, "There was a spider. I panicked. I think it's gone now." This was like that, only with bleach-based cleaning products instead of fire. It's not that I'm afraid of ants. I just don't want them in my kitchen. It seems that this may have been a lone wanderer because I haven't seen more, and they definitely aren't in any of the obvious places for ant infestation, like the sugar bowl. On the up side, my kitchen is now mostly disinfected and scrubbed, and that makes it less likely that other ants will wander by.
I'm getting house cleaning urges, and some cleaning is necessary, but I must get this book done.
November 5, 2012
Hooray for Monday!
You know you love your job when you actually like Mondays. To me, Mondays are quiet, restful days, especially after a weekend like this one. I had two parties, one on Friday night and one on Saturday. Neither ran all that late, but they still made for long days. There was a surprise impromptu Doctor Who discussion late in the Friday party. That wasn't a geek gathering, which was why the initial reference was a surprise (I don't think the person who made it expected anyone else to get it), and then there was the usual sort of moment of connection you get when you find that someone else has the same geeky interest that you weren't expecting to find in that sort of group. A lot of the people were talking about favorite wines, and then suddenly Doctor Who comes up.
Am I being a shameless namedropper if I say that the Saturday party was at Rachel Caine's house? I've known her forever, so occasionally I forget that one of my friends is a famous bestselling author.
After singing for two services Sunday, I just came home and collapsed. Now, thanks to the time change, I was up and going earlier than normal (in spite of staying up way too late), and I'm hoping that will make for a productive day, since I have a lot of work to do. I got a scene revised on Friday, then realized that I did it wrong. I'd planned how to revise it, then didn't follow the plan, and upon further reflection I decided the plan was right. What happened was that I wasn't willing to stray that far from what was already written. That's why this seems to be a two steps forward, three steps back process. I often find several scenes later that a much earlier scene that I've already revised was still wrong, so I have to backtrack.
I think I say this with every book, but this book may be the death of me. I knew the story would be challenging when I came up with it. I just didn't realize how challenging. I'm pretty sure I'll come out of this a better writer.
Now I just have to step away from the Internet for the afternoon, turn off the phone (strangely, I'm not getting political calls, but I am getting at least one "we're a remodeling company doing some work on one of your neighbors' homes, and while we're in your area, we can stop by and give you a free estimate" calls a day -- I guess the high-tech version of the guy in a truck who rings your doorbell and tells you he just did some work on a neighbor's house and has some material left over, so he can give you a reduced price for doing work on your house) and get some work done.
Am I being a shameless namedropper if I say that the Saturday party was at Rachel Caine's house? I've known her forever, so occasionally I forget that one of my friends is a famous bestselling author.
After singing for two services Sunday, I just came home and collapsed. Now, thanks to the time change, I was up and going earlier than normal (in spite of staying up way too late), and I'm hoping that will make for a productive day, since I have a lot of work to do. I got a scene revised on Friday, then realized that I did it wrong. I'd planned how to revise it, then didn't follow the plan, and upon further reflection I decided the plan was right. What happened was that I wasn't willing to stray that far from what was already written. That's why this seems to be a two steps forward, three steps back process. I often find several scenes later that a much earlier scene that I've already revised was still wrong, so I have to backtrack.
I think I say this with every book, but this book may be the death of me. I knew the story would be challenging when I came up with it. I just didn't realize how challenging. I'm pretty sure I'll come out of this a better writer.
Now I just have to step away from the Internet for the afternoon, turn off the phone (strangely, I'm not getting political calls, but I am getting at least one "we're a remodeling company doing some work on one of your neighbors' homes, and while we're in your area, we can stop by and give you a free estimate" calls a day -- I guess the high-tech version of the guy in a truck who rings your doorbell and tells you he just did some work on a neighbor's house and has some material left over, so he can give you a reduced price for doing work on your house) and get some work done.
November 2, 2012
Creative Circuits Firing
Since I have something like a month's worth of dance classes to make up, I took the beginner class last night. In my regular intermediate class, I feel like a total klutz. In the beginner class, I feel like Anna Pavlova. It's not so much the contrast in skill level with the other students as it is my mastery of the material. In the beginner class, they really focus on form, slowing it down to really learn it the right way. Since I already know these things pretty well, that allows me to focus on making it pretty. The intermediate class moves more quickly and does more advanced work, so while I'm getting it done, it doesn't look so nice. I'm definitely more of an adagio dancer than an allegro dancer. Slow and graceful and making use of balance and strength are what I do well. Quick and bouncy don't work so well for me. I'll be taking two classes a week for the rest of the semester, so it'll be interesting to see if my dancing improves overall. I'm hoping the refresher from the beginning class starts making the intermediate class easier for me.
I've got a busy weekend ahead, with a wine tasting party tonight and a meeting/party tomorrow. Sunday's supposed to be rainy, and I've got a good book waiting for me, so that will be quality time with the sofa day. Meanwhile, I'm really close to finishing the revisions on this book. I've reached my target word count, though I imagine some of those words are about to be cut and then replaced, and I have most of the rest outlined. It would have been nice if I could have figured out this part of the book before I wrote it, but I think I had to kind of play around with the circumstances before I could know what was possible.
But I'm at the really difficult and dangerous phase of the creative process in which the creative circuits are firing full-blast and it's difficult to focus on this project because there are all these other things out there that I want to work on.
After I get this book off my plate, my agent will probably have revision notes on the insanely quirky contemporary fantasy I've written that she says she loves but has some suggestions on. But what I'm thinking the most about is a story idea I came up with while I was in college that I actually wrote (and even won a contest with) in my 20s that didn't sell. I took another look at it and found that I still like the situation, story and characters, but the actual events in the plot need work. What I hadn't considered is that the voice is very young adult and the characters are very young. So I think I'll tackle it as a young adult traditional fantasy -- yeah, one of those quasi-medieval things. I'm starting to do the world-building research for this one.
There's another book that's been lurking at the back of my mind for a couple of years, gradually taking shape. It's going to take a lot of research, and I've been doing bits and pieces of that research, so every so often it pops up to be played with. Either this one is going to be absolutely brilliant or it will drive me mad and I'll be terribly disappointed in myself once I start writing it and the words don't match the brilliance that was in my head. Now there's also that wacky portal fantasy idea that popped into my head last week, and I'm still toying with ideas for a paranormal mystery series. There are also a few other things lurking or in the works, and some of them pop up at the strangest times.
I suppose that means I should spend more time writing. But the more I write, the more ideas I get.
I've got a busy weekend ahead, with a wine tasting party tonight and a meeting/party tomorrow. Sunday's supposed to be rainy, and I've got a good book waiting for me, so that will be quality time with the sofa day. Meanwhile, I'm really close to finishing the revisions on this book. I've reached my target word count, though I imagine some of those words are about to be cut and then replaced, and I have most of the rest outlined. It would have been nice if I could have figured out this part of the book before I wrote it, but I think I had to kind of play around with the circumstances before I could know what was possible.
But I'm at the really difficult and dangerous phase of the creative process in which the creative circuits are firing full-blast and it's difficult to focus on this project because there are all these other things out there that I want to work on.
After I get this book off my plate, my agent will probably have revision notes on the insanely quirky contemporary fantasy I've written that she says she loves but has some suggestions on. But what I'm thinking the most about is a story idea I came up with while I was in college that I actually wrote (and even won a contest with) in my 20s that didn't sell. I took another look at it and found that I still like the situation, story and characters, but the actual events in the plot need work. What I hadn't considered is that the voice is very young adult and the characters are very young. So I think I'll tackle it as a young adult traditional fantasy -- yeah, one of those quasi-medieval things. I'm starting to do the world-building research for this one.
There's another book that's been lurking at the back of my mind for a couple of years, gradually taking shape. It's going to take a lot of research, and I've been doing bits and pieces of that research, so every so often it pops up to be played with. Either this one is going to be absolutely brilliant or it will drive me mad and I'll be terribly disappointed in myself once I start writing it and the words don't match the brilliance that was in my head. Now there's also that wacky portal fantasy idea that popped into my head last week, and I'm still toying with ideas for a paranormal mystery series. There are also a few other things lurking or in the works, and some of them pop up at the strangest times.
I suppose that means I should spend more time writing. But the more I write, the more ideas I get.
November 1, 2012
When Darth Met Mickey ...
I had a pretty good Halloween. I got a fair amount of writing done, watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and had enchiladas. I had other treats planned, but I wasn't hungry for them, so I just ate a couple of pieces of my "just in case" candy that I didn't have to hand out to trick-or-treaters. I wouldn't let my kids trick-or-treat at my house unless I knew the people who lived there because it isn't really directly on the street, and no one who lives around me has kids, so I don't generally get trick-or-treaters. Besides, in this neighborhood full of big, nice houses, it would be inefficient trick-or-treating to focus on the smaller townhouses tucked away in a corner where all the residents are single and/or retired (I'm the baby of our little corner). You go to the nicer houses that are decorated and where the people likely have kids in order to get the best candy haul.
The big geek news of the week is that George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney. That's resulted in some fun photos that have been going around Facebook, like the Death Star with mouse ears, or the Death Star hanging overhead with the "When you wish upon a star" logo below.
But I think my favorite Star Wars/Disney mash-up is an official one. This is what Disney Parks put together, and though I don't normally embed videos, this one is totally worth it. So, Darth Vader, Disney just bought Lucasfilm. What are you going to do next?
Listen very carefully to the music. On the surface, it sounds like the kind of tinkly music they play in all those Disneyland ads, but it's actually a rather familiar theme in a way you've never heard it before. That alone makes this a work of art, and if this is the kind of thing that comes out of this merger, I'm totally on board with it. I have to admire the kind of minds that would come up with this sort of thing.
They've said they'll be putting out new Star Wars movies, but in my wildest dreams, what I'd love them to do is reboot the prequels. Those stories need to be told, but they did it wrong. Now they need to claim that those movies were badly produced Imperial propaganda and set the Disney-Pixar writing team to work on telling the real story. They know character and story and know to focus on that, no matter how many pretty bells and whistles they're throwing at the screen. I think they'd realize that they have to totally scrap the idea of Anakin being the "hero" of the prequels because that puts them in the uncomfortable position of making the Young Hitler Adventures. The hero should be Obi Wan, who's struggling with this kid he loves like a brother but who's going down the wrong path. I'm sure they could get Ewan McGregor back (try to keep him away), and he hasn't aged that much, plus he was actually way too young before to have turned into Alec Guinness in only 20 years after the end of Episode 3. They could scrap everything that wasn't already directly referenced in the original trilogy, which would get rid of Jar Jar, make Luke and Leia's mother less useless, allow Anakin to be a darker, less whiny figure (when out of Lucas's grasp, he'd have to be less of a Mary Sue), scrap that awful immaculate conception pseudo-scientific "midichlorian" nonsense, and just tell the tragic story of a young Jedi who was so full of himself that he was easily seduced by the dark side.
Not that I expect that to happen, but in my geeky mental happy place I'm picturing Pixar writing allowed to go into more complex, adult places, with better acting coming out of a better script and better directing. I am curious about where they might go with the new movies. I've lost track of that expanded universe and haven't even finished the last two Zahn books (his are the only ones I've really liked), but I think I'll always be a Star Wars geek at heart, since that was my gateway drug into science fiction and fantasy.
The big geek news of the week is that George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney. That's resulted in some fun photos that have been going around Facebook, like the Death Star with mouse ears, or the Death Star hanging overhead with the "When you wish upon a star" logo below.
But I think my favorite Star Wars/Disney mash-up is an official one. This is what Disney Parks put together, and though I don't normally embed videos, this one is totally worth it. So, Darth Vader, Disney just bought Lucasfilm. What are you going to do next?
Listen very carefully to the music. On the surface, it sounds like the kind of tinkly music they play in all those Disneyland ads, but it's actually a rather familiar theme in a way you've never heard it before. That alone makes this a work of art, and if this is the kind of thing that comes out of this merger, I'm totally on board with it. I have to admire the kind of minds that would come up with this sort of thing.
They've said they'll be putting out new Star Wars movies, but in my wildest dreams, what I'd love them to do is reboot the prequels. Those stories need to be told, but they did it wrong. Now they need to claim that those movies were badly produced Imperial propaganda and set the Disney-Pixar writing team to work on telling the real story. They know character and story and know to focus on that, no matter how many pretty bells and whistles they're throwing at the screen. I think they'd realize that they have to totally scrap the idea of Anakin being the "hero" of the prequels because that puts them in the uncomfortable position of making the Young Hitler Adventures. The hero should be Obi Wan, who's struggling with this kid he loves like a brother but who's going down the wrong path. I'm sure they could get Ewan McGregor back (try to keep him away), and he hasn't aged that much, plus he was actually way too young before to have turned into Alec Guinness in only 20 years after the end of Episode 3. They could scrap everything that wasn't already directly referenced in the original trilogy, which would get rid of Jar Jar, make Luke and Leia's mother less useless, allow Anakin to be a darker, less whiny figure (when out of Lucas's grasp, he'd have to be less of a Mary Sue), scrap that awful immaculate conception pseudo-scientific "midichlorian" nonsense, and just tell the tragic story of a young Jedi who was so full of himself that he was easily seduced by the dark side.
Not that I expect that to happen, but in my geeky mental happy place I'm picturing Pixar writing allowed to go into more complex, adult places, with better acting coming out of a better script and better directing. I am curious about where they might go with the new movies. I've lost track of that expanded universe and haven't even finished the last two Zahn books (his are the only ones I've really liked), but I think I'll always be a Star Wars geek at heart, since that was my gateway drug into science fiction and fantasy.
October 31, 2012
Enchanted Questions, Halloween Edition
Happy Halloween! It's Enchanted, Inc. question time again!
Where did Owen get the magic-detecting necklace he gave Katie for Christmas? At one point James started to ask about it, but Gloria cut him off like she didn't want the subject brought up. It seemed like the necklace's origins might be rather interesting…
Sorry to disappoint you, but that bit was more about illustrating character than setting up a plot point. Owen bought the necklace and then put a spell on it. Owen gets his magical geekiness from James, even though they're not biologically related, so James was all eager to talk theory and technique about the exact spell Owen came up with. Gloria shut down the conversation before they went off into a rabbit hole that would bore everyone else. It was sort of a "don't even get him started on that subject or we'll never hear the end of it" situation.
I wondered about the crystal balls in the Enchanted, Inc. series. Are they only used inside the building of MSI or do they work like a network as the internet for the magic community?
They're sort of the magical Internet, though I have to admit that I haven't really done much with that concept. It's difficult to explore it in much depth when they don't work for the viewpoint character. The crystal balls are a remnant from my first envisioning of this magical world, when I was trying to depict what a magical office would be like and finding magical equivalents for ordinary things. In other words, it looked cool and was an instant sign that magic was afoot. I think I was trying too hard to be like the Harry Potter universe, where the magical world and the normal world are totally distinct and have entirely different technology. Since then, the development has gone in different directions, but I make sure to keep the crystal balls there so I don't just drop it entirely. In a way, it's very convenient that they don't work for Katie because I can stay vague about it and still keep them in the picture.
And then a question I've been getting a lot of lately:
I'm frightfully curious if you have any idea as to whether you'll be digitally publishing Book 7, or if it will be exclusive to the Japanese publisher?
I don't know for sure yet. I'm still writing the book, so I haven't made any decisions, and it will have to be something I discuss with my agent, since I'm doing the digital publishing through her platform. Books 5 and 6 have been fairly successful, but I don't know for sure what the return on investment has been, and I don't know what else might happen between now and when I'd even have the book ready for publication, so I'm not going to say anything definitive, though I would say that it looks likely, but I have no idea what the timetable would be. Vague enough for you?
I think that's all the questions I had that I haven't answered yet, though I've let my e-mail get way out of control, so I may have lost some.
In other news, speaking of book 7, I had a bit of a breakthrough yesterday, one of those things that seems kind of "duh" in retrospect, but that somehow didn't occur to me until now, and it will really change things for the better. It was so big that it took me a while to wrap my brain around it and figure out how the ripple effect will go.
So, my Halloween plans mostly involve writing. There's no choir, and I seldom get trick-or-treaters. There aren't a lot of kids in my part of the neighborhood, and my house faces a courtyard instead of a street, so the front door isn't visible from the street. There may be some goodies for me, and when I'm not writing, I've got a good ghost story to read.
Where did Owen get the magic-detecting necklace he gave Katie for Christmas? At one point James started to ask about it, but Gloria cut him off like she didn't want the subject brought up. It seemed like the necklace's origins might be rather interesting…
Sorry to disappoint you, but that bit was more about illustrating character than setting up a plot point. Owen bought the necklace and then put a spell on it. Owen gets his magical geekiness from James, even though they're not biologically related, so James was all eager to talk theory and technique about the exact spell Owen came up with. Gloria shut down the conversation before they went off into a rabbit hole that would bore everyone else. It was sort of a "don't even get him started on that subject or we'll never hear the end of it" situation.
I wondered about the crystal balls in the Enchanted, Inc. series. Are they only used inside the building of MSI or do they work like a network as the internet for the magic community?
They're sort of the magical Internet, though I have to admit that I haven't really done much with that concept. It's difficult to explore it in much depth when they don't work for the viewpoint character. The crystal balls are a remnant from my first envisioning of this magical world, when I was trying to depict what a magical office would be like and finding magical equivalents for ordinary things. In other words, it looked cool and was an instant sign that magic was afoot. I think I was trying too hard to be like the Harry Potter universe, where the magical world and the normal world are totally distinct and have entirely different technology. Since then, the development has gone in different directions, but I make sure to keep the crystal balls there so I don't just drop it entirely. In a way, it's very convenient that they don't work for Katie because I can stay vague about it and still keep them in the picture.
And then a question I've been getting a lot of lately:
I'm frightfully curious if you have any idea as to whether you'll be digitally publishing Book 7, or if it will be exclusive to the Japanese publisher?
I don't know for sure yet. I'm still writing the book, so I haven't made any decisions, and it will have to be something I discuss with my agent, since I'm doing the digital publishing through her platform. Books 5 and 6 have been fairly successful, but I don't know for sure what the return on investment has been, and I don't know what else might happen between now and when I'd even have the book ready for publication, so I'm not going to say anything definitive, though I would say that it looks likely, but I have no idea what the timetable would be. Vague enough for you?
I think that's all the questions I had that I haven't answered yet, though I've let my e-mail get way out of control, so I may have lost some.
In other news, speaking of book 7, I had a bit of a breakthrough yesterday, one of those things that seems kind of "duh" in retrospect, but that somehow didn't occur to me until now, and it will really change things for the better. It was so big that it took me a while to wrap my brain around it and figure out how the ripple effect will go.
So, my Halloween plans mostly involve writing. There's no choir, and I seldom get trick-or-treaters. There aren't a lot of kids in my part of the neighborhood, and my house faces a courtyard instead of a street, so the front door isn't visible from the street. There may be some goodies for me, and when I'm not writing, I've got a good ghost story to read.
October 30, 2012
What Doesn't Work
Because of the ridiculous amount of spam comments I've been receiving lately, I've changed my settings to log IP addresses of anonymous commenters. I'm hoping maybe that will deter the bots, and that's the only way I'll be using that feature. I likely won't ever go back and track anyone down, unless they're being abusive. I've never had anyone get ugly in comments, so I don't think that will be a problem. I just want to try to make it harder for people to sell Ugg boots (seriously? I thought those were over) by leaving comments at my blog.
I made actual progress yesterday. Yay! Though I'm about to cut a huge chunk of book and replace it with entirely new material, so it will feel like I've lost ground. However, I realized that incorporating one of my literary bucket list items will do a lot for enhancing tension and bringing out conflict, so the new material should be tons of fun to write. Come to think of it, it involves two literary bucket list items, but one was already there.
I've worked my way through the library stash from the latest round of recommendations, and I'm afraid some of the fantasy recommendations weren't quite my cup of tea. Not that they were bad books -- in fact, if I were writing a review for a magazine or newspaper, it would be positive -- but they weren't really what I was looking for. With that in mind, I think it might be informative to discuss why they didn't work for me even though I liked a lot about them.
First, there was Hounded by Kevin Hearne. The book is about a 2,000 (or more) year-old Druid whose magic keeps him looking like a 21-year-old. He's living in modern Arizona and running a bookstore, hiding out from the enemy he took a magical sword from ages ago. What he didn't anticipate was his enemy learning to use the Internet to track him down. I loved the characters and the set-up, thought the writing was great and laughed out loud a lot, but I wasn't crazy about the story itself. It took me a while to read the book because of this, which is weird because when I like the characters this much, the plot usually doesn't matter all that much to me. I think my issue is that I'm not all that fond of "the gods are real!" plots. This was one of the topics that came up in that panel on faith in fantasy at Worldcon, where somehow the faith loses something if the god is a character who can show up and have tea with you or when the god is who you're fighting -- literally, not metaphorically. I don't know enough about Druidism to know if this is an element of that belief system, but outside of actual mythology, I prefer for gods to be something people believe in and ascribe things to, maybe even talk to, without the gods actually showing up and talking back. It's even more jarring in a modern setting. Weirdly, I like the clash of images when magic shows up in a modern setting, so I guess this is just one of my quirks. Based on the preview for the next book, he'll be going up against Thor, so that one likely won't be my cup of tea, either. And yet I think I'd happily read an entire book in which Atticus, his dog with the overactive imagination, his werewolf and vampire lawyers and his feisty Irish widow neighbor just hung out or irritated his nosy neighbor who's too eager to call the cops.
The other one that I didn't quite get into was The Time of the Dark by Barbara Hambly. It's a really interesting take on the portal fantasy, in which the two worlds coming closer than usual means that a woman's dreams actually take her to the other world, which brings her to the attention of a wizard in the other world. Since his world is under attack, he goes to her in her world to get help hiding the infant prince, but when the enemies manage to follow him and he narrowly escapes with the baby back to his world, he ends up bringing the woman and the biker type who happened to be at the hideout with him. Then they realize they'll have to defeat the enemy before they can get home, or else they'll bring the enemy to their world. There were a lot of interesting things in this book, including some different approaches to portal fantasy -- like the "real" world characters don't seem to be Destined, Chosen Ones With Magical Specialness, just people who turn out to be useful at a bad time and who happen to meet the guy who does seem to be pivotal. I just didn't connect very well to the characters or to the story.
I think this one comes down to being a good explanation of what I see as the difference between intimate and epic fantasy. One thing that kept me from getting too involved with the book was that the scale was so grand. The enemy they're fighting is essentially a plague of locusts, only they're not insects and are more dangerous and scary. It's a faceless mass with what appears to be purely primal motivations (feeding), so it comes across as a Man vs. Nature conflict, which is pretty epic in scope, but it's so epic that I have a hard time relating to it. Then again, it's essentially Aliens (but written before that movie came out), and that's one of my favorite movies. The scope seems to be the difference for me. Aliens had a very defined and limited reach -- there were just a few characters, and they were all the people affected, as opposed to a few people with names who represent a larger mass of thousands affected. There was also a limited space to work in rather than the whole world, and there was a tightly defined timeline -- at first it was a countdown of how long they had to hold out before help could arrive, and then it became a ticking clock of having to escape before things blew up. Plus, in addition to the faceless mass with primal motivations, there was a human villain they could talk to who had more complex motivations. I guess that's what I mean by intimate vs. epic -- we're focused on a few people, the story and its effects are limited in scope to mostly affecting those people, there's a villain you can see and talk to, and there's a defined end in sight as opposed to endless years of misery, if they can even survive that long.
Not that every book must be that way. It's just why this book didn't quite grab me even though it was well-written and quite original. I might look for the sequel eventually because it did seem to be moving into more interesting territory for me toward the end, and what's being set up seemed more like my kind of story. I think I mostly came away from this book feeling oppressed and hopeless rather than like I'd had a great adventure, and it's possible that the end of the trilogy gives more of that sense of completion.
I made actual progress yesterday. Yay! Though I'm about to cut a huge chunk of book and replace it with entirely new material, so it will feel like I've lost ground. However, I realized that incorporating one of my literary bucket list items will do a lot for enhancing tension and bringing out conflict, so the new material should be tons of fun to write. Come to think of it, it involves two literary bucket list items, but one was already there.
I've worked my way through the library stash from the latest round of recommendations, and I'm afraid some of the fantasy recommendations weren't quite my cup of tea. Not that they were bad books -- in fact, if I were writing a review for a magazine or newspaper, it would be positive -- but they weren't really what I was looking for. With that in mind, I think it might be informative to discuss why they didn't work for me even though I liked a lot about them.
First, there was Hounded by Kevin Hearne. The book is about a 2,000 (or more) year-old Druid whose magic keeps him looking like a 21-year-old. He's living in modern Arizona and running a bookstore, hiding out from the enemy he took a magical sword from ages ago. What he didn't anticipate was his enemy learning to use the Internet to track him down. I loved the characters and the set-up, thought the writing was great and laughed out loud a lot, but I wasn't crazy about the story itself. It took me a while to read the book because of this, which is weird because when I like the characters this much, the plot usually doesn't matter all that much to me. I think my issue is that I'm not all that fond of "the gods are real!" plots. This was one of the topics that came up in that panel on faith in fantasy at Worldcon, where somehow the faith loses something if the god is a character who can show up and have tea with you or when the god is who you're fighting -- literally, not metaphorically. I don't know enough about Druidism to know if this is an element of that belief system, but outside of actual mythology, I prefer for gods to be something people believe in and ascribe things to, maybe even talk to, without the gods actually showing up and talking back. It's even more jarring in a modern setting. Weirdly, I like the clash of images when magic shows up in a modern setting, so I guess this is just one of my quirks. Based on the preview for the next book, he'll be going up against Thor, so that one likely won't be my cup of tea, either. And yet I think I'd happily read an entire book in which Atticus, his dog with the overactive imagination, his werewolf and vampire lawyers and his feisty Irish widow neighbor just hung out or irritated his nosy neighbor who's too eager to call the cops.
The other one that I didn't quite get into was The Time of the Dark by Barbara Hambly. It's a really interesting take on the portal fantasy, in which the two worlds coming closer than usual means that a woman's dreams actually take her to the other world, which brings her to the attention of a wizard in the other world. Since his world is under attack, he goes to her in her world to get help hiding the infant prince, but when the enemies manage to follow him and he narrowly escapes with the baby back to his world, he ends up bringing the woman and the biker type who happened to be at the hideout with him. Then they realize they'll have to defeat the enemy before they can get home, or else they'll bring the enemy to their world. There were a lot of interesting things in this book, including some different approaches to portal fantasy -- like the "real" world characters don't seem to be Destined, Chosen Ones With Magical Specialness, just people who turn out to be useful at a bad time and who happen to meet the guy who does seem to be pivotal. I just didn't connect very well to the characters or to the story.
I think this one comes down to being a good explanation of what I see as the difference between intimate and epic fantasy. One thing that kept me from getting too involved with the book was that the scale was so grand. The enemy they're fighting is essentially a plague of locusts, only they're not insects and are more dangerous and scary. It's a faceless mass with what appears to be purely primal motivations (feeding), so it comes across as a Man vs. Nature conflict, which is pretty epic in scope, but it's so epic that I have a hard time relating to it. Then again, it's essentially Aliens (but written before that movie came out), and that's one of my favorite movies. The scope seems to be the difference for me. Aliens had a very defined and limited reach -- there were just a few characters, and they were all the people affected, as opposed to a few people with names who represent a larger mass of thousands affected. There was also a limited space to work in rather than the whole world, and there was a tightly defined timeline -- at first it was a countdown of how long they had to hold out before help could arrive, and then it became a ticking clock of having to escape before things blew up. Plus, in addition to the faceless mass with primal motivations, there was a human villain they could talk to who had more complex motivations. I guess that's what I mean by intimate vs. epic -- we're focused on a few people, the story and its effects are limited in scope to mostly affecting those people, there's a villain you can see and talk to, and there's a defined end in sight as opposed to endless years of misery, if they can even survive that long.
Not that every book must be that way. It's just why this book didn't quite grab me even though it was well-written and quite original. I might look for the sequel eventually because it did seem to be moving into more interesting territory for me toward the end, and what's being set up seemed more like my kind of story. I think I mostly came away from this book feeling oppressed and hopeless rather than like I'd had a great adventure, and it's possible that the end of the trilogy gives more of that sense of completion.
October 29, 2012
Still More Follow-Up
This was Halloween party weekend, and wouldn't you know, I never even got out my camera to have someone take a picture of my costume. Nothing has even shown up on Facebook. I must have been functioning in stealth mode. Which would make a good costume, but I'd have to find a way to represent it in costume form. But then if it was too clever, there would be a lot of pictures taken of it, which would mean it, by definition, wasn't stealth mode.
This is kind of a week off for me because I don't have children's choir or choir rehearsal. I'm going to try for two dance classes, but I turned my ankle on Saturday, so we'll see how that goes. It never swelled up at all, and it seems to be entirely functional, just a bit stiff and not so much sore as feeling a bit "different," so we'll see if I'm up to dancing tomorrow if I continue resting it today. In the future, if my leg falls asleep while I'm sitting at my desk, I will wait until feeling returns completely before I try going down the stairs. Fortunately, it was only stepping off the last step onto the floor when I suddenly couldn't feel where the floor was and the foot wouldn't take my weight, so I didn't actually fall. I just stepped badly. Actually, in the future I should probably sit properly at my desk instead of twisting myself up into odd positions in my chair that lead to my legs falling asleep. Ergonomics are our friend.
I came up with a really cool new twist to throw into the current book that I think is totally in character (and not doing it wasn't in character). And I think I've found another issue that means I'll have to go back a few chapters to fix it. I sometimes feel it's two steps forward, three steps back. But I do know what needs to be done today, and I have nothing else to do other than rest my slightly sore ankle.
Revisiting my gripe about the premise of Easy A: I found a message board discussion about it, and a lot of the posters there seemed to have the same problem I had with the idea that anyone in a California high school in this day and age would care about a rumor that a "nobody" that no one even knew had had sex. But someone pointed out that the entire movie was her telling her side of the story, so she's not an entirely reliable narrator. I'll have to watch it again sometime to see if this works, but that poster said that the only people we actually see confronting her about it are members of that hyper-religious group. Otherwise, she just feels self-conscious, like she thinks everyone is looking at her and talking about her. That's when she puts on a bit of attitude, starts dressing a little different and walking with a bit of swagger, so people are more likely to notice her. The real rumors around the school only start after half the school is on the other side of the door when she's faking noisy sex during a party, and that would tend to give her a reputation, and it only escalated when she started agreeing to say that she'd done various things in order to enhance the reputations of all the school's losers. Now I can relax about that one issue that kept taking me out of the movie, though I'm still going to be irked that they were having the hyper-evangelical people coming from what appeared to be a mainline Protestant church.
While resting my ankle yesterday afternoon, I finally caught up with all of Elementary via OnDemand, and I really like that show. On the other hand, while I liked the pilot of Last Resort, I've only watched one episode since then. It seems to be something I have to be in the right mood to watch, and I have to actually watch it instead of using it as background noise, so I keep putting off watching it. In fact, I caught up on all of Elementary because I checked the episode expiration dates for Last Resort and found that I still have a few more weeks to get around to the first episode I still haven't watched. I've also found myself getting more and more into Chicago Fire, which isn't the sort of thing I normally like. It does make good background noise, and I like the characters enough to want to know what happens to them next.
And now for what I hope to be a productive writing day.
This is kind of a week off for me because I don't have children's choir or choir rehearsal. I'm going to try for two dance classes, but I turned my ankle on Saturday, so we'll see how that goes. It never swelled up at all, and it seems to be entirely functional, just a bit stiff and not so much sore as feeling a bit "different," so we'll see if I'm up to dancing tomorrow if I continue resting it today. In the future, if my leg falls asleep while I'm sitting at my desk, I will wait until feeling returns completely before I try going down the stairs. Fortunately, it was only stepping off the last step onto the floor when I suddenly couldn't feel where the floor was and the foot wouldn't take my weight, so I didn't actually fall. I just stepped badly. Actually, in the future I should probably sit properly at my desk instead of twisting myself up into odd positions in my chair that lead to my legs falling asleep. Ergonomics are our friend.
I came up with a really cool new twist to throw into the current book that I think is totally in character (and not doing it wasn't in character). And I think I've found another issue that means I'll have to go back a few chapters to fix it. I sometimes feel it's two steps forward, three steps back. But I do know what needs to be done today, and I have nothing else to do other than rest my slightly sore ankle.
Revisiting my gripe about the premise of Easy A: I found a message board discussion about it, and a lot of the posters there seemed to have the same problem I had with the idea that anyone in a California high school in this day and age would care about a rumor that a "nobody" that no one even knew had had sex. But someone pointed out that the entire movie was her telling her side of the story, so she's not an entirely reliable narrator. I'll have to watch it again sometime to see if this works, but that poster said that the only people we actually see confronting her about it are members of that hyper-religious group. Otherwise, she just feels self-conscious, like she thinks everyone is looking at her and talking about her. That's when she puts on a bit of attitude, starts dressing a little different and walking with a bit of swagger, so people are more likely to notice her. The real rumors around the school only start after half the school is on the other side of the door when she's faking noisy sex during a party, and that would tend to give her a reputation, and it only escalated when she started agreeing to say that she'd done various things in order to enhance the reputations of all the school's losers. Now I can relax about that one issue that kept taking me out of the movie, though I'm still going to be irked that they were having the hyper-evangelical people coming from what appeared to be a mainline Protestant church.
While resting my ankle yesterday afternoon, I finally caught up with all of Elementary via OnDemand, and I really like that show. On the other hand, while I liked the pilot of Last Resort, I've only watched one episode since then. It seems to be something I have to be in the right mood to watch, and I have to actually watch it instead of using it as background noise, so I keep putting off watching it. In fact, I caught up on all of Elementary because I checked the episode expiration dates for Last Resort and found that I still have a few more weeks to get around to the first episode I still haven't watched. I've also found myself getting more and more into Chicago Fire, which isn't the sort of thing I normally like. It does make good background noise, and I like the characters enough to want to know what happens to them next.
And now for what I hope to be a productive writing day.
October 26, 2012
Friday Follow-ups
I have a number of follow-ups to recent topics.
First, there was an interesting story in the news this week that tied into my reality concerns involving the premise of the movie Easy A. There was apparently a "fantasy slut league" at a California high school in which male students "drafted" female students and earned points for real-life sex with them, and many of the female students knew about it and participated willingly or because of peer pressure. I'd say that the fact that the peer pressure was to participate proves that it would be unlikely for a girl to become the subject of a rumor mill for supposedly having sex once -- unless she was something like the president of the purity club or something else that would make her out to be a huge hypocrite.
Second, the discussion about the portal books continues in writing and publishing circles. The Publishers Weekly "Genreville" blog about fantasy and science fiction recently had a post about this trend and a possible sense of "exhaustion" in the genre -- if we're living in the future, has our world become the "other" world so that we're no longer interested in other worlds? It does seem like a lot of the fantasy published today (including my books) takes place in our world rather than in the "other" world that's traditionally been the setting for fantasy. That's interesting to think about. I tend to go in cycles. I love the juxtaposition of the normal and the abnormal, that sense that maybe this time you'll round the corner and find that things are different. But then sometimes I just want to escape.
I also read that one of the issues with the portal fantasy is that not only is the idea that an ordinary person in our world becomes the Destined, Chosen One With Magical Specialness dangerously close to Mary Sue wish fulfillment, but if you look at it through politically correct goggles, it becomes a metaphor for colonialism, with the ignorant savages needing the more sophisticated outsider to come in and solve all their problems for them, and that makes a lot of editors uncomfortable. Never mind that all these other worlds seem to be very white and European-based.
But that got me started thinking: Why do most of these "other" worlds that people visit through portals seem to be quasi-medieval and European? I suspect to some extent it has to do with the fact that for a very long time, the standard fantasy setting was quasi-medieval and European -- swords, knights, castles and the like, with bonus wizards. Therefore, if you were going to travel from our world to a fantasy world, it had to be what a fantasy world was supposed to look like.
But then if you think about it, some of the earlier portal fantasies didn't involve medieval worlds. Alice's Wonderland was more or less Victorian, made different from the "real" world by whimsical touches like talking animals and playing cards. I'm not sure it really even mapped to a particular time period, aside from a few things like the tea party and the croquet game. Likewise with Neverland, which seemed to be an amalgamation of everything that seemed like a good fit for a place where you could have adventures -- pirates, Indians, mermaids, and the like. Even in the original illustrations, Hook looks vaguely early 18th century, but otherwise, it would be hard to time-stamp Neverland. It's been ages since I read The Wizard of Oz, but a quick skim of the description of the Emerald City doesn't strike me as the typical medieval fantasy world. It seems more like a city contemporary to the time of the writing, only better (there's specific mention of no horses, which would imply it's a lot cleaner). Actually, it would be really hard to map Oz to any particular time in earth's history. Oz is Oz.
And, really, why would a fantasy world have to follow earth's history so exactly that you could figure out what time period you're in? I remember the Internet outcry over the fact that there were hay bales mentioned in the Wheel of Time books because those wouldn't have existed in that time period. What time period? This is another world! Ditto with SCA complaints about fantasy, unless the story is specifically set in our history.
Now that fantasy has broadened beyond the medieval European setting, I wonder if there's room for portal worlds that are, say, Victorian or Regency (assuming there's room for portal worlds at all). Or get wild and crazy and pull an Oz, so that your portal world is itself and not anything you can map against earth. It might be full of seeming anachronisms because technology may have developed in different ways and at different rates. The clothes might be different not only because of technology but because societies with different religions and moral codes might not have the same taboos of what parts of the body can be shown. The existence of magic might stall the development of technology or lead into entirely new technologies. They might not have internal combustion engines, but they might have the equivalent of flying cars, because if magic allows you to fly, why bother building roads?
And now I think I've fed my subconscious a little too much, considering I have work to do, especially since I plan to plant myself on the couch tonight. It's nice and cool, so I can huddle under the blankets and watch Grimm and Haven's Halloween episodes.
First, there was an interesting story in the news this week that tied into my reality concerns involving the premise of the movie Easy A. There was apparently a "fantasy slut league" at a California high school in which male students "drafted" female students and earned points for real-life sex with them, and many of the female students knew about it and participated willingly or because of peer pressure. I'd say that the fact that the peer pressure was to participate proves that it would be unlikely for a girl to become the subject of a rumor mill for supposedly having sex once -- unless she was something like the president of the purity club or something else that would make her out to be a huge hypocrite.
Second, the discussion about the portal books continues in writing and publishing circles. The Publishers Weekly "Genreville" blog about fantasy and science fiction recently had a post about this trend and a possible sense of "exhaustion" in the genre -- if we're living in the future, has our world become the "other" world so that we're no longer interested in other worlds? It does seem like a lot of the fantasy published today (including my books) takes place in our world rather than in the "other" world that's traditionally been the setting for fantasy. That's interesting to think about. I tend to go in cycles. I love the juxtaposition of the normal and the abnormal, that sense that maybe this time you'll round the corner and find that things are different. But then sometimes I just want to escape.
I also read that one of the issues with the portal fantasy is that not only is the idea that an ordinary person in our world becomes the Destined, Chosen One With Magical Specialness dangerously close to Mary Sue wish fulfillment, but if you look at it through politically correct goggles, it becomes a metaphor for colonialism, with the ignorant savages needing the more sophisticated outsider to come in and solve all their problems for them, and that makes a lot of editors uncomfortable. Never mind that all these other worlds seem to be very white and European-based.
But that got me started thinking: Why do most of these "other" worlds that people visit through portals seem to be quasi-medieval and European? I suspect to some extent it has to do with the fact that for a very long time, the standard fantasy setting was quasi-medieval and European -- swords, knights, castles and the like, with bonus wizards. Therefore, if you were going to travel from our world to a fantasy world, it had to be what a fantasy world was supposed to look like.
But then if you think about it, some of the earlier portal fantasies didn't involve medieval worlds. Alice's Wonderland was more or less Victorian, made different from the "real" world by whimsical touches like talking animals and playing cards. I'm not sure it really even mapped to a particular time period, aside from a few things like the tea party and the croquet game. Likewise with Neverland, which seemed to be an amalgamation of everything that seemed like a good fit for a place where you could have adventures -- pirates, Indians, mermaids, and the like. Even in the original illustrations, Hook looks vaguely early 18th century, but otherwise, it would be hard to time-stamp Neverland. It's been ages since I read The Wizard of Oz, but a quick skim of the description of the Emerald City doesn't strike me as the typical medieval fantasy world. It seems more like a city contemporary to the time of the writing, only better (there's specific mention of no horses, which would imply it's a lot cleaner). Actually, it would be really hard to map Oz to any particular time in earth's history. Oz is Oz.
And, really, why would a fantasy world have to follow earth's history so exactly that you could figure out what time period you're in? I remember the Internet outcry over the fact that there were hay bales mentioned in the Wheel of Time books because those wouldn't have existed in that time period. What time period? This is another world! Ditto with SCA complaints about fantasy, unless the story is specifically set in our history.
Now that fantasy has broadened beyond the medieval European setting, I wonder if there's room for portal worlds that are, say, Victorian or Regency (assuming there's room for portal worlds at all). Or get wild and crazy and pull an Oz, so that your portal world is itself and not anything you can map against earth. It might be full of seeming anachronisms because technology may have developed in different ways and at different rates. The clothes might be different not only because of technology but because societies with different religions and moral codes might not have the same taboos of what parts of the body can be shown. The existence of magic might stall the development of technology or lead into entirely new technologies. They might not have internal combustion engines, but they might have the equivalent of flying cars, because if magic allows you to fly, why bother building roads?
And now I think I've fed my subconscious a little too much, considering I have work to do, especially since I plan to plant myself on the couch tonight. It's nice and cool, so I can huddle under the blankets and watch Grimm and Haven's Halloween episodes.
October 25, 2012
Costume Decisions
First, a bit of housekeeping: I know there are occasionally people who discover my blog or discover my books and then discover my blog, and then they go back and read all the archives and post comments in the discussions, so I should let everyone know that you might find that some old posts are locked to comments. I've been getting a lot of spam comments coming in on old posts, usually the same posts, and to deter some of it, if a post more than a year old gets more than two spam comments, I'm locking the comments in that post. I don't know what the spammers hope to achieve by commenting in four-year-old blog posts, and I don't know how their bots determine which posts to comment in because it's all very random. I do get a nice little nostalgia trip in having old posts brought back to my attention, but then I cut it off.
Last night was the church's community Halloween carnival instead of children's choir, and I got to run one of the craft booths. At my booth, we made door hangers. There were these foam things that hang on the doorknob and then we had various Halloween stickers and other foam shapes to use to decorate them. We also had sheets of letters so they could put their names on them, though a lot just put stuff like "Boo" and one girl put "Keep Out or" and then put one of the tombstone stickers under it. I'm guessing she has younger siblings.
Disney princesses seem to be the big thing for girls, though I was having trouble recognizing some of them, in spite of my in-depth knowledge of all the fairy tale movies. Part of the problem seems to be that all the costumes are of the fancy dress the heroine wears for the last few seconds of the movie rather than the outfit she wears for most of the movie. The other thing is that they make the dress even fancier for the costume. The Aurora one for Sleeping Beauty really threw me because her dress is very simple, with no lace or ruffles, but the costume version is covered in ruffles and lace. There's something wrong when the actual Disney princess costume isn't fancy and girly enough for you. If the costumes didn't have little medallions showing who the princess was, I'd have never guessed the Aurora ones, and that's probably my favorite of the "classic" era movies. There were lots and lots of Snow Whites and Tinkerbells (she seems to have been elevated to princess-hood. I guess Wendy is no fun because she just wears a nightgown through the whole movie), a few Auroras, a couple I think were supposed to be Rapunzel but without the hair, and one Merida from Brave, complete with curly red wig. She was one of my choir kids, and I might not have recognized her if she hadn't been with her mom. Though the wig didn't get the curls right as well as the movie did. I was joking that if my hair were lighter, I'd just need the green dress for the costume. Unfortunately, auburn hair doesn't have quite the same effect, though I consider myself a stealth redhead. You think you're dealing with a mild-mannered brunette, but by the time you notice that there's a lot of red in there, it's too late for you. You're doomed.
For the boys, there were a lot of Star Wars-related costumes, but most of them were from the prequels (and possibly the Clone Wars cartoon series), so I couldn't think of the names of most of the characters. I felt like I'd fallen down on my job as a Star Wars fanatic. There was a dad who showed up in a Phantom of the Opera mask, which meant that singing "The Phantom of the Opera" became mandatory, though I skipped all the shrill vocalizing at the end. I'm mostly well, but I didn't want to try going above a high C in public just yet, and I did have choir practice afterward.
One interesting costume for me was a little girl in a blue-and-white cheerleader outfit that said Eagles on the front. Someone made a remark about how for the Eagles it should be green, and I said it was just like my high school, since we were blue and white and the Eagles. The mom told me about how when her daughter decided she wanted to be a cheerleader for Halloween, she went looking for costumes, but they were ridiculously expensive, and she ended up finding this one through a moms' group on Facebook that got her in touch with someone from East Texas who was selling one her daughter no longer wore. So it turned out that it really was for my high school -- there are always little girls dressed in replica cheerleader outfits at the football games. The mom got all excited that I actually knew she was dressed as a Lindale cheerleader. The daughter was less impressed.
I remember when what to be for Halloween was a huge decision that had to be pondered. I tended toward the princess thing, and I remember the year I decided to be a witch. It was a very serious decision, and I recall telling my parents that I thought I was finally mature enough for a scary costume and saying it with the kind of gravity that you'd expect to come with "I've decided to join the army instead of going to college." I'm impressed that my parents managed to keep a straight face and act like they considered this as important as I did. Of course, I was more of a pretty witch. No green skin or warts for me.
Now that costume parties for adults are a big thing, I'm back to having to contemplate a costume. I've had one in reserve for a while, but it requires certain weather to not be completely miserable, and the forecast for this weekend is perfect, so I think I'll finally get to use it.
Last night was the church's community Halloween carnival instead of children's choir, and I got to run one of the craft booths. At my booth, we made door hangers. There were these foam things that hang on the doorknob and then we had various Halloween stickers and other foam shapes to use to decorate them. We also had sheets of letters so they could put their names on them, though a lot just put stuff like "Boo" and one girl put "Keep Out or" and then put one of the tombstone stickers under it. I'm guessing she has younger siblings.
Disney princesses seem to be the big thing for girls, though I was having trouble recognizing some of them, in spite of my in-depth knowledge of all the fairy tale movies. Part of the problem seems to be that all the costumes are of the fancy dress the heroine wears for the last few seconds of the movie rather than the outfit she wears for most of the movie. The other thing is that they make the dress even fancier for the costume. The Aurora one for Sleeping Beauty really threw me because her dress is very simple, with no lace or ruffles, but the costume version is covered in ruffles and lace. There's something wrong when the actual Disney princess costume isn't fancy and girly enough for you. If the costumes didn't have little medallions showing who the princess was, I'd have never guessed the Aurora ones, and that's probably my favorite of the "classic" era movies. There were lots and lots of Snow Whites and Tinkerbells (she seems to have been elevated to princess-hood. I guess Wendy is no fun because she just wears a nightgown through the whole movie), a few Auroras, a couple I think were supposed to be Rapunzel but without the hair, and one Merida from Brave, complete with curly red wig. She was one of my choir kids, and I might not have recognized her if she hadn't been with her mom. Though the wig didn't get the curls right as well as the movie did. I was joking that if my hair were lighter, I'd just need the green dress for the costume. Unfortunately, auburn hair doesn't have quite the same effect, though I consider myself a stealth redhead. You think you're dealing with a mild-mannered brunette, but by the time you notice that there's a lot of red in there, it's too late for you. You're doomed.
For the boys, there were a lot of Star Wars-related costumes, but most of them were from the prequels (and possibly the Clone Wars cartoon series), so I couldn't think of the names of most of the characters. I felt like I'd fallen down on my job as a Star Wars fanatic. There was a dad who showed up in a Phantom of the Opera mask, which meant that singing "The Phantom of the Opera" became mandatory, though I skipped all the shrill vocalizing at the end. I'm mostly well, but I didn't want to try going above a high C in public just yet, and I did have choir practice afterward.
One interesting costume for me was a little girl in a blue-and-white cheerleader outfit that said Eagles on the front. Someone made a remark about how for the Eagles it should be green, and I said it was just like my high school, since we were blue and white and the Eagles. The mom told me about how when her daughter decided she wanted to be a cheerleader for Halloween, she went looking for costumes, but they were ridiculously expensive, and she ended up finding this one through a moms' group on Facebook that got her in touch with someone from East Texas who was selling one her daughter no longer wore. So it turned out that it really was for my high school -- there are always little girls dressed in replica cheerleader outfits at the football games. The mom got all excited that I actually knew she was dressed as a Lindale cheerleader. The daughter was less impressed.
I remember when what to be for Halloween was a huge decision that had to be pondered. I tended toward the princess thing, and I remember the year I decided to be a witch. It was a very serious decision, and I recall telling my parents that I thought I was finally mature enough for a scary costume and saying it with the kind of gravity that you'd expect to come with "I've decided to join the army instead of going to college." I'm impressed that my parents managed to keep a straight face and act like they considered this as important as I did. Of course, I was more of a pretty witch. No green skin or warts for me.
Now that costume parties for adults are a big thing, I'm back to having to contemplate a costume. I've had one in reserve for a while, but it requires certain weather to not be completely miserable, and the forecast for this weekend is perfect, so I think I'll finally get to use it.
