Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 247

The Dog Days of Summer

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I'm afraid that the summer doldrums have hit full-on. Doctors have actually recognized that in this part of the world there's a kind of reverse seasonal affective disorder, where people get depressed during the summer because it's too hot to be outside during the daylight hours, and that means less sun exposure and cabin fever. It doesn't help that we still seem to take our cues for what the season should be from the media centers and retailers in the northeast, where a really hot summer day is 90 degrees, so they plan stuff like outdoor concerts and festivals and Shakespeare in the park for the middle of summer. Never mind that it's still 96 degrees at 10 p.m. We should be doing stuff like that here in April and October. We should be buying patio furniture in September. Summer activities should be indoors -- the equivalent of what might be planned for the dead of winter in colder climates. It's just depressing to see notices about Shakespeare in the park or outdoor concerts and then think about how miserable it would be. We have this mental image of a pleasant picnic under the stars where it's a comfortable 70 degrees in the evening, when actually even at the end of the event it would still be hot enough here that in the northeast they'd declare it a deadly heat wave if that were the high temperature for the day. We should get on our own schedule here and quit trying to live up to some externally imposed idea of the seasons and then I think we'd be happier.

With all the summer doldrums, I need something to perk me up, some good news or something really good to happen to me. Not that my life has been miserable. I've had a string of minor disappointments (though I suppose that some might consider them major disappointments, but I've grown used to this sort of thing) without anything truly bad. I've had good times with friends and enjoyed some good books, movies, etc. But I haven't experienced anything of the sort that makes me want to immediately call my parents and all my friends to share my awesome good news. The highlight of my summer may have been the surprise IRS refund. I could use some really good news or something great happening to me. Maybe WorldCon will be really, really great.

With that kind of general bummed feeling, I made a point of finding good things to focus on when I was out running errands this morning. I found the latest Vorkosigan book at the library (but I may need to re-read the last one before I tackle this one) and a book I've had on hold for ages finally came in. The lady in line ahead of me at Target had a Rock-em, Sock-em Robot in her cart, and that triggered a fun conversation among her, the checker and me as we waxed nostalgic about toys from our youth. I've been working on exercising regularly this summer, and I wore my "skinny" jeans on my errands (in the irony of vanity sizing, the "skinny" jeans I bought about eight years ago are actually a larger size than the newer jeans I was able to wear before I started exercising). There is a slight possibility that we won't hit 100 degrees tomorrow. There are clouds in the sky now. See, life is pretty good. But I still want something awesome to happen.

Getting into a Story

Yesterday was a spectacularly unproductive day. I couldn't seem to focus or think. I blame the heat and my dentist. It's been really hot for about a month, and the tough part isn't the 100-degree afternoons, it's the 86-degree low temperatures. It never gets cool enough to get comfortable when the cool part of the day is what a lot of places would consider a warm summer afternoon. I've been coping by hibernating, but I had a dentist appointment yesterday, and being out and about left me drained (I think all that lying upside down doesn't help). So I shall have to be particularly efficient today. I did try to daydream the scene I need to write next, so maybe it will flow when I start writing.

I've been thinking more about what it is that hooks me into a story, after the post earlier this week, and a review of my bookshelves, DVD shelves and my TV viewing habits has revealed a few patterns.

On the shallow end, I'll admit that an attractive dark-haired, blue-eyed man will do a lot for catching my attention in a visual medium (TV or movies). Beyond that, I tend to be drawn to characters who intrigue me. That can include characters I identify with, characters who have something about them that doesn't quite fit, characters with a sense of humor, characters who have traits or characteristics that have a lot of story potential, characters who have room to grow (without currently being too stupid to live), and characters who are just plain lovable (nice, sense of humor, heroic, good at what they do -- especially if this isn't appreciated by other characters).

I do find that I make a distinction between the "bad boy with a heart of gold" and what I call the "jerk with layers." I don't like bad boys, but I can be drawn to a jerk with layers. The bad boy has an element of lawlessness, rebellion and often selfishness to him. He's all about breaking the rules. I figure that if he really had a heart of gold, he wouldn't be a bad boy. The jerk with layers may be superficially obnoxious, often being the class clown or the goofball, but he's not really a rebel or a rule breaker. The outer attitude is a defensive mechanism to protect a sensitive interior. I think perhaps my bad boy hatred has something to do with fan response. It seems like if a bad boy ever does one nice thing, the fans will then declare that he has a heart of gold and proclaim him a hero. But if the non-bad boy ever does one wrong thing, he's practically crucified by the fans, even if that one bad thing isn't nearly as bad as the bad boy's usual pattern of behavior and if the bad boy's one good act isn't as good as the non-bad boy's usual pattern of behavior. It's like if the bad boy refrains from mugging an old lady, he's considered to have a heart of gold and the fans fall madly in love with him, never mind that he's murdered and robbed plenty of other people. But if the hero gives a dirty look to someone, he's declared an evil jerk, even if he's usually sacrificing everything that matters to him to save others. I get disgusted with that, so I really dislike bad boys, while I can tolerate a guy who puts up an obnoxious show, as long as his actual behavior is generally good when it matters.

Aside from individual characters, I'm also drawn to interesting relationships, like a strong partnership or team or the "found family." I'm less interested in the "total opposites who bicker constantly" thing than I am in people who get each other on some fundamental level -- kindred spirits. That doesn't mean no conflict, just that I prefer the conflict to be based on more substance than "you're a stuffed shirt and I'm a free spirit."

A good case study for what draws me into a story would be my current blowing-my-mind-weekly favorite, Haven. I didn't plan to watch this show, and in fact I didn't watch the first couple of episodes. I don't remember how they were promoting it other than that it didn't appeal to me. They seemed to be relying on the Stephen King angle, and while I acknowledge that he's a great writer, his subject matter isn't really to my taste. But last summer I was in physical therapy for a bad shoulder, which meant doing tedious exercises every night. I'd run out of things to watch while I exercised, so I pulled up the pilot for Haven OnDemand, and was so hooked that I immediately watched the second episode and then had to wait for the next one.

So, what was it that drew me into something I hadn't been interested in watching? To start with, the first thing that happens in the series is a clock radio alarm going off playing "Love Will Keep us Together." That was my favorite song when I was in second grade, and that album was my first "real" album that wasn't a Disney record or Broadway cast album. That caught my attention immediately. That song came up again when it came on the main character's car radio just before a crack in the road suddenly appeared, driving her off the road and leaving her car teetering on the edge of a cliff. She risked going over the edge to lean forward and turn off the radio because she didn't want that song to be the last thing she heard. I may love the Captain and Tennille, but I can appreciate the humor there.

We meet the other main character when he arrives on the scene, looks in the passenger window of her car and asks if she needs help. She sarcastically tells him that she's fine, and he says okay and walks away, leaving her irked and flabbergasted until he reappears on her side of the car and pulls her out just before the car goes over the cliff. That establishes that our two main characters share a slightly twisted, dry, snarky sense of humor, and I could already tell that they were going to make for a fun partnership that's a lot heavier on the banter than on the bickering. They disagree about some things, but there are also times when they're on the same page (and often in unison). Later, we learn that our main guy has lost his sense of touch -- he doesn't feel pain, pleasure, hot, cold or anything else. I thought that made for an intriguing trait because it's this odd combination of invulnerability and vulnerability. We see in that pilot episode that it comes in handy for a cop because he can be shot and still keep going to take down the suspect, since the pain doesn't affect him, and we learn that he's a lot more sensitive in his other senses. But there's also the psychological impact of a condition like that because it separates him from the physical world, and there's the fact that he doesn't know when he's been hurt, so his partner has to keep an eye on him, and just about every mishap means he has to get an MRI to make sure there aren't any internal injuries he hasn't noticed. My brain was already churning with ways that could play into a story (and unfortunately, it's too distinctive a trait for me to be able to use it).

Meanwhile, there's a mystery about the main female character, who knows nothing about her own origins, as she discovers that there was a woman who looked just like her in this town twenty-seven years ago, and she was somehow involved in an unsolved murder case. Again, there are intriguing story questions there, and I like the idea of an orphan on a voyage of self-discovery. All that added up to enough to have me immediately clicking on the OnDemand menu to get the next episode. There were later plot and character developments that intensified my involvement, but these were the things that drew me from episode to episode to begin with. And, yeah, okay, there's an attractive dark-haired, blue-eyed man.

I've noticed that this season's promos are including the quirky humor and the characters with the Stephen King horror elements, so it would seem that they've realized that audiences in general responded the way I did.

How to Be a Published Author

One of the questions about writing I often get asked is the general one about how to become a writer. Often the person asking this question thinks of this as a get-rich-quick thing -- dash off a book one weekend, send it off to a publisher, then get a huge check in the mail when it becomes a bestseller (pardon me while I collapse in hysterics). Or else they've only seen information from vanity presses, so they want to know how much it costs to get published. Here's a very high-level, general look at how to become a published writer:

1) Read. A lot.
For most aspiring authors, this goes without saying, since the urge to write usually comes from a love of reading. At some point, a lot of avid readers will either think "I could do better than this" or "I want to do this." But those "I could dash off a book next weekend and be a bestseller" people generally aren't big readers, and all it takes to dissuade them from this scheme is asking them what they like to read. Once you decide to pursue writing, your reading will change, though. You should read the classics in your genre, the recent bestsellers and recent books by new authors. All of this will give you a sense of the genre conventions and the cliches, what works and what doesn't and what's selling. You've probably read a lot of these things anyway as part of what sparked your drive to write, but read them again with a critical eye to analyze the characters, plot, pacing and other story elements. I think it's also good to read outside your genre. There are romantic elements in most stories in most genres, so read romances to learn how to build emotion. There are mystery or suspense elements in many stories, so read mysteries or suspense novels to learn how to build that kind of plot. Read poetry to learn ways to use language to paint a picture. Read non-fiction to learn how the world works.

2) Write. And rewrite.
A writer writes. Talking about writing isn't writing. Your first efforts may not be publishable. They may be your learning books or stories, but there are very few cases of anything worth doing where you can do it perfectly the first time you try. It takes practice and repetition. Write something, put it aside for a while as you write something else, then come back to it and revise it. Lather, rinse, repeat. I would almost recommend putting your first novel aside for a year without submitting it. Go write other stuff. Then when you come back to that first novel, you'll probably cringe. You'll be glad you didn't let an editor or agent see it.

3) Study the craft.
This can involve reading books about writing, reading writing magazines, going to writing workshops and conferences or joining writing organizations. Or it can just be seriously studying published books. Some people have an innate instinct for storytelling and can be successful without study. Some people even find that analysis and study is stifling. But if you're not satisfied with the quality of your work or if you're not achieving the results you want, consider doing some studying.

4) Study the business.
It would be lovely if we could just focus on the art without sullying it with commercial considerations, but if you want to be a published author, you need to learn about the business side of things. That's the best way to avoid career-limiting moves or being taken advantage of by scammers. Learn which publishers publish your kind of books, and learn who the editors and agents are. Learn how to work with editors and agents and what to expect from them. Learn what's in a publishing contract. Learn the process through which a book goes from submission to publication. Learn the proper way to submit a book and the business etiquette of the publishing industry. You can learn this from some of the writer's marketplace books. There are also books on how to get a novel published. Join a writing organization. Read blogs written by editors and agents. Read other industry blogs. Network.

I think this step is one of the most important these days because the industry is changing so rapidly. Not too long ago, it was pretty much an absolute that the path to publication was to submit to agents or publishers. Now there are people breaking in by being successful in electronic self-publishing, and given the risk-averse nature of the industry, I wouldn't be surprised if publishers started using electronic self-publishing as a kind of slush pile. Instead of taking a risk on an unknown debut author, they can hand-pick the authors who have already found some success. But that means even more industry knowledge will be required. You'll have to know a lot about what it takes to publish a book and operate a business.

5) Submit your work.
Once you have a manuscript that's the best you can make it and you're armed with knowledge about the business, you can begin the submission process. As part of your study of the business, you'll have learned the pros and cons of going through an agent first and decided which route is best for you. You'll also have researched the legitimate publishers and agents and have a target list, plus you'll know something about how to submit a manuscript. The odds are good that you'll be rejected a few times. Your first book may not make it, but then you'll move on to the next one. That's the part that separates the published authors from the dreamers. The dreamers get discouraged when they aren't an instant success, and that means they'll never get published. The ones who get published are the ones who keep trying.

As an aside, I'd still recommend at least trying the traditional route even if self-publishing becomes the new slush pile because you never know, you could still sell that way, and even if you don't, going through the submission and rejection process will teach you a lot while helping you develop a thick enough skin that you'll be less likely to have one of those embarrassing Internet flip-outs when your book gets an unfavorable review because that's the first criticism you've received. There's something about going through the process that helps give you a sense of professionalism that is often lacking in people who just threw the first thing they wrote up on Amazon.

Of course, all of this is overly simplified, but I tend to think that the publishing world is one of those areas where the steps are pretty simple in theory but very hard to actually carry out. I frequently use the analogy of losing weight -- it's a relatively simple formula. You just take in fewer calories than you use, generally by eating less and exercising more. But actually doing it is a real struggle, and current obesity rates indicate that a large percentage of the population has difficulty with it. Likewise with publishing, all you have to do is read, write, research and submit, but only a small fraction of people who try are able to do it successfully. On the other hand, if you don't do these things, you're guaranteed not to be successful.

Attaching to Characters

I hit a slow point on the rewrites yesterday that was ultimately resolved by realizing that the problem was in the previous scene. Plus, I had to get into the head of a non-viewpoint character who was the one driving the action and figure out what that person would really be doing, even though the viewpoint character wouldn't know the reasoning. This writing stuff can really be work sometimes. You have to think. The first instinct of what's going on may be wrong.

I think I may have given up on Alphas. This is the third episode, and for two of the three, I've found myself zoning out so completely that I missed major plot developments when they happened. It does make good background noise for other work, and there's nothing on opposite it, but if I don't have anything to work on, it may fall by the wayside. When I look at the series I really enjoy, I've always fallen in love with a character (romantically or otherwise) by the end of the first episode, and that can hold my attention until I get caught up in the story. If I haven't attached to a character, then I'm not going to get into the plot, and I don't seem to be attaching to any of these characters.

So, note to self: Make sure to create at least one character readers are likely to attach to early in a book. The trick is, that's different for each reader, and I can't even come up with a specific list of what works for me. It just seems to happen, an "I'll know it when I see it" thing. Generally, it helps if there's something about the character that intrigues me, some question about the character or something that doesn't quite fit that I want to know more about, maybe some element that I think will make for interesting stories. And it has to be a character I like enough to want these answers. But what I like in a character isn't exactly normal, since I tend to go for the nice guy, the "best friend" type, and these days, the dark and dangerous bad boy is what's popular. Adding a heart of gold or secret pain to a bad boy isn't enough to intrigue me. The fact that I don't like this doesn't mean others won't. I just have to write what works for me and hope there will be others who like it, too. We may just be the minority, though I don't know if we're the minority in general or if it's just that we're underrepresented among people making decisions in the entertainment industry (including publishing). Maybe we should start a club, the League of Nice Guy Lovers.

I am encouraged by the number of best friend-type heroes/Beta men on TV today, or maybe that's just the shows that I'm watching and it's a self-selected trend. But at least they're there at all, and that wasn't always the case.

So, what is it that will make you attach to a character enough to want to read a book or follow a series?

Making Brutal Cuts

I had a remarkably busy and social weekend, with a movie outing with friends, dinner out with friends both Saturday and Sunday and a meeting on Sunday. During this, there was some plotting of a grand scheme that should be way too much fun if we can pull it off. All that socializing, planning, plotting and eating of large meals means that I'm getting a slow start today. I'd better get the iced tea brewed because I do need to get some work done.

Most of this work seems to involve getting rid of bits that I was proud of. They were very clever little bits of conversation that bogged down the pacing of the scenes, that weren't relevant at the moment and that were actually kind of out of character. I resisted cutting because they contained some great lines and told us fun things about the characters. But finally, I had to admit that these things don't belong in the book, and that information can be conveyed in a different way and in a different place. The big lesson I'm learning is that it's boring to have a conversation in which a person asks a direct question and the other person answers it directly and fully.

Now for some TV news: Doctor Who will be returning August 27. And from that point, I'll be spending my weekends with my head spinning. It'll start on Friday night with Haven, which seems to throw in some new twist or clue to the overall story in each episode, along with some new character revelation, and then they zig when you think they're going to zag. I get the feeling the writers are all well aware of all the TV tropes, so they can deliberately set up a trope-like situation and then subvert or undermine it by doing exactly the opposite of what you'd expect to happen on most shows. Each episode sends me into another spiral of speculation. So now, after a Friday night and Saturday spent mulling over that, there will be new Doctor Who to also give me something more to think about. My dreams on Saturday and Sunday nights will be very, very interesting if I manage to merge the two very different things. The Doctor would likely discover that there's some alien force behind what's going on in Haven but would be surprised by the sarcastic aplomb with which the local authorities accept an explanation that weird. "So, aliens, huh? Makes about as much sense as anything else. Now, what do we do to send ET home?"

So, now I'll spend the day writing conversations in which characters ask roundabout questions and the other characters respond by hedging, evading or answering indirectly.

Reasons to Like Summer

We're facing our thirty-zillionth consecutive day of temperatures over 100 (actually, I think we're somewhere in the 22 days range, but I lost count). I remember loving summer when I was a kid, but that may have been because we were out of school and there were fun things to do like go to swimming lessons or play on the Slip 'N Slide. And there were times when I lived in places that had a normal summer, when summer was the warm time when you could be outdoors, not the time you had to hibernate in the air conditioned interior or risk heat stroke. In the interest of focusing on the positive instead of making myself miserable by counting the days until October, I'm making a list of reasons to enjoy summer:

1) Summer fruit
I'm practically living on fruit these days because there's so much good stuff that's available inexpensively. I'm eating cherries for dessert every night, there are blueberries and strawberries on my morning cereal, and then there are peaches and watermelons. It's tasty and good for me. These days, I can get these things at other times of the year, but they cost a fortune and have to be shipped in from Chile.

2) Summer television
Once upon a time, summer was a dead spot full of reruns and failed pilots run as television movies (though those could be fun, even if they were frustrating because you would have liked to see those series more than the ones that were actually picked up). Now, the cable networks have summer series, many of which I like better than those from the regular TV season. There's Leverage on TNT, a lot of the USA lineup and the summer lineup from the network formerly known as Sci Fi. Haven would be on my list of top-three series, Warehouse 13 is like a combination of all my favorite elements rolled into one show, and Eureka is good fun if you turn off your brain and all critical thinking. Alphas may not stick for me, though. I'm giving it one more try, but the second episode bored me to the point I barely paid attention to it. It came dangerously close to being turned off in the middle of an episode. It's nice to have something to watch while huddling under a fan.

3) Summer movies
Well, sort of. This has been a slow summer for me. The only movie I've seen is the final Harry Potter, and there's not much on the horizon, other than maybe Cowboys and Aliens. I'm not a comic book fan, nor am I a superhero fan, and that seems to be the bulk of movies coming out this year. On the up side, this is when HBO gets last summer's movies, which gives me more to watch without leaving the house.

4) The swimming pool
This is one thing that holds over from childhood. I don't get in the pool unless it's warmer than 90 degrees outside, and the hotter the better because then the water feels good, so it's one thing that's best done when it's really hot. I like swimming late in the day when our pool is in the shade but the water retains the heat. I haven't been swimming yet this year, though, in part because it's been too hot to walk to the pool, and the few times I have ventured out, there have been kids in the pool. It's a community pool, and most of the people who live here are either retired or childless couples and singles, but there seem to be a few more families with kids now, and that means fewer times I have the pool to myself. I don't get in the pool when there are kids unless the parents are also in the pool because there have been a few times when the kids were behaving very dangerously while the parents have been nearby but ignoring them while they read a magazine or talked on a cell phone, and I realized that as the adult in the pool, I'd be put in the position of being the first responder if something went wrong, and I'm leery of being forced to take life-and-death responsibility for someone else's kids like that. So, I stay out of the pool when there are kids, which limits my pool time. But I will have to make a point of hitting the pool. School starts the week I get back from WorldCon, so then I should still have plenty of warm days that are child-free.

5) My birthday
I have an August birthday, so that's always something to look forward to in the summer. Not that I'm eager to age (although it beats the alternative), but it's fun feeling special for a day. If I play it right, I can milk it for longer than that with multiple celebrations with different groups of people.

6) It's convention season
I've been a homebody this year because writing is more important than promoting right now, but summer is peak season for science fiction conventions around here. That means time hanging out with friends and discussing geeky stuff. I'll be at WorldCon in a few weeks, and then there's FenCon in September, but that's getting into fall, when it will start getting cooler …

and, oh dear, I'm looking forward to fall again. It's about seven weeks until September, and usually the 100-degree days have stopped by then, even though it's still hot. The way I have my work currently planned, I should be able to take time off in October to enjoy my favorite time of year. Which means I need to get moving on today's errands so I can spend a busy day writing.

The Poetry Response Unit

I spent much of yesterday killing my darlings -- editing out some of my favorite jokes. It's not that you're supposed to cut the stuff you like from a book, but rather that you're supposed to be willing to cut good stuff that doesn't belong. In this case, some really clever jokes turned out to be the kinds of things the character wouldn't really say, or they involved a lot of interior monologue to set up a clever thought that led to a line, and that broke up the rhythm of the dialogue. I'm trying for the snappy banter of the screwball comedy, and you can't do that with whole paragraphs of thought in between. Or the witty joke was me showing off my research or explaining too much. So it had to go. And once I cut those things, the relationship and the conflict between the characters became so much clearer.

Meanwhile, I've also been reading some Jung. I figured that since a lot of the things I use in writing, including archetypes, the hero's journey and personality types, are based on the works of Jung, I ought to go to the source. I found a library book that compiles extracts from the essential works, with commentary. There's a lot of stuff about dreams and what the elements of a dream might represent, and that's made me conscious of my dreams. Last night, I had one that would stump Jung. I dreamed I was walking past my city fire department's array of specialty unit trucks. There was the MICU (the fire department ambulance), the hazardous material unit, the bomb squad, etc. And then there was the truck with "Poetry Response Unit" printed on the side. I wondered if that was to respond to the aftermath of dangerous poetry, like in the case of a Vogon invasion (yes, I was thinking about Vogon poetry in my dreams) or if it was to soothe people who'd been through a trauma by using poetry to lift their spirits.

I suspect this was in part triggered by yesterday's wreck at the intersection behind my house. There was the usual "screech, whack" sound, and I went upstairs to look outside, but during the summer, I can't see the intersection from my office balcony because the crepe myrtles on the corner are in bloom. I did notice that the fire department got there within three minutes. I also noticed that the church across the street had sent someone out. Their office windows overlook that intersection, and they're good about getting out there with water or blankets whenever there's a wreck, and as fast as the fire department responds, the church is faster. Wrecks are frequent enough there that I wonder if they have a wreck response ministry. I can't figure out why wrecks are so common there. There's a traffic light, with left-turn signals in all directions. It's on flat ground on a straightaway, with good visibility from all angles. I go through that intersection almost every time I come and go from my house in my car, and I've never had a near-miss or scare there. And yet at least once a week there's a major wreck there. So, anyway, maybe my subconscious tied together my notice of the fire department unit response time and the way the people from the church show up to help and created the Poetry Response Unit. There may be a story in there somewhere.

RIP Borders

I didn't have any Enchanted, Inc. questions to answer, but I've got a tangentially related topic that's one of the big pieces of news in the book world this week. The Borders chain is now pretty much dead. The remaining stores will start closing by the end of the week. This is sad for me, and not just for book buying, since the Borders stores that were even remotely convenient all closed during the last round of cutbacks. But Borders was a major factor in selling my series. I did most of my booksignings at Borders stores, and I heard that a lot of Borders staff members were handselling these books. I got my best bookstore sales through Borders.

The impact that this could have on the book business is kind of scary. The publishing industry does not respond well or rapidly to change. When I was working in the technology industry, we all got a kick out of that EDS ad about running with the squirrels, which was what dealing with telecommunications and the Internet was like. The publishing industry is more like running with the snails, or maybe the tortoises. Not too very long ago (especially in publishing timelines), publishers were basing a lot of their profitability projections on the initial print run -- they didn't want to publish a book if it wouldn't be profitable from the first print run -- and the initial print run was based mostly on orders from the major chains. Even though Amazon has an increasing share of the industry, they order on a more as-needed basis instead of making a big up-front order, while the chains' initial order is generally the majority of copies they'll sell for most midlist books (for the bestsellers that are offered at Walmart, that's where most of the sales come, but most titles aren't sold at Walmart). There are too few independent stores, and each of those stores sells a tiny fraction of the number of copies as a chain sells. So, basically, the buyers for Borders and Barnes and Noble decided what books would succeed and what books and authors would fail, based on their initial buy-in. The people who buy thousands of copies have more sway than the people who buy a few hundred copies at a time and definitely a lot more sway than people who buy ten copies at a time. I don't know what impact the increasing popularity of e-books has on all these decisions and how that's factored into P&L projections. The first print run is still important because it needs to cover the cost of typesetting and print set up (the creation of printing plates). There's anecdotal evidence that the publishers are undercounting the sales of e-books, which means they aren't accurately tracking their impact on the bottom line, and that means they're likely not being properly factored into P&L projections that are part of the decision of which books will be published. So, what this boils down to is that the failure of Borders as a chain means that now the Barnes & Noble buyer in each market segment pretty much has total power over what authors will get another contract, without even the buyer for another major chain to balance that power.

Why did the chain fail? One reason that's been given is that they were slow to catch onto electronic retailing. For a very long time, they outsourced their online shopping to Amazon, so they only strengthened their competition and then entered that market after customers had already formed relationships and habits with other sellers. The other reason was the cost of real estate. Their stores tended to be in expensive locations. Yeah, that's where readers tend to be (educated and affluent), but there were some mistakes made in location decisions. I've been in a lot of Borders stores, and while it's nice that they tended to be extremely spacious, that was a lot of expensive space that didn't turn a profit. Then there's where the stores were. It seemed like they picked locations by sticking pins in a map at every B&N location, then putting their stores in the closest available space. I did a lot of stock signings, where I visited all the bookstores in a city to sign the copies they had on hand, and it seemed like almost all the Borders stores were within about two miles of a B&N. In a lot of cases, the Borders store was across the street from the B&N. That's really convenient for an author trying to hit all the bookstores in an area, but I can't think that it's too great a strategy for maximizing your potential customer base. It's like the TV networks' proclivity for scheduling a series exactly opposite the series most likely to appeal to the same audience. You're forcing people to choose one or the other instead of going to a place where there aren't other options. It's like the main goal was to hurt the competition instead of to improve their own chances (in most cases, B&N was there first).

One strength Borders used to have that they squandered was a knowledgeable and empowered store staff. They used to have networks of subject matter experts at the store level who could help customers, hand sell books and who even had some say with the corporate-level buyers. There was also apparently some autonomy at the store level in purchasing, so instead of all stores stocking what was dictated at a corporate level, they could adjust what they carried based on what would do well at each store. Then apparently corporate started tightening up on control, and there were subject matter experts who were let go because they tended to be senior employees who earned higher salaries, and they were replaced by entry-level people. Things got really bad when instead of genuine handselling they started dictating it from a corporate level, with certain books that all employees were forced to push, with quotas. That was when I stopped shopping at Borders because it was too distracting and annoying to be stalked by employees pushing books I had no interest in (they were all of the book club fodder variety) while I was trying to look for something specific.

What happens now? I have no idea. I hope maybe that more independent stores will arise to fill some of the gaps or that maybe mass merchandisers like Target and Walmart will sell a broader variety of books. I hope publishers will realize that the business is changing and use something other than first print run to decide a book's potential profitability (like including e-books and possible long-term sales). I won't hold my breath, though. Like I said, running with tortoises.

Book to Movie: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

I discovered what one of the problems was in the book I'm now working on: I had the character in the opening scene acting in ways that were totally wrong for her character. She was doing what I'd probably do, not what she'd do.

One of the movies on my screwball comedy weekend was Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Although it's a recent film, it was based on a book published in 1938, at the height of the screwball era, so I figure it counts. I finally read the novel by Winifred Watson, so now I can compare the book to the film. A short summary: a down-on-her-luck middle-aged governess goes to work as a social secretary for a flighty wannabe actress and experiences a life-changing day in a world she's only experienced in movies. It's a truly delightful book, but the movie actually improves upon it (which is rare). In fact, the comparison between book and movie makes for a good exercise in seeing how you can rev up a manuscript.

The first difference is the level of tension, which comes from higher stakes. In the book, Miss Pettigrew has been fired from a governess job and is being sent out on her very last chance at a job. If she doesn't prove satisfactory this time, the agency won't send her on any more assignments. Her landlady at her rooming house is on the verge of kicking her out if she can't pay her rent soon. Those stakes seem pretty high, right? Well, in the movie, Miss Pettigrew doesn't have a rooming house, so she has nowhere to go when she gets fired. She's penniless and has all her possessions in her suitcase, and she loses those when she collides with a recently released prisoner and flees in terror. She resorts to lining up at a soup kitchen and sleeping sitting up in a train station waiting room. When she reports to the employment agency, they refuse to send her on another assignment. In desperation, she swipes the card for a job from the desk and rushes off to get hired before they can send someone else. If this job doesn't work out, she's literally out on the streets. To complicate the situation, the new employer's best friend saw her at the soup kitchen and threatens to reveal that she's a homeless tramp if she doesn't lie about seeing the friend with a man at the station and doesn't help patch things up with her fiance, to whom Miss Pettigrew is strongly attracted. So, either she's out on the streets with nothing or she lies to a man she admires and manipulates him into staying with a faithless woman. That's taking already high stakes to an even higher level.

Then there's the storyline with Delysia (the Amy Adams character). In the book, she's torn among three men -- the playboy producer who can make her a star, the wealthy man who wants to possess her (Nick) and whose allure she can't resist, and Michael, another reasonably wealthy man who loves her enough to demand a commitment from her so that she'd have to give up the other men. That's a bit of a dilemma, choosing between freedom without love and commitment with love. The movie adjusts the Michael character (Lee Pace) to give her a harsher dilemma. She's not choosing among the three wealthy men. She's choosing between the kid who can make her a star, the wealthy, alluring man who wants to possess her and the penniless pianist who's her best friend who loves her and wants to marry her. She has to choose fame, money or love. And there's a ticking clock: Michael is leaving the next morning on the Queen Mary. He needs a singer and wants to take her, but if she doesn't go with him, it's over. Miss Pettigrew's dilemma is also stronger in the film. In the book, there's no blackmail, and the man Edyth (the friend) wants her help with is a different character from Joe, the man Miss Pettigrew falls in love with.

Since the book was written before WWII, it doesn't include the specter of impending war the way the movie does, and it also isn't haunted by the specter of the past war the way the movie is, which I think adds some depth and poignance to the story. As a warning, the book is a product of its time, and so it's not at all politically correct. There's a fair amount of casual racism of the sort that was pretty common at the time but which is shocking now.

Other than these things, the movie is remarkably faithful to the book. A few of the scenes are moved to different settings and there are more meals in the book (while in the movie poor Miss Pettigrew keeps having near misses with food), but otherwise the same scenes are there, and essentially the same things happen. It's just all revved up a bit. Now I'll have to think in terms of doing a Miss Pettigrew when I take stakes, a conflict or a dilemma that I think are strong enough and find a way to make them even stronger.

The funny thing about this book is that it's pretty racy, especially for its time. There's open discussion of cocaine and illegitimate children, and one of the heroines is a kept woman who's maintaining sexual relationships with three different men. It's a very sophisticated urban novel. And yet, according to the biographical notes, this was an aberration for the author. She was best known for writing the kind of rustic romances that Cold Comfort Farm spoofs. I would love to track one of these down, just to see what it's like.

Screwball Comedies

The Friday Night Lights finale just about destroyed me. I had to reach for my first tissue before the opening credits and then spent the last twenty minutes or so sobbing uncontrollably. I guess I was primed, in spite of watching Phineas and Ferb in between, because part of Haven also made me weepy.

I guess after a week of Harry Potter and the TV weepiness, I had a fit of "now for something completely different" and I went on a screwball comedy binge. There was His Girl Friday, The Awful Truth, The Philadelphia Story and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (which is more current, but it was based on a book written during the screwball comedy era, and it has all the hallmarks of the genre, so I'm including it). This was kind of work-related, as I've figured out that the book I'm about to rewrite has a dialogue problem. It's too direct -- the characters ask each other direct questions and get answers. The snappy dialogue in the screwball comedies is more oblique, with insinuations instead of direct questions. And watching all this worked because I figured out exactly how to fix one of the scenes that was bothering me.

I've just about memorized The Philadelphia Story and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is one of my favorites, but the other two were new to me. I must say that The Awful Truth is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. I'm going to have to watch it again just to catch all the jokes because a few of them were of the "did they really say that?" variety. It's a pretty simple story of a couple that divorces mostly out of suspicions and sheer stubbornness, only to eventually realize that the awful truth is that they still love each other and their suspicions were unfounded. Meanwhile, she tries to move on with an Oklahoma oilman and he tries to move on with an heiress, and both of them scheme to get in each other's way. Irene Dunne is so very funny, and she plays well against Cary Grant. The other movie of theirs that I love is My Favorite Wife. In this one, she has a truly priceless scene in which she pretends to be his sister meeting his fiancee's snooty family, supposedly to help him after his fiancee grew suspicious when she answered the phone at his place but really carrying out a massive sabotage effort.

After these films, I kind of feel sorry for Ralph Bellamy. He seemed to be typecast as Mr. Wrong (in fact, I've got a "how to write romantic comedy" book, and the author refers to the Mr./Miss Wrong character "the Bellamy"). He walked a fine line with these roles, so that he seemed perfectly reasonable and not a totally bad choice at first, but then gradually revealed his true colors when put under pressure. He was never really a bad guy, just only suitable for the heroine when she wasn't being her true self -- and totally, horribly wrong for her true self. I'll have to dig through his filmography to see if he ever got to be the hero and get the girl because he was rather attractive and quite funny.

Watching these movies, including the more recent one, highlights why there are so few good romantic comedies these days. I found myself thinking while watching all the Harry Potter films that the reason they've been so successful is that they took them seriously, which doesn't always happen with fantasy films, children's films or especially the deadly combination. There seems to be a temptation among filmmakers to be condescending to these audiences, to think that they'll take whatever you throw at them, so you don't have to work very hard to actually make them good. But the Harry Potter films are loaded with the top actors working today, and none of them acted like "oh, I'm just in a kids' movie." The same thing applies to romantic comedies. Filmmakers tend not to take them or their audience seriously, and the result is lame, half-hearted movies that are a string of cliches, gimmicks and contrivances. The movies I watched this weekend involved some of the top actors of their time playing complex characters, they had witty writing that didn't rely on gimmicks, and the characters faced real dilemmas that weren't just misunderstandings. Oh, and no gross-out jokes or overgrown fratboys being "tamed" by shrewish women.

Instead, we're getting a lot of gross-out jokes, fratboys being "tamed" by shrews, silly gimmicks, shallow conflicts, senseless bickering with no subtext and musical montages substituting for actual writing.

I recently read the book Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and tomorrow I'll discuss the transition from book to movie. And now today I'm going to dive into rewrites.