Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 45

The Rose Throne: Names

I knew from the beginning that Issa and Ailsbet, the two princesses, would have variations on the names “Mary” and “Elizabeth” because of the way they are anchored in my mind to the historical Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I of England. Other characters in the novel also have names that are references to figures in Tudor England, though it may be tricky to figure them out. In general, I used Dutch equivalents because I wanted to give a feeling of difference from historical England, but I also wanted the names to seem familiar in an eery way.

Haikor=Henry

Jaap=James

Ailsbet=Elizabeth

Mary was trickier because I wanted her name to be more different than the Dutch variations, so I admit, I mixed up some Mary-like names and came up with the combination of “Marlissa.”

In the first draft of the novel (and some of the subsequent drafts), Ailsbet also went by the nickname “Bez,” an analog of the nickname “Bess.” Ultimately, I chose not to use that name  for two reasons. 1—Ailsbet’s position at her father’s court is not one likely to lead to her having a nickname. No one seems to have that kind of affection for her. 2—“Bez” didn’t work for some readers. They thought it sounded odd.

Just for fun, here is a list of other variants of Elizabeth that I considered for Ailsbet/Bez:

Ailsbek (Bek)
Ailsbet (Aila)
Ailusa (Lusa)
Elzavetta (Zava/Zavi)
Izabetta (Zaba)
Sabeta (Beta)
Elzunia (Zuni)
Chabika (Bika)
Chelbeka (Bek)

Writing Wednesday: How to Begin

I am doing a workshop again this weekend and did one just three weeks ago. I find myself saying a lot of the same things about first pages in these sessions, so I'm going to repeat them here for those of you who don't have a chance to come to my workshops.

What a First Chapter Should Do:

1. Make the Reader Feel Something.
You want to evoke an emotion. It can be a negative emotion. It can be a positive emotion. But an emotion is almost always going to be associated with a human character. If your main character is not human, you are going to have to work awfully hard to make the reader feel an attachment to the character. Try to show the character as human as possible in the first chapter. You want the reader/editor/agent to really want to find out what happens in the next chapter. And reminder here: impressing the reader/agent/editor with your big words or pretty language isn't an emotion that is likely to make them want to keep reading, all on its own.

2. Introduce a Character who either desperately wants something or desperately needs/fears something.
This is one of the main reasons that a prolog can be a problem. Even if you have a prolog character who is desperate, if you change povs in the next chapter, you may lose your reader. Ideally, you want to keep the same protagonist from chapter one to chapter two and show this character doing something to get what s/he wants or needs. An active character is always better than a passive one. But the reminder here is: don't let worldbuilding overwhelm your character, especially in the first chapter. No matter how much you might want to tell the reader about all your cool stuff, if you don't have a strong character attachment in the first chapter, you are likely doing something wrong.

3. Be Unique.
Sometimes this means having a unique voice, but it can be many other things. If you are doing a paranormal romance (which I'm still seeing at a lot of workshops), make sure your set-up is unique and that your dilemma is unique. If it feels like the same-old, same-old, my eyes glaze over. Don't tell me that there is an evil bad guy and your mg protagonist has to save his father and then the world from this evil. Don't tell me that your two main characters have been in love for centuries, but keep losing track of each other and have to find each other in a new incarnation. Don't tell me that a vampire hunter and a vampire fall in love.

4. Show Conflict.
You don't need to introduce the main conflict of the whole novel in your first few pages. In fact, you probably don't want to because it takes too much set-up to explain the stakes and the worldbuilding. But you do need conflict in your first few pages. Conflict shows us about characters and it moves things forward. It makes things feel real and important. It makes characters feel real. So if you have characters who agree with each other or who don't argue in the first chapter, who are passive or not talkative, reconsider.

5. Is Clearly Written so that the reader knows what is going on.
This cannot be overstated as an important part of a novel. I know so many writers who are so concerned with proving that they can write as well as the greats in their field--or better--that they forget that a story needs to be understood to be valued. Just make sure that you aren't honing your words to the point that they lose all meaning. We need to know who people are, where they are, and what they are doing. It seems simple, but it can be very hard to achieve.

Why I Read Young Adult Literature

When I was a child, I read voraciously. My mother had to give us a limit on the number of books we could check out each week. This meant that I often ran through all of my picture books in one or two days, and ended up reading “up” to the books my siblings got. (I was the ninth of eleven children and we were too poor to buy books very often, but lucky in that my parents valued reading.)

I remember when I moved up from picture books to early readers, and from there to “juvenile” novels as they were called at the time. I read through the entire bookcase of biographies, and then read through all of Louisa May Alcott's books, and then John Bellairs' scary books. My obsessions at this age were Robin Hood and King Arthur. But after that, there wasn't much left in the children's level of the local library.

In fifth or sixth grade, I moved up to the “adult” section of the library and began reading the books that I still consider to be the foundation of my literary interests: James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek and Star Wars, and Perry Mason. I actually read the James Blish versions of the Star Trek episodes before I ever saw them on television. (In my house, control of the television was never in my hands.) I also read romance novels voraciously, though this was easy because the library didn't count these in our total and my siblings (male and female) also read a lot of romance novels, so we never ran out.

When I reached junior high, I began to work my way through a long list of “classics,” including Gone With the Wind, Jane Austen, Hemingway, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens (never did much care for Dickens, sorry!), and of course, Shakespeare. I was one of those weird kids who would read while walking to school and during recess or lunch at school. I had a sister who read a lot of fantasy and I considered myself to be literarily far above her. I would never waste my reading time with that. So, while she enjoyed Diana Wynne Jones, I was reading Of Mice and Men and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

It wasn't until I was in graduate school, reading dark German tomes ten hours a day, that I finally turned to reading fantasy/sf and actually, young adult literature. Some of my favorites were: Lois McMaster Bujold, Kate Elliott, Orson Scott Card, and Cynthia Voigt. I made no distinction between young adult and genre literature. They were all books that I knew were “inappropriate” for someone who was working on a PhD in German Literature to be reading. In fact, I was terrified of checking books out of the Princeton Library, sure that my professors would get a list of the books I was reading. So I read everything in the library. I would spend hours there, reading things that were “just for fun.” I needed some fun in my reading, needed it desperately.

When I finished my PhD at last and started writing “just for fun,” it is no surprise that I also decided to write YA fantasy with a touch of romance thrown in. I was deliberately rebelling against all those “rules” of “high literature.” I was tired of my classes in which we deliberately turned our noses up at plot, at anything written by women, and at books that could be appreciated by someone without a PhD. I wish sometimes that I had discovered reading “just for fun” a little earlier. I wish that I had been one of those lucky teens who has Cynthia Voigt's Homecoming to read as a teen, who found books that connected with my actual experience as a teen, instead of having to make the leaps from classic books. But I suppose I wouldn't be who I am if that were the case.

I am not someone who loved young adult literature as a teen. I honestly don't remember realizing there was such a thing as young adult literature. I was certainly encouraged to being reading adult as soon as I could understand it. But I am glad that I found young adult literature when I did, when I needed it. The story of becoming that is in the background of every young adult novel is the story that I was going through in grad school, and to some extent is the story that every adult goes through repeatedly (if they are still willing to learn and grow). It is the story of life, of learning, and moving on, through loss and pain.

I knew who I was when I started graduate school, but I think I was avoiding it. I wanted to be a writer, but Young adult literature helped me find a place where it was all right for me to stop avoiding it, where I could play with my own identity. Maybe I was backward in some ways, but I don't think so. I think that a lot of adults are finding in young adult literature what I found back then. And to those adults, I say, don't be ashamed. Don't imagine that your interest in young adult literature means you are juvenile. It means you are still growing and changing, and you see that reflected in what happens to be shelved in the “young adult” section of the library and bookstore.

Influences on The Rose Throne #3: Elinor in Sense and Sensibility

Marianne is the flashier sister, the romantic, the one with the dramatic love story of Sense and Sensibility. Elinor is the boring one, the one who keeps her feelings to herself, who never does anything wrong. Willoughby was the dashing, tall, dark, handsome hero. He was the one who understood poetry. Edward Ferrars in some ways feels like a pale imitation of a romance hero. He would never lie like Mr. Rochester, or do anything or stop anyone in order to get the woman he loves. He's a civilized man and he falls in love with a civilized woman. The happy ending between Edward and Elinor seems tacked on, a deus ex machina. Marianne, on the other hand, seems like she gets set down for all her pretensions to marry the ideal man, and ends up with the older gentleman, Colonel Brandon. The movies make us like Brandon far more than the book.

But as a teenager, I identified far more with Elinor than with Marianne, in part because my family was ruthlessly unemotional. I couldn't remember my parents hugging me from the time I turned five or six until the time I was in my twenties, when one of my sisters insisted that they do it again. It was very awkward, trying to put physical affection back into my relationship with them. My mother frequently complained when I was a child that I was too affectionate, but it's something I've tried to put back into my personality as an adult. I'm very affection with my own children.

The scene where Elinor is finally able to tell Marianne the truth, where Marianne chides her for never showing her heart and Elinor bursts into tears—I love that scene, both for the way in which it breaks character for Elinor and which it shows us her deeper character. When I was writing The Rose Throne, I found it easier to write the flashier character of Ailsbet, who was so defiant and unusual. But through every draft of the novel, I found Issa a much more difficult character to bring to life. She is obedient and feminine. She is the foil in some ways for Ailsbet. She is everything that Ailsbet isn't and can't be. She is the “normal” woman, with the woman's magic.

It wasn't until I began to see Issa as a kind of Elinor that I really found her spirit. She isn't without feelings. It's just that she keeps them hidden. She is very controlled, but she has deep feelings. Every scene she is in, I had to work to make sure that the reader senses her hidden feelings and the depth of them. I had to work hidden messages into her language. And then there had to be a great scene in which her feelings finally come out, in a rather over-the-top, loud, and messy moment. I loved writing that moment and I loved Issa after that as a character who could have a moment like that.

Short interview with me at The Enchanted Inkpot

about The Rose Throne. If you are interested, go here:

http://enchantedinkpot.blogspot.com/

Writing Wednesday: It Will Get Better

About ten years ago, I went to a marriage class taught by a professor from a local university. One of the studies he talked about tracked a large set of couples who were considering divorce. It tried to get as much information as possible about the couples, and then five years later, the same couples were re-interviewed. Apparently, the study could not find any significant factors that predicted whether or not the couples would divorce. What the professor found more interesting was that whether or not they got divorced, five years later, almost every couple said that they were happier. His conclusion? That there are ups and downs in marriage and that many times, happiness isn't a result of the marriage being good or bad. It's a result of the natural wave pattern of good and bad that happens in any life. He told the couples in the class that they should remind themselves, “it will get better,” when things were bad.

I have thought about this a lot as the years have passed. I think it applies to writing as well as it does to marriage. Maybe it would be more useful to simply accept a more yoga-like acceptance of the stress of being stretched into a new shape for the future challenges that await us. We can choose to stretch less or more, or not at all, perhaps. We can refuse to change. But that isn't really the way to happiness. Mostly, when we notice we are unhappy, in our writing lives or in any other part of our lives, it can be useful to remember that “it will get better.” Even if we don't do anything to change, it will probably get better. Or maybe we will do tiny things to grow that we don't even notice, and it will get better.

I am not trying to argue here that there are no marriages—or writing problems—that need more attention than the hope that “it will get better.” I know that some things require some drastic surgery. But a lot of the time, we stress about things that will get better on their own. We go to the doctor for colds right when the cold is about to get better on its own. The doctor does nothing, but we think she does because that's when we get better. (Antibiotics don't help colds, BTW.) Pain from a hard workout might respond to drugs, massage, or heat. But it also will mostly just get better left on its own to heal. The winter doesn't last forever. Neither does the summer heat. As Scarlett O'Hara would say, tomorrow is another day. And I would add, it's likely to be a better one.

Just For Fun: Outtakes from The Rose Throne

At one point, my editor asked me to try writing a series of epitaphs for the beginning of each chapter. Here are a few of the better ones. None of them ended up in the book, by the way. It just didn't end up seeming right. But you try things in the writing process and they don't always work.

Rejected epigraphs Nov 2011:

A woman who loves too well is like a woman who forgets herself in her neweyr. She may return to herself, but she will never be the same again. And she will always be wary of giving too much a second time.

                                                                                                               --Marriage and Neweyr

My neweyr is my child. My kingdom is my body. My women are my eyes. My plants are my breasts. My animals are my feet.

                                                                                               --The True Book of Neweyr

A girl who is born on a winter’s night is bound to have a great neweyr, for the world has been storing it up for her.

--Neweyr in Law and Practice

A mother can show her daughter the way to the neweyr, but she cannot make her drink it in. She must wait and see what her daughter wills, and how she takes the neweyr into herself her own way.

                                                                               --A Mother’s Legacy

There are many loves. The love between a parent and a child. The love between a sister and a brother. Between friends and lovers. But there is one great love. That of neweyr for taweyr. For a true love must be love for that which is utterly different, and can never be encompassed or understood.

                                                                         --Advice From A Mother to Her Daughter

Women, look for a man who is stirred by the passion of his taweyr. He must fight against it, but if there is no fight, there is no power and no control. A man of taweyr will make many children.

                                               --Proper Marriage and the Weyrs

Writing Wednesday: Internal Sensors

So for my race this weekend, I ended up forgetting my watch. It ended up being a happy accident. Instead of fretting over the time passing while I had problems on my bike, I thought about other things.

I simply let myself feel how the pace I was going felt. I listened to my own body, my own sensors. I did it again today while doing a hard interval set at the track. I just went as hard as I thought I could sustain for the 12 repetitions I was supposed to get done, and rested until I was ready to go again. Not surprisingly, in both of these cases, I was a lot less anxious and self-judgmental about racing. I don't know for sure if I always have better results in these cases, but I often do. It turns out that stressing about getting the results you want is counterproductive. On some level, you have to let it go, and let come what will.

Probably the comparisons I am going to make here to writing are obvious, but I am going to explain them anyway. For a long time, in the beginning of my career, before I had sold my first book, I would count up a lot of the outside gauges I had of my progress because they were the only things that I had. I would use my writers' groups responses and see if they thought I was doing better. I would notice the fact that I was getting more personalized rejection letters rather than form rejections. Then, when I published my first book, I continued to look outside of myself for validation. Professional journal reviews were the biggest measures then, and of course, book sales themselves. If I wanted to see if I was more successful as an author, I looked at my advance numbers, and my agent's sales and then later, the number of goodreads 5-star reviews or those on amazon, or even crazier, the links to reviews on twitter.

I can't say that I believe I will completely go without any external measure of my writing, just as I don't think I'm going to get rid of my watch for all my training. But I have to say, there are some wonderful parts of being a published writer that have nothing to do with external validation. I'm not saying I think that any writer should live completely in a bubble. I think it's healthy to have a writers' group, an agent, and an editor. But there are times when it's great to take off the watch and just do the writing without any other voices in your head, without anyone looking over your shoulder. There's a time when it's important to only look inside. How does it feel? Is this right? Is this true? Is this the story I want to tell? Is this the best way to tell it? Are these characters I would lie down in the street for? Is this a world I would happily go back to for the rest of my life?

Race report: My One Boston race at "Rage" Las Vegas

This wasn't the best race ever. I ended up riding on a flat for way too long, and then stopping to change it, so my bike time sucked. But the swim and the run were still fun and a chance to practice my racing strategy. I started out too fast in the swim, went hypoxic, and had to breast stroke for a while. It was a good reminder to myself that I don’t race that way. I tend to start slow and pick people off ahead of me one by one. But I got back into it and finished strong.

The run was uphill for 3.1 miles, and then back downhill, which made for a great feeling. I started slow-ish and just kept telling myself to keep it under control, and to really turn it on at the top, which I did. It was also the first race I have ever done with a group of friends. We got to look out for each other on the race course and get ready at the beginning. Then we went out to lunch afterward and pounded as many calories as we could, while deconstructing the race. I also got to hear a few of the stories from the people there. What brought us to triathlon, and what we took away from it.

Everyone has a story. Everyone has been on a journey. For one of us, this was the last triathlon race due to some pretty serious injuries. When this guy crossed the finish line and the announcer said, “You’re done,” it hit him like a hammer. Triathlon has become part of our lives and it is a hard thing to give up and to move on to another part of life. I suppose we’ll all have to give it up at some point, and there’s a temptation to look away from that pain.

I love the way that triathlon has taught me about the goodness of people. A woman stopped to ask me if she could help with my tire issue. I have unique tubes, so she couldn’t. She went on to say she would go ahead and see if she could find anyone else with tubes or the bike support van. This one woman reminded me of the goodness of the people of Boston and how they reacted so immediately to the disaster in their city by going to donate blood, running to help rather than running away, offering places to stay to runners and family, and actually paying attention to the city-wide lockdown.

At the hotel all day Friday the day before the race, we were watching the news for updates on the search for the Boston Marathon bombers. For me it was especially tense because my oldest daughter is at MIT. She was in lockdown and was physically safe, but also kept thinking about how easily she might have been in the way of the suspects since she walks home from the library right by the site of the killing.

When I was so frustrated with my bike and the fact that I hadn’t brought my own equipment to change my tire (a mistake I didn’t realize until the race), I was tempted to sit by the side of the road and throw in the towel. But I’ve been in enough situations that were similar that I chose to keep going. It’s not the only honorable choice, but I was proud of myself for thinking that now I had a chance to enjoy the scenery and to find out who I was. There are a lot of different challenges in life. The emotional challenge of dealing with the grief and anger of Boston was far more difficult than the challenge of racing, but the race itself helped me put aside other thoughts, at least for a while.

It wasn’t officially a One Boston race, but I think no one could have been at Rage without thinking about how easy it is to go to a sporting event and be a target. There was no extra security as far as I saw, but in one way, continuing on with our race as usual is a way to fight back, to show we will not be cowed, in the same way that the city of Boston did this last week.

Ultimately, triathlon is for me a little bit of life, the good and the bad. Time doesn’t matter in the end. It’s the experience itself that matters, and for me, putting aside my watch was a good reminder of why I really race. Not to win a medal, but to win at life.

Lessons in Revision #3: The Rose Throne dialog

“You’ve been hiding from me,” said Issa.

Her father let out a breath at that and turned to stare at her. “You know me very well.”

“Well enough to know when you don’t want me to read your face,” said Issa, with the lilting rhythm and harsh consonants that seemed appropriate to a northern life where the weather in winter could be quite harsh, even with the assistance of the neweyr.

“Ah,” said King Jaap. “There are times when I wish that I had not taught you to be so honest.”

“Not many times, I hope,” said Issa.

King Jaap paused.

“It is bad news, then,” said Issa.

He nodded. And then, because there was no more reason to hold back, he said, “It has to do with Lord Umber.”

Lord Umber was the southern-most nobleman, just on the border with the land bridge to Rurik, with whom her father had begun to negotiate a betrothal for his daughter.

“Has he refused me, then?” said Issa.

“He has left Weirland with half his men—the best half—and a good deal of his wealth,” said King Jaap in a rush of words that indicated only how upset he was. Normally, her father was as slow to speak as Issa was herself. “But Issa, I’m afraid that is not the worst of it. Umber has gone to Rurik, to the palace itself. To King Haikor.”

“He means to ally himself with Haikor against us,” said Issa, her tongue feeling leaden in her mouth.

She had always imagined that she would marry and be happily in love, as her parents had been when she was a young girl, before her mother had grown ill. She had never wanted anything more in life than to take care of her small kingdom with her neweyr, and to hold tight to a husband’s arm as he ruled the land.

But that was not to be, it seemed.

“What do we do now?” asked Issa, moving on. There was no point in trying to change what had already come to be. The past was gone. Only the future remained malleable.

“First, I must appoint a lord to take Umber’s place. And second, we must do something to stop him.”

“How?” said Issa.

“King Haikor has a young son. His name is Edik.”

“Yes.” Issa knew this.

“He is not yet old enough to marry, but he might be betrothed, if his father were tempted with the right offer.”

“Me,” said Issa instantly.

So this is the earlier version of this dialog, though I have cut out a lot of the text, at least half, because it is boring. One of the first rules of dialog: it can’t be boring. Also, I tend to have too much introspection, so I cut that out, too. Dialog should dialog, not be too thinky.

But the real problem with this first version couldn’t be fixed with more sparkling dialog. The real problem is that there is no conflict between father and daughter, or so little that it is just boring. They already know what’s going on in their world. They have similar goals. Far more interesting to introduce a different, new character who is really going to challenge them. I wouldn’t call the above Maid/Butler dialog, but it has some similarities. The two are talking about something more for the sake of the reader than their own sakes.

Hopefully, the final version introduces some real conflict and moves along more quickly. It is also funnier and has a bit of romance. Not that this romance wasn’t in the text to begin with, but I moved it forward to the first scene in the book with Issa, instead of leaving it for the third or fourth scene. Another great rule of dialog: do as much with it as you can. But that’s really true of all good writing. It should all multi-task. Compress, compress. Real life is boring. That’s why people read books.

Final Version:

“Issa, there is an emissary come from Rurik, waiting to speak to you in the Throne Room,” said her father, King Jaap, coming up behind her.

I am sure he would rather speak to you than me, Father,” said Issa. Since her mother’s death, she had taken the queen’s place in guarding the neweyr. But she had not yet decided if she would encourage the distant cousin who was her father’s heir to propose marriage to her.

“His name is Duke Kellin of Falcorn. He is one of King Haikor’s court favorites. He has come to offer a betrothal.”

“A betrothal?” said Issa. Well, this would be interesting, at least. A duke of Rurik had never been to the kingdom before. In fact, Issa could not remember any official emissary ever coming from Rurik, only spies. She might have fun with this.

Issa climbed down and made her way to the Throne Room in the other wing of the castle. Before she entered, her father touched her arm and she turned back to him.

“I have sheltered you,” the king said. “Kept you from your responsibilities as princess.”

“I have been guiding the neweyr in my mother’s place since I was eleven years old,” Issa protested. “How is that sheltering me from my responsibilities?”

“Not the responsibilities of the neweyr, but the responsibilities of the throne. You are a princess, Issa, and it is time that you were used as one.”

Issa still did not understand what her father meant, but she puzzled over it as he led her into the Throne Room. A man stood when they entered. He was tall, with broad shoulders and long legs. He was dressed in a long, thick, wool cloak that was adorned with pearls along the edge, and he seemed utterly untouched by the wear of the weeks of trave he would have endured on the journey here. It made Issa more conscious of her own worn tweed gown, the edges of her sleeves dirty from her work in the garden early that morning, the skirt with a tear to one side.

Issa glanced back up and saw Duke Kellin observing her every movement. There was a kind of arrogance in the set of his mouth and in the point of his chin. He seemed to Issa everything that she would have expected from a nobleman of King Haikor’s court. He was younger than she had expected, but perhaps King Haikor had run out of older, more experienced men. It was said that his favorites died with a frightening regularity.

“King Jaap,” said Kellin with a formal bow. Then he turned to her. “Princess Marlissa.” He bowed again, and held out his hand.

Issa gave him her own hand. When he kissed it, the sensation was strangely cold. Did he think she would marry him because he was handsome and powerful in King Haikor’s court?

“I come to you with gifts from King Haikor.” The duke offered Issa a small velvet bag. “To match the shine of your eyes,” he added.