Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 71

Writing Wednesday: What the Character Wants

I had a phone conversation with my editor yesterday that has had me thinking a lot about characters and what makes an audience connect to a character and root deeply for that character. There are a lot of books that are well-written that don't make me feel like I *have* to find out what happens next. And sometimes in hyped, best-selling books, I can feel a little manipulated into wanting to know what happens next. Some people call this "plot," but for me, everything always comes down to character. I don't care about plot. I don't care about saving the world. Really, I don't. I care about characters. I care about people being rescued and surviving, yes. But even more than that, I care about people getting what they really want and what has been denied them for a long, long time. I also care about characters becoming a better version of themselves than they are in the beginning. I care about their development, so long as they care about it, as well.

In The Hunger Games, I care about Katniss saving Primrose. It's certainly an old device, to put a child in jeopardy and then have a parent or someone in loco parentis have to risk his/her own life to save the child. I think that plot has to be about a third of all the plots in the world. Another third are ones where lovers are in jeopardy. The other third is about capturing a big white whale (I think). Anyway, it works every time. Or almost every time. It works as well as the author is able to make me care about the child and about the relationship between the child and the adult. I have to read to the end of the book. I have to see that final reunion. Everything that happens before that I want to rush through, and that sense of wanting to rush is part of what makes me turn pages. Each scene that refuses to end the story for me also tantalizes me, holding out the promise of the ending I want, but not giving it to me quite yet. It's a strip tease of sorts, making me watch until the last moment.

In Twilight, I think Stephanie Meyer is brilliant in making me want to know what happens next. It's not about the vampires and about the threat to Bella's life, though. It's all about does she get what she wants? Does she get Edward? Does she get him to notice her? Does she get him to kiss her? Does she get him to tell her more about his life? Does she find out his secret? Does she get him to stop pushing her away? Does she get him to marry her? Does she get him to make love to her? Does she get him to make her into a vampire? There are a thousand smaller goals that Bella wants and every chapter we are set up a new one and Meyer teases us to make sure that we get an answer at each step, and then are posed another question. And it absolutely makes sense, because the way that we humans are, we are never satisfied. Not with anything that we want, not really. There is always something else. But with Bella, what she wants is all about Edward, tightly connected. And anything that puts that in jeopardy (and there are a lot of things) that makes us want to know even more what will the ending be. Even though we know it's going to be a happy ending. Because all romances are, aren't they? We still want to get there.

It helps if what the character wants is something that a huge number of readers are going to relate to. If the character wants to die a fiery death, the reader is going to have a problem with that unless it's presented in a way that makes absolute sense. The character wants rest. Tell why. Make the reader want to rest and feel along with the character. A driving desire or ambition in a main character isn't a necessity. There certainly are main characters who work without them. But it makes things a lot easier as a writer if your character stands up in the first chapter, points at what s/he wants, and says--that! In the end, this is one of the reasons I tend not to outline, because a character who wants something ends up being the engine of a novel, and all you have to do as a writer is start throwing obstacles in the way that make sense given the circumstances and the world you've built. You don't want the author to drive the story. You want the character to do it. (Not that I think characters really exist, but there's a kind of fiction that authors like to believe in while at work.)

The character almost has what s/he wants, and then it gets snatched away. There are a thousand ways to take it away, to make the reader root for the character to keep going, to keep chasing it. The snatching needs to be done in an appropriate way. But when you find yourself thinking--or shouting out loud--"Kiss him!" or "Kill her!" then you know that the writer has done it. You're hooked. You're rooting. You want a specific thing to happen and you'll read a whole novel to find out how it finally does. Yes?

Teens Deserve Respect

My oldest daughter was telling me a story about how little respect teenagers get. She is 18, has been accepted to MIT, has some pretty impressive scholarships and has her name up on a banner at her high school. The last year, she has not spent much time at her high school except for a handful of AP classes, and has taken "release" time for college classes at a local college. Nonetheless, when she ended up at school after driving her younger sister in, she stayed in the common area to do math homework in one of her college classes. An assistant principal came up to her and asked her why she wasn't in class. She explained that she didn't have a class, that she was doing homework for her college classes but that they were in the evening. He continued to give her a hard time about it for a while and then walked away.

Her complaint about this is that she was not doing anything disruptive. She was quite obviously sitting down quietly in front of a book, with a notebook opened in front of her, working through problems. But because she wasn't doing what the authority figure thought she should be doing, he felt that it was his responsibility to go up to her and tell her what he thought. No adult would do this to another adult. He didn't ask her out of curiosity what she was doing. He treated her like a criminal for no other reason than that she wasn't following his idea of the rules. She pointed out that at 18, she is still not allowed to check herself out of school. She has to get a note from her mommy, though she could drop out of school if she wanted. What is this? Is this really the way to create independent adults who will contribute to society. Yes, there are jobs where you just have to do what you are told, but how many? Is that what a high school diploma prepares you for? Maybe it is.

There are certainly teens who give up on school just because it is too hard. There are also an awful lot of them who give up on school because it is too boring and isn't teaching them anything but how to sit in a class and listen to someone bore them. I think that teens in general deserve more respect and also the courtesy of being listened to. I wish that more adults remembered clearly what it was like to be a teen. The constant insistence that one must wait for respect no matter how well one acts now. The belittling of a teen's ideas simply because the teen is a teen. Nothing makes me angrier than to see my teens or any teens treated this way. Teens challenge adults because they are smart, not because they are simply rude. I love the way that teens make me see myself and my world upside down. It is one of the greatest pleasures of being around teens, and it is one of the reasons that I still write for teens.

Monday Book Recs--Nielsen

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen is about an orphan named Sage who survives by trickery and theft on the streets of the kingdom's capital city. But he is captured himself one day, and drawn into a dangerous and treacherous plot. I don't want to reveal too much of the plot here, but I will say that the book reminded me strongly of Megan Whalen Turner, in all good ways. Sage is a smart-mouthed kid who has a heart. When others mistreat him, he seems to see more deeply to the truth. And like The Thief, the story is told in first person, which has the intended effect of making it feel intimate and honest, while at the same time somehow disguising information or making light of it and then revealing the truth at the end in a bravado climax that made perfect sense. I really fell in love with the character of Sage, and though there was a moment where the plot seemed to take the obvious turn, I ended up not caring because it was so well done that I forgot about the plot twist and became caught up in the character development. I say to students a lot that they make a mistake in thinking that it's the most original story that is going to sell. Being original is not nearly so important as being simply a good writer, and that is what Jen Nielsen is.

Friday Tri: Rules to Break

1. Schedule each day

When you are first starting an exercise plan, it's great to have a schedule so that you can see your progress day by day and also so that you have accountability, if to no one else, then to yourself. But I have found that the returns on having a schedule can diminish as time goes on. For me, I find it difficult to sleep at night if I am thinking about a difficult workout the next day, which is counterproductive, of course, but still happens. The only way around this for me has been to simply live an unscheduled life. I may not be progressing as fast as I could be theoretically if I scheduled well or had a coach, but in terms of living a normal life, I've had to do this. It forces me to listen to my body. Some days I wake up and am still unexpectedly sore from a strength training workout, and I adjust my workout either in time or in intensity because of that. Other times, I simply have too much on my plate in terms of family life and a workout has to give. So while I think it's a good idea to workout every day, there are limits to this rule.

2. Intervals every week

When I was doing hard core running workouts in preparation for an important marathon four years ago, I did intervals every week. I also did a tempo run every week. I don't know if it was the fault of the plan I was using, but I ended up getting injured and I have done less and less interval training ever since then. I tend to do more tempo-like training, and just never push myself past that pace. It has been working for me, so I am going to start recommending it to older athletes (over 40). I've heard increasingly that it is very common for older athletes to need more recovery time than younger ones. It doesn't even necessarily mean that you are getting slower, though that may happen. I am still getting faster than I was 8 years ago, which is cool. But I do it by doing smarter training like trying to run the actual course or something like it and overshooting race distance in preparation. The intervals have fallen by the wayside. Which doesn't make me too sad, since I was always more of a distance girl and intervals make me want to puke.

3. Gather information

My first year of training, I had no information. I just went out running or biking and had only a vague idea of how far I had gone. Then I stepped up and bought myself a heart rate monitor. I liked that so much my husband bought me a GPS watch, which I used obsessively for a year or so. And then I realized that the equipment was interfering in my enjoyment of the sport as well as in my ability to focus on my own body's signals as to when it was time to slow down or stop. So I put away first the GPS (my husband, who is not so OCD was happy to take it over), and then I even gave up my heart rate monitor except for every occasional uses when I am trying to compare data from previous years or when I am doing a race where I am trying to keep my heart rate really low for endurance. I still keep careful logs of all my workouts. Don't get me wrong. I'm still OCD about it. But my forcing myself to go without certain data, I tend to write down more information about how I FEEL about a workout rather than what the data tells me objectively is true about a workout. Yes, I'm still indoors and on a treadmill or an indoor bike most of the time, so I can still have lots of control over my terrain, but still, it's a step in the right direction for me. More information is not always better.

Success, Failure and the Familiar

A friend of mine won a major award in the last year. A huge award. Something he had never expected, even though he was at the ceremony and knew he had been nominated. I congratulated him afterward and asked him how it felt to win the award. He told me that it was actually like an out of body experience. He was so surprised, so absolutely shocked when his name was called, he ended up feeling detached from himself and said that he actually could not remember anything after his name was called. He said those around him had told him that he got up and thanked people properly, but it was such a surprise, even though it was a wonderful one, that he hardly had a chance to really experience it. He said it still felt like it happened to someone else.

Hearing this story has really made me think about how similar the physiological reaction to a shock, whether we call it good or bad. I remember when I first started in the writing business, a few people warned me that success could actually be a terrible thing. I could not understand what this might possibly mean. Yes, I saw people who were successful and didn't handle it well. I saw their marriages fall apart and their families. I saw them retreat from the world and refuse to continue writing or acting or whatever their field of success was. It seemed insane. That would never happen to me, I thought.

And I'm certainly not as successful as I dreamed I would be then. But truthfully, I have had enough success to see clearly the dangers of success and to understand why it is that success and failure can feel very much the same. That is, they are not what you expect. You are not prepared for either of them. You cannot be. Because it is not what is familiar to you. It is not what you are used to. And in the end, what makes us humans the most comfortable is sameness. It's why people stay in weird relationships and duplicate terrible parental relationships in their own life. It's the default. It's what is easy. Easy isn't necessarily happy, but it can feel like it. Too much happiness can feel a lot like too much pain because it is too much to take in. It can make you breathless in a good way if it's what you are hoping for, like in a romantic comedy. But if it's not what you imagine at all, it can be overwhelming.

I'm convinced I'm going to use this idea in a story somewhere, because I think writers often write about happiness in the same way, as if it is always what is wanted. But my friend's story seemed so true to me, and so not what you would normally read about, that I wanted to use it somewhere. I don't know where yet. But that's what it's like being a friend or family member of mine. Everything you tell me will be mined for stories in the future. Be warned!

Writing Wednesday: Oversinging it

Yeah, so I watch reality TV on occasion. Specifically, I like talent shows. American Idol has palled for me of late. I honestly can't stand to listen to the judges be so positive. And I hate Simon Cowell's new show The X-Factor with a passion. It's too over-the-top in terms of performance. You CAN actually have too much fire and sexy backup singers on stage, as it turns out. Plus the nastiness between the judges has gone up a notch. So, my new reality drug of choice: The Voice.

Recently I watched the battle between Pip and Parrett in which Pip is told by Alanis Morrissette that he should just sing the straight melody, that there is nothing cooler than a singer who dares to sing just the melody. Pip then admits that he has a tendency to sing more flowery runs, just because he can and because he wants to impress. In the actual battle, he restrains himself and ends up singing one small run at the very end, and that's it. That was all he needed to do to win, stop oversinging it and have confidence in the song.

Of course, writing a novel is not exactly the same as singing a song that someone else has written. There are probably more similarities between doing an audio presentation of a novel and performing a song, but nonetheless, I think there is a lot to be learned. I really cringe when I hear authors profess to teach aspiring writers how to really amp up their pretty language. I get angry when I hear writing teachers in schools tell my kids not to use the word "said" more than once, and give them a list of alternative words that are "fancier." I have actually had my kids marked down on papers because they used the same word too many times, even if that word is a character's name. These are people who do not understand the importance of the simple melody. They are people who are distracted by the flowery parts of a song, maybe because they are too insecure to realize that a simple melody, ie a great story, is all you really need.

It doesn't matter how many times the story you are telling has been told before. It doesn't matter who has told it before and how incredible that person is. What matters is that you are telling the story your way, in as clear and confident a way as possible. Don't "fancy" up your language to make it seem like you're a better writer. Don't add subplots to pad your word count. Don't tell irrelevant details just because you feel like you need to add. All that does it make you seem like you aren't secure in yourself as a writer. Tell your story. Tell it the way you know it to be true. Tell the hard parts. Tell the funny parts. Tell it as slowly or as riproaringly fast as it needs to be told. But tell the story. Make sure that you don't oversing that story. You don't want to cover up something as good as that story of yours. You want it to shine, even if you think it's not your story. You will be surprised. It will be your story, the more you carve away at the extraneous parts.

Or to borrow a quote from politics, It's the story, stupid!

The Book That Changed My Life

I have always loved books. I was that kid who read books while walking to school every morning. I read through the 10 books weekly my mother allowed me to check out, and then worked through all the books that my (10) siblings checked out. I don't remember every missing a week at the library, even into my college years. So, a lot of books. And I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was 5, which was when I wrote and illustrated my first very short children's book. But the doubts set in and by the time I was in college, writing was a far-off dream, something I would do someday.

Until I read SHARDS OF HONOR by Lois McMaster Bujold in 1992. My brother lent it to me. I remember him telling me that he and his wife had arguments every month about him spending over his allotted book budget, which was $100. A month. That floored me. That at the time was my definition of rich. But I read through SHARDS in a big gulp, all in one day, then drove to my brother's to get all the other books in the series. I devoured them all in a couple of weeks' time, lent them to my husband who read them, too, then lent them to my best friends at the time, who also fell in love. And I wandered around for a while trying to find other books that were LIKE THAT. I read a few that were supposed to be in the same genre, but didn't feel the same in my head at all.

I wanted: smart female characters who did stuff and were still somehow women, male characters who treated these women like equals, world-building that didn't take over the novel but felt smart, technology that mattered sociologically, romance that wasn't cheesy, gut-wrenching choices, tight as a drum plots, dialog that was snappy as Jane Austen, language that was transparent but also occasionally literary and beautiful and quotable, twists and turns that forced the characters to change and grow--dammit! I suppose that sounds like a list of everything every writer is trying to do, but Lois did it best. What followed were about ten years of me trying with feverish hopes to write something that was anywhere near as good, including something that I actually sent to Lois (with her permission) and she handed back with kind comments.

In the end, I had to actually stop trying to write like Lois in order to find my own voice, which was in some ways painful. I ended up finding that I wrote fantasy better than science fiction for some reason and that I tended to have a knack for fairy tale-style language. If Mira, Mirror and The Princess and the Hound succeed in my own mind, it is because they finally were up to the writing I found in SHARDS. I think I still am writing in some sense to that particular series, though I figured out how to steal what I like and wrap it up in paper that no one recognizes anymore. But that's the book that changed my life as a writer and gave me a target to shoot for.

Monday Book Recs--Sizemore

Memory of Morning by Susan Sizemore is an alternate world Regency romance that I found simply delightful. In this world, women are now being allowed to study medicine and even join the Navy as surgeons. The main character Megere Cliff is one such surgeon. She has fallen in love with the ship's captain, although she knows she can never have him. She is equally smitten with the ship's surgeon, whom she can also never have. When she returns home and discovers that her family is planning to send her to "Loudon" for a season to catch a husband, she is willing enough to help with the catching. But there is more going on here than just Regency-tilted. There is some rich worldbuilding with the fever and the blood that Megere holds which makes her particularly valuable, though she is a member of the gentry and not the nobility. I enjoyed the twists and turns.

The funny thing to me was that there are a lot of romance tropes in here that might have annoyed me and didn't. The love/hate relationship, the power dfifferential, the need to write it in Regency times, although there is no particular reason for it not being a stand alone fantasy world except that Regency is fun and women like to read Regency romance. I finished the last page and immediately wanted to read the next book in the series. I hope there will be a series. I can't find a sequel at the moment. I think one of the reasons that I forgave some of the tired old cliches was that the story itself was not primarily about romance. There were a lot of other important threads going on, and the romance was intertwined with those threads inextricably, but it wasn't as if it was the most important thing. Megere Cliff has her own ambitions besides marriage. She is a strong, smart character who doesn't do stupid things. She doesn't bump around trying to find marriage.

It was just Regency enough to interest me and just not Regency enough not to annoy me. I liked Megere and her family, found the various heroes charming and believable in their own way, and most of all, liked the world that was in the background here, where it should be. No pages long descriptions of the history of the disease, no annoying names to try to pronounce. The name "Loudon" for London was a perfect introduction to how the author would play this twist. Exactly like London, but with one letter changed. And how one letter can make a difference! I often tell writers who want to try fantasy to change just one thing, but be rigorous about all the implications that one change will make. That's what's going on here, I think. I also loved how fantasy and science fiction blended a bit. No reason fantasy can't steal, eh?

Friday Tri: Rules of Swimming

I have been swimming laps since I was 14, which is almost 30 years now. When I started on the swim team, I had no idea what I was doing. We'd had a swimming pool in the backyard when I was a kid, but I'd never had formal swimming lessons until a month before the swim team started. I only knew vaguely that there was more than one swimming stroke, or that you were supposed to dive into a pool in a particular way. I didn't know at all how to breathe while swimming, how to do a flip turn or circle swimming. The rules for swim team swimming are really useful to learn, but if you're not on a swim team, how do you learn them?

If there are more than two people swimming in a lane, you must circle swim. This is done by swimming up the right hand side of the lane, as if you are driving a car, then flipping or turning at the end, and continuing to swim on the right hand side. If you swim slowly, expect that the other swimmers in the pool will need to pass you. Try to be aware of where they are and stop at the side of the pool for them to pass you if they are coming close. If they are expert swimmers, they will not be willing to wait for a turn and will touch your foot when they need to pass. Your job then is not to stop (although you can if you choose to), but to move as far to the right as you can. Again, as in driving a car, the center section of the lane now becomes the passing section and the faster swimmer will move around you as quickly as possible. If this happens often, it can be annoying, but it's just the way that it is. You can try to find a lane that is designated "slow" swimming, but I must admit that I rarely see people pay attention to those signs. Often fast-ish swimmer are humble and seem to think they are slow. Compared to Michael Phelps, perhaps, and so they swim in the slow lane anyway. There is no need to apologize about being slow. You have as much right to be in the swim lane as anyone else. However, they also do not need to apologize to you for being fast. If you don't move over properly, they will feel within their rights to brush against you as they pass. They're not trying to hurt you, but they are probably trying to hit certain times and are watching the clock with every turn. They are serious about swimming.

If there are only two people in a lane or if you are swimming alone, I recommend side to side swimming. This allows two swimmers of varying abilities to swim in the same lane without ever bothering each other. If you are swimming on the left side of the lane, you flip and keep on that side, though now it will be on the right. Does this make sense? Just stay on your side, and you won't ever cross paths with the other swimmer. I will admit that I think it is rude if you are in a lane by yourself and decide to swim right down the middle on the black line. I may just get in the lane with you anyway and start swimming to one side and expect you to move over politely. There is no reason that one person should be allowed to hog a lane all by him or herself.

There are times when there are no lane lines up and therefore it can be difficult to tell where one lane begins and another ends. In this case, I know that most swimmers will take up a lane. I still find this inefficient. In this case, if I need to get in, I am not going to stand by the side of the pool waiting for an open lane, as I suppose you would if you were waiting for a treadmill to free up at the gym. I am just going to climb in and find a place for myself. I will try to swim either on top of the black stripe in this case (which otherwise I would never do) or to the side of the black stripe left or right. I keep an eye on the other swimmers to make sure I don't crash into them.

If you are feeling chatty at the swimming pool during a break, feel free to talk to any other swimmers who are resting at the side of the pool. I generally find that other swimmers are happy to give advice about swimming or gear or weight loss or whatever you are interested in. You'd be surprised at how many swimmers would love to give you advice about your stroke if you give them the least indication that you are interested. My husband is always itching to tell people how to be more efficient swimmers. It's like listening to someone play a violin off key to him. It just bothers him to see weird strokes. So if you see someone better than you taking a break, you can ask for advice. You can also probably ask the lifeguards at the pool. There is equipment at the pool that you can often use if you are interested in it while lap swimming, such as a kick board, a buoy to hold your legs up so you can focus on your arms, or paddles to add more resistance to your stroke. If you want to use a kick board, put it under your chest, not just holding it outstretched with your arms.

If you are into triathlon, there is no real reason for you to need to learn to do a flip turn. You will never use one in competition unless you get roped into a Master's swim meet. But they are not that hard to learn and they do make it so that you aren't stopping very minute to turn. All you need to do is practice doing a somersault by the wall of the pool and then kick off with your legs while you are still underwater. That's the basics, anyway.

I hope that's helpful and makes it a little less scary to go swim at the pool.

Thursday Quotes: Friedrich Schiller "Naive and Sentimental Poetry"

"The poet, I said, is either nature, or he will seek it. The former produces the naive, the latter the sentimental poet."

This is a translation available online from The Schiller Institute. I think it's wretched, but I admit, I tend to translate very freely, with more focus on making the translation sound natural rather than focusing on trying to be true to the original. This may frighten people who think I should show more respect, but I suppose I have confidence enough in my own writing not to worry so much about that.

Anyway--

Schiller's essay on naive and sentimental poetry has often been read as a description of his and Goethe's way of writing. Goethe was supposedly the naive writer, with a natural sense of beautiful language. Goethe was quite prolific, was famous as a young man for Young Werther, and became as an older man Germany's great writer on par with Shakespeare in England. Schiller on the other hand, wrote far less and is not as well known. He died much younger than Goethe, which may be part of it. The two were good friends and have quite a correspondence.

That's the backstory. What interests me as a writer now is the idea that for some beauty is more natural and doesn't have to be worked at so hard. I am someone who writes very quickly and I suppose some might say "naturally." This isn't because I'm not afraid of writing, however. I think I am just as terrified as any other writer who has been in the business a while (the fear gets worse the longer you are in it as far as I can tell). I do have certain mental tricks I use to ignore the fear. And I do things whether or not I am afraid of them in other parts of my life. I don't have to like something to do it and do it well.

So a part of me is annoyed with what seems like whining from Schiller about how it's "so hard" to write. Yeah, yeah, so what? And there is also another part of me annoyed that Schiller seems to say that he works harder at his writing, and there seems to be a kind of privilege given to writers who work hard. Maybe he works too hard? Maybe he should stop a little earlier? You can overwrite stuff and then it feels unnatural, yes.

But this discussion in my mind also comes back to the question of talent and hard work. It's impossible really to know how much natural talent any given writer started with and how much of the result is actually hard work. Our judgments on good writers are suspect to begin with. We can measure BIC hours, I suppose. But writers work in different ways, not all of them visible. In the end, I think it doesn't matter what talent you have to start with. It matters less and less the further along you get in your career. What matters are other things. Your hard work, yes. But also things like how well you anticipate what readers want. What other writers you draw into your circle. How smart you are in your business decisions. How well you deal with the neurosis that is a writing career.

I'm not saying talent matters not at all. I don't know what talent is, really. But whatever it is, we can't control it. That's sort of the definition of talent. It's the thing that you don't control and can't really get at. There is no real naive writer. There's only the rest of us, trying to do our best with what we have. That's all we've got. Other writers have different things than we do. We try to learn from them, yes. But we are also always ourselves, and we shouldn't want to be something other than that.