Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 72
March 22, 2012
Four questions from WFC
I find myself more and more answering questions in ways that I worry my listeners find rather vague and skirting the issue at hand. At Writing For Charity, this weekend here are some of the questions I remember being asked:
1. What do you do when you can't fix a book you've been working on for years?
You write a different book. You write about twenty more different books. And then maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to go back to the first book and see what it was that you couldn't get out on the page because you've become a good enough writer to do a very complex job that you're not up to yet. Or alternatively, you will realize that there is really nothing salvageable, and you will discover to your enormous relief that you don't care anymore because you've become a writer in the meantime who is much better than in the past, and those characters who are pestering you to tell their stories now will find other books to morph into in wonderful ways you will never know now if you keep banging your head against the wall.
The problem with this answer is that it is really turning around all the assumptions in the question and essentially refusing to answer the question as stated. But the reason I still stand by this answer is that I think it is often true that our questions turn out to be the wrong questions, or at least that we are asking them in a way that doesn't really make any sense to someone who is further down the line than we are. Also, a lot of the time, it turns out that what we think we are doing isn't what we are really doing. And that no one can answer certain questions except the person we will become if we can get where we are meant to be going. The other real answers others can give are a pat on the head and a sympathetic nod, saying, yeah, I was there, too. I remember how it felt. I remember that I didn't know what to do then, either.
2. Is it bad if you know you're writing the same story that has been told a thousand times before?
The simple answer to this: No.
The slightly more complex answer to this: No, because all writers are liars and thieves. Thieves because they steal everything they can get their hands on, then mix it up with all the other things that they've stolen so no one will ever guess where it all came from. The real trick is in reading so widely and knowing so many stories that people can see the line of theft because you know stories they have never heard of. And liars because writers are always refusing to admit the truth about being thieves and perhaps in the end are incapable of remembering everything that they have stolen, not because they don't know they've stolen it but because they don't know where.
The even more complex answer to this is: The problem with asking this question has nothing to do with the story and everything to do with where you are as a writer. Writers are incredibly neurotic. We wander around like the bird in "Are You My Mother?" and we ask everyone--am I OK? Am I a good writer? Am I good enough? Now? What about now? You're just going to have to learn to live with that uncertainty. No one can tell you enough times that you are good. No review, no award, no amount of money, no agent, no movie deal, no letter from a reader is ever going to fill the hole that is your neediness, at least not for longer than a few hours. That isn't to say that good news shouldn't be celebrated. It should. But it should be celebrated as a confirmation of your own acceptance of yourself as flawed but perfect in that imperfection. You must learn to stop looking to others for reassurance and approval and ask yourself. If you want to tell the story you are telling, then that is the only thing that matters. If it still interests you, then keep writing it. If it doesn't, then decide if that is because of your fear or because you really have moved on to something else. Fear should not keep you from writing. Fear is what we write about, ultimately.
3. How much is too much backstory?
Um, too much.
Or if you want a more specific answer: one paragraph. Except with epic fantasy, and then it can go on for about two hundred pages, but only if you can write it interestingly, and with a particular stylistic panache. And in memoir, you can do backstory for exactly ten pages, but only if the language is perfect. Oh, and historical can have backstory for five pages. Also, any mysteries can have backstory if it has to do with the crime.
But mostly, if you think it has too much, it has too much.
Unless you're one of those people who are so smart they never think of backstory, and then you need a lot more than you're giving right now, only don't do it condescendingly. Do it like you're talking to a teen child who is looking at you with shining eyes and you know every word is going to be memorized and repeated to a teacher who is going to think of every reason you are wrong.
4. What is the right balance of telling and showing?
47% and 53%. Always.
Of course, this is just a question of what effect you want to have on the audience. A masterful writer seems to intuit what almost every reader will feel on every page. How you get to that expert level? Well, you write a lot. More than you think is a lot. And you throw that all out and then you've still got about fifty novels before you're anywhere near an expert.
But even the experts will tell you that the balance you choose is going to be your personal choice. You may want there to be a slower sense of pace in one novel and a faster one in another. You may want the reader to feel as if everything is going to happen in its own good time. Or you may want the reader ready to hit you over the head if you don't tell her right now what is going on.
There is a cost in telling and that is that it feels like you are manipulating the action of the story. The payout is that you can tell things a lot more easily and more clearly than you can show them. Showing allows the reader the chance to interpret the story. Telling not so much. But showing often feels faster to the reader. I remember Orson Scott Card once said he tried writing his first novel and it was only a hundred pages and he showed it to a friend and the friend tried to read it, but said it was just too long. Then he figured out how to write scenes, made the story 400 pages long and the friend wondered how he had made it so much shorter.
I think what beginning writers often write when they come to conferences (certainly this was what I wanted when I came to conferences) was a list of items to tick off in order to write a good novel. Do these things, and your book will be good and people will buy it and you will be a real author. So that's why writers start making up rules about writing with numbers and lists. But the further along you get, the less you find such things useful and the more you tend to mock them because you can see both sides of any answer to any question. But if you say that to beginners, it makes them feel as if they aren't being told the truth, or that there is some secret conspiracy to keep all the rules of good writing to the people who are already "in the know." Which is exactly the opposite of the truth. We are happy to share, it's just that the answers aren't always ones that sound like answers.
Sorry.
1. What do you do when you can't fix a book you've been working on for years?
You write a different book. You write about twenty more different books. And then maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to go back to the first book and see what it was that you couldn't get out on the page because you've become a good enough writer to do a very complex job that you're not up to yet. Or alternatively, you will realize that there is really nothing salvageable, and you will discover to your enormous relief that you don't care anymore because you've become a writer in the meantime who is much better than in the past, and those characters who are pestering you to tell their stories now will find other books to morph into in wonderful ways you will never know now if you keep banging your head against the wall.
The problem with this answer is that it is really turning around all the assumptions in the question and essentially refusing to answer the question as stated. But the reason I still stand by this answer is that I think it is often true that our questions turn out to be the wrong questions, or at least that we are asking them in a way that doesn't really make any sense to someone who is further down the line than we are. Also, a lot of the time, it turns out that what we think we are doing isn't what we are really doing. And that no one can answer certain questions except the person we will become if we can get where we are meant to be going. The other real answers others can give are a pat on the head and a sympathetic nod, saying, yeah, I was there, too. I remember how it felt. I remember that I didn't know what to do then, either.
2. Is it bad if you know you're writing the same story that has been told a thousand times before?
The simple answer to this: No.
The slightly more complex answer to this: No, because all writers are liars and thieves. Thieves because they steal everything they can get their hands on, then mix it up with all the other things that they've stolen so no one will ever guess where it all came from. The real trick is in reading so widely and knowing so many stories that people can see the line of theft because you know stories they have never heard of. And liars because writers are always refusing to admit the truth about being thieves and perhaps in the end are incapable of remembering everything that they have stolen, not because they don't know they've stolen it but because they don't know where.
The even more complex answer to this is: The problem with asking this question has nothing to do with the story and everything to do with where you are as a writer. Writers are incredibly neurotic. We wander around like the bird in "Are You My Mother?" and we ask everyone--am I OK? Am I a good writer? Am I good enough? Now? What about now? You're just going to have to learn to live with that uncertainty. No one can tell you enough times that you are good. No review, no award, no amount of money, no agent, no movie deal, no letter from a reader is ever going to fill the hole that is your neediness, at least not for longer than a few hours. That isn't to say that good news shouldn't be celebrated. It should. But it should be celebrated as a confirmation of your own acceptance of yourself as flawed but perfect in that imperfection. You must learn to stop looking to others for reassurance and approval and ask yourself. If you want to tell the story you are telling, then that is the only thing that matters. If it still interests you, then keep writing it. If it doesn't, then decide if that is because of your fear or because you really have moved on to something else. Fear should not keep you from writing. Fear is what we write about, ultimately.
3. How much is too much backstory?
Um, too much.
Or if you want a more specific answer: one paragraph. Except with epic fantasy, and then it can go on for about two hundred pages, but only if you can write it interestingly, and with a particular stylistic panache. And in memoir, you can do backstory for exactly ten pages, but only if the language is perfect. Oh, and historical can have backstory for five pages. Also, any mysteries can have backstory if it has to do with the crime.
But mostly, if you think it has too much, it has too much.
Unless you're one of those people who are so smart they never think of backstory, and then you need a lot more than you're giving right now, only don't do it condescendingly. Do it like you're talking to a teen child who is looking at you with shining eyes and you know every word is going to be memorized and repeated to a teacher who is going to think of every reason you are wrong.
4. What is the right balance of telling and showing?
47% and 53%. Always.
Of course, this is just a question of what effect you want to have on the audience. A masterful writer seems to intuit what almost every reader will feel on every page. How you get to that expert level? Well, you write a lot. More than you think is a lot. And you throw that all out and then you've still got about fifty novels before you're anywhere near an expert.
But even the experts will tell you that the balance you choose is going to be your personal choice. You may want there to be a slower sense of pace in one novel and a faster one in another. You may want the reader to feel as if everything is going to happen in its own good time. Or you may want the reader ready to hit you over the head if you don't tell her right now what is going on.
There is a cost in telling and that is that it feels like you are manipulating the action of the story. The payout is that you can tell things a lot more easily and more clearly than you can show them. Showing allows the reader the chance to interpret the story. Telling not so much. But showing often feels faster to the reader. I remember Orson Scott Card once said he tried writing his first novel and it was only a hundred pages and he showed it to a friend and the friend tried to read it, but said it was just too long. Then he figured out how to write scenes, made the story 400 pages long and the friend wondered how he had made it so much shorter.
I think what beginning writers often write when they come to conferences (certainly this was what I wanted when I came to conferences) was a list of items to tick off in order to write a good novel. Do these things, and your book will be good and people will buy it and you will be a real author. So that's why writers start making up rules about writing with numbers and lists. But the further along you get, the less you find such things useful and the more you tend to mock them because you can see both sides of any answer to any question. But if you say that to beginners, it makes them feel as if they aren't being told the truth, or that there is some secret conspiracy to keep all the rules of good writing to the people who are already "in the know." Which is exactly the opposite of the truth. We are happy to share, it's just that the answers aren't always ones that sound like answers.
Sorry.
March 20, 2012
More than you probably want to know about depression
Here is a link about "walking depression" that I found amazingly perceptive:
http://www.gresik.ca/2012/03/10-signs-of-walking-depression/
Some of the things I connected with in particular:
Feeling worse in the morning and better at night.
This was particularly true when one of my main goals of the day was a horrendous workout that I did not know if I could conquer. I tend to put a lot on my plate each day, but because I am so efficient, I often get done all my goals by about dinner time, and then in the evening I can "veg." Sometimes I am catatonic by then, but at least all the little things on my daily list are checked off.
Simmering resentment against people I was supposedly "helping."
Giving myself permission to say "no" more often was the cure to this, and working on pushing away guilt on a regular basis. I have had to cultivate some serious self-protective behaviors, including not answering the phone at times, and spending some time each night giving myself silent compliments on things that I find actually admirable, not stupid stuff or things that in fact increase my self-alienation.
Feeling distanced from people around me, since after all I was lying to them by not telling them how I really was feeling.
As painful as it was, I had to go to people and tell them directly how miserable I really was and what they needed to do to accept that my feelings were real. I had to insist that they not ignore my feelings, even if it was tempting for them to assume I wasn't that seriously depressed because I was still functional.
And also the reasons that it took a long time for me to seek help:
It didn't seem like I was as depressed as other people were, since I was still getting up in the morning and doing my work.
Nonetheless, the number of times a day that I would think about how great it would be to be dead was a pretty serious warning signal. I don't think I would ever have allowed myself to act on those fantasies, because my sense of responsibility to my family is just too strong, but it was scary that I had the fantasies at all.
Pride about being strong was going to take a hit.
There was something that seemed delicious about being invincible and never needing medication. That had to go. So did the idea that I didn't need professional therapy. I did, and I have before and I will probably again. Maybe everyone who is actually healthy already knows this and has no problem admitting it.
Realizing that I was going to have to change and that was going to take a lot of work.
This was the biggest barrier to me. Part of my depression was caused by the realization that my relationships were not as great as I had thought they were, but the more depressed I was, the more impossible it seemed to deal with the enormous work that fixing them would require. Give me a list of concrete tasks to accomplish, and I'm right there. I can do them fast and well. But the more difficult emotional work of relationships is so amorphous and changeable and well, let's admit it, emotional. I am always trying to circumvent that.
Realizing that I was secretly angry at everyone close to me in my life (however fair that was) and that was going to be painful to deal with.
Some of the people in my life were to blame for this in larger degree than others, but it is still true that I can get angry when I think about how some of the most destructive behaviors were those of people who simply found it easier and more convenient to believe that I was doing fine when I think if they had bothered to look even a tiny bit closer, they would have known it wasn't. Yes, I was pushing away their concern sometimes. But at other times, they ran away from the first hint of it, terrified of the depth of my despair. People are weak and they don't want to feel bad with you. Very few people in my life could handle me talking about how I really felt on a regular basis. I get it. They are human. But it still hurt. One of my major ongoing tasks is to accept the anger and let it go.
http://www.gresik.ca/2012/03/10-signs-of-walking-depression/
Some of the things I connected with in particular:
Feeling worse in the morning and better at night.
This was particularly true when one of my main goals of the day was a horrendous workout that I did not know if I could conquer. I tend to put a lot on my plate each day, but because I am so efficient, I often get done all my goals by about dinner time, and then in the evening I can "veg." Sometimes I am catatonic by then, but at least all the little things on my daily list are checked off.
Simmering resentment against people I was supposedly "helping."
Giving myself permission to say "no" more often was the cure to this, and working on pushing away guilt on a regular basis. I have had to cultivate some serious self-protective behaviors, including not answering the phone at times, and spending some time each night giving myself silent compliments on things that I find actually admirable, not stupid stuff or things that in fact increase my self-alienation.
Feeling distanced from people around me, since after all I was lying to them by not telling them how I really was feeling.
As painful as it was, I had to go to people and tell them directly how miserable I really was and what they needed to do to accept that my feelings were real. I had to insist that they not ignore my feelings, even if it was tempting for them to assume I wasn't that seriously depressed because I was still functional.
And also the reasons that it took a long time for me to seek help:
It didn't seem like I was as depressed as other people were, since I was still getting up in the morning and doing my work.
Nonetheless, the number of times a day that I would think about how great it would be to be dead was a pretty serious warning signal. I don't think I would ever have allowed myself to act on those fantasies, because my sense of responsibility to my family is just too strong, but it was scary that I had the fantasies at all.
Pride about being strong was going to take a hit.
There was something that seemed delicious about being invincible and never needing medication. That had to go. So did the idea that I didn't need professional therapy. I did, and I have before and I will probably again. Maybe everyone who is actually healthy already knows this and has no problem admitting it.
Realizing that I was going to have to change and that was going to take a lot of work.
This was the biggest barrier to me. Part of my depression was caused by the realization that my relationships were not as great as I had thought they were, but the more depressed I was, the more impossible it seemed to deal with the enormous work that fixing them would require. Give me a list of concrete tasks to accomplish, and I'm right there. I can do them fast and well. But the more difficult emotional work of relationships is so amorphous and changeable and well, let's admit it, emotional. I am always trying to circumvent that.
Realizing that I was secretly angry at everyone close to me in my life (however fair that was) and that was going to be painful to deal with.
Some of the people in my life were to blame for this in larger degree than others, but it is still true that I can get angry when I think about how some of the most destructive behaviors were those of people who simply found it easier and more convenient to believe that I was doing fine when I think if they had bothered to look even a tiny bit closer, they would have known it wasn't. Yes, I was pushing away their concern sometimes. But at other times, they ran away from the first hint of it, terrified of the depth of my despair. People are weak and they don't want to feel bad with you. Very few people in my life could handle me talking about how I really felt on a regular basis. I get it. They are human. But it still hurt. One of my major ongoing tasks is to accept the anger and let it go.
Monday Book Recs--Brooks
The Book of Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks
I connected to this story in a lot of ways. Joanna Brooks grew up in Southern California as a Mormon in the 70s and 80s, probably less of a minority than where I grew up in New Jersey around the same time. She sang pioneer songs in Primary, made handiwork as a Beehive, and admired the Osmonds. Like her, I felt a deep sense of belonging at church and not belonging at school. I moved to Utah at 9, and then had to deal with being a Mormon in a group of Mormons that suddenly didn't seem to fit as they did before. It was a lot different seeing people at church once a week than it was seeing them every day at school and at church. Or maybe Mormons in Utah really are different. It is so hard to tell and I don't like to make sweeping generalizations.
Brooks went to BYU as I did, but she was two years behind me and by the time she got there, I was already headed to graduate school at Princeton. I knew that problems were brewing for certain professors. I had taken classes from some of those professors and I must say, I loved them. They made me really think, about the church, yes, but also about everything else. About politics, about history, about feminism, and most of all about stories. They made me feel smarter just by being around them, and when I went to Princeton, I can't say that I had any better professors there. But I felt again more at home among the Mormons in Princeton than I had in Utah. I felt more fierce in defending my faith there, and I didn't mind being an outsider, an intellectual who was a Mormon, a PhD candidate who had no problem in considering the possibility of being a stay-at-home mom. When I got pregnant my last year there, I remember the astonishment and pity on most of the professors' faces and one who, despite his normal courtesy, asked me outright if it was an accident.
By the time I returned to BYU as a teacher, a good deal of the storm was over. I saw the after-effects, and by some measure benefited from them, since my position was in part opened because another professor who had not been a member was forced to leave the university. I have wondered on occasion if my bad experience teaching at BYU (where I was pushed out after 4 years) had anything to do with being a woman or being the kind of intellectual I was. I have mostly chalked it up to inexperience on my part, and have turned down another path (writing) that I have no regrets about taking.
Joanna Brooks returned her diploma to BYU in protest over the firings of various intellectuals and has since become a professor at San Diego and an interesting spokesperson for those in the church who do not necessarily follow the party line. It was such a relief to hear someone who argued cogently for a place for those who cannot support the church's position against gay marriage. I wonder if I might connect more with church service if I had her position. I don't know. I told a friend recently that I was a Mormon and she asked, astonished, but you've left the church? I said no, I hadn't. She said that I must be inactive. Well, not technically, I go to church every Sunday. I just don't feel anything there. I keep hoping, I suppose.
I was happy to be reminded of my childhood days, and of the sense of connection that I still feel to the histories of the pioneer past, and the uncertain sense of wanting to pass something along to my children. I think that the book may feel a little unfinished because it is an unfinished story. It is still being decided, as mine is.
I connected to this story in a lot of ways. Joanna Brooks grew up in Southern California as a Mormon in the 70s and 80s, probably less of a minority than where I grew up in New Jersey around the same time. She sang pioneer songs in Primary, made handiwork as a Beehive, and admired the Osmonds. Like her, I felt a deep sense of belonging at church and not belonging at school. I moved to Utah at 9, and then had to deal with being a Mormon in a group of Mormons that suddenly didn't seem to fit as they did before. It was a lot different seeing people at church once a week than it was seeing them every day at school and at church. Or maybe Mormons in Utah really are different. It is so hard to tell and I don't like to make sweeping generalizations.
Brooks went to BYU as I did, but she was two years behind me and by the time she got there, I was already headed to graduate school at Princeton. I knew that problems were brewing for certain professors. I had taken classes from some of those professors and I must say, I loved them. They made me really think, about the church, yes, but also about everything else. About politics, about history, about feminism, and most of all about stories. They made me feel smarter just by being around them, and when I went to Princeton, I can't say that I had any better professors there. But I felt again more at home among the Mormons in Princeton than I had in Utah. I felt more fierce in defending my faith there, and I didn't mind being an outsider, an intellectual who was a Mormon, a PhD candidate who had no problem in considering the possibility of being a stay-at-home mom. When I got pregnant my last year there, I remember the astonishment and pity on most of the professors' faces and one who, despite his normal courtesy, asked me outright if it was an accident.
By the time I returned to BYU as a teacher, a good deal of the storm was over. I saw the after-effects, and by some measure benefited from them, since my position was in part opened because another professor who had not been a member was forced to leave the university. I have wondered on occasion if my bad experience teaching at BYU (where I was pushed out after 4 years) had anything to do with being a woman or being the kind of intellectual I was. I have mostly chalked it up to inexperience on my part, and have turned down another path (writing) that I have no regrets about taking.
Joanna Brooks returned her diploma to BYU in protest over the firings of various intellectuals and has since become a professor at San Diego and an interesting spokesperson for those in the church who do not necessarily follow the party line. It was such a relief to hear someone who argued cogently for a place for those who cannot support the church's position against gay marriage. I wonder if I might connect more with church service if I had her position. I don't know. I told a friend recently that I was a Mormon and she asked, astonished, but you've left the church? I said no, I hadn't. She said that I must be inactive. Well, not technically, I go to church every Sunday. I just don't feel anything there. I keep hoping, I suppose.
I was happy to be reminded of my childhood days, and of the sense of connection that I still feel to the histories of the pioneer past, and the uncertain sense of wanting to pass something along to my children. I think that the book may feel a little unfinished because it is an unfinished story. It is still being decided, as mine is.
March 14, 2012
The Princess and the Horse
is now available for 99 cents on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Princess-Horse-Hound-ebook/dp/B005Z5FTD8/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1331754446&sr=8-4
http://www.amazon.com/The-Princess-Horse-Hound-ebook/dp/B005Z5FTD8/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1331754446&sr=8-4
Writing Wednesday: How to Sell Books
Anytime I go to a bookstore, do you know what section of the store seems to have the largest number of books? The section that is full of books on how to get rich. If you want to sell a lot of books, it seems, you should write a book about how to get rich. Whether you are rich yourself is not important. Neither is having made your money yourself. Just inherit it, then write a book that has tired advice that worked for people decades ago, and you will have a bestseller on your hands.
Why?
Because people want to believe that making money is easy, and that if they buy your book, then they will be able to avoid all the traps that everyone else who has been investing for years falls prey to.
The other guaranteed bestseller? A diet book that explains how to diet without ever feeling hungry. Ten easy steps to losing weight that are brand new and never heard before. And easy. Just eat this soup every day and the pounds will melt away. Just cut out all red foods from your diet and the weight will magically disappear. The Hostess diet, eat twinkies and dingdongs every day for breakfast and lose weight like I did. The all-meat diet, eat steaks at every meal, and you will never have to diet again. Because all the known advice on how to lose weight is wrong. The whole history of human experience is wrong. You can eat whatever you want, and if you do it standing on one leg, then you will lose weight.
Why?
Because everyone in America wants to lose weight and no one wants to do it by following the real rules. They already know what the real rules of weight loss are. They want to be lied to. They really do.
In the book world, the variation of this seems to be people who write books about how to write books and make them into bestsellers. The reality that this is something that cannot be guaranteed, is not something anyone wants to admit. Yes, we can control what readers buy by tweeting on a regular basis, by blogging and linking to other blogs, by placing ads in magazines and on-line, by going to conferences, doing book signings, and on and on. These are GUARANTEED ways of becoming a bestseller for years on end. That's what people want to hear, and that's what sells these books. But no one ever thinks of the fact that if things were so easily manipulated, every publishing house in the world would already have a handle. No one would buy books that don't sell for millions of dollars. There would be no mid-list.
One of the things I tell my kids often is: If it sounds too good to be true, it is.
Why?
Because people want to believe that making money is easy, and that if they buy your book, then they will be able to avoid all the traps that everyone else who has been investing for years falls prey to.
The other guaranteed bestseller? A diet book that explains how to diet without ever feeling hungry. Ten easy steps to losing weight that are brand new and never heard before. And easy. Just eat this soup every day and the pounds will melt away. Just cut out all red foods from your diet and the weight will magically disappear. The Hostess diet, eat twinkies and dingdongs every day for breakfast and lose weight like I did. The all-meat diet, eat steaks at every meal, and you will never have to diet again. Because all the known advice on how to lose weight is wrong. The whole history of human experience is wrong. You can eat whatever you want, and if you do it standing on one leg, then you will lose weight.
Why?
Because everyone in America wants to lose weight and no one wants to do it by following the real rules. They already know what the real rules of weight loss are. They want to be lied to. They really do.
In the book world, the variation of this seems to be people who write books about how to write books and make them into bestsellers. The reality that this is something that cannot be guaranteed, is not something anyone wants to admit. Yes, we can control what readers buy by tweeting on a regular basis, by blogging and linking to other blogs, by placing ads in magazines and on-line, by going to conferences, doing book signings, and on and on. These are GUARANTEED ways of becoming a bestseller for years on end. That's what people want to hear, and that's what sells these books. But no one ever thinks of the fact that if things were so easily manipulated, every publishing house in the world would already have a handle. No one would buy books that don't sell for millions of dollars. There would be no mid-list.
One of the things I tell my kids often is: If it sounds too good to be true, it is.
March 13, 2012
Friday Night Lights and plotting
I love fantasy, but that doesn't mean I can't also love a show set in a very ordinary town with characters who never deal with big problems like the world coming to an end, international spy rings, or murder investigations. One of the things I think Friday Night Lights does better than any series I can think of is plotting by giving characters exactly what they want and seeing what happens when they get it, and at the same time giving characters the thing they fear the most and seeing how they deal with that.
Jason Street is the star quarterback and ends up getting paralyzed in the first episode. You think that's bad? What makes it a lot worse is that then his girlfriend sleeps with his best friend. And he has to decide what he is going to do. Every day of his life, he has to decide if he is going to accept his disability or not, if he is going to forgive or not, if he is going to go back to coaching the team that he once ruled or not.
Eric Taylor, the high school football coach, wins the state championship against all odds in the first season. We all cheer for him. And then? Life goes on. His players grow up and leave. When I first started watching the show, I was afraid that he was always going to win, but no, he doesn't. He loses sometimes, too, or almost wins and then has to deal with that. He has ordinary problems like team members who mess up. Then he ends up getting the dream job, coaching in college. He goes and does that. But what happens? The people around him pay the price for this choice, and he eventually decides it isn't worth it. Then just when you think all things are going well, this character ends up with what he fears the most. He gets pushed out of his beloved job and forced to coach a hopeless team. He is angry and he makes some terrible mistakes. But his character's plot isn't dealing with surprise twin sisters like a soap opera. It's just dealing with ordinary problems in a realistic and incredibly well written way.
Tami Taylor has only wanted to be a stay at home mom, it seems. But she's only blessed with one daughter and once that daughter is in high school, she becomes a guidance counselor. Then she gets offered her dream job, being a principal. Only what happens when she gets that dream job is that it isn't what she thinks it will be. She has to deal with very ordinary political problems and there is fall-out. I love how she makes choices and lives with the consequences. I love how she ends up moving on and being a counselor at another school.
Vince Taylor is a troubled kid whose father is in jail. When his father gets out of jail, this could be either what Vince most wants or what he most fears. It is both at the same time. Vince gets to have his father cheering for him, and then there are terrible consequences for that. He also gets to see what happens when his father ruins things for him by trying to arrange his life the wrong way.
Tim Riggins is a good old boy, always getting into trouble and then facing the consequences. I really loved the plot twist where he ends up getting a scholarship to play college ball, a dream for many of the other characters in the show. His brother gets in his face and tells him that he has an obligation to the family to go to college. But for Tim, this dream is a nightmare. He gives it up and he ends up in jail because of it. But it's so real to his character, every step he takes. He doesn't change overnight into a hero. He does become a better person bit by bit.
One of my favorite plot lines was the romance between Landry and Tyra. He is the geeky smart band boy who has no chance of being with hot girl Tyra. But then there is a chance. But it doesn't last. I suppose this was a bit of a soap opera, but it was a perfect description of letting a character get what he wants and then seeing how it doesn't turn out quite right. No apocalyptic nuclear explosions necessary, no fairy godmothers coming in to grant wishes. Just ordinary people with very ordinary motives who the writers are very careful never to twist or turn into cheesy moments.
And of course, the romance between Matt and Julie I loved, too. My favorite scene in the entire series is probably the scene where Julie and Tami sit down to discuss the consequences for her having sex with her boyfriend. Julie is expecting a punishment, but in the end, it turns out the discussion is itself the punishment. I made my teenage daughter watch this scene with me, though they haven't watched the rest of the show. It is so perfect written. The mom doesn't have to be over the top angry. She doesn't have to be handing out condoms. She doesn't know what the right thing to do is, but she does the best she can, and she makes her daughter talk to her about the hard stuff. Julie and Matt have all the problems you would think would happen when you are high school sweethearts. Sometimes it looks impossible for them to be happy, with Matt's father dying and his grandmother with Alzheimer's. There's no miracle cure. Matt has to pick out his father's casket and he has to make choices about money even then. I just love the ordinariness of these choices, which are so pitch perfectly presented.
If you want a workbook on how to plot a contemporary novel, you could do worse than spend 50 hours watching the entirety of the 5 seasons of Friday Night Lights. No cheap tricks, just giving characters what they most want and what they most fear, step by step. And the great thing is, as characters change and grow, they have new things they want which you can take away from them, and new things that you can give them to make them happy for just a moment.
Jason Street is the star quarterback and ends up getting paralyzed in the first episode. You think that's bad? What makes it a lot worse is that then his girlfriend sleeps with his best friend. And he has to decide what he is going to do. Every day of his life, he has to decide if he is going to accept his disability or not, if he is going to forgive or not, if he is going to go back to coaching the team that he once ruled or not.
Eric Taylor, the high school football coach, wins the state championship against all odds in the first season. We all cheer for him. And then? Life goes on. His players grow up and leave. When I first started watching the show, I was afraid that he was always going to win, but no, he doesn't. He loses sometimes, too, or almost wins and then has to deal with that. He has ordinary problems like team members who mess up. Then he ends up getting the dream job, coaching in college. He goes and does that. But what happens? The people around him pay the price for this choice, and he eventually decides it isn't worth it. Then just when you think all things are going well, this character ends up with what he fears the most. He gets pushed out of his beloved job and forced to coach a hopeless team. He is angry and he makes some terrible mistakes. But his character's plot isn't dealing with surprise twin sisters like a soap opera. It's just dealing with ordinary problems in a realistic and incredibly well written way.
Tami Taylor has only wanted to be a stay at home mom, it seems. But she's only blessed with one daughter and once that daughter is in high school, she becomes a guidance counselor. Then she gets offered her dream job, being a principal. Only what happens when she gets that dream job is that it isn't what she thinks it will be. She has to deal with very ordinary political problems and there is fall-out. I love how she makes choices and lives with the consequences. I love how she ends up moving on and being a counselor at another school.
Vince Taylor is a troubled kid whose father is in jail. When his father gets out of jail, this could be either what Vince most wants or what he most fears. It is both at the same time. Vince gets to have his father cheering for him, and then there are terrible consequences for that. He also gets to see what happens when his father ruins things for him by trying to arrange his life the wrong way.
Tim Riggins is a good old boy, always getting into trouble and then facing the consequences. I really loved the plot twist where he ends up getting a scholarship to play college ball, a dream for many of the other characters in the show. His brother gets in his face and tells him that he has an obligation to the family to go to college. But for Tim, this dream is a nightmare. He gives it up and he ends up in jail because of it. But it's so real to his character, every step he takes. He doesn't change overnight into a hero. He does become a better person bit by bit.
One of my favorite plot lines was the romance between Landry and Tyra. He is the geeky smart band boy who has no chance of being with hot girl Tyra. But then there is a chance. But it doesn't last. I suppose this was a bit of a soap opera, but it was a perfect description of letting a character get what he wants and then seeing how it doesn't turn out quite right. No apocalyptic nuclear explosions necessary, no fairy godmothers coming in to grant wishes. Just ordinary people with very ordinary motives who the writers are very careful never to twist or turn into cheesy moments.
And of course, the romance between Matt and Julie I loved, too. My favorite scene in the entire series is probably the scene where Julie and Tami sit down to discuss the consequences for her having sex with her boyfriend. Julie is expecting a punishment, but in the end, it turns out the discussion is itself the punishment. I made my teenage daughter watch this scene with me, though they haven't watched the rest of the show. It is so perfect written. The mom doesn't have to be over the top angry. She doesn't have to be handing out condoms. She doesn't know what the right thing to do is, but she does the best she can, and she makes her daughter talk to her about the hard stuff. Julie and Matt have all the problems you would think would happen when you are high school sweethearts. Sometimes it looks impossible for them to be happy, with Matt's father dying and his grandmother with Alzheimer's. There's no miracle cure. Matt has to pick out his father's casket and he has to make choices about money even then. I just love the ordinariness of these choices, which are so pitch perfectly presented.
If you want a workbook on how to plot a contemporary novel, you could do worse than spend 50 hours watching the entirety of the 5 seasons of Friday Night Lights. No cheap tricks, just giving characters what they most want and what they most fear, step by step. And the great thing is, as characters change and grow, they have new things they want which you can take away from them, and new things that you can give them to make them happy for just a moment.
March 12, 2012
Monday Book Recs--Zimmer
42 Miles by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer is a beautiful book of poems that tell the story of JoEllen, who lives two lives, one with her mother, and one with her father. She even has different names. She goes by Ellen in the city with her mother and Joey with her father on his farm. Everything in her life seems to be divided now that her parents are divorced. She thinks about herself in terms of what characteristics she shares with her mother, and which she shares with her father.
I am not a poet. I do like poetry, even though I read it rarely. What Zimmer does in this book that is truly amazing is that she makes me believe that each of these poems might actually have been written by a teen girl. They are just rough enough, found enough, and sound easy enough for me to hear them in a girl's voice. But there are also these moments of exquisite language like:
"In front of him
the instrument case
is left open
like a hungry mouth,
the red velvet lining
peeling from each corner."
Or:
"We try everything on:
elbow-length golves
with dainty pearl buttons
and delicate moth holes.
Stained corsets
with laces and straps.
Heavy, musty dresses
in fabrics that Tamika names:
gabardine, velvet, brushed-back stain,
calico, homespun."
Or:
"he plants a garden
each spring,
churning the rich soil
with his old hand plow,
spending long days out
in its rippled rows,
the corn slowly swallowing
his crumpled frame
as the summer winds on."
There is a certain kind of poetry that tries to be arcane, that allows itself only to be opened up by those who have a specialized knowledge of all poetry ever written in the Western world. This is not that kind of poetry. This is poetry that invites the reader to read once, twice, and again and again, to taste the words on the tongue, to share them with another, to think and to admire, but not in a way that demands attention. The story and character are more important than the words. You can read this book without loving language, but you will come to love it as you read.
For me, the story was especially poignant as I remembered the two years in junior high, just the same age as JoEllen, when I decided I no longer wanted to be known by "Mette," a name that had to be explained to everyone and that was always misspelled. I went by "Marie," my easier middle name for those two years, because I wanted to hide, to fit in, to be like everyone else. And then in high school, I was happy to be myself again, to have the name that needed an explanation, to laugh when everyone misspelled it. My parents were never divorced, but I had the same sense of separation between the me at school and the me at home, and I played with different versions of myself, funny, smart, shy, theatrical, trying them on like words in a poem to see which one was right. This to me is the essence of junior high, and far more painful than high school, which was about finding friends who fit me. Finding out first who I was--yes, that is the first work of adulthood.
I will never write a book this sharp, this careful, this precise and beautiful. But I can read it, and I can play again with my own words to make them something a little closer to this perfection.
I am not a poet. I do like poetry, even though I read it rarely. What Zimmer does in this book that is truly amazing is that she makes me believe that each of these poems might actually have been written by a teen girl. They are just rough enough, found enough, and sound easy enough for me to hear them in a girl's voice. But there are also these moments of exquisite language like:
"In front of him
the instrument case
is left open
like a hungry mouth,
the red velvet lining
peeling from each corner."
Or:
"We try everything on:
elbow-length golves
with dainty pearl buttons
and delicate moth holes.
Stained corsets
with laces and straps.
Heavy, musty dresses
in fabrics that Tamika names:
gabardine, velvet, brushed-back stain,
calico, homespun."
Or:
"he plants a garden
each spring,
churning the rich soil
with his old hand plow,
spending long days out
in its rippled rows,
the corn slowly swallowing
his crumpled frame
as the summer winds on."
There is a certain kind of poetry that tries to be arcane, that allows itself only to be opened up by those who have a specialized knowledge of all poetry ever written in the Western world. This is not that kind of poetry. This is poetry that invites the reader to read once, twice, and again and again, to taste the words on the tongue, to share them with another, to think and to admire, but not in a way that demands attention. The story and character are more important than the words. You can read this book without loving language, but you will come to love it as you read.
For me, the story was especially poignant as I remembered the two years in junior high, just the same age as JoEllen, when I decided I no longer wanted to be known by "Mette," a name that had to be explained to everyone and that was always misspelled. I went by "Marie," my easier middle name for those two years, because I wanted to hide, to fit in, to be like everyone else. And then in high school, I was happy to be myself again, to have the name that needed an explanation, to laugh when everyone misspelled it. My parents were never divorced, but I had the same sense of separation between the me at school and the me at home, and I played with different versions of myself, funny, smart, shy, theatrical, trying them on like words in a poem to see which one was right. This to me is the essence of junior high, and far more painful than high school, which was about finding friends who fit me. Finding out first who I was--yes, that is the first work of adulthood.
I will never write a book this sharp, this careful, this precise and beautiful. But I can read it, and I can play again with my own words to make them something a little closer to this perfection.
March 9, 2012
Friday Tri: Getting Started
Make a reasonable commitment.
How much time are you going to devote to working out? Write it down in minutes. How many days a week are you going to do this? If you are moving from a couch potato, it is not reasonable to expect you will be able to do an hour of working out a day. Even walking or easy biking should be approached gently. 10 minutes the first day is plenty. 15 minutes the next day. Then 10 minutes again. Gradually go up, not increasing your speed until you have been doing an hour of exercise for at least a month. Then you can try to get faster, but only if you keep your exercise level at an hour and do not increase it.
Look for beginner’s classes at your local gym.Ask someone at the desk for a recommendation. You don’t want to do Bodypump to begin with and many spin classes are for more advanced people, which you are not. You can find sometimes a Master’s swim team for beginners where you will get tips on improving your swimming. There are also great yoga classes and I love Pilates for beginners.
Find a guide to help you get started. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi!A trainer is a great person to help you figure out how to use the equipment at the gym and what sorts of exercises you should be doing. If you can’t afford a trainer, maybe you can find a friend who would be willing to let you shadow him/her for a few weeks at the gym. Even better, if you find someone who is just a little better than you are and who would be willing to be your workout buddy. Then you will have someone to help show you the way and someone who can help make it funner to workout.
Reward yourself.But don’t make the reward be something to eat, which will probably counteract your attempts to lose weight. You can reward yourself with money on a regular basis, like $1 for each hour of working out you do which you can spend on new clothes or if you workout at home in front of the TV, reward yourself with movies and TV shows you want to see.
Be accountable.Make an achievable goal and keep track of your progress toward the goal. There are on-line communities set up to help you do this, some free, some not. But I am sometimes uncomfortable letting other people see my goals, even if I’m doing well. So I just keep a $1 lined paper notebook at my desk and write down a week’s worth of workouts on every page. I write down how long I worked out for, at what pace or how many calories I burned, and then I sometimes write notes about how I felt like “crappy,” “sick” or “great!” I like being able to look back sometimes and see how far I’ve come but I doubt anyone else would be able to figure out what my notebooks means.
Give yourself a budget.You will need to spend some money to make it interesting and safe to keep working out. You will need to pay to get into a gym at the very least. Even if you are planning to walk (which is just fine for lots of people), you will want a place you can walk during the winter. Maybe you can go to the local mall. You can do it for a low cost, but you will probably still need some good shoes. If you have higher dreams like races, make sure that you budget them. At the beginning of every year, I try to set a budget for race fees and stick to it. We also try to stick to a budget for repairs on bikes and racing food, as well as an entertainment budget for going out to eat the night before a race or sometimes for lunch after a race. Don’t bankrupt yourself. Make goals that work with the resources you have.
Get the proper gear.Once you have set a budget, you can go out shopping. Don’t spend all your budget on the first shopping trip. You will discover you need things along the way. But don’t nickel and dime yourself, either. Good running shoes cost money. Don’t but them at Payless or Walmart. Don’t try to get buy with a swimsuit that doesn’t fit you anymore. Don’t wear goggles that leak. You will hate your workouts if you try and then you will stop doing them.
Make realistic goals.If you want to do a race, make sure that you set it far enough out that you can train for it. And if something happens and you get injured, have a back-up plan for another race that you could do as an alternative at a later date. Make goals that are completely depend on you and your persistence, not on other people or on wildly optimistic plans of the future. For example, a goal of finishing a race is reasonable. A goal of winning a race is not reasonable because you don’t know who else will be at the race. You can’t determine what other people will do, only what you will do. I often set a best-case scenario goal, a medium goal where things go well but not perfectly, and then a backup goal if everything goes badly but I still want to be proud of myself for trying.
Don’t give up.If you don’t see the results you want to see, don’t just assume that the laws of the universe work for everyone else and not you. That’s just silly. We know the principles of improving your fitness and your weight. Stick with them, even when it seems like you’re not seeing results. If you need to get a different scale to help you see that even if you’re not losing weight, you’re changing your body composition, put that into the budget. Those scales are surprisingly accurate at showing changes, though not necessarily absolutely accurate. If you are working out, your fat % will go down even when your weight doesn’t. And if you want to lose weight, then don’t use exercise as an excuse to eat anything you want. Give yourself a small treat each day, but one you know has less than 100 calories like a mini candy bar, whatever works for you.
Keep people around you who are cheering for you to succeed.This is true in all parts of life, not just in triathlon training. I am not someone who likes to train with other people. I like solitary contemplation, but everyone needs people who are cheering. If you have someone in your life whose voice is in your mind when you are at your lowest and that voice tells you to quit, that is someone you need out of your life. Or you need them to change. If necessary, feel free to tell people appropriate comments to make like I've done on occasion with my husband and kids at Ironman. I tell them not to tell me to go faster, but to keep my pace and stay hydrated.
March 7, 2012
Writing Wednesday: On Theme
I find that whenever an author talks about the theme of the book first, the plot tends to be rather dull and the characters thin. I don't know why this is true. It's perfectly possibly for other people to talk about the theme of an author's book and for it to be a wonderful book, but somehow it doesn't work for the author to do it. This may just be cultural prejudice, that I think authors should be modest, do their work, and let others interpret it. Or maybe put in a different way, authors are part of the culture that they are. Good writing actually reflects that culture and to some extent satisfies it. Analytical or critical writing about story tends to try to see the culture from a different vantage point, and it's not actually that helpful for a creator to do that.
Writers who are excited about the plots of their books, on the other hand, sometimes bother me just a little because it feels as if they have no awareness of the fact that they are writing within a culture and that they have certain prejudices because of that culture. Just because you think a certain plot line is "cool," does not necessarily mean that the plot line in question doesn't have a ton of cultural baggage that goes with it. So it can be useful to be aware on some level, though perhaps not on the creator level, what the meta-meaning of your story is. If that sounds like it completely contradicts the above paragraph, I'm sorry. I'll try to make it more clear as I go on here.
Writers who are excited about the characters of their book are the ones I most often find to be writing stories that interest me. This does not at all mean that I do not care about plot or theme. I do enormously. And it may be only a false correlation on my part. I don't know. I often think of myself as someone who cares about character first, but that doesn't mean that when I start writing, it's the character that comes to me first. Or even that character means anything when isolated from plot. In reality, characters are what they do and what they say in the book. They aren't real. They don't exist outside of the pages of the book. And the best characters are those who change and are honed by the way in which they deal with really tricky plot problems. But I think this is because life feels that way to me, and perhaps I am looking for fiction that *feels* like life, which is actually quite different from realism.
What is interesting to me is that one of the things I get asked to talk a lot about is plot, so people seem to think I do it well. As I have been thinking about plot lately, it occurred to me that generally plots are generated in one of two ways:
1. Everything your characters wants most and wants least happens during the course of the novel, often requiring sacrifice of the one for the resolution of the other. (Of course, this means that your character must first of all want something very, very badly--and also be afraid of something in equal portion.)
2. What happens in the plot to the character is utterly unexpected and unanticipated and the end result of this plot is that the character comes to see that the world isn't what the character thought in the beginning. (This means that your character must have some strong ideas about how the world works and what it is to begin with, which may seem obvious but isn't necessarily.)
These are both excellent ways to plot a novel, at least in general terms. Some writers use them both. Some lean heavily on only one or the other. Both *feel* true to me in terms of real life.
But here are some questions to ask yourself that are really about theme, much as I hate to admit that I think it's something an author may want to think about, though perhaps not talk about. In the end, I think most authors unconsciously put theme into their novel simply by the choices they make in terms of plot and character. The possibilities you allow in your world say a lot about you as a person, which is part of the reason that writing can feel so much like disrobing in a full room of gawking strangers.
a. What is the meta-story you are telling? (Hint--it's not just a story about a boy on a spaceship or a girl with magic. My daughter's English teacher says that a theme is a statement, not a single word.)
b. What are you saying about men and women, about race relations, about power, about community and individuals, about faith and hope?
c. What are you saying about art, about truth, beauty, justice, about love and honor, about satisfaction and contentment, about dreams?
d. What are the rules of your world, both stated and unstated? What is possible? What is not possible? Or maybe put better, who can do what and who can't?
e. What stories are you retelling (and don't get me started on originality--everyone is retelling one story or another)? You should be able to name half a dozen stories that are twined into yours in a full-length novel. Think Greek myth, fairy tales, history, or even classic movies if it helps.
f. What makes your book uniquely yours? What are the parts that no one else could have written and how do those parts come out of your life and your soul?
Writers who are excited about the plots of their books, on the other hand, sometimes bother me just a little because it feels as if they have no awareness of the fact that they are writing within a culture and that they have certain prejudices because of that culture. Just because you think a certain plot line is "cool," does not necessarily mean that the plot line in question doesn't have a ton of cultural baggage that goes with it. So it can be useful to be aware on some level, though perhaps not on the creator level, what the meta-meaning of your story is. If that sounds like it completely contradicts the above paragraph, I'm sorry. I'll try to make it more clear as I go on here.
Writers who are excited about the characters of their book are the ones I most often find to be writing stories that interest me. This does not at all mean that I do not care about plot or theme. I do enormously. And it may be only a false correlation on my part. I don't know. I often think of myself as someone who cares about character first, but that doesn't mean that when I start writing, it's the character that comes to me first. Or even that character means anything when isolated from plot. In reality, characters are what they do and what they say in the book. They aren't real. They don't exist outside of the pages of the book. And the best characters are those who change and are honed by the way in which they deal with really tricky plot problems. But I think this is because life feels that way to me, and perhaps I am looking for fiction that *feels* like life, which is actually quite different from realism.
What is interesting to me is that one of the things I get asked to talk a lot about is plot, so people seem to think I do it well. As I have been thinking about plot lately, it occurred to me that generally plots are generated in one of two ways:
1. Everything your characters wants most and wants least happens during the course of the novel, often requiring sacrifice of the one for the resolution of the other. (Of course, this means that your character must first of all want something very, very badly--and also be afraid of something in equal portion.)
2. What happens in the plot to the character is utterly unexpected and unanticipated and the end result of this plot is that the character comes to see that the world isn't what the character thought in the beginning. (This means that your character must have some strong ideas about how the world works and what it is to begin with, which may seem obvious but isn't necessarily.)
These are both excellent ways to plot a novel, at least in general terms. Some writers use them both. Some lean heavily on only one or the other. Both *feel* true to me in terms of real life.
But here are some questions to ask yourself that are really about theme, much as I hate to admit that I think it's something an author may want to think about, though perhaps not talk about. In the end, I think most authors unconsciously put theme into their novel simply by the choices they make in terms of plot and character. The possibilities you allow in your world say a lot about you as a person, which is part of the reason that writing can feel so much like disrobing in a full room of gawking strangers.
a. What is the meta-story you are telling? (Hint--it's not just a story about a boy on a spaceship or a girl with magic. My daughter's English teacher says that a theme is a statement, not a single word.)
b. What are you saying about men and women, about race relations, about power, about community and individuals, about faith and hope?
c. What are you saying about art, about truth, beauty, justice, about love and honor, about satisfaction and contentment, about dreams?
d. What are the rules of your world, both stated and unstated? What is possible? What is not possible? Or maybe put better, who can do what and who can't?
e. What stories are you retelling (and don't get me started on originality--everyone is retelling one story or another)? You should be able to name half a dozen stories that are twined into yours in a full-length novel. Think Greek myth, fairy tales, history, or even classic movies if it helps.
f. What makes your book uniquely yours? What are the parts that no one else could have written and how do those parts come out of your life and your soul?
March 6, 2012
Longing
When romance writers start talking about the importance of obstacles keeping the two main characters apart or how they need to hate each other, I start to feel a little sick inside. It's not that I disagree in principle with this. It's just that I've read too many romances that create stupid obstacles, at least in part so that they can be waved away easily by the end. Real obstacles are not easily waved away by the end, and are created by worldbuilding, either fantastical or not, that is intense.
You have to believe that Romeo and Juliet's families are involved in a terrible feud and so much of the play is taken up with that feud. Very little is really the romance. Or take another favorite of mine, Buffy and Angel. She's a vampire slayer, he's a vampire. A vampire with a soul, but still a vampire. And in the end, they can't be together. It's a great romantic obstacle, only it's so great that there's no way around it and the romance has to end and Angel has to be on his own show. A romance with a great obstacle I think works brilliantly is The Queen of Attolia. But think how long it takes to set up the romance. The whole first book is simmer. Then the second book is more simmer. And it's not until The King of Attolia that I think any reader really believe the romance will work.
Just a few examples, anyway. But my point here is that romance writers are absolutely right when they talk about the importance of longing. It's all those moments when the two lovers stare at each other and know they can't have each other. That's what romance readers love. It's what makes us watch TV shows like Bones for season after season. It has to be subtle, really. It has to make sense for the characters you've created. Why they love each other and why they can't have each other. But once you set it up right, the moments of longing play out without much nudging.
Except when they don't. I was watching Two Weeks Notice recently with my kids. I like Sandra Bullock. She is great in While You Were Sleeping. And I love Hugh Grant in lots of things, from The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down a Mountain to Notting Hill and Sense and Sensibility. But at the end of the movie, I found that I didn't believe for an instant that these two characters were in love. Why not? Sandra Bullock's Lucy is smart, a little crazed with saving the world, clothing impaired, and seems destined to be alone. Hugh Grant is a playboy who has serial romances with girls he finds attractive and is uninterested in anything else from them--until he meets Lucy. He is willing to be led to better things, begins to really trust her, and ultimately realizes he can't live without her. And still, for me as a viewer, I could only see them as friends, really good friends maybe, but not more than that. I ended up analyzing this for a while and deciding it was largely an editing problem. And the thing I was missing most from the movie was longing.
We needed those camera close ups where she was looking at him and he wasn't looking at her, and then he looks up and she turns away and you can see they are in love with each other, but afraid to show it because they've been hurt before. And then, when there is a little hope, more camera close ups so you can believe that the longing is becoming something more than longing. Then a disaster and anger, and more longing back and forth until the sacrifice and resolution. But without the longing, as cheesy as it sounds, there is no romance.
It feels sometimes like I have to relearn this trick about longing with every romance that I write. I tend to get the lovers together too soon and let them deal with other problems, not just their love for each other. But there's no reason they can't deal with both at the same time and raise the emotional stakes for the reader. But you have to keep the glances back and forth. You have to play with the reader, toy with hopes and tease out the climax. A bit like the romance itself. Because in the end, the writer and the reader are lovers, too, and there is longing between them. The reader wants the promise that the book will be perfect, that it will give him what he wants and yet be surprising and wonderful. The writer wants the reader to trust her, but not to trust too much, because that would be boring. It's a striptease, isn't it, writing?
A romantic comedy I watched recently that did longing well: Love Actually. A friend of mine complains about the Colin Firth romance where he and she don't speak each other's languages and yet we have to believe they are falling in love. We the viewers get translations of what they are saying, but the longing is in the camera angles. We have to see them wanting each other, afraid to want, and then throwing all caution to the wind. But aren't we doing the same thing, wanting them together, knowing it's silly because you don't fall in love like that, and then hoping that maybe the writers will pull it off and make us believe. And then they do. Or they do for viewers who want to fall in love enough, who long for the happy ending.
You have to believe that Romeo and Juliet's families are involved in a terrible feud and so much of the play is taken up with that feud. Very little is really the romance. Or take another favorite of mine, Buffy and Angel. She's a vampire slayer, he's a vampire. A vampire with a soul, but still a vampire. And in the end, they can't be together. It's a great romantic obstacle, only it's so great that there's no way around it and the romance has to end and Angel has to be on his own show. A romance with a great obstacle I think works brilliantly is The Queen of Attolia. But think how long it takes to set up the romance. The whole first book is simmer. Then the second book is more simmer. And it's not until The King of Attolia that I think any reader really believe the romance will work.
Just a few examples, anyway. But my point here is that romance writers are absolutely right when they talk about the importance of longing. It's all those moments when the two lovers stare at each other and know they can't have each other. That's what romance readers love. It's what makes us watch TV shows like Bones for season after season. It has to be subtle, really. It has to make sense for the characters you've created. Why they love each other and why they can't have each other. But once you set it up right, the moments of longing play out without much nudging.
Except when they don't. I was watching Two Weeks Notice recently with my kids. I like Sandra Bullock. She is great in While You Were Sleeping. And I love Hugh Grant in lots of things, from The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down a Mountain to Notting Hill and Sense and Sensibility. But at the end of the movie, I found that I didn't believe for an instant that these two characters were in love. Why not? Sandra Bullock's Lucy is smart, a little crazed with saving the world, clothing impaired, and seems destined to be alone. Hugh Grant is a playboy who has serial romances with girls he finds attractive and is uninterested in anything else from them--until he meets Lucy. He is willing to be led to better things, begins to really trust her, and ultimately realizes he can't live without her. And still, for me as a viewer, I could only see them as friends, really good friends maybe, but not more than that. I ended up analyzing this for a while and deciding it was largely an editing problem. And the thing I was missing most from the movie was longing.
We needed those camera close ups where she was looking at him and he wasn't looking at her, and then he looks up and she turns away and you can see they are in love with each other, but afraid to show it because they've been hurt before. And then, when there is a little hope, more camera close ups so you can believe that the longing is becoming something more than longing. Then a disaster and anger, and more longing back and forth until the sacrifice and resolution. But without the longing, as cheesy as it sounds, there is no romance.
It feels sometimes like I have to relearn this trick about longing with every romance that I write. I tend to get the lovers together too soon and let them deal with other problems, not just their love for each other. But there's no reason they can't deal with both at the same time and raise the emotional stakes for the reader. But you have to keep the glances back and forth. You have to play with the reader, toy with hopes and tease out the climax. A bit like the romance itself. Because in the end, the writer and the reader are lovers, too, and there is longing between them. The reader wants the promise that the book will be perfect, that it will give him what he wants and yet be surprising and wonderful. The writer wants the reader to trust her, but not to trust too much, because that would be boring. It's a striptease, isn't it, writing?
A romantic comedy I watched recently that did longing well: Love Actually. A friend of mine complains about the Colin Firth romance where he and she don't speak each other's languages and yet we have to believe they are falling in love. We the viewers get translations of what they are saying, but the longing is in the camera angles. We have to see them wanting each other, afraid to want, and then throwing all caution to the wind. But aren't we doing the same thing, wanting them together, knowing it's silly because you don't fall in love like that, and then hoping that maybe the writers will pull it off and make us believe. And then they do. Or they do for viewers who want to fall in love enough, who long for the happy ending.
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