DeAnna Knippling's Blog, page 76
February 6, 2013
Ebook Formatting update: PDFs and Kindle Ereaders
This is one of those “duh” moments that I’m sure other formatters are already doing. But it makes me pretty happy nonetheless.
Okay, someone wants a PDF copy of your book for their ereader, and you’re willing to send it to them. How to do that?
To size the PDF for an ereader, assume that the ereader screen is 6 inches. They may be bigger, but if you assume 6 inches, you can also catch the larger smart phones.
To resize the document:
In your word processing program (e.g., Word), set the paper size to 3.5 by 4.75 inches.
Change the margins to .15 inches.
You may want to make sure any images are resized/compressed for screen viewing.
Flip through the pages to make sure there’s nothing too odd. The way the pages are laid out is the way the pages will look on the ereader.
Convert the file to a PDF the way you normally would.
Update:
Resize your cover to ~45% of original size (if it’s supposed to correspond to a 6×9 or 5x8ish cover, trade paperback or mass market paperback size).
See? Duh, easy.
You should be able to send them this file, and they can transfer it to their ereader via USB cable.
However, to send the PDF to their Kindle, send it to their Kindle email address. To find your Kindle email address:
Go to Amazon, log in, and click on the “Your Account” link on the upper right.
A dropdown menu should appear. Select “Manage Your Kindle” from the menu.
Amazon may ask you to sign in again. Do so.
On the left, scroll down until you see the header “Your Kindle Account.” Under it, click “Manage Your Devices.”
Your Kindle(s) should be listed. From here you can edit your Kindle’s name, see the email address, and more. Incidentally, if your Kindle is ever stolen, this is where you go to deregister it, so nobody can access your credit card from your Kindle. (You can re-register it here too, if you get it back. True story.) You can also, if you scroll down, turn on Whispersync, so all Kindle apps/devices, when they can access the Internet, update all your books to the last page read. If you have several members of your family on the same account, don’t do this.
The person who is getting the file (even if it’s you) has to go to their Amazon account and allow emails from that address. This way, your Kindle won’t accept spam.
Go to the “Manage Your Kindle” page.
Scroll down to “Your Kindle Account.”
Click on “Personal Document Settings.”
Find the header “Approved Document E-mail List.”
If your address isn’t already added (you may have added your own email address while registering), click on “Add a new approved e-mail address” and follow the directions there.
Yes, this is a pain in the butt for the reader. If they don’t like it, they can use USB or email it to themselves.
To email the PDF:
You may have to pay to do it this way. It’s $.15 per megabyte in the U.S. if you have to use/can use a 3G account. It’s free via wifi.
You can force Amazon to send it via wifi by changing the address from [name]@kindle.com to [name]@free.kindle.com.
I think if wifi is available, [name]@kindle.com will use wifi for free instead of charging you, but I’m not sure.
On a Kindle Fire, you will not see the pretty cover, even if you’ve embedded it in the file. You’ll see a PDF-logo cover.
You may see some weird issues with text that takes less than a full page aligning to the center or bottom of the page. (No idea what’s causing this. I checked the vertical alignment and nothing was odd.)
You can also force Amazon to convert the file to Amazon proprietary format (.azw) from PDF. It looks okay, but if you are sending over PDF that’s really the interior layout for a POD, all your tracking will show up (smooshing words together in some spots), and the tabs will be gone baby gone. If you want to send a professional-looking ebook file, this isn’t the way to do it.
Note: I can’t currently see how to email a document to a Kindle app. It’s supposed to be the same as for anything else, but I’m not seeing my PDFs come up on my app, and they’re not in my archive. But then again, I have a really old phone, so it could just be that.
Also: No idea what to do on a Nook, Kobo, iPad, etc.
February 4, 2013
When You Promise Genre, What Do You Promise?
The first rule of Writing Club is that a rule that doesn’t suggest how to successfully break itself is a boring rule. No, I lie. That’s the second rule of Writing Club. The first rule is “don’t be boring.”
I’ve been playing around with the idea that genre means making certain promises to the reader–setting up certain reader expectations–and that everything else about the story will revolve around that. I’ve been using romance (as a genre) as an example a lot lately in personal conversations. It’s great: I’m approaching the genre with fresh eyes (I’ve only been reading it seriously for about six months), and everyone in the genre is so very, very clear about what it’s about. It’s about the feeling of falling in love, and the risks that you take in love. The reader expectation of a romance is that you’re going to watch people falling in love, and that the story will be about falling in love, and that the characters will feel the feelings of falling in love and share them so effectively with the reader that they feel like they’re falling in love too.
Romance is pretty easy to work out that way. But other genres aren’t, necessarily. I’m going to make some preliminary guesses about genres here, and see whether I end up with “rules” that encourage clarity and play.
Here’s how I’m splitting these out: main genres are the main types of stories, age categories arethe age of your audience, and meta-genres are analagous to Dean Wesley Smith’s “umbrella genres.” I just like “meta” better…the rules of meta-genres seem to me to have rules about how you’re going to tell the main types of stories. Like a Christian romance…you tell a romance story, but you have to follow the rules of Christian fiction in order to do so. You can’t really have a meta-genre story without a main genre. It might look like you have a standalone meta-genre story, but you don’t really. For example, you might have a thriller, and that’s all you call it, but what is the main story about? It’s a mystery, usually. Hidden somewhere in any story is usually going to be one of the main genres; it might not have the trappings of setting that the genre itself has (like SF)–you can write a story about your fears of society without having a single futuristic or alternate or science-oriented element about the story.
So here are some preliminary guesses about the main genres:
Romance – falling in love/feeling unloved
SF – hopes for society/fears for or of society
Fantasy – mastery of society/lack of mastery
Mystery – increasing order in the world/increasing chaos
Western – what has value/what does not have value (usually expressed in terms of justice)
Horror is an interesting case. Dean Wesley Smith argues that horror, as a genre, is going away. I had my doubts, but I’ve been watching the bookstores that I go to, and they’re starting to break up the horror shelves, King into fiction or bestsellers or thriller, anything heavy on an alternate setting into SF/F, and anything with a relatively normal setting into suspense/thriller. So what was horror about, emotionally? My guess is being hurt/hurting someone else. I want to stay away from fear as a description of horror, because all genres rely on fear. Romance, for example, can deal with the fear of falling in love, the fear of feeling unloved. And horror doesn’t really contain any hope, or if it does, it’s not the point. If you go with “hurt” as the continuum there, then you can explain things like Cabin in the Woods, which isn’t a book, but comes to its unusual conclusion after weighing the balance of pain in the world, and what you’re willing to do to make the hurters stop hurting you. Notice that it’s easier for me to find a recent horror movie that we’re likely to have read, versus a recent horror novel that isn’t one of Stephen King’s. He’s broken out of genre, and I don’t know that he can single-handedly count as the justification for independent sets of shelves in bookstores.
And on the age categories:
Children’s (picture book) – Questions of sorting, establishing the basic categories of life. At the earliest level, it’s about sorting out things like colors, numbers, and what sound goes with what animal. You can crack up a little kid by pointing to a red ball and saying, “What a pretty yellow duck!” “No!” says the little one, extremely proud of being able to sort that out. You can also get things like, “What is a family? What are the roles in a family? How do you know when it’s a good family or not a good family? What is real? What is imaginary?”
Chapter book – Sadly, I don’t think there’s a really good idea of what a chapter book (for Kindergarteners to, say, eight or nine) should do for kids. I have some pretty strong opinions about this, but I’m not really clear on what I would have a chapter book actually do, so I’ll reserve spouting off on this one too much. I do know that Ray never really got into chapter books, because they were SO boring. She stuck with picture books for a long time, until she was ready to get into MG.
Middle Grade – fear of independence/longing for independence
Young Adult – asserting identity/fear of not fitting in
New Adult – I haven’t really gotten into these, and can’t really talk to them.
Adult – longing for the good life/trapped by the less-than-good or ordinary life
I also know there’s an emerging age category called “geezer lit.” I haven’t read in it yet, but I’d predict that you’d see something along the lines of resisting change/accepting change in it.
And on the meta-genres:
Christian – Christian/unchristian. I think how people define “what is Christian” is diverse enough, and I don’t read the genre enough, that I’ll leave it at that.
Erotica – sexually compulsive/sexually repulsive. Another genre that I don’t read, so I’m just guessing.
Literary – ugly/beautiful. This is a question of writing style. You can have this elegant style writing about something horribly ugly – and it’s a great fit for literary fiction. I don’t feel like I’ve really hit the nail on the head here yet.
Fiction – I list this here, but I think this is really just “adult genre, not overwhelmed by other genres, or approachable and popular enough that nobody cares.” For example, women’s fiction is the longing for independence as a woman/fear of being trapped as a woman.
Historical – This isn’t really a genre anymore, but a subgenre you can apply to any other genre. Hm…I may have to talk about the emotions involved in settings at some point. With SF, you imbue your setting with your opinions about society so strongly that they’re impossible to miss. With historical…you try to be accurate, yet exotic. More thought will be required here.
Thriller – inevitable collapse/impossible victory. There’s so much at stake, so many impossible odds, that there’s this constant feeling that there’s no way to succeed, and that if you do succeed, it’s not for very long, or something else will go wrong very soon. If you stop a murderer, there will be another one, usually in the same book.
I’m going to invitingly add “Pulp” as a meta-genre. It’s been coming up a lot lately in discussions I’ve been having, and I want to say that the range of emotion in pulp deals not with good or bad (and is almost negated, as a genre, by transformation of character, precluding use of that kind of structure, like the Joseph Campbell stuff). It deals with the poles of strength and weakness: physical, mental, emotional, what have you. I know “pulp” isn’t a genre on the shelf – but I think it should be. (Pulp – strength/weakness.)
—
Each genre has its own subgenres. Each subgenre has its own specialization of emotion. There are many fertile areas of cross-pollenization.
So. You have to pick one main genre and one age category. You may or may not pick a meta-genre. You can specialize into a subgenre (I may go there later; we’ll see). You can pick pieces of one genre and use them in another (like science fantasy or Star Wars). This is a toolbox, not a straightjacket. However – when you start playing fast and loose with your genres, how do you know what genre to put things into? What are the unavoidable constraints? The answer I hear is usually, “Just pick one.” Bleah. I hate that answer. It’s boring, confusing, and belittling. Because the answer is really, “Just pick one, stupid.”
Let me pick something at random, build a story out of these categories.
Western – what has value/what does not have value (usually expressed in terms of justice)
Romance – falling in love/feeling unloved
Adult – longing for the good life/trapped by the less-than-good or ordinary life
Erotica – sexually compulsive/sexually repulsive. Another genre that I don’t read, so I’m just guessing.
Christian – Christian/unchristian. I think how people define “what is Christian” is diverse enough, and I don’t read the genre enough, that I’ll leave it at that.
And a tentative flow for sorting:
Is the age other than “adult” or older? If yes, then that is your main category (children’s, middle grade, etc.).
Is there a meta-genre? If yes, then it’s your genre, unless 1 applies, in which case it’s a subgenre. 2a. If there is more than one meta-genre, then research both metas to find out whether that combination exists as a subgenre to one of the two, and where. Is there a Christian erotica subgenre? Or Erotic Christian subgenre? I’ve heard the first exists. If the genre is Christian and the subgenre is Christian erotica, then the polarity of Christian/unchristian emotions must be more important than questions of sexually compusion/repulsion. If it’s Erotic Christian, then the question of sexual compulsion/repulsion has to be more important than the Christian aspects. Or whatever.
Is the setting the most important part of the book (ignore any historical aspects for now)? Then sort the book into the appropriate genre for the setting. 3a. If there is more than one possible place to sort the book by setting, then the heirarchy of settings goes like this: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Western. If a book is a SF Western (e.g., Firefly), then it’s SF, with a Western subgenre. 3b. If you have aspects of SF, F, or Western but they aren’t the main genre, then list them as part of the subgenres.
If there is a more or less accurate historical aspect, then the subgenre is Historical.
If the story is about falling in love and has a happy ending, it’s a romance. 5a. If the most important thing about the story is falling in love with a happy ending, then all other main genre aspects are subgenres. 5b. If the romantic aspect isn’t the most important one, then the book has a romantic subplot, and you usually won’t have to mention it.
If the story is about a crime and the resolution thereof, it’s a mystery. 6a. If the most important thing about the book is the crime and its resolution (bringing it to order, although not necessarily justice or truth), then all other main genre aspects become subgenres. 6b. If the crime/order aspect isn’t the most important one in the book, then the book has a mystery subplot, and you usually won’t have to mention it.
If you don’t know your genre yet, it’s fiction.
So here, we go:
The age is adult or older, no determination of genre.
There is a meta-genre (two). 2a. There’s a Christian Erotica genre, so this book is a Christian Erotica, with the most important aspect of the book being questions of Christianity.
The setting is not the most important part of the book, but there is a Western aspect. I’m going to say the question of value/justice is stronger than the Erotica here.
The setting’s in the Old West, but Western is more specific than Historical, and there’s the emotional aspects of a Western, so I’m going to stick with Western as a subgenre.
The story is a romance, but there are meta-genres, so they win out.
N/A.
N/A.
Our genre is Christian Western Erotica, or possibly even Christian Western Erotic Romance. The emotions in the story should be (from most to least important):
Questions of Christian/unchristian behavior.
Questions of value and justice (set in the Old West or something like it).
Questions of sexual compulsion/repulsion.
(And/0r) Questions of love and romance.
A likely plot might be something like, “A former preacher and now mercenary gun in the Old West is hired to eliminate a brothel. But when he meets the madame, he finds her irresistable and falls in love with her. Can he save this woman from a life of sin–and should he carry out what he was hired to do?” With a plot like that, you satisfy all the emotional promises that you’ve made to the reader, in the priority order that you’ve made them.
I think writing the book first and then figuring out the genre, if you don’t know genre, is going to make it really, really easy to screw up the promises that you make to the reader, because you have specific promises that you’ve made, and they have to have specific priorities (you can play with the priorities, of course, but you have to be specific about them). I’m probably off about more than a couple of these emotional promises that you’re making to the reader, but I think the idea as a whole is useful.
I don’t actually read either Christian or Erotica, so I’m going to play this one again:
Fantasy – mastery of society/lack of mastery
Western – what has value/what does not have value (usually expressed in terms of justice)
Middle Grade – fear of independence/longing for independence
Pulp – strength/weakness.
Middle-grade is the genre.
Pulp is a subgenre.
Settings are Western and Fantasy. Fantasy takes precedence over Western.
Western beats Historical, so Western.
N/A.
N/A.
N/A.
My genre is MG Fantasy Western Pulp. My emotions should be:
Fear of/longing for independence.
Mastery of society/lack of mastery.
Value/Justice.
Strength/Weakness.
A likely plot: “An eleven-year-old boy sets off on a quest to get revenge against an evil wizard who runs his backwater town and who turned his sister into a gibbering idiot for breaking a minor law, after his parents reveal they’re too afraid to act on their own. He finds and hires a famous outlaw to murder the wizard…but the outlaw only makes things worse.” The boy has to act independently, and live with the consequences of his actions. He gets the wizard killed, and then has to deal with the outlaw. I should probably give the kid a magic power in there to help him accomplish this. He’s going to be wondering about whether he should have tried to get the wizard killed or not the entire time: whether it was right for his parents to accept the wizard, or whether they should have fought back. And this isn’t a situation that’s going to be resolved by talking things out, but by sticking it to the wall, a strength of determination.
Right. And now I’m going to try to write that, to see how well my ideas are working out
January 31, 2013
Goodreads for Writers
So you’re a writer and you don’t know what to do with Goodreads.
And I’m going to try to tell you all about it. Wish us both luck…
Here is the link to Goodreads’ intro to the author program. I suspect this is just the first post on the subject; it’s not thorough, but covers the info that I couldn’t find easily when the issues came up, as well as the basics of getting started. Feel free to shoot me more questions.
1. First, you need to set up an account as a reader. If you clicked on the Goodreads link and got a page that has an account creation page, that’s what to do first. You can also sign in using Facebook, Twitter, etc., if you have an account there, by clicking the Facebook, Twitter, etc., button on that front page.
2. Once you’re signed up, you need to set up a writer account. Start out by searching for one of your books or your author name. (You may need to wait up to 2 weeks for a new book to show up; they collect feeds from several indie publishers, too, so indie writers can find their work, too.) Just type one or the other in the search field and skim through the results until you find your author name. Click on your author name.
You should go to your author page. Somewhere near the bottom of the page is a link saying “Is this you? Let us know.” Click on it. Fill out the form on the next page (I forget exactly what it looks like) and submit it. Wait a couple of days for your author account to be activated. You’ll get an email when it’s ready.
Note: You have to set up an entirely different login account for each pen name that you want to activate. You can only set up one author name with one email/FB account.
3. You’re signed up, but something is amiss about your books or author page. Help!
Navigate either to your author page or to your book page. Click the “edit profile” or “edit details” link to update the information.
Double-check that your cover image isn’t too big, if it’s not updating. If things aren’t working, contact Goodreads or a Goodreads Librarian for help.
4. You have more than one copy of a book listed. Help!
This might be good or bad. Goodreads is run along the lines of a library. Librarians are thorough. Did someone helpful add every single edition and/or cover of your book? Even ones that you don’t want? That’s what you get. You cannot remove a “real” edition or a “real” cover, even if you’re no longer using it or you hate it. Too bad: Goodreads will err on the side of thorough. You might have a listing for an ebook, a Kindle ebook, a Print book, etc. Whew!
All the editions of a book should be “combined,” which means that all the blurbs on one book will tie to the other, and any rankings/listings/etc. you have on one will feed to another. If they are “combined,” then all editions of the book will be listed under the “Other Editions” bar on the right hand side of your book’s page. If they are not combined correctly, then click the “combine” link on the same bar to go to the combine page.
Note: if things aren’t working at this point, you may want to check all versions to make sure there are no extra listings of your author profile.
If there are, make sure there are no extra spaces in the author’s name. Let’s say there are two authors named Stephen King. One will be listed as “StephenKing,” and the other will be listed as “StephenKing.” The extra space will not be apparent from the public page, and is used to keep the two authors’ books from getting shoved into the same account.
Sometimes an overly helpful person will overly helpfully add your book, overly helpfully creating a brand new account for you, just you, and, noting that you already have an account and not being sure that you are really you (overhelpfulness seems to go only so far), they’ll add an extra space in the name so they don’t have to do extra research. You have to click the “edit profile” link to change this, and it may be that you can only get into one of the two profiles to check on things. If this is the case, contact Goodreads or a Goodreads Librarian or sign up to be a Goodreads Librarian. Warning, it’s kind of like having a large pickup truck when it comes time for your friends to move, only there’s no heavy lifting and nobody buys you pizza afterward (hint hint).
5. You want to run a Goodreads giveaway.
You have to have a print edition in order to do this.
If your print edition is not automatically uploading on the site, then check the exiting edition to make sure nobody overly helpfully added your print edition’s ISBN to one of your ebook editions. If they did, remove it from the ebook edition and manually add the print edition WITH the ISBN, then combine it with the other editions. You may need to wait ten minutes for everything to update through the system.
—
Okay, these are the questions that I could think of, off the top of my head. Drop me a note if you have anything else you’re struggling with, and I’ll add the answer
January 29, 2013
The Bare Minimum of Character
My experiment for the day: what are the bare minimum of data points you need to know before you can start writing (or reading) most characters? What does it take to hook the reader?
I have slushed (and rejected) an uncounted number of short stories that start out with the character waking up with amnesia. Yes, Zelazny did it in Nine Princes in Amber, but that was Zelazny–and you knew what the character was like from the first sentence, even if the character didn’t:
It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me.
I attempted to wriggle my toes, succeeded. I was sprawled there in a hospital bed and my legs were done up in plaster casts, but they were still mine.
We don’t know the character’s name, we don’t know whether they’re male or female, we don’t know what their background is, what they do, their hair color, basic description, etc. We find out all that later, of course. But we know the character, and, as events get stranger and stranger, we believe them, because we know that the character is just that determined, just that patient, and just that impatient. Because of this opening. We know they’ve been paralyzed, and can now move, and are proud and possessive and maybe just a little bit driven. Just a little. When things escalate and the character is right back in this situation, only worse, we almost feel bad for the person who did it to them, because it’s not going to be a happy day when that first sign of recovery happens.
I have no idea how much Zelazny knew about Corwyn or Amber or any of it before he started writing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he just sat down and said, “So there’s this guy who can’t remember a damned thing, but that’s not going to stop him…” and it all fell into place from there.
For most of us writers I think we need a little bit more.
But how little can most of us get away with? Zelazny could get away with nothing more than attitude. You probably have other books you love that start out with amnesiacs. Take a look at them–what, in the opening paragraphs, does the reader start out with?
Another favorite opening of mine:
I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.
My surname is Lu and my personal name is Yu, but I am not to be confused with the eminent author of The Classic of Tea. My family is quite undistinguished, and since I am the tenth of my father’s sons and rather strong I am usually referred to as Number Ten Ox. My father died when I was eight. A year later my mother followed him to the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth, and since then I have lived with Uncle Nung and Auntie Hua in the village of Ku-fu in the valley of Cho. We take great pride in our landmarks. Until recently we also took great pride in two gentlemen who were such perfect specimens that people used to come from miles around just to stare at them, so perhaps I should begin with a description of my village with a couple of classics. –Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart
We know Ox’s name(s), gender, and physical appearance; we know where he’s from; and we know his background. We know what he does for a living (peasant). We know his attitude (modest, long-winded, reverent, slyly humorous, and very traditional).
We know a lot more than we do from Zelazny’s first two paragraphs. Zelazny dumps us into action; Barry Hughart, into backstory (which works because Ox is just that kind of talker, a consumate storyteller, and we are completely in his power).
In both, we get a heavy dose of the character’s attitude toward life. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s pretty important to get that down right away.
What else?
Mrs. Geiss watched her new student coming across the first-graders’ playground from her vantage point on the balcony of the old school’s belfry.–”This Year’s Class Picture,” Dan Simmons
The Egotists’ Club is one of the most genial places in London. It is a place to which you may go when you want to tell that odd dream you had last night, or to announce what a good dentist you have discovered. –”The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers,” Dorothy Sayers
What had led me to abdicate in the first place was the realization that the time had come to drop everything and run for it. –Star of Gypsies, Robert Silverberg
On Friday, August third, 1923, the morning after President Harding’s death, reporters followed the widow, the Vice President, and Charles Carter, the Magician. At first, Carter made the pronouncements he thought necessary: ”A fine man, to be sorely missed,” and “it throws the country into a great crisis from which we shall all pull through together, showing the strong stuff of which we Americans are made.” –Carter Beats the Devil, Glen David Gold
Ye emporers, kings, dukes, marquises, earls, and knights, and all other people desirous of knowing the diversities of the races of mankind, as well as the diversities of kingdoms, provinces, and regions of all parts of the East, read through this boo, and ye will find in it the greatest and most marvellous characteristics of the peoples especially of Armenia, Persia, India, and Tartary, as they are severally related in the present work by Marco Polo, a wise and learned citizen of Venice, who states distinctly what things he saw and what things he heard from others. For this book will be a truthful one. –The Travels of Marco Polo
I sent one boy to the gaschamber at Huntsville. One and only one. –No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
“Men half your age and double your weight have been slain on these wastes by Extremity of Cold,” said the Earl of Lostwithiel, Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and Rider of the Forest and Chase of Dartmoor, to one of his two fellow-travelers. –The System of the World, Neal Stephenson
As Red Connors put the sorrel up the slope he felt the big horse break stride and knew that it was all in. –The Riders of High Rock, Louis Lamour
Georgetown, Washington, DC. The surname of the family was Cox, the father a very successful trial lawyer, but the target was the mother, Ellie Randall Cox. The timing was right now, tonight, just minutes away. The payday was excellent, couldn’t be better. –Cross Country, James Patterson
It started when David came in from the lawn absolutely furious. We were down at Farthing for one of Mummy’s ghastly political squeezes. –Farthing, Jo Walton
The morning air off the Mojave in late winter is as clean and crisp as you’ll ever breathe in Los Angeles County. It carries the taste of promise on it. When it starts blowing in like that I like to keep a window open in my office. There are a few people who know this routine of mine, people like Fernando Valenzuela. The bondsman, not the baseball pitcher. He called me as I was coming into Lancaster for a nine o’clock calendar call. He must have heard the wind whistling in my cell phone. –The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly
Thirteen snippets, selected off one of my shelves because I like the openings. I typed until I felt like “Oh, I’m hooked on this character,” then stopped.
Gender: Six clear instances.
Name: Five names (of the main character).
Occupation: Nine (some of these are really subtle, like the Sayers; only three were given even remotely directly)
Past Event/Background: Nine (again, some very subtle; only two were given directly). A lot of the backgrounds and occupations were the same or were implied by the same details.
Appearance: You can guess the appearance of all of them from these descriptions. In only three of them are any physical details given (casts, Zelazny; strength, Hughart; hair slightly mussed from open window, Connelly).
Attitude: All of them.
Going by this random, un-scientific sample, I’m going to say the bare minimum of character goes like this:
Attitude. The most important thing about your character is their personality.
Appearance, usually implied.
Occupation/role in society, usually implied.
A background, but usually implied, often tied to the occupation or vice versa.
Less important are name and gender.
Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, History, Lit, SF, Western, Thriller.
Oops, it seems I was missing romance on that shelf:
“I didn’t mean to marry both of them!” “The problem,” said the duchess, leaning forward, “is not marrying twice, but marrying a second husband while the first is still alive.” –Duchess by Night, Eliosa James
In the summer of 1810, Mr. Edward Noirot eloped to Gretna Greene with Miss Catherine DeLucy. Mr. Noirot had been led to believe he was eloping with an English heiress whose fortune, as a result of this rash act, would become his exclusively. An elopement cut out all the tiresome meddling, in the form of marriage settlements, by parents and lawyers. In running off with a blue-blooded English lady of fortune, Edward Noirot was carrying on an ancient family tradition: His mother and grandmother were English. Unfortunately, he’d been misled by his intended, who was as accomplished in lying and cheating, in the most charming manner possible, as her lover was.–Silk is for Seduction, Loretta Chase
Gender: eight.
Name: six
Occupation: Eleven, with four given directly.
Past event/background: eleven, with three direct mentions.
Appearance: All implied, still only three direct descriptions given.
Attitude: Still all of them.
I’m sure if you read further–a whole page–that you’d pick up more solid details like hair color, height, etc. But in order for a reader to get hooked on the characters (as I was), you don’t need the niggling details. What their personalities are like, and what the character’s context is (occupation, background, appearance) seem to be far more important, and you’re probably better off implying what those are than baldly stating them–unless there’s a reason to do so, like Hughart’s Ox loving the sound of his own voice, or Magician Carter being in the newspapers, or the Duchess of Berrow, whose title tells more about her than her name itself.
To be fair, I should probably crack open a stack of my own story openings, but I’m scared of what I’ll find.
Mice are delicious. But even more delicious are monsters, ghosts, and things that go bump in the night. –”The Society of Secret Cats”
When Nickolas was a young boy following his father into the woods in order to carry water while his father cut trees, his father would tell all kinds of stories of dragons and knights and fighting, and Nickolas enjoyed those stories very much. However, there was one story that his father would not tell him. –”The Boy Who Would Not Sleep”
The door of Bill Trout’s bar opened, and a couple of people pulled their guns out. The aliens weren’t supposed to come till dawn, but hell, who trusts an alien? –Alien Blue
If he’d meant to leave his wife for her, he shouldn’t have shot her horse. –”Miracle, Texas.”
Okay, not as good as I’d hoped, but not as bad as I’d feared, either. Whew.
What do you think?
January 25, 2013
How to Read like a Writer
Every time this subject comes up, I put my foot right in it: it’s only by strangling myself that I can keep my mouth shut. So. In the interest of not killing myself, and possibly even not making an ass of myself in multiple conversations, allow me to go off on a topic dear to my heart here, on my blog, which is where all asinine rants belong. That is, I want to talk about how to read like a writer. Audience of crickets.
It’s also “how to watch movies like a writer,” and “how to listen to music like a writer,” and even “how to look at visual art as a writer.” ”How to go to a restaurant as a writer.” ”How to evaluate a blender as a writer.” ”How to survive your inlaws as a writer.”
Want to know a mark of a n00b writer?
They go, “I don’t like X, so it’s a piece of crap.”
Go ahead. You’ll see it everywhere. You know who gets to say that? Customers.
Of course customers get to say what they like about a product. They don’t like it? Nobody cares: every time someone says your name, a little publicity fairy gets her wings. I had no idea who One Direction or Justin Bieber were until someone made fun of them and prompted me to look them up.
I gave them mental real estate.
When pros talk about other people’s work, they control how that mental real estate is being used. They acknowledge the qualities that made X grab that real estate, and they work out how they could do the same. They try to work out what the creators of X were trying for, how they did it, how well they did it, and whether the same technique could be used for a current or future project.
Opinion isn’t worth much without analysis. When a pro doesn’t like something, they can tell you why–and it isn’t “because Y is better” or “there used to be better X twenty years ago.”
You’ll see that all the time, too.
For a creator, it’s not a question of whether X is better than Y. Nobody gives a damn. It’s a question of whether X is the best X it could have been, how to make it better X next time, and how to rip off parts of X to build your next Y.
You might not be able to stomach X. So stop giving it mental real estate already. Don’t joke about it, don’t talk about it, don’t badmouth it, don’t use it for comparison to anything else. No more space, no more power.
If you’re going to talk about X, if you can’t stop talking about X, figure out what X does right.* Go ahead, make fun of X, if you have to. But you’re acknowledging power. Every one-star review is a bow to the creator of that product. Every three-star “meh” is a lie.
Look what they made you do.
There it is. Now I don’t have to grit my teeth every time someone makes fun of modern art or Twilight or Goosebumps or Michael Bay or LMFAO or Phil Glass or whatever. Instead, I get to smugly think, “Ah, if only they’d read my blog. Then they’d know I think they’re being a n00b.” Which, I guess, makes me a n00b. Because I’m giving them mental real estate. Letting them get under my skin.
Look what they made me do.
*For me, it’s New Couuntry. Gah…it’s 80s soft rock with slide guitars. I still don’t get it, but I’ve been trying to work it out for years. I’ve come to the conclusion that what we call Country Music is mostly some genre of popular music that’s 20 years old with slide guitars, no matter what era you pick from, so you hit “pop” and “nostalgia” while still being able to write and sell new songs. I grok people like it because it tells them that they should be proud of themselves. I don’t like it because it comes across as smug rather than proud, and tells people to be proud of stuff that you really shouldn’t proud of, like cutting your name into your ex’s leather seats. (Rub two brain cells together and spell “evidence,” will you?) And hoorah for alcoholism and hating on people who aren’t like you! But there it is: mental real estate. I welcome comments about what makes New Country so damn catchy–even trails to theories about what makes pop music in general so damn catchy.
January 13, 2013
What Adult Fiction is For
Or, why the words “entertainment” and “escape” aren’t all that helpful.
This is going to sound dumb, but I’ve struggled over the last couple of years with what adult fiction is for. The answer is obvious: entertainment. Or escape. I don’t get it. But then I’m the person who searches for the keys when they’re already in her pocket.
Let me contrast what middle-grade fiction is for.
One, it’s for entertainment. It has to compete with TV, movies, the Internet, video games, etc. It has to compete with Goosebumps and Erin Hunter and Harry Potter. It has to be entertaining for people who aren’t jaded, who miss implications, who have some fundamentally different emotional reactions.
Two, it’s a variation of the same story: you will be able to make it without your parents. Eight- to twelve-year-olds aren’t little kids anymore. Things don’t just happen to them. They make choices. Part of this involves the authority figure either stepping back (which can feel like abandonment) or not stepping back (which can feel like imprisonment). There’s a lot of crap to work out.
And so when I write middle-grade fiction, I have clear constraints.
I don’t have anything similar to work with, for adults. ”Adult” is too broad a category. ”Entertain” is too big a word.
But some ideas have made themselves obvious lately.
The adults who are likely to buy books tend to have ordinary lives. They produce something of use to society, have more or less stable personal lives, and are sane enough to function on a daily basis. They have a modicum of wisdom.
How many main characters are wise? –That is, how many of them start out as wise? How long does their personal journey feature as the center of the story, if they are wise?
Sherlock Holmes. Not wise. Poirot. Not wise. Both intelligent men. You can be as smart as you like and not wise. Scarlett O’Hara. Huh. Luke Skywalker, feckless farm boy, is the center of Star Wars, not Obi-Wan Kenobi. Finding Nemo. The Incredibles. Disney has an empire based on characters who don’t start out making the best decisions. So do a lot of romance writers. You want to slap some sense into Bella but she sells books.
“Flawed characters are interesting.” I’ve heard that a lot, and people usually follow that up with, “because you can relate to them.” But there are a lot of flawed characters I can’t relate to. Read the news, go to work, you’ll see a few. What’s so great about flaws?
Nothing.
So here’s my guess: Great characters aren’t just flawed or unwise. They’re passionate to the point of action.
Ordinary people can’t get away with it. Our passions are carried out on a once-in-a-lifetime basis, if that. Our jobs are dull. Or if they are exciting, they aren’t exciting as often as we get in books. A new adventure every night. Even firefighters spend a lot of time standing around. Even ER doctors have to do paperwork. The best characters live unbalanced lives, where they do not have to dot the is and cross the ts, or if they do, it’s because they have OCD, like Monk.
I recently read a book that was otherwise lovely, but the main character was entirely too reasonable. It was like watching an office struggle carried out on a big screen: two coworkers striving for attention, with the main character doing nothing to further her place in the battle. I could relate, but I couldn’t really get into the character. The character wasn’t perfect–she held back information that could have resolved things in a couple of words. Too shy. Too restrained. I wanted to smack her. ”Communicate more. Be mildly self-righteous less. Fight back.” But. It was realistic.
I can’t think of a single book that I enjoyed that I read in order to get wisdom from it. Someone recommended I read one, and I had to put it down because I felt like I was indulging the woman’s self-destructive behaviors. It was a biography. Great writing. Made me feel ill, which was maybe the point.
Sure, I have gained some wisdom from books. Mostly kids’ books, because a lot of the conclusions that kids’ books come to is, “Be nice to other people; it often turns out handy.” Which it does.
Adult books aren’t constrained like that. There’s no one story that we can all relate to or one lesson we all need to learn. Thus different genres, I guess. But there is one thing that people who tend to buy books need. To feel something, no matter how foolish. Maybe the more foolish the better.
I told you I wasn’t so good with the obvious.
January 8, 2013
Lost in Les Miz
So it’s the credits of Les Miz and I’m trying to dry my face off discreetly with my scarf, and two women in front of me are chatting cheerfully. I decide that they are Martians. Then three women are talking about escaping their kids and going to Les Miz. They call it La Miz and chatter pleasantly together. I decide that they, too, are Martians. Then I remember that not every sobs all the way through Les Miz. Then I realize that it is a book, and then a play, and now a movie both thematically, dramatically, and musically designed to evoke sobbing; thus, the name, and that if you’re neither sobbing nor rolling your eyes on the way out, then there’s something wrong with you, Martian or otherwise. You have to react somehow.
First act: brilliant. I would never have guessed 24601 as Hugh Jackman, and kept getting lost in it. Yes, there were some large faces, but I agreed with the choice there: you’re supposed to cry. There is just noplace to look that isn’t someone’s tragic facial expression. Just TRY to run from that emotion. I was really impressed that so many of the actors gave them over to hideousness, too. That sobbing was not pretty.
Second act: very nearly dull. I think that’s by purpose, that if you sustained the intensity of Act I throughout the show, that people would off themselves, just walk into the bathroom and slit their wrists. Grownup Cosette never does anything but put me to sleep, and Amanda Seyfried was no exception here, although she was less annoying than most. Screw her; let’s keep Eponine next time instead. Also, I kept staring at Marius, going, “That kid just looks odd,” but I liked him here. Another non-pretty, almost infinitely stretchable face. I love watching people with large mouths sing.
Third act: The horrible uselessness of it all crashed in on me here, to the point where it kicked me out several times. And seeing the palace where Marius lived didn’t help at all: that’s right, not-so-pretty boy! Run home to Gramps! Probably also intentional. Also wept to wretched excess here.
Thenardiers: boring?!? How do you do “boring” and “Thenardiers”? Whoever made the call to tone them down will be drug out to the wall when the revolution comes. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the actors making that call. Or the costume designers. I think that was my only real issue.
Some have called out Russel Crowe for less-than-stellar singing (especially compared to Hugh Jackman, who was not flawless but in an enjoyable way); however, whether intentional or not, I thought he was charming, the best Javert that I’ve seen – he came across as a kid in a man’s clothes, with an almost innocent voice. I normally eyeroll my way through Javert: good Lord, man, just calm down for two seconds! But here I just kept thinking, “He really does believe in all that crap.” A boy’s spirit. Law! Honor! Someday I will grow up to be a man of Justice! And the scene on top of the tower where he’s walking the edge of the balcony…it was a) a nice setup, and b) reminiscent of Batman, which made some nice echoes.
Overall, nicely done, easy on the ears, enjoyable, and about as sad as I can stand to watch more than once.
December 27, 2012
New Story: The Mighty Mountain of Theornin
The Mighty Mountain of Theornin
by De Kenyon
Astra knows what she’s good at: thieving, tricking, and hitting people with rocks. Especially the mayor’s bullying son, after he makes fun of her. She also knows what she’s not good at: being a girl. Not the kind of girl that lives in the tiny mountain village of Theornin, anyway.
So logically that means making Wizard Jorphen change her into a boy.
But the mayor’s already pushing Wizard Jorphen around to do something else: stopping a mountain from growing under the village and pushing everyone out. Except the only way to stop a mountain from growing might kill Astra’s only friend.
(For kids 8-12.)
“Now, what I want you to do is spell them off. Or just keep them from getting bigger.” Astra held her breath. Didn’t matter how good a plan was, if some adult didn’t approve of it.
Sure enough, Wizard Jorphen said, “No.”
She slammed her fist on the heavy, black-wood table, which made the dishes rattle but didn’t move the table one bit. He was looking up at her all steady and serious. His dirty, dark blue robe sparkled with stars; as she looked, she thought she saw one twinkle and slide over the skinny bone at the top of his shoulder. He had big blue eyes and yellow hair and a fake beard that was coming loose again.
“Then make me a boy so I can grow up to be a man, and they can all quit bothering me. I don’t want to learn how to cook or clean up after people. I don’t want to go out in the fields and dig and hoe and pull weeds and get the sun in my eyes and the bugs in my throat. I want to go to Newmarket and steal for a living. Why don’t anybody believe me when I say I’ll send money back?”
“No,” he said.
She hit the table again, but this time the whole house shook around them, and she had to grab the table to stay steady. They’d been having a lot of earthquakes lately, the first ever in the history of Theornin village. The old clay jar at the end of the Wizard Jorphen’s bookshelf started to tip off the side of the shelf, right over his head. She jumped up so her foot was on the table and hit the pot away from his head. The jar smashed against the stone wall, busted-up clay flying everywhere.
Astra stood on the table and braced the row of books before they could slide off. “I told you not to sit there. Now can we take the books down?”
Wizard Jorphen ignored her and crouched down on the floor next to where the jar had smashed. Astra started taking books off the shelf and dropping them on the one clear spot on the table, in a stack. He was just lucky his dirty dishes hadn’t slid off the table, was all. He was running out of dishes. At least she’d put all the jars in the cellar were on the floor, so they should be all right. She should of just said she wasn’t going to work for him anymore, last time she’d paid off all the favors he’d done her. He was so stubborn. He could find someone else to do chores for him. And be his friend.
“You could have just caught it.” He picked up a few of the larger pieces. “Now I’ll have to make time to fix it.”
“Why? There wasn’t anything in it, and it was ugly as a snake.”
He sighed. “I was going to put something in it. Someday.”
“Well, at least leave these books on the table ‘till the earthquakes are over, all right?”
He twisted around, a stack of jar pieces in one hand that he set on the table. He blinked and swayed on his dirty knees.
“Your eyes are real red,” she said. “Are you sick?”
“Just tired. The earthquakes aren’t going to stop, Astra. A mountain is growing under our village.”
She blinked. A mountain? Mountains grew? “When’ll it be over?”
“Never. Theornin will either have to move or slide down the mountain.”
Buy now at Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo, and more to come.
December 11, 2012
Learning to Learn More Easily
Okay, granted, it’s a crappy title for this blog post. It kind of assumes that I know what I’m talking about, that I’ve got a bunch of answers, and that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, I felt like writing an essay. And this was the essay that was on my mind: when I gather facts, it’s different than when I learn something.
Wait, back up a second.
Essay. What’s the word mean? It implies a certain kind of structure: here’s my premise, here’s three to five main points, here’s my closing argument. But that’s bullshit. That’s not an essay. That’s an argument: here’s what I’m going to try to convince you of, here are my arguments, and to sum up (you blithering idiot), here’s my conclusion. Blah blah blah. An essay isn’t meant to be an argument. It’s meant to be a trial, an essay. An attempt. An essay can fail. It doesn’t have to be all in your face about what it wants to accomplish. It can…be a lot of things. A testing of ideas. Blog post, sure, this is a blog post. But it’s also an essay.
So, back to it. A trial of ideas, on the subject of learning.
When I learn something, what happens? I can tell you the symptoms of learning: I feel like a piece of shit, like I’m the world’s biggest idiot. I get depressed. I question my assumptions. I hate myself. I drive myself down into the mud, and then…I’m not sure how this works. Things just…get better. I call it “leveling,” because I’m a gamer, and gamers understand sudden jumps in abilities. It’s not a smooth progression. You don’t gradually get better at a task; it plateaus, you learn something, and then you suddenly get a lot better. Over and over and over again. There is no permanent state of “being good at X,” because if you’re not an idiot this cycle keeps happening. The people who are actually good at something have less and less awareness of being good at it, I think, because they’ve gone through the learning cycle so often that they’re wary, like horror movie buffs. ”Oh, you think you’re good now, do you? Just wait until the next time you go into that base–don’t split up! Don’t split up! Auuuuuugggghhhh!!!” They know what’s coming, if not specificially, then that it will come, and that they’ll be torn up all over again.
So how do you make it easier on yourself? How does anyone learn how to learn?
Well, one thing I’ve learned is that gathering a lot of facts helps. With a lot of facts, you can spread out the leaning cycles in smaller, more frequent chunks. ”Ah…well, that assumption was wrong” is so much easier to take when you’re breaking it down into smaller bites. Gather data.
Getting advice from people you respect is good, because it’s harder to go into denial about the advice. You go, “I know you’re right, I just can’t cope with it yet.” You can resist the learning, but you know it’s coming…it cycles around until it hits you again, but this time you’re ready for it (usually because you’ve been gathering facts).
Admitting that you need to keep learning and that, if you don’t want to learn something, as in you’re actively resisting it, actively resisting anyone who even comes close to talking about it, it’s time to say, “I lose, this is what I need to learn,” and start digging in. It feels like you’re losing a conflict–the conflict between your ego and the universe, I guess.
Having a good goal. If you want something more than you want your pride, it’s easier to learn. It always helps me to go, “I want to be good at this more than I want to be right.”
But. All those things having been noted, and probably some other tactics that other people use, it’s still hard to learn. I have all these techniques to dull the pain, but it doesn’t seem any easier. Faster, yes. I spend less time recovering from the down cycle of learning. –There’s a thought. How well do optimists adapt? I wonder if there’s been a study. The word I’m looking for isn’t optimist, it’s something else. How well do people who never second guess themselves adapt? Do they learn? Is doubt a necessary condition of growth? Is unassailable confidence a flaw?
I want to say yes, and maybe that’s what I’ll find out from this essay, that I just want to comfort myself because I have doubts. Faith–faith isn’t the word I want, in contrast. People with faith are full of doubt. They walk across an abyss, one foot at a time. People who don’t doubt don’t, in my opinion, really have faith. They just have excellent being-brainwashed skills. Like courage and fear. You can’t have courage without fear; you can’t have faith without doubt. They aren’t opposites. Well, as the case may be: I’m sure this won’t be the first essay written to justify one’s own beliefs or actions.
You can’t have an essay without inspiration. Somewhere in the middle of a true essay, you have to come up against a wall, and you have to jump. You do jump, and you cross…for better or worse, if you finish the essay, you cross somewhere. Maybe somewhere stupid. Essays, despite what they teach in schools, aren’t truly made up from a perfect structure. The structure comes out of the post-essay analysis, not out of the writing. A good essay includes an element of chaos, not of disorder, but of unpredictable order. One foot in front of the other, not knowing where you’ll end up, but knowing that you’ll end up somewhere, because you’re walking.
–I have a saying about writing science fiction, not really true, but true enough. ”All good lines of thought lead to Neal Stephenson.” I’ll often start playing with an idea and end up with a couple of lines out of Diamond Age or something. I feel frustrated, but at least I know it’s a good path. I suspect a lot of people have something similar, in their lines of expertise or affection or taste. ”All good puns lead to…” ”All good cooking shows lead to…” ”All good Facebook posts lead to the front page of Reddit…” Things like that.
Essays, learning, lines of thought. Essays, learning, lines of thought.
Where do they go?
Is it possible to make it easier to learn? Is it the human condition, or am I so patterned as a writer now that it’s impossible for me to imagine a real learning that doesn’t involve depression, destruction, redemption? A thought that’s been haunting my freewriting is that a good story is just…the learning process. Something happens you can’t understand. You feel bad about it, try to solve the problem, fail, try to solve the problem, fail…gathering facts and friends and advice along the way…screwing things up right and left until…that black moment when you can’t pretend to be right anymore, you can’t pretend to understand. Once you hit that, you despair.
And then…there’s a leap. You try something else, something completely different, you have no idea whether it will work (you can’t possibly believe it will, it probably won’t, but what have you got left to lose?), and, finally…it just does.
There’s one story: someone learned something. Or, in a tragedy, ultimately didn’t. –Some tragedies, like Kafka or Brazil, are about the value of not learning, not adapting. Why on earth would you want Gregor Samsa to learn how to support his family…as a giant beetle? They never gave a shit about him anyway.
Sure, a lot of stories don’t look like they’re about learning. ”Oh, I need to find the X, fall in love with the Y, and save the Z.” But–every story is just someone’s made up, imaginary world. Every problem is self-manufactured. Every drama is a made-up drama, written by someone addicted to the stuff. They might be more or less realistic, but realistically most people’s dramas are made up. ”How would a Buddha handle this?” usually ends up with, “With an eyeroll, a hug, and a plate of cookies.” Wait, that’s Grandma, but you get the point. A lot of things that look dreadfully important, worth all kinds of throwing yourself on the floor and having a tantrum over, aren’t. We just aren’t wise enough to know ourselves, or to do it the right way the first time.
So: that takes me back to the beginning. It’s not quite Neal Stephenson, but it does make me realize that I’m at the end of this.
How do you learn more easily?
By being wiser.
How do you become wiser?
By making mistakes and learning from them (presumably painfully).
Ugh, I already knew that. I guess that’s what you get sometimes. ”I already knew that.” I just wasn’t wise enough to remember.
New story: The Boy Who Would Not Fall Asleep
This story’s exclusive to Amazon for now. Click here to check it out; it’s free for now if you have Amazon Prime.
by De Kenyon
In the woods, Nickolas’s father tells him stories to pass the time as they cut down trees…but one story, he won’t tell. Not until Nickolas grows old enough to hear it. Finally, the time comes: the men in Nickolas’s family were always good at cutting things, but in older times, they were too good, and did monstrous things, eventually angering a local dragon.
The dragon cursed the men of their family to fall into a deep sleep that lasts from fall to spring, like a bear’s. And in their dreams, they must serve the dragon.
More than that, Nickolas’s father will not say.
Now, Nickolas is eating enough for many men…and getting sleepier with every step. The townswomen think it’s funny, but Nickolas has made up his mind: he will not sleep.
No matter what the cost.
(Ages 11-13.)
When Nickolas was a young boy following his father into the woods in order to carry his water while his father cut trees, his father would tell all kinds of stories of dragons and knights and fighting, and Nickolas enjoyed those stories very much. However, there was one story that his father would not tell him.
Nickolas would beg for a new story, and his father would say that he only had one story that he hadn’t told him yet. “But Nickolas, I am saving this story for you, and when it is time I will tell you.”
Nickolas grew older and older, and his father showed him how to use the ax to strip off branches, to cut away bark.
But he would not let him cut down a tree, not by himself. “There will be time,” his father said. “After you hear the story.”
“Soon?” Nickolas asked.
At first, his father had laughed and said, “Not so soon,” and told him the old stories again.
But then it changed to “soon,” and then “very soon now,” until finally his father said, “Now it is time to hear the last story, Nickolas, during the noon meal.”
They worked all morning, until finally it was time to eat. Every mouthful felt like it was going to choke Nickolas, for he could barely swallow.
“Once upon a time,” his father said, because that was the way he started his stories, “our family was cursed by a dragon.”
“A dragon!” Nickolas said. “I don’t believe it.”
“You better watch out for what you believe and what you don’t believe, young man,” said his father, who smiled until the tips of his teeth showed. “It will only get you in trouble. If I tell you our family was cursed by a dragon, then that’s what happened.”
“Yes, Father,” Nickolas said.
“Our family was cursed by a dragon for being…more than a little rambunctious. Wild. You see, when our family was young, we had no patience, no love of family, nothing but a desire to cut trees, to cut and cut and cut. Our family was so mad about cutting trees that we cut down the whole forest.”
Nickolas was surrounded by trees, trees so tall and thick that it seemed like the sun set hours early and rose hours late, it was so shaded and dim. Yet he knew better than to argue with his father that day.
“This was many, many hundreds of years ago,” his father added. “And the trees have all grown back.”
“Obviously,” said Nickolas, which earned him a pinch on the ear from his father. “Ow!”
Read more here.