Jonas David's Blog, page 58

Multiple I’s

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is written in first person, from two viewpoints. I don’t see how the two stories are related just yet, but I expect it will become clear.

Writing two different characters from a first person point of view seems strange. I would be wondering, as a reader, if they were the same character. I only expect that they aren’t, really, because each has a different narrator.

I do notice, though, that neither of the characters is an arrogant prick, which breaks my streak of arrogant jerk first person POV characters. So that’s nice.

I feel like I have something against the first person POV in general, though I’m not entirely sure what. It seems harder for me to suspend my disbelief in a first person story. I think about why this person is telling their story, how they are telling it? Who are they telling it to, and why? How they can remember all these details? Why are they recounting all these details, specifically? And on and on. Somehow, when it’s first person I often find myself focusing more on the idea of ‘someone is telling me a story of something that happened to them’ rather than just enjoying the story.

This novel, though, I haven’t found myself having that trouble. For whatever reason, I haven’t thought much about it being first person. Maybe it’s the relaxed, conversational way the character tells his story. Or maybe it’s just a sign of good writing.

Either way, maybe this novel will make me change my distrust of first person POV…

Doctor Who Writes this stuff?

I’ve been catching up on Doctor Who. I hadn’t seen any of the Peter Capaldi episodes, and just finished season 8. I don’t know if I’m getting older, or the show is going downhill… but, way too many of the episodes in that season were kind of lame.

It seemed to be a recurring theme that things happening have zero consequence for anyone. And as I’ve said before, things with no consequences, are not interesting.

In one episode, we find out that Earth’s moon is a giant egg that is about to hatch. Should we kill the thing inside to stop it from hatching, or is that wrong? There is discussion about how losing the tides will cause massive damage to Earth, as well as how the falling pieces of the broken moon would kill millions. At the last minute Clara decides to let the thing hatch and… the ‘shell’ magically disappears with no effect after the thing hatches, and it instantly ‘lays an egg’ in the same place, the same size of the moon. So it’s as if nothing happened. Great.

In another episode, giant forests sprout over night all over the Earth. After some confusion we learn that the trees are growing as a shield for a solar storm that is about to hit earth. When the solar storm hits Earth is safe because of all the trees everywhere, yay! But, then, all the trees just… disintegrate into nothing? But not all the other trees that were already there, just the new ones. It’s just like nothing ever happened. Great.

In another dramatic scene, Clara has found all the keys to the TARDIS and is threatening to throw them in lava if she doesn’t get what she wants from the Doctor. Interesting, seeing the Doctor about to actually lose something is powerful. She throws the keys into the lava and its shocking! What will happen? How will he get back into the TARDIS? He’ll get in fine cause it was all a dream, and it’s as if nothing happened. Great.

All these episodes just made me sigh and groan and feel like my time was wasted. It reminded me of watching cartoons as a kid, where a character will be exploded by a bomb or have a limb broken or take any other kind of damage to be just fine in the next scene. It always bothered me. I found myself wondering ‘What would this show be like if the things that happened, actually happened? What if Tom the cat had to go through six months of episodes with a broken limb? What would that do to the story? How would Jerry the mouse react?

Real, adult stories for fully developed humans need there to be consequences to things that happen. Especially when the things are huge and effect everyone. Or else, you might as well just be telling me about a dream you had. It is really hard to care about things with no effect on anyone.

 

Intentional annoyance?

I’m on to my next audiobook, and this time it’s Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami, who I’ve heard many good things about but have never read.

The opening of this book takes place in an elevator. An extended elevator ride that is described repeatedly, in an overly-long and quite annoying way that made me say ‘come on!’ out loud. This was not a good first impression of the book.

But I wonder, was this a purposeful way to evoke the irritation of riding in such an elevator? The rest of the book so far, outside the elevator, has not been annoying at all, so I have to assume it must have been a desired outcome of the author.

This seems to me a very risky way to start your novel. Intentionally annoying the reader in the first pages? This guy must have supreme confidence in his ability to entertain.

I hope he’s right…

 

Every writer

“Every writer I know has trouble writing.” – Joseph Heller

I love seeing quotes like these. Writers tend to be a solitary species, in my experience, so I think can sometimes talk themselves into believing they are terrible, just because they are having a hard time.

Well, every writer has a hard time, even the best ones. Being good at something doesn’t mean it’s easy. In fact, I’d say the better you are at something the more you realize you have to learn, and the more you push yourself.

So revel in the difficulty, and congratulate yourself for still doing it!

 

The Warrior’s Apprentice

I finished this today on audible, and though it had some fun, clever action and witty, likable characters, I never really got into it enough to care about what was happening.

As mentioned in previous posts, I was at a loss for the main character’s motivation. He sometimes seems to  want to impress his father by being soldierly, but other times wants desperately for his father to never find out anything he’s doing and to escape it all. He Doesn’t seem to be after adventure or money, he is somewhat after love but nothing he is doing could ever be seen to be bringing him closer to that goal.

What does Miles want? After the end of the book I’m still not sure. I think it is ‘to be a soldier’ but any reference to these desires throughout the story seem to have been forgotten.

Miles is the perfect character for an adventure story: a proactive one. He solves problems, he takes action, he is against the odds but still tries for a solution. These are all great attributes that are missing in too many adventure stories. But all this is kind of deflated by the fact that I have no idea what the character is putting himself in danger for, what he is trying to live for, other than the banal reason of simply not dying.

Without an overall objective that is clear to the reader throughout, even the most proactive character is still going to come across as a passive one with things just happening to them.

 

The final stretch

I’m very near to the end of a first draft of my novel, and am having a harder and harder time keeping thoughts of all the hard work ahead at bay.

So many things to add, and change, and remove. So many crappy sentences to fix, words to remove, characters to insert and excise. It’s going to take forever till it’s readable!

The trick now is pushing these thoughts out of the way for a few more weeks till I’ve passed the finish line. Then I can buy myself a nice bottle of scotch and celebrate a little… then, back to work with endless editing and rewriting and dying inside.

Can’t wait…

Be the best you can be

I recently started reading The Crimson Petal and the White,  by Michel Faber, in my attempt to read instead of browse the internet and social media on my devices. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so impressed by prose, if ever.

The story follows a young prostitute in 1870’s London–a subject I have close to zero interest in. But since I enjoyed his other books so much, I went so far as to read the preview on Amazon. The first pages were all it took to convince me to buy.

Have you ever read something so rich and potent that it makes your favorites seem pale and thin in comparison? I have no interest in this story’s subject matter, but the writing is so deliciously good that I can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop popping it open for a few paragraphs whenever I can.

I keep making food metaphors because, it really is like food for my mind.

And it makes me want to be a better writer. It makes me want to stretch to my limits to make my writing so enjoyable that the subject doesn’t matter cause you love the words so much.

I feel the odds of getting as good as Faber are low, but it’s something to aspire to.

Character motivation is kind of important

I am currently listening to The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois Mcmaster Bujold, and though it is competently written and the characters are distinct and likable, I am having a hard time getting into it .

The problem is it’s difficult to care about what’s happening when you don’t know what the characters want.

The story starts with the protagonist, Miles, a dwarf (smaller person, not the fantasy variety) who is the son of a general or some other important person, and is a kind of royal figure himself (a minor lord, in fantasy terms). Miles is failing to get into military school because he can’t pass the physical tests.

Okay, good start, our hero has a problem to overcome.

But then the story seems to go off the rails. When taking a trip off-world to visit relatives, Miles randomly buys a ship by mortgaging some land, and starts hiring all kinds of people and getting into massive debt doing it–and agrees to a mission to transport some weapons through a military blockade into a war zone. Because… why?

Is he desperate for cash and thus willing to risk his life (and the life of his body-guard’s daughter, who he seems to have a thing for) to get some? Well, as was made clear earlier, he is a Lord, with important relatives. He shouldn’t be wanting for money. Is it just for some adventure? Maybe, but even the slightest hint that he intended to seek adventure and try to escape from his boring life beforehand would have been helpful.

Instead he’s just doing all this crazy stuff, and no one in the group is saying a single contradictory word even though all their lives are in danger because of it. Baffling.

It’s very very hard–much harder than you’d expect without experiencing it–to get into a story when you have no idea why the characters are doing the things they are doing. Now that Miles and co. are getting into trouble with mercenaries and fighting and so on, the story is more engaging because we can see the clear motivation of wanting to live. But the overall goals of the characters are still a mystery to me, and that is a big problem.

I hope it becomes clearer in time, because the more stories I read, the less patience I have for them.

Read More

I saw an article recently that said with the time an average persons spends looking at social media each year, you could read 200 books.

So, with that in mind, I’m aiming to read a lot more this year. Along with the audio books I listen to on my commute, I will be reading a text book on my phone or other device at the same time. So whenever my thumb aims for the facebook or twitter icon, I’ll do my best to redirect it toward the kindle icon instead!

I read/listened to 18 novels last year. I plan to bring that over 25 this year. Since I’m already at 4, though, I may have to bump that up a bit higher. We’ll see.

Cut back on the scrolling through headlines, and pick up a book!

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Discovery writing

I get why they call it that, I really do.

When I write, I never know any details when I start. I have a vague idea of something I’d like to write about. Maybe I have a glimmer of a character, and some thing’s she’ll do, places she’ll go. I have a sort of impression of what the ending will be and what the story will say to the world. But that’s it.

As I write, I find out the details, the connections between the events and characters, the subplots and themes, all as if I’m discovering a story that already exists. It’s like I saw a hint of a story buried somewhere, and started excavating it. Each chapter I type is a pile of soil brushed away from the slowly revealed artifact.

Hopefully I don’t do any damage in the process of digging it up…