L.E. Truscott's Blog, page 49

Naming Your Novel

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.”

Chinese proverb

There were three great – and I mean truly great – things to come out of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. The first (not particularly literary) was Robert Pattinson. The second was another writer moving into the realm of never having to worry about money again. And the third was the inspired choice of names for each of the books – Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.

Of course, writing a four-book series is more than half the writing battle – it’s most of the writing battle – but coming up with a theme for the names of all the books is at least half of the post-writing marketing battle. They need to be catchy, they need to be relevant and they need to make sense by themselves as well as in totality. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Well done, Stephenie (or your editor, whichever one of you it was to make this decision). Conversely, boo, hiss to the producers of the film versions who after the first film insisted on prefacing the following four with the words “The Twilight Saga”, as though people choosing whether or not to see the films wouldn’t realise they were part of a series without it. We knew. We would have to have been living under a rock (or the modern day equivalent, without an internet connection) not to know.

Another series to be similarly successfully named was Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant – how those names roll off the tongue in sequence. Kudos to you (or your editor) as well, Veronica Roth.

In recent years I have been playing around with this concept in my own writing efforts by trying to come up with a great theme for a series of book names. The success of my efforts so far has been so-so (and that’s a generous assessment). In 2013, I was considering a three-book series with the titles Black Death, Red Heart and White Light. These titles related to the original plot involving Livia Black and anyone who has read my post entitled “The Evolution of a Character and a Plot” will know both Livia and her story have been through several stages of development and redevelopment. As they did, the original three titles began to make less and less sense, making title revision also necessary.

Although I’ve currently only finished writing the first in the series of three books, the three titles I settled on last year were Black Spot, White Wash and Blue Print. There are multiple problems with these when I check them against the list of requirements:

*Yes, they make sense individually (when you eventually read the books, I hope you’ll agree).

*Yes, they make sense in totality (obviously, the theme is colour).

*Yes, they are relevant (again this may require actually reading them to make a judgement so I hope you’ll happily defer to me on this one).

*But, crucially, no, they are not catchy at all. In fact, White Wash has the potential to confuse given it has a political meaning (my intended usage) and a decorating meaning (not my intent at all) and Blue Print is actually one word, not two (blueprint) but it didn’t flow with the other two proposed book names so I made a grammatically incorrect style decision, which I really hate myself for doing. (What self-respecting grammar nazi would do that?)

Assuming a publisher expresses any interest in publishing the series, I’m sure it’s something that will be rectified quick smart but I’m not sure I will be any help in that area unless they are looking for “yes” or “no” answers. My ability to come up with great book titles seems to be diminishing as my ability to write well increases. Ten years ago, the title Enemies Closer was one of the first things I conceived, well before I ever finished writing even the first draft. Obviously, it’s a play on the famous saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

The novel I am working on now had a working title of Dyad which means, “two individual units, things or people linked as a pair.” It made sense as the novel was an exploration of the relationship between two people who are hugely impacted by illegal actions but from completely different sides of the experience. Except then I added a third key character and decided the write it in three parts, each exploring the same two weeks in first person perspective from one character, then the next and then the last. Dyad no longer made any sense. The novel is now called Trine, which simply means, “consisting of three parts.” Inspired, huh? Another one for the publisher to fix in due course.

Here are some other great title series worth a mention:

*JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books – a timelessly classic format (…and the Philosopher’s Stone – or Sorcerer’s Stone, depending on where you read it – …and the Chamber of Secrets, …and the Prisoner of Azkaban, …and the Goblet of Fire, …and the Order of the Phoenix, …and the Half-Blood Prince, and …and the Deathly Hallows)

*Pittacus Lore’s number series (I Am Number Four, The Power of Six, The Rise of Nine, The Fall of Five and The Revenge of Seven)

And here are some partial special mentions (because while the whole series may not have met the criteria, some of the titles were just terrific):

*John Marsden’s Tomorrow, When the War Began and Darkness, Be My Friend from the Tomorrow series

*Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (but I’m not a fan of the titles of the subsequent books)

*Stieg Larsson’s wonderful Millenium series (at least the English language versions – because the first book in the original Swedish was titled Men Who Hate Women, not as catchy as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) which has sparked an avalanche of books with the word “girl” in the title

Which book titles or series of book titles have struck a chord within you?

Black Spot: Chapter One

(black spot n a place where something bad exists or happens)

There is no wind, no sound, no movement. The dawn that rises over the mountains is the most quiet, still morning that Livia Black can remember. Not that she remembers them all. Not since the car accident that wiped the slate clean of her memories.

Six years ago today. Six years since her mother died in that same car accident. Her brilliant, beautiful mother. Not that she remembers her either. Livia has pictures but she doesn’t look at them often. They don’t spark her memory like they are supposed to. Instead they are reminders of the unfamiliar things she has lost. She feels bad that she doesn’t feel bad about the loss of a mother she wouldn’t recognise in a crowd of strangers. But how can she miss someone she can’t recall being there or being gone?

Livia lingers as long as she can at the foot of the heavily forested mountains that border the eastern edge of her vast family farm but eventually turns her horse, Pepper, and heads for home. Pepper knows the way and she doesn’t need to guide him. He’s slower than normal though. He knows she is not eager to arrive at their destination. He’s a smart horse.

When they are back at the stables, she brushes his coat and offers him a carrot. He eats it loudly and then wanders into his sandpit, which used to be hers, to roll around. She doesn’t remember it being hers but it’s what she’s been told. She does remember taking apart the wooden sides to let the sand spill out and the horses get in. It was her choice. At twelve, she may not have known herself but she knew she was too old to be playing in sandpits anymore.

Livia goes into the house and up to her bedroom to change out of her riding gear and into jeans and a t-shirt, then waits at the front of the house for her father to bring the car around. There is no arguing, no cajoling, no pleading in spite of the fact she wishes she didn’t have to go. They have taken this trip together a lot. More often a few years ago. Less often now.

She always sits in the back seat. She doesn’t know why. Her father says it’s because she’s afraid of the front passenger seat. It’s where she was sitting when the accident happened. But that’s silly. She can’t remember the accident. She doesn’t feel afraid. It’s just habit.

The drive takes nearly an hour even though Doveton is the next town over from Murphy where Livia and her father live. Doveton sounds pretty, she thinks, but the reality is anything but. A deserted town taken over by a huge medical corporation called Evergy. Only Evergy employees live there now.

When they arrive at Evergy headquarters, a modern multi-storey building, all glass and chrome and completely out of place in the surrounding rural setting, a guard dressed in a uniform of perfectly pressed dark blue trousers and shirt checks that they are expected and then directs her father where to park. He needn’t bother. They park in the same spot every time. They are met at the door by Dr William Wallenius every time. They are escorted through the stark white hallways to the same even starker white examination room every time. Her father is offered coffee in the next room every time.

Dr Wallenius is older, or what Livia thinks of as older, with grey hair and unfashionable glasses, but she doesn’t actually know his age or really anything about him. He’s never talked about himself and that suits her just fine because it means she doesn’t feel guilty about doing the same, as much as she can anyway.

‘How do you feel today, Livia?’ Dr Wallenius asks without looking at her, consulting the chart he is holding. How does she feel? She doesn’t really know. There’s an elusiveness to the true answer to that question. She feels ambiguous, abstract and indistinct, as if removed from herself somehow. Existentially, at least. But she suspects that’s not the kind of feelings he’s asking about.

‘Well, thank you,’ she answers by rote. Physically, it’s the truth.

‘Have you remembered anything?’

‘No.’ He asks every time they meet and not once has she been able to answer differently. Her life from before the accident is less than a blur. It’s not even a blur. It’s just gone.

‘Are you doing your memory exercises?’

‘Yes.’ She has a program called Brain Training on a Nintendo DS but it never holds her interest. Most of the time her father has to remind her to do her exercises, which she thinks is ironic.

‘Are you taking your tablets?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m going to draw blood for some tests.’

‘Okay.’ Sometimes Dr Wallenius draws blood, sometimes he doesn’t. She’s not sure how blood tests are going to cure her of amnesia. During moments of self-doubt she wonders if they have told her the purpose of the blood work and she has forgotten. But she’s able to form new memories perfectly well. She just hasn’t been able to hold on to any of her memories from before the accident.

Her free hand is instinctively drawn to the pendant hanging around her neck. It’s the only piece of jewellery her pragmatic father has given her – not really jewellery even; it’s a tiny gold compass on a gold chain for when she is in the mountains so there’s no chance of her getting turned around or lost – and it has become a talisman of safety, even in situations that a compass would prove fairly useless. Like now.

After he has drawn her blood, Dr Wallenius offers her a lollipop like she’s still a child. But she’s eighteen now. It seems strange. She takes it anyway. Deviations from the routine tend to raise their interest. She doesn’t want to raise their interest. She’s had enough interest from doctors to last her several unpleasant lifetimes.

Livia sucks the lollipop while her father re-enters the room and talks to the doctor in hushed tones.

‘Any change?’

‘None.’

In the first weeks after the car accident, Livia was in a coma. She stayed at Evergy’s clinic – meant for employees and research patients only – for nearly three months as they first woke her, assessed her, then tried to figure out when her memories might return. After she was released, she had appointments scheduled daily. Then weekly. Then the weekly appointments became fortnightly, and the fortnightly appointments became monthly. Now she can go ten weeks between seeing Dr Wallenius. It is her goal to get to three months between appointments. Well, it’s her goal to stop having to see doctors altogether. But there doesn’t seem to be any likelihood of that.

Livia’s mother worked for Evergy, which is why they take such good care of her daughter. Perhaps it is guilt, too. She was on her way home from work, on her way back to the farm when the accident happened. Livia doesn’t know why she was in the car with her mother. Maybe she’d gone to work with her – the accident happened in the summer and there is little for a twelve year old to do in Murphy in the summer other than the obvious: swim, play, ride horses, roam the farm, roam the town, roam the mountains. Actually, that sounds like rather a lot to do for a twelve year old. Perhaps she preferred her mother’s company to her father’s. Or perhaps she was fascinated by and attracted to her mother’s brilliance in the same way her father was.

Her parents met while hiking Kilimanjaro. Livia loves to hear this story but thinks it is painful for her father to tell it. The reason, she supposes, she’s only heard him tell it once. The reason he told it through gritted teeth. It was just after she’d woken from the coma but before she discovered the stranger sitting by her bed was her father. He told it in the third person about two people named Fleur and Teddy, like he was narrating a children’s fairy tale, romance and happily ever after shining through the sadness of the person telling it.

She reflects on how lucky they were to be in that particular same place at that particular same time because it is unlikely they would ever have met anywhere else. Dr Fleur Schuyler, MD and PhD, a research scientist with degrees from Harvard and Yale and a family line stretching back as far as kings and queens in Denmark or the Netherlands or somewhere Scandinavian on her maternal side, and Theodore Black, who everyone calls Teddy, a farmer.

When the Evergy doctors found out her father had told her the story they ordered him not to share any more stories with her, that it would interfere with efforts to have Livia remember things for herself. So for the longest time there were only three things she was told: that the man who never left her bedside was her father, that her mother had died in the car accident that was responsible for her amnesia, and that her parents had met while hiking on Kilimanjaro.

Other snippets slipped through later on – ancestral family histories that she couldn’t possibly know without being told, that her mother had ridden horses as a teenager as well – but she’s never heard him tell the Kilimanjaro story again. Instead she plays the memory of his telling it that one and only time over in her mind to spare him the pain.

The Evolution of a Character and a Plot

I have a habit of coming up with characters and story ideas and then setting them aside for years before finally getting around to doing anything about them. This was the case with Livia Black, the heroine of my complete but unpublished crossover young adult novel called Black Spot.

Initially, she was meant to be part of a group of twenty-somethings who all had a secret paranormal talent although managed to lead relatively normal lives. There was Sebastian, a prosecution lawyer who was unable to be lied to when he asked a direct question, making him incredibly successful in the courtroom. There was Imogen, who could read people’s thoughts and used the skill to make a fortune playing poker. There was Amelia, who could control technology through the mere touch of her fingertips. There was Ezekiel, a gay ballroom dancer with the strength of ten men. And there was Livia, a reserved woman with a history of incorrectly diagnosed mental illness who could see Death.

Sebastian and Imogen were supposed to be the two romantic leads with all the drama that comes from a couple where the woman can’t lie to the man and she can read his thoughts so effectively it didn’t matter if the man lied to the woman, she would know the truth anyway. But the more I fleshed out the character of Livia (version 1), the more I was drawn to her and her story.

Livia had been just a toddler when she had first seen Death. He appeared as a dark-haired man dressed simply but entirely in black – black plants, black shirt, black shoes – and took people’s souls by placing a hand on the victim. Death wasn’t vicious or malicious, he was just doing a necessary job.

When Livia realised as a teenager what she was seeing and confessed it to her parents and doctor, they had her involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility believing she was suffering hallucinations. Eventually, she stopped telling anyone what she was seeing and they pronounced her cured before allowing her to go home. So she had to learn to cope with what she was seeing all on her own. But she didn’t cope well.

She left home not long after, travelling from town to town to prevent herself from forming attachments. But it didn’t really work: she saw Death everywhere. She moved to the city and took on a job as a make-up artist in a funeral home, reasoning the people she worked with on a daily basis were already dead so Death shouldn’t turn up too often.

One day while having lunch in a crowded food court, she saw Death standing next to a man, the tell-tale sign he was preparing to take a soul. Livia felt compelled to comfort the man and approached him but all she could say was, “God bless you.” The man responded dismissively, “I don’t believe in God.” And Livia’s own response was, “You should.” But as she turned to leave, she caught Death’s eye and Death realised she could see him.

Death himself was once a regular man and is serving out his punishment for a crime committed so long ago he can’t remember what it was. He can’t even remember his real name. He begins following Livia everywhere and peppering her with questions until she admits she can see him. And so begins a tortured love affair, very much complicated by the fact that they can’t touch each other or Livia will die.

This, I thought, would make a terrific basis for a crossover young adult series in the vein of Twilight and my unofficial marketing manager (who I would bounce ideas off) agreed except for one thing. There was already a book with a storyline very similar. I can’t remember the name of the book now but I remember reading the outline and thinking, “Oh, no!”

I also remember thinking that if only I’d progressed with my storyline sooner, maybe I would have gotten there first. I know plots involving Death as a character aren’t new but I thought I’d had a new spin on it. Apparently not. There was only one thing for it: I would have to start from scratch.

The only thing I kept was her name. The character of Livia went through multiple versions. The daughter of a scientist and one of only a few people in the world immune to a deadly epidemic sweeping the world (sounds a bit like World War Z, commented my unofficial marketing manager). The daughter of a scientist who had been researching measles but found the cure for cancer (I think I Am Legend had something to do with measles research, my unofficial marketing manager informed me). Until finally the paranormal and medical focused storylines virtually disappeared and my unofficial marketing manager’s only comment to the latest proposed storyline was, “Mmm. I haven’t heard of anything like that before.”

And that was how Livia Black became an eighteen-year-old girl with amnesia, the result of a car accident six years before that also killed her mother, living on a farm with her father and isolated from the world with her horse her best friend. When her memories start to very, very slowly return, she realises that some of the things she’s been told about her life before the accident don’t match up with what she is remembering. She has to decide if she really wants to know the truth because she’s content living with her father on the farm. But she also feels incomplete and wonders if it’s because she doesn’t have those memories.

I still fondly hold onto Livia version 1 and sometimes wonder (unrealistically) if I could get away with ignoring the fact that there are similar books out there already and just write her story anyway. But it’s a big commitment for a project that has the potential to end with me being told it all sounds very familiar.

Check back in the day after tomorrow when I’ll post the first chapter of Black Spot and you can decide for yourself whether the transition from Livia (version 1) to the new and improved (and unrecognisable) Livia has been a successful one.

“I Hate You” and Other Things You Should Never Say at Work

I’m a writer for a reason. And that reason is sometimes when I speak, stupid silly faux-pas things come out of my mouth. I would love to have a delete button or a remote control for my life (not just my work life, my personal life, too) that allows me to pause a little longer to consider the consequences of what I am going to say next or rewind for a do over when I get it wrong (which can be frequently).

I once phoned a colleague and began the conversation with a Freudian slip that had my cubicle neighbours convulsing with laughter long after the call was ended. I’ve heard others in the workplace using what can only be described as colourful language. I’ve even caused a fellow worker to faint by talking about the very specific processes of blood donation.

But there are a handful of things you should never say at work (most of which I’m glad to say have never come out of my mouth) and knowing what they are in advance might just help you avoid an awkward, embarrassing, termination-inducing or unwanted reputation-making situation.

‘I hate you.’

Well, really, we’re not in kindergarten anymore (unless you are because you work in a kindergarten and then it’s even more inappropriate to tell a colleague you hate them because impressionable young ears will probably be listening in). And even though you might want to say it, is it really true? Perhaps you’re just repulsed or frustrated or angry or offended. And none of these emotions will get you very far in a workplace.

Genuine hatred should be reserved for murderers, rapists, bullies who subject you to physical and emotional abuse, and people who park in disabled parking spaces when they don’t have a disability. Personality differences are on another level entirely. While you might not get on with someone, you should have enough class to keep that information to yourself and get on with your job. Because saying it won’t make the working environment better, it won’t achieve anything (except maybe a talking to from your boss or HR or – if you’re really lucky – both), and you’ll end up regretting it almost the moment the words come out of your mouth.

‘I hate [insert minority group here].’

A cursory inspection of any equal opportunity employment policy will generally reveal that discrimination (including any stated hatred) based on race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, disability, health, marital and/or family status and a variety of other defining characteristics is a one-way ticket to unemployment. Justifiably.

Nobody can claim to be perfect. I look down on people who freely admit a fondness for Justin Bieber’s or One Direction’s so-called music. But even bigots like me (and possibly you) need to put food on the table. So if you can’t or won’t work at becoming just a little bit more enlightened, keep it to yourself.

‘You’re not very good at your job.’

Ouch. Harsh words. They might even be true. But it’s not up to you to make this determination and then say it to the person’s face. It’s their boss’s job. And if you are the boss, there are about a thousand better ways of saying it.

It’s easy to be negative but it’s so much more effective to find the positive in a situation. Instead of telling someone they’re not good at their job, why not try to help them get better? Suggesting to their supervisor that they might benefit from some additional training could help them to become good at their job. Wouldn’t you rather be part of the reason someone improves at something rather than part of the reason they are crying in the office toilets at lunch time?

‘You’re just plain stupid.’

This one is more of a blanket statement and we all know blanket statements are never good. They lack nuance, they lack specificity, they lack defensibility. However, I am now going to make a blanket statement. Everyone is good at something. But a lot of people aren’t lucky enough to either know what that something is yet or to have found a job where they get to demonstrate it on a daily basis. In the meantime, they still need to earn a living. And being told they are stupid isn’t exactly going to be perceived as an incentive. In fact, being told they are stupid is almost guaranteed to be taken as an invitation to aim lower. After all, it’s now expected.

It was the wisdom of Forrest Gump and his mamma that gave us, ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’ So which is worse? Being stupid? Or telling someone to their face, who for all you know could have a very good reason for failing to live up to your standards, that they are stupid?

‘I only work here for the money.’

Perhaps I’m a utopian but my checklist of reasons for working at a particular place of employment has to be longer than one. I know it’s impossible to tick every box but a combination of some of the following tends to be why I take on or continue in any job:

I like the company.
I share their vision.
The corporate culture promotes a work/life balance.
I enjoy the work.
There’s a chance for advancement.
My co-workers are more like friends.
My boss is someone I can learn from.
I love the industry.
The commute is reasonable.
The salary is generous.
The perks are things that actually get used.

If the only reason you stay in a job is the money, then it’s likely that money is the only thing you’ll ever get out of it. And telling people about your one and only mercenary motivation for staying won’t endear you to anyone.

‘You’re not Greg. Greg’s the guy with the little hand.’

Okay, yes, I admit, I once said this. To Greg. And as he held up his little hand (that had been behind his back) to prove me wrong, I would have given anything for a hole to open up in the ground and suck me down. In my defence, I was fifteen, it wasn’t at work (it was a BBQ at my dad’s house) and the filter mechanism in my brain that now stops me (mostly) from saying these types of things hadn’t yet fully developed.

Many people these days have physical disabilities or scars but it isn’t okay to use them to as a mark of identity. I have an ugly set of scars up my left arm, the consequences of a motorbike I was riding colliding with a barbed wire fence (ah, the follies of youth) but I would be horrified to hear someone referring to me as, ‘You know, that woman with the scars on her arm.’

The guiding principle of identifying the people you work with is this: what is their name, which department do they work in and what is their job? Fred from accounting. Gillian from marketing. Tom from customer service. Sally from operations. If you can’t identify people in this way, then ask yourself: should you be talking about them in the first place?

‘I wish someone would blow this place up/burn this place to the ground.’

It’s one thing to hope for a black out, a gas leak or a nearby grass fire that means everyone has to be evacuated and sent home for the day. But in our age of middle class radicalism, a comment like this overheard without its all-important context – such as a computer that hasn’t worked for four hours or yet another avoidable delay in something you have prioritised, things that can justifiably make us crazy at work – can have you sitting in the HR manager’s office clutching a termination notice faster than you can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

And, let’s be honest, you’re free to leave any time you’d like. Wishing destruction on a workplace that other people have worked hard to build, that other people have contributed considerable effort to keep up and running, that other people depend on for their livelihoods is not really a joking matter.

There are plenty more industry-specific things you should never say at work. ‘I’ve finished the operation. It was the left leg, yes?’ (Surgeons.) ‘Did you know your car has a top speed of 224 kilometres per hour?’ (Mechanics.) ‘I don’t really care if you go to jail or not.’ (Lawyers.) But if there’s one thing to take away from this, it’s the following mantra: think before you speak. Your career, and your reputation, could depend on it.

*First published on LinkedIn 31 August 2014

Book Review: Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Oh, wow! This is a must read book!

Yes, it’s one of those books that you persist with begrudgingly, wondering where it is going, only to feel bad because the end is so beautiful and perfect. And, yes, it could have been one hundred pages shorter and still had the same impact. But it is spectacular, a genuine contribution to literature.

This book was relatively easy to read for a literary piece although some sections did seem to go on and on. I wasn’t sure about the algae island section and think it could have been part of the 100 pages that could have been edited out.

But the questions that the ending raises – questions for each individual reader to consider and decide for themselves only – were so poignant that I still can’t decide what my answers to them are. The questions keep popping up in my mind over and over. How many books can we say that about?

I wouldn’t call this book life-changing but it is certainly perspective-changing and well worth pushing through if you are struggling to continue in the middle section.

4 stars

*First published on Goodreads 24 December 2012