Books I Desperately Want to Read!

My friend keeps telling me "not enough hours in the day" and she's usually correct.  There simply aren't enough hours in the day to play, to read, to watch a Game of Thrones marathon, to write, and do most other fun things that we humans of the nerdy persuasion are want to do.  And so, surrendering to the lack of hours in a day, I'm pushing off a pinch of homework to compile this list.  These are the books that make me want more hours in the day.  I'm planning on reading some this next semester, but what I really want is to already have them happily devoured and snuggling into my subconscious like the miraculous brain food I know they'll be.  I own the first one and am borrowing the second one from my aunt.  I reckon I'm going to just have to buy it, along with the last two, and feed my ever-increasing library. (Note: the book descriptions are taken from Amazon.com).

The Alchemy of Stone

Mattie, an intelligent automaton skilled in the use of alchemy, finds herself caught in the middle of a conflict between gargoyles, the Mechanics, and the Alchemists. With the old order quickly giving way to the new, Mattie discovers powerful and dangerous secrets - secrets that can completely alter the balance of power in the city of Ayona. However, this doesn't sit well with Loharri, the Mechanic who created Mattie and still has the key to her heart - literally!

The Last Wish

Geralt of Rivia is a witcher. A cunning sorcerer. A merciless assassin. And a cold-blooded killer. His sole purpose: to destroy the monsters that plague the world. But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good. . . and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth. The international hit that inspired the video game: The Witcher.

The Inheritors

Eight Neanderthals encounter another race of beings like themselves, yet strangely different. This new race, Homo sapiens, fascinating in their skills and sophistication, terrifying in their cruelty, sense of guilt, and incipient corruption, spell doom for the more gentle folk whose world they will inherit. Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Saga

Winner of the 2013 Hugo award for Best Graphic Story! When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe. From New York Times bestselling writer Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina) and critically acclaimed artist Fiona Staples (Mystery Society, North 40), Saga is the sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the worlds. Fantasy and science fiction are wed like never before in this sexy, subversive drama for adults.

The Importance of Imagery

This is my craft analysis for my MFA on imagery using Deliverance by James Dickey as the main source. You do not need to have read the book to read this essay and I do not believe there are any real spoilers contained within.  Enjoy!

 

Imagery in the Georgia Wilderness

            Some say the devil is in the details, but when it comes to imagery, I say the ‘difference’ is in the details.   Imagine a picnic scene.  Vivid, sensory descriptions are all that stand between a Monet-esque afternoon, and the third circle of Dante’s hell.  On one hand we have gently swaying ash trees, rolling grasses, polished silver with scalloped edges, and starched, white doilies; on the other we have a threadbare blanket, an overcast sky, enormous deep-fried turkey legs, an ant army descending upon a glob of jelly, and greasy fingers digging into the basket for more.  Could very well be the same picnic, but the images give us vastly different impressions.  These descriptions not only color our perceptions of scenes, they give us a deeper understanding of the novel as a whole, particularly its theme. 

            In the novel, Deliverance, James Dickey reinforces the Darwinian theme – survival of the fittest, or, you have to adapt or you die – through his use of sensory and emotional imagery.  Janet Burroway tells us in her book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, “... if you are to realize your characters through detail, then you must be careful to select the details that convey the characteristics essential to our understanding.  You can’t convey a whole person, or a whole action, or everything there is to be conveyed about a single moment of a single day.  You must select the significant” (Burroway 78).  This goes back to the imaginary picnic.  If the theme is ‘rich people are slobs and pigs on the inside’ wouldn’t it be better to use the latter description over the former?  Of course that depends on the context of the rest of the novel.  Looking at Deliverance, which is a story about survival at great physical and emotional costs, it would be strange if the narrator, Ed, who happens to be a novice hunter, only noticed fluffy tails, wiggling noses, and cute features when encountering animals.  Those details have a time and place, but not in this novel.  The imagery in the following passage is what separates Dickey from Disney. 

            “In the middle of this sound the tent shook; the owl had hold of it in the same place.  I knew this before I but the light on – it was still in my hand, exactly as warm as I was – and saw the feet with the heel talons now also coming in.  I pulled one hand out of the sleeping bag and saw it wander frailly up through the thin light until a finger touched the cold reptilian nail of one talon below the leg-scales.  I had no idea of whether the owl felt me; I thought perhaps it would fly, but it didn’t.  Instead, it shifted its weight again, and the claws on the foot I was touching loosened for a second.  I slipped my forefinger between the claw and the tent, and half around the stony toe.  The claw tightened; the strength had something nervous and tentative about it.  It tightened more, very strongly but not painfully.  I pulled back until the hand came away, and this time the owl took off.

            All night the owl kept coming back to hunt from the top of the tent.  I not only saw his feet when he came to us; I imagined what he was doing while he was gone, floating through the trees, seeing everything.  I hunted with him as well as I could, there in my weightlessness.  The woods burned in my head.  Toward morning I could reach up and touch the claw without turning on the light” (Dickey 89).

            Nothing is fluffy or friendly about this owl.  Dickey uses words like ‘reptilian,’ ‘stony,’ ‘claw,’ and ‘scales’ to describe an animal that, in a different setting, might be considered cute.  The image Dickey creates is that of a fit and efficient hunter, everything that Ed wants to be, and, in the end, is forced to become.  In On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner, the author says that “... the writer who works closely with detail – studying his characters’ most trivial gestures in the imagined scene to discover exactly where the scene must go next – is the writer most likely to persuade and awe us” (Gardner 37).  So much happens in this small scene where Ed touches the owl.  Through his “most trivial gestures” we understand, or have an idea, of what has to happen next.  Already we see Ed adapting himself for survival: “I hunted with him as well as I could,” and, “I could reach up and touch the claw without turning on the light.”

            Sandra Scofield reminds us in her book, The Scene Book; A Primer for the Fiction Writer, to, “... keep in mind that you want details to be part of action, not tacked on for effect.  And do remember to engage all of the reader’s senses, not just sight” (Scofield 112).  The owl passage focuses more on touch than it does sight, but an even better example of “... integrat(ing) description – mak(ing) it a part of the flow of the action of the scene ...” (Scofield 111) occurs during a confrontation between the protagonists and two men who, “... stepped out of the woods, one of them trailing a shotgun by the barrel” (Dickey 107).  The climax moment of this confrontation occurs in sounds:

            “I knelt down.  As my knees hit, I heard a sound, a snap-slap off in the woods, a sound like a rubber band popping or a sickle-blade cutting quick.  The older man was standing with the gun barrel in his hand and no change in the stupid, advantage-taking expression of his face, and a foot and a half of bright red arrow was shoved forward from the middle of his chest.  It was there so suddenly it seemed to have some from within him” (Dickey 116).

            While Burroway tells us, “A detail is ‘definite’ and ‘concrete’ when it appeals to the senses.  It should be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched” (Burroway 75), Dickey often creates images using a combination of abstract and sensual details.  In the following passage there are a number of details that help us see the river on its surface level, “... as if [we] were a movie camera” (Gardner 71), but we also see it as Ed sees it, as something mindless, indifferent, and uncomprehending. 

  

            “What a view, I said again.  The river was blank and mindless with beauty.  It was the most glorious thing I have ever seen.  But it was not seeing, really. For one it was not just seeing.  It was beholding.  I beheld the river in its icy pit of brightness, in its far-below sound and indifference, in it large coil and tiny points and flashes of the moon, in its long sinuous form, in its uncomprehending consequence.  What was there?

            Only that terrific brightness.  Only a couple of rocks as big as islands, around one of which a thread of scarlet seemed to go, as though outlining a face, a kind of god, a layout for an ad, a sketch, an element of design”  (Dickey 171).

            Gardner introduces the concept of the originality of the writer’s eye in On Becoming a Novelist.  Essentially, “Getting down what the writer really cares about – setting down what the writer himself notices, as opposed to what any fool might notice – is all that is meant by the originality of the writer’s eye” (Gardner 71).  The above passage is a great example of that originality.  This isn’t just a river anymore; it’s Dickey’s river.  It’s Ed’s river.  Through his narrator, Dickey captures things about this river that are different from ‘what any fool might notice’ and uses these things to develop his survival theme.  Ed’s life before the river begins to merge with his life now: “outlining a face, a kind of god, a layout for an ad, a sketch...”  He sees the face of a god in recognition of the divine power of nature and he relates it to things he knows from his job, from his life before the canoe trip.  Only this character, presented by this author, could view things this way.  That is the power of imagery and the originality of the writer’s eye. 

            One of the lengthier scenes in Deliverance depicts Ed climbing a mountain cliff.  It is a simple enough action: man climbs mountain.  But the massive amounts of sensory detail that go into the scene’s composition turn it into an intense conflict of man versus nature.  

 “I got on one knee and went cautiously outward, rising slowly with both hands palm-up on the underside of the fissure top.  I was up, slanting backward, and I felt along and around the bulge over my head.  To the right there was nothing I could do, but I was glad to be back.  To the left the crevice went on beyond where I could reach, and the only thing to do was to edge along it, sidestepping inch by inch until only my toes, very tired again, were in the crack” (Dickey 175).

“Time after time I lay there sweating, having no handhold or foothold, the rubber of my toes bending back against the soft rock, my hands open.  Then I would begin to try and inch upward again, moving with the most intimate motions of my body, motions I had never dared use with Martha, or with any other human woman.  Fear and a kind of enormous moon-blazing sexuality lifted me, millimeter by millimeter” (Dickey 176).

            What starts out as ‘man climbs mountain’ turns into ‘man f***s mountain.’  It makes sense in a way.  There is an enormous amount of risk and physical exertion involved in climbing and in love making and Dickey uses this relationship between activities to not only create a visceral image for the reader but to also how Ed’s development in becoming a survivor.  Scofield says, “... ‘description’ isn’t a discreet element in narrative” (Scofield 111), and there is certainly nothing discreet in Ed’s triumph over the mountain:  “It was painful, but I was going.  I was crawling, but it was no longer necessary to make love to the cliff, to f*** it for an extra inch or two in the moonlight, for I had some space between me and it” (Dickey 177).

            The example of the picnic from the beginning gives us a taste of the spectrum of choices an author has to make when writing imagery into a scene, but Dickey’s text shows without a doubt the importance of making the right choices.  In The Scene Book, Scofield says, “Forget those high school classes where you talked plot, setting, character, theme.  Those things aren’t separate!  You want your descriptions to exist as part of action and emotion, part of the meaning of your scenes” (Scofield 111).  Imagery is just one piece of the puzzle.  It’s a piece, if done well, that is entirely unique to each author, and even each character, and it’s the one that makes all the difference. 

Works Cited:

Burroway, Janet, and Susan Weinberg. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. New York: Longman, 2003. Print.

Dickey, James. Deliverance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Print.

Gardner, John. On Becoming a Novelist. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Print.

Scofield, Sandra Jean. The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer. New York: Penguin, 2007. Print.

Amanda LaFantasie © October 2013

Book List!

This semester at Pine Manor I have a fantastic line-up of books to read.  I have already tackled seven - almost eight! - and felt like it might be interesting to show our readers and contributors the annotated bibliography that I have to keep for my readings.  What you see below has been copied and pasted from my personal account at EasyBib.com, which has been a godsend for this project.  Please note that my annotations are meant as a personal guide for myself to see what I learned or liked about a book and perhaps even why.  They contain spoilers and also some of my immediate reaction.  

Abbott, G. The Executioner Always Chops Twice: Ghastly Blunders on the Scaffold. New York: St. Martin's, 2004. Print.

• It is interesting reading how someone methodically describes the actual mechanics of bringing people to pain and to death and giving an objective bird's eye view of the process. Helpful to me in my own detailing of execution in writing. This book is a fast and interesting read - the best part of it is the accidental intimacy we begin to feel for certain hangmen by the end and for the Sanson family in particular. It gives a bit of humanity to the ones carrying out the sentences as well as a bit of justice (or scrutiny) to the one's being killed. Also has great insight to the mental rationale of the executioner (one says he executes while his predecessor hung them - another says that he doesn't kill them, he let's them kill themselves at the end of his rope).

Dickey, James. Deliverance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Print.

• Favorite parts were the owl on the tent, the making love to the rock wall, and the part when he cut out the arrow. I had visceral reactions to much of the 'gore' or 'pain' descriptions and oddly enough, not as much of a reaction to the rape. It reinforces some of the rape culture beliefs of the time and makes the victim feel tainted through Ed's POV. Overall, this is a fantastic example of effect and poetic prose. The ending was subtle and I wouldn't have minded just a bit more of something - it sort of just stopped after a wonderful cool down period. I loved all the non-sentimental and yet extremely sad mentions of Drew and his death. Excellently haunting. This is the 1970's version of Lord of the Flies for me: Drew = Simon, Lewis = Jack (in his savageness), Bobby = Piggy, and Ed = Ralph. Very archetypal in that way. Highly enjoyable read.

Gaiman, Neil. The Ocean at the End of the Lane. New York: HarperCollins, 2013. Print.

• He wrote the first part intending to make it 'boring' so that it might dissuade young, young readers from continuing on - so that only kids mature enough to get through the boring part would persist. I love the dip back into memory and the part when he feels it's a 'ghost memory' that it didn't happen when he gets his heart ripped out by the varmints. I love the end so much that he is still recovering even at forty-seven and that he's suffered as a human and is growing a new heart. This is a fantastic and quick read with so much imagery and such a raw-innocence in it that it just had to be told through a child's eyes. There's something beautiful about this story that makes me feel like Gaiman is a web weaver - like he wrote the epilogue long before he wrote the first chapter (probably not) but he had such precision in getting from the start to the end. Such tight story telling and no wasted words. It was wonderful and the repetition of water and fabric were just gorgeous.

Gardner, John. Grendel. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.

• An interesting look at POV - I really fell in love with this poor monster. I melted every time he screamed, "Wah! Mama!" It was fun and full of anachronistic moments, phrases, 'knowings', that made it highly humorous yet no less serious. Gardner's use of dialogue mixed with action is fantastic and reinforces the aesthetic of the novel. Fun stuff in the book: moments when the structure takes a movie type turn as well as moments when the first line of the paragraph is flush with the margin and the rest of the paragraph is indented. This inversion really caught my eye. Fantastic resource for structure. Something else that I loved and found to be very effective was that it went 'oh so smoothly and sneakily' from first person past tense to first person present tense. That was brilliant especially since the ending of the novel portrays Grendel on a fall to his death and it ends with this suspended moment of knowing what's going to happen but having to use your own imagination for it.

Memmer, Philip. Lucifer, a Hagiography: Poems. Sandpoint, ID: Lost Horse, 2009. Print.

• Interesting take on the Lucifer myth - putting him neck and neck with Christ as a caring and sympathetic brother rather than an antagonist. I like the brother-ness. The story telling in the poetry is fantastic. Favorites include the dance and when Lucifer watches his daughter be born. I like the reaffirmation that Satan and Lucifer are different angels. It's a real twist that God wanted Lucifer to perform the Christ role initially and that this 'plan' was what made Lucifer drop out of heaven saying 'that's the stupidest thing he'd ever heard.'

Myers, Walter Dean, and Christopher Myers. Monster. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1999. Print.

• Super quick read - nice handling of some very adult matter (prison rape and violence) without making it too graphic or turning off a younger audience. My only complaint with the book is that the main character is sixteen and much of his diary entry narrative feels younger than that. It could just be the fear making him feel that way, or maybe he's not that intelligent but the rest of the story leads us to believe that he is quite smart. The end is haunting and unsettling and leaves such a chillingly ambiguous taste in my mouth that it redeems any 'immaturity' in the text prior. Also I love the gradual and effective way Myers pulls us into the screenplay format.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five: Or, The Children's Crusade, a Duty-dance with Death. New York: Dell Pub., 1999. Print.

• It's like a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream. Craft-wise, I enjoyed the various POV narrators and the broad spectrum third person (with occasional author asides) that delved into omniscience. For satire and comedy this broad stroke style is highly effective it seems. This book also makes me proud of my affection for ugly, mutilated, awkward, and otherwise non-traditional appearance characters. No one in the book is attractive accept maybe Derby and he's doomed from the get go. Structure wise I adore the long chapters with continuous breaks (lots and lots of white space) and not just between Billy's 'time travel jumps' but also in the middle of a conversation. It gives the reader a breath and for me it makes it easier to come back and read again and pick up with a sense of knowing exactly what's going on. There's so many lovely gems in here - all of Kilgore Trout's novels and the recurring imagery of silver and blue defining the skin of the dead. Not to mention the picture of the pony and the woman. I liked the non-linear approach and it worked to make Billy even more interesting.

Happy Anniversary: Looking Back and Looking Forward

As I was perusing the blog today, I noticed that it's been a year since we got this craziness going!  Our official anniversary was the 13th of this month, but we'll celebrate it a few days later because I definitely feel it's worth celebrating.  Firstly I want to congratulate everyone who has been a part of this blog, the admin, the writers, the editor, and the readers.  I know that for me, Detangled Writers has been a source of pride, enjoyment, and education.  Taking a look at our contributor profiles, I see a group of people who I hold in high esteem.  These women have taken time out of their lives to share their thoughts and knowledge with the writing community.  Some of the goals we wrote in our profiles might be a bit outdated by now - some things might be all done and checked off, some things may have been set aside, while others may be in progress.  I invite the contributors to create fresh goals lists and provide an update.  Tell us about your writing; what projects do you have going on, is writer's block bugging you, are you having trouble finding time for your craft?   Also, let's talk about what goals we have for the blog in general and how we can become an even better support network for each other.  

 

Old Goals for Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora)! 

1. Time Management 
2. Keeping the Creative Juices Flowing
3. Finishing what I start...
4. Grad School and everything to do with it!
5. Characters - working on characterizations

I accomplished part of number four by applying to and being accepted to an MFA program.  I am currently working toward completing my masters in creative writing at Pine Manor College.  Number five can be removed because, for me, the writing itself is what generates character and plot and trying to work on those independently is possible but not really a goal.  As far as the first three goals, I would keep one and three on my list!  Number two is less of a goal for me and more a goal for the blog.  My new list, a much more specific list, would look like this:

New Goals!

1. Time Management
2. Finish Death Man (my current novel in progress)
3. Work on short stories for Workshops
4. Read craft books and fiction novels
5. Attend an AWP conference (Seattle 2014)

Some goals for the blog would be to see some more blogs on hot topics such as fanfiction writing, romance versus erotica, elements of craft, literary definitions and analyses, and even book reviews and discussions.  I would love to see more vocab words!  Everyone is encouraged to post vocab builders and word exercises.  If people have personal blogs where they share writing pieces, I would like to see entries detailing the process, successes, and failures they had with the project and then a link so we can read your work.

I hope that everyone who is part of this blog is as proud of it as I am.  This post brings our total to 148 published blogs for Detangled Writers.  Here's hoping that by this time next year we have upwards of 300!  Thank you to our contributors and readers.

The Curious Case of the First Person Omniscient Narrator

Craft Analysis, Packet 1

Author(s): Kurt Vonnegut, John Gardner, Walter Dean Myers

Novel Title(s): Slaughterhouse-Five, Grendel, Monster

Student: Amanda LaFantasie

Semester 2, August 2013

The Curious Case of the First Person Omniscient Narrator

            What are rules for if not for breaking, or at least bending?  The Elementary school version of first person point of view might go something like this: the main character uses the pronoun ‘I’ and the story is told completely from his or her perspective limiting us to only what that character knows.  But it isn’t as clear as all that.  The phrase, ‘I learned later,’ is just one way that authors are able to provide greater scope to a scene where the first person narrator might fall short of giving a solid account of the action.  There are other ways to stretch the limits of what first person narration is capable of. 

            Kurt Vonnegut, for instance, enables the narrator of Slaughterhouse-Five – a veteran of WWII who survived the Dresden firebombing – to relay his story with a degree of omniscience that is rare even in third person point of view.  He uses a particular method to accomplish this: a story within a story.  Others have also found ways to free themselves from the strict parameters of first person.  In Grendel, John Gardner invokes the omniscience that one would commonly find on the stage in moments when the first person narrator, the famous monster from the Old English poem “Beowulf,” views the world as if it were a play.  Similar to this, Walter Dean Myers broadens the first person narrative by alternating between journal and screenplay format in the novel Monster, wherein a sixteen-year-old boy faces the possibility of jail time after a neighborhood robbery goes wrong. 

Each of these novels warp the typical portrayal of the first person narrative until the warping itself becomes part of the characterization, creating a sense of detachment and revealing the mental strain and sometimes dubious sanity of the narrator.

            For any of this to really work, the author must first establish a strong first person voice.  Chapter one of Slaughterhouse-Five is 22 pages of ‘I’ and ‘we’ and all the traditional elements associated with a first person POV, thus introducing the reader to the god-author who will make himself known in further chapters.  The narrator begins with stating, “All this happened, more or less. […] I’ve changed all the names,” and so simply sets us up for the third person story that he wrote (a story within a story), which takes place primarily between chapters 2 and 9 (Vonnegut 1).  In chapter 10, the first person narrative voice returns and wraps up the experiences not only himself but of the main character from his story.

At the end of the first chapter, the narrator prepares the audience for a leap away from the first person point of view that they’ve just gotten used to and bring us into a story he calls The Children’s Crusade (Vonnegut 15).  “I’ve finished my war book now.  The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and had to be, since it’s written by a pillar of salt. 

It begins like this:

Listen:

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

It ends like this:

Poo-tee-weet?” (Vonnegut 22).  And just as promised, the story does begin with “Listen” and end with “Poo-tee-weet,” but what he fails to mention is that he is not going away just because it’s Billy Pilgrim’s story.  Despite the appearance of third person omniscience in The Children’s Crusade, the narrator continually makes himself present through first person annotations as well as bold assertions of authorial omniscience.  During a scene where Billy and a fellow soldier are captured by German forces, the author mentions the sound of a dog barking.  He goes on to relay information that only a god-narrator could know saying, “The dog, who had sounded so ferocious in the winter distances was a female German shepherd.  […]  She had never been to war before.  She had no idea what game was being played.  Her name was Princess (Vonnegut 52).  This sort of excessive trivia appears again and again ranging from the way a stranger perceives Billy to be “in abominable taste” to the fact that Billy and a young German guard are actually distant cousins but that neither of them ever found that out (Vonnegut 151, 158).  It is almost as if the narrator cannot possibly keep from interfering in his own novel.  When Billy is set up at the first POW camp, he receives stamped dog tags and the narrative author, not Billy, makes this observation: “A slave laborer from Poland had done the stamping.  He was dead now.  So it goes” (Vonnegut 91).

The narrator makes himself unavoidably present throughout his ‘novel’ when he states boldly, things such as: “It would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim – and for me, too,” and, “Now Billy and the rest were being marched into the ruins by their guards.  I was there.  O’Hare was there.  We had spent the past two nights in the blind inn-keeper’s stable” (Vonnegut 121, 212).  This insistence to remind the reader of his presence is not limited only to scenes which show him in a favorable light.  The first time Vonnegut’s narrator inserts himself into The Children’s Crusade is after Billy Pilgrim follows the sounds of grief coming to him from the latrine where he finds an American soldier wallowing in intestinal discomfort upon the toilet.  “That was I.  That was me.  That was the author of this book,” says the narrator, in full admission (Vonnegut 125).

            Another technique that Vonnegut employs to create an omniscient flavor to his story is the addition of an all knowing character or characters.  In Slaughterhouse-Five, this role belongs to the Tralfamadorians, a race of aliens who see past, present, and future simultaneously and who may or may not have kidnapped Billy Pilgrim and kept him a zoo (Vonnegut 30).  During his time with these creatures, Billy makes an assertion that Earth’s violence will play a part in the destruction of the universe and, to his shock, the creatures assure him, “’We know how the universe ends –‘ said the guide, ‘and Earth has nothing to do with it, except that it gets wiped out, too.’ […] ‘We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers.  A Tralfamadorian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears.’ So it goes” (Vonnegut 117).

The moments of Vonnegut’s book that tend toward a third person omniscience are the moments that solidify the first person authorship off the war vet narrator who knows everything about every character and about every object in his book.  While Vonnegut is responsible for  Slaughterhouse-Five, the first person narrator is very much the author of The Children’s Crusade and can and does get away with saying impossible to know things about side characters and how they feel toward Billy Pilgrim.  The layering of authorship – even Billy Pilgrim becomes an author and public speaker in the story (Vonnegut 142) – creates a certain tug on the reins, strains the reliability of the narrator and reveals a bit of the fragmented psyche of an old man desperate to chronicle his time as a prisoner of war. 

            Some of the omniscience in Gardner’s Grendel comes from the bird’s eye view that the title character often assumes.  In this way the world comes to him via the Shaper’s (Bard’s) songs and the extrapolations Grendel is able to make based on what he sees and hears from the near and far.  Grendel would, “… be watching a meadhall from high in a tree, night birds singing in the limbs below me […].  Inside the hall I would hear the Shaper telling of the glorious deeds of dead kings – how they’d split certain heads, snuck away with certain precious swords and necklaces – his harp mimicking the rush of swords, the heroes’ dying words” and through his observations the narration becomes more and more omniscient (Gardner 34).   He learns of the surrounding peoples and the shifts in alliances and even knows somehow from his perch that “…two groups would fight as allies […], except that now and then they betrayed each other, one shooting the other from behind for some reason, or stealing the other group’s gold, some midnight, or sneaking into bed with the other group’s wives and daughters” (Gardner 37).

            Just as in Slaughterhouse-Five, Grendel’s omniscience relies heavily on the establishment of a strong first person narration.  This book, for the most part keeps true to this form, even stating quite obviously who the narrator is such as in the passage: “The harp turned solemn.  He [the Shaper] told of an ancient feud between two brothers which split all the world between darkness and light.  And I, Grendel, was the dark side, he said in effect.  The terrible race God cursed” (Gardner 51).  There are other places where Grendel proclaims his own name in relation to the ‘I’ of the story it is when he begins to say Grendel as a separate entity that things really take on an omniscient point of view.  Here is the first time the narrator breaks from first person:

What will we call the Hrothgar-Wrecker when Hrothgar has been wrecked?

(Do a little dance, beast.  Shrug it off.  This looks like a nice place – oooh, my! – flat rock, moonlight, views of distances!  Sing!)

Pity poor Hrothgar,

Grendel’s foe!

Pity poor Grendel,

O, O, O!

Winter soon.

(whispering, whispering.  Grendel, has it occurred to you my dear that you are crazy?)

(He clasps hands delicately over his head, points the toes of one foot – aaie! Horrible nails!! – takes a step, does a turn:

[…]

It will be winter soon. 

Midway through the twelfth year of my idiotic war.

Twelve is, I hope, a holy number.  Number of escapes from traps.  (Gardner 91-92)

            It takes all the way until the end of the section before Grendel reclaims himself as ‘I.’  Through this technique the reader has a clear idea of the loss of control Grendel feels and the effect it has on his mental stability, which is, obviously, debilitating.  Toward the end of the novel, Gardner demonstrates Grendel’s emotional destruction further by ambiguously presenting dialogue in italics, therefore making it seem either imagined or telepathic: 

His syllables lick at me, chilly fire.  His syllables lick… A meaningless swirl in the stream of time, a temporary gathering of bits, a few random specks, a cloud…Complexities: green dust, purple dust, gold.  Additional refinements: sensitive dust, copulating dust… The world is my bone-cave, I shall not want… (He laughs as he whispers.  I roll my eyes back.  Flames slip out at the corners of his mouth.) (Gardner 170)

Preceding this italicized conversation are a myriad of places within the text where the first person narrator moves further and further into objectivity and omniscience, consequently moving detaching himself further and further from himself.  At one point he seems to have an out of body experience which is presented parenthetically in italics.  (He lies on the cliff-edge, scratching his belly, and thoughtfully watches his thoughtfully watching the queen.) (Gardner 93).   Gardner takes it a step further in this strange mixture of first person commentary and third person stage play:

Theorum: Any action (A) of the human heart must trigger an equal and opposite reaction (A¹).

Such is the golden opinion of the Shaper.

And so – I watch in glee – they take in Hrothulf;

quiet as the moon, sweet scorpion,

he sits between their two and cleans his knife. 

SCENE: Hrothulf in the Yard.

Hrothfulf speaks:

In ratty furs the peasants hoe their fields,

fat with stupidity, if not with flesh.  (Gardner 113)

            The semi-mathematical word choice also lends itself to the omniscience of the piece as it comes across as grossly anachronistic.  In Slaughterhouse-Five the all-knowing characters are the Tralfamadorians; in Grendel that role belongs to the Dragon.  With the inclusion of such characters/elements into their first person narratives, both Vonnegut and Gardner are able to make the overall concept of omniscience much more palatable.  The Dragon tells Grendel, “’Things come and go […] That’s the gist of it.  In a billion billion billion years, everything will have come and gone several times, in various forms.  Even I will be gone.  A certain man will absurdly kill me.  A terrible pity – loss of a remarkable form of life.  Conservationists will howl’” (Gardner 70).

            There is no alien race or dragon to unveil the past, present, and future in Walter Dean Myer’s novel, Monster, rather this time it is through a camera lens and a journal that the audience comes to understand what happened and what could happen to the first person narrator, Steve Harmon.   He establishes a first person base line with a journal entry indicating, “Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie.  It is a strange movie with no plot and no beginning.  The movie is in black and white, and grainy.  Sometimes the camera moves in so close that you can’t tell what is going on and you just listen to the sounds and guess” (Myers 3).  

This novel teeter-totters between this journal format and that of a screenplay.  Unlike Vonnegut’s novel, Monster does not spend a great deal of time in the first person to start out, instead, Myers inserts journal entries throughout, frequently and powerfully enough to keep the audience from forgetting the narrative voice.  There is another key difference between Monster and the other two, Slaughterhouse-Five and Grendel, this being that the first person and third person omniscient do not bleed into each other.  There are some sudden shifts between the two forms, but Myers keeps screenplay and journal separate.  The following is an example of the omniscient portions which are structured to resemble a screenplay:

FADE IN:  INTERIOR: Early morning in CELL BLOCK D, MANHATTAN DETENTION CENTER.  Camera goes slowly down grim, gray corridor.  There are sounds of inmates yelling from cell to cell; much of it is obscene. (Myers 7)

            While the traditional first person point of view does not make an appearance in these segments, the narrator does find a way to insert himself without saying ‘I’ or ‘me’ but with just as much potency.  The rolling credits appear on the page in this fashion:

Starring

Steve Harmon

Produced by

Steve Harmon

Directed by

Steve Harmon

(Credits continue to roll.)

(Myers 9)

The direction in the action line indicates that the credits are to roll like the opening of Star Wars and while this isn’t as direct as plastering his name all over the place, it keeps Steve’s voice present for the audience.  Something even as simple as a line of direction can create a duality within a story.   On one hand, the audience reads the bare bones of a screenplay and on the other hand, when it comes to action lines, they are reading only the things that Steve feels are most important concerning his trial and that makes it almost more intimate than his journal entries.  We learn of his past through scenes of the movie:

CUT TO: FILM WORKSHOP at Stuyvesant High School.  A film on a small screen is just ending.  It is a class project.

[…]

We see STEVE raising his hand, looking much the same as he does in court.

STEVE

I liked the editing. (Myers 18-19)

           

Whereas we learn of his now through the journal: “Notes: I can hardly think about the movie, I hate this place so much.  But if I didn’t think of the movie I would go crazy.  All they talk about in here is hurting people” (Myers 45).  As mentioned before, there are some quick shifts between journal and movie, and it is when these two styles meet, but do not mix, that the audience gets an idea of the narrator’s emotional duress as he immediately chooses to switch over to a detached persona rather than put this court appearance into a real time journal entry. 

When we got in the court, there was a delay because the stenographer had brought the wrong power cord.  The court officer was talking about termites. 

[…] 

OFFICER 1

So this guy comes to the house and tells Vivian we got

termites.  I get home and she’s all upset.  I said no way

we got termites.  No way.

JUDGE

You ever see any termites? (Myers 65)

            It becomes clear that Steve is using the movie as a way to forget that this horrible thing is happening to him.  At one point, Steve has a death fantasy involving lethal injection and eve this appears as part of the movie, the camera focusing on his face as imaginary executioners put in a plug to keep him from messing his pants as he dies (Myers 73).  The final movie moment of the novel captures the fragmentation left by this false sense of security – that the objective world (third person omniscient) doesn’t hurt as much as the subjective one (first person limited).    

CUT TO: CU of O’BRIEN.  Her lips tense; she is pensive.  She gathers her papers and moves away as STEVE, arms still outstretched, turns toward the camera.  His image is in black and white, and the grain is nearly broken.  It looks like one of the pictures they use for psychological testing, or some strange beast, a monster.

The image freezes as last words roll and stop mid screen.

A Steve Harmon Film (Myers 276-277)

So it goes, that breaking the rules of first person and expanding a fairly limited point of view to the point of omniscience has many effects on the story.  For these three novels, the most compelling effect is that of escape.  These narrators – the veteran, Grendel, and Steve – are all prisoners in some way or other.  The first one was a POW and spends much of his life trapped in the memories of that time.  The second narrator tries and fails to understand and walk among the humans.  He becomes a prisoner of his condition, trapped in his cave with only his mother for constant companionship.  Lastly, Steve is, quite literally, a prisoner.  When he is not in court, he is in a prison cell – guilty until proven otherwise so it seems.  For each one of these characters, it is the idea of escape that propels them toward omniscience.  The drive to know and be done with it.  To finally be free of their prison.

At the end of Myer’s novel, there is an Extra’s section where the author answers various questions.  When asked why he chose to use the screenplay format, he explained, “In interviewing inmates I noticed a tendency for the inmates to attempt to separate their self-portrayals from their crimes.  In Monster I have Steve speak of himself in the first person in his diary, but when he gets to the trial and the crime he distances himself through the use of the screenplay” (Myers, Extras 7).  What Walter Dean Myers sums up in this response is more than just the reason why Steve hides behind the camera lens, it is the reason for the war veteran’s story within a story and the logic of Grendel’s stage play projections.  It is why the disintegration of first person into third is a fascinating ride for the audience; it exemplifies humanities ever present need to cope.

Works Cited:

Gardner, John. Grendel. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.

Myers, Walter Dean, and Christopher Myers. Monster. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1999. Print.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five: Or, The Children's Crusade, a Duty-dance with Death. New York: Dell Pub., 1999. Print.

An Update & Possible Genre Change

Tomorrow I leave for my second residency at the Solstice MFA program in Boston.  My first time around left me with a whirlwind of ideas as well as a fantastic bunch of writers to count as friends and comrades.  This time I head back with one semester under my belt, a yearning to catch up with my Boston buddies, and a strong desire to learn as much as I can.

For the first semester I read twelve books and wrote around fifty pages (more than that but fifty semi polished pages) for my Dystopian novel.  This novel does have the potential of being marketed as YA but I'm not going to push that at all.  However, this time around, I have a list of several YA books that I want to read and I am suddenly inspired to work on a very clear cut YA story.  I actually wrote out this story in screenplay format several years back.  I never finished the screenplay but I did chart out the entire ending up to the 'FADE OUT' via long notes.  One reason I'm wanting to rekindle this story is because of the strong female lead (and I don't write many females even though I am one), and another reason is because it's already plotted.  This plot may change here and there but the fact that it is plotted will help me write out scene after scene and also give me a chance to really tackle writing a synopsis. 

In order to work on this however, I would need to change my major from Fiction to Young Adult Fiction.  From what I understand this is totally doable and that it's only in my third semester that I have to decide on what genre to graduate out of - some people switch in their second semester and never go back, but I think I will return to Fiction a better person for having honed another side of my literary interests.  

Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) 

Guided Prompts

So I have a fun idea to get away from the blank page syndrome (a.k.a. writer's block, a.k.a. I-dunno-how-to-start-this-really-cool-idea).  Looking back at my writing history I realize that I write better (or at least more profusely) when working off a prompt.  This is why Role Play story writing is so successful.  Each time you interchange with a partner, it is essentially them giving you a prompt.  For any of you out there that might not know what Role Play (RP) writing is, it is just as the name suggests.  You write (in third person) the experiences and thoughts of a single character performing an act or a series of acts and then you have a writing partner have their character react to what you wrote.  It's a fun back and forth that is not only great writing practice but wonderful at helping you build and develop characters.  One of the reason's it's so fun and so successful is because you are kept wondering what your partner will write because that is your next prompt.

Back when Yahoo!360 was an active site (may it rest in peace), I used to write a few short segments based on prompts I found on sites like Writer's Digest.  One such story was about a person receiving a text from an unknown number.  I pumped out a generous amount for such a tiny prompt and had thoughts to even take it further.  Now, when I say 'prompt' it doesn't necessarily have to be 'It was a dark and stormy night when Mrs. Winters went outside to look for Pooky and found...' like that.  I mean even a self prompt like 'what would I do if I won the lottery.'  Things like that to get the juices going.  And this brings me to the point of this blog post: guided prompts.  If you have an idea and you want to write about it but aren't sure how to get started, try prompting yourself into scenes.

I have an android piece that I am itching to work on and so far I have about five different beginnings, all of which I despise and I know that it's because I'm putting too much pressure on myself to make it 'perfect' and I'm not letting myself just relax and write (which is kind of the point of writing, right?).  So what I'm going to do is give myself specific prompts.

Idea: Dystopian Android Tribe

Prompt: Leader of Android Tribe comes across a dead human.  What does he do?

Prompt: Androids find a baby and attempt to raise it.

Prompt: Androids think of themselves as 'living,' how do they react when someone tells them they have no value and are just pieces of machinery?

Prompt: Show the androids breaking or following the three laws of Robotics.

Prompt: Do androids really dream of electric sheep?

Prompt: It was a dark and stormy night... wait... no, I meant: one of the androids falls into disrepair, how do the androids react to the 'death' of one of their own?

These are all scenes that could potentially work themselves into the book, but the real purpose of these prompts is to get me somewhere in character and plot development and, ultimately, to get words on the page.  I will most likely be answering some of these tomorrow and posting them on my Gurgle Burp blog.   I know that the idea as I've written it is very vague (trust me I do have a bit more of a plan in mind than just that), but if you have any prompts for that idea, please post them and I will attempt to answer them as well!  Prompts are fun, dang it.  They shouldn't just be used to generate ideas, they can also be employed to fuel ideas that are already hatched and eager for development.

Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) © April 2013

Progress Report for Skoora

I'm over the halfway mark on my first semester in the Solstice MFA program.  I have about ten books left to read (I'm behind, unfortunately) and I have five craft analyses under my belt, one pedagogical response finished, three cover letters, one artists statement, and somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty pages toward my novel.  There are more pages than that, but those are incomplete scenes and chunks of notes.  On the whole I have to say that distance learning with a mentor has really worked well for me.  It was new and I was unsure at the beginning but I enjoy the back and forth of the cover letter and have found Steve Huff's comments to be incredibly helpful.  His critiques are honest but not rude.  He doesn't skirt around issues and, when necessary, he offers reasons behind his assessments.  It's been a wonderful journey so far and I'm a little sad that I only have two more packets to exchange with him.  That being said, I need to get my rear in gear because I want to share brand new writing with him on this next packet as well as really start putting into practice the things that he's touched upon in his responses to my packets.

One thing that we discussed is narrative authority.  I tend to write 'somehow' and 'perhaps' when writing in observant third person and not writing directly from the characters experience.  This makes it sound as if I, the god-like narrator, does not know how or why something happens.  The character does not know these things, but the narrator definitely does.  This is something I definitely want to work on because a vast majority of the stories I want to write will depend greatly upon the credibility of the observer narrator.

This month is a Camp NaNoWriMo month and I am signed up with a 20,000 word goal.  Usually I try and crank out the 50K but since the majority of what I am writing right now is coming to me slowly and with much revision and polishing, I figured a smaller goal would be less stressful and much more feasible.  I'm curious about my fellow contributors: are any of you participating in NaNoWriMo this month and if so what kind of projects are you undertaking?  I am working on my dystopian novel as well as a few short stories that may be lead ins to future novel projects.  

© Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) 2013

Notes on Dystopia

At the Solstice MFA Winter Residency, I attended a class on writing Dystopian literature taught by the wonderful Laura Williams McCaffrey.  We discussed a few novels during the class (The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi and 1984 by George Orwell) and delved into some of more intricate characteristics of Dystopia.

Firstly, we discussed the idea that there is no such thing as objective time.  It is relative in every way (the experience of time), regardless of the ways we have discovered in measuring it.  When you extract all rigidity from time itself you open yourself up to alternative time-lines and alternative nows.  In one 'now' you are married, in another 'now' you are not.  How many nows, how many yous?  The possibilities are endless.  The alternative nows are what Dystopia is all about.  True, these stories are often placed in the future, but that is a future that 'could' happen in the now, or a future that the 'now' is helping to create, or, most vitally, it is a now that is already happening this very moment, but we just don't or won't realize it.  In Bacigalupi's story, the backdrop of war and child soldiers is terrifying and upsetting, but it is also a reality: In several parts of the world, there are children who live this life everyday.

Dystopia is a juxtaposition of the possible and the actual, the future and the now, the there and the here.  It is wrought with all the things that keep you up in the night.  Not just monsters, but broad ideas and abstractions that chill you to the bone.  The goal of this type of writing is to make the strange familiar and make the familiar strange and to upset habituality. Suddenly going to the market place to buy apples becomes a dangerous and alien experience, while searching dead bodies for gold teeth becomes just part of the morning routine.   Dystopia draws its power from destabilizing characters, events, settings, and even language. For more information on this concept, Laura recommends an essay by Charles Baxter called "On Defamiliarization" from Burning Down the House.  Another source, one that I highly recommend, that some might find valuable are Anne Bogart's essays from A Director Prepares.

In terms of the overall concept of a story, it should be rooted in something concrete that your audience can relate to or at least understand.  Essentially, find the Hurricane Sandy in your story and make people respond to your abstract idea.  Think to yourself, what might be the worst outcome of 'now,' and study history and human nature because plausibility is what makes Dystopia such a frightening genre.   Study regimes, dictators, and hegemonic power systems.  Ground the 'now' of your novel with the horrors of things that have already happened.  And never forget that your characters are the key.  Put your main characters in the center of the problem, don't skirt around the society through the eyes of a casual observer.  In 1984, the main character works in the records department that allows him to see clearly all of the corruption and censorship around him that others might not be privy to.  In The Drowned Cities, the characters are directly caught up in the conflicts of the war lords and the direct fallout of unsuccessful peace keeping missions.  Show us this unrecognizably familiar new world from within.

Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) © March 2013

Craft Choice: Point of View

When composing a narrative, one must examine point of view.  There are many different types, some of these are rather common while others are obscure and typically only attempted by the masters of craft.  This is meant as a refresher for POV since most of us, if not all of us, are familiar with and have written in the vast majority of different POVs.

• Third Person Limited: 'he' or 'she' is used to denote a POV character and it is through this character that we experience the story.  We see through his/her eyes.
• Third Person Unlimited or Multiple: the POV character changes throughout the story usually by chapter.  In one chapter we experience things through character A and then in the next we experience it through character B and so on.
• Third Person Omniscient: it still uses 'he' and 'she' but now the narrative voice is above and beyond a single character.  We see through the eyes of every character and 'head pop.'  It can be difficult to do this and keep the audience clear and who's head we are in and when.  
• First Person: 'I' is used and the POV character is the narrator.  
• Second Person: 'You' is used and the narrative tells 'you' what to do or what you are feeling.  This is mainly used in 'how to' type writing and text books.  The choose your own adventure tales also employ this technique.

These are the building blocks of narrative and once you learn to use them, you are more than welcome to abuse them.  Mix it up!  Jonathan Stroud's Bartimeaus Trilogy employs the use of third person multiple as well as first person depending on which character's head we are in.  

In college (undergrad) I had a professor who stated most adamantly that female authors should only write from the POV of female characters and male authors should only write from the POV of male characters.  He also said that most, if not all, stories should be written in third person limited and keep with one character throughout the entire novel.  Recently, during grad school, I met several accomplished and aspiring authors who awakened me to the freedom we have in writing.  They encouraged me to play with POV and also reaffirmed my belief in the commonality of human experience, a.k.a women can write men and men can write women.  For me, being given a sort of permission to mix up POVs and play with alternating POV characters in a story, was extremely liberating.  I encourage our contributors and readers to never feel limited in delivery.

Please visit the following sites for other definitions and explanations of POV: The Beginning Writer, Humboldt.Edu, and Learner.Org.  For further discussion on this topic, comment below!

Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) © 2013

Craft Choice: Speaker Tag

"I shan't go overboard with speaker tags," she said, "I find them to be horribly dull!"
"Then don't!"  He retorted.
"Oh, I certainly won't!  And when I do use speaker tags, I'll keep it nice and simple and only use 'said' for the communicative verb."

Having just finished rereading Golding's Lord of the Flies, I am left to ponder the usage of speaker tags in fiction.  In this book, lines of dialogue get their own paragraph and are often left without a tag of any kind.  It is the preceding or following paragraph that give us a hint as to who spoke.  Many people, authors and the like, have expressed a desire to minimize speaker tags in writing as a way to keep the story moving along or to limit the temptation to add unnecessary exposition to 's/he said.'  Some people feel quite the opposite and demand a tag on almost every line of dialogue because losing track of who's speaking is more detrimental to your story than a moment of extraneous detail.  Personally I hate not knowing who is talking though sometimes keeping it a bit obscure, such as in Golding's novel, can add to the setting of chaos.  But don't let that be your only element of chaos either.

Then there is the subject of what to use in your speaker tag.  Most Fiction authors agree that 'said' is more than enough, yet, Venice Berry (a very successful author herself) informed my workshop class in Boston that 'said' is fine but can get a little boring after a while.  She encouraged us to reach for other ways to express the verb.  There was a time when I steered clear of 'said' figuring that it was what 'learning writers' used and not the mark of a matured author.  I've been corrected.

What do I do when it comes to speaker tags?  I use them generously and I often fall into the trap of adding exposition right along with it.  And I primarily use 'said' but I am not afraid to change it up when I feel it better expresses how or why the character spoke in the first place.  This is a topic of interest to me and may end up working its way into a critical analysis at some point during this semester.  Just as a casual question: how do you - readers and fellow contributors - typically handle speaker tags?  I'm not asking what you think is best or better or more professional or more likely to get you published.  I'm just curious what works for you at this point in time.  Everyone has a different style and sometimes it helps to know you're not completely alone in your craft choices.

Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) © 2013

Getting Ready for Solstice

This Wednesday I head out for Boston, Massachusetts.  I have been accepted into the Solstice MFA Program for Creative Writing at Pine Manor College and will be attending my first of five residencies.  These next ten days include a rigorous schedule of craft and seminar classes as well as nightly readings by professors and early morning workshops.  There are eight people in my workshop groups and I have read all but one of fourteen pieces.  I will finish that up tonight and then, upon my second read through, I am going to mark up and annotate all the places that pique my interest, confuse me, or otherwise deserve some type of comment.  It's been very interesting reading what others, outside my specific circle, are writing.  A trend I am seeing is the need to put everything in present tense or first person and sometimes both.  I don't mind this really and, in fact, I am looking to explore this a bit myself.  Some of the pieces I've read so far leave me wanting more while others leave me fairly content (or not very content) and not really looking for anything further from them.  The workshops should be very eye opening as I've not had a read workshop since I was in college at Mesa State about seven years ago.

On my Prime Cuts Goal List for this blog, I mention five things I want to work on as a writer: time management, perpetuation of creative juices and inspiration, finishing what I start, Grad school, characters, and my letter of intent as part of my admission into an MFA Program.  I am very excited and nervous because once I arrive in Massachusetts and engage in the residency, I will be working on all of these goals simultaneously.  Well, all except for the letter of intent which I can put a huge slash through as I not only accomplished it, but used it successfully to get in to Solstice.  

I hope to get in a blog post from Massachusetts and share the valuable tidbits that my classes and seminars promise to be peppered with, but in case I don't get a chance to do an update in the next two weeks, you now all know why.  My classes for this residency are as follows: Craft Analysis, The Future Now: Dystopia, Magic Realism, Unforgettable Characters, Teaching Composition, Adjusting the Sails, Raw Material, and Changing Lives Through Literature.  Massachusetts here I come!  Also, as a side note, one of the several novels that I was encouraged/required to read prior to attending the residency is The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi.  So far I find it to be a fantastic young adult read.  It's not for the squeamish, that's for sure, but, just like any good Dystopian novel, it is sure to frustrate and invigorate.  I recommend it highly. 

Amanda LaFantasie (Skoora) © 2012

Writing as a Reader

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” 
― Stephen King

In many ways, it just goes without saying. To be a good writer, you have to read. And I'm not talking about self-help, learn how to write guides. There are a lot of those out there, and we've shared a lot of ideas from such publications. Authors have an abundance of advice to give readers, lists of 'dos' and 'don'ts.' Honestly it can all become pretty exhausting.  But in the end, you can read every 'how-to' book there is on writing, and your writing still may not shine. You my know every craft 'rule' and phrase ever conceived of, but that doesn't mean you can implement them. But why?

Experience. That's what it comes down to. Like every profession, every talent, every aspiration there is more to it than just doing. You have to learn your craft, and you can't just go in knowing everything.  Authors are invaluable tools that should never be wasted. They can offer an abundance of advice, but I think the strongest words that many authors can give are those that work in the novels they publish themselves.  

Many tools out there can help you when you write, but nothing as much as reading, and dare I say it, borrowing from other authors.  I do not mean stealing. You know that author you really like, that writing style that you really connect with and love to read? Try writing like that, see if your words can flow in the same way his or hers flow with you. What does an author do that really works in their writing? What resounds with you? Can you mimic them? Can you find from their voice your own? The best writing comes from reading, it is just up to the writer to take the time to do it. So next time you're really itching to write but find yourself unable to, instead of trying to force it or picking up one of the hundreds of self-help writing guides (unless that's what you are craving) pick up that favorite novel of yours and read it, and think to yourself, 'What do I love about this book? What is the author doing here that works? Why does it work? And if it works for me, does it work for others?'

But never overwhelm yourself, that is key.  Don't force yourself to write in a way you can't, but never forget the importance of stepping away from your keyboard and turning the pages. Because you gained your desire to write from somewhere, from someone else's work. I believe it's important to rediscover that every now and then. 

And who knows, in the future, you may be that inspiration to a aspiring author!

Publishing Companies and Editors

I recently read a book that I was surprised was even published...

It is important to note that I am not too upset with the author. I think this was an interesting story. However, I was a little unnerved by how many typos were present. One or two typos in a book is fine, I know editors aren't perfect and don't catch everything. But there were so many! Some words were not in the right order, there was a place where a word that didn't even belong in the sentence was present, and other little issues. And if I, the grammar idiot, am catching them, then you know it's bad.

Clearly this is a case where the publishing company demands quantity rather than quality and pushed this author into pumping out a book in a very limited amount of time, shoved it through a once over by an editor who didn't try to catch everything, and sent it on to the press to be printed and put on the shelves. And you have no idea how much that rakes my coals. I feel like this book could have been much richer, deeper even, and clearly the author had to have some talent to get published in the beginning so why force her to be an Assembly line, over worked, underpaid, and stomping down her light? You know, turning what could have been or once was a fantastic author into a mediocre one. Frankly when I sit and read a book and think, "Damn if this got published, then I'm pretty sure my stuff could too," and I think my stuff isn't good (that could be my usual self-debasement at work), then obviously something is wrong. 

So what can be done about this? I don't know other than to keep improving yourself and your personal craft and research the hell out of the publishing companies and editors you send your work into. Check out their authors, see how many books they crank out a year, look at their early work and compare it to their current work. Look at the quality of work the publishing company is putting out. And, even though you're internally screaming with intense desire to be published, don't settle and don't let an editor or pub co make impossible demands.  

Just a short note about reading.

You know how in middle school, high school, and college you have to read a ton of text books, books off the required reading list, and stuff your teachers make you read? Well as an adult, aside from things having to do with work, you can read anything you want. ANYTHING!

When I was growing up my Grandmother read me kids books and biographies about historical people. My Mother read my fairy tales and kids books and my Father read my The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. And they read to me almost nightly until I was reading on my own. But I had trouble reading because I have dyslexia and reading out loud was a nightmare and you know every teacher just loves to make kids read out loud. So I began to hate books and it took until I was in middle school before I began to love them again. 

I started out reading the William Allen White and other award winning books. They were nice and some I really loved but they weren't quite, exactly what I craved. 

In High school, for the first three years of English classes I liked all the required reading but when it I got to senior year, English comp college reading, I wanted to slap my teacher every class period. She picked out the worst books ever! And when it came time for college, it didn't get any better. Thankfully, I'd been seeking out books on my own and I was lucky enough to get a weekly trip to the bookstore. I read fantasy, I read young adult fantasy and Sci Fi, I read romance, some classics and plays, and some non-fiction too. But I felt kind of bad for not reading the gems of the literary world. 

Well as is turns out, like in all genre fiction, there are crap books in literary too, and when you are a poor, extremely choosy (ehm picky) person, you want to make sure that the book you are reading is worth the money you paid for it. So my point is, if there is something that you love to read from shameless, raunchy erotica to the most snooty of mainstream literature, READ IT and don't feel bad for it for goodness sake don't let anyone make you feel less for what turns your crank in the reading sense.