Living the Fictional Dream

Sometimes, it’s really hard for me to turn off the editing portion of my brain and just read. I’ll be reading along, be it a novel or the latest offering from one of my favorite online fiction venues, and I’ll come across some bit of language and think how much better it would have been if they’d edited just a little more closely — eliminate that passive voice or not say the same word twice so close together, things like that.

Now, of course, if it’s a style thing, that’s totally different, but a lot of the time, it reads to me like it’s just a be verb or whatever that the author didn’t notice, as opposed to a conscious choice to stick with the passive.

I was reading a story recently that said something like, “Her dress covered her like….” (The quotes have been changed, because I don’t want to point fingers.) I thought the similie that the author used to describe the outfit was lovely, but the sentence would have been so much more impactful to me if the author had written, “The dress covered her…” instead. Having the same word twice so close together bumps me out of the story and has me thinking about repetition and redundant word choice instead of marvelling over the similie and description.

Then, not much farther down in the same story, there was an intrusive be verb — something simple like, “He was walking down the street.” Again, I was thrown out of the story to wonder why the author didn’t just say, “He walked down the street.” Why put in that passive voice, when the active voice flows so much better and creates a more vivid picture?

It’s like, now that I search for these things in my own work with such a critical eye, I can’t shut my brain off when I see these things elsewhere. And then I wonder why the author didn’t see them. If only he or she had taken a few extra minutes to edit — perhaps do a search for be verbs. Such a small thing can make a story so much crisper and cleaner!

Is it the mark of a writer who has not spent as much time honing his or her craft? I know that I used to fling passive voice, repeated words, and complicated verb constructions around with abandon. I go back to some of my earlier work and wonder how I ever didn’t see that! It’s thanks to the efforts of my writing group that I’ve learned to go through my first drafts with a fine-toothed comb, searching for better, more active, more descriptive ways to say things.

(A quick shout out here to writing group mate Jens for his nazi like devotion to marking complex verb constructions in crits, and to writing group mate Virginia for doggedly pointing out each and every repeated word! And, heck, to all of Writer’s Ink in general — I’ve learned so much from you guys!)

An author blog I read once recommended reading a book about screen writing and the three-act structure as a way to help develop novel plots. The caveat I remember this author mentioning was that after she read the book and understood the formula used in movie scripts, it made it harder for her to simply lose herself in a film. Instead, she was always looking for the catalyst, the denouement, and the other traditional parts of the screenplay.

Sometimes I feel that way about reading. The more I hone my craft and the better I get at this writing thing, the harder it is for me to be forgiving of other work out there. Especially published work, and especially work that is published in novel format. I’m much more apt to set a novel down and not pick it up again if the writing is sloppy than I ever used to be — even if I like the plot and the characters.

The mark of a really good book to me is one that sucks me in as a reader and totally short circuits the editing brain. If I look up an hour later, and I haven’t thought about word choice, grammar, or passive voice once, it’s a good story.

Take the Twilight series as an example. People give it a hard time because it’s not quality literature (I’m not sure it’s supposed to be, but people judge best sellers harshly, I suppose). And it’s true — there are many books that are better written than Twilight (though, I do think that Meyer’s craft improved over the course of the series). But when I jump into the world of Bella, Jacob, and Edward, I am totally sucked in. Hours can go by, and I don’t even notice until I start getting a crick in my neck or the phone rings.

That is the point that character, setting, and good, old-fashioned story-telling trump the mechanics of writing. Twilight transports me into the fictional dream and doesn’t let me go without a fight. To me, that’s the mark of a good novel that’s worth reading, no matter what the nay-sayers think. (Though, I can see how someone who’s not into young adult romance or vampires might not be sucked in the same way — subject matter is subjective.)

So, from the reader’s perspective, I guess I would have to say that the editor’s brain is a detriment. It is harder to enjoy reading certain things than it used to be — I’m much more selective than I used to be.

But, from the writer’s perspective, the editor’s brain is an asset that you simply cannot do without. The better your craft, the better chances you have of selling it — case closed. Sure, sometimes less well written stories get published, but I prefer to think that’s because the person who bought it was swept away by the story and the characters so much that they didn’t mind a few mechanical flaws.

I don’t think I would give up my editing brain, not even for all the reading enjoyment in the world. There are enough books out there that still suck me in and there are books with issues that I still enjoy (remember the clavicle thing from the Luxe series?), despite being knocked out of the fictional dream every once in a while. There is a wide world of books to choose from out there — I’ll keep my editing brain and let it have a field day with all of my first drafts.

And then all you guys can laugh at me when you read something of mine where I missed a glaring instance of word repetition or passive voice!

The folks over at Every Day Fiction and Every Day Poets have started a writing blog specifically devoted to flash fiction. If the quality of the blog is anything like the quality of fiction and poetry these publications offer us on a daily basis, the blog should be a must read.

Today’s entry was written by my writing group mate Alex, and discusses the effect of exposition and world building on flash fiction stories.

Here’s the link so you can go check it out:

I’m always fascinated by stories that approach time in something other than a linear fashion. The movie Memento is a stellar example of this. The main character has a condition where he can’t make long-term memories, so once they leave his short-term memory, they are gone forever. To illustrate this, the movie progresses in reverse.

Another example of stories that play with time well is the TV show How I Met Your Mother. I truly believe that this is the best-written sitcom that I have ever watched. Their grasp of continuity is amazing. Something is mentioned in a throw-away line in season 1, and it comes up as a huge plot point in season 3. And the stuff that they put in for viewers with a sharp enough mind to catch it makes the show really fun to watch.

But I especially like it when HIMYM plays with time. They’ve done several episodes where they tell stories out of sequence. Sometimes they’ll split the plot between the characters — do one or two characters’ stories from start to finish, then rewind and go to the next one. Other times, they will throw in flashbacks in creative and amusing ways (my favorite was once when they put in a flashback to 30 seconds ago — and it worked).

The best thing about stories that experiment with time is how the normally linear element is twisted and used to give the reader/viewer a unique A-Ha moment — that moment when everything you knew about the story is flipped on its head and you see it all from a whole new light.

I’ve always wanted to expirament with non-linear time in my stories, but I have yet to really do so. I’m not sure why… Part of it may be that I’ve just never had an idea that seemed like it would work well in such a structure. And part of it might be that I seem to have a bias in that a more visual medium seems more appropriate for these types of stories.

I know that second limitation is all in my head, though. I’ve read print stories that did a fine job of twisting time. There was one in particular that I remember enjoying at Every Day Fiction — sadly, I have long since forgotten its name. I just remember it was a story about a guy in prison that was told backwards Memento style, and it was pretty good.

I will have to put my mind to this time twisting conundrum and see if my muse has anything to say about it. It would definitely be a challenging project.

What about you guys? Any recommendations for good time twisting stories/shows you want to share? Have you ever tried your hand at such a story? If so, how difficult was it?

While on vacation in Sedona, I read two novels by Karen Macinerney — her “tales of an urban werewolf,” Howling at the Moon and On the Prowl. This series is about a werewolf named Sophie Garou who lives in Austin, Texas. Sophie has lived all of her life trying to keep her “hairy problem” a secret from everyone she knows, and juggling her normal life as an auditor with wolfsbane tea and a mother who owns a magic shop and is a little psychic.

Overall, I enjoyed these books (thanks to writing group mate Sandra who loaned them to me!). They are fun urban fantasies with a strong female character. There are also charsimatic male characters (including a male werewolf named Tom and Sophie’s human boyfriend, Heath), and interesting supporting cast, like Sophie’s witch mom and her best friend Lindsey.

One facet of these novels is a mystery that has to be solved by the end of the installment. I wouldn’t call them mystery novels — the urban fantasy is much stronger with these stories as far as genre goes — but the mystery is there as a supporting element. Especially in the first book of the series.

In Howling at the Moon, Sophie’s mother is accused of murder, and she has to figure out who really did the dastardly deed. By the end of the novel, we have a suspect in hand, thanks to Sophie and Lindsey’s sleuthing, so it should be case closed. And it is, as far as the mystery goes.

However, at the end of the novel, I was unsatisfied with the conclusion of said mystery. We did meet the murderer earlier in the story, so it wasn’t completely out of nowhere, but said murderer was never on the list of possible suspects. Not even a tiny blip on the suspect radar. The only reason Sophie is tipped in the right direction was because she stumbled upon something magical, and her mother, who didn’t use that kind  of magic, sent Sophie to a different magic shop to find information. It just randomly happened that the magic shop Sophie visited happened to be run by a relative of the murderer.

The whole thing felt very random and happenstance. If Sophie had gone to any other magic shop in the whole city, she wouldn’t have been able to solve the mystery.

I think the mystery would have had a more satisfying conclusion if the muderer had been on the short list of suspects in the first place. As it was, Sophie spends a lot of time running about after suspects who are all red herrings, and even when the murder victim gives them a clue from his ghostly state, the clue turns out to be bunk — unrelated to his actual death.

I don’t want to be too harsh on the books, because I thought they were an enjoyable read, but my issues with the mystery in book one started me thinking about how mysteries are not a plot element that you can toss into a story willy-nilly. To make a mystery truly satisfying to the reader, you have to do the work. A twist ending is only awesome if, once you get the twist, it shows the whole rest of the novel in another light. All the clues have to be in place. A mystery is not satisfying if it comes out of left field.

Last night, with an unexpected windfall of birthday money (woo-hoo!), I picked up a couple of new books. One of my guilty pleasure series had a new release — Envy, book three in the Luxe series. Think Gossip Girl, but set in 1899 - 1900.

This series is interesting to me for how it combines “the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite” with the historical elements of the dawn of the twentieth century. Also, can you beat that cover art? The girls with the cascades of ruffly dresses are fairly spectacular. Only possibly the iconic images on the Twilight books beat out Luxe for cool covers.

This is fun, guilty pleasure reading. I don’t know that I’d recommend it to the world, but if you enjoy historical romance you’d probably enjoy these books.

But, on to my main point. Last night, while reading Envy, I noticed that the author tends to fall back on certain body parts in her descriptions. Foreheads are a big thing for this author — all the girls had smooth foreheads, large foreheads, sweat glistening on their foreheads, or hair sweeping becomingly across their foreheads…

And the other body part mentioned repeatedly was the girls’ clavicles. One girl had masculine clavicles. Dresses were always baring clavicles. And once, a guy actually thought specifically about how lovely a girl’s clavicles were.

Isn’t that odd? First of all, how often does one actually think about clavicles specifically. I notice necklines and busts and a woman’s form in general, but I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever looked at someone and thought, “Wow, what nice clavicles she has!” Foreheads, also, while I notice them as part of a person’s face, not a big seller on their own.

The thing I learned from this is that, while it can be interesting for an author to use something unique (or, perhaps, little used is a better term) when describing people in their stories, a little of this goes a long way. Give one character good clavicles, one character a lovely forehead, and leave it at that. A unique, defining characteristic can be a great way to make one character stand out in your readers’ minds, but when it’s clavicles, clavicles everywhere, it gets kind of absurd!

The Best of Every Day Fiction anthology is now available for ordering. This anthology includes 100 pieces of flash fiction — EDF’s best from Sept. 2007 to August 2008. Jens, Alex, Stephanie, and myself from Writer’s Ink are included, as are other great authors like Gay, Kevin, K.C., and more.

Alex is setting up a reading/signing for the EDF authors in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. If you’re an author in this area and want to join us, comment and let me know. If you’re in this area and want to come up to the event, I’ll post all the details when they are settled. It looks like it will be a Saturday in January — after the holidays but before Jens heads back to S. Korea in early February.

Sorry if I’ve been neglecting the blog lately — one of the hazards of NaNo, I fear. My novel is progressing OK so far… I’m in that early stage of semi-hating it, but that’s not the story’s fault. The plot hasn’t actually fallen apart or anything, so I think we’re still good. I’m just about about 6K, so under quota, but I have two write-ins today, and I’m looking forward to a day off tomorrow and then a weekend at the cabin (no Internet!), so much progress should be made. (And, if the plot is going to fall apart, well, I should know by the end of the weekend!)

Work is gearing up again. Only two projects left for the year, both that should be more update than writing new stuff. But we’ll see. With the holidays coming, I have to get into high gear on those or they won’t be out by year-end.

I proofed the .pdf pages for my story in the EDF anthology today. I always love doing that — there is something about looking over proof pages that makes a publication so real!

EDF sister site, Every Day Poets, has been interesting since it’s 11/1 launch. I’ve been checking in on the poems fairly regularly. Some I’ve really liked (”School Uniform”!), and some, not as much. But that’s true of any publication. Poetry is always a little harder for me to wrap my prose-bound mind around, but sometimes a poem will just click.

All right… enough babbling for today. I have work to do, and then a write-in to prep for.

Happy writing, everyone!

I found out this morning that Arcane Twilight is going on an indefinite hiatus, which really feels like the preface to ceasing publication entirely.

It was a “for the love” e-zine (e.g., it didn’t pay its authors), and such efforts tend to come and go with great frequency. However, this is the first time one that published a story of mine has gone away. (It can’t me my story that did it, though, since it was published months and months ago.) Well, I guess there was that one e-zine that folded before it published the story of mine that it accepted, but this is the first one that ceased publication after my story came out.

Anyway, it just made me a little sad, so I thought I would mention it here. Efforts like this are labors of love for their editors, so if you have a favorite e-zine out there, maybe take the time to promote it on your blog, tell a friend, or even drop by the site and leave an encouraging comment or, if the site has a donation button, donate to keep them around.

I must admit that I avoided Richelle Mead’s Y/A series for a while. I think it was the name — Vampire Academy. It sounded so… silly. Not the concept. The Casts pull of the concept of a high school for vampires in their House of Night series for a very intriguing series. But the name Vampire Academy just sounded so lame that I didn’t even want to pick the book off the shelf for the longest time. But, earlier this week, I finally did and bought the first two books in the series — Vampire Academy and Frostbite — and I can say with all honesty that they were very good.

It’s getting hard to walk through the Y/A section of any bookstore these days without running into a new series of what I lovingly call Y/A vampire crack. Vampires have always been popular characters, but these days they are springing off the shelves in a million new incarnations. A sign of the popularity of the Twilight series, perhaps?

Either way, now you can read about vampires at the House of Night; St. Vladimir’s Vampire Academy; in Forks, Washington; in NYC in Melissa de la Cruz’s Blue Bloods series; in Scott Westerfield’s parasitic Peeps series, and more. They’ve even released L.J. Smith’s Vampire Diaries series in a posh new cover — that series was all the rage when I was actually a teen — it was one of the few good alternatives to Christopher Pike. I’ve even seen a Y/A vampire book with a beach and a setting sun on the cover, of all things — haven’t checked that one out yet.

As far as this type of series goes, despite the silly title, Vampire Academy is one of the better ones. It has an interesting interpretation of vampire life. In this ‘verse, there are living vampires, Moroi, who need a small amount of blood and regular food, who are mortal, and who have enhanced sense and magic powers; there are vampire/human hybrids, the dhampir, who have the best of both human and Moroi powers — strength, stamina, ability to be in the sunlight, no need for blood, fighting skills. but no magic; and there are the Strigoi — dead/immortal vampires that kill humans, Moroi, and humans alike, drink only blood, and are super strong and fast.

The main character is Rose, a dhampir, who is bound by a mental link (rare among Moroi and their dhampir guardians) to her best friend, Lissa, a Moroi. They left the school and lived on their own for two years when Lissa was in trouble, but book one of the series begins when the school’s guardians finally find them and bring them home.

These books are an interesting mix of high school life — snobby girls, clique politics, mean teachers, and crushes — and the adult side of vampire life — political struggles, ostracism, and family — and Rose and Lissa’s attempts to navigate both. And, there is plenty of eye-candy (a.k.a., love interests) for both Rose and Lissa — a staple of any high school Y/A series.

One thing I really appreciate about this series is how each installment ends with closure. A lot of Y/A series these days don’t do that — each novel merely the next chapter of the larger plot, so to speak, instead of having its own plot (in addition to the larger plot of the series) with its own closure.

The first Vampire Academy novel deals with Rose and Lissa’s return to school, what they find there, and resolution of why they had to leave in the first place. The second novel, Frostbite, concerns a new level of attacks by a band of Strigoi, and most of it takes place at a posh ski resort frequented by the wealthy Moroi. The Moroi are definitely the Gossip Girl class of vampires in this ‘verse — especially those in the 12 royal families, of which Lissa is one.

Finally, Rose is a great narrator/main character. So much Y/A and chick lit these days is written in the first person that I’m gaining a better appreciation for it. It’s stil not my favorite POV, but I like it more than I used to. And Rose’s POV is an interesting perspective of her world. She’d has enough time on her own and with Lissa to have a view on that life, but at her heart she is a dhampir guardian, with the strength and loyalty that entails.

Rose is strong and resourceful, and her mental bond with Lissa is both unusual and powerful; however, at least thus far, Rose has not strayed down the Anita Blake/Bella (in Breaking Dawn) Mary Sue/unbelievable powers kind of way. Rose is even more down to earth and natural than super priestess-in-training Zoey Redbird of the House of Night series.

So, overall, I would say if you enjoy some of the proliferation of Y/A vampire novels, this series would be a great one to check out. In my opinion, it surpasses the others I’ve read, except, perhaps, for the first two or three installments of the Twilight series. My personal ranking of the ones I’ve read is:

1. Twilight, Eclipse, and New Moon
2. Vampire Academy
3. House of Night
4. Blue Bloods
5. Breaking Dawn
6. Peeps (this one is last because of the gross parasite angle… the plotting and characters were actually pretty good)

I don’t really feel qualified to add the Vampire Diaries to the list, because I barely remember them. I remember liking the first three pretty well, but that the fourth book was a bit of a let down. But, it’s probably been 15 years since I read them.

I’m definitely looking forward to the next installment the Vampire Academy series, which comes out in November.

I saw on Google today that it’s Paddington Bear’s 50th birthday. I loved Paddington Bear when I was a kid. I liked him so much more than silly old Winnie the Pooh — though, I think that might be because I never was a fan of the Disneyfied version of WtP. If the “classic” Pooh stuff that you see today had been available when I was young, I might have liked WtP more.

Of course, WtP didn’t have that romantic association of being lost at Paddington station. Paddington also seemed special because he had a real family in the “real world,” whereas WtP lived in an imaginary world.

Thinking about Paddington made me think about some of the other picture books I loved. I’ve talked at length on this blog about childhood books and Y/A books, but I’ve never really talked about picture books, which are an important element of childhood reading all their own.

When I stayed at my grandmother’s house as a little girl (my Mimi), I used to beg her to read me stories. She had quite a collection of Golden Books to choose from. I loved “The Pokey Little Puppy,” “The Saggy, Baggy Lion,” and all the other classics. She also had Babar the Elephant books, which I loved.

Two of my favorites, though, I’ve never seen in a regular store. I don’t know if they were really old, like from the 50s when my mom was a girl, or if they just weren’t actually Golden Books (I seem to remember that they were, though, I could be wrong).

One of them was called (I think) “Harry Goes to Lollipop Land.” It was this funny story of a little boy who goes to Lollipop Land where everything is made out of candy. Talk about a dream for a little kid, right? And the pictures were great — I totally wanted to go outside and find a tree made out of lollipops to snack on!

The other one I loved was the story of the easter bunny. I don’t remember the title now. The main character was a bunny — I think he was called “Grandpa Bunny,” but the details are hazy. I remember all these pictures of the bunny painting these beautiful Easter eggs to give to all the good little girls and boys. Every year, the eggs got more and more intricate. Then he trained all his children and his children’s children to carry on the work, and Grandpa Bunny moved on to painting flowers, tree leaves, and other colorful portions of nature. I remember a great image of him painting blue shadows in the snow. At the end of the story, Grandpa Bunny essentially dies, but they don’t call it that in the book. He leaves Earth and takes a new job painting sunsets in the sky, so every time you see a beautiful sunset, you should remember that Grandpa Bunny painted it just for you.

I would love to try my hand at writing a picture book one day. I actually have a little story written that would make a good Christmas picture book. And I think that “A Castle in the Clouds” might also translate well to that medium. Sadly, I can’t draw for squat! Hmmm…