Abhorsen and the Other Mother

Recently, I finished the Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix (Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen). It is a brilliant series (which everyone should read), and he is a great writer.

In the beginning of Abhorsen, there is a passage where Nix describes the armor that Lirael puts on. Rather than the typical, boring, step-by-step recitation I’ve encountered in other fantasy novels, it is an interesting description that created the true feeling of putting on the armor. I could feel the weight of each article as if I were putting them on myself. The passage doesn’t describe that many pieces of equipment, but because Nix took his time with each, it feels like each one is important, and we know exactly why.

This passage is more than just beautiful description; it demonstrates an important thing for writers to learn: choosing the right place for description is crucial, and this passage is carefully placed.

It is near the beginning of the book, so we don’t have the opportunity to imagine whatever we will in place of what she’s actually wearing. It is in a situation where Lirael is taking her time and thinking about what she’s doing. Her contemplation translates into the narrative, allowing for the slower pace. In the wrong place, a passage like this one could be like running into a brick wall, like having a period where a semi-colon should be (sorry; I’m a grammar geek). But where it is, it’s amazing.

Another problem with description placement that comes up frequently is not having enough detail where it is needed. Some people write as little description as possible in order to let their reader “fill it in” themselves. But that’s just as bad as the brick wall. Instead of seeing a fleshed out world, readers find themselves in a blank slate akin to the world that the “Other Mother” inhabits in Coraline.

Beyond the boundaries of the Other Mother’s garden, the world is white and empty. Coraline walks only a short distance before coming back to the house she had left behind her. An under-described world feels like that blank space. The characters are walking through nothingness. It’s even worse if the characters aren’t properly described—how can I understand a story when I don’t even know what the character looks like?

Description has to have balance. In fast-paced scenes, there probably won’t be much or we’ll hit that brick wall. In slower ones, you can put in a lot more, and if you don’t, you’ll end up with the Other Mother.

I'm Not Dead Yet

Yes, indeed, I am still alive! This semester was crazy (when is it not, really?), hence I never posted after May. In a little while, though, I’ll fall off the face of the planet (well, I’ll be on the other side of it, anyway) for about 18 months.

You see, back in November, I decided that I wanted to serve a mission for my church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (check out www.mormon.org for more info). I filled out all the paperwork, and in June, I got my call. I am going to serve in the Baguio Philippines Mission. I will spend about 18 months teaching people the gospel and serving them. I won’t have internet (except maybe to email my family once a week), and I won’t be able to call home except on Christmas and Mother’s Day.

I report to the MTC (Missionary Training Center) on October 10, so I have a little while before I disappear, but after that, you won’t hear from me for a year and a half.

I have some plans for when I get back, ways to blog better, but I don’t want to start them yet, on account that they’ll be on hiatus for so long anyway. However, I do plan to toss a few posts up before I leave.

And a quick question before I go, which blogging platform is the best? Obviously, I’ve been using Blogger, but where do you find the most blogs you want to read? Where do you find the most exciting ones? 

A Love of (Re-)Reading

Am I weird for liking to re-read books?

This has come up twice in the last two days, once in my American Lit. and once in my Creative Writing and Publishing class. Apparently, it’s a lot rarer than I thought to not only enjoy a book once, but to enjoy it many times.

One person I talked to said they only re-read books if they’ve forgotten the details, usually with at least SIX YEARS between readings. Even if that were my philosophy, I’m sure I’d read them more often than that. (Though that may just be due to me forgetting details faster.)

Another classmate said occasionally re-reads, but she prefers new things—there’s so much out there to read, why shouldn’t she? I can understand that. Just because I like to re-read doesn’t mean I don’t like new things. But they almost make it seem like a bad thing that I do…

Anyway, my teacher says he never re-reads (though I find that hard to believe; he’s a teacher, for Pete’s sake; he has to re-read whatever he assigns students). Another said she only does when she has to—like for a class. Their biggest argument seems to be that once you’ve read it, you know what’s going to happen.

I don’t get it. When you watch a movie, don’t you like to watch it over again, even when you know what’s going to happen? Why buy books, if you’ll never read them again? Why care? Sure, re-reading isn’t the same experience as the first time around—but that’s just the point. It’s different. You catch different things. You notice different things. Different things speak to you. You may know what’s going to happen, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it.

I love books. I love reading books, whether it’s the first time or the seventh. Re-reading old stories is like visiting old friends. Those characters you know so well, imaginary people and places you love. How can you never re-read? How can you abandon them? I just don’t get it. Why do I appear to be the minority, anyway? I thought that among English majors, surely, I would find people who also loved to re-read. They say they love books, even certain books and stories. But how can you love something you leave behind? How can you love something you don’t spend time with? It doesn’t make sense to me.

Oh well. I suppose I can’t force my views on anyone. It almost hurts my feelings, on behalf of those books. These people seem to be saying “Yeah, you were a good story, but I’m never going to read you again. See ya.” It seems like a lie. Sorry this is a little rant-y. But I’ll ask it again: am I weird for re-reading?

Intro to Everything

I don’t know if any of you have ever taken a Literature class, but I’m in both an American Lit. (Civil War-Mid Twentieth Century) and a British Literature (Victorian-Modern) class this semester—and I’m loving them! (Is it weird that I’m okay with saying “Lit.” when it’s American but feel compelled to say “Literature” when it’s British? Probably.)

Considering the semester only started last week, all we’ve really done so far is read the introductions to our anthologies, but they’re amazing. Reading them kind of makes me long for the point when Publishing was really just getting started. There were so many magazines back then that published stories in serial! People were excited to read; printing was becoming cheaper. Novels and short stories were just coming onto the scene, and it was the main entertainment source for many.

Nowadays, it’s just the opposite. A lot of people don’t read at all. It’s all old hat, and if they read anything, it’s online (yes, I realize that I’m writing something for people to read online, but I sincerely hope my blog isn’t the only thing you read. If it is…I’m sorry).

But another thing these introductions have done is make me want to learn about EVERYTHING. (More than I already did, I mean.) I read an author’s name, and I think “I want to read their books/poems/whatever!” Even people I’ve never been interested in before, suddenly, I want to read. And not just read: I want to collect their works. I want to absorb it, and then be able to take it off my own shelf and read it again and again. I began a running list of everything I wanted to learn about, and added tons of things just from reading one introduction.

Yeah, I’m a little crazy, but there it is.

I’ve always wanted to learn about everything, but I’m lazy and never really quantified it before. It’s kind of nice to have a list, incomplete though it may be. I still want to learn it all at once, though, and I know I won’t, but now that I’ve got a list at least I can be on the lookout for things to teach myself with.

Anyway, it’s amazing how much just the introductions have inspired me. I never really thought they would.

Go the Distance

Isn’t it funny how sometimes something you write just seems complete and utterly…awful? You slaved away hours upon countless hours, spent months plotting, casting, world-building and writing only to discover when you’re nearly done that it’s completely full of barnacles?

I guess this happens to everyone, but honestly, you aren’t going to realize what kind of an effect it has until it happens to you.

Remember the story I mentioned at the beginning of the year? I really did try to finish. But then it got to me; this story seemed absolutely worthless to me. It was stupid, overdone and not worth writing, not to mention finishing. I felt that way for well over a month, and I couldn’t shake it.

Eventually, I heard a song that always made me think of one of those characters, and I realized something. Several things, in fact. First, this story was not stupid; it just needed work.

Second, I realized that there was a certain take I wanted to have on the things that happened to certain characters and I would need to put that into my next rewrite if I wanted this to be satisfactory to myself.

Third, I needed to wait. Though I had had these epiphanies and thought I knew what I needed to do, I could still tell I need more distance before I’ll be able to write this story well. I’ve been working on it so long that certain things seem good that are bad and certain things seem bad that are good.

Whenever you are writing, whether short stories or long ones, the first thing any author, editor or writer will tell you to do when you revise is to put that story away. Hide it. Forget about it. DO NOT LOOK AT IT.

See, as writers, sometimes we just need to forget what we wrote. We need distance to see things in the bigger perspective. Just like you can’t see an entire landscape if you’re huddled against one rock, you can’t see what the story really needs if you’re upset about just one sentence, scene or even just one character. We need time apart to get far enough away to see everything.

For me, spending time away from something that frustrates me is easy, but I still look forward to the day when I can take this story from the drawer, shake it off and take my trusty red pen to it. It may be a while off, but it will come, and I can’t wait.

Looking for Trouble

Good Morning, World, and all who inhabit it! Seeing as it’s been two weeks since my last post, I thought it was about time to speak again.

So, I’ve started writing a new story, and I’m not sure how long it’s going to be, but I’m excited about it. As part of the basic premise, the characters are living in a country where magic is essentially its life-blood, but the city they live in has been taken over by another country (as part of an on-going war) that doesn’t believe in/doesn’t like magic. The main character is a magic user. This is part of the second essential element of Good Writing, Trouble. Good writing is all about trouble.

We all know this one almost instinctively. A story about nothing but good things is boring, and not really a story at all. As Gail Carson Levine (author of Ella Enchanted) said in her book Writing Magic, it’s the author’s cruelty and the reader’s sympathy that keep people reading.

The esteemed J. K. Rowling practically mentions this outright when Harry Potter says, “I don’t go looking for trouble; trouble usually finds me.”

Even as children, when we make up stories, there is always some kind of trouble happening. For example, in one story I made up as a child, there were a king and queen who loved a certain book so much that their kingdom practically ran by it. Then a page ripped. This was the trouble. (Which shows what kind of child I was, doesn’t it?)

So, how do we go about creating trouble for our characters? Remember the formula for desire?

Once upon a time, there was a ________ , and what he/she/it wanted more than anything else in the world was _______ .

Now we’ll add a second part.

But there was a problem. He/she/it couldn’t have what he/she/it wanted because _________.

This is the opportunity to create trouble for characters. For me, trouble is usually not a problem. Trouble is easy. What’s difficult is making it exciting trouble, especially in small moments of a longer book. That’s probably another discussion, though.

Speaking of trouble, I have a question for you. Since I’m a college student, when I’m at home, I often feel like I can’t start my own projects because I might be called on to help my family at any point and be disrupted. How do you motivate yourselves to write? How do you get over the “I can’t write because (whatever)” and write anyway?

Erised

You remember how I mentioned way back in September that I was in a Creative Writing Class that semester? And how I said I would blog about stuff we talked about? Well, I didn’t lie to you; I’m going to do that now.

See, during the semester, I always have time excuses for not blogging. Now that I’m off for a little while (‘til April), I don’t really have that excuse, only the excuse that I can’t think of anything to talk about, and even that’s only sort of true. So, now, I’m going to talk about one of the Rules of Good Fiction (which are different than the Rules of Being a Writer that I talked about before) that Brother Allen (my teacher) taught us.

This is the first, and in my opinion, the most important rule: Good Writing is about Desire. Every character in any story you have read, heard or watched has had a desire. If they don’t, why are we reading or hearing about them? Think about it. What did Mulan want? She wanted to protect her father. What did Shrek want? He wanted his Swamp back. What did Harry Potter want? According the mirror of Erised, he wanted a family (though that’s kind of a cheap trick, telling us flat out like that). He also wanted to be what a hero. We could do this for any movie, book or myth you care to throw out. Characters always have desire.

So, how do you go about giving a character desire? Sometimes it’s actually the desire that sparks the idea for you—if that’s the case, you’re lucky. For me, there’s usually another spark, and I have to figure out the desire separately. Once, I actually tried writing a story (or a rambling tale, as I knew it was even back then) without knowing the Desire or even any semblance of the plot. It was full of barnacles, let me tell you what. It’s still full of barnacles, even though I know both of those things now; there’s still something not quite there, and I’m beginning to suspect that I’ve got the wrong character for the main…but that’s a topic for another day.

Anyway, Brother Allen gave us a device that would help us give our characters desire. I’ve found it pretty useful, and it helps you sum up your story in a neat little package as well (though it has something to be lacking in the setting department). It goes like this:

Once upon a time, there was a ________ , and what he/she/it wanted more than anything else in the world was _______.

Pretty simple isn’t it? It’s not what you want to give to someone to sell a story with, but it helps you to get their desire in order. Without desire, characters are inanimate lumps that just sit there, and nothing will happen in your story. They need desire. You’ve never met a person who didn’t want something; I’ll guarantee you that.