Changing Meanings

In one of my workshops, we were happily going over a friend’s excerpt, commenting on this and that when our faculty leader drew our attention to the first page. The time was predawn, the setting a city street. A gaggle of girls stood on the corner twittering. The sentences the author had written evoked such imagery, with the girls taking the place of dawn birds to greet the morning. Until our faculty leader said that he had thought all the girls were on their cell phones. Twittering.

Language has a way of morphing, which is good. Cultures grow and change and language should change with them, but sometimes the change is frustrating. Words we once enjoyed and loved can suddenly take on new meaning that isn’t always pleasant or destroys the word for its old meaning.

I noticed yesterday a phrase in my story. The characters were “writing on tablets of paper.” I thought, “My goodness, it’s a good thing I specified paper!” Writing on tablets has new meaning since the emergence of those tiny clipboard-sized computers.

So when you are doing revisionary work, remember to check your phrases and words to make sure they mean what you intend them to mean.

Happy Writing!

Cutting Characters, Left and Right

“Sooooo, did you catch last night’s episode of popular reality show? Yeah, no? You missed a good one, man. You missed a good one. They were kicking people off left and right. And like, some people got kicked on. And uh, I mean, you should a watched it, man. You definitely should a watched it. Should a watched it.”
~~Homestarrunner in Strong Bad e-mail 37, “Dullard.”

That quote keeps running through my head as I write, with minor variations. “She was cutting characters left and right, and like, some characters got kicked on.” When I started this story, I had five main characters and about four secondary characters. Over a period of about five years (author time, not story time), it grew to ten main characters with about fifty secondary characters (not at the same part of the story at least!). My protagonist started the story with a family of seven, a best friend and his little sister, and another friend and his family of nine (plus a sister-in-law and nephew). He then met up with a group of nineteen others, plus around five mentors. Add to that all the tertiary and absent characters as well as the villains and it was mind-boggling.

At my first writer’s workshop, I submitted the first (terrible!) three chapters of The Epic Novel. One of the questions my shopmates asked was why the fourth friend was there. Because you don’t leave one of your crew behind when you take a road trip, of course.

As I’m redrafting this first part of my novel, I painfully realized that the question they asked was quite legitimate. Cutting that fourth friend hurts because two of my favorite most poignant scenes deal with that character. Sigh.

Horrifically, I am realizing that the third friend, who at one point was my favorite character, may not have purpose either. Not to the MC’s motivation, not to this particular plot of the story. Sadly, I think he may have to go. The problem is, his sister is quite involved. How do I keep her involved without him? How does the MC even know her if not as the little sister of his best friend? Dilemmas, dilemmas!

One Lump or Two?

I just read an interesting article at the Teaching Authors blog on food and fantasy. It reminded me of an exercise I did once for a big project. I wanted to get to know my characters better, so I wrote a few questions for them. A couple of the questions were "What is the character's favorite dessert?" and "How does the character take his tea or coffee?" I used it just to get to know my characters better, but the answers came in handy later for a scene where the characters drink hot tea after a harrowing experience. I knew the MC always had his tea with a little bit of honey.

In other news: today, I turned in the first twenty pages of a young adult science fiction novel for my workshop in January. I really like the story, but I have a feeling the first draft of the first twenty pages isn't very good. I'm also almost done with the second draft of my middle grade novel. And my last packet is due December 10! I feel this semester should be over already, but just three more weeks.

I imagine I won't post in the next week (family in town), so Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Planning for Next Semester Already?

I’m about halfway through with my last packet, and I have two weeks until I have to stick it in the mail. I’ve read a dozen picture books, two novels, two MG non-fiction books, and some other bits and pieces. I’ve also written about 20 pages of my science fiction novel as well as 20 pages of a new contemporary piece I’m working on (yes, I work in pages rather than word counts). Not too bad.

Aside from school, my writing has been going okay. I’m still having trouble with the POV of my sci-fi novel, but I really like my new contemporary story, Aside from the short story I wrote earlier in the semester, this is my first attempt at a contemporary piece. I submitted it for my workshop piece, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve been trying to decide what to work on next semester. I’m thinking of working on my contemporary piece, but I’m not sure what else I’d like to work on, if anything. I’m also debating what craft areas to focus on. I’d tried to work on POV this semester, but I’m still struggling. I started a book list so that I can have something ready for my semester plan. I’m so lost when it comes to famous kid’s books. I always just read what looked fun to me, which means no Charlotte’s Web, no Phantom Tollbooth, no Wind in the Willows, no Where the Wild Things Are, etc.

I also have to start thinking about my critical thesis for the third semester. Hmmm. Not so much fun. I had thought about doing something on hypertext, but I’m not sure if that’s feasible.

I should get back to writing my bibliography for this packet. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

From My Point of View . . .

Several people have told me that I need to work on point of view (POV). Most of the people in my workshop told me that I kept switching POV’s. I asked them if they thought maybe I should use a different POV, and they suggested omniscient as opposed to third-person. I tried that only to have my mentor tell me that I have no clue how to write omniscient (not surprising considering I’d never tired it before) and that I wasn’t telling the story from my characters’ points of view.

So, I picked up a book called The Power of Point of View by Alicia Rasley. I like it so far. Actually, I like it better than all of the confusing and conflicting advice that I’ve been getting from other people. I think that I’ve finally figured out what’s going on.

Omniscient POV isn’t trendy right now. First person is the trend. At least half of the readings that I heard at the residency were written in first person. Since this is the case, writers have been telling me that I can’t write in anything but first person or deep third (deep third is basically first person without the “I”). However, I don’t like to read first person very much, so I’m not too fond of writing it. More importantly than that is the fact that only particular stories can be told in first person. Some stories just don’t lend well to a first-person POV.

Just because I like to write stories in non-deep third-person or multiple third-person doesn’t mean that writing that way is wrong. According to Rasley, I can even start a scene in omniscient and then move in to third—something I had been told was taboo. It’s like someone said at the residency (Marion Dane Bauer?). She said that an editor told her she wasn’t a picture book writer when what he really meant was, “This isn’t a picture book.” People have been telling me, “You can’t write light-penetration third,” when maybe they should have said, “Light-penetration third is an okay POV, but you need to work on it. You don’t have a handle on it yet.”

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t have problems with POV; I definitely have some things to work on. Although, I do feel that a lot of my issues have to do with voice and character rather than directly with POV. I have trouble developing character voice, and I have a tendency to remain distant from the story. This affects my POV, but it’s an issue in and of itself.

Anne M.