I read...I read The Farwalker's Quest by Joni Sensel. It’s been on my list for a while; couldn’t tell you why anymore. I put books on The List anytime someone suggests it for any reason. (I used to lose The List but then I moved it to Amazon. And GoodReads.) In this instance, Joni (pronounced Johnny) herself bumped the book to the top of the list. We had a gap in our writing/critique group so we sent out a call to our local chapter of SCBWI (pronounced skib-wee; really. Ask Jon Scieszka (rhymes with Fresca)) to help us fill it. Joni asked to sit in on a meeting to see if we’re a good fit. (Critique groups can sometimes act as therapist/spouse/best friend so you want that relationship to be nurturing/kind/ass-kicking as appropriate. It’s good to visit a few different groups a few different times to see how they work before committing.) Anyway, I squee’d with joy and fear (writer’s self-esteem kicking in. How can we help a real live published author?!) then gave her our standard introduction and thought maybe I better go read her book! Just so you don’t think I’m gushing (tho I sort of am; I enjoyed this book considerably), I had not met Joni nor read any of her work before I started reading FARWALKER. And I learned...Worldbuilding. I harp on it because it is so very important (and because it’s one of my favorite things). When a reader cracks open a book, especially if they’ve pulled it from the Fantasy/Science Fiction shelf, they have no idea what they’ve opened up. There are the basic questions: who is the book about? Age, name, gender? Then there are the more complicated questions: what is this world like, how does it differ from our own, and how does it affect the main character? When I was a youngster working for $3.35 an hour (that was minimum wage in Missouri. You can do the research to find out just how old that makes me), I had two strict rules: 1) I would not pay more than a penny a page for a book. If the book cost $3.99 and was less than 350 pages, it was a no-go. 2) I would give every book 50 pages to suck me in and teach me about its world before I gave up on it. I read fantasy pretty exclusively back then, so it was like jumping into a whole new world every time I switched series. Given that 50 page rule, let me show you what Joni shows us of her world in her first few pages. Single-word worldbuildingWhen I critique or edit your writing, I often ask for adjectives to help set us in a certain time and place. In her first chapter, Joni uses a few well-placed adjectives to set up a preindustrial, possibly subsistence-living, village. “Their catch wiggled in the wood bucket…” [emphasis added] Wood buckets tell us this society does not have a supply of cheap metal. Wood is more plentiful and cheaper to shape than metal for these people. “Zeke watched his goat-leather boots…” Goat-leather boots tell us this group is on marginal land—not enough pasturage for raising cattle. Goats imply a rocky area. And given a child (Zeke is 12) is wearing leather, that implies the goats are relatively cheap/plentiful (as opposed to today where real leather goods tend to be expensive compared to synthetic counterparts). “Together they’d trapped classmates in the outhouse…” “lowered each other into the village well” Outhouse and well imply no indoor plumbing. (Classmates indicates some sort of formal schooling.) “Her mother had given up on insisting on skirts…Ariel wore mostly wool trousers and sweaters.” Skirts shows us girls are expected to dress differently than boys. That Ariel doesn’t shows us it’s not horrific if she goes against the culture. Wool trousers and sweaters can come from the already mentioned goats. Each piece of clothing can be handmade, which keeps in line with the preindustrial/subsistence theme. “beyond that were thatched and tiled roofs” Thatch for poorer homes; tile for the more well-off ones. Shows multiple classes within the society. Worldbuilding in a character's nameSometimes a name is just a name, but sometimes it tells us about a world’s culture. In Joni’s first chapter, we learn of Luna Healtouch, Ariel Healtouch, Fisher, Reaper, and Tree-Singer. We also learn a bit about how those names are given: “’But Namingfest is only three days away!’” “He couldn’t say he might fail.” “both of Zeke’s brothers had settled for more ordinary trades” “She would turn thirteen later that summer, so at Namingfest in a few days she could apprentice herself to a Fisher or Reaper. But the easiest course would simply be to learn from her mother [Luna Healtouch]” “Several [symbols] she recognized as the signs of a trade: the Windmaster’s, the Tree-Singer’s, and of course the xx that marked the home of a Healtouch With these phrases, we learn that a person’s last name is also their occupation, their trade. We learn that when children are about to turn 13, they are apprenticed in a particular trade and that is when they are given their last names. Through some of Zeke’s comments, we also learn there is some anxiety and uncertainty, and perhaps some kind of test, involved in choosing a trade. This all shows us the entire culture is involved in training up the next generation to work. Children are not given the opportunity to continue their broad education, nor do they seem to choose a craft for the sake of the craft itself (art or music). Children are apprenticed to something that will earn them a place in the village, and while they have some say in what they are apprenticed to, not all of them succeed in their first choice. Worldbuilding with magicSome fantasy has magic, some doesn’t. Which story are you reading? Unless it explicitly says on the blurb you happened to read, you won’t know until the author shows it to you. Joni sets up magic in the very first sentence and runs from there. “Zeke’s tree wouldn’t speak to him.” “A Tree-Singer could be the most important person in the village. Hearing the voices of trees and coaxing them to share their great wisdom took special talent” “Unlike tree-singing and the more mystical trades, most of the healing skills could be taught.” “She’d envied his talent [Zeke’s ability to talk with trees], since she seemed to have none of her own.” “In fact, Ariel had the strangest sense that the tree wanted to be climbed.” “’I thought telling darts were supposed to find the people they were sent to, [Ariel says]’” “Before her eyes, the tree reached to catch him” From all these bits and pieces, we learn that there is a kind of magic in this world and that some of it relates to talking to trees (and hearing what they have to say back). We learn that magic may be an inherited trait (it cannot be taught). That the darts (inanimate objects) are supposed to find a particular person also smacks of magic. Adding depth to your world with historyAnd finally, let’s talk about history. Unless your world is new-minted (like Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew) it will have a history. (Altho, come to think of it, even new-minted Narnia has a history.) That history can give your world a richer feel, less made up/more real, or it can provide conflict for your current characters (those who don’t learn their own history will continue to step in it…). In the first chapter, Joni already starts laying in her world’s history. “Maybe Zeke’s tree, grateful, would share an old secret, like where to find gemstones or the legendary treasures locked away in the Vault.” “Ariel had never seen a telling dart, but she had heard plenty of stories.” “’I didn’t think you could still find stuff like this anymore,’ she [Ariel] said. Darts that could talk were only one of the marvels lost after the Blind War and now known only in legend.” Already we learn of some type of major historical event that changed this world and that something from before that event has come to affect Ariel and Zeke. Conflict set up through worldbuilding. TL;DRThis worldbuilding stuff is really important. It fixes the reader in a particular world: time, place, and technology/science/magic level. It provides interest in your story, like frosting on a cake, making the story-cake that much more interesting/tasty. (My metaphor is only kind of working here.) Good worldbuilding can provide the conflict for your story. Once you've taken the time to develop two wildly different cultures, it can be easy to see how they'd disagree and how they'd handle those disagreements. And, finally, worldbuilding can help create your story. I once took an online class with Holly Lisle who created a three-book fantasy series after drawing a map and creating the world that created the map. Worldbuilding in a very literal way. Read 1000 booksReading widely changes your writing. For the better. Many published writers credit their success to having read voraciously, both in and out of their chosen genres. But most people don't read like editors; they read for enjoyment, not to learn a new writing technique. I read for a zillion reasons, and one IS to learn writing and story-telling techniques. Occasionally, I'll write about what I learn and share it with you here. Read 1000 books. Then write one. A little backgroundI first wrote this piece approximately a thousand years ago (or nine. Nine years ago) and posted it to my blog, but that blog has since disappeared into the ether. So, here it is again.
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I read...A few years ago [a lot more than a few years ago now] I got the chance to meet agent Nathan Bransford at a local SCBWI conference. He critiqued the first five pages of my first novel. The two pieces of feedback he gave me? “A lot of novels start this way.” (One character upstairs, another downstairs, calling to each other.) And, “You don’t have a unique voice.” Ouch. I thanked him and left. My 15 minutes were up. I spent the second half of the day mooning about and then—if you’ll excuse the decidedly non-feminine expression—manned up and marched over to where Nathan was waiting all by himself and asked if he could recommend any books I should read that had a good strong voice. He did. Ball Don’t Lie was one of them. And I learned...Ta da! Voice! Voice is the magic of a book. No voice and you’re likely to get a form rejection. Every agent and editor (and reader!) is looking for “fresh new voices.” Trouble is, voice is also nebulous, hard to describe, harder to teach, but oh-so-obvious when you read it. Voice is a concatenation of writerly skills, techniques, and just plain individual style. Voice is limitless. Voice is not simply point of view, tho I have heard some authors call it that. Point of view is fairly limited: 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person; limited or omniscient. POV is a part of voice, but not the whole of voice. de la Pena uses an external first-person narrator to tell an omniscient third-person story about Sticky, the main character: I could tell you a lot about this game… (says the narrator) Oh, that name, the lady said in a voice so Sticky couldn’t hear. She moved under the game room door frame. We’ll have to do something about that awful name. Voice includes using slang or swear words, whatever words your characters may use. In the right novel, voice can include dusting off your SAT vocabulary and busting out with words like septuagenarian or apotheosis. de la Pena uses street slang to describe street basketball: It’s tied sevens and Sticky’s handling the rock up top. Back and forth with the left hand. In front of his glazed body. Rhythm pats. Type of dribbles that get you in the groove to cut and slash, body loose and quick to make somebody look like a fool. The ball is also called a “brick.” The hoop a “bucket.” Men are called “cats” and “fellas” and “guys.” Girlfriends are called “old ladies.” Voice includes how you write description: as solid blocks of fragmentary sentences or long, flowing, lyrical sentences. de la Pena does things a little differently by using a colon to set off phrases of description: Jimmy is: eyes the size of golf balls in thick Coke-bottle glasses, overgrown crop that starts a thumb’s width from his bushy eyebrows, old beat-up flea-bitten sweatshirt zipped up to the throat: ARMY FOOTBALL. Voice can include repeating phrases over and over to indicate a character’s personality: Sticky shook her off. Pulled out one pair [of pants], checked tangs twice (price and size) and then stuck them back on the rack. When the sticking-back sound didn’t sound right, he pulled them off and stuck them back again. Pulled them off and stuck them back. He started to panic inside. Started sweating. Last thing he wanted to do in front of this pretty girl was act all retarded. But he couldn’t stop himself. He pulled them off and stuck them back again. (Note the use of the word retarded in that quote. Many people won't use it, so its use here is part of voice and part of character development.) Voice can include formatting, like using italics for dialog: Oh, damn, that was a nasty foul, Dave said, holding a fist to his mouth. Jay had to slap em down, though, Sticky said. He had to let em know whose lane it was. Fat Jay did just like this, Sin said, and he put his arm out clothesline style and swung it through the air. That’s the kinda foul that could set the tone. Like Sticky said. After Fat Jay did that, wasn’t no little number twenty-three flyin through the lane no more, right? Voice is all of these things. And a little bit more. Voice combines to create a story that could only be about Sticky, only be written by Matt de la Pena. You could pick this book up and read a few lines and know it wasn’t written by Suzanne Collins or Meg Cabot or even Chris Crutcher, another YA-boys-sports-issues book writer. TL;DRVoice is a unique blending of all these tools: POV, verb tense, word choice (which includes formal vs slang, in addition to individual words), metaphors, how you handle description, even formatting. It happens through writing over and over and over again. Every day. Pruning out that which doesn’t fit, allowing to grow that which does. Voice is developed over time and with much practice of the basic skills in a writer’s toolbox. Voice truly is more than the sum of its parts. Read 1000 booksReading widely changes your writing. For the better. Many published writers credit their success to having read voraciously, both in and out of their chosen genres. But most people don't read like editors; they read for enjoyment, not to learn a new writing technique. I read for a zillion reasons, and one IS to learn writing and story-telling techniques. Occasionally, I'll write about what I learn and share it with you here. Read 1000 books. Then write one. A little backgroundI first wrote this piece approximately a thousand years ago (or nine. Nine years ago) and posted it to my blog, but that blog has since disappeared into the ether. So, here it is again. Related articlesEvery character needs a description, but how do you include that description without stopping the story's flow? How do you include it without creating a situation that feels contrived? How often should you describe your characters? Read Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold and learn description techniques from a master. To describe or not to describeShould you describe your characters at all? Some writers believe that offering too much (or any) description of the main character distances readers from the story because then readers cannot simply picture themselves as the protagonist. Some writers want to control their world and characters and therefore want to describe those characters so completely they cannot be confused with anyone else. Ever. Either of these choices is reasonable (altho the second can easily become tedious). These choices are style issues: some readers want a lot of character description while others don't. You get to pick what you want to do. Repeat, repeat, repeatIf you decide to describe your characters, you must repeat that description throughout your story. Not as a solid block, but with key words placed strategically here and there to remind readers who they are reading about. Readers need these reminders because, while some will sit down to devour a book, most have to set it down to eat, sleep, do homework/laundry, go to school/work, and they will forget what the characters look like during their time away from the book. (Or worse, if they are like me and have two or three books going at once, a lack of description can make it harder to keep the separate story lines straight.) BEGUILEMENT and Fawn BluefieldBujold had some 14 published books under her belt before she wrote Beguilement, the first book in the Sharing Knife series, so she knows a thing or two about writing. She has a clear idea of what her characters look like and keeps offering up reminders for the reader. Fawn Bluefield, the book’s female protagonist, is described as short, with pale skin, dark curly hair, and big brown eyes. All those descriptions are offered up, again and again, in different ways and from different viewpoints. Character ThoughtsFrom Fawn’s point of view, we learn her appearance through her thoughts (and note the page numbers, to see how often the simple description of being short, or having curly hair, is repeated, and how late into the book it appears):
Character ActionsWe are also reminded of Fawn’s appearance through her actions:
Other Characters' ThoughtsWe see Fawn’s appearance through the eyes and actions of others, most often from Dag, a Lakewalker patroller who is essentially a foreigner in Fawn’s lands. Note again that these descriptions are consistent, and appear even very late in the book.
ComparisonsA good way to continue reminding readers of a character's description is to compare one character to another. With living characters, you can provide info about both characters with the description. With dead characters, you can give us description without being too contrived: She looked in the mirror and noticed her face now looked like her mother's. No wonder her father turned away from her. Note that this technique is almost common enough to be a cliché, or at least a trope (at least in the fantasy I've read), but it can be useful, especially if the comparison between two characters helps explain the relationship between two other characters.
Why did I read this book?Uh, ‘cause I just loves me some Bujold? Seriously, Lois McMaster Bujold is, like, my favorite author EVER and I reread her stuff with surprising regularity. Now to be honest, this isn’t my favorite Bujold book, and the first time I read it, I really didn’t enjoy it. I was reading it with the YA rules for new authors in mind: all first books in a series must satisfyingly end before the second book can start. This one doesn’t do that. It just stops, rather like the first part of a four-part book than a complete story in itself. When I read it a second time, as the first part, I liked it much, much better (tho the third book in the series is, in fact, my favorite). I started reading the series again because I wanted something familiar and comfortable. I had a sinus infection when I started re-reading these books and I just didn’t want to struggle with a new author/story while struggling with massive headaches. (Whine, sniffle, whine.) Beguilement, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Book 5/1000. About 1000 BooksReading widely changes your writing. For the better. Many published writers credit their success to having read voraciously, both in and out of their chosen genres. But most people don't read like editors; they read for enjoyment, not to learn a new writing technique. I read for a zillion reasons, and one IS to learn writing and story-telling techniques. Occasionally, I'll write about what I learn and share it with you here. Read 1000 books. Then write one. If your main character is … non-standard: overly mean, vapid, or maybe just plain dumb, learn to evoke sympathy in your readers to keep them engaged in your story. I read Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes and State of Grace by Hilary Badger back-to-back. That order wasn’t intentional. I read Flowers because I saw the title used in another book (Nicola Yoon’s Everything, Everything), remembered it was classic sci-fi, decided I should read it *because* it’s classic, and I put it on hold at my local library. I read it when it came in and then… had nothing immediately queued up to read next. I was skimming my book list and stumbled on Grace. It’s not actually my book. It’s my son’s. He asked me to buy it for him because he made a deal with his friend: He’d read her favorite book (Grace) if she read one of his (Harry Dresden). He never got into it. I figured, well, I read and edit YA and fantasy and *this* YA fantasy is a teen’s favorite, so I should read it. (A large number of the books I read are “shoulds” to keep myself up-to-date with current trends in novels. I don’t mind; it makes it way easier to pick out a book to read when I’m reading for a zillion different reasons, only one of which is pure entertainment!) So, I read these seemingly very different books back-to-back and was stunned by the similarities in story-telling technique. Both books start out with a not-obviously interesting character: Keyes’ Charlie is a literal moron (“retarded” in the mentally deficient meaning used in the late 1950s) and Badger’s Wren is a vapid teenager, obsessed with having fun. On the surface, these characters shouldn’t work. There’s no “hook” that lets us latch on to them. Most of us who read are not morons or vapid. How do we see ourselves in these main characters? Neither character is a deep thinker or even observer of the people and situations happening around them. Neither character seems to be a driver, or even able to drive, their own destiny. And yet… somehow Keyes and Badger are able to evoke sympathy in us for these seemingly simple characters, and that sympathy propels us along the story until the characters grow into themselves. Flowers for AlgernonFlowers is written in first person POV, and Charlie is a moron. It’s rather difficult to read Flowers at first (unless you’ve had practice with a kid whose school told students to write phonetically and worry about spelling later):
Those misspellings aren’t mine. This is how Charlie hears the words and translates them to the page. Every time Charlie writes (in the first few chapters), it’s this painful phonetic writing with a lot of repetition (Keyes and his editor are GENIUSES, keeping just enough repetition to show us Charlie but not so much we want to gouge our eyes out). But… Charlie is also earnest in his single-minded desire:
It’s this earnest desire to “be smart” that keeps us reading. Charlie wants very much to be smart, and I found myself reading more: why does Charlie want to be smart? What does he think he’ll get in return? Can the scientists help him?
As Charlie writes more, we see events that have happened to him during his life, some of them awful, but Charlie never saw them as awful when they happened. We see these stories from two points-of-view: Charlie before he is smart, and Charlie after. (Spoiler alert: the scientists DO make Charlie smart.) His first viewing of events pains us because we see the subtext he didn’t. We see him laughing along with his own degradation as people he thinks are his friends make fun of his deficiency. Worse, we see the events AGAIN as Charlie re-processes them once he’s “smart” enough to see the subtext himself. (Honestly, this is one of the most relentlessly tragic books I think I’ve ever read.) Our hearts break all over again. As Charlie “gets smart,” our sympathy for him grows and becomes sympathy for ourselves because NOW we can begin to see ourselves in him. The pre-smart Charlie couldn’t question anything. The smart-Charlie wonders about everything.
What does it mean to be human? How do you live a good life? How do you create a loving relationship with someone else? These are all questions we often struggle with and watching Charlie come at them from an educated innocence lets us see these issues from a new angle.
Keyes uses our sympathy for Charlie’s innocence and child-like desires to draw us along the story until Charlie becomes sophisticated enough to lead us on his own. State of GraceState of Grace starts out with a similarly child-like character. Teenaged Wren (she’s 16 or 17-ish) appears singularly interested in having fun:
Wren has both the simplistic desires of a child and the childlike ease of accepting and following authority. (And if you’ve raised/are raising a teenager, you know this is SO not the typical case!)
The first few pages are all about Wren pursuing hedonistic activities with very little responsibility of any kind. Even the teens for whom this book is written aren’t living this life, so what keeps us going? It’s that sympathy again. Quickly, Badger shows us that not all is right in Wren’s world, and even when Wren can't (or won't) see it, we do.
Wren is experiencing something strange, something she “shouldn’t” and it’s her fear that evokes sympathy in us. We’ve all felt (especially when we were teens!) that we didn’t fit in and that not fitting in is dangerous because it means we’re all by ourselves in this big scary world. (Isolation is a cruel punishment/torture in almost every culture.) We keep reading Grace to see how Wren handles her fear and doubts, to cheer her on when she’s feeling “prenormal.” Our sympathy keeps us reading until Wren has grown sophisticated enough (in her doubts, in her searching for truth/meaning) to lead us in her own story, just like Charlie. CodaEverything you read has the capacity to teach you something: about yourself, about your world, and (perhaps most importantly) how to write better. If you like this idea of engaging a reader's sympathy, you may also want to consider reading the Thomas Covenant series by Stephen Donaldson. Donaldson's anti-hero's actions are profoundly unheroic. About half the people I know who read this series (it came out in the late 70s and is STILL in print) threw the book across the room and quit forever and the other half kept going, grudgingly, after they picked the book up off the floor. That anyone kept going at all (and I was one), is, I think, a huge testament to the power of sympathy. Some backgroundA thousand years ago* I wrote a post about how reading 1000 books changes your writing. I wrote a few articles*** about different techniques you can learn by reading different books. I wrote about how I really don’t like rating books. So much of rating is based on personal preference and what I like you may not and vice versa.** And then… I didn’t write anymore. Hah! That changes now. * Three. Three years ago. ** Plus… I know just how long it can take to write, rewrite, edit, re-edit, format, re-format a book. Who am I to judge its quantitative worth? I liked it, I didn’t like it. I loved it enough to ready it a zillion times; I learned enough from reading it once. My 4 stars means nothing to you… *** Related articles
I first read North of Beautiful back after I heardJustina Chen speak at a SCBWI writers conference. She was lively and local (to me; she was living in the Seattle area) so I thought I should give her book a go. Whoa. I loved it. Really. And I read a lot of books for a lot of reasons; I don’t expect to love anything anymore—I just want to learn.
But I loved NoB and knew I wanted to write about it—eventually. But as life ground on, I completely forgot about the book, until a mentee asked me to review an article she was writing about the use of theme in How to Train Your Dragon. Reading her article, I knew she wasn’t referring to theme, but something else. I just couldn’t put my finger on the something else.
Then I read Laurie Halse Anderson’s Twisted. In Twisted, Tyler, the main character, is sent to in-school suspension. There, his English teacher reviews symbolism, motif, and theme. I was a little ticked at LHA for not telling us readers the difference but, well, she wasn’t writing an English textbook. It did lead me to Wikipedia and a few other sources (come on! I’m a (relatively) responsible researcher) to look up the differences and that taught me about NoB.
Justina Chen is a master of motif.
Motif?
According to Wikipedia (OK, sometimes I’m just a lazy researcher), motif is “any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. Through its repetition, a motif can help produce other narrative (or literary) aspects such as theme or mood.”
JC’s use of maps and mapping terminology is consistent, constant, and clearly helps build on the narrative’s themes of finding and accepting yourself.
The book’s cover includes a compass rose, and the title is “North” of Beautiful. I don’t usually include cover and title when learning about books because often the author has no or little say in these things, but, what the author definitively has a say in are the parts and chapter titles. And the motif continues throughout that structure: the three parts are titled “Terra Nullis” (null earth, Latin), “Terra Incognita” (unknown or untested earth), and “Terra Firma.” The theme of each part reflects the part’s title. In “Terra Nullis,” Terra feels awkward, hating her face (she has a port wine stain) and herself. She is unsure of her future, her relationship with her parents, and her art. She feels like she is nothing. In “Terra Incognita,” Terra starts exploring her options, working on her art, trying a new surgery. Her trials at becoming a self-confident independent young woman are random stabs in the dark, unknown and untested. In the third part, “Terra Firma”, Terra’s journey solidifies as she grows into herself.
JC keeps the motifs going with the book’s chapter titles. Titles include “The Topography of Guilt” (topography is the study of the surface of the earth), “Here be Dragons” (in reference to dragons old mapmakers drew in the margins where unknown lands lay), “Dead Reckoning” (the process of calculating your current position by using a previously determined position), and “Orientation.” While each chapter references some aspect of mapmaking, the chapter titles are not random.
In “Orientation,” Terra and Jacob meet; they swap stories, learning about each other and their current journeys (they meet in Leavenworth—which really is as JC describes it—halfway to their final destinations). Additionally in this chapter, Jacob, as a Chinese Goth with a scar from a cleft palate surgery, shows (orients) Terra to another way to deal with the stares she receives because of her port wine stain.
It keeps going. The use of mapmaking as motif continues with the character names: Terra (earth) and Terra’s brothers--Mercatur and Claudius. (As a side note, I first learned about the Mercator mapping system on The West Wing.)
JC uses mapping as subplots in the book as well. Terra’s father is a disgraced cartographer. Jacob introduces her to geocaching (a sport/hobby where you try to find “treasure” caches using GPS coordinates. If you have a smart-phone, there’s an app for that. The Boy and I have found a dozen or so caches so far and have introduced a whole mess of other kids to the adventure. If it hadn’t been for JC, I’d never have known about it!). Terra’s aunt leaves one of Terra’s father’s challenged maps torn in pieces as a cache treasure.
Additionally, JC, through Terra, uses maps as metaphors for Terra’s feelings:
“But all maps lie. … even the best maps distort the truth… Greenland balloons; Africa stretches.” Page 4
“But Erik was at my side like a lost adventurer chasing the North Star.” Page 20
“Unlike his cartographic namesake, Geradus Mercatur, Merc wasn’t just laying down lines for lands that had already been discovered, transferring a globe into a flat map. He was seeing the world.” Page 41
It goes on, throughout the book, instances of mapmaking changing lives; mapping terminology describing Terra’s thoughts and feelings; mapping as an activity to provide background for the characters.
Because mapping is used so heavily throughout the book, and it is tied so closely to the theme (you need a map to find something, even if it’s yourself), motif can easily be confused with theme. The two may overlap, and motif can be used to build theme, but motif is separate: a subset of theme.
I can’t help but think this use of motif would make a good story idea generator. Figure out your hobbies—knitting, horseback riding, sailing—anything with its own language. How can you use the language of your chosen hobby to show—anything? Then build a plot around that.
Regardless, when you’re ready to add another layer to your novel through revision, scan for any powerful images you’ve already used and see if you can’t repeat those images, even just two or three times, to build up your theme. And read North of Beautiful to see how a master does it.
Bonus! A few characters from JC’s Girl Overboard make a cameo appearance here.
Whine: Justina (can I call her Justina when I’ve only heard her speak and read her books? Or is that like stalking?) totally used the naked spa in her book before I could. Pout.
Post first appeared on my now-defunct blog in 2010
Remember back in Read 1000 books about how I don’t like to review books? I don’t. But I love to read, both for pleasure and for learning. And I’ve learned something about writing from every single book I’ve read.
Before I started reading Going Bovine by Libba Bray, I had just read through a friend’s complete novel manuscript and two teen writers’ chapter submissions and received feedback on a few scenes from my novel. The common feedback? No one had any idea what any of the characters looked like. THAT is a problem, I thought. And then I picked up Going Bovine and noticed almost right away Bray’s use of character descriptions and how she sprinkles them, repeatedly, into the story. For example:
Technically, girls aren’t allowed in men’s bathrooms, but since only the losers, present company included, ever use this one, it’s a nonissue. Besides, Rachel’s five ten with six tattoos and seven piercings. Nobody gives her shit.
page 10 Kyle tucks his long, stringy blonde hair behind his ears. page 11 The door bangs open, and a really small dude with a huge ‘fro comes barreling out, pushing up his sleeves. It takes me a minute to realize he’s a dwarf. page 12 She’s [Jenna] standing beside the water fountain with her dance squad, her dark blond hair pulled up into the requisite ponytail and cascading ribbons. page 15 But against the uniform pert tan-blondness that is the dance team, my [Cameron’s] shaggy dark hair, British-musician-on-the-dole pale skin, and six feet of seriously awkward body stand out like a strip of film negatives plopped down on top of their happy group photo. page 16 Eubie’s growing a little soul patch. It looks good with the dreads and the multicolored T-shirt emblazoned with the face of some famous reggae star. page 21
Even though Bray introduces four characters in one chapter (pages 10 – 15), they each have a little something, not a huge description, but a little something that helps readers distinguish them. And that little something is so skillfully done, and so subtly, that we recognize the characters when they appear later in the book, like Rachel and Eubie, either as themselves or morphed into a new character on Cameron’s (the main character) road trip.
Not only does Bray provide individual descriptions unique to her major characters, but she also takes advantage of reader expectations and/or stereotypes to help fill in details for her minor characters: Jenna has dark blond hair, and she’s part of the dance squad. We can deduce she’s good looking, tan (even before Cameron’s description of himself), thin, and maybe even tall, based on our idea of what girls look like when they’re on the dance team. And as a minor character, we can even guess some things about Jenna’s character—again based on our ideas of a high school dancer. Don’t be afraid to use stereotypes to help flesh out minor characters. Don’t RELY on those stereotypes and don’t use them for major characters, or for every minor character, but for a few characters—especially those who really just serve as background decoration—it’s quite useful. And remember to “sprinkle” in your characters’ descriptions, as Bray does, in bits and pieces continually throughout your story to remind readers what they look like and how they act. Have Eubie rub his soul patch or push his dreads back under a cap (Bray puts him in new band T-shirts for almost each scene), but also have a reason why he does it. Does Eubie rub his soul patch when he’s nervous? Does he push his dreads out of his eyes just so he can see (has it become a habitual gesture)? These repetitions make your characters real to our readers.
Book facts
Post first appeared on my now-defunct blog in August 2010
A few years ago, I finished reading A Single Shard. I loved it so much, I immediately headed over to the author Linda Sue Park’s website and read everything she had to say about writing. This was when my son was still a baby and taking up an inordinate amount of my time. I wanted a quick-and-easy out to spending lots of time writing every day, something I could easily do in between naps and feedings, playtime and errands. Well, there isn’t an easy out, but there was something I could do. Park mentions she “heard an editor say, ‘Read a thousand books of the genre you're interested in. THEN write yours.’ " And she went on to do just that. She read, wrote a book, and sold it on its first submission. She later won the Newbery Medal Award for A Single Shard. Reading widely improves your writing. And the converse is also true: NOT reading will NOT improve your writing. It may even hurt your chances at selling your work. What do you learn when reading someone else’s book? Glad you asked. Reading in your genre When you read books in the genre you plan to write (fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, horror, picture books, middle grade, young adult…), you learn What you like, and therefore, what you want to write. After reading many of Ellen Hopkins’ books, I’ve learned I don’t like books that bleak. I want my books to end in hope. Do you like books with a lot of action? Romance? Shopping? Reading widely will help you hone in on your own interests. What’s become cliché. Diana Wynne Jones wrote The Tough Guide to Fantasyland exposing many of the clichés in fantasy novels (my favorite: “horses can be used just like bicycles”), but as no one (I know of) has done the same for every genre available, you’ll just have to read to ensure your plot, characters, and conflict contain some spark of originality that will appeal to tired readers. How to handle description. Some genres (fantasy, science fiction, and literary fiction come to mind) love sweeping passages of description. Others, especially YA, don’t. As you read in your genre, you internalize how much is too much and when and where to place setting details. How point of view (POV), word choice, verb tense, and other language decisions affect the tone of your story. First person present tense can create a close—sometimes claustrophobic—tone, but it’s also common for young adult novels. You also internalize certain…not rules, but guidelines, for your genre. By reading widely within your genre of choice, you learn whether sex, drugs, cursing are "allowable." You internalize plot pacing commonalities—how much tension do you need to create? How often do you need to break the tension with some sort of relief? How long can the story continue after the ultimate denouement? Reading outside your genre Don’t limit yourself. Read widely. If you plan to write YA, make sure you read nonfiction, mysteries, fantasy, picture books. Everything. By reading outside your genre, you learn Storytelling techniques that you can apply to your novel to give it a new spin that may sift it to the stop of an editor’s slush pile. How to combine nonfiction elements into your fiction work and how to write your nonfiction work using fiction techniques to make your writing lift off the page and capture a reader’s interest. New vocabulary used in perhaps new ways. (I love reading Barbara Hambly and Neal Stephenson just for that reason. She taught me chiaroscuro; he taught me gallimaufry. I’m hoping to use those words someday in a work of my own…) Learning from books I have a hard time writing actual book reviews. I know how hard it is to write a novel, start to finish, to revise it over and over and over again, to tentatively show it to someone, hoping for good feedback but likely getting notes for yet more revisions. If a book has been published, SOMEONE saw enough value in it to purchase it, put it through even more editing revisions, publicize it, and sell it. So, I won’t be writing any book reviews here. Instead, I’ll share what I’m reading and what I’ve learned from it. Read 1000 books. Then write one. This post first appeared on my previous blog in August 2010.
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