http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
Sincerity
by J.T. Ellison
With all the publishing news this week – Random reorganizing, the layoffs at S&S, Houghton and Thomas Nelson, Penguin and Harper instituting a pay freeze, Macmillian's uncertainty, and who knows what else looming in the coming days, it's hard to be cheerful. Friends and loved ones are suddenly out of work, faced with unbelievable economic challenges on the heels of a major recession. It seems this holiday season is going to be one of the hardest we've faced in many years.
This is always a difficult time of year for me anyway. I'm not sure when the candy cane fun of my youthful holidays became a drudging chore to me. Thanksgiving hits and my holiday-induced schizophrenia kicks in. Carols – good. Shopping – bad. Cards to friends and family – good. Decorating – bad (the cat loves to eat the tree and spends the month ill. We haven't figured out a way around that yet, so the decorations don't go up until the last minute.) Giving gifts – good. Budgeting for gifts – bad. I flip and flop my way through December, half the time giddy and foolish, the other half staring mournfully out the window, wishing it were January.
For the past two years I've also been on production deadlines during December, so I need to stay focused and tapped into my creativity. Malls and addressing oodles of cards kind of yanks me out of the mindset I need.
I've blamed it on all sorts of things in the past – the fact that all the good holiday shows suddenly stop running anywhere near Christmas and are relegated to awkward times and zero advertising; the fact that my family is in a another state and I can't see them until right at the holiday; the fact that I live in a state with no appreciable snowfall. Yes, I still equate SNOW with CHRISTMAS.
But the truth of the matter is I wish I was still a child, without the concerns that adults face.
One of the most important lessons that I took from my childhood was about lying. Lying is bad. Pinocchio lied and look what happened to him. I distinctly remember telling some sort of untruth and Daddy sitting me down with Pinocchio, making me watch it and explaining the metaphor to me. I got it. I've never been a very good liar. Don't get me wrong, I can spin a tale with the best of them. But looking someone in the eye and telling them an untruth – that's not my forte.
But on paper? On paper, I can fool anyone.
So today, to lift all of our spirits, I thought we should play a game. It's the brainchild of Arthur Phillips, the opening of his novel Prague, and I've stolen the idea directly from the utterly charming Tasha Alexander, who of course would be the first person to think to bring this to the blogosphere.
The game is called Sincerity. Here's how it works.
- Each player makes four statements, none of which can be verifiable facts.
- One must be true, the other three, lies.
- Everyone else tries to guess which statements are true.
- Finally, each player reveals what he said that was sincere.
Score as follows:
+One point for each of your lies that was accepted.
+One point for each correct identification of a true statement.
So tell your biggest whoppers, and be sure to include one truth. And take a guess at your fellow commenters' true and false statements. Toward the end of the day, come back to the blog and reveal your truths. I'll keep score, and the person who win will receive a signed copy of my new novel, JUDAS KISS, that won't be in stores until the end of December.
I'll go first.
1. I was once held and frisked by the Secret Service for hitting the Vice President of the United States.
2. My first pet, a Siamese cat named Jezebelle, lived to be 23 years old.
3. On my honeymoon, a maid stole my diamond earrings from the bedside table, and we had to bring in the Bahamian authorities to have her arrested.
4. I ate escargot for the first time in Paris when I was 18.
Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone who is suffering this holiday season. I hope there is joy in your life again soon.
Wine of the Week: Since we're being all dignified this week, how about a nice glass of port. Fonseca Vintage Porto
PS: NaNoWriMo is over, and though I didn't succeed in hitting 50,000 words this month, I have a promise to keep. If you made it, send me an email at jtellison at jtellison dot com, and I'll do a drawing next Friday to see whose opening pages get a free critique.
PPS: I've added a link in the Round Up to BUY MORE BOOKS, an effort by fabulous new author Karen Dionne to encourage the continuing message that buying books during the holidays is crucial to our longevity. Check it out here, and add your latest buys to the list!
Building a Story in Snapshots
Canon commercial telling a story in a series of snapshots
Dedication
The dedication in my next book SHADOW OF BETRAYAL coming out
in July will read thusly:
To William Relling Jr.
Mentor. Friend.
Missed
Some of you may have read one of Bill’s books. His first was
a novel called BRUJO…a horror novel that involved the spirit of a Native
American medicine man on the island of Catalina. His next was also in the
horror genre. SILENT MOON. After that he mainly switched to crime fiction. He
had a short lived series featuring former Treasury agent Jack Donne who takes
up life as an owner of a vineyard and winery. There were only two books in the
series: A DEADLY VINTAGE and SWEET POISON. And then about a year before he
died, his last book, THE CRIMINALIST, came out.
I met Bill in the fall of 1992. I figured it was about time
for me to get serious about my career as a writer, and to admit I needed help,
or at least a kick in the butt. So I signed up for a beginning novel writing
class through UCLA Extension. Bill turned out to be my teacher. I remember that
it was 1992 because we had classes on Tuesday, and one of our classes happened
to be on election night when Bill
Clinton defeated Bush senior. (Not a political statement, just something I
remember.) It was a great class, and Bill gave me a lot of encouragement. In
fact, after the course was over, he called me up and invited me to join a
writing group he was forming. I jumped at the chance.
Now the group was not exactly typical. It was set up where
Bill was in charge. Each week we would all ready whatever anyone submitted the
previous week, then we’d give our thoughts. The last to give thoughts would be
Bill. He was the authority. But not only would he tell us what he thought, he
would also do a heavy line edit on everything that was submitted. It was pretty
shocking at first. Sentences cut. Words X’d out, paragraphs moved around. But
after you got past that first couple of times, you realized that most of his
suggestions were actually spot on. He was just damn good at making our mediocre
stories great. I also have to say that I have never had anyone do an edit on my
manuscript like he used to do, which I’ve decided to take to mean I’m doing a
much better job on things on my end.
In that time, Bill became first my teacher, then my mentor.
I trusted him, I turned to him with questions about my work that previously I
would have been afraid to ask anyone because I would not want to get hurt by
their response, and I learned in the end to trust myself, too.
His straightforward, no bullshit style help to also toughen
my skin, and allow me not to be phased by the dozens of rejections I would
later be receiving. He believed in my work and knew one day I’d break through.
The others in the group I’m sure felt the same way. Several
have also gone on to get published. Besides Bill and myself, our weekly meeting
included Nathan Walpow, Richard Jordan, and Marc Paoletti, along with several
other talent writers. It was a great group. One I was very proud to be a part
of.
After a couple of years, staying in the group and juggling
the rest of my life had become too much. I had to bow out. My writing output
also ebbed during this time. But when I finally was ready to jump back in about
7 years ago, Bill told me he’d started another group and I was more than
welcome to join. I readily accepted the offer. It was in that group that I
wrote the original version of the book which would become THE CLEANER.
I’ve talked about Bill before, so several of you already
know he didn’t live to see me get my first contract. Close, so very close. In
fact, and I’ve never told this part before, in many ways it was because he had
passed away that I got my contract. At his memorial service I reconnected with
someone who, later, put me in touch with the folks who eventually bought my
book. I still get a little bit of a chill thinking about that. And I wouldn’t
be surprised if Bill’s spirit had been hovering beside us as the offer for an
introduction was made.
Bill was my mentor, and I know without any question that if
it wasn’t for his help in improving my craft, and preparing me for the world of
publishing (he proofed my query letters, and even wrote a recommendation letter
for me himself) I wouldn’t be where I am today. I still remember his smile and
his too loud laugh and his pointed remarks when I tried to get away with
something in a story.
The quote he used to love to repeat to us…Never let the
truth get in the way of your story. I still repeat it to myself today, along
with about another two dozen Billisms.
Mentors are a powerful, powerful thing. You don’t always
know when you are going to get one, and they aren’t always easy to find, but
when you do find one, a good one, learn all you can from them, then go out make
them proud.
Do you have a mentor? How have they helped you?
The Hazards of the Profession
I have a friend who has spent much of his adult life working as a production assistant, then as a producer of television commercials.
Now, this is a guy who loved movies. Lived for them. He and I would spend hours and hours talking about our favorite movies and writers and directors and actors.
But after several years of working behind the scenes, he told me, "I have a hard time watching movies anymore. All I see is the hellish work that went into them. I see the grips, the PAs, people shoving lights around, bad tempers, asshole directors, whiny actors — I see it all. It can be the simplest scene in the world and I know exactly what's going on behind the camera, and it kills it for me."
And I felt sorry for him. I've been on a few movie sets in my time, but those have mostly been magical experiences and haven't had any impact on my viewing pleasure at all. In fact, in one experience I had been struck by how hammy the acting seemed while I was on set. But later, when I viewed the actual movie, the acting was superb. So any negative aspects of the experience were immediately washed away.
Unfortunately, I'm starting to understand where my friend was coming from. But not with movies.
With fiction. Novels, in particular.
Before I started writing novels, I carried one (or two or three) wherever I went. If I had to walk to work, I'd read along the way. If I was waiting in the doctor's office, I was reading the latest installment of my favorite series character. If my wife was shopping at Ross or wherever, I was in the car reading a book.
I read good books and bad books. And even though I'd spent many years on and off as a screenwriter (which oddly enough had never had an effect on my movie viewing), I'd always looked at books as an escape and read them, for the most part, uncritically.
But now that I spend a lot of my time in the trenches, pumping out thousands of words (if I'm lucky) a week, I find that it's almost impossible for me to read fiction.
See if this sounds familiar to you:
You've settled down with a new book by one of your favorite authors, or maybe by a new author that you've been hearing good things about. You go to chapter one and you start to read.
Then BAM. You get past the first paragraph, you're saying to the author, "Jeez, why did you choose to open it this way? Wouldn't it have been better if you'd started with the last line of the paragraph? That would have given the opening more urgency and really hooked the reader."
If it doesn't happen there, it might happen later. You notice that a character is behaving a certain way and you say to the author, "Dude, that's so out of character. The guy wouldn't react that way. And the fix is so easy. You could have had him say…. "
Maybe this doesn't happen to you, but it happens to me, ALL THE TIME. I'm constantly trying to "improve" the writer's work. And this isn't because I think I'm the God of all writers (although I'll happily accept any nominations), but simply because I WOULD HAVE DONE IT DIFFERENTLY.
In other words, I am incapable of blocking out my profession. Because my job is stringing words and sentences together in order to entertain, it is impossible for me to read someone else's fiction (or even my own) without seeing all of its warts and wanting to fix them.
Which effectively kills the reading experience for me.
And the only time I'm able to get past this is when the book is just so damn good, so damn involving, so expertly crafted that I forget where I am and just disappear into the author's world.
But such books are sometimes hard to come by. For me, at least. Nowadays.
It seems it was much easier to find great books when I wasn't a "pro" (and I use the term VERY loosely) at this game. When I wasn't so concerned with craft and only wanted to be whisked away.
I guess such are the hazards of reading for those in the business. Or am I alone here?
Tell me what you think.
Do you dare risk a sabbatical?
by Tess Gerritsen
For the past six months, I've been doing something that conventional publishing wisdom says could cause my career to crash. I've avoided any and all work on my next book. Which is not to say that I've stopped writing entirely. I've contributed a chapter for a serial novel. I've also written a piece for International Thriller Writers' upcoming anthology. I've been blogging, both here and on my own site. I also went on a very long book tour. But as for working on my next novel, the work that actually pays the bills?
I haven't produced a single word.
What this means is that next year, I won't have a new hardcover on the stands. There'll be the paperback release of THE KEEPSAKE, but without a new hardcover, there'll be no book tour and none of the promotional hullaballoo that comes with having a new title on the stands. If you ask most publishing professionals, this gap in my annual release schedule is a Very Bad Thing for an author's career. They'll tell you: "If you go away for more than a year, readers will forget you exist. They'll move on to another author, and you'll never get them back. You must not let a year go by without a new book. Better yet, write two books — no, four books — a year! And while you're at it, make them all masterpieces!"
I've tried to follow that advice. Over the past twenty-one years, I've produced twenty-one books (counting my romances.) I'm not fast enough to turn out more than a book a year, but with the exception of the year 2000, I've managed to stick to an annual release schedule. And yes, I've watched my readership build and my "real estate" grow in bookstores, as my titles took up more and more shelf space.
But as the years went by, my promotional travel took more and more weeks away from my writing. I wasn't just touring in the U.S.; I was promoting my titles abroad as well. I love touring, but meeting my deadlines became a stomach-churning ordeal. I began turning in my manuscripts closer and closer to their on-sale dates, which meant that the books had to be "crashed" into publication, leaving little time for reviews or advance word of mouth. My biggest pleasure is travel, but even when I managed to carve out a few weeks for a vacation trip, I'd spend it fretting over my next deadline. My whole existence, from the moment I woke up till the moment I dropped to sleep, was dominated by the publishing cycle.
Then my dad died. And my mom, living alone in California, started going blind. As I scrambled to finish writing THE KEEPSAKE, I was fielding ever-more-urgent calls from her to take care of things!
That's when I called a halt to the madness. I needed to step off the publishing treadmill — not just for my family, but also for my own well-being. I turned in my manuscript, cleared off my desk, and let my agent know that I wanted to take a sabbatical. I didn't want to even talk about a new contract. I could take the time off, couldn't I? I could write a book at my leisure, and sell it only after it was completed, couldn't I? It would mean no more contracted deadlines, just the old pleasure of storytelling at my own pace. Maybe the next book would take eighteen months. Maybe it'd take a leisurely two or even three years. With all that extra time, I could write a bigger, fatter novel. University professors are allowed sabbaticals every seven years, and here I'd gone for twenty-one years without one. Why not insist on time off? How bad could it be for my career?
That, it turns out, is an unanswerable question. No doubt there are writers who dropped out of the publishing cycle for a few years who never came back. But there's also Sue Grafton, who took a year off from her mystery series, and came roaring back onto the bestseller lists when she resumed writing. There's Diana Gabaldon, whose sprawling stories take more than a year to write, and whose readership only seems to grow with each new installment. Ken Follett turns out books every few years. So did Michael Crichton. I have my own example to point to. After my book GRAVITY came out in 1999, it took another two years before my next book, THE SURGEON, was released. And my sales for THE SURGEON far exceeded my sales for GRAVITY. Clearly, taking a year off does not always mean your sales will suffer.
It may also be the best thing an exhausted writer can do for her career. It gives her the chance to rest and get back her writing mojo. It gives her the time to pursue the interests and passions she's put off for far too long. It allows her to refill the creative well with all the quirky facts and anecdotes that will end up enriching future stories.
After six months of not writing, I'm already feeling the benefits of that time away. I didn't spend it lolling around the house. I used it to do what needed to be done. I packed up my mom's belongings and moved her out of her California home, to Maine. I've found a place for her in a retirement home three miles away from me. I've gotten her financial affairs in order, connected her with numerous medical specialists, and driven her to countless medical appointments. In short, I've "taken care of things," and both she and I are now sleeping easier at night.
I've also indulged in the interests that I put off for far too long. I started learning how to read hieroglyphs, and took the trip to Egypt that I'd been dreaming about. I caught up on my back issues of Biblical Archaeology and National Geographic. I walked three miles in the state park every day.
I bought four new pairs of shoes.
Now the old creative juices are flowing again, and the next Rizzoli and Isles story is already materializing in my head. In preparation, I've placed a box of new pens and a stack of blank paper on my desk. I'm actually looking forward to writing this book, and I'm ready to jump back into the publishing cycle.
The wonderful part is this: my publisher understands. After I finished THE KEEPSAKE, I didn't even want to talk about renewing my contract. I wasn't trying to be coy; I was just too exhausted to think about future deadlines. Once it became clear to them that what I really wanted was nothing more than a six-month break, we could start talking about a deal.
I've just signed a new three-book contract. The first manuscript isn't due until December '09.
A six-month sabbatical was exactly what I needed at this point in my life. Will a year without a new release hurt my sales? I don't know. But speaking as a reader, I don't see why it should. When I find an author I love, I'm patient enough to wait two or three years for her next book. A wait of more than five years, though, may well cool my ardor. That's enough of a delay to make me forget what made her last book, and her characters, so compelling. I believe that a five-year gap is indeed a career killer.
But two years? I don't think so, especially if the next book is well worth the wait. You'll lose far more readers if you keep turning out book after book, right on schedule, in a series that grows ever more stale and mediocre.
I'm curious to hear what other readers think. How many years are you willing to wait for an author's next book? At what point do you lose interest in a continuing character?
And for the writers: how close are you to exhaustion? How would your publisher — and your agent — react if you wanted to take a sabbatical?
Pas de Deux: The reader and the written word
by Pari
Page 1: She steps into the room. Orange-gold light from dozens of candles paint a mosaic on her slender face. She flicks a strand of hair from her forehead. He notices the impatient motion. In the moment their eyes meet they forget every other love, every other joy, they've ever experienced.
Page 70: He slaps her. The sound of his hand against her flesh silences the birds and makes the squirrels run for cover. She laughs at the sting of his touch. The baby isn't his anyway.
Page 153: The bump on the back of her head oozes blood and a strange clear liquid that shines in the illuminated circle of a lonely street lamp. She wanders the rough pavement on an old sidewalk in an unfamiliar town. The policeman spots her crouched in a doorway, shivering in only a long tee-shirt and one woolen sock.
Page 226: "No! You can't have him!" She hurls herself at the elderly woman.
Page 332: Still wearing their soccer uniforms, two teens take a detour through a shorn wheat field. There's an odd lump in the flat landscape. By the time they're close enough to figure it out, both will be scarred by the vision of that one hand emerging from the coffee brown soil — the gray fingers curled around a mangled photograph.
Amid the wonderful posts of the last few weeks, the exhortations to buy books for holiday gifts, I've felt that something wasn't quite being addressed.
It's taken me time to figure it out and I hope I can express it well here . . .
Books are essential because of the dance between author and reader, between reader and the written word. It's one of the most crucial pas de deux in the human repertoire.
For years, I've heard how books (and other forms of writing) make people work, that they're effortful. We're urged to simplify, to dumb down our prose, to apologize for the old technology of print or text-heavy passages without graphics.
We writers, booksellers, publishers, reviewers, scholars, have missed a fundamental truth about this medium — especially as it compares to others.
Even though the cultures of industralized societies are trending toward the flashy whizbang of electronic media, I think that it will be books that save and nurture human imagination.
The problem with all the new media: from movies to television, from video games to virtual worlds, is that we let other people imagine for us. While some of these works are interactive, astounding, mind-blowing, they're still passive in that we're seeing or playing by others' rules.
It's like taking our food intravenously rather than tasting it.
But the written word is different because it forces us to own it, to make it ours, to make it personal. In the quiet of our own minds, we dance and create because of what we read.
I suspect that's why Brennan #2 was disappointed with the movie TWILIGHT; she'd built her own images already and they didn't match those of the director.
That's why I wrote the sketchy story at the beginning of this post. I wanted to prove how much we all fill in the blanks, how active we become with the written word. And yet, no one reading those paragraphs will see the two women and man in the same way. Each reader will make dozens of different assumptions about them, about the whys and hows of their lives. Without realizing it, every one who takes the time to ponder the story will have created scenes and explanations far beyond those few hundred words.
So, yeah, books make us work. And guess what? Without exercise, our minds and imaginations atrophy.
I believe that books are the primary prophylactics against creative pudginess. They prevent us — all of us who read, anyway – from becoming lock-step thinkers, monochromatic mentalists.
To me, that's the reason to buy books, to make them presents. By doing so, we're giving the gift of imagination.
Imagination is the heartbeat of change.
Without it, no innovation is possible.
Books save the world.
Discussion:
1. Am I making any sense here? Do we not talk about books and imagination because the link is so obvious?
2. What did you picture in that story?
Twilight Craze
Brennan #2, my seventh grade daughter, is a prolific reader. She's always been a good reader, but when she was eight-and-a-half, I gave her the first three SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS books for Christmas. She loved them. Why? Because "bad things happened." After pushing her, I finally understood what she meant. There wasn't a happy ending, per se–she couldn't predict how the story was going to go.
When you're young, every ending is a happy ending. Fairy tales end with the prince and princess riding off in the sunset, and your parents assure you that even though Nemo was flushed down the sink in the dentists office, he's going to be okay.
So for her ninth birthday I gave her the rest of the series, except the last two that hadn't come out at the time. She read them that summer. And thus began Brennan #2's lust for reading.
I buy a lot of books I intend to read, but never do. Two of them were A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY by Libba Bray and TWILIGHT by Stephanie Meyer.
I gave both books to Brennan #1. Okay, this was a mistake. I know that my oldest daughter, the serious athlete and social butterfly, doesn't care much for reading. Oh, when she finds something that grabs her, she'll sit down and read it straight through–she loved Gena Showalter's Teenage Alien Huntress series (Gena's coming out with another YA series from HQN in 09/10) and she devoured R.L. Stine's "Fear Street" series.
(Aside: I met R.L. Stine at Thrillerfest this past July and, being pushy, I introduced myself and told him my daughter–who is not a big reader–loved his Fear Street series. He blinked, astonished. Told me he wrote those so long ago he was surprised they were still for sale. Thought about it and nodded. "Right. I had teenagers then. That's why I killed a lot of them in those books.")
But Brennan #1 wants action–on the first page. If you don't grab her immediately, she's gone, grabbing her constantly vibrating cell phone to make sure she doesn't miss anything. This is very much like her personality–as an athlete, she thrives in action–she wants to be on the court, anticipating, jumping, working for the point. She plays volleyball and basketball and even though she's not the tallest on either team, she is one of the strongest players because she's dedicated and involved.
Brennan #2 has that same dedication and involvement with her books. Having read all the books on her shelves, she came across A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY last summer and read it. In three days. It's a meaty book, over 400 pages. So I bought her the next one, REBEL ANGELS, which was 600 pages. She finished it in less than a week. She was practically dying for the third book . . . which came out a few months later and she said that A SWEET FAR THING is her favorite book of all time.
Now, I've never given up on #1. I mean, I'm a reader AND a writer, dammit, I expect all my kids to read. I kept pushing TWILIGHT on her. "All my friends say it's great," I would say. She'd look. "It about vampires. Yuck." This, from the teenager who, along with Brennan #2 and myself, loves the television series SUPERNATURAL. But I couldn't argue with her. To me, vampires are evil. Like . . . SALEM'S LOT by Stephen King. They're the bad guys. It's why I don't read vampire romances or any book where there's a good demon. Remember ANIMAL FARM? I just can't get it out of my head: two legs good, four legs bad. Demons and vampires–bad.
I digress.
So TWILIGHT makes the move, unread, from our old house to our new house. The movie is announced. #2 picks up the book. I ask her if she's going to read it. "No, everyone's already read it, I don't want to be the last person to read it. It's popular. I probably won't like it. I don't want to read it because everyone else is reading it."
But the movie is imminent. She really wants to see the movie. But she wants to read the book first. She goes back and forth. Then two weeks ago, she picks up the book and starts to read it.
She can not put it down.
She's halfway finished and says, "Mom, please, please, please order me the next book because I'm almost done and I have to read it."
So being a good mom, I order her all three. #2 (NEW MOON) and #4 (BREAKING DAWN) come two days later from AMAZON, but #3 (ECLIPSE) is not in the box. It's being shipped separately.
Again, these are meaty books, but Brennan #2 is undaunted. She dives into NEW MOON and read it over the weekend. Then she panics. ECLIPSE has not arrived. She's going through withdrawl. She begs me to take her to Borders so she can buy it. But, I tell her, it's coming from Amazon. She makes me check the status. It's at the routing center. What if they lose it? What if it doesn't come tomorrow? What will she do because she has nothing to read tonight???
When the book came–on Tuesday before Thanksgiving–she sat down and started reading. Finished it on Thanksgiving. She was thrilled, because on Friday we planned to see the movie.
So, I haven't read the books and I was going to the movie because she's my daughter and she was excited. We brought one of her friends–who, like me, hadn't read the book. The friend and I both enjoyed the movie. It's a romance with a twist.
Bella Swan is a 17 year old girl who's never quite felt like she's fit in. She's quiet, down-to-earth, and hates the cold, dark and wet. When her mother remarries, she moves from Phoenix to Washington State to live with her dad, the Chief of Police–another quiet, down-to-earth person. She falls for Edward Cullen, a vampire 100+ years old. In this vampire legend, the vampires are essentially superheroes–they can run faster than a speeding bullet, leap tall trees with a single bound, and some of them can see the future or read people's thoughts. The Cullen's are vegetarians–they only drink animal blood. Not all vampires are so . . . healthy.
* * * MINOR SPOILERS BELOW * * *
But from a story point of view, I enjoyed the conflict. Edward will never grow old. Bella will. It's a soulmate type story–Bella's scent attracts Edward, and she's the only person he can't read their thoughts. He's loyal, protective, and dedicated. He'll defend her to the death, always a nobel trait in a hero. Even better, he's tortured. Women love tortured heroes. Give me Joe Pike any day.
Bella's the consummate heroine, feeling safe and trusting him even when he tells her he doesn't know if he can stop himself from sucking her blood.
Okay, okay, I really have a problem with vampire stories, but seriously, the movie wasn't bad. I could buy into the myth because it was compelling and it was true to itself. Stephanie Meyer created a world with certain rules and those rules were met and in that meeting, there was great conflict. But all I could think about when Edward was staring at Bella was "STALKER! STALKER! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!" While Bella didn't commit any blatantly TSTL moves (until the end when she did the classic TSTL heroine move and agree to meet the bad guy without telling the hero . . . I really hate that) I still felt kind of creeped out by the whole falling in love with a vampire thing.
* * * END MINOR SPOILERS * * *
So the movie is over, and #2's friend and I are thinking it was pretty good (she loved it–it was a teenage romance!; I was thinking, okay, it wasn't a waste of $10.25.) I asked my daughter who had just read and loved
the books.
the books.
She was disappointed. So I pushed. Why? Though I knew–and I had warned her–that movies from well-loved books never (or rarely) met expectations.
So much was left out. She was expecting that, but . . . it left a hole for her. "They talked a lot more," she said. I pointed out that people didn't like to go to the movies just to hear two people talk. (I sure don't.) She understood that, but . . . while they didn't really change the story overall, they moved things around, the secondary characters played less of a role in the movie, and the villains (such as they were–the bad vampires) didn't really show up until near the end of the book. And apparently, someone dies in the movie who doesn't die until book #2, and he didn't die the same way.
She doesn't know if she was glad she saw it. But already, she started reading the last book and wants to finish it tomorrow before she has to go back to school.
It's hard for me to complain. She's read over 2,500 pages in the last two weeks and still managed to get a B on her math test. Even if she has been so quiet we forget she's around.
After she told me her disappointment and the differences (which I had to pull out of her because she was afraid she'd ruin the book for me, so I assured her I had no time to add the books to my towering TBR piles . . . ) I started thinking about books I'd read and whether I had seen the movies . . . or not.
I realized that I shy away from movies if I've loved the book, unless it's something I read ages ago (such as reading I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER as a young teen and watching it as an adult.) It came down to THE SHINING with Jack Nicholson. I was pissed off at the ending of that movie. As a die hard Stephen King fan, I'd read the book and expected the story to go the same way. I understand that books are more detailed, you get more backstory, more STORY itself, but I expect the major points of the story to be the same.
And I HATE it when someone dies in the movie who didn't die in the book . . . and vice versa. And they did that in THE SHINING. Up until Act Three (see Alex? I can talk story structure too! Ha!) I could accept the minor story changes. But they tossed the book in Act Three leaving me angry and frustrated.
I've seen several movies where I haven't read the book–HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS–or watched the movie THEN read the book–BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES–and enjoyed both. Because the movie is the shell, and the book is the meat. So to see the movie first, you can enrich the story with the book . . . but to read the book, you already have it all, and the movie is a pale imitation, hollow, and generally unsatisfying.
There are some exceptions. MISERY, for example. That was one book . . . and movie . . . where I enjoyed both. And THE PRINCESS BRIDE (though I did NOT like how the movie handle the Zoo of Death.) Another thing I've noticed, since I've read most of Stephen King's short stories, is that the shorter the book or story, the better the movie. Perhaps because there's less story and more room for the screenwriter and director to develop the characters while keeping the story true to the author's vision (THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and 1408 come to mind as being equal to or superior on film than in written form.)
But in general, I just avoid all movies if I've read–and liked–the book. It's safer that way.
Brennan #2 learned that lesson. Books are books. Movies and movies. And it's a rare movie made from a novel that is as satisfying as the original story.
Of course, if anyone in Hollywood wants to option any of my books . . . I'm listening. 😉
So what do you think? Any books-to-movies you loved? Hated? Refuse to see? What about TWILIGHT? Love it or hate it? And in case you didn't notice, books make GREAT gifts. You might turn a child into a life-time reader . . . with just the right book.
Elements of Act Three
Oh, all
right, I guess I can’t avoid this one any longer.
So why
is this so hard?
The
third act so often falls apart or disappoints, don’t you think? We all seem to be somewhat afraid
of it – that is, unless it’s all there in our heads to begin with and we can
just – “speed we to our climax”, as Shakespeare said.
But
even then, a third act is a lot of pressure. So maybe I’ll just make it easier on myself and say
that this is going to be a SERIES of discussions on the third act. (There, I feel better already.)
To
study how to craft a great third act, you have to look specifically at the
endings that work for YOU.
(Back to “The List”.
Have you made yours yet?).
The
essence of a third act is the final showdown between protagonist and
antagonist.
Sometimes
that’s all there is to it – one final battle between the protagonist and
antagonist. In which case
some good revelatory twists are probably required.
(And as
a reminder – the third act is generally the final twenty to thirty minutes in a
film, or the last seventy to 100 pages in a four-hundred page novel. The final quarter. )
By the
end of the second act, pretty much everything has been set up that we need to
know – particularly WHO the antagonist is, which sometimes we haven’t known, or
have been wrong about, until that is revealed at the second act climax. Of course, sometimes, or
maybe often, there is one final reveal about the antagonist that is saved till
the very end or nearly the end – as in THE USUAL SUSPECTS and THE EMPIRE
STRIKES BACK and PSYCHO.
We also
very often have gotten a sobering or terrifying glimpse of the ultimate nature
of that antagonist – a great example of that kind of “nature of the opponent”
scene is in CHINATOWN, in that scene in which Jake is slapping Evelyn around
and he learns about her father.
There’s
a location aspect to the third act – the final battle will often take place in
a completely different setting than the rest of the film or novel. In fact half of the third act can be,
and often is, just GETTING to the site of the final showdown. One of the most memorable examples of
this in movie history is the “storming the castle” scene in THE WIZARD OF OZ,
where, led by an escaped Toto, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion scale
the cliff, scope out the vast armies of the witch (“Yo Ee O”) and tussle with
three stragglers to steal their uniforms and march in through the drawbridge of
the castle with the rest of the army. A sequence like this, and the similar ones in STAR
WARS and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, can have a lot of the elements we discussed
about the first half of the first act:
a plan, assembling the team, assembling tools and disguises, training or
rehearsal.
And of
course speed is often a factor – there’s a ticking clock, so our hero/ine has
to race to get there in time to – save the innocent victim from the killer,
save his or her kidnapped child from the kidnapper, stop the loved one from
getting on that plane to Bermuda…
NO. DO NOT WRITE THAT LAST ONE.
Most
clichéd ending EVER.
Throw in the hero/ine getting stuck in a cab in Manhattan rush hour
traffic and you really are risking audiences vomiting in the aisles, or
readers, beside their chairs.
It almost destroyed my pleasure in one of the best movies I’ve seen this
year – totally took me out of what had been up until that moment a perfect
film.
But
when you think about it, the first two examples are equally clichéd. Sometimes there’s a fine line
between clichéd and archetypal.
You have to find how to elevate – or deepen – the clichéd to something
archetypal.
For
example, one of the most common third act structural patterns involves
infiltrating the antagonist’s hideout, or castle, or lair, and confronting the
antagonist on his or her own turf.
Think of THE WIZARD OF OZ, STAR WARS, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS – the witch’s
castle, the Imperial Starship, Buffalo Bill’s house, the sewers in IT, Las Vegas in THE STAND…
Notice
that this pattern naturally divides itself into two separate and self-contained
sequences: getting in, and the
confrontation itself.
Also
putting the final showdown on the villain’s turf means the villain has
home-court advantage. The hero/ine
has the extra burden of being a fish out of water on unfamiliar ground (mixing
a metaphor to make it painfully clear).
SILENCE
OF THE LAMBS is a perfect example of elevating the cliché into archetype. It takes place in the basement,
as in PSYCHO, and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. Therapists talk about “basement issues” – which are your
worst fears and traumas from childhood – the stuff no one wants to look at, but
which we have to look at, and clean out, to be whole.
But
Thomas Harris, in the book, and the filmmakers, bringing it to life in the
movie, create a basement that is so rich in horrific and revelatory and mythic
(really fairy tale) imagery that we never feel that we’ve seen that scene
before. In fact I see new
resonances in the set design every time I watch that film… like Gumb having a
wall of news clippings just exactly like the one in Crawford’s office. That’s a technique that Harris
uses that can elevate the clichéd to the archetypal: LAYERING meaning.
NIGHTMARE
ON ELM STREET takes that clichéd spooky basement scene and gives it a whole new
level, literally: the heroine is
dreaming that she is following a sound down into the basement and then there’s
a door that leads to ANOTHER basement under the basement. And if you think bad things
happen in the basement, what’s going to happen in a sub-basement.
To
switch genres completely for a moment, an archetypal final setting for a
romantic comedy is an actual wedding. We’ve seen this scene so often you’d think there’s
nothing new you can do with it.
But of course a story about love and relationships is likely to end at a
wedding.
So
again, make your list and look at what great romantic comedies have done to elevate
the cliché.
One of
my favorite romantic comedies of all time, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, uses a
classic technique to keep that wedding sequence sparkling: every single one of
that large ensemble of characters has her or his own wickedly delightful resolution. Everyone has their moment to
shine, and insanely precocious little sister Dinah pretty nearly steals the
show (even from Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, and Cary Grant!!) with her
last line: “I did it. I did it ALL.”
(This
is a good lesson for any ensemble story, no matter what genre – all the
characters should constantly be competing for the spotlight, just in any good
theater troupe. Make your
characters divas and scene stealers and let them top each other.)
Now,
you see a completely different kind of final battle in IT’S A WONDERFUL
LIFE. This is not the classic,
“hero confronts villain on villain’s home turf” third act.
In fact, Potter is nowhere around in the final confrontation, is
he? There’s no showdown,
even though we desperately want one.
But the
point of that story is that George Bailey has been fighting Potter all
along. There is no big
glorious heroic showdown to be had, here – because it’s all the little grueling
day to day, crazymaking battles that George has had with Potter all his life
that have made the difference. And
the genius of that film is that it shows in vivid and disturbing detail what
would have happened if George had NOT had that whole lifetime of battles, against
Potter and for the town. So
in the end George makes the choice to live to fight another day, and is
rewarded with the joy of seeing his town restored.
This is
the best example I know of, ever, of a final battle that is thematic – and yet
the impact is emotional and visceral – it’s not an intellectual treatise – you
LIVE that ending along with George, but also come away with the sense of what
true heroism is.
And so
again – in case you haven’t gotten the message yet – when you sit down to craft
your own third act, try looking at the great third acts of movies and books
that are similar to your own story, and see what those authors and filmmakers
did to bring out the thematic depth AND emotional impact of their stories.
I'm going to stop now, because there's something else I want to post about today.
So – if there's anyone out there who isn't shopping, today – what are some of your favorite third acts? What makes it real for you – the location, the thematic elements, the battle itself?
More
next time – and here’s more about What
Makes a Great Climax?
Previous articles on story
structure:
Story
Structure 101 – The Index Card Method
Fairy
Tale Structure and the List
—————————————————————–
Forget shopping. Do something purely great for yourself and anyone you love, instead – go see this film.
You'll be knocked over – repeatedly – and then lifted to undreamed of heights – by the story, the filmmaking, the sheer magic of it.
But more than that, this is the most perfect example of perfect structure I've seen in a long, long time. The structure of this story is THE way to tell this story.
It's based on the novel Q and A, by Indian diplomat and novelist Vikas Swarup, which I'll be reading immediately, and I want to talk about both the novel and the film as part of this structure series, but I don't want to spoil one moment of the experience of watching and reading by telling you anything more.
I will warn that the first 20 minutes or so are so harsh I wasn't sure I was going to be able to take it, but once you grasp where it's going, you completely commit to the ride.
Just GO.
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
Based on the novel Q and A by Vikas Swarup
Adapted by Simon Beaufoy
Directed by Danny Boyle
I Am So Thankful…
by JT Ellison
Happy Day after Thanksgiving! Are you stuffed? Tired of the relatives? Enjoying the football, or the movies? Well, good. I hope you had a nice day, regardless of how you celebrated. And obviously, since our non-American guests didn't have the pleasure of our most secular holiday, here's wishing you a fruitful year full of joy and happiness too.
I had a strange experience this past weekend. It's making me rethink how I do some things with my writing, namely how I build some of my characters. Specifically, how I create a victim.
I've talked before about creating characters.I have rules, very stringent rules. No character is allowed to exist without a purpose, a reason. Each character MUST drive the story forward, whether they are the waitress at a diner or the Chief of Police or my protagonist. Tertiary characters can be a lot of fun. They can also be heartbreaking.
Early on in my writing career, I read an interview with John Connolly where he described his view of the victims in his novels, based on how a reporter he knew dealt with a real prostitute who'd been killed in Dublin. She was treated as the most basic chattel, just an anonymous, nameless person. She'd been depersonalized by the reporter, treated as if she were nothing. John wanted to be sure none of his fictional victims were ever treated like that.
When I read that, I realized I felt the same way. I'm a crime novelist. Operative word is crime, which means a victim of some sort. I've written books with serial killers, and books where there is a single murder. Creating a believable villain is only one component to the crime novel. Creating a sympathetic victim is a completely different challenge.
Paramount to everything I do when writing a book is how I treat my victims. It's constantly in the back of my head. I do a lot of fictional killing, and the victims are most commonly women. It's a very tricky matter to work through this. It's difficult for me emotionally, because I am a woman, and I'm delving into some of my worst fears, and as such it's quite personal. I strive not to victimize my victims, though bad things are happening to them. I definitely try to breathe life into them, to make sure they're never treated as just another dead body.
To do this, I usually start with a name, and a face in my head. Then I troll through some of my local magazines to see if I can find a visual, a picture of someone who might fit the bill, so to speak. When I find a match, I cut out the picture and create a biographical sheet, a thorough victimology. The information builds throughout the creation of the story. Whether the victim is on one page or fifty, I want to be sure that they are respected and understood. That they will be missed.
Which brings me to my bizarre weekend. I've just finished creating a huge numbers of characters to fit into my new book, THE IMMORTALS. I needed a killer, and victims, and parents and family of victims. I have pages of pasted pictures and bios. Remember, I use local magazines for my pictures, because these books are about Nashville, and it fits that I would have people who LOOK like the Nashville I know.
Randy and I were out to dinner, and after we'd been seated I started looking around – the occupational hazard of dining out with a writer – at our fellow diners. Over Randy's shoulder, I saw a familiar face. I was having a hard time placing this woman, and then it hit me. In all the time I've been writing in Nashville and creating these very Nashvillian characters, I've never ran into one that I've included in my story. Well, sitting no more than five feet from me were the parents of one of my characters.
I felt the strangest feeling of dread. Though they didn't know it, I was using them as an inspiration. It's not their real son who is a part of my novel, but it is their fictional child. Cue creepy chills. They finished their dinner and stood to leave, and started a conversation with the people behind them. And what are the odds… they too were parents in my book. Now I'm feeling a little freaked out. Weird coincidence, without a doubt. But something that was bound to happen – though I always assumed I'd be running into a victim instead of the victim's parents.
The next morning we were out to breakfast, and damn if it didn't happen again. This time it was the victim's sister, sitting at the table next to us. Chatting it up with her family, goofing off with her boyfriend. With no clue that in my own weird little way, I was attached to her.
I wasn't brushing up against the dead, which has always been my fear. I was stumbling into the walking wounded, the ones left behind.
I've always spent so much time worrying about my victim, and hadn't really comprehended until that moment what I was doing to their family. I have dealt with the family dynamic – heck, JUDAS KISS is all about that – but since I've never been that close to anyone who has been touched by tragedy, I've never seen inside that world. I've only imagined it. I couldn't help but think about what she'd look like if she were crying, if she'd just found her brother dead in his bedroom. Not smiling, a dead look in her bright, happy eyes. I thought back to the parents the previous evening, and how they'd deal with the news. By coming face to face with the people who will fictionally be there for the aftermath, I was given new insight into what exactly it must be like. And I admit, it was horrifying.
I think we need to be somewhat detached to be able to write about these weighty issues time and again. I wonder now if I've been too detached. I don't know. I just hope I can do my character's stories justice.
So on this day after Thanksgiving, I'm thankful that God gave me the gift to manipulate words to tell a story. I'm also thankful that I've been given the gifts of tolerance and compassion, so I can make sure the victim's story is told. And now, I think I'll have a better grasp on how to help my victim's families deal with the aftermath of losing a loved one.
I'm thankful for all of you too, listening and helping as I work through some of these issues. Thank you.
So what are you thankful for today?
Wine of the Week: It's that time of year!!! 2008 Louis Tete Beaujolais Nouveau