Stories of Old

Unroll your parchment. Dig out your quill pen. Dust off your IBM Selectric. Pick your favorite historical period and write about it for fame, glory, and untold wealth. Children's Writer is sponsoring a contest for a 1500-word historical fiction short story targeted at 13-year-olds. Check out the complete rules at Historical Fiction Writing Contest. Deadline is October 30, 2010, so there's still plenty of time to conjure up the past.

Possibilites in Plausibility

I can't count the number of novels, plays, and movies ruined for me because I'm so picky about plausibility. "Wait, why would he do that?" I ask myself so loudly, it drowns out the story's own dialog. "Why didn't the CIA notice that?" "Where did she get that rope?"

Rarely would I raise this complaint about 007 movies, say, which routinely defy the laws of physics (let alone the probability that a trained marksman will hit his target) in the name of escapist entertainment. That said, the eternal question of "where does the Highlander stash his sword when he rides his motorcycle?" is, over time, wearying.

The problem mainly bothers me in more serious, introspective, or supposedly frightening works, where a deus (or simply a res) ex machina and downright magical luck can sever my connection to the narrative and my belief in the characters. Being picky is a curse, but many curses can be re-conceived as blessings.  My duty, then, is to use my overactive incongruity sensor to improve the details of the plots I write.

Mysteries of Creation

Don't misunderstand: I claim no godlike skill. But I must insist the creation of a plot is a thing of wonder, an inexplicable thing. If I am so amazed at my own meager ability to make a story where there was none before, imagine the electrification felt by a genius at work. No wonder so many of them drink.

This isn't a joke. I am amazed every time I can come up with a story. A topic comes to mind, a setting, a main character, a basic conflict. That, in and of itself, is heartening. But what really astounds me is how, every time I sit down with this story, more details come to me. Plato believed that there was no real learning or experience; it was all recognition from past lives. I have to admit, curmudgeonly skeptic that I am, that I feel like I am remembering stories when I write them. As each layer of detail gets added on, I have the sensation that my memory has simply become clearer.

The Less Thrilling Thriller

In reading my first Frederick Forsyth novel, I cannot quash unfavorable comparisons to John Le Carre. I'm a long-time fan of Le Carre's baroque style, resplendent with detail yet deeply emotional.

Forsyth's research on every subject he touches leaves one breathless, but in the sense of a happy geek, not a satisfied novel-reader. There's a dispassionate nature to the reams of information, often sickeningly graphic yet frigid. I also notice an unusually small amount of dialog. That alone might quantify the difference between these two authors. "Show, don't tell," as they say. I'm outside, watching things happen rather than living them.

Unfashionably Pedantic

Virginia Hamilton probably ran into serious resistance when she began her career in the 1960s, specializing in mid-grade novels about African Americans. In honor of her her courage alone I was excited to read The House of Dies Drear, a paranormal mystery novel featuring ghosts of slaves along the Underground Railroad.

Having read just half that novel (in more than the amount of time it should have taken me to finish it), I am sorely disappointed. It's not the brave subject matter, nor even the story itself or the depth of characterization that's the problem. What's miring my progress has more to do with changing taste in children's writing than with Ms. Hamilton in particular.

Her prose is detached. There is a determination to force great quantities of history upon the reader, with the result that a textbook veneer covers over the storytelling. With every paragraph I get more annoyed at the lifelessness of the writing.

Let this be a lesson to me: the details of one's research must not overshadow the fiction and motion in historical novels, especially for children. The desire to teach must be subsumed under the desire to entertain and even thrill.

Who Am I, Peter Jackson?

There have been a lot of articles in writers' newletters recently on the topic of book trailers. It seems, in these tough and competitive times, that authors are expected to produce short videos promoting their own books, to be shown on YouTube, Amazon, or blogs like this one. I mean scenes acted out by live or animated characters, or at least a voice-over ("In a world...").

Don't bother watching this space for that sort of entertainment, dear reader. The more I read about this, the more inane and rife with nightmares such a project sounds. Besides the obvious production problems of finding affordable professional-level actors, animators, and videographers, there are also myriad legal issues. An essay in the new SCBWI Bulletin mentions how copyrights on music and images might get you into trouble, not to mention the fact that some author's contracts prohibit the use of one's own text for this purpose.

Let me know when book trailers are out of beta phase and maybe I'll test the waters.

Vestigial Inflection

As Middle English morphed into Modern, its Germanic word-endings dropped off like fly wings. No longer did a word show its part of speech. Grammatical inflection became a matter of traditional usage and guessed context, with declension and number no longer in evidence. Even before that, European writing in general had lost the intricacies of Latin grammar, clause buried in clause. These disrupted fragments, even before the advent of commas, worked because the parts of speech were visible on the words, so they could be reconstructed and reconnected like puzzle pieces.

But a few writers of Modern English are historicists, stalwartly harking back to a better and more complicated time in the history of language. Please enjoy parsing this bit of mastery from Anthony Burgess' Enderby Outside, featuring three distinct grammatical roles for a most unlikely noun:

"Then, instead of expensive mouthwash, he had breathed on Hogg-Enderby bafflingly (for no banquet would serve, because of the known redolence of onions, onions) onions."

And cherish with me, friends, the layering of the clauses, not unlike the concentric levels of ... an onion!