The Difference Between MG and YA

As someone who tends to have 14-year-old protagonists talking in her head and has written at least two “upper-MG/tween/lower-YA” manuscripts, I keep coming back to this question, and I’m not alone. Check out agents Erin Murphy and Michael Stearns for wisdom and insight. I’m not going to discuss character age, word choice, writing style, or first versus third person. This post is about story.

Midgrade tends to revolve around a search for home and family. The protagonist moves from being alone to having love and support. Consider Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Bud Not Buddy, The Higher Power of Lucky, Ellie McDoodle: have pen will travel, Moon over Manifest, Star in the Forest, and Waiting for Normal.

Young Adult novels tend to be more genre-focused, however the plot often revolves around the protagonist’s need to strike off into the unknown. To search for the Deathly Hallows, Harry must leave Hogworts. In Dairy Queen, DJ challenges her family’s traditions to go out for football. In Suspect, Jen solves the mystery and resolves her issues about her mother’s disappearance. The Everafter is a paranormal novel, and even though Maddie is dead, she has to rediscover her past then leave it behind.

Feel free to argue with these opinions in the comment section. I’ll continue this discussion later in the week or next week.

Sunday

photo by me

Don Quixote

(my literary ice photo)

The World’s Best Writing Advice

Our niece has to write a 2000-word paper for a college class. Her young son said, "Mummy, you should really get started. That's a lot of words.”

Overheard #136

"Never argue with a crazy person."

Listen and Learn

Recently I started listening to the audiobook version of Playback by Raymond Chandler. My first impression was that the short sentences and choppy writing style would drive me nuts. Then I realized I was getting an excellent lesson in voice. The story is told by Philip Marlow, a hard-boiled private eye, and the short, almost brutal writing style makes his character come alive. I love hearing about Los Angeles in the early 1950s and seeing the other characters through Marlow’s eyes. I find myself listening for turns of phrase that are unique to this particular character. That’s what voice is, the expression of a unique personality.

Guest Photographer Day

Here's TimInMich's Prettiest Ice. I have to agree.



photo by TimInMich

This year I didn't get a startlingly pretty ice photo, so my Sunday entry will be Literary Ice. 

Sunday

This is my Close Up Ice photo.

photo by me

Overheard #135

"Fear is a great motivator."

The Guest Photographer Strikes Again

Welcome back to the Ice Photo Challenge. This week is Close Up Ice. TimInMich's photograph reminds me of lace. The definition on those crystals is amazing. (Stop back on Sunday to see mine.)

photo by TimInMich

When In Doubt, Write the Sequel

(or at least plan it)

I was having trouble fleshing out a character in my WIP. He was irritating and mean but two-dimensional. I added and subtracted dialog for a while, but it didn’t help. Then I started outlining the sequel. (I doubt I’ll ever write it, but I typed up some ideas.) Suddenly my flat character had a past and a future. His actions had motivations. I snuck a few bits into my WIP and so far, it’s working well.

Sunday

Here are my Cropped Ice Photographs. This shrub was planted where the runoff from an awning would hit it. The sun was melting the roof snow, but the air was cold enough that the melt had refrozen on the branches. (I love getting a freezing rain effect without hazardous driving conditions or power outages!) The bush’s interesting shape, didn’t come through in the Before Picture. I prefer the detail seen in the After Picture.

The After Picture


photo by me



The Before Picture


photo by me



Overheard #134

"Be perfect little church mice, temple mice, mosque mice."

This is Brilliant

I intended to post today about developing secondary characters, but instead I'll send you to Darcy Pattison's blog. Her post on Three Types of Character Arcs is wonderful. I found myself analyzing not only my own WIP but also books I've read.

Guest Photographer Wednesday

This week’s category is Cropped Ice Photographs featuring before and after pictures.

Here’s TimInMich's After shot. It reminds me of a topographical map, and I love the color palette.

photo by TimInMich

Here’s the Before picture. You can see more of the "mountains."


photo by TimInMich



My photos will be posted on Sunday.

Begonias

“It’s the shadows that make you notice the light.” - Laura Resau from The Ruby Notebook (Delacorte Press, 2010)

Every year these begonias bloom (inside) during the grayest part of the winter.

Sunday

photo by me

Here is my Weirdest Ice photo. I call it Masquerade. Yes, those little black things are some kind of insect.

Overheard #133

"Reality is a four-dimensional manifold."

Disclaimer: The concepts expressed in the Overheard series do not necessarily reflect the knowledge base of the management. Here’s a link – not that it helps.

The Guest Photographer is Back

Here's TimInMich's Weirdest Ice entry in the Ice Photo Challenge.


photo by TimInMich

He calls it Sunny Side Up. The bubbles are so cool.

Happy Valentine's Day

The big Valentine news around here is I’ve stopped hating my Work In Progress. Oh, I know the whole romance/manuscript metaphor is over-used, but in many ways, it rings true. Usually there is some point in the revision-endless-revision process that I despise my manuscript.

People offer advice. “Take a break,” they say, or “You need some time apart.”

Bah. When it comes to manuscript revision absence makes the fond heart wander. What’s actually needed in that case is a New Idea. Or ten. Anyway, revisions are rolling again. I like my WIP. Perhaps love is too strong a word, but I’m moving in that direction.

Can someone tell me why converting a Power Point image into JPEG results in such poor image quality?

Sunday

Turkeys are difficult to photograph because posing isn't on their agendas. This isn't a perfect picture, but the one on the left is so ruffled. Next week, back to ice.

Overheard #132

"What could go wrong?"

Realistic Settings

Somehow many of my manuscripts are set in California. I grew up there, and when my mom was alive, I visited frequently. Little details that come from actually being in a place are gifts for a writer. How else would I know sound of the morning sprinklers or the colors of the hills as the sun set?

For the past few years, I’ve done little traveling and had to rely on webcams and internet photos, but 2011 seems to be the year of the suitcase. So far, we’ve been invited to four weddings on one coast or the other. (It won’t be possible to attend all of them.) I’ll be going to an SCBWI-MO writing retreat in March, and in September, I may go to Italy.

I plan to bring a camera and a notepad to record as much of these places as possible.

Sunday

photo by me

I chose this as my Best-Lit Ice photo because of the diffraction patterns on the rain gutter. Then again, it might be a contender for Weird Ice ...

Overheard #131

"Where’s the fun in having completely ordinary parents?"

Guest Photographer

Please welcome TimInMich and the first of his beautiful photographs. Here is his entry for Best-Lit Ice in our Ice Photo Challenge.

photo by TimInMich

I love the textures.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Dial Press (2008)

 
 
 
 
Reading this novel is like getting a writing lesson from a kind and generous mentor.
Voice: The novel is written in the form of letters and each character’s voice remains distinct.
Characterization: The authors allow us to read between the lines to discover the personalities of the characters.
Plot: Because the story is told in letters, the back-story leaks out bit by bit.
Warmth: This book demonstrates how to create memorable characters. I became involved in the story because the characters cared for each other in imperfect and totally human ways.

The Ice Photo Challenge

My friend and talented photographer, TimInMich, suggested this antidote to the winter blahs. The rules are simple. Photograph ice and email the pictures to each other. The categories are:

• Prettiest Ice
• Best-Lit Ice
• Cropped Ice (before and after)
• Close-Up Ice
• Manipulated Ice (involves human intervention)
• Weirdest Ice
• Melting Ice*

Tim sent me seven photos within a week of the challenge. So far, I have one photo that might qualify. Ahem.

To add to the fun, I’m posting Tim’s pictures here if and when I take a photo in the same category. Tim’s photos will go up on Wednesdays and mine will be part of my Sunday nature series**. So brew hot cocoa and stay tuned for some chilling photography.

*This was my suggestion (ever the optimist)
** Disclaimer: If I don’t manage to find photos in all the categories before spring, Words and Pixels will host a TimInMich photo expo with all of his remaining pictures.

Overheard #130

"If I’m the computer expert around here, we’re in deep digital doo-doo."

Revision Technique

This idea came from one of my Write Night exercises. It worked well for the other participants, although I’m having a hard time with it. The technique is simple.

1. Print the manuscript or a section of it.
2. Consider how the voice could change to express a personality trait: tougher/gentler, more/less educated, warmer/colder, outgoing/reserved, aggressive/passive, confident/insecure, younger/older etc.
3. Highlight words or phrases that could be strengthened or changed to express the personality trait.
4. Consider what words or phrases that would improve the highlighted sections.
5. Revise.

Step 3 is a problem for me because I continually put down the highlighter, pick up a pen and rewrite, cross out, rewrite again. I shall persevere.

Contest Announcement

Check out this contest. The prize is a free MG or YA fiction manuscript edit from Deborah Halverson. It's a wonderful opportunity, easy to enter, and the winner will be announced soon (Feb. 1).

Sunday

crabapple fusion

spotlight

January

the upside of freezing rain

Overheard #129

"I’m hurryin’, almost scurryin’."

Wise Words

This morning I received some brilliant advice from Lori Van Hoesen.

"Imagine telling your story to the one you'd share any secret with, that intimacy will transmit to the reader and make them care."

This will definitely be a focus for the next draft.

Raising the Stakes

I haven’t posted much lately because I’m revising madly and critiquing a manuscript for a friend I met at a workshop. It’s got me thinking about raising the stakes. Sure it’s important to make the situation worse, to add layers of complication so that a happy ending seems impossible.

But raising the stakes is secondary to creating a character the reader cares about. The protagonist doesn’t need to save the world. He only needs to save his world, and make the reader believe this world is worth saving.

Overheard #128

"You just haven’t found the silver lining yet."

Sunday

I find water interesting. Note the little animal footprints near the top.

Yesterday afternoon I saw some ice sculptures forming above the river, but I was too late to catch the light.

Overheard #127

"Zombies are the unleavened dead."

Civil War Code

The Washington Post ran a fascinating article on a newly deciphered Civil War message. Believe it or not, the Museum of the Confederacy had this message in a bottle since 1896, and it remained unopened, un-deciphered and unread until collections manager Catherine M. Wright decided to investigate. The other thing that amazed me was retired CIA code breaker, David Gaddy and Navy cryptologist Cmdr. John B. Hunter, solved the code by brain, not by computer. It goes to show that spies like to play as much as anybody.

The description of the Vigenere Cipher isn’t completely clear in the article. A Vigenere Cipher is not a simple substitution or Caesar cipher (a frame shift). A Vigenere Cipher is a series of shifts based on a code word or key. This makes decoding the message by frequency analysis much more complicated because the most common letter is not necessarily E. Frequency analysis is how Sherlock Holmes decoded messages in “The Adventure of the Dancing Men.”

I loved finding out about this newly deciphered code. I wish the picture of the message was more legible and that they’d told us what the key was.

Thanks to Debbie Diesen for the link.

Color My World

Jeremy needed some paint for a project, and I told him I could buy it while running some other errands.

Me: What colors do you need?
Jeremy: Rainbow and silver.
Me: Rainbow paint?
Jeremy: Yeah, all the colors in the rainbow plus silver.

Resolutions

1. Add fun.
2. Sooner is better than later.
3. Dance.
4. Make a positive comment about my writing every day.

Sunday

This picture was taken in the early afternoon, although it looks like evening. I’d used the automatic landscape setting, and the camera compensated for the reflected light off ice and snow. To me it speaks of winter in the north woods.

I resized the image using photo editing software that came with the camera. Let me know how it looks on your screen.

Happy New Year!

photo by Z.F. Burton 7-4-08

I wish you health, happiness and many brilliant ideas.

Overheard #126

"I start to worry that it is sustained by wishes and fairy dust rather than plain old logic."

The Thrill is Gone

Revisions are stalled, every word seems trite, and the entire premise seems mediocre. Is it time to give up? Not yet. This is what I’ve been doing to get back in the groove.

Step away from the computer. Every relationship needs a break sometimes.

Have fun with the manuscript. Yesterday I had a writing day with some friends and fellow writers. TimInMich brought a brilliant exercise that involved describing our protagonists from other characters’ points of view. Yes, I’m sick of my main character, but focusing on some of the secondary characters is lifting me out of this rut.

Take a different approach. One member of my writing group is outlining her novel with poetry. Hmm, I wonder if I could come up with a synopsis in Haiku.

Do the creative thing. One of my writing friends gets her best ideas during bubble baths. Another claims that housecleaning inspires her. (Honest) I prefer long walks.

What do you do to makeup with your manuscript?

Ice

Last winter my Sunday nature series was frosted over. Remember picture after picture of ice formations? So far this year, my hunting expeditions have not yielded great photo ops, but while I tromp through the snow, I’ve been thinking about the weather conditions that make the best ice photographs.

1. Moving water – like a river or a fountain. No splashing – no stalactites.
2. Temperatures just below freezing. This year we had a hard freeze right after the first snow, and the Red Cedar River crusted over.
3. Sunshine. Yeah, it’s all about light. Unfortunately in this part of the world, when the temperatures warm up to freezing, the sky is often overcast.*
4. Lower water level. As the water freezes, the river level goes down, leaving ice formations high and dry.

I’ll keep searching.

*To be honest, that sentence should read: Unfortunately in this part of the world, the sky is often overcast.

Joy and Peace

I am thankful for every person who stops by this little corner of the web to read my musings and see my photographs.

Have a wonderful holiday.

Overheard #125

"I wish I could play in your brain for a while."

Sunday

a partridge in a pear tree

afternoon sun slanting through ice

misty crabapples in the background

Overheard #124

"Able was I ere I ate the ebelskivers."

In case you’re hungry for ebelskivers, here are some links for general info, recipes, a cookbook, and an ebleskiver pan plus a video on how to make them.

For purists: Æbleskiver is the Danish spelling, ebelskiver is the plural form and ebelskive is singular. But hey, let’s relax about that.

Why Do You Stop Reading a Book?

Almost every novel I start to read then reject* has the same flaw.

The protagonist doesn’t care about anything or anyone.

The novel may have a killer voice, and a beautifully twisted plot, but if the main character is devoid of passion, I don’t care about the book. Some people argue that the teenage experience is Brownian motion. (Actually, since they were English majors, they used a different term.) I’ve never met a teenager who cared about nothing. It may be buried too deep to see at first, but I have to believe it’s there. Even characters at the pit of depression need a flicker of hope to lead them out. If a protagonist is indifferent to everything, why write a book about him? After all, passion is the bottom line.

Why do you give up on a book?

*The exception to the rule is any book that has a vampire in it. Uh, uh. No way. I won’t read it.

Contest Alert

Check out a cool contest on Debbie Diesen’s blog. It promotes Michigan authors and reading good books. Plus it has a PRIZE.

Sunday

The temperature was hovering around freezing.

Overheard #123

"This week’s assignment requires no ideas whatsoever."

Three Wise Guys

Check out Darcy Pattison’s post today. Her analysis of We Three Kings as a model for telling an effective story is positively brilliant.

Perhaps unfortunately, it got me thinking ...

The well-worn parody of We Three Kings can be viewed as a model for writing humor. So, with apologies in advance for taking the sublime and turning it ridiculous, here I go.

We three kings of Orient are
The setup gives a frame of reference. The audience may not yet realize a joke is about to be told.

Trying to smoke a rubber cigar.
By now it's clear a joke is in progress. Rubber cigars are funny. The rhyme is unexpected and humorous. People often laugh at impropriety.

It was loaded.
The build up.

It exploded.
The payoff.

We three kings of Orient were.
This line is a callback to the setup. The song’s minor key makes it particularly effective.

And that’s it. The joke doesn’t drag on. In comedy, timing is everything.

Shave and a Haircut?

This bear decorates the local barbershop.

Sunday

miniature garland: snowflakes caught on a spider web.

When I took this picture, I didn’t think it would work. The web was whipping in the wind, so focusing was problematic. Specialized equipment (including a microscope objective) is required to take great photographs of snowflakes. Last week The Guardian ran a short article on snowflake facts.

Bridge May Be Icy

This mystery photo contest was so much fun. I loved every answer. Three cheers for all the guesses involving frost. Those little white furry things are hoarfrost growing between the planks of a wooden bridge.

Thanks for participating.

Overheard #122

"You can’t do anything with a metaphor unless it’s properly mixed."

I Was Supposed to Post Something on Scenes in November

If you haven’t checked out Darcy Pattison’s 30 Days to a Stronger Scene, take a look. I’ve been following this series, and I promised to write my own post on scenes this month. Hmmm. Looks like I’d better do it today.

For revising scenes, the bottom line is simple.

CUT THE BORING PARTS.

I’ve been wondering how dull stuff gets into a novel in the first place. Perhaps it happens because living people need downtime more than characters. Quiet interludes recharge our bodies and give us time for creative thinking, but characters cannot be given that courtesy. They have to press on.

When my sons were little and stuck in an uninteresting situation, they made their own fun – usually in a disruptive, loud and parentally-challenging way. Yep, when things calm down, it’s time to cause some mayhem.

Mystery Photo

What is it?

Please leave your guesses in the comments section.

The answer will be posted on Saturday (12-4-2010).

I think this one is extraordinarily difficult.

Sunday

twisted stems

These photographs were taken with a flash around noon on an overcast day. I used creative autofocus and slightly increased the depth of field to get the curving stems in focus and the backgrounds blurred.

Reflections on a Gift of Homegrown Pecans*

My brother recently moved to a large ranch in northeastern Texas. Before Thanksgiving, he sent me a bag of shelled pecans from trees on his property.

I was touched by the gift. In this era of busy lives and scattered families, it seemed almost like a reunion. Our families were separated by a thousand miles, yet we’d both be eating chocolate pecan pie. On Wednesday, between picking up the turkey, making cranberry sauce, preparing the stuffing, fetching one son from college and juggling cars with the other, I made a pie.

As a baker, this was not my finest hour. I hadn’t realized that the pecans, machine-hulled at my brother’s local feed store, still contained small fragments of shell. The pie, while tasty, was a minefield of tooth-cracking hard things. A metaphor for sibling relationships lurks somewhere in that chocolate studded sweetness. The gifts are unexpected and interesting, yet it takes some work to remove the shells.

*with apologies to Stephen Dunning

Overheard #121

"Chocolate ... and pecans? Oh my - now there's a combination to make you believe in Santa again!"

Happy Thanksgiving!

The week is flying by. The YEAR is flying by. My Thanksgiving dinner preparations are almost on schedule, so maybe I’ll post something yet this week. Perhaps, with luck, I’ll get out with my camera this weekend …

Happy Thanksgiving!

(That was as close as I could get to pumpkin color.)

Sunday

wasps' nest

Overheard #120

"I hate it when the stores go from Halloween to Christmas and don’t give us any time to be thankful."

Analogies

If you need a laugh on a Thursday morning, check out these analogies written by high school students.

(My fave is #16.)

The Target Audience

Writing is all about what will attract and hold the interest of the reader.

I get that.

Lately I’ve read or started to read a couple books that were intended for adult readers even though the story began when the protagonist was a child. The authors chose to present the young part of the story as an adult looking back. The language was sophisticated, and life-experiences of the adult were apparent in the telling. These authors apparently believed their adult readers would relate more readily to a young voice if viewed through the lens of memory.

I get that too.

But for someone who’s in the trenches, striving day after day to make my teenage characters’ voices sound realistic and young (without appearing to work at making them seem realistic and young), this approach seems too easy.

Sunday

the last leaf

zoom

Overheard #119

"I got a friend request from a stack of pancakes in an astronaut suit."

A few years ago, that sentence would have been nonsense.

The Band with No Name

For one of my manuscripts, I need the names of a few imaginary rock bands. No problem. I assumed I could string together a few goofy or relevant words then google them to see if a band already used that name.

Ha!

Just about every band has a web presence, and just about every word or short phrase in the English language has been used to name these bands. I even tried some geeky scientific terms, but they are some of the most popular. Eventually, I came across a band name generator that was helpful, but I still don’t have a stellar name.

Any suggestions?

(I’m leaning toward metal bands because of the thunderous presence of a certain metal band in my life.)

Brit Lit

Jeremy’s English homework was to write a letter based on one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. His first idea was:

Dear Summer’s Day,
You remind me of this chick I know …

But being unsure of his teacher’s sense of humor, he opted for a different approach.

Think about how much the voice changes if synonyms are substituted for chick. Maybe this will evolve into a Write Night exercise.

Sunday

ice crystals on rosebuds

Overheard #118

"Et tu, telemarketer?"

Ruth's Revision Genius

This revision technique comes from Ruth McNally Barshaw.

When faced with suggestions for major revisions, all writers feel the earth tilt a bit with the realization of how many changes will be required. Eventually our planet regains its orbit and the work begins. Ruth’s revision plan is simple and brilliant.

1. Put the manuscript aside for a few days to provide time for celestial shifts.
2. Brainstorm ways to implement the changes. Take several days to do this, working for a couple hours each day and simply jotting down ALL ideas. Sometimes the concepts that seem the most offbeat at first turn out to be the best.
3. Brainstorm without the written word staring you in the face. Do not look at the manuscript or you won’t be able to see the forest for the trees.
4. Choose the best ideas and start revising.

Step 3 is the most crucial.

November Update

Just Say No to NaNoWriMo
Actually, I like the idea of NaNoWriMo, but it never fits with my writing/revising schedule. Good luck to all who are participating.

November Scene Clinic
I’m taking part in Darcy Pattison's 30 Days to a Stronger Scene. Check Darcy's blog for daily postings or her facebook event page. I’ll write about my scene ideas – at some point this month.

“Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky”
Thanks to William Shakespeare (As You Like It) for that description of winter. For the next few months, Michigan will be gray, brown and occasionally white. Skies will be overcast. As Emily Dickinson wrote:

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons —
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes —

I’m not going to promise a photograph every Sunday. If I encounter something good, I’ll certainly share it.

Sunday

I took a lot of pictures of this pumpkin stem before I captured the ringlets to my satisfaction. In the process, I learned something about the Creative Autofocus function on my camera and its depth of field adjustments. This picture was taken about 4:00 PM when the sun was slanting over the treetops.

Happy Halloween!

Overheard #117

"A sequence of epiphanies eventually converged to what I think is the right answer."

No Time to Think

Usually when I design the Write Night exercise, I post it in my blog, but last week I forgot. The idea for this one came from the skillful writing of two authors. Both Judy Blundell in What I Saw and How I Lied and Sara Gruen in Ape House let their protagonists uncover secrets gradually. After each discovery, the protagonist is faced with events so earthshaking that she doesn’t have time to process the new information.

I’ll post my exercise here. During Write Night, we only completed parts 1 & 2.

1. Think of an essential secret, clue, fact or tidbit of information that your protagonist needs to know in order to finish the novel. (You don’t have to tell us what it is – yet.)

2. Write a scene in which your protagonist discovers this secret. Provide a bit of setting, show how your protagonist discovers the information, and a hint of his/her initial reaction. Be sure you actually get to the discovery. (We can allow extra time if needed.) No limit on the number of characters.

3. Before your protagonist has time to process this information, make something happen. It has to be big, distracting and exciting. Consider the emotional, physical and psychological implications of this event on your protagonist. Write the scene.

4. Independent Study: (We probably won’t have time to write anything else.)
a) Will your protagonist be faced with further dilemmas before finding time to process the information?
b) How will your protagonist cope with the information once he/she has a minute to think?

Photos and Computer Woes

I hope to have a nature picture up on Sunday, but it all depends on the home computer situation. My new camera will not interact with my venerable computer, so I’ve been downloading photos onto my husband’s newer laptop. That worked until Sam’s laptop battery refused to recharge, and we learned the hard way that many online computer companies post false information or fail to ship ordered products. Sam and my husband have been sharing our one functional battery, but last week Sam took the battery to Ann Arbor so he could complete his midterm projects, and my husband borrowed a computer to give his lectures at State. I’ve felt that photos for my blog are a less important concern.

Sing along with me:

Four weeks of waiting
Three follow-up emails
Two insistent calls
And a dead laptop battery

I hope the situation resolves itself before we get to five – or at least before Christmas.

(There’s an excellent reason why I don’t write in rhyme.)

Sunday

Fall colors reflected in the Red Cedar River.

Overheard #116

"There should be a sarcasm font."

Stuck in the Middle

Don’t you hate when you’re reading a book that is absolutely riveting – and then the author runs out of ideas? Subplots fizzle, plot devices repeat, and each chapter seems endless.

The last thing any writer wants is for readers to start singing this song.

At some point, all writers get becalmed in a sea of motionless prose, and, like the sailors in that endless section of Moby Dick, we get desperate. Some writers try to move the story out of the doldrums by cranking up the action, but the new action must be essential to the plot. Adding random acts of violence, disconnected scenes involving bad people with bad manners or lengthy chase scenes won’t fix the problem. The story needs a big new idea.

Aphorisms on Experience

Learning curves always look steepest from the bottom. One of my physics professors used to say, “Everything is easy once you know how.” That was true of his homework problems, but my life provides many exceptions. The local high school has a prominently displayed banner that reads, “At first all things appear difficult – Chinese proverb.” As a parent, I was relieved they didn’t use the Russian version, “Even vodka is unpleasant the first time.”

Sunday

Sulfur Shelf Mushrooms - Laetiporus sulphureus

Overheard #115

"We’ll call in the experts then do whatever we want."

Note: I changed my overheard statement this morning. The first one was meant as a joke between two people who respect each other. However if taken out of context, it could appear mean spirited. There is no cyber bullying on this blog.

The Quiet Mind

Every morning while I’m enjoying a cup of coffee, I open The Writer’s Almanac and read the poem of the day. It isn’t possible to read poetry when the news is on, so I turn off the clock radio first, but sometimes, even in the early morning stillness, I can’t concentrate on the poem. The day’s responsibilities hammer in my head, postponed chores clamor for my attention, and doubts whimper in the corner.

Writing is like reading poetry because it requires a quiet mind and total focus. Every writer has good and bad writing days. The less productive times are blamed on our muses, our jobs or our families, but I wonder how much of a bad writing day is due to the lack of a quiet mind.

Lights, Camera, Action!

I’ve been recruited to make a music video for Jeremy’s band even though so far I’ve done only still photography. In my manuscript G&CBS (fka TAoCBS), Troy, the protagonist, makes a short film, and he has the entire novel to figure out how to do it.

I have a week.

Troy’s approach was to film everything in his life then cut, splice and edit a bunch of random footage into a video. Probably the band will want a more specific approach. I think practice is the answer – practice for everyone. Tonight, when Jeremy plays his guitar, I’ll start figuring out lighting and camera angles.

Sunday

Happy 10/10/10!

Overheard #114

"‘Less is more’ doesn’t apply to education."

Musical High School

I heard on All Things Considered yesterday that the adaptation of Disney’s High School Musical in China has been a total flop. The part that interested me most was this quote:

“China's High School Musical wasn't actually set in a high school. It had to be transplanted to a college. That's because Chinese high schools involve such a huge workload, it would be impossible for students to take part in the singing contest around which the film revolves.”

Graduate students from the lab used to talk about the long hours they studied in high school. I’m glad that despite budget cuts and hard economic times, extracurricular opportunities are still available at my son’s high school.

Jeremy is particularly lucky because he is able to take private voice lessons at school, during his choir hour. He records the lesson so he can sing along when he practices at home. The other day during physics lab, he bumped his backpack and accidently turned on the digital voice recorder. His bass voice blasted out:

              me                 

        me       me

    me                 me

me                          me

Sunday

Sunset pictures are tricky in this part of the world because you can’t see the horizon for the trees. Last week I managed to capture some clouds lit from below.

Overheard #113

"Think of the horror if someone did an incorrect citation."

Disclaimer: Overheard statements do not necessarily express the views of the management.

Planning Versus Plunging

Novel writers seem to fall into two categories: those who plan/outline/diagram their story before they start writing, and those who take a deep breath and plunge into their novel.

I’m a planner.

There. I said it.

My friends who are plungers explain they never make outlines because if they knew how the novel was going to turn out, they’d be too bored to finish it. That always makes me feel like a pedantic plodder – or at least someone who is easily entertained.

However …

When you wake up at 4:00 AM with the sure realization that the story in its present form DOES NOT WORK, it’s easier to modify a bunch of chapter notes than already-written, interlinked scenes.

Are you a planner or a plunger?

And I Repeat ...

Lately, as part of my head-cold-recovery-program, I’ve been watching movies on TV. Most were truly disappointing because they had too much repetition.

A plot cannot succeed as slightly varied reiterations of the same interaction. Sure the protagonist can try to solve one problem throughout the entire story, but the plot gains interest if he or she tries different solutions and improves even more if the problem changes with the protagonist.

Other movie plots failed because an exciting and well-conceived segment was used twice. Space ships can collide only once per movie, and then we need another plot device. The man and woman who are destined to be together can miss their rendezvous one (1) time. After the evil villain stalks the heroine through a dim and scary setting, he has to think of a different approach.

As I plot my new project, I’m reminding myself that change is good.