My Teeth Twinkle

My Teeth Twinkle with Alma Alexander, Darragh Metzger, Christine Morgan and Maggie Bonham

I knew that a lot of writers considered heroes passe', but I had a different pov.  I'm married to a hero with more virtues than you can shake a stick at.  So when I arrived, I knew pretty well how I'd start out.  As expected, the other panelists scoffed a bit at 'perfect' heroes and how unbelievable they are and boring, etc.  Then I brought up how real heroes feel real pain, fail, struggle, and how their morality and ideals cost them (sometimes dearly.)  The tone of the panel changed a bit, especially since I had Alma Alexander on my side (to an extent) because she knows my DH and realized what I was talking about.  We began defining which led to a discussion of the difference between a good guy and an untouchable perfect darling, and I began learning, which is one of the fun parts of being a panelist.  Panels can be about the brainstorming, and this is definitely one of those.

There's a difference between a 'perfect' hero and a guy who does the right things, fights hard, loves hard, and doesn't have a dark past or skeletons in his closet.  The darling hero defeats every villain, crashes through every obstacle, and does it without breaking a sweat or a hair out of place.  Often the obstacles s/he faces aren't on his (or her) level; they're no match for the might of the darling hero.  *That's* what's boring.  

Now, some authors deal with an otherwise unstoppable hero by developing an equal or even more powerful villain or insurmountable problem. This is the superhero route, though they aren't always called superhero stories.  In a way, Gandalf vs. Saruman is a superhero/supervillain story.  Gandalf can otherwise plow through just about any obstacle.  Tolkien had to put a balrog, a fellow wizard, and the Witch King in Gandalf's way before Gandalf broke a sweat.  It's different than a darling hero, and it can be a fascinating read.  I loved The Dark Knight movie.  That worked for me.

Personally, I prefer a morally principled hero who will not cross certain lines, who won't cheat on his spouse, and who won't call in sick to work unless he's actually sick.  Boring?  Well, when it seems like he's the only one who cares, the only one willing to put his ass on the line to speak out against bureaucratic bs, and the only one who doesn't want to go to the strip club because the drinks are overpriced and he prefers to watch his wife dance, thank you, it can get pretty lonely.  In fact, it can get dangerous.  Remember the 'okay, on three, everyone charge' type stuff going into a fight?  What if your character is the only one who goes on three? 

 

Being good, even great, even the best in combat, or science, or whatever doesn't always save the day.  In the real world there are insurmountable problems.  Try kicking cancer's ass sometime.  How about stopping a line of tanks from plowing into a village by yourself?  How about dealing with bad intelligence, or someone outright lying to you about something being one way when it's another?  Real heroes fail, and they get hurt, often badly, not just by the thing they're fighting but the consequences of their failure, and also the consequences of success.  Sometimes, no matter what you do, there are widows and orphans, and a real hero feels that pain.  

Everyone who looks at a too-good-to-be heroine might think no one is that smart, that beautiful, that accomplished.  Having a beautiful, smart and physically powerful character can absolutely be annoying in fiction, but only if that character is protected, only if that character doesn't suffer from the sense that she's resented, or always the one asked to do one more thing, the one everyone borrows money from.  It can not only be lonely, but frustrating.  If the heroine walks on stage and everyone gazes at her with worship, lust and awe, the reader is going to roll their eyes.  But think about what really happens, not on those 'grand entrances' but day to day.  Sleezebags at the bar trying to pick her up with cheesy lines and offers to buy a drink.  The boss that keeps coming up with reasons not to promote her.  Seen through her own eyes, she may not consider herself beautiful at all.  She may wake up in the morning, stare at the mirror and wonder how she can face another day on the battlefield when what she really wants to do is try to negotiate a surrender before every blessed soul in her army is killed over a land grab. 

Writing about teams of these people can be fun as well.  Being the go-to team can lead to more than their share of adventure, but believe me, not only can it get tiring, but they can suffer from bad press, back-stabbing from all quarters, undermining, and a desire to take a long vacation but feel like they can't or the world will fall apart without them.  Think rock stars have it tough with the lack of privacy, and the hero worship?  Try fame, unrealistic expectations and worship on when lives are at stake.  Top that with their bosses micromanaging them, telling them 'how' to do something, when they all know that will only get them all killed.  And if they succeed their way, they're in trouble, again, as always, and come out looking like the bad guys.

The short of it is: provide conflict, make it hurt, have failures, and use that goodness against the hero.  Force your hero to make hard choices, and give him that same sense of isolation that our real world heroes--the dedicated cops, caring firemen, tireless doctors, etc.--often face as they stand alone in a sea of apathy, bureaucracy, greed, selfishness, envy and Monday morning quarterbacking.  (That last one is especially frustrating.)  Just don't forget to give them an occasional bright spot, like the gratitude of a child, the help of a good samaritan in a time of need, or a moment of peace under a starlit sky, or they'll break like so many of our real heroes break and end up alcoholics, hermits or suicides.  Somehow I doubt the readers will complain that your hero is too perfect if you write it like that.  

I'll leave you with Cyrano de Bergerac (paraphrased):  

Now, who are these--a thousand thronged about me?  I know you well--you are all ancient foes; Falsehood!  Compromise!  Cowardice!  Shall I make terms?  No, never!  There is Folly too!  I knew that in the end you'd lay me low.  No matter.  Let me fight! and fight! and fight!  You snatch them all away--laurel and rose!  Snatch on!  One thing is left in spite of you, Which I take with me: and this very night, when I shall cross the threshold of God's house, and enter, bowing low, this I shall take, despite you, without wrinkle, without spot--and that is--my stainless soldier's crest. [Also has been translated brilliantly to 'my panache' by Anthony Burgess] (translation by Howard Thayer Kingsbury)

Educational side note--panache originally described a white plume or sash carried by nobles, and the pride with which they wore it turned it into a symbol of the qualities we now call panache.

Prologues

Prologues.  A lot of people don't read them.  Why not?  Because they're done so badly so often.

My preferences for prologues won't guarantee that a particular prologue done in that style is necessarily going to work, nor are my pet peeves going to set down some magic rule that guarantees all prologues written that way are bad.  I do feel that people who are so dead set against reading them won't be able to provide writers with useful information.  There are good prologues, I've read them, enjoyed them, and the book would be poorer without them.  Unfortunately there are far more prologues that are done really badly and they've poisoned the prologue well.  

So here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

Action blood sweat panic attack!  The issue with this sort of prologue is that 99% of the time the reader doesn't know the characters enough to care about whether they live or die.  Second, they have no idea what the fighting is about, so they don't care who wins or loses.  Also, this kind of prologue screams "everyone is going to die and in chapter one we're going to go visit the real pov character who will be eating breakfast or trimming his/her fingernails."  That's what happens so often that it becomes a cliche' and the readers are so disgusted by it that they never want to read this kind of prologue again.  Even if everyone doesn't die and the next chapter does in fact start with one of the combatants, the reader may not get that far to find out.  They'll have put the book down within two pages because they can't see the story.  There's too much blood in their eyes.  These kinds of openings are often written with the conscious or unconscious reason that the first chapter has nothing exciting going on.  It's a transparent hook, aimed as much or more toward editors than readers to rope them in to buying the book.  Yuck.

Way Back in the Neolithic Period  This is one style of prologue that can work if done right.  This drops the reader into a point in the pov character's past where s/he experiences something life-altering.  Now, if this can be done in the space of backstory peppered through the first part of the book (or even better, throughout the book where we don't see the whole scope of the experience until the emotional climax--rah! Right on!) then don't bother writing this kind of prologue.  However, if there are visual, sensory, cultural, emotional and other experiences that form a kind of self-contained short story in and of itself then you're not going to want to break up that party.  A major clue to whether you need to pepper backstory or write a prologue is if the context of the prologue is immediately necessary--the reader won't know what they're looking at in Chapter One without the prologue and will be utterly confused--you need the prologue.  If the info can wait, pepper that baby.  Finally, if you go back too far--the character is born and egad, it's supposed to be a girl not a boy--you're in danger of boring your reader (because there's absolutely nothing at stake that the reader will care about and also, who is the reader supposed to sympathize with?  Drooly child?)  The reader may dread that you're going to describe every blessed living daily detail.  Also, if you start too far back it's more difficult to connect the young person to the much older person and the reader may not trust you to do that well.  You have to earn the reader's trust and with an iffy prologue you're not off to a good start.  

Concerning Hobbits  This kind of prologue is all setting.  Invariably they are so boring that even faithful prologue readers immediately start skimming.  The big question is the same as in the battle openings.  Who cares?  Where's the story?  What's at stake?  Why am I staring at a tree, or an encyclopedia entry, or the little town of Gerspotten?  It's debatable whether Tolkien got away with it.  If you're a novice writer or even merely unpublished, do yourself a favor and assume you won't get away with it.

Twenty four hours after the book starts...  This one drives me the most dingbats.  This style of prologue isn't introduced this way (or very rarely.)  Chapter One defines this style of prologue retroactively.  We get through the prologue and everything is going swimmingly but then in Chapter One we're hit with (usually in italics) Twenty four hours earlier ...  (Or two weeks earlier, or two years ago, whatever!)  My immediate reaction is to fling the book across the room.  No joke.  Even if I'm wrong I don't care; my expectation is this:  I now know what the climax looks like.  I don't care how we get there.  I don't worry about who is going to make it there or why.  The tension has left the building.  The reader has been cheated because s/he's coming in at the end of the story and many, many of us readers want to wait until the end to find out what happens.  And don't even get me started about the authors who use just the beginning of the end for a prologue and then we have to reread that beginning at the end before we can find out what happens.  Bleh!  It also doesn't help that these sorts of prologues are often another thinly disguised hook written to get the reader hooked enough to get through a boring chapter one that's all set up or a normal boring day or involves a situation so mundane that your reader is wondering when we're going to get to the juicy parts.  On tv shows this is done all the time.  A book is not a tv show.  Besides, I hate those tv series episodes too.  I'm watching X-Files season 2 right now and if I never see another episode start with Mulder or Scully dying of something and then skipping back to two weeks earlier I'll be so happy!  What's really bad about the X-Files episodes that start that way is that if they began without the prologue, I'd still be intrigued by what's going on when the story really begins.  The difference is that I wouldn't be annoyed.

Here's What the Bad Guy is Up To  This is another type of prologue that can work if done well.  The key is to be short and sweet and crystal clear that this is the antagonist while making him/her a believable, fascinating character.  The reason this kind of prologue doesn't work as often as it should is that the bad guy is usually more interesting than the good guy is in chapter one.  Unless your good guy really, really shines in chapter one, don't make him/her pale by comparison to your bad guy by writing a stunning antagonist prologue and then sit your good guy down at breakfast.  K?  Glad we're clear on that.  A major pitfall of this style of opening (and any prologue that doesn't feature the pov or main character) is if your antagonist is sympathetic and fun to read about and suddenly the reader discovers we don't get to read about him/her, we're stuck with this other guy and the reader/author trust has to be rebuilt all over again.  Why do I say trust instead of interest?  Because readers tend to attach to the first characters they read about.  The expectation is that the characters first mentioned are going to be the most important in the book.  If that expectation is broken, then the reader loses a little trust in the author and the author will spend the whole first part of the book showing the reader that s/he will not be jerked around.  Much better to, again, make it crystal clear that we're dealing with the antagonist in the opening so that the reader doesn't get attached in the first place and is looking forward to what the protagonist will be like.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!  These kind of prologues shouldn't even exist, but they do.  I can't even theorize about what was going through the author's head, or why the editor allowed such a prologue to come to term and rampage around in bookstores everywhere.  They are pure hooks that appear to have absolutely nothing to do with the beginning of the book.  I don't care if they come into the book later.  Don't.  Care!  Weird stuff is going or people we don't know are doing mysterious things or there are voices without any setting talking about the state of the universe or how evil is running rampant or how Thug the Invincible was the last great hero or whatever.  When I read this kind of prologue (assuming I even get through it) and Chapter One has absolutely no connecting element to the prologue--no characters, no setting similarities, nothing to go on at all--I don't even have the energy to throw the book across the room.  I just set it down and if possible never pick it up again until it's time to dust.

So those are my thoughts on prologues.  I'm sure there are other kinds, and subtypes.  I may write about those in the future if I think about them.  But mainly, I hope that by presenting this information someone out there writing a prologue will think hard before they finish it.  Or, if they finish it, will reconsider before including it in the text.  So often prologues are just scaffolding anyway.  Tear it away and let the story stand on its own in all its architectural marvelousness.  You'll know it belongs if you tear it away and oops, you just stripped off the entryway and there's insulation fluttering in the wind ...

Story Structure? Um, I thought I knew ...

Big writing day today. I worked on a short story that, when I wrote it back in the day, I didn't have the skills to pull it off. I did a rewrite from memory, remembering only the good parts (in theory.) After I transcribe it and edit it until it's all clean except for the remaining bits of glitter that stick to it from the glitter editing soap I use, I'll hand it over for critiques.

I also spent some time trying to analyze "The Incredibles" for story components. Dark moments. Turns of event. Action rise and fall. False triumphs. Sub plots. Theme. Set up, hook, setting development, character introduction and development, what's at stake, and so on. I got all tuckered out after a short night and an early morning, so we didn't finish the movie but we got a good start. What I learned, fast, was that what had been clear in my mind, when presented scene by scene, became unclear and debatable. Novels and feature-length films, done right, have an interesting weave and scenes multitask, thematic elements leap between story lines, and foreshadowing as well as revealing the true nature and importance of certain characters is masked or subtle. One of the reasons I glommed onto "The Incredibles" is that I'd seen it so many times. Seeing it many times didn't help me as much as I'd thought it would. It was a humbling experience, and informative, and it helped me appreciate all over again the very fine writing that went into that movie.

I imagine as it all sinks in I'll re-envision writing yet again. Going back to a beginner state of mind can be daunting because I know I'm going to flail and make more mistakes. But beginner mind states of mind are when I learn the most the fastest. It can be exhilarating.

Once the beginning stages are done with, the rush is over and learners hit a plateau. Learn the lessons deeply takes a long time, well after the thrill is gone, and it'll seem like I'm getting nowhere. That'll take patience and perseverance. Learning deeply has its own rushes and epiphanies, but those are fewer and far between. The commitment to learning is the only thing that gets me through at times. That and I just can't seem to stop writing.

In the meantime, I get to play with story structure, something I've used by instinct but never examined. I thought I knew so much. Ha!

Word Choice

When I created my Wordle, I had a revelation about word choice.  When I started out putting it together I opened the first chapter in Masks determined to just pull out the articles, weak verbs, conjunctions, all pronouns except pertinent personal pronouns, and so on.  I didn't bargain on gaining a lot of insight into my word choices.  I'd always known that I used too many adjectives, and I'm developing the skills to help weed them out, but as far as actual word selections I never realized how much potential (and freedom) there was in choice.  Not just picking the exact right word for the situation.  I'm talking about the ability to fold word choices back into a theme or atmosphere or both at once.  The Wordle laid those choices bare and I went through (after I'd sent the book to Lucky Labs for review, of course, because I couldn't have been so lucky as to find this out before I sent it out) the first chapter again with a sharper eye.  It was a lot of fun.  I'd go through the rest of the novel, but I'm busy with other projects at the moment.  It's not a lesson I'll soon forget, though.  Yay, I have a whole new tool!

Also, I'm starting a new blog tradition (for me.)  I don't think I'll ever go into reviews.  I'm too critical and not particularly eager to have my opinions known to the wide world.  But I'm comfortable with rating books on a general scale.

What I'm reading:  Lace and Blade, edited by Deborah Ross

Quality:  Very high

My quality ratings:  Struggling, Emerging, Average, High, Very High

Complexity

I fibbed about the wine yesterday.  Not only did I not get around to opening a bottle, but then I calculated my last dose of ibuprofen to land at 11:15 am today and had a glass of wine at 9pm when all but a minute trace of ibuprofen would be out of my system.  Ahhhh, wine and chocolate, Fetzger Shiraz and Dagoba dark chocolate with lavender, to be precise.  Way better than meds, and probably (not sure) healthier for me.

Once I started to suffer from solid pain the depression mostly went away, probably from the body's reaction to pain with the release of a complex cocktail of hormones and other living chemistry.  Sometimes I think about how the body is both very simple--a reactionary organism that is relatively fragile and predictable in relation to the overall environment--and very complex and sturdy with its interplay of checks, balances and compensatory mechanisms that keep us functioning through a huge spectrum of circumstances in ways that we still don't completely understand.  I doubt we ever will completely understand, but complete understanding isn't necessary.  We are what we are, and we live how we live and existence is a patchwork of willpower, fate, environment, timing and a whole slough of factors that we all ride out to our ultimate ends.  

Gee, I got all philosophical there.  Sorry 'bout that.  But, while I'm philosophizing ...

Storytelling attempts to create life experience.

But wait, some say, some stories are just for entertainment.  Well isn't life entertaining?  I know mine is.  And heartbreaking, and beautiful, and ugly, and frustrating, and teaching and wonderful.

 When storytelling is done well the listener connects with the story and becomes engaged enough to experience it in a deep fashion that opens the emotions/heart/being to surprise, wonder, laughter, pain--all the colors of emotion.  Done poorly and the best a listener can hope for is a line that resonates with them enough to get a quick kick of some sort, whether it's a laugh, an aha or whatever.  

A story is by necessity, and due to limitations of medium, simplified.  I think that part of the appeal of VR (remember the SF projections of VR in the late 80's early 90's?) is that we can envision fewer limitations to story, deeper experience.  That deeper experience is achieved by more sensory experience, and more implied history through the creation of characters with independent existences as well as more plot possibilities which, as in the case of Star Trek holodecks, become interactive with listener choice.  

Good writing not only includes lots of sensory detail, unexpected moments, turns of fate and complexity of character, it includes choices that hopefully can draw in a reader into feeling like they themselves are faced with hard choices, and they themselves might choose as the character chose even if it's a bad choice.  Then the story begins to feel real.  

Lately I've read quite a bit of work where I'm not on board with the character choices.  I don't have to like the choices, but I darn well better feel like I might have chosen the same way in the same circumstances.  I think this is the real killer with 'But we have to go back to save Fluffy!' plots.  Done well, they can be entertaining, but now we're not talking a fine Shiraz (good story.)  We're talking pop, something a person drinks because it's sweet, it temporarily kills thirst, is predictable and readily available and is worth little or nothing--a throwaway that readers accept with comments like 'I just wanted to escape for a while.'  It's an Atari video game at best.  No crime in that, no shame.  I played lots of Asteroids and Pong as a kid, and I still love Snood (argh! get thee back, foul addiction!)  But if you're a writer who wants to create a really good, memorable story, you have to look around at real life's complexity.  Develop an awareness of a body's complexity, of life's complexity, and bring your story to life with it.  

Which, btw, makes me think about pat endings.  People say they don't like them, and say things like 'it all wrapped up too neatly.'  But sometimes life happens that way too, at least temporarily.  There are moments in our lives when we 'live happily ever after,' and a writer can capture that and give the audience that sense of closure and peace without the pat ending blahs.  The way a writer pulls that off is with implied continuance beyond The End.  There's more after 'happily ever after' that may not be happy.  It's just that the story reached its natural resting place, a point where we can diverge from traveling with the characters and return to our own lives.  Then it's a very satisfying ending, not just a mechanical knot that contains all the loose ends.

Stuff to think about while living in the clutches of complex body chemistry in a world that surprises me, lulls me, creates me as I create small pieces of it.