Logic in Fiction by Christine Duncan

I was reading a really cool mystery just yesterday.  It was set in an area I’ve never been to, the heroine was someone I truly liked and the mystery was intriguing.  And then it happened.  The heroine did something so stupid, so out of character, I couldn’t believe it was the same person I’d just spent 15 chapters reading about.  And I wanted to throw the book against the wall. 

  

  You hear about it all the time in real life, the mass murderer who neighbors talk about as such a nice, quiet fellow, the wonderful mother who abandons her children, the out of character real life events that we all know happen.  But when it happens in fiction, it better have a reason.  

  

And I’ll tell you my personal belief on why that is.  Writers go on and on about the suspension of belief in fiction and about how people will put their trust in a writer until they find they’ve been mislead.  I personally believe it is simpler than that.

 
    I think we read to make sense of the world around us.  If everyone is snarky at the large company you work for and you read a book about a character who works in a big corporation and is disgusted by the politics, you don’t feel so alone.  It is a vent.

  
But we identify with our heroes and heroines.  And we want to believe we would react the way they do.  So when a character reacts stupidly, out of character, and against all logic, we can’t identify.  We are back with not understanding, at least the world of that book.  Back to being alone.

   And that’s not why we read. 

 

   

The Importance of Titles by Christine Duncan

Once again it was reading that drove home the writing rule. You know the rule I’m talking about. Hone that title.

I’ve spent a lot of time writing titles over the years. And frankly, sometimes I’ve thought it was wasted time. Here on the blog, it seems to me that tags are the important thing. Write a tag that catches the post’s ideas and readers can tag surf here or are directed by Google and by WordPress itself.

But titles still mean something. The other day I was looking for a book on Yoga. I’m taking a class in it to help my flexibility and my running and yeah, my balance. Well, really my balance. (Okay, so I fall a lot when I run and I was appalled to find I couldn’t stand on one foot for very long.)

Anyway, I’ve paged through old copies of Yoga Journal, read excerpts of books and basically been totally lost in the language of yoga. You want me to do a who/what? I don’t speak sanskrit. And what exactly does Namaste mean? Are you calling me a name or something?

So anyway, back to the other day–I’m going along the shelf and there are a ton of books on Yoga. Many promise me to take my practice to a new level. If only my practice had a level. A book on Yoga for beginners looked interesting until I realized that it must be beginning Buddhists or something. I am not really interested in finding a meditative practice or a new religion. I’m good with being Christian. Really.

I ended up with the book that I got because of the title. The title drew me in. The No Om Zone. Subtitle? A No-Chanting, No Granola, No Sanskrit, Practical Guide to Yoga. Yes! I can handle that.

Tell me what you really mean.

Of course, follow-through is important. If you page through a book and realize that the title is not backed up by the text (or even the first page) you’re not going to go for it. So authors, you still have to work on that first or second draft you’re writing.

But if you need a break from transitions, plot points and denouement, try working on that title. It really does make a difference.

Is Reading Dead? by Christine Duncan

The subject line I just used is a popular one for many writing blogs. Every time I turn around, people are citing the death of the publishing industry, or paper based books, or e-books or just reading in general. When asked for proof, they will tell you stuff like Dorchester publishing is not going to do paper books anymore. (I heard this rumor but no one is pointing me to a newspaper article or a company memo, so don’t go off over that one.) Or Barnes and Noble has put itself up for sale All I can say to that is Wonderful! Maybe they’ll get bought out by folks who are more writer-friendly.
The doom and gloom prediction that really irritates me is someone telling me that nobody reads anymore.
The thing is books in some form, and reading has been around for literally thousands of years. The forms have changed. We don’t use papyrus anymore. The Guttenberg press is gone. Most layouts (I won’t say all because I’ve worked at some really cheap and antiquated publishers and I’m sure they weren’t alone.) are digital now.
The more things change, yada yada.
We writers still don’t get paid much. Other people make more money than we do off of our work. But writing, whether it comes out in paper or e, whether it’s read on your I-phone or you download it to hear as you run, is still a very viable form of communication. And it is still the best job you can do in your PJ’s.

What Parts Do You Skip? by Christine Duncan

When I was a little kid, I loved to read, but I always skimmed the description. To me, all of the action was in what the people had to say. So when I grew up and was trying to write my first book, and heard the famous Elmore Leonard quote:”Leave out the parts people skip.” I thought I knew what the heck the guy meant.

The more I write, the less I think so.

When I ask friends about their reading habits, turns out the parts people skip can be worlds different than just what the character was wearing that day. One of my friends confessed to me lately that she had read a book by three authors working together. The book was written in three points of view and my friend loved…only one. You guessed it, she paged through the book and kept reading only that one pov. She claims she got the gist of the whole book. When I looked at her funny, she said, “I hate when authors do that. Why do authors make you fall in love with one character and then change like that?”

When I thought about it, I understood what she meant. When we begin a book, we have to like the person whose viewpoint we’re in. We’re planning on spending some time with them. I also find it jarring to find myself switching to another character. (Although I must say, when it came to the multi-viewpoint story she described, I think I would have tried to read it.)

I have often thought about writing a book that way since I tend to write short anyway. Think about it, you could combine a couple of the stories you have really wanted to write and weave them together. And it does seem like a nifty way to co-author stuff with your friends. But the conversation with this friend talked me out of that brilliant idea.

Another friend admits to getting maybe half-way or more into a mystery and then peeking at the end. If it doesn’t end the way she thinks it should, she shuts the book. Her explanation? “I don’t need to be pulled down by a book. I have enough to deal with. If the book isn’t going to have a happy ending, then I’m moving on.”

That one puzzles me a bit, I must say. Skipping the whole middle to last part of the book? C’mon! You can tell if it’s one of those dark worlds well before you get that far and move onto cozies (or romances or comedies or….) But then writers often complain about writing the middle too–maybe it comes through the writing?

So what do you skip? And how does it affect your writing?

Writers as Readers A Catty piece by Christine Duncan

Before I get to my rant for today, I wanted to shout from the mountain tops! Safe House is out in print. You can find it on the Trebleheart book site, or it should be on Amazon and the other usual places soon.

We’ve discussed this before but a recent discussion on a writing forum brought another dimension to this discussion that I hadn’t previously considered. As many of you who saw my original post on the subject know, I am more than a little appalled by writers who don’t read. Or who can’t be bothered to read much. And yes, there were those in this  discussion who proudly proclaimed that they weren’t readers.
But the rest of the discussion was the part I hadn’t thought much about.  Some of these writers wanted to read but since they had learned so much about the craft itself, were unable to find books that interested them. Many times they were forced to put books down because of the craft problems.
Frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever done that. It’s not that I don’t read some terrible stuff. I do. But then something in me kicks in to wonder why the book sold despite its obvious problems. And the writing part of me is busily re-writing to avoid the problems. The what if syndrome.
I don’t know that it helps my writing any. But it makes me feel superior. :->
And I can sympathize with the reasoning behind those writers who can’t find much worth reading.  Sometimes you don’t want to pick a piece apart. You just want to lose yourself in a good book.
As to the writers who don’t read. I think their excuse is universal. They all seem to think they have something to give. What I want to know is, if they don’t read, how do they know it hasn’t already been done to death?
Are you a reader? Do you think it helps your writing?

What Keeps You Reading–Or Makes You Put a Book Down by Christine Duncan

Michelle’s post about reading the other week got me thinking. I tend to put books down for all sorts of reasons–sometimes there is nothing wrong with the darn thing at all–I’m just in the mood for something else.
Have you ever felt that way? This week with all of the news about the Iranian election and the test nukes from North Korea, I can’t read what I think of as simple or sweet books. There has to be a complexity of character or plot to capture me right now. Otherwise, I’m drifting into other thoughts.
But other times, when life is overwhelming, it is the simple, the sweet, and the cozy that draws me.
I guess even though I always say that I’ll read anything, I’m a picky reader.
As a rule, I don’t read hobby mysteries, even when I like the hobby. I don’t usually read horror because the images stay in my mind. I’m not the type to read bestsellers just because they’re bestsellers either–a book has to be about something I’m interested in. But I will sometimes read best sellers to see why others are enthralled. I tore apart a couple of Dan Brown’s books just to see what the deal was. I concluded that his style read so quickly because he tended to keep it short. Short chapters, short paragraphs. There was always something going on–always more excitement but it was terseness that kept the tension. Or so I decided.
Lately I’ve put books down for too much terseness. There seems to be a trend where authors skip on description so that I can’t really see what is going on. It made me drop one book. She described a car as a “big ass pimp mobile.” And I couldn’t see the darn car at all–thus making some of the action obscure.
Conversely, another author who went on and on about every leaf in a field (or so it seemed) lost my interest. There can be too much.
As a writer, though this might seem discouraging, I think the opposite is true. Someone not being interested in your book is not a personal rejection. It’s not really a rejection at all. Sometimes, we crave ice cream, sometimes we want roast beef. What do you think?

Reading is FUNdamental

A recent article in O magazine listed the advantages of reading-not the joys.  Oh no!  The author was anxious to promote what reading could do for you and how it helped your brain.  And there is a t-shirt for an avatar on Yahoo that simply states Read.

What is wrong with these people?.  Reading is not a cause.  Reading is one of life’s pleasures.  Reading is communication.  Can you imagine having to promote any other form of communication? We’d all have T-shirts that say Watch TV Now.  Or Have You Loaded up your MP3 today?

It would never happen.  And that is exactly what is wrong with making reading a cause.  The job of my generation is to teach reading sure-but it’s more than that. The generations before us were smarter.  Banned books are not a problem.  Banned books are a reason bunches of kids learned to read.  They wanted to know what the adults thought was too much for them. Ditto with comic books.  Junk reading, sure, in its purest most fun form.  And reading under the covers was one of the joys of childhood.  Mom would never know how long I stayed up reading.  Then again, maybe she did.

We should eliminate all the talking on those computer games and just stick with the little lines of text running underneath.  Reading scores across the world would skyrocket-and so would spelling.  Oh, and keep complaining about the kid’s cell phone bill.  Text messaging may be the only thing to keep this generation from being totally illiterate.

My generation has forgotten what the ones before us knew.  Kids want to do all the stuff we don’t want them to do.  Harry Potter was a hit in part because of all the controversy from those who didn’t like kids reading about witches and wizards.  Don’t make reading a cause-make it a privilege like computer time and playstations. Tell them if they’re good, you’ll let them keep the lights on fifteen extra minutes for reading tonight. Read in front of them, but tell them it’s only for adults.  Watch the kids read then.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

I usually ask for a book as one of my Christmas presents because that’s how i like to spend at least part of my Christmas holiday.

Christmas 2004 was no different, however my book choice surprised me (and as it turned out, all other attendees at our Christmas lunch). 

I’d tuned into the tail end of an interview with Aron Ralston some weeks before while I was stacking the dishwasher.  With the TV in the background and dirty dishes in the foreground, I vaguely heard the part of his story that talked about rock climbing, alone, in a remote area of Utah.  Then the part about being pinned in a crevasse by an 800lb boulder.  And although I’d tuned in a little more by the time he said he was trapped for six days, that wasn’t what really got my attention.  I actually stopped what I was doing and listened when the interview turned this corner:

Interviewer: “Aron, I have to ask, what was it like amputating your own arm?  I can’t imagine…”

Aron: ”It was exhilarating, euphoric even.”

“Hang on,” I thought as I stopped in my tracks and bounded onto the lounge room, “I must’ve heard that wrong” .  Amputate + own arm = euphoria?  No, no, no amputate + own anything = total nightmare.

The interview ended soon after that and the cover of Aron’s book flashed up on the screen.  I sat wondering what could’ve transpired to make amputating your own arm seem an appealing (never mind euphoric) proposition.   I’m intrigued by people who have a different take on the world and let’s face it, I love a good survival story.  I did wonder how interesting the book would be given that he was stuck alone in a crevasse for six days which meant that there would be no scene changes, very little dialogue and few (if any) other characters. 

So knowing little else about Aron Ralston or his story I put his book on my Christmas list. 

It was an absolute gem.  Couldn’t put it down and still think about it today.  May I suggest that if you decide to buy the book, buy a Do Not Disturb sign.  You’ll need it.

 

 

Living life

. One of the many, many, MANY things that annoy me is people who say to me ‘You spend too much time reading, instead of living a real life. Get your head out of your book, and go and live’.

Well, for a start, their idea of ‘living life’ is to spend every evening in the pub – which I don’t enjoy more than once or twice a month.

As for ‘living life’ – it doesn’t matter how much I do, or where I go, my life can only ever be what happens to me. In books, however, I get to live a hundred thousand lives. This week alone, I have walked the gardens of Versailles with the Sun King, fought evil villains in the Carribean, hunted down Jack the Ripper and danced in a ballroom the nightbefore Waterloo. Where could I do all that outside a book?

And even when I do lift my head up, and go travelling, my reading brings a life to the places I visit. I walk down by the Tate Gallery, and think of the people of Our Mutual Friend, I visit Rochester and think of Great Expectations. Egypt is beautiful, but it is made even more so when I remember Lord Caernavon asking ‘what do you see?’ and Howard Carter breathlessly replying ‘beautiful things!’ as he opens Tutanhamun’s tomb. That is an experience I could never have myself, but there it is, in a book, for me to relive.

One person once told me (thinking she was being complimentary) that she envied the way I lived outside reality, engrossed in my books. She’s wrong. I don’t escape reality by reading. I make reality far more wondrous than she could ever imagine, and I live realities she has never heard of.

Reading and Writing

I am always astonished by adult people who tell me they don’t read. They say it with a form of pride that I just don’t understand. But then, it’s the writers who don’t read that I find the most incomprehensible. Maybe it’s hard to fit in a book on writing with everything else on your plate-so you rely on podcasts or conventions to teach you craft. But to read nothing? Not even for pleasure? And yet, it seems there is one in every critique group-writers who don’t read. In one critique I was in, one lady saw no problem with not reading. “I don’t want my work to be too derivative,” she said. Instead her mystery in progress often read like a travel guide with its description filled pages. The action and dialogue was conspicuously missing.

I know other writers who don’t read in their genres when they are writing a book. I guess that makes some sense. But I learn from each and every book I read–even the ones I throw against the wall, never to finish. After all, if I don’t know what makes the reader throw the book against the wall, how can I avoid it? If a book is really, really good, the kind you just hate to have end, then when I finish, I go back and take the whole thing apart to see why it worked so well for me. Is that derivative? Ehh.

And what about the message here-I don’t read, but you should read my stuff-because it’s better? I’m not grasping this one. Reading might be a lost art with the next gen, because our generation doesn’t value it now. Even the writers.