Yearly Archives: 2012

Book Review – Tree Soldier

A relative suggested I read Tree Soldier by J.L Oakley, ©2010, and I did so.  Usually I read books on CD, but I read the paperback version of this book.  Yes, I read the “dead tree” version, and yes, I see the irony in that, considering the book’s title.

The novel takes place in 1935 in the Pacific Northwest.  It is mainly about the character Park Hardesty, who hails from Pennsylvania, but joins the Civilian Conservation Corps, partly to escape the guilt over some events of his past.  He falls in love with a girl who lives in town near the CCC camp, but there is a rival for her affection and Park’s past eventually catches up to him.

The book seems to be well researched, and gives a vivid picture of life at a CCC camp in the state of Washington during the Depression.  It seems a realistic portrayal of the interactions of a quasi-military camp of young men from various parts of the country living in close quarters, and their interactions with each other and with the “locals.”  We see their rough behavior, rough language, jealousies, and developing interests in some detail.  It’s clear the protagonist is trying to make a new life and put his past behind him.  The romance between Park and Kate seemed realistic and blossomed with the right mixes of thoughtful tentativeness and emotion on both parts.  The ending is exciting and well-paced.

Before I review the novel’s weaknesses, I should note I read the book in brief snatches over a period of months.  It’s possible a more concentrated reading of more than a few pages at a time would have yielded a better impression.

Although the beginning and ending are both thrilling and action-packed, the rest of the book is very slow.  It’s as if the author wanted to include all her research in the book to give it credibility, but much of it ends up slowing down the plot.  Also the work suffers from poor editing, with word errors, missing quotation marks, a name spelling change, and anachronisms (people didn’t say “no way” in 1935).

For me the most maddening part involves what happens following the commission of a vicious crime.  The entire town seems to leap to a conclusion about who did it; that’s just human nature.  However, the victim comes out of her recuperation to announce a fact about the prime suspect.  Not a peep about who might have done the crime, and no one seems interested in asking her.  The authorities launch into an investigation of footprints and combing the territory with search parties, etc.  All the while I’m wondering why no one is asking the victim any questions.  Perhaps she has some clue about the perp, or even knows who did it.  No mention of any of that until the scumbag is caught and locked up.  Then we learn the victim remembered the smell of his breath and one facial feature.  The only part important to Oakley’s plot is that announced fact about the prime suspect.  After that, there’s no point in concealing the victim’s knowledge from the reader.  In fact this reader began to suspect the town of being populated by idiots.

Tree Soldier is getting excellent reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and has won some awards, but I’ll have to dissent from that majority.  If you have an interest in that historical period, or setting, or the CCC, you might enjoy it.  It is a nice romance between two strong and well-drawn characters.  But the weaknesses lead me to give it a rating of 2 on my seahorse rating scale.

Whether you agree or disagree I’d like to know your comments about the book.  Leave a comment for–

                                                       Poseidon’s Scribe

July 17, 2012Permalink

Tom Swift and His Psycho-Subliminal Writer Inspiratron

When I was a young lad growing up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in the mid-1960s, my Aunt Betty gave me a precious gift, a copy of Tom Swift and His Flying Lab by Victor Appleton II, ©1954.  It was the first book in “the New Tom Swift Jr. Adventures” series which eventually included 33 novels.

The series involves the adventures and inventions of an 18 year old engineer and scientist.  Each book features a new invention and typical titles are Tom Swift and His Ultrasonic Cycloplane, or … and His Electronic Retroscope, or … and His Subocean Geotron.  The series is a continuation of the previous Tom Swift (Senior) series that ran from 1910 to 1941.

Aside from the blond main character with the crew cut, there was Tom’s sidekick Bud Barclay, Tom’s sister (and Bud’s girlfriend) Sandy, Tom’s girlfriend Phyllis Newton, Tom’s father Tom Sr., his mother Mary Nestor Swift, and the executive chef for Swift Enterprises, Charles “Chow” Winkler.  I remember these characters as if I knew them as real people.

Story lines typically involved some trouble somewhere, like a kidnapping, a stolen invention, or some other evil being done in some exotic locale.  Often one of the dastardly countries of Brungaria or Kranjovia was behind it all.  Tom, fresh from some previous adventure, has just invented (or proceeds to invent) some gadget used to save the day.

We are not discussing superb literature here, admittedly.  The characters were stereotypical and lacked depth.  None of them changed or learned anything as a result of the conflicts they dealt with, either within any book or across the series.  Tom himself had no character flaws whatsoever, other than paying insufficient attention to his very tolerant girlfriend.  The writing style was amateurish.  In an earlier post I already mentioned the occurrence of “Tom Swifties.”  Any notion of realism was abandoned in these novels, from the basic premise of an 18 year old being the sole inventor of all the gadgets, to the implausibility of the inventions themselves, to the fact that one young man could be the hero in so many dangerous escapades.

I loved that series, and still do.  I begged my parents for the next book I hadn’t read until I could afford to buy them myself.  I thought about how cool it would be to have such machines and vehicles myself, or to be able to invent them.  I compiled a personal library of about 2/3 of the series.  Decades later, I found my mother had disposed of them, thinking I no longer wanted the set.  That saddened me, but my brother scoured garage sales and helped me rebuild the collection.  Thanks to him, I now have 18 volumes from that series, and 20 novels from the earlier Tom Swift series.

It appears I’m not Tom Swift’s only admirer.  There’s at least one website dedicated to the series, and an active discussion group.

None of Tom’s inventions mentioned were actually built.  Indeed, most are impossible.  But one of his gadgets, a mechanism never actually named or referred to, worked really well.  That’s Tom’s Psycho-Subliminal Writer Inspiratron.  The Tom Swift Jr. series, so loathed by librarians and English teachers, motivated my interest in engineering and in storytelling.   It prompted me to read other things, better books, including the works of Jules Verne.  Tom kindled an interest in adventure and traveling to distant places, and is a big part of why I joined the submarine service.

Please comment and let me know if Tom Swift also inspired you, or let me know what other books of your youth did.  For now I’d like to say thanks for everything, Tom, especially your amazing Inspiratron.  Sincerely,

                                                   Poseidon’s Scribe

 

July 15, 2012Permalink

A Mystery to Me

Do you love reading mysteries?  Ever think of writing one?

The genre was invented by Edgar Allan Poe and popularized by Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes stories.  It remains a popular genre with a devoted readership.

The mystery genre is hard to define.  All fiction involves an element of mystery, since there’s always a conflict and the reader doesn’t know how the protagonist will resolve that conflict.  Here we’ll speak of stories where the focus is on the puzzling aspects of the conflict, which is often a crime or some unexplained phenomena.  In addition, the sleuth in the story uses attention to detail and deductive logic to solve the mystery.

In your mystery story, make sure the mystery itself is something important, something the reader will care about.  That’s why there are so many murder mysteries, and so few involving a missing 99¢ comb.

Before writing your story, develop various timelines or storylines:

1.  First is the actual timeline of events in which the real perpetrator commits the act.  This must be logical and in accordance with various character’s motivations.  As author, you’ll be the only one who knows this one.

2.a., 2.b, 2.c, etc.  You may need a series of fake timelines, in each of which one of the other suspects could commit the act.  These need not be completely logical or reflect character motivations exactly, but at first your sleuth won’t know that.

3.  A timeline pieced together by your sleuth, formed through evidence and logical deduction.

4.  You might even have a separate timeline that is revealed to the reader.  However, Timeline 4 usually matches Timeline 3.

Most mysteries involve the commission of a crime.  To do so, a criminal must have means, motive, and opportunity (MMO).  The challenge for the sleuth is that either (1) several people seem to have all three, or (2) nobody seems to have all three.  Of the three necessary parts of MMO, motive is often the first part presented to the reader.

Among frequent readers of the genre it’s considered unfair to (1) withhold evidence from the reader that the sleuth knows, including specialized skills or knowledge, or (2) have the sleuth confront the guilty suspect with insufficient evidence (that wouldn’t gain a conviction in court) but still the criminal breaks down and confesses.

Your writing challenge is to present the reader with all the evidence needed to solve the mystery, but to make the puzzle difficult enough that the reader would rather just read to the end to see how the sleuth cracks the case.  Bear in mind the necessary evidence need not be emphasized in your story, just present.  It could be buried in the middle of a paragraph.  Or you could distract the reader’s attention with some dramatic action that happens to include a piece of evidence easy to gloss over.

The genre has been so well explored, it’s difficult to think of mysteries that haven’t been done.  For example, I wish you luck in thinking up a new version of the locked-room mystery, where a crime is committed in a sealed enclosure where the only entries are locked from the inside.

For that reason, writers of mysteries these days seem to be focusing on the character of the sleuth, or the setting.  In today’s market, the way to set your mystery apart is to have a very compelling sleuth.  The minimum attributes for this character are: (1) attention to detail, and (2) an ability to deduce a chain of events from disparate facts.  Or you could have two sleuths working together, each of which has one of these traits.

Another way to distinguish your mysteries from others is to use a historical or unusual setting.  Depending on how far back a time you choose, it could present a real challenge for your sleuth due to the lack of modern crime investigation technologies.

Did this blog entry inspire you to write a mystery story?  Leave me a comment and let me know about it.  Just make sure the answer to whodunit isn’t–

                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

 

July 8, 2012Permalink

Book Review – The Clan of the Cave Bear

Go ahead and chastise me now.  Yes, I’m one of the few who hadn’t read Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear © 1980.  Until now.  Along with the rest of the world, you read the book, and perhaps the series, long ago.  You already formed your opinion.  What follows is mine.

I listened to the Brilliance Audio CD version, narrated by Sandra Burr.

In brief, an earthquake collapses a cave containing a clan of Cro-Magnon people and the only survivor is a five-year-old girl named Ayla.  She is taken in by a clan of Neanderthals and her differences from them complicate all their lives.

The novel seemed, to this listener, to be authoritative and well-researched.  I liked how the author didn’t paint the lives of these prehistoric people as being simple; these characters had complex lives and traditions, as well as sophisticated knowledge of their environment.  I found the characters to be distinct, memorable, and intriguing.  Descriptions of the settings and characters were vivid, making the events of the book easy to imagine.

I thought the conflicts in the novel were clear and challenging, both the inter-character conflicts and the conflicts with the environment.  The conflicts posed bedeviling problems for the characters, especially Ayla.  I thought the book contained profound lessons about leadership, with both positive and negative examples.  Anyone aspiring to lead a team would do well to emulate Brun, the clan leader through much of the novel.  Moreover, Jean M. Auel wrote in an easy-to-read style that flowed well.  Sandra Burr did commendable job of narration.

However, I found the novel repetitive, as if the author felt she had to remind the forgetful reader of previous events and who the characters were, on a frequent basis.  In addition, for every big decision made by any character, the entire deliberative thought process was described.  The author presents detailed pros and cons for every choice.  Once the reader understands the motives driving a character, it’s no longer necessary to drag the reader through the careful weighing of pluses and minuses.

I found the point-of-view changes distracting at times.  Auel did a fair job of signaling which character’s POV we were in, but it’s not necessary to describe how each major character feels about significant events; the reader can discern a good deal of that from expressions and actions.  In fairness to Auel, it’s possible she also signaled POV changes using breaks in the text, something I couldn’t tell from listening to an audiobook.

A few events in the book strained credibility, though these events were necessary, perhaps, to make the novel relevant to our present and to help readers identify with Ayla.  They included (1) Ayla becoming a huntress despite strict clan tradition against that; (2) Ayla learning, with apparent ease, every Neanderthal skill including cooking, medicine, weapon-making, tool-making, as well as hunting; (3) Ayla reasoning out the connection between sexual intercourse and pregnancy as well as the fact that people are products of a father as well as a mother; and (4) the holy man Creb foreseeing the end of the Neanderthal people.

Taking strengths with weaknesses, I’ll give the book a rating of four seahorses using my much-coveted book review rating method.  The novel deserved its good reputation and popularity.  I don’t need to recommend you read it, since the only remaining person who hadn’t read it was —

                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

July 2, 2012Permalink

Fleshing Out Your Story

Perhaps you’re a beginning writer with a great idea for a story.  Or maybe you’re an experienced author and someone has come to you with a  story idea and suggested you just whip up the story inspired by that idea.  Either way, there’s something writers know that non-writers don’t — the idea is the easy part.

Would you approach a sculptor with a sketch, then gesture to a nearby block of marble and suggest the sculptor merely chip away at the block until it looks like your sketch?  Would you hum a tune to a composer, and suggest she spend a few minutes penning some lyrics and orchestrating all the instruments to play the harmonic parts to fit with your hummed tune?

It’s not clear to me why people think writing is so different.  Somehow the belief got started that writers search and search for something to write about, that we spend 90% of our time enduring the agony of waiting for the idea to hit.  Once it does, we simply dash off the story and hit send, apparently.  A particularly long novel might, they think, take the better part of an afternoon to jot down.

I hate to be the one to burst the bubble on that myth, but it just ain’t so.  On occasion, it’s true, some writers struggle to figure out what to write about.  For a time, they seek some prompt.  There are books and websites to supply these, but there’s also real life–it’s all around, filled with plenty of things that could form the basis of a story.  Even that’s not enough.  Next the writer must turn this ‘prompt’ into an idea.  This idea forms the skeleton of the story.  An idea includes main characters, a rough primary plot, and some notion of settings.

I don’t mean to downplay the difficulty of getting that far.  But a writer reaching that point is a long way from finished.  Moreover, we have no sense yet of whether the resulting story will be good.  Promising ideas still can suffer from poor execution when converted to finished form.  Alternately, a truly wonderful tale can be spun from a trivial, humdrum idea.

A writer with an idea now faces the task of fleshing out that skeleton.  He must breathe life into the characters, making them identifiable and engaging.  She must select such descriptive words for her settings so as to transport the reader there.  He embellishes the plot with understandable motives for actions, and adds subplots.  She imbues the story with her own style and flair, ensuring she touches on universal human themes.  When his first draft is crap, as it always is, he edits and rewrites, often several times. During these subsequent drafts, she might spice the manuscript with symbolism, alliteration, foreshadowing, character quirks, tension-building techniques, allusion, metaphor, and the other little things separating good from average fiction.  Then, because the story is now too long, he goes through it again, compressing, trimming, cutting, and making each word defend itself.

I’ve made this fleshing-out process sound like drudgery, and sometimes it is.  True writers find enjoyment in it, or at least tolerate it.  But it is not the easy part.  For me, writing consists of the same proportions as Thomas Edison’s formula for genius–1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.  Perhaps someday when I’ve written many hundreds of stories it will get more difficult to come up with new ideas, but I’m a long way from that.  Even then the percentages will likely be 2% and 98%.

Were you laboring under a misconception about the difficulty of ideas and the ease of writing?  Have I changed your mind?  Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.  While I wait for you to do that, it’s back to the hard work of fleshing out another skeleton for–

                                                                Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

July 1, 2012Permalink

Writing for Young Adults

Want to write stories for Young Adults?  Hard to blame you.  It’s a large market, and some authors have become successful in aiming for it.  If you, like J. K. Rowling, happen to write a YA story that also appeals to adults, then your story’s market is that much bigger.

Perhaps your purpose in writing YA stories is more complex than a direct desire for money or fame.  One web commenter has suggested writer Robert Heinlein wrote YA (then called ‘juvenile’) novels to shape a young audience, to prepare readers for later buying his brand of adult novels.  If true…wow!  That’s thinking ahead!

Whatever your reason for wanting to write for it, the YA market is an interesting one.  It took until about 1900, several hundred years after the first printed books, for the following confluence of events to make a YA market possible:  (1) the price of books dropped to be within a teen’s budget, (2) teen buying power rose so they could afford books, and (3) teens weren’t working so long and had available time to read.  Once the market emerged, authors began aiming for it.

What are YA stories like, and how do they differ from other genres?  Young adults, as an audience, are leaving the comfortable world of childhood and ready to experience adulthood.  They’re curious about it, anxious to try things.  Fiction gives them a safe opportunity to “try” things in a vicarious way.  They’ve grown beyond simple, moralistic tales.  They crave stories with identifiable, strong but vulnerable characters–complex characters who aren’t all good or all bad.  A good, solid plot-line is more important to them now than it was in the children’s books they no longer read.

In short, YA stories are very similar to those written for adults.  I thought I’d read once where Robert Heinlein had said writing for juveniles (the old term for YA) was just like writing for adults except you take out all the sex and swearing.  I can’t find that quote now, but it would need amending anyway.  Notice Heinlein had no problem with violence in YA stories, and that remains true.  As for sex, it’s probably best to leave out graphic descriptions, but don’t pretend the act doesn’t exist.  As for swearing, it’s my guess that mild swearing is acceptable in YA literature these days.

How do you write for the YA market?  I think it’s important to think back to your own teen years and pull what you recall from those experiences.  Remember when the world was new to you, when all your emotions were intense ones, when you longed to be accepted and wondered if there were others like you, wondered if you’d find even one special person for you?  Pick a protagonist who is aged a few years older than your target audience, either in the late teens or early twenties.  Don’t talk down to your readers; they’re old enough to look up words they don’t understand.  Don’t set out to write a moralistic story of instruction; teens are quick to spot a lecture and, frankly, they get enough of those from their parents.  They’re not about to shell out good money and spend their time reading a sermon from you.

My own reading as an early teenager focused on the Tom Swift, Jr. series published between 1954 and 1971.  After that I primarily read Jules Verne and other science fiction authors, mostly those writing hard science fiction.  Now as a writer, I think all my stories should be acceptable for the YA audience, though I haven’t consciously aimed for it.  My tales have very little swearing.  There is a sex scene (of sorts) in my horror story, “Blood in the River,” but nothing too graphic.  However, none of my published stories feature a teen protagonist.

Good luck with the YA story you’re writing.  If this blog post has helped in any way, or if you take issue with what I’ve stated, please leave a comment for–

                                                    Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

June 24, 2012Permalink

Can’t You Stick With One Genre, Steve?

Today I’ll explore the reasons why some authors write in only one genre, and why others don’t.  If you’re a beginning writer, most likely you picture yourself staying in your favorite genre.  Don’t be too sure things will remain that way.  When I started, I never imagined I’d write a horror story, or a romance.

Here’s the list of the genres in which I’ve had stories published, along with the stories that apply to each (and yes, some stories reside in more than one genre):

Science Fiction “Bringing the Future to You,”  “Seasteadia,” “The Finality,” “Target Practice”
Alternate History “Leonardo’s Lion,” “Alexander’s Odyssey,” “The Wind-Sphere Ship,” “The Vessel,” “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai”
Steampunk “Within Victorian Mists,” “The Steam Elephant”
Clockpunk “Leonardo’s Lion”
Romance “Within Victorian Mists”
Horror “Blood in the River”
Fantasy “A Sea-Fairy Tale”

Consider things from a reader’s perspective.  With limited funds and little free time, they’re forced to be selective.  They tend to prefer reading in one or two genres, and if two, the pair of genres are often related.  Readers seek good, consistent, and dependable authors.  Once they discover an author they like, they stick with that one for a time.  Readers do not like surprises from authors, either in quality or in change of genre.

From the author’s perspective, there are two needs to satisfy–the reader and the muse.  Many authors seek to make money from their writing, and the only way to do that is to delight a lot of readers.  Other authors write for their muse, their creative mind.  That often causes these authors to dabble in several genres, since the muse is fickle and easily bored by sameness.  Since authors are aware of the preferences of readers mentioned earlier, they will sometimes use pen names when they write outside their main genre.

As you might have suspected, I’ve been writing for my muse so far.  How have readers been taking to my stories?  I get some data from Amazon, but even so it’s hard to tell.  Several of my stories are combined with other author’s tales in anthologies, so sales of these anthologies do not necessarily indicate readers like my stories.  Only a few of my stories are sold as ‘books’ in their own right.  Further, I’m unable to get sales data from Amazon on two of my stories–“Bringing the Future to You” and “Target Practice.”

With the data I was able to gather, I decided to rate my stories by number of sales per year rather than total sales, to account for the different publication dates.  Here’s the list, starting with the best-selling:

Story Genre
“The Finality” * science fiction
“Blood in the River” * horror
“The Steam Elephant” * steampunk
“Within Victorian Mists” steampunk, romance
“A Sea-Fairy Tale” * fantasy
“The Vessel” * alternate history
“Alexander’s Odyssey” alternate history
“Leonardo’s Lion” clockpunk
“The Wind-Sphere Ship” alternate history
“The Sea-Wagon of Yantai” alternate history
“Seasteadia” * science fiction

* published in an anthology or magazine

This suggests I should be writing more science fiction, horror, and steampunk if I want to maximize sales.  However, sales do not always equal income.  The anthologies all paid a single advance, so my earnings from them do not reflect sales.

Still, I’ve decided to continue to follow my muse, and to keep writing under my own name rather than under a pen name.  I’ll keep track of story sales as I go.  If stories in one genre really take off, then it makes sense to keep riding a winning horse.  What do you think of my strategy?  What will yours be?  It might be very different from that of–

                                                                      Poseidon’s Scribe

June 17, 2012Permalink

How Do Writers Exercise?

Writers exercise like everyone else, I suppose–when it comes to their physical body.  Today, though, I want to consider how writers exercise their writing skills.  Early in life we learn the secret to getting better at any skill–long hours of practice and exercise.  Sadly, writing is no exception to this.

1.  The first step in a writing exercise program is to identify your weak area, or areas.  You can get a feel for these from your critique group, from any comments received from editors as they reject your manuscripts, or from honest self-assessment.  By area I mean some aspect of writing such as characters, plot, setting, the hook, thinking of story ideas, tension, pacing, active vs. passive verbs, conciseness, etc.  Chances are, there’s at least one aspect of your writing you wish to improve.

2.  Next is to assign yourself an exercise, and do it.  The point is to focus on your weak area and just try different things, explore different solutions.  You’ll be writing just for yourself here, so there’s no pressure; give your inner editor the day off.  If your problem is weak setting descriptions, for example, you could write a description of your neighborhood or describe a setting from a picture, or re-describe a setting from literature.  Then write several other descriptions of the same setting, but using different tones.

You get the idea.  This is your creative mind at play.  The time spent counts toward the 10,000 hours you’ve got to put in.  Permit me a strange metaphor here.  Imagine you’re shoveling manure from a truck and spreading it on a field.  The field is vast and the trucks keep coming with full loads.  You do this all day, then many days, then years.  At one point you pause, leaning on your shovel’s handle, and gaze out at the field and see a single plant, a flower, growing in the field of manure.  The rough ground beneath could never have supported that flower–it could only grow after all the shoveling you did.  That’s writing.  The manure represents your exercises and early stories.  The flower is your first successful publication.

As you do your exercises, don’t critique yourself at first.  Give your writing free rein.  Use the brainstorm technique.  Consider using mind-maps.  If the weak area lends itself to this, practice many (say ten or twenty) solutions to each problem.   If you like some of your solutions, feel free to alter, refine, or hone them.

3.  After you’ve done some exercising, review, reflect, and analyze what you did.  Which techniques worked?  Which didn’t?  This assessment should reveal whether you’re on the path to improvement or not.

4.  Last, what do you do with all the residue from your exercising?  Keep the flower; discard the manure.  Chances are, you’ve got something beautiful there you can use in a story.

I can hear some of you objecting to this technique already, before you’ve even tried it. Steve, you’re saying, we beginning writers are always being told to write, write, write.  Now you’re saying to take a break from that and do these silly, and time-consuming, exercises?  Don’t the exercises take valuable time away from writing stories?

Yes, they do, in a sense.  They take time away from story-writing in the same way sharpening a saw takes away time from ‘sawing’ with a dull blade in the Stephen R. Covey example.  Think about that. You’re saying you don’t have time to learn to write well because you’re too busy writing garbage that won’t sell.

So conjure an image of the roughest, most dedicated coach, gym instructor, or drill sergeant.  Hear that image yelling at you to exercise, to give him more push-ups, to run another lap?  What are you waiting for? You do want to improve your writing, don’t you?  Try exercising, then whether you believe it worked or not, leave a comment for–

                                                                             Poseidon’s Scribe  

 

June 10, 2012Permalink

Book Review – The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Writers should be versed in the classics of literature to some extent, and I had never read The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, published in 1831.  So I read it.  I just completed listening to all 19 CDs of the Recorded Books version narrated by the incomparable George Guidall.

It would be easy to do a straight review and give this monumental novel a rating of 5 seahorses.  Hunchback well deserves my highest rating for its universal themes and timeless characters.

However, you can find those sorts of reviews anywhere in print and online.  I propose to do something different here.  Since the purpose of my blog entries is to tell you things I wish someone had told me when I was beginning to write fiction, I’ll do a different sort of review.  I’ll analyze the book as if it had been written today for English-speaking readers.  If an author tried to market this book today, what would editors say?  I know this is very unfair to Victor Hugo, and I apologize, but I believe this sort of review might be more useful to you, a prospective writer.

So here goes, and I’ll start with a few positives.  Hugo has crafted a work with well-drawn, tragic characters, and then proceeded to put each of them through hell.  Quasimodo is a deaf and grotesque cripple who (1) feels an understandable but undeserved loyalty to the Archdeacon who saved him, (2) loves a woman who could never love him back, and (3) is forced to defend a church alone against an irate mob.  Esmeralda is a beautiful young girl raised by gypsies who searches for her parents and loves a soldier who does not return her love; moreover, she is accused of witchcraft and is both tortured and condemned to die.  Archdeacon Claude Frollo is tormented by his love for Esmeralda to the point of insanity.  In addition to these vivid characters, Hugo’s language–his style and use of metaphors and similes–survives even the translation from French to English.

On the other hand (and again I’m reviewing the book as if it were a submitted work in English today), the novel has an unsatisfying hook.  It gets off to a slow start and it’s not clear near the beginning what the central conflict of the story is.  Moreover, the pace is slow throughout; much of the text could be tightened up.  The long section on architecture, where Hugo compares books to buildings, could be either eliminated or cut way back.  In general his descriptions of things are two long.  There is no need for the narrator to periodically address the reader (“With the reader’s consent,…” “Let the reader picture to himself…”  “Our readers have been able to observe…”).

If Mr. Hugo would hope to get this manuscript published today, he would have considerable editing left to do.  As it stands, I would have to give it a rating of three seahorses.

All right, quiet down out there, Victor Hugo fans.  You’re asking (in loud tones) how I dare to give this colossal work of literature a mediocre rating. I believe I explained that.  My aim, as always, is to help beginning writers–those who hope to get published early in the 21st Century.  I reluctantly had to downgrade Hunchback, but I only did so to aid budding authors.  Even so, I’ll take legitimate comments from anyone about this review.  So go ahead and (figuratively) heave down your timbers and your stones, pour down your molten lead upon–

                                                                      Poseidon’s Scribe

June 9, 2012Permalink

All Depends on Your POV

Every story has a point of view, and because POV is a basic element of story-telling, it’s important for beginning writers to understand the term.  There are some choices to make, and you’ll want to select the one that maximizes the reader’s enjoyment of your story.

Think of POV as knowing who’s holding the camera that “sees” the story.  There are three basic types.  First person POV is told from a single character’s perspective as if the narrator is the character–“I walked into the room.”  Second person POV is told from the reader’s perspective–“You walked into the room.”  Third person POV is told from a perspective outside both reader and the character–“She (or Susan) walked into the room.”  There are two kinds of 3rd person POV:  omniscient and limited.  In 3rd person omniscient, the narrator can relate the thoughts and emotions of any character.  In 3rd person limited, the narrator can only get in one character’s head, and can only describe other characters as sensed from that one character’s viewpoint.

In the early years of novels and short stories, 3rd person omniscient was, by far, the most common POV used.  I guess that’s because it’s easier.  Since authors feel a strong need to make the reader understand what each major character is thinking, 3rd person omniscient is a logical, safe choice.  Today, the most common is 3rd person limited, with 1st person coming in second.

Of the types, 1st person is the most personal.  The POV character may or may not be the focal character for the story, but the POV character should have an interesting, engaging personality, and not be just the boring person who happens to be standing there whenever something interesting happens.  The POV character can be an “unreliable narrator,” a person who sees things that aren’t there or thinks things that aren’t true.  The challenges with writing 1st person are to avoid repeating the word “I” an annoying number of times, and ensuring your POV character has a reason to be in all the key, dramatic scenes.  The major uses of 1st person are in horror and Young Adult (YA) fiction.

2nd person is rare in fiction, but more common in songs.  It can really make the reader feel a part of the story.

As I’ve said, 3rd person limited is the most common.  It allows a more objective view of the story.  Some markets accept only stories with this POV.  The challenges with 3rd person limited are (1) choosing a POV character who is intriguing to the reader and has a reason to be right there in every dramatic scene, and (2) avoiding what’s known as “POV wobble.”  POV wobble is where the writer shifts to a different character’s POV without a break in the narration.  This can be disconcerting to readers who suddenly find themselves “in another character’s head.”  This mistake sounds easier to avoid than it is.

For beginning writers, I recommend using 3rd person limited as the default POV for your early stories.  If you find a story not working, you could try rewriting it in a different POV.  It’s amazing how you can gain new insights in trying this.  Leonardo da Vinci invented the idea of various perspectives in art and engineering.  It’s a technique used in engineering drawings ever since.  Artists find that by looking at an object from the front, above, and one side, they understand more about its three dimensions.  There’s an analog there for POV in fiction, I think.

So whether it’s “I’ll conclude by saying I’m–” or “You’ve been reading a blog entry by–” or “He signed off by stating his name as–” the ending is the same…

                                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

 

June 3, 2012Permalink