Book Stack 3.27.12

With my professors advising us to start work on our final projects and the beautiful (unusual) spring weather we're getting here in Minnesota, I'm not reading much fiction. I'm usually either doing homework or practicing my archery.  But still, I always have a book stack I'm working through.  For a little bit lighter content today, I'm going to share what's currently in the stack.

First, we have Cinder by Marissa Meyer.  It's basically about Cinderella... except for one twist.  She's a cyborg.  My dad brought this one up in conversation and we sort of made fun of the idea (we tend to poke fun at things we don't know much about or are secretly interested in - bad habit), but several weeks later, it appeared at the library and it had such a glossy, beautiful cover that I picked it up and brought it home.  (After checking it out, of course... Man, I sound like such a horrible person in this paragraph...drawn only to books with beautiful covers, ridiculing stuff...)
Anyways, it's actually very good so far, managing to be incredibly unique while staying close to the traditional Cinderella story.  Another interesting fact: it takes place in futuristic China! The author really knows what she's doing with the whole cyborg thing, too.  It makes me wonder if she learned from experience.  Hmm...

Next we have Entwined, by Heather Dixon.  I learned about this one from The Book Fae, but I haven't started it yet.  It's an alternate story of The Twelve Dancing Princesses.  (I'm sensing a theme from my book stack here...) The only other thing I know is that the main character is named Azalea, and I'm trying to sort out my feelings on that name.  Do I like it, or do I not?

Next we have The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld.  I was at the library one day (I volunteer there once a week, that's why I'm always bringing it up) when Dad came by to pick me up and checked the sale cart.
"Anything good?" I said.
"No." He sounded pretty decided about it, but I went to check for myself anyway, in case there was a Gallagher Girls or something like that whose interest he would not share.
A few seconds later, I was hurrying toward him, waving The Risen Empire and demanding, "You mean this isn't considered something good?"
He was just as excited as I was, and so we paid the measly fifty cents and took it home.  I started reading it the day or so after we got it, but frankly, it wasn't that exciting.  But I shall read it anyway - I have to support dear Scott W.

And there, at the bottom, I have some Amish romance by Beverly Lewis: The Thorn and The Judgment.  Even though there are certain aspects to Amish romance that drive me crazy, it's one of my guilty pleasures and an excellent stress reliever.  After my statistics exam yesterday, I wanted to escape my own little world for a while, so I curled up on the bed with The Thorn and some chocolate.  Although that probably did nothing to change my impending doom (revealing of exam score), it was very nice.



What have you been reading lately? Got any suggestions for my stack?

Happy Hunger Games - A Chat About Protagonists

Tonight, my dad, brother, some friends, and I will be joining the horde of Katniss-braided, Capitol-coloured fans on their way to watch (in a theater, not on Capitol broadcast, so it's okay) THE HUNGER GAMES.

I don't have a flaming shirt or any other fan paraphernalia, but I did doodle a mockingjay on my wrist before school one morning.

In honor of The Hunger Games and its generally acclaimed awesomeness, I'd like to talk about protagonists and something Suzanne Collins did (and you can do) to create a gripping protagonist.  In addition to this, you'll get to see pictures of me trying to impersonate Miss Everdeen herself.

What is this 'something' Suzanne Collins does to Katniss to make us so sympathize with her and root for her every step of the way in the Games?

It's simple.

Katniss does things.

At the very beginning, we see her playing the breadwinner, hunting and gathering herbs - doing everything she can to keep her fragile family alive.  When her frail little sister is chosen to participate in the Games, Katniss immediately volunteers herself in Prim's place - without even a second thought.  When the Gamemakers are paying more attention to the roast pig than Katniss during her private session, she loses her temper and shoots the apple right out of the pig's mouth.

Katniss doesn't mope or whine or sit around wondering what to do next - she just does what she knows she has to.

A lot of authors tend to describe their protagonist in great physical detail, but then let them free float emotionally through the book.  These characters don't do what they need to in order to solve their problems.  (This is the problem I had with my female main character, Ren, from Seaspear.)

Cheryl Klein states in her fabulous book on writing called Second Sight, "Action is inherently attractive because it makes things happen in the book, and the readers read to see things happen.  (They can watch paint dry in real life.) Bad guys are often sexier than good guys because they do things, they cause trouble, in going after what they want.  Flip that around and have your good guy do something in going after what he wants (210)."

After you come home from The Hunger Games, (all streaked with tears and mascara like I probably will), or even if you don't plan to see the movie and just enjoy the book instead, examine your own characters:

- Are you letting your protagonist drive the story? 

- Don't just let things happen to your protagonist.  Have your protagonist happen to things.

- Does your protagonist have something he / she wants throughout the whole story? Does he / she take significant steps toward achieving this goal?

May the odds be ever in your favor - you're on your way to creating a complex, gripping protagonist and an amazing story.  Keep writing!


P.S. Here's my favorite quote from The Hunger Games:
"I keep wishing...I could think of a way to show the Capitol that they don't own me.  That I'm more than just a piece in their games." - Peeta Mellark

- Ellyn

The Masterpiece

Have you ever had a dry reading spell, where everything you try to read is tasteless as sand?
Then, have you picked up a book from the library shelf with some degree of doubt, and begin to smile as you read through the first chapters? Does it serve as ice on your forehead in the desert?

This book draws you in, captures your entire mind until you have thoughts for nothing else.  You read all day, even into the night.

Then, something so terrible happens to the characters that you want to cry, but your throat feels all gritty and cold, like it's full of ice splinters.  You swallow and read on.

It only gets worse and worse, and better and better at the same time.  When at last you turn the last page and close the book, it's as if you've been released from a hangman's noose and you can breathe again.

Your light is the only one on in the house, so you turn it off and huddle under the covers to cry a bit and get warm.

Even when you get up the next morning, the book haunts you from where you set it on the chair in your room, beside your laptop.

Such a book is a quietly terrible masterpiece.

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Warning / Language Advisory: If you wish to read this book, do not assume you and I have the same convictions when it comes to books.  This book does have language (some f-words, some b-words some d-words) and a few sex references.

Necessary Cliches: Diary of a Wimpy Guard

You pace along the castle wall.  It's sixty steps each way, unless you go exactly toe to heel.  Your heavy armor is making you sweat, and yet somehow, you're still cold.  You wish something would happen, that the Riders would assault the castle, that a peasant would try to slip in to steal a handful of gold.  Anything! Just so you got to move and use the fighting skills you trained so hard to master.


Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.  You turn around and begin to pace back.  You wonder what your dear Sara is doing inside the castle.  Most likely she has finished caring for the princess and has retired to her own small room behind the garret.  You begin to compose the dialogue you will use when you finally muster up the courage to speak to her.


"I know not from whence you came, or how I came to find you, but let me just say..."


"...Hi," says a voice, rudely interrupting your train of thought.  And all at once, someone dark and handsome climbs over the parapet, grabs your spear right out of your hands, and begins thumping you across the stomach with it.  


This was not how things were supposed to work.  Your armor! It was supposed to protect you, but you can feel blood seeping from your stomach underneath the chain maille.  "Who are you?" you whisper.  You punch him hard, but despite his bare chest, he does not seem to be hurt.  You try to draw your sword, but unknown forces make you stiff and clumsy and you fumble in vain.


"I am the main character," says this fire-eyed hero.  He flips you, armor and all, over his head, and you land hard on the stone ground.  "Good night."


"Sara," you whisper, before drifting into a black sea of oblivion.

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I have an ongoing laugh affair with 'guards', a term I use to encompass all men (sometimes women) who, despite any previous training, fall prey to the poetic justice of the main character.

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Guards are people too, right? They have lives, and yet, when the dashing main character appears, they're like paper dolls. 

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 We see this pattern over and over: main character needs to get somewhere to retrieve something, guards guard the something, so main character devises plan to get in that usually goes wrong and the main character ends up having to fight his (or her) way through singlehandedly.  He wins and leaves a trail of dead or frantic guards in his wake.

Some cliches are cliches because they're necessary.  We have to keep on using them because we can't live without them.

We can't get rid of our guards.  If they weren't there, it would be dumb, unrealistic, and not a very interesting story.  "Oh, here's a castle.  I'll go inside and get the treasure - might as well, there's no one to stop me." We need someone for our main character to fight and win against.  At the same time, we can't get the guards too involved with the plot or it will be too much of a sidetrack from our main storyline.

Therefore, they exist to be prettied up in armor and then killed by a bareheaded hero with fists of iron.

You can still tweak these necessary cliches:
- Instead of human guards, you could have an elaborate sequence of booby traps.
- Give your guards a little more personality.  They could even have a conversation with the main character before getting clubbed unconscious.  Establish to your readers that they are people too, not just cardboard cutouts.
- Write a story from a guard's point of view and then have him join up with the main character, or just have a guard play a pivotal role in the story.

I think the movie Tangled does a pretty good job with the guards.  We get the little conversation about hay fever (see picture above) and then there's the talented Maximus, along with his rider, who is in full knowledge of his horse's skill.  Now, those are both guards with personality.  (P.S. Virtual french fries for you if you got the Flynn Rider reference in the above narrative.)

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Are there any other necessary cliches you can think of? How would you recommend dealing with them?

Defy Maturity!

Last night, I talked with a friend on the phone for around 3 hours.  (If we got to factor in daylight savings / hour losings time, it would be 4.) Among other things, we mourned the loss of childhood and imagination.


"I'm craving an imaginary game so bad that my chest tingles," she said.


I nodded on the other end of the phone.  I had just defied the unspoken law of "sixteen = too old to pretend" the weekend before, with my friend Colette (fake name) in her woods.  As soon as we stepped into the 17 acres of deep, crunchy snow and mile-high trees, we knew it was the perfect landscape for playing... outlaws.


Outlaws with British accents, actually.


We did it.  Colette and I gave into temptation and just played.  We made a fort near a fallen tree and covered it with sheets of birchbark.  When we finished, it looked just like the beavers' house from Narnia.


We were out in the woods around two and a half hours and just barely made it back through the deep snow.


"I think being an outlaw for one day is quite enough," I told Colette, still enslaved by the British accent that, once I begin to use, is hard to shed.


Here's my challenge to you this month: find a trusted friend and play something you loved when you were a child.  Whether that be wading barefoot in spring mud or soggy ditches, playing spies / indians / outlaws, or just dancing around your room...


...It will completely rejuvenate you and give life back its luster.  It will open your eyes to the beauty in this life we have to live.


Farewell!


- Ellyn (mature college student in public, outlaw and pirate everywhere else)

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"At Least My Cat Likes Me!" - Speculations on the Writer's Best Friend

It's my belief that just as a dog is a man's best friend, a cat is a writer's best friend.Why?


Here's my theory.


Cats are different than dogs.  Usually, dogs give everyone the benefit of the doubt and like them right away.  But cats are always skeptical at first.  Like cats, the general public is almost always skeptical of a budding new writer.  We try so hard to please them, but something is always wrong.

Let's face it, people.  We can win a cat's love a lot easier than we win the public's.  So when a cat-owning author gets a rejection slip, he can read the comments, shrug, and get his cat some milk, saying, "At least my cat likes me," and be glad for that little accomplishment. A non-cat-owning author who gets a rejection slip is in danger of a fit of depression and insanity.  He'll yell, "THE WORLD IS AGAINST ME!" (Then he might find himself clicking through pet ads online.  Or pictures of kittens.)


Moral of the story: if you're writer, go get a furry companion who you can stroke in the night, who can give you skeptical looks when you think of some too-cliche idea, and who can help you procrastinate by sitting on your notebook.

Other authors have commented on cats as well:

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“To understand a cat, you must realize that he has own gifts, his own viewpoint, even his own morality.” (Lilian Jackson Braun)

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 “You now have learned enough to see / That cats are much like you and me / And other people whom we find / Possessed of various types of mind / For some are sane and some are mad / And some are good and some are bad / And some are better, some are worse — / But all may be described in verse.” 
(T. S. Eliot)

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“A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It’s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys.” 
(Barbara Holland)

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“Poets generally love cats – because poets have no delusions about their own superiority.” 
(Marion Garretty)

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"A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not."

(Ernest Hemingway)

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I currently have three cats, who I will introduce to you in order of age.

This is CC.  The two c's stand for 'Conifer Christmas,' because we got her at a Christmas tree farm when she was just a wee lass.  Until Dickens arrived, she was indisputably the Head Cat, but now that position is still uncertain.  CC most enjoys sitting around looking angry with everyone.  She also refuses to drink unclean water (meaning: any water that has come too near to human filth).  Despite all this, she's a great hunter, the only one of our current cats who I have seen bring back a mouse / vole to eat.  Hopefully, Dickens at least will get there.

It's a lucky thing CC doesn't have her little sister Mitzy's looks - or she'd be too vain to bear.  Happily, Mitzy does not have CC's personality - she has no idea how beautiful she is.  We got Mitzy from a box of dumped kittens at our feed store.  Mitzy had a hard childhood, and we believe she's not quite right in the attic, as she can be prone to staring into space, sudden loss of hearing which may return at any given moment, and jumpy behavior.  She's certainly not as capable as CC or Dickens.  When she was young, her greatest fear was CC, and she was so afraid that she'd hide under the couch without eating for days on end.  Now, however, she has Dickens to play with and she's almost the same size as CC, so she has a much better life.  She likes begging for table food and sometimes she'll sit on my lap for a while.  She's growing more trusting every day.

Dickens is our newest addition.  From his literary name, you'd think that he'd be more in favor of writing in general, but his favorite thing about the pursuit is that it involves paper that he can shred.  When we got Dickens in the fall, he was a bouncy, uncontrollable little thing.  Now, he demonstrates deadly fighting skills (in a playful manner) and he's also growing into his little black waistcoat - developing a sense of aristocracy that any cat would envy.  His favorite things to do are playfight with Mitzy and CC (though whether she enjoys it, I can't say), and watch birds from the window.


Do you have a feline companion? If so, give me the details! I love talking about cats in general.