naming challenge

Working on a newish story and I'm stuck on what to name a principal character. He's a doctor, a scientist, but also seen as a romantic rival for our narrator. We never can quite pin down whether he's a good guy or not.

I'm thrown because most of my characters are so concrete to me that I know  their names.  Even if the names change over the course of drafts, they are the right and only names at the time.

So, what to name him?

Suggestions?

How do you name your characters?

adapting to the right medium

Last night, I watched John Krasinski’s film adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.  I should say up front that I have never read the book.  My previous experience with the content was from another adaptation, a theatrical production that John Krasinski knew as well.

So this should be an interesting post… comparing two adaptations into different media without knowing the source material.  And I must distinguish between the quality of the adaptation and the appropriateness of its medium.

I’ll begin with the theatrical adaptation.  Picture yourself, if you will, at Brown University. In addition to the official theatre department productions and the various plays put on by student groups, occasional enterprising students mounted shows independent of any producing body.  These often happened in the upstairs space of the student theatre—a rehearsal room come lobby come rec room—dark and poorly maintained. In the early 2000s.

It was in this space that Chris Hayes (now Washington editor of The Nation) directed an adaptation of Brief Interviews.  Just a serious of monologues performed with a chair, sparse lighting, and pages in hand if the actors had not memorized their parts.  It was a who’s who of the best male acting talent at Brown.

I went to see the production with two girlfriends, fully intending on going to a party afterward.  Our experience in the theatre that night was so raw and powerful, disturbing, dare I say it—hideous—that our plans for the rest of the evening were abandoned.  We returned to my dorm room to drink rum into oblivion in silence.

Chris Hayes’ production was unapologetic.  It put forward a number of men’s stories for the audience to judge and to judge themselves by.  I can’t say whether it had the same feel as Wallace’s work, but I can say it is in my top five most affecting nights in the theatre.

John Krasinski performed one of the monologues that night.

So it was with a great deal of anticipation that I watched his film adaptation yesterday (with an associate producer nod to Chris Hayes). 

Alas.

By giving the interviews a framing device—Julianne Nicholson is a grad student interviewing men while coping with her own ex-boyfriend’s infidelity—the content was diluted.  Cheapened.  Context robbed the monologues of their ferocity.  And this particular frame left me feeling like this was supposed to be a romantic comedy that never got romantic or comedic.

The monologue performed by Dominic Cooper’s character in the movie was the climax of the theatrical production for me.  It’s brutality has only ever been rivaled for me by Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman.  But with the context of an angry student trying to fight a bad grade (or is he really reaching out for help?), it became overwrought.  John Krasinski’s monologue about the hippie rape victim becomes insipid when it is his excuse for cheating on his girlfriend.  Alas, the frame was poorly crafted.  The movie, disappointing.

But I wonder whether it would have been possible to create any film adaptation that would do the work justice.  A modern American movie version cannot allow a series of disjointed monologues and any plot threading them together softens some of the ragged edges. 

And then there is the lack of being present in a movie.  Theatre’s power is in its presence.  In the audience being in the room and sharing the experience with the performers.  Theatre makes the audience complicit in the production.  It implicates them while film distances.  (I am now thinking of Oskar Eustis making the same argument in a dramaturgy class at Brown.)

I write about Brief Interviews here, not because I felt like ranting about a disappointing movie, but because it has led me to think about medium.  Film was the wrong medium for an adaptation of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.  On the other hand, I have read plays and thought, “why is this a play and not a novel?”  

There are stories and experiences better suited to particular media and that is something, as a writer, to think about.

the just war, love, and writing

The US media is focusing quite a bit on Libya right now.  One of the most interesting questions that I have only heard a single pundit ask on twitter, without any subsequent answer or dialogue in any other medium was: Who are the rebels in Libya?  We are so focused on Gadhafi that I think most Americans assume the rebels are good guys--that Egypt arming them and the coalition bombing Gadhafi is a good thing.  I don't know.  Maybe they are good guys.  Maybe they are Islamic fundamentalists bent on bringing jihad to a mall near you.  Don't know.  Nobody's talking about them.  Instead, there is a lot of dialogue about "just war."  That protecting the civilians of Libya is the first opportunity for "just war" since Bosnia and what should have been Rwanda.

Since my goal in this blog is not to write about how I feel about the fine line between voluntary human shields and combatants, but to write about writing, I want to focus on the concept of "just war" and why it inspires me. 


I loved my grandpa.  We had a pretty special relationship.  By all accounts from family and friends he was an angry, bitter, violent man.  From stories, I know that he was abusive, prejudiced, and reveled in being mean.  But that's not the grandpa I saw.


My grandpa let me brain his comb-over down the wrong side of his head to play Indian chief.  He took me to the beach on cold days and walked up and down the boardwalk plying me with hot dogs while we talked about the solar system and Greek mythology.  He kidnapped me for the day to drive up to Maine so we could have lobster rolls for lunch.  He would growl at me--an imitation of his fierce persona to the rest of the world--and I growled back.  My grandpa loved me more than anything in the world and I was the exception to just about every rule of how he behaved in the world.


While this was an awesome experience as a little girl, it rather destroyed my capacity to have a realistic, loving romantic relationship for a while.  Prior to finding my husband and finally understanding what it means to be an equal member in a relationship, I expected all of my boyfriends to be like my grandpa.  Namely, I wanted them to prove their love by being the exceptions to their rules.  

Is art the most important thing to you?  Nope, I am now.
Are you a good boy who never breaks the rules?  You will for me.
A jerk who can't settle down?  It's not settling when it's me.

This was unfair to them, unfair to me, and didn't end well for anyone.


While being the exception to the rule is no fair expectation in a real-world romantic relationship, it makes a strong statement in fiction.  In fact, it is short-hand in just about every romantic comedy for "he really does love her."  Richard Gear climbing the fire escape in Pretty Woman.  While it is unfortunate that people have gotten lazy using the trope, it works for a reason, and not just in love.


My stage combat professor (who is coming up in blog posts quite a bit lately) once asked my class, "what is worth fighting for?"  Mind you, he asked this to a room full of liberal college kids.  Most people said, "Nothing!  Fighting is never justified!"  I caught quite a bit of shit when I raised my hand and said, "My family.  You try to hurt my dad or my sister and you bet I will hurt you."


I am not a violent person, but protecting my family is the exception to my rule.


This brings me back to Libya and the "just war."


I don't know whether the rebels in Libya are fighting a just war, and whether the coalition backing them are either.  I don't have enough information to make a call on that.  But I find the concept fascinating.  No one questions whether the Allies were fighting a just war in WWII.  Everyone knows that not interceding in Rwanda was unjust.  "Just wars" involve an entire country or culture choosing collectively to find an exception to the general rule that war is bad.  This is powerful.


When people decide that one person or cause is more important to them than the general paradigm of how they interact with the world, that makes for some intense stakes, some real drama.  It makes for good story-telling, whether in the headlines or fiction.

words and violence

My professor in a stage combat class told us often that no matter the type of combat scene--sweeping, emotional, comedic, whatever--the creators of the scene have a moral responsibility to depict pain.  Violence hurts.  And to suggest anything contrary to this fact is dangerous.

I think about what my professor said more often than one might expect.  I no longer choreograph or act in combative scenes.  I do not write violence.  But that question of the moral responsibility of artists has stayed with me.

There is a line one can cross between "you cannot depict violence without pain" and "you cannot depict sex outside of marriage."  I am fervently anti-censorship, and yet the question of a writer's responsibility lingers with me.

Back around the same time that I took the stage combat class, I wrote a sex advice column for a fairly large and famous men's magazine.  I wrote under a pseudonym, which was a good thing, because I received death threats in open letters in our school newspaper.  I was accused of being a part of a culture that plays into men's fantasies and causes women to be raped.  I did not take any of this lightly.

When I wrote the advice column, I had a rule with myself: while I might tailor my voice to the publication, I would never lie.  I would never write something because it was what I thought men wanted to hear.  It was always what I felt was true and all of the anecdotes shared were my own or those of close friends.  I have never questioned the morality of my participation in a men's magazine.  But there are those who might suggest that I am an enabler of "rape culture."

Today's post was inspired by Roxane Gay's "The Careless Language of Sexual Violence."  Read it.  It is important.

And now I ask you: do we, as writers, have a moral obligation in the language we use?  The circumstances we depict?  The violence we portray as painless?  I think we do and, though I can't pinpoint exactly where this sits on the censorship scale, I think that it is dangerous and childish for artists to believe that we have no responsibility for the words we use.

return of the prodigal blogger

She enters tentatively, ducking her face away and trying to hide a grimace.

It's been a while.  

Sorry.

I'd like to be able to say that I've been squirreled away writing or so engrossed in reading gorgeous literary prose that I have not come up for air.  Or to blog.  Alas.  No.

I have not blogged because I have not been writing and I have been reading crap that isn't worth blogging about.  Intentional crap.  Therapeutic crap.  I got a bit overwhelmed with my attempts to become a writer and  I forgot how much I loved words.  And stories.  And reading.  So I hid for a little while to rediscover it all.

And what brought me back?  A word.  

Snick.

While reading one of those crap stories that I am only willing to read on the subway thanks to the literary trench coat of an e-reader (won't even read it on the couch at home, where my husband might ask, "what are you reading?") I came across the word, "snick."  Used as a verb, to click.  And it had a great onomatopoetic quality.  The word was so satisfying I think I sighed.  Even amidst the schlock I found so perfectly used a word that it reminded me of my love for words.
 Hello.  
I am writing again.  
I am blogging.  
And I am currently reading a book of essays about Jane Austen that I am perfectly happy to be seen with on the subway.

Special Topics in Reader Alchemy

I just finished Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics this weekend.  It took me two months to read.  This is not common for me.  I read quickly and I read books to their ends.  Setting a novel down for days at a time, closing the covers with a huff after only having read 10 pages, it’s just not me.  And it is not Ms. Pessl either.  Rather, there was a strange alchemy: Special Topics in Calamity Physics + me = disgust.

When I was only a few pages in, I turned to a dear friend and beta, who is quite the literary kindred spirit, and said, “You have to read this book.  I think you will love it.” 

Said Literary Kindred Spirit, “I read it and I can’t put my finger on why but it annoyed the shit out of me.”

As I, too, began to get annoyed, I wondered what it was about this book that had so irked us both.  The characters are great, the plot fun and well laid out, the relationships bore the hallmark of reality, and the writing was clever.  So, why did we both have trouble with this book?

The answer, when it dawned on me, was intriguing.

The protagonist and narrator, Blue Van Meer (we’ll get into her name in a future post), is a precocious young woman.  That should not annoy either Kindred Spirit or me, as we could both relate.  

Blue is incredibly well read and clever, citing sources through the novel.  In the first pages, it is charming but after a while, not so much.  Blue suffered a characteristic that a clutch of Kindred Spirit and my college friends (did I mention we developed our similar literary palates at college together?) shared.  This group all went to a prestigious private high school where they were taught that the height of education was proven by the ability to hold erudite cocktail party conversation about anything.  They were raised to quote Rumi and Janis Joplin and Euclid with equal ease.  But only one quote per source; cocktail party clever is a mile wide and an inch deep.  I am not friends with anyone from this clutch anymore as their friendships, like polite banter, ran shallow.

Hence, my disgust with Blue Van Meer.

I am writing about this, not because of my dislike for the character, and not because I genuinely think Ms. Pessl wrote a great book that you should read (and you should!), but because this reading experience reminded me that writing is a dialogue.  As a writer, I try to think about my reader, try to imagine a pace that will keep them interested and characters that are dimensional and true to themselves while likeable enough to read.  But I forget that readers are each individuals that bring their own thoughts.  No reader is a target demographic, they are people who went to college with hurtful clever people and who cry easily at depictions of father-daughter relationships and dislike Westerns solely because the simple and innocent always gets tortured just to hurt the harder protagonist.

I’m not sure how this reminder will affect my writing but I sincerely hope it will.

community of loners

I've started to query agents and really, the idea of it is just making me queasy.  So instead of focusing desperately on my inbox, I am going to blog about a bit of writing common wisdom that I disagree with.

Writing is a lonely practice.

Writers, industry professionals, commentators all agree.  But I don't.

Sure, when I am writing, I do so alone.  I have all of these characters and visions swirling around my head.  I type at breakneck pace in fear that I will lose a morsel before I have time to commit it to the page.  In these moments, I like my solitude.  It is necessary.  I don't feel lonely, I feel invigorated.  In truth, the aspects of my life that intrude on that solitude--work, family, friends, husband, cats--only make me angry at those times.

But what about when the frenzy is over?  Nearly a year of editing, rewriting, beta's critiques, researching agents, query writing, and (cringe) the synopsis.

During this year, it was the community of writers and industry professionals that kept me sane.  Reading the many agent blogs taught me a great deal about the process of finding an agent, what a good query letter is, the do's and don'ts.  Comments on that blog let me know that my fears and misunderstandings were not my own.  A whole community of writers shared them with me.  Beta readers made me feel better in my blue days and kicked my ass into gear on my tired ones.  Forums helped me refine my work and support others'.

Perhaps this says more about my social life in the real world than anything else.  I am not a partier.  I do not have a large group of friends.  I do not attend a religious group or a book club.  So this community of writers and readers and publishing industry good Samaritans has made me feel... well... a part of something.

So, thank you for sharing your manuscripts, your critiques and your wisdom.  I am humbled to be part of this crowd.

put a fork in it

Huh.  I think I finished FLIGHT.  This is weird.

Thirteen months after I began writing the first scenes--eleven of which have been spent on editing--I think I am ready to begin querying agents.  I've gotten the incredible input of 3.5 beta readers (I'll let you speculate about what that .5 means) and now feel like I've gotten it to a high plateau.

I've written my query letter template and have research agents, even begun personalizing the queries to them.  The synopsis, much as it makes me cringe, is as close to uncringeworthy as it might ever be.

So, what is stopping me from querying?

I'm petrified.  Literally paralyzed with fear.

Is FLIGHT really done?  It's not the grand work that it is in my head.  But according to this elegant article by Michael Cunningham, that is to be expected.  I'm happy with FLIGHT.  I like what I have done with it.  It is imperfect but it is my offering.  (Three points to whoever picks up on that reference.)  But am I querying to early?  Is FLIGHT really finished?  Is the query the best it can be?  The synopsis?  All I can say is that I am happy with what they are.

I am sincerely hoping that by this time next week I will have worked past the nausea sufficiently to start putting it out there.

Keep breathing.

beta learning

While letting FLIGHT sit with two beta readers, I am taking on a new role... acting as beta for another writer.  I have done this in the past for short pieces written friends, but never a full length MS.  Though the story is fun to read, I am also feeling the responsibility of a beta.  And I am learning a lot as a writer.

It is not often that I get to see works in progress.  It feels a lot like seeing an open body.  I am fortunate enough to have a clearer view of how the muscles and tendons and bones and circulatory system all work.  (A view that allows me to reflect on my own body.)  It is a tremendous learning experience and rather humbling.  It is also incredibly personal.  I've never had to wonder what my bedside manner is like and now I will have to see.

I am currently making my way through a first read.  I want to get a sense of the book as I would if I were a casual reader.  Then, I will go back through and make notes.  Still, even as a casual reader, I have noticed a few aspects of the writing that I really like.  But more difficult to deal with, I see a major problem in the plot.  A huge problem.  As I read, I am chewing over how best to present this criticism to the writer.

Of course, I plan on using Nathan Bransford's sandwich style for critiquing -- positive, negative, positive.  But beyond that?

read an excerpt of FLIGHT on Glass Cases

Many thanks to Sarah La Polla for publishing an excerpt of FLIGHT on her awesome blog, Glass Cases.  You can read it here.

Woo hoo!

do you write what you read?

On his blog, Nathan Bransford wrote yesterday about books as existing at some point along two number scales. The first measured plot--how good the story is, the structure and pace. The other measured the writer's mastery and use of language. Any book could be given two numbers, one for plot and one for language.  So, anything by Virgina Woolf might receive a 1 for plot and a 10 for writing. Dan Brown would get the inverse 10 and 1.  Haruki Murakami would receive a pair of 10s.  Bransford asked what people prefer to read and if that correlates to what the write.

I enjoy books on all points of the scatter chart. Twilight has a place in my bookshelf along with Atonement, Oryx and Crake, and The Graveyard Book.  Bransford's scales match how I choose what book I feel like reading at a given moment more than any other mechanism I know. I ask friends to recommend a book and say, "I'm in the mood for candy," or "I want to swim in something beautiful." But I can't think of a time when I've said, "can you suggest YA paranormal," or "how 'bout dystopic fiction?"

But as a writer, I am careful to time this consumption. High scoring plot books for when I'm outlining or writing a first draft. But only well written literary when I am crafting sentences.

See, I'm one of those people who pick up accents. I don't mean to, but I drawl around my Southern friends and get more nasal around my family. So, when I am focused on word choice and sentence cadence, I want my mind to be influenced by the most beautiful writing I know.

What about you? Does your reading palate vary according to what you're writing?  By these measures or some other?

ethics questions raised by Gayle Forman's If I Stay

I recently read If I Stay, Gayle Forman's YA novel about a teenage girl waiver between life and death after a car accident and whether her survival is a matter of choice. Ok enough book. A quick read, vivid characters, moments of surprising authenticity (like when the main character and her boyfriend "play" each other).

After finishing the book, I read the Q&A with the author and skidded to a halt. The book was inspired by the tragic deaths of a family with whom Forman was friends and their surviving daughter. (Sorry for the spoiler, but it isn't much of one. The way the book was set up, if Mia had died, the author would have been stuck basically advocating for suicide.) I was shocked that the book was premised on such a tragic situation that Forman's friends had experienced. When I mentioned this to a friend she asked me why it upset me; writers draw from real life all of the time.

My horror had felt so obvious that it took me some time to put my answer together. I know that writers often draw from their own experience, that they often draw from tragedies that happen to others, and that they often draw from people in their lives. But it was this particular combination that struck me as in poor taste: the tragedy happened to people she knew and loved. She did not have the distance of someone inspired by a headline nor the ownership of the event that would come if it had happened to her. She did not claim to write for closure or to have asked the surviving member of this family if the novel would be ok. I was left feeling like she had somehow used her relationship with the family that passed away and cheapened the experiences of the surviving girl.

What do you think? Am I being too hard on Ms. Forman? Is everything fair game? Where do you draw inspiration and where do you draw the line?

help from my two readers

Getting over my hangups about being a crazy lady because I blog with the full knowledge that I have pretty much 0 readers. I'm going to put this out there in case I am wrong or in case you, who have stumbled somehow over my site (watch your step!), have the answer.

Can you think of an example of a story with a very fluid POV? Beyond just having multiple characters hold the camera in a very formal broken-up-by-chapter way? I'm writing my ms from a few perspectives and I've been trying to move between them more smoothly than that. The trouble is, I'm not sure if it can work. So I am just looking for proof that it is possible.

Suggestions?

after four days in the woods...

Muchos muchos minor word level edits.
Two new scenes written.
One character edited out. (Goodbye Emily!)
Three new scenes outlined.
One gaping plot hole filled with what I hope is stronger than chewed gum.

And might I say that this is pretty darn impressive for four days without AC or running water during a crazy evil heat wave.

Feeling productive.

working on a new story

I finished Outer Dark, left honestly underwhelmed. Maybe that was bound to happen after The Road. But it took me only two days to devour Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants. I just got sucked so completely into the world she created. Great book. I recommend.

I've also started a new story. The earlier (something borrowed) story idea is on hold. While I still like the idea and hope to go back to me, it just wasn't getting me jazzed. I wasn't sneaking time to write whenever possible.

Earlier this week, a new idea came to me. It came as a response to me pondering a conflict facing two characters in one of the books I recently read. (And since you know all of the books I've recently read, I'll let you figure it out.) The conflict really spoke to me and I imagined a different story in which a single person might be faced with the same struggle, instead of two with differing priorities. The story outline formed immediately in my head and I've been writing all week.

Part of me is nervous that I have pulled an idea from another book, but I suppose this happens often enough. Where do authors get their ideas? Where does inspiration come from? Not new questions. In any case, I am glad to be writing again.

something old, something new, something borrowed

Taking a break from FLIGHT for a while so my beta reader, J, can read and critique. I think my query letter is done. And I have no idea how to make my synopsis any better even though I know it is not yet good enough. (Trying to keep that one good eye!)

What to do?
Start working on my new project!

I've been tossing this idea around in my head for a few months but have been too focused to do anything with it. A retelling of a classic story with the emphasis on a different character and what happens once the original tale ended. (My god, that sounds trite!) As with FLIGHT, it will be a bit of magic realism. Unlike FLIGHT, it is going to need a lot of structure to provide the foundation for a very fluid narrative. So, outlining ahoy.

And there we are... my something old, something new, and something borrowed. Just in time for a good friend's wedding next week.

now what am I supposed to do all day?

Latest draft of FLIGHT with my beta reader: check
Query posted in online forum for feedback: check
Synopsis posted in online forum for feedback: check

Um. Now what am I supposed to do all day?

my brain is full of words

Some updates in the world of what I am reading and how my manuscript is going:

Sirens of Titan ended up not blowing my mind the way I was hoping it would. It got about as brilliant as it was going to get by two-thirds of the way through. After that it was just about getting to the ending. Still a really good but, but I was left feeling like it became obvious as it unfolded.

Now rereading Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series. I first read them freshman or sophomore year of high school and they changed my world a little. But I haven't read them in well over a decade. And two things jump out at me as I read from a more writerly perspective:

1. The sparsity of language is awe inspiring. Yes, I know that pictures tell a thousand words and this is a graphic novel. But no, that is not enough. It is a rare cell that captures a facial expression or scene in such a way as to maximize those thousand words. Neil Gaiman can simply flip a story on its head or renegotiate the rules of a world in a few words. It is breathtaking. The reader is never left confused or feeling lost or disbelieving.

2. And this is tied dramatically to #1... the underlying structure to the story is a work of art in itself. The books are like a two-dimensional glimpse of the sculpture beneath.

Now, I wish I could write like Neil Gaiman. Of course I wish I could write like Neil Gaiman. But I am not him. And that is ok. But any decent writer could learn much from studying the structure in Sandman.

So good. Oh, and you should follow him on Twitter.

Onto the writing front: 30 pages left of word-level nitpicking before I hand the manuscript back over to J and plummet back into the evil land of synopses, queries, and pitches. Ugh.

I am not this melodramatic

On Tuesday night, I went to bed with a lead weight twisting in my stomach. When I woke Wednesday, it was still there -- heavy and churning before I was even awake enough to remember why.

Oh right, that's why.

I posted something I'd written on a forum. Random member #47 tore it to shreds. Shreds. Not just my writing. The story. Told me I was a mid-American housewife with pathetically typical fantasies. Cue all cliches about being punched in the gut.

By Wednesday night, I regained some composure and perspective. Maybe #47 is right and I can't write for shit. Or maybe she's just not into what I write. Or maybe the synopsis I posted is not representative of the novel. I don't know which is true. But the only way I can move forward is to assume that the first "maybe" is false.

Where to from here?

Going back through the novel. I'm doing a word-choice edit. Looking to pair down the number and make sure I don't get repetitive. It's soothing. The process also reminded me of something important: I like my story. The only reason I'm doing this is because I like my story.

After I get through this current round of edits, I will give it to beta reader J. While she has it, I will start that synopsis from scratch. After all, I still have that one good eye.

the business of turning story into book

The latest -- so nearly done -- draft of Flight awaits comments from my friend and book guru, J. To keep from going stir crazy, I've started writing my synopsis (which is like poking myself in the eye), researching agents, and putting together a framework for my queries.

Scary.

In truth, I've been researching agents ever since I realized that maybe this story I was writing down would end up becoming a book. That's when I started reading blogs and forums. There are agents I feel like I already know because I've been reading them for months. I imagine these are also the agents who are deluged with queries from people just like me. So I wonder... what do I do when I run out of agents? There are only a precious handful that I feel I would be querying for a solid reason -- their blog, the authors they rep. Otherwise, I would just have to say, "I'm querying you because I really want an agent real real bad." Umm...

Advice?

And synopsis writing. I don't even want to blog about synopsis writing because I still have one good eye left.