What's your question?

Writer Unboxed had a really good post today about writing to answer your central question.  In it, the author discusses the realization she had while writing her first draft that she was really trying to answer a very big question about why bad things happen, and argues that we all have central questions we are trying to address in our work.

Perhaps not all of us do, but I think a central question or theme is what pushes an enjoyable tale into one I remember for years to come.  The books that focus on a central question or theme are the ones that focus on the human condition, allowing the reader to better connect with the characters while engaging their minds in analyzing both the story and the world at large.  And for the writer, it provides a point around which to build everything else in the story.  Of course, that doesn't mean the writer sets out to answer that question; often there's little more than a story idea, and as plot elements begin to coalesce, the question begins to emerge and shape the events and the characters' decisions.  In fact, I think it's probably dangerous to set out with the express purpose of answering a particular question, because it increases the temptation to "make" the story go a certain way, no matter how unnatural, in order to arrive at the desired conclusion.  The writer may try to dictate the answer rather than explore the theme.  Even worse, the writer might end up sounding preachy or didactic, and unless the story is written for a very narrow audience, this may turn off more readers than it will inspire to think.

Still, thinking back, I realize the best manuscripts I've written are those where a question arose early on and I got to explore the theme through the characters, rather than the ones where I just thought plot elements x and y and z would be cool together:

Manuscript 1:  Genetically-engineered human weapon teams up with war refugee in exile.  Themes/questions explored:  forgiveness, the age of personal responsibility for one's actions, and when (if ever) it is acceptable to kill.

Manuscripts 2 and 3:  Had some minor questions in regard to character arcs, but not for the main character, and there was no overarching theme or question.  These manuscripts are indefinite trunk novels.

Manuscript 4:  Mercenary-ish guy escorts a nun who's resistant to a world-wide plague to a group of scientists.  Themes explored:  accepting one's past and present after one's dreams are crushed, accepting one's purpose/vocation.

Manuscript 5 (in progress):  Humans are invited to make an expedition to an alien planet, only to find that nobody's home when they get there.  Themes explored:  Memory and the desire to be remembered.


What about you?  What are the central questions of your writing?  Or what books have stuck with you because of their approach to a central question?  Would they have done so if they'd focused less on that?


Also: Woo!  100th post!  I cleaned up and simplified my layout to celebrate.  Let me know what you think!

Literary Orange 2012 report and an unexpected solution

Hello all!  Short double-topic post here.

First and foremost, Literary Orange, the festival for which I've worked/moderated for the last three years, happened this past weekend!  Once again, we sold out and had great keynote speakers (Paula MacLain and Lisa See).  And once again, I moderated the fantasy panel, titled "Fantasy: Cosmic Destinies" this year.  I'll keep my eye out for any reports on the event and link them here.

This year my panelists were Nathan Long and Samantha Henderson, who were both engaging speakers and brought something we haven't discussed in previous years:  they are both writers of franchise fiction (for Warhammer and Dungeons and Dragons, respectively).  This was definitely new territory for me, as the most I've ever read of tie-in media was a few Star Wars books I got at Comic-Con one year.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked and understood their stories, since I've played D&D maybe once in my life and know nothing of Warhammer.  As all good panelists are, they were jovial and detailed in their responses, and the discussion of writing tie-in fiction and how it fits into the larger science fiction and fantasy universe was interesting because it touched on a portion of the genre that sells extremely well but is rarely talked about in other panels.  And the time split between my questions and the audience's seemed to work out perfectly.  There's always that moment of fear as a moderator when you turn the questions over to the audience and it takes a second for the first person to work up their nerve, but then the questions flowed well and the rest of the hour was filled.

Other than that, I attended Paula MacLain's and Lisa See's keynote presentations, of course, and found both of them charming as they discussed their writer's journeys and the way they tie personal experience and research into their novels.  In the afternoon, I went to the science fiction panel, where the panelists were Amy Sterling Casil and Michael Cassutt.  Things got interesting there, especially when one of them remarked on the failure of science fiction westerns and half the audience responded with defenses of Firefly.  OK, I never worked in television, but I still think Firefly's failure was due to the network screwing it over, and I think the huge fanbase for it still lends support to my position.  In all seriousness, it was a great panel as well, and also touched on the ways genre fiction interacts and blends with science fiction in other media, providing a nice (unplanned) continuum for anyone who attended both panels.  I hope at some point I'll find audience write-ups of the event, since I'd love to know what unbiased non-moderators thought of it.



My second topic in this post is rather silly, but I'm happy about it.  I've mentioned several times the challenges I'm facing in trying to craft unique personalities for ten characters who are all always on-stage in my current WIP.  Well, in the shower the day after LO, I figured out a way to eliminate one of the characters who was fading into the background and transfer the important functions he was going to fulfill later in the novel to another character.  And it even enhances a portion of that character's personality and adds a new dimension to her personality, so it's not just a random shoving-over of character traits!  I'm psyched and hope I pull it off as well as I'm imagining.

Expectations vs. subversion, a review of my latest epic fantasy read

Warning:  Longest post ever ahead as I review the ending of a series of books I've decided not to name, since I actually don't want to discourage people from reading them.

Yesterday I finished an epic fantasy series I've quite admired for its sense of adventure and parallels to certain religio-political issues in a particular part of the world throughout the last several thousand years, and it's left me with mixed feelings that make me question when it's better to fulfill reader expectations and when it's better to subvert tropes.

The majority of my conflict comes from the bittersweet ending faced by the two characters I felt provided the emotional heart of the novel.  The series is centered around a war between two nations (founded mostly on a good deal of religious intolerance) and each nation's quest to annihilate the other and explore the world, partially in hope of finding the ancient homeland of each nations' ancestors and the god(s) they believe live there.  In the first book, the characters I viewed as the emotional heart are a young married couple, desperately in love and all that.  He sails away on a mission to explore the world and is the lone survivor of a shipwreck.  By the time he makes it home years later, the other nation has raided his village and killed most of the inhabitants.  He believes his pregnant wife was likely killed in the conflict.  In reality, she was taken as a slave by the ruler of the other nation, and a few years later, she saves the ruler from an assassination attempt and becomes his wife.  She mostly does it to save her son, the only piece she has left of her first husband.  She has several children by the ruler and eventually comes to feel affection for him, but her true love is still the sailor and she views him as her true husband in the eyes of their god.  The sailor, after living in exile for years as he mourns his (believed-to-be) deceased wife, eventually embarks on another mission and resumes sending her letters in glass bottles with a strand of her hair, which would ensure she eventually gets them due to the magic system of the world.  Of course, she eventually does reach one, and even later, the son and the sailor meet as captains of rival ships who are forced to work together, then grow close once their true relationship is revealed.

In case it's not clear, the expectation is that these two characters will find their way back to each other.  They'll get their happy ending.  And they do finally meet, and their hearts are soaring and they're crying tears of happiness.  And then at the last minute, she chooses to stay with the ruler instead, and they all seem strangely OK with it.

Don't get me wrong.  This choice could have made for an interesting ending; it's how blasé the choice ends up being that makes me twist my mouth a bit.  She is so happy to discover the sailor is alive and does feel torn between them at the end, but it seems as if she will go with the sailor when she, rather suddenly and without much fanfare, just decides to stay where she is instead, in a seemingly casual manner.  The woman doesn't really love the ruler, though she cares for him.  After she finds out the sailor is alive (but before they are reunited), she wonders how she could ever stay with the ruler, much less perform her, ahem, wifely duties.  The ruler does love her, but once he finds out the sailor is still alive, he pretty much expects his wife to leave him and doesn't seem like he will try to stop her.  She rationalizes that she's staying because she doesn't want to be separated from the rest of her children, but given the general peace at the end of the book and the lack of wrath on the ruler's part, I wouldn't believe he would cut her off from them, no matter how awkward or hurt his own feelings were.  Both the woman and the sailor realize they've changed a lot in the past twenty years, but neither really vocalizes that they're such different people that a relationship wouldn't be possible; on the contrary, they both seem to be madly in love with and desirous of each other.  (Later, the sailor does think it would have been horrid of him to take her from her children, but as I said, I just didn't believe this would be a real issue due to the ruler's reactions.)

I guess I just felt that since, for three books, both the woman and the sailor have longed for each other and the whole story was set up for them to eventually reunite, there needed to be a little more anguish for me to accept her decision.  I would have more easily accepted the author's decision to play against the reader's expectation of a fairy-tale ending if the decision didn't read so boring and casual, like, "Ahh, well, I'll probably never really love you, but I guess I'll stay with you anyway even though the love of my life is right there.  Never mind that it's your fault we were separated or anything."  I think the aim was for it to be bittersweet, but it just didn't have the kind of emotional punch I was expecting.  It didn't need to get saccharine, but maybe the subversion of expectations would have worked better if her emotional torment in that moment was greater, if the sailor's reaction had been more than "oh, I was kind of expecting this", if she had come to actually love the ruler as well rather than just accepting what her life had become, or if it was played more tragic.  That would give the reader more emotional payout, even if it was more cathartic than joyful.  At the same time, I'm glad the writer didn't do as I expected and kill the ruler in one of the climactic battles or make him the kind of man who mistreated his wife, because that would have made her choice too easy.  Subverting those tropes was a good choice that contributed to the complexity of the situation.

By the way, did I mention that the woman and the ruler are in a polygynous marriage?  Yet nobody seems to even think of the idea of polyandry.  Just saying...

At the same time, I was a little infuriated that the woman and her sailor didn't work out because the other pair of star-crossed lovers did, and I was having a hard time viewing the female half of that pairing (the queen of the kingdom from which the woman/sailor came) in a sympathetic light.  She had become twisted by a desire for revenge, which was an interesting arc, but even when her god was standing there telling her to make peace with the other nation OR ELSE, she couldn't focus on anything but all the atrocities the other nation had committed (ignoring the grave ones for which she was responsible), and only agrees when the god resurrects her recently-slain lover.  Even after that, she still has the desire to hurt the other nation for a long time, and only refrains from acting out because of that resurrection.  At that point in the book, though I had no issues with the male half of the pairing, I almost wanted him to stay dead just to spite her.

Lest you think my mixed feelings are only over romantic pairings, they're not; they're just easier to analyze because there was a lot of character development over several books.  Remember that god I mentioned?  Yeah, the major conflict of the book is solved by an almost literal deus ex machina.  While he was racing halfway across the world to put an end to the war, I almost expected the story to take a really dark turn and subvert our expectation of peace by having him show up an hour too late, with both nations already having annihilated each other.  But nope, he and another god-figure show up, lecture both sides a bit, and force them to get along.  The nations don't solve the conflict on their own; neither side wins and they don't come to an understanding.  Left to their own devices, they would continue escalating atrocities until they were both wiped out.  They only make peace because somebody steps in and tells them to do so or else.

Other than these issues, I swear I really liked these books and their ending!  My criticism probably sounds more serious in this post than it is in my head, simply because of the length.  Overall, I thought the world was fascinating, the characters and plot colorful, and the interweaving of the individual stories well done.  Other than the deus ex ending, I rather enjoyed the interesting way in which he treated the nations' religious figures/gods (hint: not really gods, just older and more powerful beings who are just as flawed as the humans, and most of them are dead).  I thought all the characters behaved in believable ways, especially those who were around for the entire twenty-year span of the novel, and there were quite a few twists I did not see coming.  And I like that his presentation of both sides was so balanced.  Both sides do horrible things, and both have religious and political fanatics who do terrible things as well as genuinely good characters.  The presentation of fringe cultures, affected by the war while trying to stay uninvolved in it, added a lot of depth and complexity to the world without making it difficult to understand.  I'd still highly recommend these books, don't regret the copies I already gave out, and have a lot of respect for the author's storytelling ability.  I'm just picking minor scenes toward the end to dwell on.



What about you?  When do you feel it's best for authors to fulfill reader's expectations, and when is it best to subvert tropes?  And what sort of payoff does there need to be for a trope to be subverted well?

Getting away with things

So like half of America, I went and saw The Hunger Games last weekend and am now reading the books, which are striking me of perfect examples of being able to break the rules of writing effectively.  It only took a few pages for me to realize that this was one of those books where the plot was what would propel the reader forward, despite the writing being somewhat plain and basic and not all that correct.  There are run-on sentences and comma splices and simple vocabulary everywhere.

It's an effective device for telling the story, even if it's not the most sparkling prose.  First of all, there's a simplicity to it that suits Katniss' character.  It reads like her thoughts, especially since it is written in present tense, rather than a carefully prepared report compiled after the events.  Katniss is smart, but her education has only been basic, and she does not seem like the type to worry too much about forming complete sentences or separating one run-on sentence into two. She isn't one for flowery expression, so it makes sense she chooses direct and simple language to express her thoughts.  She doesn't dwell on things (at least from what I've seen in the first book), so her thoughts are quick and unornamented, not weighed down by rules and careful consideration of her word choices.

Most importantly, this structure and style seems like a deliberate choice by the author.  We can see from other portions of the novel (like other characters' dialogue) that Collins knows how to form whole sentences.  Aside from the odd (technically incorrect) punctuation, none of Katniss' narrative is grammatically wrong.  And Collins has years of writing experience before The Hunger Games.  Rather than writing poorly and arguing it is her style (rather than a reflection of her lack of knowledge or skill), Collins chooses to veer away from perfect English to move the story along in a way that feels authentic to a character like Katniss.

That's the important thing.  If you're going to break the rules of writing in your novel, it has to be a deliberate choice.  It can only be a deliberate choice if you know how to write properly.  Otherwise it will be haphazard instead of effective.

Just a thought.  Other than fragments and asides set off by em-dashes, I tend to conform more to grammatical rules, so I'm not searching for any kind of justification here.  I just find it interesting to analyze effective examples of unconventional lack of adherence to grammatical rules.


One last plug:  If you live in southern California, come check out Literary Orange this Saturday!

Ack! So many characters!

Ahh, nothing like coming back from spring break, having read nothing blog- or academic-related, only to realize how much you have to catch up on.

I did continue work and writing, though, and for the last one, came to the realization that I am only a few thousand precious words from the halfway point of my goal word count but only 40% through my outline.  Past experience makes me think I'll move through the latter half of my outline with greater economy of words, since most of the world-building will be done, but it's also made me realize how much I envy writers who write with brevity.  I know there are things I can trim, but there's also stuff I need to add.  I need more description of the planet, even if it is supposed to be rather Earth-like.  A big reason for my lengthiness thus far has been trying to craft unique characters, but that has been more challenging than normal because I have ten of them.  They're always together, so they each need a lot of development if I want them to be doing more than hanging around in the background.  With so many, though, that's a challenge to do unless I add many scenes or pieces of dialogue that disrupt the flow of the scene.  It's been helpful to do smaller scenes with fewer characters, of course, but it still feels like some are getting more developed while others are remaining one-note.

I am pleased with my main character and several of the supporting cast.  I'm a bit chagrined that one of my major characters (the captain of the mission) isn't coming out as awesome as I'd planned, because she keeps getting bypassed to showcase one of the others.  I'll either need to accept that she becomes more important later in the story or do some major revisions.  My jerk is a little too one-dimensional, but he's going to die soon and I don't know how much complexity I really want to give him; some people are just grumpy.  (Oooh, maybe I could establish him more in the first storyline... He would have been around then.)  And my "hidden villain" character, who's not supposed to come into much prominence until the jerk dies, is too far in the background at the moment.  And a few of the others should have more depth, even if my POV character doesn't know them too well yet.  I've thought about trying to combine a few, but they each serve a specific function on the ship, so...

My journalist, astrobiologist, doctor, and one of the engineers are awesome, though.  I just need to bring the others up to that level in a more expedient fashion. I still have a lot to learn, and a lot left to write, and a need to do it all in fewer words, but that's what revision is for!