Tag Archives: Mary Pletsch

What an enlightening month November has been! If you ever wanted a crash course in what makes writing the best or the worst, this was it.

There is so much to learn about writing craft and storytelling from the masters yet we can learn equally from writing that doesn’t engage us. Deciding on the ‘best’ means we need to understand why we like what we do and what constitutes the best for each of us (Kristin Luna). It also means not disregarding other forms of fiction because the best stories use elements of both literary and commercial fiction and knowing how each works makes us better skilled writers (Susan Forest).

Elements in the best writing includes:
precision of word choice, great imagery and detail plus an author who gets right into his character’s heads (Clancy); a grasp on multi-sensory prose which like a dream, makes the fantastical normal and lifts the reader to a place of wonder (Brenda Sawatsky); cliffhangers and when multiple story lines crash together in a maelstrom of calamity at the end of a book (Evan); well executed diverse fiction that helps the reader understand the world we live in and cultivates respect (Kim May); story matters and being a good storyteller with proper pacing and resolutions is key, but before telling the story, think about how much you can tell us by each word, each sentence, and the beauty you strive for in bringing them together (Colette); it’s not just about the protagonist against the antagonist but about how every character interacts with every other character (Jace Sanders); heroes aren’t heroes all the time. They are just humans with something about them that is extraordinary, and the more flawed a character is, the more human they seem (Leigh Galbreath); the best writing has characters who strive for themselves along with sentences that soar on their own (James Van Pelt); successful prologues convey information without being an info dump and they promise a story/writing style upon which they deliver (Ace Jordyn); a consistent background which functions almost as another character, widening the options for the protagonist’s conflict along with psychological realism where characters behave consistently (Al Onia); the key to the ‘best’ has less to do with perfect prose, and more to do with story impact when what we’re writing matters, emotions rise up, and the reader can feel it (Adria Laycraft).

What constitutes the worst writing includes:
meandering prose that loses the reader and is boring and there’s no beginning, middle or end and no characters to invest in (Clancy); it’s a bad idea to mislead readers about what kind of story you are telling readers for pick up books because they’re hoping for a certain type of experience. (Mary); when writers grab hold of a culture’s cool elements—Samurai swords, martial arts, ninjas—and throw the rest out the window because the history, philosophy, sociology, and traditions are so intertwined and influential on the cool elements that you can’t separate the two and do it justice. (Kim May); it’s not possible to root for a guy who seems like a walking pity party or if the main character lacks any sense of wonder (James Van Pelt); prologues don’t work if they create expectations that the book doesn’t meet either in story content or style, if they’re an info dump or if they are used to foreshadow or tease (Ace Jordyn); when writers betray the promises set in the beginning of the book and shatter the reader’s bond with the story (Frank).

So how can we judge how we each measure up at being the best? We can compare our work to those we admire and like to read or, as Nathan Barra observed, we can learn by comparing our earlier works to our current ones and being motivated by that.

In case you want to follow up on any of the excellent points I’ve summarized, here is a list of November’s blogs. Just click on the title and the link will get you there.

Happy reading and writing!

Lee Child vs the Boring Clancy
Not What I Signed Up For Mary
The Dreamer Brenda Sawatzky
In Loving Appreciation of the Story Swirl Evan Braun
The Emperor and the Impostor Kim May
Kneeling in the Silver Light Mary
The Importance of Word Choice Colette
Learning from the Masters Jace Sanders
A Tale of Two Readers; or, Everybody Wins Kristin Luna
The Not So likeable Hero Leigh Galbreath
Pluck, Pity Parties and Prose – What I Like Best and What Doesn’t Work James Van Pelt
SSWS Writing Scholarship: Should YOU Apply? Colette
Clive Cussler, Guy Gavriel Kay and DJ McIntosh are Masters at … Ace Jordyn
Writing What I Like to Read Al Onia
Writing Stories that Matter Adria Laycraft
Looking for Progress in a Mirror Nathan Barra
Don’t Break Your Promises Frank
Using the Tools of Both Literary and Commercial Fiction Susan Forest

Not What I Signed Up For

November 5, 2014

mary

The Writing Life 1 Comment

(Trigger warning for discussion of sexual abuse and rape in the following article.)

A friend of mine is a big fan of romance novels. These aren’t my usual choice of reading material, but I accepted her offer to try a few. I wanted to understand my friend’s interest, to figure out why these books had so much appeal, and, I’ll admit, I was curious.

The first three books entertained me easily enough. I could see the selling points of these modern-day Cinderella stories. Usually, a hardworking but not particularly well-off young woman would catch the eye of a rich single bachelor. He’d sweep her off her feet into a whirlwind of luxury and excitement (I laugh at the lavish descriptions of houses and hotel rooms, gowns, and meals; the upper-class lifestyle is as much a selling point as the man himself) and there would be hot sex. Then a misunderstanding would split the couple apart, until the end when true love conquered all.

Then came the fourth book.

In this book, a woman agreed to a prearranged marriage. Bizarre wills, marrying for desperately needed money and familial obligations are common plot devices to force contact between heros and heroines who initially don’t like each other beyond their sexual attraction to one another, so I thought nothing of it. Until the wedding night scene.

Usually, this scene is one of seduction, in which the woman indulges her secret sexual attraction. In this case, the wedding night read to me as a sexual assault. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The heroine didn’t want the encounter, didn’t enjoy the encounter, and was deeply upset afterwards. Shocked, I flipped to the end of the book. She was going to get the creep thrown in jail and marry the butler, right?

Nope. At the end of the book, the heroine was head over heels in love with her rapist.

This wasn’t an old book, either, reflecting the social values of 1900…or even 1999. It had been written the same year I’d read it.

Now, a caveat. I don’t have a problem with dark fiction or dark themes in stories. I know several real-life abuse survivors who’ve told me they like to read and/or write fiction with themes of assault because fiction gives them a safe arena in which to explore, understand, and come to terms with their emotions. Fiction is a place where no real people are harmed in the creation of imaginary stories, and people can enjoy certain acts occurring in fiction–including war, murder, natural disasters, etc–that they would never want to have happen in real life.

What bothered me was not that there was rape in a story, but that there was rape between the lead characters of a story that had been presented to me, the reader, as a sweeping romance. Following the happily-ever-after convention of these novels, I was expected to believe that in the second half of the book, the heroine would forgive and fall in love with her rapist, who would love her in return.

I don’t usually stop reading books halfway through, but this one, I did. I did not want the writer to convince me to believe in this “romance”. My idea of a happy ending, at that point, was to see the “hero” locked up behind bars. A rape scene, and a woman falling in love with her rapist, were not what I had signed up for when I picked up what I thought would be a light and fluffy love story with a side of sex.

On the other side, I’ve read a murder mystery story that also broadsided me, in a good way. I’m not going to identify the book, for fear of spoilers, but it is the first of a trilogy.

The premise is that the hero, a young man whose nature puts him at a high risk for becoming a serial killer, finds that murders are being committed in his neighborhood. He’s both fascinated and repelled that someone is doing the very thing he’s struggling so hard not to do. He both appreciates the killer’s work, and understands that his family and schoolmates are at risk, and that is a Bad Thing.

Halfway through the novel, it’s revealed that the killer is a supernatural being.

Up until that point, the reader had expected to enjoy a book in the vein of “Dexter”…a serial killer murder mystery set in the real world. At the moment of revelation, though, the reader realizes s/he is reading an urban fantasy or magic realism novel instead–a story set in a world where a certain form of supernatural being truly exists.

As a speculative fiction reader and writer, I was all on board for supernatural beings! The realistic start to the book made the supernatural villain seem more real and more frightening. The shock I felt paralleled the main character’s surprise when he discovered that creatures he’d thought mythical were actually real. The supernatural angle also enhanced the story. Now there was a logical reason for this disturbed teenager to investigate murders…because he’d seen the monster, while the police weren’t even considering the possibility of a supernatural killer because they did not believe in such things.

I’ve seen mixed reviews of the book. Some readers felt disappointed by the supernatural angle. These people had signed up for a realistic serial-killer story and received monsters instead, and they wanted nothing to do with a supernatural story. A lot of other readers, though, were really impressed at the risk the author took, and the way it paid off, giving them the first genuine shock they’d had in years of reading mysteries.

Whether readers loved or hated the book seemed to depend to a large deal on how open-minded those readers were, and how willingly they’d accept the existence of a supernatural being in an otherwise realistic story.

In rare cases, the risk run by confounding expectations can pay off. In most cases, though, it’s a bad idea to mislead your readers about what kind of story you are telling. Even the abovementioned serial killer murder mystery still had a serial killer, a mystery, an investigation, and a crime spree that needed to be ended–all the classic elements of a murder mystery. Readers still got what they signed up for, just with a little supernatural flavour thrown in.

Readers trust authors and publishers to satisfy their desire for a certain type of story. Whether that be fantasy, action, romance, or mystery, readers pick up books because they’re hoping for a certain type of experience. Giving readers a story that satisfies that need will encourage them to come back in the future for more.

When Life is Larger than Life

September 26, 2014

mary

Character Mary Pletsch The Writing Life Tropes & Archetypes No Comments

A writer friend of mine has cautioned me about borrowing storylines too faithfully from real life. Her words of caution read as follows: “Fiction has to make sense; reality doesn’t.”

If a story doesn’t hold together–if information is missing so that readers don’t understand why or how important events happened, if characters undergo situations without learning or growing or changing in any meaningful way, if the conclusion doesn’t leave readers with a sense of satisfaction–it’s considered a failure on behalf of the writer. But these sort of things happen in real life all the time.

Readers who pick up a murder mystery story can rest assured that by the end of the book, they’re going to know whodunnit (and usually how and why). Real life, on the other hand, is filled with examples of murders that were never solved, missing persons that were never found, and criminals who were never brought to justice. These situations, while realistic (indeed, real), don’t make for satisfying murder mystery stories.

That’s not to say it’s impossible to write a successful story in which a mystery remains unsolved – I think of Minority Report, where the hero’s missing (and never found) child provides motivation for his decisions – but the plot of Minority Report is not centered on the missing son.

Another important factor to consider in fiction is suspension of disbelief. If a character or plot point is too outrageous or implausible, it can shock readers out of the story. It can make a serious story unintentionally humorous, ruining the tone and the mood, or it can leave the reader feeling frustrated and disappointed if they thought they were beginning one kind of story and ended up with another. (No spoilers here, but I recently read a book which began as a realistic-seeming crime story and, in a daring move halfway through, a supernatural element was revealed. I thought it was great, but afterwards I found mixed reviews, depending on the willingness of the readers to shelve their disbelief, accept the unexpected supernatural premise, and continue reading.)

So what do you do when your real-life example is so much larger than life that it stretches plausibility–even though it really happened?

Audie Murphy – the most decorated American soldier of the Second World War – later became an actor and played himself in a movie based on his autobiography, To Hell and Back. Murphy himself was not the typical action-hero–he was shorter and skinnier than the archetypal figure–and though he filmed the movie as an adult, he fought when he was still a teenager. Many of us are used to movies “based on a true story” containing gross exaggerations for dramatic effect. In this cas,e though, comparison between historical accounts and the movie suggests that the film understated Murphy’s heroic deeds. In a world where the usual formula is to overstate the fictional version to make a more dramatic story, To Hell and Back is an example of where real life has been toned down to make the story seem plausible to an audience unfamiliar with the actual history.

My writer friend, who is English, has been following with great amusement the saga of Rob Ford (the mayor of Toronto) over the past year. From conflict of interest trials to admitted public intoxication and crack cocaine use, from lewd comments to investigation by police, and with videos of the mayor drunk, swearing and threatening people posted on Youtube, Mayor Ford is like a reality TV show playing out on the nightly news. He’s real. He’s all too real. And he still intends to run for office again.

But my writer friend says, “You couldn’t make him up.”

You couldn’t make him up, because who would believe in him? Who would believe that the mayor of a provincial capital would conduct himself in this fashion? Try swapping Rob Ford for the leader in a military thriller or political drama. How many readers would be able to suspend their disbelief?

Maybe you could get away with him in a screwball comedy or cheesy cartoon–the genres where viewers aren’t supposed to take anything seriously.

“But he’s real,” you say. “It really happened.”

Now that it’s happened, while he’s still public knowledge, a writer could get away with a serious story involving a crackhead mayor. Before the scandal broke–or in ten or twenty years when Ford is forgotten–not a chance.

Fiction is a craft. By all means, borrow ideas or plot points or character concepts from real life, but be ready to revise them to suit the needs of the story. In the end, the goal of fiction isn’t to provide an accurate historical account, but to tell a coherent and engaging story. Sometimes that means simplifying events, adding explanations, and ramping up drama. And sometimes…just sometimes…that means toning characters down, when real life is just too much “larger than life.”

Warrior. Iconoclast. Unicorn.

May 5, 2014

mary

Character Mary Pletsch Narrative Voice POV Reading The Writing Life 3 Comments

Unicorn stories. The topic seems geared towards wish-fulfillment for little girls, a more fantastical rendition of the “horsey” books so popular in the 1980s. As a child I consumed mountains of these books, about both horses and unicorns, until I stumbled across a completely different animal: Birth of the Firebringer by Meredith Ann Pierce.

This is not a story about what it’s like to ride a unicorn. This is a story about what it’s like to be one.

From the first page I was catapulted into a world unlike any I’d ever imagined. There are no human characters in this book. The unicorns of the Vale are a people, a culture unto themselves (though notably not the only unicorn culture), and the narration is sprinkled with examples of their religion, their storytelling, their singing. The main character, Jan, is torn between a desperate desire to win the good regard of his father the prince, and to follow his own heart, even when it conflicted with his people’s traditions and teachings. This conflict leads him to question everything he was raised to believe: about his faith, his people’s history, and his destiny.

These unicorns don’t lounge about in meadows waiting for beautiful maidens to happen by. Their story is one of struggle: driven from their homeland by the wyverns, they settled in a Vale across the Great Grass Plain. As Birth of the Firebringer opens, their numbers have grown and they await the coming of the prophesized Firebringer, who will lead an army back to their ancestral lands to reclaim what is theirs.

Pierce layers the narrative with hints that the unicorns’ version of history might not be as true as Jan has been taught to believe. The legends, for example, always describe the Vale as “empty” when the unicorns arrived. Later, Jan will realize that the Vale was a hunting ground for the gryphon clans, and when the unicorns invaded and drove out the native game, the gryphons, as a people, suffered. I still remember the shock of realizing, along with Jan, that the antagonistic gryphons might actually have a legitimate reason for the attacks they launched against the Vale–something beyond a thirst for cruelty.

I was thunderstruck. And I wanted to tell stories like that. My play with My Little Ponies changed from saddles and bridles and combing hair into epic quests and wars against dragons, incorporating world-building, history and mythology, involving prophecy and politics and revelations. Unicorns were serious business. I no longer wanted to be a princess mounted on a unicorn. I wanted to see a world through a unicorn’s eyes.

I was an adult before I realized that Birth of the Firebringer was in fact the first in a trilogy. Dark Moon addresses the question of humanity, previously only hinted at in Firebringer — an alien and powerful species that sees the unicorns as fabulous beasts. The Son of Summer Stars brings prophecies to fulfillment in a way no one imagined, and takes Jan from youth into adulthood.

The Firebringer Trilogy is classed as young adult fantasy, but reading the last two books as an adult, I have no reservations about recommending them to other adults. The story remains powerful, and the language beautiful. Pierce chooses words to enhance the conceit that the reader, along with Jan, is listening to a unicorn storyteller’s tale; and yet the tale remains easy-to-follow rather than getting bogged down by its own description.

If you’re ready to leave your humanity behind and take a look at the world from the point of view of a creature who is utterly unlike you – if you are ready to question your leaders, your faith, and your role in the world – if you are prepared to set aside the preconception that unicorns are fluff for little girls – then enter the world of Meredith Ann Pierce’s Firebringer Trilogy.