Being Versus Telling

So I just started reading Book II of the Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials, which begins with The Golden Compass. Right away, I stumble over what is one of Pullman's biggest faults. For me personally, it's a huge problem. It's enough to make me fall completely out of his stories, especially when it happens during an important plot scene, which it does often enough in a Pullman tale. (In fact, you could say that the entire plot of the first novel was predicated on this error.)

Basically, Pullman ignores his characters. He creates characters and writes about them from a distance, as if he were merely reciting the text of some play rather than being an actual actor who dons the makeup, dress, and physical demeanor and then speaks and acts as if he were the character.

Here's an example of what I mean: The story begins with a boy searching an old abandoned house from top to bottom for some special notebook that contains a raft of mysterious letters, which, once he finds it, will reveal tons of answers to questions that have dogged the boy for many years. I mean really HUGE questions, like, "Who is/was my father? Why was he so special? What happened to him? Why are my mother and I being chased by dangerous, bad people? Who are they?" And so on. So he finds the tablet and gets away from the bad guys, then by some miracle he ends up in a mysterious paradise where he has literally tons of time to do nothing.

We all know what he will do next, right? He'll do what any other boy, man, girl, woman, or space alien would do. He'll tear open the tablet and read the contents voraciously.

Wrong. He never opens the tablet.

Yes, he's dying to find out what's inside. Yes, he has waited his whole life to find out these answers. But he DOESN'T OPEN THE TABLET! Instead, he meets a mysterious girl and they talk. Then they eat dinner. Then they make plans to go on a trip. Then he says that he really wants to know what's inside the tablet, gee whiz, but instead he'll LEAVE IT BEHIND! It's safe here, he says, so he'll just read it when he comes back. Off they go, tra-la-la!

At this point I say something like "J. F. C.!" I drop the book on the table, and I swear I won't finish it. (I probably will.)

Note to self: If a character "wants" to do something, either let him do it and then find a way to make the plot work around it, or change the precipitating events so that the character no longer has any real knowledge of or opportunity to do that thing, or change the character entirely. But never, NEVER, force a character to do something stupid and obnoxious just because it's expedient for the plot.

Cheers to Pullman of The Golden Compass Fame

My respect for Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, inched up a bit after reading an interview in which he addresses the controversy surrounding the film.

"So he won't argue back?" [the interviewer asks.] [Pullman answers,] "It's a foolish thing for the teller of a story to answer critics. If you're putting forward an argument, you can argue back and demonstrate why your argument is better than theirs. But if someone doesn't like a story you've written, what are you going to say? 'Well, you should'?"

How incredibly rare is that?! For once an author doesn't say the usual: "I apologize for any offense I might have caused. I respect everyone's point of view, and I'm not trying to say that my ideas are better than anyone elses." Blah, blah, blah.

Congratulations, Mr. Pullman, for having a spine.

On a separate but related note, I did enjoy reading The Golden Compass, more or less. I liked the swift and steady beat of the story, although I felt like it suffered from being a bit too swift in places. I'm told by a writer friend of mine that such a fast pace might be appropriate for a young audience. Could be.

Here's a funny coincidence: I walked out of the bookstore with two books in my hands, Milton's Paradise Lost and Pullman's The Golden Compass. I headed straight to a nearby coffee shop and set about trying to decide which of the two I would read first. Imagine my surprise when I read in the introduction to The Golden Compass that it happens to be Pullman's answer to Paradise Lost. Fate must have guided my hands. (Just kidding.)

Strand 80 Winners

I blogged recently about a contest at the Strand Bookstore in New York City. If you recall, the top 80 books to be named as favorites by customers would be featured at the front of the store, and certain prizes were to be given away.

The results are in:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Great Gatsby
4. Catcher in the Rye
5. Atlas Shrugged
6. The Fountainhead
7. Lord of the Rings
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Marquez)
9. Jane Eyre
10. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
11. Lolita
12. 1984
13. On the Road (Kerouac)
14. Gone With the Wind
15. Anna Karenina
16. Brothers Karamazov
17. Crime and Punishment

To see the rest, go to Strand's website.

Alert: Mcgonagall Has a Fetish for Dragon Hide

I don't agree with everything in this article from the Dallas News, Harry Potter and the Author Who Wouldn't Shut Up, but I agree with the basic intent of it.

Creativity is only half the job of an author; selectivity is the other half.

So you made your choices, Ms. Rowling. They were tough choices. Some of them you may even regret. Now you have to do what all authors do: live with those choices. That's your job. Or, if you just can't endure having all of those morbid darlings locked up inside of you, how about writing another book? I'm sure you'd find a hungry audience.

World Building

If you are at all familiar with fantasy literature, then you know what it means to be a world builder. Some authors decide to be builders — Tolkien, Piers Anthony, Anne McGaffrey — while others may not — Neil Gaiman, Ann Rice, and J.K. Rowlings. Since all of these authors project a fantastical metaphysics, a strange and unique world, then the term world building must imply something more.

It basically means creating a complete and convincing alternate universe. Notice I didn't say merely alternate reality, but alternate universe. Turning a taxicab driver into a warlock does not an alternate universe make. Instead, try creating Middle Earth, populating it with all sorts of species of men and animals, creating distinct languages for some of them, writing poetry in those languages, writing a history of all the peoples in that world, and so on. If you have ever seen The Silmarillion, you will know that Tolkien took world building to the maximum.

I have enjoyed more than a few alternate universes in my day, but I never expected to create one myself. In fact, at one time I meant not to. It seemed to me that so much indulgence in fantastic details must be motivated by love of fantasy for fantasy's sake. Well, as Bilbo Baggins might tell you, some things don't turn out the way we expect them to. I'm now world building. Here's what happened.

I aim to write a novel that begins during the Spanish Inquisition. However, I don't want to write about the actual Spanish Inquisition. Doing so would require historical writing, which doesn't interest me at all. I simply want the cultural backdrop for my story to be about mixing religion and politics, not to mention race/family and state — in other words, tribalism — in all cultures in all times, and I'd like to do so without spending the next ten years of my life researching details about old, dead Catholics.

Fantasy to the rescue.

So I dream up this fascinating cultural situation for My Hero. Then I begin to figure out what motivates specific characters. I ask myself, "Why did this guy get this responsibility? Where did he come from? Why do these other guys hate him so much? Are they related? What would a guy like him do about it?" And so on. Next thing I know, I'm saying, "This guy came from a marriage of these two important people. Then he and his brother had a falling out. One went this way and became like this, while the other went this other way and became like that." And so on. My alternate world begins to gain history, language, and certain metaphysical properties that distinguish men from men and provide context for motives. As you can see, I'm world building.

The bottom line is: If you want to create a complex plot in a fantastic setting, and you expect to project anything close to verisimilitude, then you're going to have to spend some time creating that universe. A few casual touches here and there isn't going to do it, at least not for my taste.

It's not as if I plan to pull a Tolkien — not even close, as if I even could. There will be no special languages in my world, and no Silmarrilion, but I do expect my story to have depth, else the characters won't.

As an added plus, I'm finding that quite a few plot points arise from exploring these fantastic spaces.

Though I'm not using the following guide myself, here's a sample of just how far some writers will go to create a world, for whatever reason: Fantasy Worldbuilding Questionnaire, created by author Patricia Wrede.

Drizzt and the Forgotten Novel

I told a friend that I was writing a kind of fantasy novel. He said, "Have you read anything by Salvatore?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Really?! Not anything by him?!"

"No," I repeated. How obnoxious! As if one author should know everyone else's favorite authors.

"I can't believe it!" he said. "You have to know about Drizzt du Orden. He spawned, like, everything." He went on from there, touching on just about every aspect of fantasy, from books to RPGs to movies and comics, and... Anyway, I got the impression that there wouldn't be any fantasy at all without this Drizzt character. Tolkien, Le Guin, M.Z. Bradley, et al — none of these even entered the picture.

"Maybe I've heard of Drizzt. Sounds familiar. But no, I don't think I've read Salvatore. Sorry."

"Huh. Interesting." Obviously he had lost hope that I would ever become a worthy successor of his main man Salvatore.

So I searched the web. Turns out my local neighborhood Powell's bookstore has about 10,000 copies of Salvatore's books (slight exaggeration). So I stop by Powell's and pick up the novel that started it all: The Crystal Shard. I thumb through the ragged copy before I buy it. By the end of the first page, I begin to feel myself entering familiar territory. By the middle of the first chapter, I know that I have already read this book, maybe twice.

This happens to me all the time. It seems I lack the ability to remember names of characters, authors, actors, or anyone else. What's more, I have read so many paperbacks, especially during a frenzied period in the 1980s, that I'll probably never remember some of them even if I were to read them all over again.

I suppose I could inform my friend that I've read about Drizzt after all, but I probably won't. I prefer to be underestimated.

And this leads directly to my next post, though on a slightly different subject. Stay tuned...

In a Word: Pencil

Imagine my surprise when I looked up the word pencil in the Online Etymology Dictionary:

c.1386, "an artist's fine brush of camel hair," from O.Fr. pincel "artist's paintbrush" (Fr. pinceau), from L. penicillus "paintbrush, pencil," lit. "little tail," dim. of peniculus "brush," itself a dim. of penis "tail" (see penis).

Think about that the next time you cradle a pencil in your hand.