writerjenn

Today's post covers ground from the serious to the silly, so fasten your seatbelts.

If you're feeling activistic, here are a couple of opportunities floating around the cybersphere.

To scratch your let's-fight-book-banning itch, or to speak up for a great book:
John Green, author of LOOKING FOR ALASKA and AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES, is asking for support in fighting a challenge to the marvelous LOOKING FOR ALASKA. Click on the link to see the full info.

Laurie Halse Anderson has long been blogging about the importance of running to her writing life. Now the author of SPEAK, TWISTED, and other great books is running to fight cancer as well, by looking for half-marathon sponsors to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Follow the link if you're interested.

Switching gears from activism to writing:

There's a fascinating discussion of beginnings over at Nathan Bransford's blog. I recommend reading not only the post, but the comments that follow it, for some great perspectives on what the first page of a work should do. How much action do you need? What about introducing the characters? Is there such a thing as starting off with too much of a bang? Follow the link to read and/or chime in.

And now for some comic relief:

Toon Thursday this week at Finding Wonderland features a toon based on one of my suggestions, hilariously brought to life by a. fortis. The ferret thing all started with a plagiarism controversy in which a romance writer was alleged to have dropped whole chunks of scholarly material about ferrets into a romance novel. Specifically, the romance novel's main characters engage in a long discourse about ferrets after first engaging in an act of unbridled passion. Now, I had never thought of ferrets as suitable material for pillow talk, and I still don't know that I do, but the whole story has certainly served as fodder for some wonderful cartoons.

Finally, thanks for the supportive comments about my difficulty with my current WIP. I've been working away at it, and it's still too early and I'm too superstitious to give a final verdict on how it has gone, so I'll just say I'm proceeding on. 

I just finished reading John Green's AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES.  Yes, I know I am a bit late to this party, and yes, it is as good as everyone says.  But in today's post, I want to focus on one specific aspect of the book, and it has to do with tone.

Somehow we are able to sympathize with this main character's pain, and recognize that it is genuine, at the same time that we see the humor in the situations in which he embroils himself.  Yet we're not laughing at the main character, Colin; it's not condescension we're led to feel, and he is an appealing and sympathetic character in spite of his (admitted) self-absorption.  I've spent some time here trying to figure out exactly how John Green pulled this off.  

I think it has something to do with detachment.  This is perhaps easier to pull off in a third-person narrative (as this book is), and the use of footnotes also encourages us to step out of Colin's head and see a bigger picture.  However, the reactions of the other characters to Colin helps, as does the tone of the narration itself.

I don't believe that first-person narration makes this kind of tone impossible, either.  The character only needs some perspective, some sense of proportion.  

It is easy to let writing about painful times and subjects descend into unrelieved darkness.  Taken too far, this can have unintended comic consequences (the reader rolls the eyes and says, "Enough with the melodrama!").  Skilled writers can avoid this, but it's a tricky balancing act not to minimize the character's suffering or to exaggerate it.  And if you can achieve humor that isn't making fun of the character, more power to you.

Writers need to "read like writers," which means studying the work of others to see "how they did it."

In that spirit, I want to visit the issue of Characters. On an earlier post, I listed 4 characters that I've found especially well-drawn:

Curt in FAT KID RULES THE WORLD, K. L Going
The Colonel in LOOKING FOR ALASKA, John Green
Russel in GEOGRAPHY CLUB, Brent Hartinger
Jason in RULES, Cynthia Lord

Now for a little more analysis on what I think works about these characters.

THEY WANT SOMETHING
Writers are told that main characters must want something--so that's a given, the motivation that drives the story. But most of the characters I've listed above (Russel excepted) are not the main characters in their books. One way these writers make their supporting characters round is by acknowledging that they have their own desires and ambitions. The Colonel wants to make good in the world and do his mother proud. Jason's desire to experience the sensation of running (which he physically can't do) drives a key scene in RULES. Curt's conflicting desires for music and drugs set up a conflict for his friend Troy.

THEY HAVE PROBLEMS
Nobody wants to read about perfect people who lack for nothing and never deal with adversity. Curt is homeless, ill half the time, and seems to have a drug problem. The Colonel loses his girlfriend to a breakup and one of his best friends to death. Russel is coming to terms with his homosexuality in an intolerant environment. Jason is physically challenged and also has to deal with Catherine's ambivalence about their friendship.
If there are no problems, there's no conflict, and no engine to the book.

WE CAN JUDGE FOR OURSELVES (SHOW, DON'T TELL)
These authors don't tell us what to think about these characters. They show them acting, thinking, doing. I especially admire the way Cynthia Lord manages to show us the rich and full personality of Jason, whose movement and vocabulary are physically limited.
Russel is a first-person narrator. This can draw us in and make us feel close to the character, but it's also fun when we can step back and see more about the character than he meant to tell.
For an exaggerated example of an unreliable narrator, I could add Keir in Chris Lynch's INEXCUSABLE to this list of memorable characters.

UNIQUE NEVER HURTS
These characters aren't "types" who show up in every other book I've read. The Colonel: Short, hard-drinking, pragmatic, prank-loving. Curt: Exasperatingly unreliable, charismatic, passionate about his music, seeing something in "fat kid" Troy that nobody else has seen.

FUNNY NEVER HURTS
Even the darkest of these books, LOOKING FOR ALASKA, has humor. As many problems as these characters have, they don't mope or cry all the time. Real people experience the full range of emotions, and so should our characters. Sometimes you just gotta laugh.