I haven't written here for a while. The combination of CRW3930 in Spring (a lot of work, but worth it) and a LIT4934 in Summer A (trying, but ultimately interesting, and I really liked what I was able to do with the last paper there) and work (insanely busy) demanded too much attention. But, the LIT4934 in Summer A was the last undergrad English class I need to take so I can start taking grad English classes for the M.Ed.
In the break between Summer A and Fall 09, I took my son to Kennedy Space Center for a program called "Family ATX" and we had a blast. We missed seeing STS-127 lift off because of the weather delays, but had fun anyway. If STS-128 slips a few days so the launch time is a little earlier, I'd really like to go see it. It's supposed to be a night launch. (Well, currently 1:30-ish AM. Maybe "dark launch" is more accurate.)
I also set about finishing Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy. I read Spring Snow a few months ago. In the past few weeks I read Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn and The Decay of the Angel. About 1000 pages in the last three of the four. I enjoyed the first two books of the four, I think because they were more about the characters and the culture. The latter two were more focused on Mishima's ideas and philosophy, which were increasingly depressing. The long discussion of Buddhism in Temple didn't bother me. It was the general tone. I've read that the books a sort of commentary of Japan. Given the switch from the first part of the book to the latter part, it seems Mishima considered WWII a turning point for the worse. Kawabata has a similar sense in his books, but his tone is more sad. By the time he hit Decay, Mishima's tone was unabashedly hopeless.
Without giving away anything, the fourth book ends by essentially saying, "Man is trapped in history. Everything is meaningless. We can't be sure anything we experience happened." Sounds a lot like Georg Buchner from a LIT class I took last Summer B. After I finished the last book I commented to someone that it wasn't surprising that he committed suicide (seppuku, no less) the day he finished it.
Now, with fall classes coming, I'm getting together books and starting to read ahead. Dunno what we're doing in ENG6019, but in LIT5934 (Robots, Monsters and Cyborgs), we're reading texts I'm really looking forward to. Two (I, Robot; Neuromancer) I've read before. I memorized Gibson's first line it's so perfect.
So I dove into Frankenstein, which I've never read, though I know I've seen a B&W version of the movie (can't remember which, just that it wasn't silent). I was expecting something tedious because of the age of the text, but it has been fun. I actually like older literature when I get back into that mode of reading/thinking. In ENG4013 last fall, the two books I liked best in that class were both set in pre-20th-century times, though written by modern authors. Mary Shelley's language and style is a bit older, but it is enjoyable. And, 100 pages in, the monster exists, but there hasn't been any lightning or electrodes (at least, not in the way they appeared in the movie). I'll see if they come in later, but since Victor Frankenstein has said that he doesn't want to reveal his secret knowledge (secrets man was not meant to know), and didn't use them when he created the monster, I'm thinking they may never appear.
And, I've already seen the rough connection to both Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which I'm looking forward to reading) and I, Robot. Man trying to become a god (or godlike), creating "life," and suffering the consequences, suggestions of "secrets man was not meant to know," and so forth. Shelley's subtitle, "The Modern Prometheus," fits.
When I finish Frankenstein, I'm on to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If I finish that before class starts, I'll read The Picture of Dorian Gray, just to make sure I've gone through the "old" books in the class.
I also think I want to get a netbook. I have a large laptop and smaller work laptop, but the former is too much to carry around and only lasts a couple of hours on battery. The latter has restrictions and is kind of chunky. I want something small and light and long-battery-lived that I can use for writing, reading and browsing at public WiFi places, maybe watching the occasional fansub. I'm still looking around for the right cheap/light/long/features combo, though. When the netbook gets up to $400-$500, I might as well start looking at a 13" laptop for $700.
Ah. ENG6019 is listing one book. 320 pages. 220 literary terms defined. Looks like a dictionary of sorts. Hmm... Wonder what else we'll be reading. Maybe time to email the professor. The booklist update is new within the past couple of days, so maybe she's around.
30 July 2009
02 February 2009
CRW3930 - Ideas?
Writing doesn't really spin itself from nothing. Regardless of what writers say, ideas form as a result of bits and pieces of the real world colliding in the writer's head, consciously or not, and mixing into that magical stuff that the writer put on the page. This web of words may lead to something completely impossible in the real world, but it starts there.
So where do ideas come from?
Everywhere. Yeah. Really.
Today I read a news item about Mt. Asama in Japan spitting out an ash cloud that dusted Tokyo. Since I'm writing a story set in Tokyo involving yokai and other supernaturalness, it wasn't a huge leap to say, "Well, what if a peeved yokai caused that and my characters need to go pacify it." So I scribbled that down for later consideration.
Another news item talked about the Japanese notion that blood type is a predictor of personality. I knew this, but the news to me was that this wasn't traditional. (Which makes sense if you think about the chronology.) It was popularized in the 1970s. So I decided that my central characters will discount blood type. (Another note scribbled.)
Then I read about the guy at Shimo-kitazawa who performs manga, like a storyteller in the old days. My characters are into the old stories and traditions and... well, you see where that's going. (They're middle-school students who like manga, so this hits several points for them.)
So I say subscribe to a few news feeds about Japan if you want to write about Japan and can't actually live there. If you want to write hard science fiction, go for Scientific American and Discovery Channel, but throw in Wired and a gadget blog like Engadget. You never know what crazy idea will come out of them. (For example, Wired has a long article about the man who is sequencing and analyzing his daughter's DNA in an attempt to identify the genetic anomaly behind her medical problems. So many interesting ideas running around in that one.) For science fiction less focused on science, well, Wired is good for that too. They have several sections that discuss social considerations of technology from privacy to health risks to sex.
Research is another source of ideas. I've been reading books about yokai that take a more scholarly bent, looking at them as a cultural phenomenon. Obviously, I get ideas for creatures and behaviors there.
But then I ran across a haiku by Basho that described octopuses in a trap in "ecstasy" (according to the translator). Which made me wonder what might happen if my characters had to track down a (potentially tentacular) yokai who attacked couples visiting love hotels. (Of course, they'd have to go undercover. And they're both guys, not gay. Comedy, and possibly cross-dressing, ensues.)
Of course, I guess research points to another thing that helps with ideas -- knowing the subject reasonably well. I've read enough manga that I know I'm writing something that combines a slice-of-life manga (e.g. Here is Greenwood) with a fighting manga (e.g., Yuu-Yuu Hakusho or Ral-o-Grad) and a supernatural manga (e.g., Tactics or Yumekui Kenbun). I may bring in a rivalry (e.g., Naruto or Hikaru no Go -- yes, they are the same thing, just different weapons). That gives me a set of specific activities that are expected. For example, a school trip, summer break activities, one of the characters is in kendo and will be competing in a tournament (possible source of rival who happens to have yokai connections, right?), attending school, and, at the same time, dealing with yokai, kicking butt on a few, resolving issues for others that are causing problems.
Yes, it's a hodge-podge.
That gives me more places to look for ideas.
So where do ideas come from?
Everywhere. Yeah. Really.
Today I read a news item about Mt. Asama in Japan spitting out an ash cloud that dusted Tokyo. Since I'm writing a story set in Tokyo involving yokai and other supernaturalness, it wasn't a huge leap to say, "Well, what if a peeved yokai caused that and my characters need to go pacify it." So I scribbled that down for later consideration.
Another news item talked about the Japanese notion that blood type is a predictor of personality. I knew this, but the news to me was that this wasn't traditional. (Which makes sense if you think about the chronology.) It was popularized in the 1970s. So I decided that my central characters will discount blood type. (Another note scribbled.)
Then I read about the guy at Shimo-kitazawa who performs manga, like a storyteller in the old days. My characters are into the old stories and traditions and... well, you see where that's going. (They're middle-school students who like manga, so this hits several points for them.)
So I say subscribe to a few news feeds about Japan if you want to write about Japan and can't actually live there. If you want to write hard science fiction, go for Scientific American and Discovery Channel, but throw in Wired and a gadget blog like Engadget. You never know what crazy idea will come out of them. (For example, Wired has a long article about the man who is sequencing and analyzing his daughter's DNA in an attempt to identify the genetic anomaly behind her medical problems. So many interesting ideas running around in that one.) For science fiction less focused on science, well, Wired is good for that too. They have several sections that discuss social considerations of technology from privacy to health risks to sex.
Research is another source of ideas. I've been reading books about yokai that take a more scholarly bent, looking at them as a cultural phenomenon. Obviously, I get ideas for creatures and behaviors there.
But then I ran across a haiku by Basho that described octopuses in a trap in "ecstasy" (according to the translator). Which made me wonder what might happen if my characters had to track down a (potentially tentacular) yokai who attacked couples visiting love hotels. (Of course, they'd have to go undercover. And they're both guys, not gay. Comedy, and possibly cross-dressing, ensues.)
Of course, I guess research points to another thing that helps with ideas -- knowing the subject reasonably well. I've read enough manga that I know I'm writing something that combines a slice-of-life manga (e.g. Here is Greenwood) with a fighting manga (e.g., Yuu-Yuu Hakusho or Ral-o-Grad) and a supernatural manga (e.g., Tactics or Yumekui Kenbun). I may bring in a rivalry (e.g., Naruto or Hikaru no Go -- yes, they are the same thing, just different weapons). That gives me a set of specific activities that are expected. For example, a school trip, summer break activities, one of the characters is in kendo and will be competing in a tournament (possible source of rival who happens to have yokai connections, right?), attending school, and, at the same time, dealing with yokai, kicking butt on a few, resolving issues for others that are causing problems.
Yes, it's a hodge-podge.
That gives me more places to look for ideas.
28 January 2009
CRW3930 - Why Write?
Someone in class posted something on the discussion board about the difficulty of writing, which stimulated this (which I decided not to post there, because it only indirectly addressed the main point).
Writing is hard.
Parts of it get easier over time.
Your skills develop so you automatically avoid some problems (but not all of them). You develop a toolkit that works for you so you can use the tools instead of building them every time. You learn to deal with blank page syndrome, not knowing exactly where the story is going, not knowing whether the part you're writing is the beginning, the middle or the end. You learn to accept that you'll need too kill several pages of text so you can incorporate the information throughout the story instead of info-dumping on the reader. Abandoning a story because it just isn't going anywhere doesn't feel like abandoning your child in the woods for the wild animals to eat.
But the real hard part -- creating characters, finding their voices, coaxing them out onto the page, knowing when you should write the story and when you should let the characters write the story -- never gets easier.
Writing has its rewarding moments though.
One day I saw a bumper sticker and the usually somewhat reclusive characters started a conversation in my head (that became a story). I changed a word or two in a sentence and it sang. After chewing my fingernails to the second knuckle because I didn't know where a certain story was going, it suddenly resolved itself the way I had hoped it would. Others read a story that I wrote and said that they laughed or cried at the same places I did. Someone critiqued a story and I saw a new scene, a new direction, a new character. Someone identified a problem and I saw they were right, but didn't think I was stupid for missing it.
That's me. Your mileage may vary.
Writing is hard.
Parts of it get easier over time.
Your skills develop so you automatically avoid some problems (but not all of them). You develop a toolkit that works for you so you can use the tools instead of building them every time. You learn to deal with blank page syndrome, not knowing exactly where the story is going, not knowing whether the part you're writing is the beginning, the middle or the end. You learn to accept that you'll need too kill several pages of text so you can incorporate the information throughout the story instead of info-dumping on the reader. Abandoning a story because it just isn't going anywhere doesn't feel like abandoning your child in the woods for the wild animals to eat.
But the real hard part -- creating characters, finding their voices, coaxing them out onto the page, knowing when you should write the story and when you should let the characters write the story -- never gets easier.
Writing has its rewarding moments though.
One day I saw a bumper sticker and the usually somewhat reclusive characters started a conversation in my head (that became a story). I changed a word or two in a sentence and it sang. After chewing my fingernails to the second knuckle because I didn't know where a certain story was going, it suddenly resolved itself the way I had hoped it would. Others read a story that I wrote and said that they laughed or cried at the same places I did. Someone critiqued a story and I saw a new scene, a new direction, a new character. Someone identified a problem and I saw they were right, but didn't think I was stupid for missing it.
That's me. Your mileage may vary.
20 January 2009
CRW3930 - Characters and What We Call Them
Characterization is such a big subject, I'm going to take a small slice of it. Name.
No, not what the names mean (though that can be important), but how we use them.
"The rule of thumb is that the narrator of the story will refer to each character the same way every time." (Card, Characters and Viewpoint)
The first time I read that, the proverbial light bulb went on over my head. I looked at some of the things I'd written and found I had generally followed it. (Wipe forehead in relief.) I looked at some of the stories I was reading and found that people who broke that rule were writing things I didn't like, usually because their stories were poorly organized and poorly done. I remember one paragraph in one story where the writer used more appellations for a character than there were sentences in the paragraph. Something like:
Joe scanned his security card and Sue the security guard waved to the brown-haired man. The green-eyed man boarded the elevator. The computer genius walked to his office.
Ignore the lame predicates. Imagine the predicates are the ultimate in soaring prose. I still want to scream. People keep appearing. There's Joe and Sue, okay. Then there's this brown-haired guy, and one with green eyes and a computer genius and…. AAAGGGHH!! Judge! Judge! Objection!! Insufficient foundation! (Objection sustained, the writer is cited for contempt.)
Geek that I am, I think it would be interesting to look for a correlation between "multitudinous names for one character" and "fiction I don't like."
"But wait," you say. "Rules are made to be broken."
Of course. To his credit, Card says it is a "rule of thumb." It isn't hard and fast. What gets written is the writer's choice.
"And he says 'the narrator' should use one name..."
Yeah. So maybe you're tempted to get crazy with characters referring to characters. But that creates problems too, especially if you're writing third-person limited viewpoint through different characters' eyes.
I agree that it makes sense, is often necessary, for a character to have many names in the mouths of different characters.
For example, Dan Lombardi is a lieutenant in the Army, father of two, has a wife, sister and a father. We might end up with "Dad" or "Oh Father" from the 14-yr-old and "Daaaaddyyyyy" or "meanie" from the 4-yr-old, "Dan" or "honey" from his wife, "Dan" and "bro" from the sister and "Danny" or "son" from his father. The point of Card's "rule" is that these characters should be fairly consistent in what they call Dan, and probably completely consistent in narrative.
Depending on how the viewpoint shifts or exactly what happens in the story, the rule flexes a bit more.
For example, maybe his wife finds Dan is sleeping with that new supply clerk (who is ten years older than her!) and starts calling him "cheating bastard". As long as the story provides the foundation, his is a logical shift in names.
Or maybe Sgt. Smith calls Dan "Lt. Lombardi" or "Lieutenant" to his face, but refers to him as "Lumpy" when speaking to the other four sergeants around the poker table on Friday nights. That makes sense. But Smith wouldn't call him "Lombardi" in one breath, "Lumpy" in the next and "the brown-eyed lieutenant" in the third.
The latter example nails home another point. Would the viewpoint character (or anyone in your story) rationally refer to a character that way? How many sergeants can you imagine referring to "the brown-eyed lieutenant" if they know the guy's name? (If he's close enough to tell he has brown eyes, he's close enough to read his name tag.) They might call him by name or by a nickname or even "that idiot," but "brown-eyed lieutenant"?
Maybe:
Mary looked at Dan as he slept on the couch. Forty years down the road, the young, energetic, brown-eyed lieutenant she'd married was old and got tired shopping at the PX. But his eyes were still brown and he was still a lieutenant.
Not only is Dan still a lieutenant (wonder why after forty years) but he is still "Dan" in Mary's mind (first sentence). She doesn't use his brown eyes and other attributes to name him, but to describe how he has aged. (Compare to the earlier example with Joe and Sue where the description was used to identify him leading to massive confusion.)
One technique that can help maintain consistency is to draw a name map. One volume of Orion no Shounen, a manga series (yes, you knew it was coming) included a name map showing who called who what. The characters followed traditional cultural hierarchies when addressing one another leading to a potentially confusing plethora of suffixes and names. Sometimes a name map isn't necessary. For example, in Fruits Basket, several characters were constantly coming up with new nicknames for Kyo to annoy him. His name would change from panel to panel. Potential for scream. But after he erupted a few times and the others laughed, it became easy to tell they meant Kyo (usually because he or his mini-image was fuming somewhere in the panel). Traditional prose would require some similar device or a group of readers who understand the nickname formation rules.
Dan walked into his office and read the memo on his desk. That idiot Smith was calling him incompetent? Him? He'd been doing this job for longer than that teenybopper Smith had been alive!
Not "Danned" to death? Not trying to sort out the brown-eyed lieutenant, the sandy-haired man, the old man, the career Army man and fifteen other characters who are all "Dan"? Yeah. Pronouns rule.
Finally, I throw out one more quote from a "how-to" book that supports this idea of consistency in character names.
"Decide how you are going to refer to a character and stick with it for at least the length of the scene." (Browne & King, Self-editing for Fiction Writers) Which is one of the recommended texts for the class.
14 January 2009
CRW3930 - Writer's Choice
I ended up dropping the Poetics class. The reading load was more than I could handle (about equal to all three classes last semester). I tried. I valiantly read through Aristotle until the drop deadline, but not fast enough.
So I chose to drop the class.
How often do we as writers make choices? How often do we realize we're making choices? Do we recognize the consequences of our choices?
I decided to refamiliarize myself with some of the ideas Orson Scott Card presented in his book, Characters & Viewpoint. My collection of writing "how-to" books numbers six, including the three Ari recommended for this course. I bought Card's book (long ago) because it was about a subject I wanted to explore and because Card is one of the best modern SF/F authors I've ever read. (Ender's Game and the short story version of "Lost Boys" from Maps in a Mirror. Read them.)
I've read the book a couple of times before, so I dove into deep end, looking at voice and first person because those are elements that are important to the story I'm currently writing. What struck me was, Card constantly talks about pros and cons and making choices.
For example, Card discusses choosing person for the narrator and suggests first and third as the most common. Then he tells about a story one of his students wrote in third person plural that was "very effective." Writer's choice.
He discusses the dreaded "showing vs. telling" and gives an example of a professor's spewing a litany of complaints about another professor, ending with, "But I didn't kill him." Then Card presents a scene where the annoying professor appears in the complaining professor's office, which also ends with "But I didn't kill him." One is showing. One is telling. One lets the reader know that the complaining professor's antipathy is (in his mind, at least) well founded. The other gives the reader only one example of the annoying professor's offenses, but makes him more memorable as a person. Card notes other factors like pacing, tone, where this fits in the story, etc that may affect which makes more sense. Writer's choice.
Card also gives an example of a choice he made in a particular novel that he chose to unmake because the resulting novel was too subtle. Still writer's choice.
Basically Card says that anything goes as long as the writer realizes he is making a choice and the consequences of that choice and uses or compensates for those consequences. Of course, if no one anywhere wants to read a writer's work because his choices make it inaccessible... Well, hopefully he likes reading his own writing.
He often focuses on audience. Does this choice narrow your audience? Does it shift the audience from one group to another? If the audience composition changes, you may need to revise other parts of your story to cater to the new audience. Do you know which parts? If you want to keep your old audience (or lose less of it), you may need to take specific steps to keep them. Do you know what techniques might work? This sounds a lot like marketing demographics, which makes sense if you're writing to be rich and famous.
Card's discussion of choices seems to tie in well with things I hear Ari saying about choosing what we take out of the workshop into our writing and his refusal to insist on specific writing topics.
Next time maybe I'll discuss some of the actual mechanics Card presents, like the "one name per character" rule (my favorite soapbox).
So I chose to drop the class.
How often do we as writers make choices? How often do we realize we're making choices? Do we recognize the consequences of our choices?
I decided to refamiliarize myself with some of the ideas Orson Scott Card presented in his book, Characters & Viewpoint. My collection of writing "how-to" books numbers six, including the three Ari recommended for this course. I bought Card's book (long ago) because it was about a subject I wanted to explore and because Card is one of the best modern SF/F authors I've ever read. (Ender's Game and the short story version of "Lost Boys" from Maps in a Mirror. Read them.)
I've read the book a couple of times before, so I dove into deep end, looking at voice and first person because those are elements that are important to the story I'm currently writing. What struck me was, Card constantly talks about pros and cons and making choices.
For example, Card discusses choosing person for the narrator and suggests first and third as the most common. Then he tells about a story one of his students wrote in third person plural that was "very effective." Writer's choice.
He discusses the dreaded "showing vs. telling" and gives an example of a professor's spewing a litany of complaints about another professor, ending with, "But I didn't kill him." Then Card presents a scene where the annoying professor appears in the complaining professor's office, which also ends with "But I didn't kill him." One is showing. One is telling. One lets the reader know that the complaining professor's antipathy is (in his mind, at least) well founded. The other gives the reader only one example of the annoying professor's offenses, but makes him more memorable as a person. Card notes other factors like pacing, tone, where this fits in the story, etc that may affect which makes more sense. Writer's choice.
Card also gives an example of a choice he made in a particular novel that he chose to unmake because the resulting novel was too subtle. Still writer's choice.
Basically Card says that anything goes as long as the writer realizes he is making a choice and the consequences of that choice and uses or compensates for those consequences. Of course, if no one anywhere wants to read a writer's work because his choices make it inaccessible... Well, hopefully he likes reading his own writing.
He often focuses on audience. Does this choice narrow your audience? Does it shift the audience from one group to another? If the audience composition changes, you may need to revise other parts of your story to cater to the new audience. Do you know which parts? If you want to keep your old audience (or lose less of it), you may need to take specific steps to keep them. Do you know what techniques might work? This sounds a lot like marketing demographics, which makes sense if you're writing to be rich and famous.
Card's discussion of choices seems to tie in well with things I hear Ari saying about choosing what we take out of the workshop into our writing and his refusal to insist on specific writing topics.
Next time maybe I'll discuss some of the actual mechanics Card presents, like the "one name per character" rule (my favorite soapbox).
07 January 2009
Why Is It Called Spring Semester?
Has anyone ever considered this? "Spring" semester begins in winter and two-thirds of "spring" semester is in winter, so shouldn't it really be winter semester?
For that matter, why is is "spring" break? UNF's "spring" break ends before the first day of spring. It should be "pre-spring" break or something like that.
This is probably mental residue from an exercise we did in Fiction Workshop where my group produced a discussion arguing that zippers are evil.
Meanwhile, "spring" semester is upon us. A's in all my classes last semester (woo hoo!).
This semester I'm taking CRW3930 (the aforementioned Fiction Workshop)
and another LIT4934, Poetry and Poetics. Which is decidedly not my thing, but I'm trying to expand my horizons, stretch myself -- or maybe this is a passive attempt to force a nervous breakdown given the reading load for Poetics.
I got a new cell phone over break (my old one was due for a refresh) and am thinking about starting a mobile side to this blog given the new phone's slide-out QWERTY keyboard that is actually pretty easy to type on. I also slapped a huge memory card (8GB $25 at Newegg vs. a lot more at the phone store) into it so it can be my primary MP3 player and maybe even replace my flash drive (though I'd need to drag around a cable to do that). How's that for technology increasing simplicity through complexity?
Well, more to come soon, hopefully -- once I figure out what I'm going to post here. Probably not much from CRW (a lot of critiquing that wouldn't make much sense if you didn't read the underlying story), but maybe some of the assignments from Poetics after the fact.
For that matter, why is is "spring" break? UNF's "spring" break ends before the first day of spring. It should be "pre-spring" break or something like that.
This is probably mental residue from an exercise we did in Fiction Workshop where my group produced a discussion arguing that zippers are evil.
Meanwhile, "spring" semester is upon us. A's in all my classes last semester (woo hoo!).
This semester I'm taking CRW3930 (the aforementioned Fiction Workshop)
and another LIT4934, Poetry and Poetics. Which is decidedly not my thing, but I'm trying to expand my horizons, stretch myself -- or maybe this is a passive attempt to force a nervous breakdown given the reading load for Poetics.
I got a new cell phone over break (my old one was due for a refresh) and am thinking about starting a mobile side to this blog given the new phone's slide-out QWERTY keyboard that is actually pretty easy to type on. I also slapped a huge memory card (8GB $25 at Newegg vs. a lot more at the phone store) into it so it can be my primary MP3 player and maybe even replace my flash drive (though I'd need to drag around a cable to do that). How's that for technology increasing simplicity through complexity?
Well, more to come soon, hopefully -- once I figure out what I'm going to post here. Probably not much from CRW (a lot of critiquing that wouldn't make much sense if you didn't read the underlying story), but maybe some of the assignments from Poetics after the fact.
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