Shaking words

The best word shakers were those who understood the true power of words. They were always able to climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words. She had desire. She was hungry for them. 

~ from 'The Word Shaker', in The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

‘She eteþ no ffyssh But heryng red’

Q: When is a fish not a fish?

show/tell

Writers are commonly exhorted to 'show, don’t tell.'

Here’s what I think about that. 

Writing the bad guy

If you’re creating stories, sooner or later you’ll need to write a bad guy.*

On worms, apples, and chewiness

There are worms, and there are wyrms. One is small, weak-bodied and blind. The other is a wily and fearsome beast, the ultimate opponent. The two words have wildly opposite meanings – or do they?

Word of the week

fox:  /fɒks/ 

(noun)  A small carnivorous animal of the dog family, with a pointed muzzle, large ears and a long bushy tail, usually with reddish brown or silver-grey fur [Family: Canidae, Genus: Vulpes].

(noun)  A crafty, cunning or sly person.

(noun)  slang  A physically attractive or alluring man or woman.

(verb)  informal  1. To deceive or outwit somebody by means of slyness or trickery  2. to confuse or baffle someone  3. to keep an eye on someone without seeming to do so  4. to be too difficult for someone to understand or solve.

The Art of Omission

If a writer of prose knows enough of what [s]he is writing about [s]he may omit things that [s]he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.  ~ Ernest Hemingway

Hunger Games

I’ve been hearing people raving about this series for a while now.  Despite my YA antenna being so underdeveloped, and the book being slower to take off in Australia, the excitement about it leaked through to me a while ago.  It has been sitting on my towering pile of books to read for ages.  It took the imminent release of the movie to fire up my hunger enough to start reading.

Glad I did.  It is addictively good, and I found myself glued to the story much like the citizens of Panem are to the Games themselves.

What I love about The Hunger Games series is its resonance on so many layers of meaning and metaphor.  I devoured all three novels in quick succession, but I think they require another reading just to appreciate the craft of the subtext.  In fact, I’m looking forward to having a look at The girl who was on fire, a collection of commentaries by other YA authors.  There is plenty for an aspiring author to glean from The Hunger Games, because Collins does much with quite simple language.  She delivers an intricate story in very clear and quick writing.  Specifically, in short sentences.  Now, there’s something I could learn.

There is some lovely work in the story that ensures it will have wide appeal.  The hair/clothes/makeup in Capitol are richly painted, and the feasts are detailed for all the foodies out there.  I especially enjoyed the subleties of the character names and the added meaning they imparted - Peetr = Peter = Rock, steady, strong, versus Gale = tempestuous, changeable.  These names are woven all through the series (Snow, Trinket), but my favorite is Rue, because of the deep sorrow and regret that Katniss experiences as a result of their interaction.  The meaning of names has always fascinated me, and I just love it as a literary device.

I haven’t read much about Suzanne Collins’ writing process for this series, but there are some interesting shifts as the novels progress.  The writing in the first book is much sparer and tighter in its sentence structure than in the next two.  It is as if she finds her stride and starts to feel more comfortable to explore the expressive space inside the storyline.  There is progression too, from the very heavily plot-driven narrative of the first novel, to the series resolution which is nearly entirely psychological in nature.  She lures the reader from the bold, apparent facts of the story and into a more interior experience of the themes that she set out to explore. 

Despite having loved all three books equally, I will admit to denouement disappointment  in Mockingjay – I felt the finale was unnecessarily convoluted, and because of that it lost the fluidity and taut pacing that typified the previous resolutions.  However, credit should be given to Collins for creating a thought-provoking resolution, instead of the formulaic version which so often typifies both YA and speculative fic.

Suzanne Collins herself adapted the book for film, which makes me even keener to see it.  Her background is in screenwriting for children, and it has obviously served her well in developing both the experience and expertise to deliver a trilogy of this calibre.

Criticism or compliment?

Why would she ask that?  What did she mean?

So, it was Thursday, and writer’s group day again (my favourite day of the week). Our group is thriving – so much that we’ve now had to close off the membership list.  Once a month we read our themed pieces to the group, originally for feedback, but with all our keen writers, it is an increasingly cursory process.

The week’s theme was Summer Menu.  I read a strange little piece I’d concocted, in which I red-herringed the reader merrily through a scene, then kicked them with a cunning reveal right at the end.  The protagonist, it turns out, is not who the reader thinks he is, and a chilly shadow falls over the previously sunny story line.  As reveals go, it was pretty smooth, and it got a spectacular response.

A wave of exclamations rippled around the table, a good sign that the ending had its desired effect.  A couple of people complimented me on deploying the creepiness factor so well.  And then one lady piped up, “Is this part of a novel you’re writing?”

This threw me, and before I could formulate a counter-question it was time to move on.  And I’ve been stewing it over ever since.  Why would she ask that?  What did she mean? 

Was it a compliment?  Like, “Wow, that scene was so well constructed with exactly the right amount of subtext about the world outside the room, that it could have been a novel excerpt.”  Or was it a veiled criticism?  Like, “I didn’t really get the point of it, and I haven’t read a short story that takes place within a single scene, and I couldn’t recognise a beginning, middle and an ending, so clearly it has to be a fragment of a larger work because it doesn’t hang together by itself. “  

Compliment or criticism?  This is one of those times when I wish for a more detailed feedback mechanism.

I made some very deliberate choices about the structure of the piece.  I placed it entirely within a single scene, because I wanted to flesh it out rather than just narrate through a string of events.  I habitually write characters within a very interior frame, without embedding them into their physical surrounds.  This is disaster-territory for novel writing, where it’s important to show, not tell.  So I’ve been consciously working on creating settings, and moving the plot along in concrete, external ways. 

Everything in the story is there for a reason (something that I’ve been learning since coming very late but passionately to JK Rowling), but there’s no hurry to get there.  I would rather you know that my protagonist wears a cream silk cravat and has long fingers, than tell you that he was impeccably dressed or tall.  If I write enough of these sorts of scenes, it should (in theory, anyway) build the kind of skills that I need to write a first novel that is worth reading.

In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter whether the story was criticised as a short piece.  Regardless of why the question was asked, it was a good sign that I’m developing the kind of tone and pacing that is suitable for longer works. 

One step closer to denouement.