Spring animals

I have mice. No big deal. There's a brown one and a white one. My daughter calls them by some highly complicated Japanese name and I get to clean the cage. They're nice mice--I call them brown mouse and white mouse. I have no imagination, lol.

Crows, mice and rats? I have this thing about smart animals. Ravens? Maybe not so much. Sometimes you get the feeling they're so smart they're malicious. Maybe why there are so many legends about Raven the Trickster.

But the other day, my youngest was out in the garage and comes pounding on my door. "Mom," he cries. "Don't go out in the garage without combat boots."

Of course, I had to ask why.

"There's a snake. In the garage somewhere. It keeps hissing."

He knows I hate snakes. Of all the animals out there, I hate'em. Doesn't matter if it's a tiny three inch squiggle. It's a freaking snake.

I avoid pet stores with snake rooms. I go "around" snake houses at the zoo. Snakes bother me on some kind of fundamental level. I like birds--but when my kid (same one, and why is that?) put my all new bird feeder on a stick out in the middle of the untamed wild that is my backyard, I knew damned well I'm not stepping one foot (even in a combat boot) into the tall grass. I started for it last year and just as I reached open ground heard the tell-tale quick slither.

Zap!

Under the deck away from me.

I figured--it's gone. It lives under the deck. It's a "garden snake" (which everyone tells me is non-venomous and scared of humans). Live and let live as long as it doesn't get some kind of idea to crawl up on my deck and scare the living bejeesus out of me.

Now it's in my garage behind the garbage can. It goes hiss.

Guess who used to take out the trash. Guess who won't take out the trash anymore?

Spring is not fun. I'd be happier with pollen.

Writing young-things

In the very beginning when I first started looking at other people's stuff, I used to think, "well...okay, maybe this person has this kind of influence" which makes them write in that style. Or maybe they watched too many forties style comedies or caught a Doris Day marathon. Watched the Partridge Family? Maybe their mom sounds like June Cleaver. I dunno. Lots of excuses. But I've finally come to the realization, people are strange.

They can look in a mirror and say, "Well, I'm of a certain age, but I still want to write about people in their twenties", using the idiom and attitudes of "my" twenties. Which would be okay, if they'd been a twentysomething in the eighties or nineties. Used the Urban dictionary? Talked to young people? Knew young people?

Like JR Ward. It's obvious she isn't in her twenties or anywhere close. I don't even think she's in her thirties, but she's got a grip on attitudes and dialog. In other words, her younger people don't ring false.

In the last couple months I've read fulls where the hero dwells (in a horrified way) on the heroine's "painted lips" and "tight sweater". The hero tells the heroine she can't cut the mustard--which might be a regional thing, but it originated with O. Henry, so to me it either means the author is a lit-major or grew up in a time period where it was the hot thing to say. The heroine can't be with the hero because she isn't pure (yes, in that way). The hero and heroine don't have cell phones, or know anyone who has cell phones, but they both have land lines. And use them.

I haven't seen one text, tattoo, piercing--junk food junkie, drive thru addict, energy drink-drinker, coffee groupie, water snob or game addict (even in extended family.) It's a squeaky clean, chaste, veggie-eating, pretty dress wearing world out there. Sure they might think "Hot Sex Now!" when they look at each other, but if one of them is chasing the other by looking up her address in the "residential phone directory", we have a problem.

Query letters

I've been gone for awhile--too much school and other stuff. It's eating my head, lol. And thinking--lots of thinking. That's the trouble with a job where the hands work, but the mind is totally separate. Might as well be a robot. I don't need to be there, just my muscle memory.

I've been thinking about query letters because I used to stress my letter--comma placement, and word usage--whether it was engaging and if anyone would even care. Now that I've had the privilege and pleasure of reading lots and lots of "other" people's query letters, I've come to the conclusion--yeah, it does matter. At least a little.

I don't read synopsizes. (horrible confession, I know, but--damn, they're boring. Boring to write, boring to read. Only good if you have some kind of question about the partial.) But I enjoy a good query.

People told me I was odd during the last RD query letter contest. I insisted on telling whoever I was approaching "why" I picked them. To me, it was just common courtesy, "hey--I picked you because I found out this about you. Thought we'd be a good fit." And any other personal stuff that might slant my book into their world view. "You like exotic places? Wow. That's amazing, I have a book set in an exotic place." LOL.

I never got it right until Anna Genoese did her LJ post. It must have worked because I got requests up the wazoo. Good letter. Maybe not the right fit. But she suggested the personalized approach too.

...for better or worse. Jodi's random analysis of fifty query letters

In fifty letters:

39 used a generic greeting. Dear **** editor

11 discovered an actual name and used it
------
42 started with an RWA crit-group style question. ie. What would happen if...

2 told me we looked okay because they read our definition of romance, agreed with it, and their story was a romance. Blah blah. In exactly those words. You don't think authors use "blah, blah"? Yeah, right.

5 read the line requirements, explained A) how they fit into them or B) why they picked us specifically

1 came up with the actual title of something in the line and complimented us on the story before she launched into her pitch
------
46 told me how much the author liked romance. Seriously

24 used the next paragraph to talk about themselves

18 used the next four paragraphs to talk about themselves

6 talked about themselves so much, they didn't tell me about the story

34 used single spacing and came real close to using the whole page

10 used single spacing and went to two pages because they wanted to put the synopsis in the body of the query

2 didn't talk about themselves or their book, but used a lot of touchie-feelie words like "wide range of emotions", "you'll laugh, you'll cry" and "love is the greatest bond/test/gift"

5 had a succinct, engaging short query-style overview hook that made me want to read more.
------
18 involved college students

12 took place on campus

29 had a cute/adorable/precious child somewhere between the ages of 3 and nine

21 mentioned a dog

5 heroines were romance writers

12 heroines owned a bed and breakfast

17 mentioned a quirky extended family

32 heroes owned their own business or were tycoons

9 heroines were elementary school teachers who fall for parent fathers

16 heroines are rescued (by the hero) when their car breaks down on a lonely road in the dark, out in the middle of nowhere
------
42 do not tell me what stops the hero and heroine from being together

8 don't bother to tell me the hero's name

26 wax poetic about the heroine's body (nobody mentions the hero's body, and I wonder why)

9 tell me they're waiting for me to tell them where to send the full

Maybe it's just me. Am I picky? The letter where the author pointed out a book from the line and complimented us, also had a hook, took up slightly more than half a page and didn't make personal statements that weren't pertinent. Good writing.

Rapid Prototyping

I really haven't been enjoying my entrepreneurship class lately. The accounting stuff--yeah, in a lot of ways, I enjoy the way all the numbers (not really math, just numbers) interconnect, how if you enter this here--that balances there, and knowing the reason behind things that have bothered me for years, like how much Social Security tax is coming out of my paycheck.

The entrepreneur stuff? I dunno, maybe it's just the way something that could be fabulous and eye-opening has turned into a search and type-it-out for rote answers, and the ever-on-going teacher-jones for papers that look like someone had way too much time on their hands.

So here I am, reading along in the book--which btw is fabulous--and trying to force myself to do the assignments (which are boring). And every now and then I go in and stir the pot on the message boards. (which "was" fun, but got sad and predictable)

But, the other day--as I was reading, I came across a concept I'd seen before. Rapid Prototyping. Maybe I was just reading a business book or something, but the first time it went by too fast or maybe I just wasn't thinking.

The idea behind rapid prototyping is that transforming an idea into an actual model will point out flaws and lead to improvements in the original design. The three principles are R-rough, R-rapid and R-right.

Rough--in the early stages perfection is a waste of time. Just make it good enough to figure out what works and what doesn't.

Rapid--each new model moves closer to the successful design.

Right.

The final model is an amalgam of a lot of other models, each focusing on a particular problem.

WIPs are a writer's way of rapid prototyping.

How much world-building?

I want to create a fantasy world as fully detailed as Robert Jordan and Tolkien.

This is an interesting question/statement because my thoughts on world-building have to do with making sure a contemporary world "which includes your characters" stays consistent. This question deals more with epic fantasy like the Wheel of Time and the high fantasy of Middle Earth.

Middle Earth is fascinating. There's a lot there, lots of background work, lots of connections, enough to fill a text book many times over. Both Jordan and Tolkien had a strong interest in mythology and history, and the ability to use what they knew to create something totally fresh, but what they didn't do was a "from scratch" creation. More like borrowing. There's Anglo-Saxon, old Germanic influences, Lang's fairy tales, Viking sagas, Norse mythology, and military/religious theories, in other words, a mish mash of everything each man knew, he threw into the pot. They both had the framework of "how" a world should operate and work, they simply filled it in, like a rectangle to which they added puzzle pieces.

What makes it epic is the structure. An overall arc like in a trilogy where each book is part of the greater whole, but also separate in itself. The "story itself" arcs over the continuing individual arcs of each character or group of characters in multiple books. Like a cake with lots of layers.

Each layer is separate, but they touch and the outside frosting holds it all together. In other words? It's not really a book, but a bunch of novellas with a common focus. Or a movie where the camera cuts away from an actor to follow the action somewhere else before swinging back to what the movie is really about.

Do you need to have the world in place first? Yes and no.

World-building is fun, but there's no point in creating Australia if you never mention Australia. If somewhere, sometime over the course of your writing, you "might" mention Australia, start an Australia file. Get a notebook, or open a folder, and start collecting bits and pieces. By the time you get to it, there will be enough Australia there to create a continent and people. Writers are like dragons. We hoard stuff. Bits of dialog, a river, odd coins and tree-colors. The story is important, because it influences what you need to build your world.

Build what you need.

If your hero is going to cross an ocean, you need to create an ocean and put something at the starting point and the end. You need stuff in the ocean, colors and smells, clouds in the sky and people on the boat. Are the people important enough to mention? Are you going to tell your reader about them? Then who they are, where they come from and everything associated with their culture "in regards to that person" need their own separate file/page. If they're going to talk about Tavar shampoo. It helps to know why it's important and where it comes from, how much it costs, and how much a Tavarian coin is worth in your heroes currency.

Everything interlocks, but "everything" doesn't need to be there. The size of the ocean is good, but if a little fish exists on the bottom of the Tavarian Trench and no one other than the author knows about it, it's a waste of time.

A story bible--the background--can expand. Files get added, rules become common usage, if a tavar is worth three kronor and the captain is Lyssian, maybe he uses gold, so your world might be able to use moneychangers. Thieves would know people frequenting a money changer would have money, so now we have thieves, and some kind of crime. That means you need a map of town so you can see where the safe areas are, and where not to go. It all interconnects in a way that directly influences your people and plot.

So world-building yes--maps and stuff, applicable cities and people and money and attitudes. All the necessary bits, an encyclopedia? No. Not unless you personally know how everything works. Most people don't. I know if you do "this" thing you get "that" result. But I don't know everything and your hero doesn't have to know everything too.

You need basic rules, like the water is wet. People drown (or don't drown as the case may be) Magic works "this" way (however it works in your world), wizards wear pointy hats (or don't). The King is the boss. But if there's a Royal Holder of the Lace Handkerchief and your hero never goes near the Lace Handkerchief--then it's just procrastination. Fun procrastination if that's what you want to do, but still...

It's been a long week

Work, homework and the flu all hit at the same time, then I fried my lungs because I thought the drain cleaner was gone. Never clean the tub when it's full of sulfuric acid. I was coughing and wheezing and thought I was going to die. A whole year of clean living wasted. It felt like I was back in the trenches. Hard to breathe, nothing to do about it--just waiting for it to blow over.

I spent a day at Uwajimaya's. Most of the time it's full blown pandemonium, but luckily there was a "sun break" and the already burnt to a crispy turn Seattlites ran outside, leaving the store deserted.

Nice store, it's one of my favorites. I love the food court. It has a Beard Papa's, which if you've never tried it is sort of a cross between a bakery and Jenny Craig. The food is delicious, but when they say slice of cake, they mean pencil-width.

I took a walk down past the fish aisle--

--because I've been watching what I eat--but when it comes to curly food or durian I just keep walking.



The deli has duck, but I wasn't in the mood. I gorged a few weeks ago--14.99 for a whole duck and it takes awhile to build up a craving.

Two hours later I gave up and stopped at the Great Wall for shrimp.

You're supposed to eat everything, but I can never get past the eyes.

The Creativity Paradigm, huh?

I've always been a corporate person. My dad did the corporate thing growing up, and I was a corporate-kid--the civilian equivalent of a military brat. He'd go one place and the other, chasing promotions--me, my mom and brothers along with him. He used a lot of jargon and buzzwords, and maybe that's why I sound the way I do. Early childhood training.

When I started doing the retraining thing, the one thing I knew I didn't want to be was a business major. Management isn't fun. When it really came down to it--I saw the enemy and ran screaming in the other direction.

No matter what they say it's all lip-service. Creativity within a corporation is bad. A couple of years ago, I was working on the outskirts of an impromptu "visit in force", y'know--one of those things where the vice-president of the company comes through with his sycophants, and they all pretend somebody didn't call ahead so we'd do things right for the hour they were there. After the big tour, they all stood around a table, talking and making nice with the "specially chosen people who would represent the right corporate values" and the VP starts talking about this problem. And Cowboy speaks up, "I've been thinking about it, and I think if we--"

You'd have thought a zombie attacked. Everybody from the regionals to the district managers turned around to shut him up, but the VP said, "Let him talk. This company encourages creativity."

Which I knew in an objective sense. I believed in the company, just not the downward translation of dogma.

Corporations stifle creativity, not because keeping people mute and dumb is built into the operating manual, but because controlling independents is harder than herding sheep. When you hire managers according to their slavish worship of the people who put them into power, you create a downward spiral. Bad managers become insecure because people don't respect them, and that in turn creates fear of competition, and that in turn leads to a disconnect between the upper levels where creativity is encouraged and lower levels, where people are encouraged to be happy but not actually think.

I'm taking an entrepreneur and small business management class this quarter. In the first chapter, we learned the successful real-life traits of a entrepreneur--I'd always thought I was all kinds of wrong, trying to fix systems no one wanted fixed. It took years, but I had finally learned to sit down and shut up--except as Cowboy would say, for one notable incident. Out of eight traits, I hit them all.

Tonight I read the chapter on creativity. The part that struck home was the creativity paradigm. A paradigm is a preconceived idea of how the world is, what it should be like, and how it operates. If we are trained from childhood to sit down and conform it's no wonder writers get diagnosed with mental illnesses, or that an organization of writers would turn into a corporation, with all the foibles and disconnects of big business because the very thing that made it work in the first place becomes a barrier to creativity.

An organization that refuses to change becomes stagnant. Entrepreneurship--a disciplined and systemic process of applying creativity and innovation to needs and opportunities in the market.

Hey now--persistantly annoying?

I'm all about financial aid. God knows, I put enough money into my taxes (and pay more at the end of the year) to want a little something in the here and now. Since I put off doing my taxes, I also put off doing my FAFSA. The deadline is coming up and while I was filling out my supplemental financial aid request (because school is weird like that, it's required) I "re-found" my school-specific scholarship request. (It was on the desktop. Guess I was so used to seeing it I...uhm "didn't" see it.)

So--why not? Money is good. I could use a little more for books and stuff--those things are expensive.

I filled it out, now I'm writing a two page "please help a poor-Jodi" letter (also required). I spent yesterday hitting up (okay, twisting arms in a nice way) people to write me letters of recommendation.

Easy. "Would you agree I'm poor? You pay me, right? You know how much I make. Would you agree I'm dedicated to whatever I want to do--not involving here? Great! Sign here, and thank you."

Funny how people always put the paper-stuff down. I'll get to it soon, they say. Me, "let me help you do that while you fill this out. I got it from the office, and look--I brought a pen!" Them, "Is there a category for persistently annoying?"

Me. "You meant proactive, right?"

Corporate-speak. "I believe Jodi will succeed at anything she decides to achieve."

lol.

Convergent threads

...and if this sounds like another riff on my old blog-post about plot threads--well, yeah--it is. About a year ago I put a lot of thought into figuring out how plot threads worked versus subplots. To make a long post short, a plot thread is a line of actions done by a specific character which is integral to the story. A subplot contains actions--which if removed, would not hurt the overall story. In other words. Threads, yes. Subplots? Personal choice. They're good for things like reinforcing theme, pointing up and reflecting stuff and adding depth by giving the reader another way to look at the h/h. Imho--if it's not doing at least one of those things, putting it in might be personal choice, but sometimes choice needs to step aside.

Convergent threads on the other hand, are something I've been thinking about because they come out of organic plotting.

In a normal Action-A causes Action-B, and that causes Action-C kind of plot, everything is pretty linear. What the hero does here, directly influences what happens next and together they influence the next whatever-happens. Like turning points? Opportunity, Change of Plans, Point of No Return, Major Setback and Climax.

I've always been iffy on turning points. The concept is strong, but what makes it work for one type of story and not the next? Sort of like Action-reaction units and GMC. What if the goal is so deeply buried, the hero isn't operating on "goal" but simply motivation? What if to get to the goal, you have to get past the "external" goal to the "inner" goal, and by laying it out you lose the journey?

ie?

John is determined to find a fabulous treasure. He's heard it's up in the Cascades, locked in an ice cave that never thaws. Gold, right? And jewels.

So John's external motivation is to find the treasure. It's easy enough to plug in the formula. Turning point one is a surprising development that radically changes the Protagonist's life, and forces him to confront the Opponent. Which means you have to have an Opponent, and more turning points to spin it around in another direction later in the story. Each turning point locks the action in one direction until the next turning point. Then finally, big climax and resolution.

Everything you need for a plot-driven novel. John is simply the vehicle.

But if we take John again, and work from character out--why does John want to find the treasure? What kind of person did you create? Maybe he's a loser. A good person with decent skills who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he wants to find the treasure to prove himself, and maybe--he's not real physical.

To slot him into a plot-driven story, he needs all that other stuff--an opponent or something to get in his way, a clear reason he won't stop. Maybe the villain can point out John's a loser and that makes John even more determined to find the treasure. From Point A, where John makes the conscious decision to go after the treasure, until Point C where he finds it (and conquers the villain), every step must make sense to the overarching plot.

And to layer? You strip mine John's creation. He needs to prove himself, to show them. He goes on the journey naked to our eyes and wins because he's a good person with decent skills who this one time, refuses to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Good story.

But not really about John. The story is about John finding the treasure. We're the person standing behind him--with a baseball bat--forcing him to run. Turning point here, turning point there. Villain, conflict, poor John with his sad past. We're going to root for him because he's the hero, and he's an underdog, and there's a villain, and he's out to stop John. From--right--finding the treasure.

A story that flows out of character is less about the end goal than the journey.

John wants to find the treasure to prove himself.

In a story with convergent threads--actions that all together seem pretty random, but connect at Point C, we don't need a villain. John--with his sad past--is his own worst enemy. Nothing holds him to the search. Watching John--a guy who'd get in his car to travel across a parking lot--hike out into the snowy wilderness says more than a book of Bourne Identity-like thrills. Time slows down.

The first time we see him start a fire, the first snow cave he explores--the day he discovers how wonderful it is to wake up in the outdoors, is a journey we take with him. Everything he does isn't straight-lined toward the goal, but each step he takes is another action that together with the other actions "builds" to the goal.

In the first story, we want John to find the treasure. It's vindication. In the second, we want to spend time with him and watch him grow. The treasure simply got him to where he could.

Trainspotting and the Breakfast Club versus The Bourne Identity and Die Hard. Each movie has a happy ending (although in the case of Trainspotting, a sorta happy ending), but the method each uses to get there either puts the focus on the people--or the plot.