Wink, wink

So it’s the last day of summer, officially. Did I get my goals done? Nope. Well, I mean not the critical draft I’d hoped to get done. The writing is no further along than when I last wrote about it, but at least I did make progress on it this summer. However, I have continued reading. The books took a little longer to arrive than I'd expected, though still on time. But I have them all now and have started reading all three of them.

One of them I’d thought wasn’t worth it after a few pages, partly because there were about 10 winks per page and obnoxious dialog tags on a few pages, and the description of the campus and the new roommates meeting each other took over the plot, leaving no room for movement to the conflict—other than to repeat a few more times what continues to be repeated, and was already iterated from the beginning a few times, that the main female character had her heart broken and wants nothing to do with men. Kind of cliché in the first place.

But something told me to keep going, so I did, and I’ve actually found she’s done some things really well, with some reminders to me on things in my own story that I could stand to pump up a bit, like a physical description of the bishop and his counselors. Woops.

I also still don’t have much of a physical description of Dinah, my main female character. But this didn't require reminding. I knew that. I'm just not really sure what she looks like. But more than that, I’m not highly convinced that it’s significant. Somewhat, I suppose, but not the specifics. And maybe even her not being described has the significance I want. That is, I don’t want her to be incredibly beautiful, contributing to the myth that you have to be pretty to get a good guy. In fact, I actually did indicate, by comparison to the Melanie character, that she’s not overwhelmingly beautiful. But on the other hand, for the number of guys who consider her toward the end, reality dictates that she can’t really be a dog either. Is there anything wrong with letting the reader’s imagination take over completely there? Everyone has different ideas about what beautiful is, anyway. And frankly, with these romances that I’m reading, okay particularly this one I'm writing about now, the author describes the main female character's looks quite a bit--and quite a bit too often. It kind of makes me gag every time I hear about her beautiful hair cascading over her shoulders, and sunlight catching a sparkle in it. Maybe I’m not cut out for this romance crap, writing genre.

But I was talking about the good things the author’s done. She does have plenty of good descriptions of the surrounding area that 1. don’t mask the plot, and 2. keep her from having talking heads. Those are good things. And she does get over, to a certain degree, the need to reiterate the main female character’s worry about more heartaches. After the bombardment of winks, the plot does moves forward, too, with the characters getting to know each other and thereby revealing other significant aspects of their personalities to the reading audience. They do keep winking at each other, which gets really annoying, but otherwise she uses good verbs and good language. I don’t recall too many metaphors, or images like that, but the story moves along okay anyway.

So in the end, I might even say I'd recommend it to some young LDS people. I still need to finish it to be sure. As I've kind of indicated, I still have some issues with it, and even some I haven't mentioned. So, yes, I am all the more convinced that the LDS-romance-genre publishers could use some improvement in the editing department. However, I should also end saying I've got some issues with my own writing as well. It's not easy to write a novel, especially without the help of editors who know that people don't really wink at each other that much. Wink, wink.

Dr. Seuss

As I continued reading Inkheart last week, I was thinking about writing a post about reading begetting writing, because I really did feel a little more inspired along the lines of the kind of writing I wanted to do as I read that. I made some progress in my thesis even, which isn't fantasy, but definitely lighter-hearted. I think a lot of it was feeling the contrast between reading The Woman in White compared to Inkheart. The mystery and heavy writing and adult writing of that book were not really conducive to my kind of writing, and I could feel it, a bit of a lag.

But why did you name this Dr. Seuss you're asking? Well, if you're following my booklist, which you're probably not, especially since the alphabetical format doesn't make it as easy to follow as a chronological one might--anyway, if you happen to be following it, then you'd noticed that I've added quite a few of Dr. Seuss's books today. (It's okay, you can look now.) And so, I'm discovering just in my thinking that reading does indeed beget writing because it begets thinking. How can anyone read 15 Dr. Seuss books in a day or two day period and not be forcing themselves to find rhymes for every thought that pops into their head? Now I haven't sat down to write a poem or a rhyming picture book today. I suppose I might later, but I imagine it might flow a little easier. Instead I've been working on other things for classes which are more prosy, and indeed, I've struggled a bit. But it is an interesting phenomenon to note.

So since I started with an example of different proses rather than immediately with Dr. Seuss you're not as tempted to argue that it's an isolated case that rhyming would naturally beget rhyming, but other styles, well, how can you prove that? I don't know that you can prove it, but don't you find yourself thinking more like people that you spend a lot of time with? How else could be a cliche statement to say that friends are finishing each other's sentences. It happens. And so if your mind is in books, you'll start to think like the books. It only makes sense. (Another reason to consider earlier posts about influences on children. But here, I'm just taking the case for style. I think I might have talked influences into the ground for the time being--well, actually I came up with a pretty cool metaphor yesterday, maybe I'll share that, but next post.)

When I was more interested in writing picture books, I found that if I ran to the library and read a bunch and checked out some more to read through the week, that my mind did ruminate along the lines of picture books. I had that style of plot going on in my head and that age of characters and their sillinesses and problems at the forefront. To contrast that, during one of the summers here at Hollins when I thought I wanted to work on picture books (the class was a free frall, for what you wanted to work on and there were a few who dabbled with picture books and poetry), but by in large, people were working on novels and since we were reading each other's work, my mind got to running in the circles of older characters' troubles and sillinesses and eventually I got more involved in a longer novel which is now my thesis. So, it can have positive effects in both directions. In fact, I would have to say I'd recommend the seeking of multiple styles of influences as you go about begetting writing things. I think it can help you find your strengths and your weaknesses and see where you like your mind to be.

So maybe I haven't said much, but it's kind of interesting to think about.

What is a Story?

I've been wondering this probably since the first time either it was suggested or I decided to cut a scene from something I was writing, which was actually only fairly recently (within the last two or three years) that I wrote something longer than 20 pages, making such an option, and it's kind of puzzling.

Okay so technically I wrote a 50-page thing in 2001, but I didn't do much cutting there and eventually trashed the whole thing, so we won't go there.

But seriously, although I knew authors did lots of cutting and re-writing, even in my own limited experience with poems, picture books and short stories, the concept of severe alterations was kind of new. So I'm wondering, when scenes are altered so much that they're really not the same scene at all any more, how is it that the story is still the same? I'm not arguing that such alterations change the heart of the story. In fact, quite the contrary, I think they still are, but how is it possible? What is at the heart of a story that makes such alterations acceptable?

So I'll look at the first and simplest example that comes to mind. For my thesis novel, the first very first scene that I ever wrote involved a BYU woman student (I hate the word "co-ed," so don't try to edit me here), in her apartment kitchen beginning to make some cookies for a guy she had a crush on. She remembered that he would be coming home from campus about then, so rushed to the window to watch him come down the campus stairs and into the apartment complex, and shortly thereafter, watched as he began a conversation with another woman, ward member. She got to feeling jealous and insecure and then pre-occupied in her thoughts as she started doing homework while the cookies baked and so as not to look like she's watching them out her window and the cookies burn.

That scene is no longer in my story. But it still fits the heart of the story, the story really did grow out of that. She still bakes him cookies, but she does so in an apartment other than her own. She doesn't remember he'll be coming home, but she does run into him, her arms full of baking ingredients which he helps to carry, on her way to the other apartment. These cookies don't burn. But, she had also tried making cookies earlier, and they burned. But he was not a distraction in that event, only studying. Additionally, although the woman she was jealous of is not currently involved in either of these two scenes directly, she does play the same role in the story, being an enviable distraction to the man our main character is in interested in.

Similar elements, same story, but pretty different too. What's at the heart of it? What are the similarities? The characters are the same. Actually our main character has undergone a name change, to add another twist. But she's still the same character, a little low in self-confidence, not a great cook, and having to bake cookies that she doesn't want to make. The guy is still the ward icon of perfection, although he is not at all perfect. And the enviable character is still that, a flirt and good at it. But these are fairly common characters. In the sequel, which would not be the same book, these characters would still be there. So what else is the same? The setting--the apartment complex where the cookies are made, the ward and the feeling of the ward in that time, though not directly described in these scenes, play a big role in her reason for making the cookies. The proximity to campus, the feeling about baking cookies in the setting, what it indicates about a woman who does and one who doesn't like to bake them, and what it means to bake them for a certain guy. In short, the premise. Right?

In the sequel, although cookie baking may play a role, there would be certain differences simply because the character has already been through that introduction to the world that revolves around how she feels about baking cookies and specifically for a guy and the particular guy that she's baking them for.

Although I hadn't really intended to do this, it does kind of bring up the question about copyrights, doesn't it? If someone else wrote a story that included the scene I first described, my first scene that isn't in the book, would they be infringing on my story? Would their overall story likely be the same as mine or might it be different? Technically they would be infringing if they had seen my draft that included that scene, because although it wasn't published, it was in a fixed medium, and therefore copyrighted according to current laws. But, aside from that, if it were just an idea that I'd described and not written, being just an idea, it wouldn't be copyrighted.

So the question then is, supposing they legally took that first scene, how likely is that they would actually be writing a different story all together if that were the first or early scene in their book? Or, can the premise of a story be the same in multiple books and they each be unique? I guess I'm still wondering. What do you think?