And Now for Something Completely Different

Thirty years ago, as a Christmas gift for a friend, I wrote a novella based upon the characters and world created by Kenneth Grahame in his classic book The Wind in the Willows. I called it "Beneath the Wild Wood."

"Beneath the Wild Wood" is not an attempt to “channel” Grahame.  I took considerable liberties with character, setting, and language—though no more than did Grahame himself. It was never intended as a commercial venture, and has since been seen by only a handful of readers. I thought that some of you—after cursing me roundly for messing with a Sacred Classic—might enjoy reading a sample from this unpublished work.

You can find the first few (unedited) chapters posted here, on the NCTE's "National Gallery of Writing."

Suddenly, December

Yet another commercial message from our sponsor, the publishing entity known near and narrow as “Pete Hautman.”  Pete wants you to know that Saturday will be your last opportunity to acquire a personalized copy of Blank Confession before the solstice. 

Second Story Reading Series

When: Saturday, December 4, 2:00 p.m.

Where: The Loft Literary Center

Who: Pete Hautman and Steve Brezenoff

Pete will read short sections from BOTH of his “BC” books: Blank Confession and his January, 2011 novel, The Big Crunch.  

Steve will be reading from The Absolute Value of -1, and maybe something from his next book, too.  

There will be snacks.  It will be fun.  Please come - you will be glad you are there and not at the Mall of America.

The Second Story Reading Series is curated by Swati Avasthi and Heather (H.M.) Bouwman, two talented YA/MG authors who recently published their own excellent first novels.  Check ‘em out here and here.

"Was that a dodo?" he said flightlessly!

Once a year, on Thanksgiving, I revisit the Turkey City Lexicon.

Never heard of the Turkey City Lexicon?  Then you are probably not an SFF (sci-fi/fantasy) writer.  The TCL was collected and published by the Turkey City Workshop, a sci-fi writers' workshop out of Austin, Texas.  It's a collection of terms describing Things That SF Writers Do that, probably, they shouldn't.  I'm not talking about drinking and driving and eating too much (like many SF writers may have done yesterday), but about writerly things like overusing adverbs and revisiting tired plot devices.  You can find it here on the SFWA website.

A couple of my favorite items include:

Fuzz  An element of motivation the author was too lazy to supply. The word “somehow” is a useful tip-off to fuzzy areas of a story. “Somehow she had forgotten to bring her gun.

You Can’t Fire Me, I Quit  An attempt to defuse the reader’s incredulity with a pre-emptive strike — as if by anticipating the reader’s objections, the author had somehow answered them. “I would never have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it myself!” “It was one of those amazing coincidences that can only take place in real life!” “It’s a one-in-a-million chance, but it’s so crazy it just might work!” Surprisingly common, especially in SF. (Attr. John Kessel)

As you can see, these errors are not exclusive to SFF writing.  

Recently I have been watching the first season of "24" on Netflix, which provides many examples of this little TCL gem:

Idiot Plot  A plot which functions only because all the characters involved are idiots. They behave in a way that suits the author’s convenience, rather than through any rational motivation of their own. (Attr. James Blish)

Because I've seen so many TCL items represented in crime fiction, I've decided to add a few of my own crime-fiction-related items to the Lexicon.  Although I've never been to Austin and I don't know any of the TCL creators, I call my addendum "Turkey City Noir."

Ross Thomas  A character who drinks enough to put an elephant under the table twice over—but remains competent and functional.

Mike Shayne  Any character who get knocked unconscious three or more times in one book, and who suffers no ill effects that cannot be treated with a stiff drink.

Kinsey Milhone  Any female sleuth who drives a cute car.

Perry Mason  A mystery in which the killer can reliably be guessed by simply choosing the most unlikely suspect.

Burkism  Ending a chapter or scene with a bizarre metaphor or image, as, “…my knuckles were round and white as quarters on the steering wheel.”  Or “…her calves clicking with light in the bright air.”  (examples from Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke)

Bottoms Up  A book that opens from the point of view of a dying person.

Jesus Plot  A character presumed to be dead near the beginning of a book turns up alive.

Thin Man  A character who does not exist.

Hailey Mary  A book with six or more viewpoint characters, all of whom are rushing headlong toward the same disaster. (after Arthur Hailey, author of Hotel and Airport.

Effing Cozy  A cozy that contains the F word.

One Bad Thing After Another  A novel in which each chapter brings a new personal disaster (loss of child, loss of limb, loss of husband, public humiliation, sudden weight gain, loss of job, etc.) until, at the end, one good thing happens that makes it possible for the protagonist to go on with his or her miserable life.

DoG PileD  A mystery in which the protagonist represents a small minority, every member of which will buy the book.  (from Disabled Gay Portuguese Detective.)

Slippery Witness  A plot that hinges on the detective putting off, for various and trivial reasons, interviewing the one witness who holds the key to the mystery.

CRUNCH VIDEO - the Redactor's Cut

Okay, so I made a book trailer for THE BIG CRUNCH and posted it on YouTube, and put it here on my blog and on Facebook. And I spammed everybody in my address book, and a whole bunch of you watched the video. Thank you!

But then I got a kind note from a middle school teacher (my BFF Dana), who said nice things about the video, but said that she would not be able to share the trailer with her students because it contained the acronym "WTF."

I was embarrassed, to say the least. In an effort to blame my own lack of judgment on Mary Logue, I said, “How come when I showed you the video you didn’t tell me to take out the WTF?” 

She replied, completely serious, “What does WTF mean?”

Huh. 

Anyway, I guess I'd been thinking that “WTF” fell into the same category as “LMAO,” or “Jeez." I was wrong, and should have known.  The last thing I want is to make a video that teachers are not comfortable sharing with teens. So what to do?

MAKE A NEW WTF-FREE VERSION OF THE VIDEO!

That’s right. Here it is, the “Middle School Approved” version of the THE BIG CRUNCH book trailer. I think it’s actually a little better.

(Some of you might be wondering if this is a "censorship issue."  It is not.  It's about creating an invitation - an advertisement, really - that works.  My use of the WTF acronym had nothing to do with the book.  It was just me trying to be amusing.)

YARN Interview

The Young Adult Review Network (YARN) recently posted an interview with me. They had some good questions. You can read it here.

Boys and Girls

In a recent interview I was asked how I am able to write in the voice of a teenage girl, as I did in How to Steal a Car, Sweetblood, and my soon-to-be-released love story (from both the boy's and the girl's perspective), The Big Crunch.  I said something like this:  "I start with the assumption that boys and girls have almost everything in common.  Boys and girls are not really that different from each other."

To expand on that thought, consider this: An alien life form arrives on Earth.  This alien is a silicon-based crystalline intelligence about the size of a mustard seed.  It derives energy from magnetic fields and communicates by means of UHF waves. 

The alien observes both a mouse and a stalk of corn, and determines that the two creatures are identical:  Both are enormous, grotesque, carbon-based entities that feed upon each other.  The differences between the two—one is motile, the other is not, one contains a higher level of silicon, one squeaks while the other rustles, etcetera—are of no importance to the alien, who leaves the planet believing that Earth offers only a single life form of little or no interest.

The DNA of chimpanzees and humans is 96% identical.  The fact that we regard chimps as being vastly different from ourselves has to do with the relative importance we place on a few minor variations having to do with body shape, hairiness, climbing ability, and so forth.

So it is with boys and girls.  We all eat, sleep, love, cover ourselves with fabrics, feel pleasure and pain…the list of similarities is nearly endless.  Those differences upon which we place so much importance—slight variations in communication techniques, body shape, reproductive equipment, and taste in movies—are relatively minor.  But those minor differences are, subjectively, major.

When writing from the point-of-view of a female character I rely upon a lifetime of close observation, in-depth studies of scholarly texts and laboratory experiments, reading chicklit, and extensive interviews with a variety of female simians.  Then I show my work to Mary Logue and she tells me where I went wrong.

Ten Reasons Why Not

There are a lot of writers - both published and unpublished - who want to write novels for teens, better known as "YA" novels. Having worked with several such writers, I've noticed that in many cases their motivations are often not exactly, shall we say, useful. Or realistic.

Herewith, the Ten Worst Reasons to Write a YA Novel:

1. For fame

2. For fortune

3. To tell teens how they should act

4. To tell teens what it was like when you were a kid

5. To gain the respect and admiration of your peers

6. To gain the respect and admiration of your children

7. Because you think it will be easier than writing an adult novel

8. Because you think it doesn't have to be as good as an adult novel

9. To relive your teenage years

10. To revise your teenage years

The best reasons? I'll leave that up to you.

Let's Get Technical

One of the most difficult, and difficult to teach aspects of writing is learning to visualize coherently.

When I sit down to write a scene, the first step for me (other writers approach it differently, of course) is to build a clear image in my mind. Often I can create a virtual model in my head, almost like a sculptor’s maquette, or scale model. I do this for settings, action sequences, characters, and emotions. It is like having a storeroom of models in my brain that I can revisit, as needed, for reference.

For some books, especially those with a large number of characters and settings, I draw rough sketches to help me keep things straight. I’m working on a book now with about forty named characters in a complex and unfamiliar setting. Here are a few of the characters.

Sometimes after I have made a sketch, the writing process forces me to change, say, the length of a character’s nose, or the location of a building on a map. I will then go back and alter the illustration. For example, in the map below I had to move and resize several of the buildings. Nothing is immutable until the book is published.

The sketch below is from the point of view of a character looking down into a river gorge. It’s a terrible drawing, but when I look at it, it helps me capture that woozy feeling of looking down from a great height.

I will probably make thirty or forty sketches for this book, most of them even looser than those displayed here. Sometimes all I need is the shape of a mouth to nail down a character, or a single line to give me the shape of a mountain, or a slash of color on a page to remind me of an emotion, or a stick-figure storyboard to outline an action sequence.

That's all for today! I may post more sketches later.