Archive for October, 2009

Teaser Tuesday

This is an excerpt from Chapter Four. In this scene, Asher has just saved a boy from falling into a bonfire, burning his hand in the process. Remy chases him, unsure if he’s the enemy but unwilling to ignore a person who needs her help. I won’t give you anymore background than that because it will give away the story. Enjoy the scene, regardless!

*Removed so as not to spoil things for my readers*

Book Review: THIRTEEN REASONS WHY (Bonus Q&A with Jay Asher)

Recorded confessions interspersed with observations. A conversation between a dead girl and the boy who might have loved her. THIRTEEN REASONS WHY wins the award for most clever format. Hands down. Let me back up. After a long absence from the Young Adult section in my local Barnes and Noble, I had no idea where to begin to find a good book. I couldn’t take one more book with a vampire on the cover. Where to turn?

Then I saw it. Whoever says you can’t judge a book by its cover has never seen the cover of Jay Asher’s THIRTEEN REASONS WHY. The heartbreaking image of a teenage girl sitting in solitary loneliness on a swing grabbed me. I read the book jacket. The premise pulled me in entirely. A girl commits suicide and leaves behind a series of cassette tapes explaining thirteen reasons why. I immediately planted myself in a chair, planning to read the first chapter to get a feel for the novel. Two and a half hours later, I closed the cover and realized I’d read a book I had yet to purchase.

After purchasing the book, I drove home with the novel and its characters still haunting me. When Clay Jensen receives a mysterious package with several cassette tapes, he is stunned to hear the voice of Hannah explaining why she killed herself. As Clay listens to the tapes, he relives the series of horrible things leading up to the tragedy. The issues presented in the novel are ones that teens deal with on a daily basis, and Jay Asher manages to make Hannah’s problems real for the reader. No one-dimensional character, Hannah flies off the page with her powerful voice, and Clay is her equal with his reactions to her revelations.

If you’ve forgotten the complexity of your teen years, instantly run out and purchase THIRTEEN REASONS WHY.

Jay Asher was kind enough to participate in a little Q&A. Thanks, Jay!

Q. What kind of challenges did the format create? For example, how did you keep the pacing going when the novel is essentially a dialogue between two characters?
A: The first challenge was simply figuring out how to write a book with simultaneous dual-narratives.  Hannah’s narrative, as you know, comes to us via recorded audiocassettes.  Clay’s narrative is made up mostly of his reactions to Hannah’s words.  I originally tried writing it just as it appears in the book, with Hannah saying something and then Clay commenting on what he just heard.  But it was hard to keep their voices distinct that way because I was constantly switching between two first-person perspectives.  So I went back, deleted Clay’s narrative, then just focused on Hannah’s story.  That took about a year-and-a-half.  Then I went back to the beginning and wrote Clay’s point of view.

A lot of the suspense was naturally built into the premise.  Where does Clay’s name appear on the tapes?  What will Hannah reveal next?  Because I was so afraid the book would become too sad for people to want to get to the end, I constantly looked for ways to keep the reader from putting the book down.  I wanted this to be a page-turner and I kept that in the forefront of my mind throughout the entire writing process.

Q: There is an amazing lack of judgment for any of the characters. Is this something you strove for and why?
A: Yes, and I’m glad you noticed that lack of judgment.  For me, the most emotional and effective books are those which allow the readers to come their own conclusions about characters.  And the most realistic characters are going to be seen differently by different people.  Writers shouldn’t be afraid of that idea because it’s just like real people!  I have friends that I enjoy spending time with, but other people find dull or annoying.  Who’s right?  A good book doesn’t mind when readers bring a little bit of their own perspectives into a story.

Now, I definitely had a message I was trying to say.  But if my message ever overpowered my story, I knew it was time to scale back on the message.  I suppose that if my message was more important than the story, I would’ve written a self-help book.

Q: What kind of response have you had to the novel, both from adults and young adults?
A: It’s been extremely positive.  Adults mostly say it reminds them of their own teen years, which makes them more sensitive when dealing with the teens in their lives right now.  Most teens say the book had a positive effects on the way they see things.  They say it’s a good reminder of how important it is to treat others with respect because you never know what else is going on their lives.

There are also people so uncomfortable with the subject of suicide, they can’t see anything positive about a book dealing with it…especially one which isn’t preachy.  But you need to expect that if you’re going to write an honest book about a sensitive topic.  It took a while, but I’ve learned to deal with that kind of criticism.  Whenever someone doesn’t think my book is appropriate for teens, all I have to do is read through some letters actually written by teens and the criticism rolls right off.

Of course, some people just love the book on a purely entertainment basis.  And that’s fine, too!

Editing Tip #2: Beginnings (Abusing the Pronoun – Verb Combo)

While laboring away on my manuscript, I obsessed over the passive verb problem. I switched out the “I was” and “She became,” obliterating most of the sleepy “to be” verbs from my novel. Proud of my work, I sent it off into the world to be read by my trusted few. The new comment that came back? Something along the lines of this: “You should really try to vary your sentence structure. Many of your sentences seem to begin with a pronoun-verb combination.” Damn.

So I sat down at my laptop once more and did a close read of a random chapter. Then, I shrugged sheepishly because my reader proved right. See an example of two lines from my current work.

Original Version:

He stared for a moment in disbelief and spoke with a bite of amusement. “When did you run into this…door?”

I sighed. “Four days ago. Are you always this nosy?”

Now that you’ve read this example, you may note one of my biggest criticisms – I have a bad habit of not letting the dialogue speak for itself. Setting that aside for another post, see how simple this problem is to fix.

Revised Version:

“When did you run into this…door?” he asked.

I sighed. “Four days ago. Are you always this nosy?”

I challenge you to scan a few pages of your manuscript. Are you varying the sentence structure enough? Do many of your sentences begin with a noun (your character’s name) or a pronoun in tandem with a verb? Spice things up and move them around. Like most revisions, you’ll find it only gives you some gray hair and will make your work better.

Teaser Tuesday

Here is an excerpt from Chapter Three of TOUCHED. This scene takes place on a deserted patio at the Underground, a club open to teens one night of the week. This is the second time Remy and Asher have met.

*Removed so as not to spoil things for my readers*

Editing Tip #1: Passive Verbs

Every six weeks I submit a packet of writing to my Spalding MFA professor. She then sends the packet back to me with margin notations and summary notes. Many of my mistakes are common to writers, so I thought I’d call your attention to them in a week of editing tips. Though I try not to censor myself when I’m writing, I find these errors happening a lot less frequently not that I am aware of them. I think that’s half the battle.

Today, let’s talk about was, were, and other variations of the “state of being” verb. “Was” and “were” are my downfalls, my fallback verbs. My professor’s comment was that she felt sleepy reading a series of these on the page. I can’t blame her. If you are using passive verbs, I guarantee you there is a way to have a stronger, more powerful sentence using active verbs. Here are some simple examples.

Passive: I was running from the madman with the knife.

Active: I ran from the madman with knife.

I’d much rather be active than passive when running from a madman.

Passive: The wrought iron fence was decorated with flowers and vines.

Active: Iron flowers and vines suffocated the metal fence.

Take out the passive verb, add in a verb that fits the tone of your story, and suddenly that boring fence comes alive.

Passive: The car is driving down the road.

Active: The tires chew up the road.

That same car that dawdled on the road is now speeding down the road.

Passive: I became overwhelmed by a sea of grief.

Active: A sea of grief overwhelmed me.

A little reordering and an active verb can go a long way.

“To be” verbs:

am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been, become, became

Most people won’t notice how much they are abusing the “to be” verb. Try using the Find/Highlight option in Word to check how often you are using them. You may be surprised to see how much better your work is once you rid it of these tired words.

My Top 40 Reads

I’m at work on the outline of the sequel to TOUCHED and beta reading a novel for an AW friend. (For those that don’t know, a beta reader scours through your manuscript or WIP looking for plot problems or glaring errors. Better than a workshop because it’s so in depth. And we do it out of the goodness of our hearts.) That didn’t leave me with a lot of time to blog today. Instead, I came up with my list of the Top 40 books I’ve read. There’s no rhyme or reason to my list as it crosses genres and subject matter. Childhood favorites sit next to Greek tragedy on my shelves, along with beloved romance novels.

SHADOW CASTLE is the book I read as a child that started my love affair with reading. I remember exactly where I was when I read it and how it captured my imagination so that I spun fantasies of my own using the story’s premise. Perhaps this was the beginning of my love affair with writing. I plan to post some book reviews of a few of these books over the coming weeks. What surprising books top your list?

Note: this list is not in any particular order. That would be impossible since my favorite changes with my mood. The list also doesn’t include any of the poetry books I hold dear.

1. SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson
2. THIRTEEN REASONS WHY by Jay Asher
3. MY SISTER’S KEEPER by Jodi Picoult
4. JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte
5. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen
6. GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens
7. SHADOW CASTLE by Marian Cockrell
8. PETER PAN by J.M. Barrie
9. EMPIRE FALLS by Richard Russo
10. LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE by Laura Esquivel
11. CHOCOLAT by Joanne Harris
12. POSSESSION by A.S. Byatt
13. THE SCARLET LETTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne
14. THE EYRE AFFAIR by Jasper Fforde
15. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE by William Shakespeare
16. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM by William Shakespeare
17. HAMLET by William Shakespeare
18. OTHELLO by William Shakespeare
19. THE ILIAD by Homer
20. FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley
21. PARADISE LOST by John Milton
22. METAMORPHOSES by Ovid
23. W;T by Margaret Edson
24. BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY by Helen Fielding
25. SHORT CUTS by Raymond Carver
26. OEDIPUS REX by Sophocles
27. THE CANTERBURY TALES by Geoffrey Chaucer
28. A DOLL’S HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen
29. TIGER EYES by Jude Blume
30. THE OTHER SIDE OF DARK by Joan Lowery Nixon
31. HARRY POTTER series by J.K. Rowling
32. TWILIGHT series by Stephanie Meyer
33. DICTIONARY/THESAURUS – I admit this is sad, but I’ve spent hours looking through mine.
34. ANY book by Jennifer Crusie
35. BORN IN SHAME/CAROLINA MOON by Nora Roberts – it’s a tie between these thee because I love them equally
36. NOW YOU SEE HER/MR. PERFECT/OPEN SEASON by Linda Howard – It’s a tie between these three because I love them equally
37. FLOWERS FROM THE STORM by Laura Kinsale
38. THE SHADOW AND THE STAR by Laura Kinsale
39. TRUST ME by Jayne Ann Krentz
40. ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY by Jayne Ann Krentz

Naming Characters

I hate naming characters. For some writers, this is the fun part. The part where they spend hours on baby name sites, researching names with meanings that fit their characters. I love research, but this process is agonizing. When I begin a story, I don’t really know who my character is going to be. I have an idea, but I’m not really acquainted with them yet. It seems rude to assume I know enough in Chapter One to create a name that suits them through and through.

Few of my characters begin with the name they end up with. Most of my female characters are born Kate, Emily, Emma, or some derivation of these names. The male characters are Jack or one of my male relatives’ names. For last names, I pick up a magazine and let my finger land on a name. I’ve also been known to use one of my mother’s married names. Seriously, it’s a running joke with my readers who pick up on this.

As I delve into my characters’ psyches, a name will sometimes come to me. Most times, though, I describe the people in my head to friends and family, and they come up with the names. Lucky for me, my sister gets a kick out of this.

My current work, TOUCHED, is no different. Only Gabriel and Lucy started off with their original names and kept them.

• Remy (heroine) – Remy is strong and this name sounds strong to me. Her name popped into my head when I was about 30 pages in and it stuck. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I found out that one of the meanings is “remedy,” which is perfect since she is a healer.
• Asher (hero) –  I wanted a name that was masculine, fit the time he was born, and a little different. I went through Nicholas (too ordinary) and Lucien (too dark). Nothing fit him. My sister is the one who came up with this name, and I loved it as soon as she said. It means “happy” or “blessed,” which fits since Remy reintroduces happiness to his life.
• Gabriel (Asher’s brother) – Gabe is dark and not a little dangerous. I loved the whole angelic spin with the name Gabriel, which means “God is my Strength.”
• Charlotte (Asher’s sister) – Lottie is small and pretty, and I wanted an old-fashioned name with a shortened nickname. Charlotte means “petite beauty.” Need I say more?
• Lucy (Remy’s sister) – Lucy is my aunt’s name, and probably why I used it initially. But when I looked up the meaning of “light” it worked since Lucy is the sister Remy never knew she wished she had.

Do you love or hate naming your characters?

Teaser Tuesday

After much debate and advice from fellow AWers, I’ve decided to post tidbits of my novel, TOUCHED, on my blog for your reading pleasure. I believe in this work and believe it will get published. I’ve just sent my edited manuscript out to the agents who requested it. I’ve had a great response from my beta readers and those same agents (Could there be a greater compliment to a writer than readers who stay up to the wee hours because they can’t put your book down?) Keep your fingers crossed for me, and I hope you enjoy reading this excerpt from Chapter One of TOUCHED as much as I loved laboring over it.

*Removed so as not to spoil things for my readers*