Reality TV and the Modern Murder Mystery

First, a few observations:

Sometimes people ask me about creative writing. Sometimes people ask me about Survivor. They almost never ask me about both these things at the same time. In fact, they almost never care about both of these things. In other words, I have no clue what niche audience I am hoping to appeal to with this post  but, by Grabthar's Hammer, I have wanted to write this for a while and I will.

This post might also be motivated by my
unrestrained grief for the loss of Joe.

If you are interested in only one of these topics, then perhaps I can frame this in a way to make it more interesting to you. The question I plan on answering today is this:

For someone who values art and stories, what role can reality TV play in legitimately filling that need? And more specifically, why does Emily, a dedicated, serious children's author, who values things like story, plot, character and pacing, love Survivor, a reality TV show that seemingly stands in direct opposition to all those things?

To begin with, I didn't always. When Survivor first hit television, I was a jaded thirteen-year-old and convinced that it, as one of the great grand-daddy's of all reality TV, signaled the end of a cultural era. It was proof that television was dying, but before it did, it would mutate into it's most horrific incarnation yet. 

I could offer no explanation for why someone would want to watch it. It was a distortion of reality. It was contrived and phony. It purported to know something about the human condition while demonstrating that it had no clue how to showcase ordinary people without forcing them to play with jigsaw puzzles in bathing suits.

What I didn't know was that His Mightiness, the Great Jeff Probst... sort of kind of was already aware of this. Yes, Survivor isn't real life. This gets said once an episode. And yet (and yet) it exposes something terrifyingly real about the human condition - namely, what we might be willing to do in order to win a million dollars. Probst and everyone who has ever been on Survivor know that what they're selling is a fiction. And they sell that fiction very very well.

Behold His Probstiness!

A couple of years ago I was reading up on Charles Dickens and came across some literary criticism that made a very interesting comparison. It pointed out how in Dickens's day, books often came out in serialized chunks of about four or five chapters at a time. When we say that Dickens was "paid by the word" what we actually mean is he was paid in installments for each of these five chapter segments that came out  in magazines. Eventually, he would republish the whole cycle as a single book. As a result, there's a bit of a four-five chapter rotation in most Dickens novels. They say that in nature your no more than ever three feet from a spider. In Dickens, you're never more than four chapters from a cliff hanger.

Some of these are real doozies too. People spontaneously combust. They see ghosts. Their wedding dresses catch on fire. They find their long-lost mothers. All of this was to leave readers hungry for the next issue and to keep subscriptions up. Comparing Dickens to visual media, he was not writing "movies" with his books, but rather sensationalist, serial TV. Dickens's novels are socially aware soap operas, where someone is always discovering a new orphan or that their uncle has drank himself to an early grave.

It's my argument that just as Dickens is the classy soap opera, Survivor (and the numerous elimination style reality TV game shows that followed it) is visual media's answer to the mystery novel. The reason why is because both are predicated on one simple question: Who done it?

In my second semester of my Master's, I took a class on writing mystery novels. One thing we stressed over and over again was that in a mystery, it's hugely important for the author to know the end result of their story. Once they know that, the art of the mystery novel is direction and misdirection. They simultaneously have to lead the reader toward and away from the ultimate conclusion of the story, so that once the reader finishes, they are both satisfied and surprised.

Ideally, Survivor does the same. Each season starts with a cast of suspects and with the viewer knowing that only one is going to be responsible for the mayhem that goes down on the beach. Everyone else will be their victims. They will be outwitted, outplayed and outlasted. The question is, who? There will be direction and misdirection. There will be shocking twists where the prime suspect is eliminated. There will be days when the villain triumphs and others when the heroes strike back. But once all is said and done, like in so many mystery novels, even the heroes will have blood on their hands. 

Some might argue that Survivor lacks the unpredictability of most fiction. There's a set timeline by which tribes are formed, swapped and merged. There's a reliable vote-out every episode. You will hear Jeff yell "Dig deep!" and "Wanna know what you're playing for?" over and over and over again. But all fiction has it's tricks and conventions, especially mystery novels. And just because there is a rhythm to a story doesn't mean that the way the elements play out won't surprise you. It can be hard to guess when that next blindside vote is coming, or when an alliance is going to crumble over petty manners at camp. And like long running mystery novel series, each additional season adds to the lore of what can or can't be done by the players. In previous seasons, iconic pairs like Amber and Rob, Stephen and JT, Denise and Malcolm, and Amanda and Todd ran the games they played. This current season, appearing to be in a tight pair with someone has been the most reliable way for one member of the duo to get voted out. Everyone knows how dangerous those close friendships are and so they aren't permitted to form. This evolution in strategy is exactly what mystery authors also have to learn. How do they keep readers guessing after they've seen over and over and over again how this author unpacks the tale of a deadly crime? 

All Hail the Queen!

For those of us who love Survivor, I believe we love it the same way other people love a good mystery novel. It gives us something to solve and makes us question how we're being manipulated into believing one thing, when another might be true. The All-Star seasons give us reoccurring characters. And like all good fiction, it straddles the line between the real and the unreal. One of the most iconic and long lasting relationships to come out of reality TV came not from a dating show, but from Survivor. And how many other major works of fiction can boast that their most terrifying reoccurring villain, the only one to slay all their enemies not once, but twice, is an unassuming Latin American army wife? Survivor knows something about the messiness and unpredictability of real life that many works of fiction, with their familiar, WASP casts, are still striving to figure out.

Returning to the beginning of my post, I stated that I thought as a teenager that Survivor was contrived. Frankly, it is. But by definition, so is fiction. Authors contrive the circumstances and then let them play out. What sets any work of fiction apart from the rest is when it can master both its contrived premise, and yet hold onto its belief that it can still say something true about real life. Perhaps it will only answer one question, like, what does it take to make someone commit murder? Or what does it take for someone to win a million dollars? But those questions are worth answering. And if there's one way that I think such questions are best answered, it's with a good story.

How to tell if you are in a story written by Emily Paxman

How to Tell if You are in a High Fantasy Novel

So for those of you who don't know, I love the internet. One of the things on the Internet that I love is The Toast, a website about feminism, humor and books. Particularly the stuff about books. One of the series that they post gently pokes fun at the tropes frequently employed (or over-employed) within certain genres or by certain well-known authors. Together, they show you how to tell what novel you are in. 

Which got me thinking about some of the tropes and themes I over-use.  It's not infrequent that someone asks me what I write about. (Note to readers: If you have the gall to call yourself a writer, people tend to expect that your writing is "about" something. Fascinating.) 

I usually bumble out a plot synopsis for one of my current projects to them. It works well enough, but it is, at best, a snapshot of what I do or have done. I have been seriously writing since I was about 15, when I clearly had the sensibilities of a 15-year-old. I have years of overblown first drafts and bizarre plot-twists to my credit. And being perfectly honest, I`m not getting any better. 

So here`s  a celebration of the tropes I over-indulge in; the scenarios that play themselves out either frequently, or in a way that strikes me as iconic. So the next time you`re wondering "what does Emily write about?" Well... I guess the answer is these things.

How to tell if you are in a story written by Emily Paxman

You are a wizard living like a hobo in the forest. It has never occurred to you to conjure a tent.

There are at least four children in your family. More likely there're about ten.

You and your nine siblings all represent a different philosophical school of morality and this causes no end of debate. The utilitarian will one day be King.

You were supposed to be a side character and so your name is ridiculous, but since the first draft, you have risen in prominence and now we're all stuck with you and your stupid name.

Once again, your father is almost dead. 

Your journey has led you to the ocean and there, you have discovered a sense of foreboding.

You are a cat and you cannot see the color red because if there's one thing this children's book about talking animals must be, it's SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE!

You are a human, living in a world of monsters, elves and Gods. But your spirit is strong and you shall stand among them as an equal, even though you lack their paltry tricks.

You are half-cat, half-human and no one likes you.

Outside your house is a herb garden. You and your nine siblings were all named after plants in it.

The herb garden is ruined! RUINED! 

 At 6 feet 2 inches, you are the "little guy" in your group of friends.

The army is in town and you wish they would leave.

Even you're not sure if you're a scientist or a magician.

The world is a place of myth, enchantment and badly translated French.

It is the Middle Ages and there is no birth control. This weighs heavily on your mind.

Your chosen profession has accepted women in its ranks for some time but to be safe, you are still disguised as a man.

You are reading a book penned by someone named "Jessop" who has nothing to do with this plot line.

It is snowing and that's terrible.

You're beginning to suspect that you live in Canada.

That guy who seemed like the plucky comic relief is, apparently, capable of destroying the world. You wish you'd known this sooner.

You have been drinking and it is time for a comic song.

You and your friends form a band of misfits with super powers and this was clearly not stolen from years of watching X-Men cartoons. 

The school dance is coming and it will involve costumes.

The Gods might be real, but if they are, they do not speak to you. You take this personally.

The Gods are real and you rather wish they would shut up.

Time-travel probably isn't possible, but it sure would explain things if it was.

Your parents have arranged for you to marry a rich, handsome lord who is kind to you, loves you, and whom you love back. You run away anyway because you are a brat.

The radio is on and the song it is playing is symbolic.

You are a dragon bent on destroying the world, but life was not always this way. You were once a humble dragon-traffic conductor, but then a motorist ran you down, turning you evil. Your name is William. You were invented by a three-year-old. And you are the start of great things.

Book Reviews - The Scorpio Races

The Scorpio Races

Every year in November, the seas surrounding the Isle of Thisby foam with the emerging bodies of capall uisce - violent, flesh eating water horses, faster than any mount on land. And every year, tourists flock to the small island to watch the Scorpio Races. Often, riders die, but the money and glory of winning propels men to enter year after year.

Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to sign her name up for the races, knows that prize is her family's last chance to pay off their debts and save their home.

Returning champion Sean Kendrick has won the races three times, but this year he's got far more riding on victory than money or fame.

But as the seas grow wild with the November winds, neither is ready for what awaits them on the beach.

What makes it so good:

If you ask me, Maggie Stiefvater is one of the least pretentious writers I have ever read. When I read her books, I get the sense that she doesn't care what you think of her. She doesn't care if you think she's smart or clever. She doesn't care how you label her work. All she cares about is telling the best possible story she can, and that emotional honesty is what makes The Scorpio Races so moving.

I first came across Stiefvater in the library when one of her other books caught my eye - Shiver. The cover image was just so beautiful and intriguing. Then I realized it was a paranormal werewolf romance and promptly put it back on the shelf. It's no longer one of my prouder moments.

Shiver, I'm so so sorry.

I started to wonder if I'd judged Shiver too harshly when I heard about The Scorpio Races. There's a nice little medal on the cover of the book and my curiosity is always piqued when major awards are handed out to science fiction and fantasy novels. Still, I didn't get around to it. Not until I got a kick in the pants from Melissa, one of my MFA classmates. We were studying YA fiction and, as a class, we'd eviscerated another paranormal romance novel that had been assigned to us. Melissa braved our snide remarks and proudly brought her copy of Shiver to a later class. If we wanted to read paranormal romance - good paranormal romance - she promised us that Maggie Stiefvater was where we would find it.

Sure enough, Shiver is a pretty good book. Paranormal romance never has been (and likely never will be) my particular niche, but I could see why Melissa loved it. It was a story passionately told, with strong characters and lovely images. But the book that blew me away did turn out to be The Scorpio Races.

I've seen this novel labeled a few ways. Sometimes it gets called a paranormal, sometimes just a fantasy. In her author's note, Stiefvater herself notes that on some level, it's a dressed up version of one of the oldest chick-lit standbys ever: The sexy horse story. But oddly enough, I think the label that best fits it is one I've never seen her use. One so many other authors clamor for but never really earn - not the way Stiefvater does. This book is straight up magical realism.

What is magical realism? There's a couple ways of defining it, but I'm going to go with a definition based on plot. Magical realism is a story that's roughly 80% reality and only 20% fantasy. It's life as we usually know it, but shifted ever so slightly. Magic has an ordinary quality to it and in some cases, it might be debatable if it's even there.

This label definitely works for The Scorpio Races because Thisby is one of the most ordinary, real and emotionally compelling settings I've ever read about. Yes, the horses happen to be able to eat people. But at the end of the day, this is a story about a girl who is struggling to connect to her brothers. It's about a young man who can't get the respect he deserves from his boss. It's about American tourists buying cheap knock-offs of Irish lore. It's about loving the wind and the sea and small places and, most of all, loving an animal.

So many books want to call themselves magical realism because it carries the connotation that it's not like "normal" fantasy. No, instead it is "real." It's "literary." I dislike the idea that literary writing is confined to any sub genre of fantasy. But oddly enough, it's still all the more reason Stiefvater could have plucked up that label without a problem. The book is beautiful and has a literary quality to it that we could always use more of in YA. But Stiefvater never seemed to care about that. She only cared about Puck, Sean and the island of Thisby. And it's exactly for those reasons that she achieved that real, authentic, engaging voice that sets this book apart.

What could have made it better:

So... going in to this book... I really thought it was going to be about racing flesh eating horses. And yeah, it sort of is. But once I was about a third in I had this moment where I went, "oh... wait... the race, is like, gonna be the climax, isn't it? We're not going to get to it until the end? Oh... Okay..."

Spoiler alert: The race is the climax.

The rest of the book is more concerned with building up towards the race and making sure you really know and feel the stakes. There's a sense of dread by the time the race actually comes, which is great. But be aware that this is not a fast-paced adventure book.

This is not a bad thing entirely. At it's core, the story is about more than racing horses and it's about more than bashing the reader over the head with elements of danger. But as a result, the middle can be a little slow. Stiefvater does a decent enough job of keeping the tension alive throughout, but I can certainly point to a few chapters that wandered around a bit much for my taste. There are some scenes that could have benefited from tightening up. A romp this is not.

But within the fantasy world, its a refreshing change of pace. It's about more than swords and sorcerers. It's about us - ordinary people with ordinary problems with extraordinary horses. So do yourself a favor and do what Melissa would do: grab yourself a copy and get ready to be swept away.

MaddAddam and why the first book is (almost) always the best

Welcome to my series on speculative fiction! For it, I will be focusing on three different series of books, highlighting three different lessons that readers (and writers) can learn from some of the best science fiction writers in the business. Since whole series are taken into account, I won’t be focusing much on plots, but rather on what unique lesson we can learn from each series as a whole. This time we’re rather spoiler free, since this is a series I don’t want to ruin for anyone.

Oryx and Crake

MaddAddam, otherwise known as Orxy and Crake

Confession: One of my favorite TV shows is CBS’s Survivor. It wasn’t always. I am not a reality TV aficionado and I was not someone who watched the earliest seasons of the series. But when I realized that it combined three of my greatest passions - tropical locations, tight editing and people taking strategy games SUPER seriously - a new obsession was born.

But since I’m a bit of a Johnny-come-lately fan of the series, some of the discussions about it have the tendency to baffle me, particularly ones about which season was the series’ best. For a large number of people, there is no topping the first season. It was too important. Too revolutionary. It set the groundwork for all subsequent seasons and all that follow have merely been echoes of it. Holding any other season up next to it just undervalues how important and shocking the first season was.

Even if I don’t understand these arguments vis a vis Survivor, I do get where they’re coming from in relation to books. The first book of a series has a kind of magic to it. It introduces the main characters, the elements the story is governed by and, most importantly, the setting. It’s undeniably true that many people read sci-fi and fantasy for the world building. And when you’re just scratching the surface of the world, there’s a sense of a new adventure around every corner.

Consider a few examples: The Hunger Games is at its most compelling when we don’t yet know the rules of the arena and are experiencing the horror along with Katniss for the first time. The Giver is extra potent because we don’t know what the next thing Jonas reveals about his world will be. They’re very much like that first season of Survivor - startling, revolutionary, instantly memorable. And in both cases, they’re the strongest novels in their respective series.

I’ll quickly list a few more series I consider to be examples of this phenomenon: Redwall by Brian Jaques, The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner, Wicked by Gregory Maguire. Even series in contemporary settings fall victim to this. Think of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables or Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.

Now, don’t get me wrong. All of these series followed up their first books with strong material. Some people may even pick some other book as their personal favorite, but my point is that sequels in a series have to work extra hard in order to equal their starting books.

So when I say that Orxy and Crake is brilliant, but its sequel, The Year of the Flood is still better, you know just how hard Margaret Atwood worked on that second book. She beat the odds. The following is my list of rules Margaret Atwood taught me for “how to improve on a first book.”

1) What fell flat in Book 1, ditch for Book 2

In Oryx and Crake, you’re stuck looking at Atwood’s post-apocalyptic world through the eyes of a strange outcast, known as Snowman. Through introspection, Snowman reveals to the reader “how the world went wrong” and we learn that once upon a time, he was known as Jimmy, an ordinary boy born to privilege who let himself be lulled into a false sense of security, even as the world was crumbling.

I say you’re stuck with him because Jimmy isn’t an entirely pleasant person to be with. He wins your sympathy, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a reader who actually liked him. But the world and the tragedy of his life is fascinating enough that it’s still a great book.

Then The Year of the Flood starts, Jimmy is nowhere to be seen and hallelujah! Though everyone in the series is damaged and filled with shades of darkness, by The Year of the Flood, there is someone worth rooting for. When Toby enters the story, wearing a pink spa jumpsuit and carrying a shotgun, there’s such a strong sense that this is someone who deserves to survive. And in that moment, the fate of humanity feels more real. If Toby dies, what’s the hope for any other half-decent person?

And as the series shapes up to be her story, it’s pretty clear that going forward, Atwood knew to focus on the character who had the gravitas to carry the plot. Jimmy is still there. He does stuff. But since he doesn’t have Toby’s power as a character, his role is diminished.

In this particular case, the weakness was a character, but this could be true of other elements too. Leave a boring setting. Axe a metaphor that isn’t working. There’s no need to repeat the same mistakes twice.

2) But for goodness sake, don’t get rid of what DOES work!

Just as Jimmy’s story is told alternating between the present and the past, so too is The Year of the Flood. In fact, this book expands on the strange story telling devises, working in sermons and hymns around the characters' memories and real-time struggles. It’s part of what makes this series so layered and beautiful.

For me, this is one of the reasons the later books in The Thief series are a bit more hit and miss. Whalen Turner very bravely switches up her view point during the series. Sometimes it pays off. But when she got to the fourth book and, for the first time since Book 1 returned to a first person narrator, I couldn’t help feeling that first person perspective is her ace. The first and fourth books share that perspective in common, and that sharpened focus made her stories far more potent. When she wrote in third person in Books 2 and 3, the story felt flatter.

It’s a delicate balance, choosing between what should stay in a book and what needs to grow. There’s not a cookie cutter solution for every series and author, but both questions - what should change, what shouldn’t - need to be considered during the creative process.

3) Give people that “explorer” of a new world feeling all over again

Even with the improved character conflicts of The Year of the Flood, Atwood might never have topped her first book if she hadn’t found some unique ways of developing the world she’d set out in the first book. As it turns out, there is much we missed from Jimmy’s perspective. The books almost feel part of different worlds, the characters come from such different spheres. As a result, that adventurous sense of discovery that makes first books so irresistible is still on offer for Book 2.

Another series that excels at this are the Harry Potter books, the evidence for which is in the titles. There is never a book title that directly references anything that came before it in the series. Even by the time of Book 7, no one has ever heard of a “Deathly Hallow.” Rowling kept her series chugging by making sure she had something new to tell us each book.

On a smaller scale, Divergent also checks this box. In Book 1, we meet the Abnegation and Dauntless factions, with just a few scenes involving Erudite. Book 2 takes Tris through both Amity and Candor and fleshes out the rest of the Erudite section. It’s really well balanced and one of the reasons that, for me personally, Insurgent is the best of the series.

In theory, if you can do these things - rework what doesn’t ring true, play up the elements of your book that people love and give the reader more world to explore, you should be well on your way to surpassing your first book.

Just good luck doing any of this in practice!

The Hunger Games and the rule of “Show, Don’t tell”

Welcome to my series on speculative fiction! For it, I will be focusing on three different series of books, highlighting three different lessons that readers (and writers) can learn from some of the best science fiction writers in the business. Since whole series are taken into account, I won’t be focusing much on plots, but rather on what unique lesson we can learn from each series as a whole. Also, beware of spoilers, and enjoy the second entry, The Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games

To begin with, a disclaimer: I love The Hunger Games. I’ve brought the books up frequently on this blog because I love them so much, especially the first. I love Katniss. I love Peeta. When I first read the series, I was just beginning to come out of a phase where I hardly read anything for pleasure. I’d been too swamped down by school reading and it had sucked the joy out of the written word for me for a time. The Hunger Games was an important part of breaking that cycle and for that, I will always love these books.

I say this because the point of this blog post is basically to give the third book of the series, Mockingjay, a whole lot of crap.

The thing is, whatever I accuse The Hunger Games of, I think Suzanne Collins and her books can take it. They’re good and they’re wildly successful. Nothing I say is going to hurt them, but possibly there are some good pieces of constructive criticism I can offer that might point to where the strengths and weaknesses of the series are, because they definitely speak to common issues that plague most writers and so a great deal of fiction.

To begin, the rule of “show, don’t tell.”

There are a few “writing rules” that get passed around in the community. Some have catchy little names like “murder your darlings.” Others are more to the point like “cut your adverbs.” Both of those rules apply during the editing stage of writing, and so you rarely think about them in a first draft. But if there’s one “rule” that is necessary to think about at every stage of the writing process, it’s “show, don’t tell.”

This “rule” is essentially a reminder that readers don’t want to be “told” something, but rather, “shown” it. What is meant by that? Let’s take the first novel in the Hunger Games series as an example. Katniss spends the first half of the book confused as to what Peeta’s motives are and why he is being kind towards her. Most of his kindness she misinterprets as somehow self interested – he’s only kind to Haymitch because he wants favoritism. He’s only kind to her to weaken her resolve. However, the reader is able to watch his actions and reinterpret them. By the time Katniss realizes his sincerity, Suzanne Collins has already given us pages and pages of compelling evidence that Peeta is kind and good and worth saving.

One of the reasons this is such a powerful example of “showing” rather than “telling” is because Collins is using the shown aspect of the story to undermine what is being said explicitly by her narrator, Katniss. Ultimately, the things that we are “shown” turn out to be truer than what was explicitly stated.

For another example, look at the way Collins describes the action in the first book. Every horror Katniss experiences, the reader follows along in step. She doesn’t say things like “I hallucinated because of the trackerjacker venom” but rather, we get to watch her hallucinations in real time. We watch her lose her hearing in her ear. We watch a fire ball explode onto her jacket. Over and over again, the reader is right next to her as horrible things happen to her.

And this is incredibly important to the story. Katniss is not a particularly “likable” person. She’s prickly and short tempered. She holds people at a distance. She’s bad at expressing feelings other than annoyance. But she is resilient. That resilience is incredibly compelling, and as a reader, we feel it every time she pulls herself through another horrific tragedy. Despite her sour disposition, it’s so hard not to empathize with her and root for her. Because haven’t we all felt that way? Put upon and beaten down, but determined to still keep going? It’s a situation we yearn to identify with, because at those moments, we are our best selves. And for all Katniss’s weaknesses, she is someone who keeps fighting no matter the cost.

But something unfortunate happens in the third and final book in the series, and I think it’s one of the biggest weaknesses the entire trilogy has. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the final book. I’ll list a few potential problems:

1) The pacing felt so slow. It took forever for anything to actually happen.

2) The story felt kind of dark and pointless. Too many people died.

3) Katniss seemed like she’d just kind of given up. This isn’t the Katniss I loved.

These were all things I complained about too in one form or another, but I don’t think any of them is the problem. As I reread the book this past semester, I realized something. First, the pacing isn’t that bad. There actually is quite a lot going on in the book. It just doesn’t make an impact. Second, most of the deaths do make sense from a story telling perspective. They just don’t resonate. Third, Katniss is still fighting the capitol. She has her moments of doubt, but they aren’t that extreme, when you consider everything she’s going through. But for some reason, she just feels whiney.

In fact, all of these issues have the same root cause: Collins, who so excelled in showing rather than telling in the first book, forgot to SHOW us what everything was like any more.

Think again about the scene with the trackerjackers in the first book. The reader spends a long time with Katniss after the wasps sting her. She stumbles around, grabs arrows, sees a strange vision of Peeta, starts hallucinating out of control and, by the time she finally collapses, is convinced ants are digging through her eyes and she’s landed in a pile of bubbles. It is trippy as Pink Elephants on Parade. Similarly, when Rue dies, we watch her sing, decorate the body, pay tribute to District Eleven, go through the motions of staying alive and then snap in shock when she realizes she also killed Marvel that day.

Now let’s look at some transitions from the third book.

1) Katniss finds out District 12 has been bombed! Her reaction is – never mind, fade to black. We’ll start the third book a month later when she’s had time to process.

2) Katniss is terrible in front of the camera! We can tell because... because... because Collins says she is.

3) Peeta lunges at Katniss! Her reaction is – hey look! She’s waking up in the hospital a while later! We’ll talk about the strangulation with distance now.

4) Katniss is shot in Disctrict 2! Her reaction is – whoops, nope! We’re back at the hospital. Glad that’s over.

5) PRIM BLEW UP IN FRONT OF KATNISS! This must merit an intense reaction! This must mean – wait? We’re fading to black again? You mean we aren’t going to be with Katniss in the first minutes, then hours after Prim’s death?

Does this look at all like a pattern? In some books, this might not have been a problem. Some books thrive on emotional distance and making the horrific seem trivial by making it seem small. But that was never the angle of The Hunger Games. Our empathy for Katniss is largely derived by how real and immediate her danger feels. But over and over again in the third book, the audience is being kept out of her most traumatic moments.

Remember how in the first book, you wanted to cry for poor Katniss when they said she won the games, but at the sight of Peeta being taken away in a hovercraft she beat against the doors trying to get to him? Remember how she almost passed out from dehydration? For every emotional and physical trauma she suffered, we were there right with her.

The trauma is still there. Collins is still telling us that Katniss has been strangled and shot and devastated. But we’re not there with her through crucial points in those events. One or two “fade to black” moments wouldn’t have been so bad, but there are several. Any time the story got messy, Suzanne Collins backed us up out of the deep, immersed perspective of Katniss’s immediate reactions to her surroundings.

Now, you’ll notice that one of my observations was that the third book seemed dark, and my suggestions are, on some level, to actually make it darker. To show the pain. But I do think it would have helped, because it would have made it so the darker parts of the story didn’t seem needless. If we had been made to feel the pins Katniss walked on, we would have been glad to walk with her. We would have never told her she was complaining too much. We would have reached out to comfort her when her sister died. And at the end, when she finally finds the will to move past that grief, the relief would have been all the sweeter.

Again, I think the whole series is wonderful. There’s so much I could point to that Collins did well. And the ending is dark. I think perhaps she wanted to spare us from it. But ultimately, the honesty she showed before about Katniss’s pain was what we needed then. We needed to be there with her and feel the weight of just what she lost.

The Giver Quartet and the Power of the Written Word

Welcome to my series on speculative fiction! For it, I will be focusing on three different series of books, highlighting three different lessons that readers (and writers) can learn from some of the best science fiction writers in the business. Since whole series are taken into account, I won’t be focusing much on plots, but rather on what unique lesson we can learn from each series as a whole. Also, beware of spoilers, and enjoy the first entry, The Giver.

The Giver

The Giver by Lois Lowry

When Lois Lowry first wrote the Newbery Award winning first book in her quartet, she meant for the book to stand alone. It has a complete arc, an ambiguous but satisfying ending, and a clear message. Subsequent books weren’t really needed in this case.

Or at least, that’s what I thought. Her fans didn’t so much agree.

First they clamoured for sequels that told them what happened to Jonas and Gabe, whom the ending of the first book left dying, but close to the homes of people who could save them. When I first read The Giver as a child, no one was really sure if they would live or if Jonas was maybe just dreaming of their rescue. My theory as a child had always been that the vision was real and Jonas did get them to the village, but that he died of exposure protecting Gabe.

 So Lois Lowry wrote Gathering Blue. And answered none of those questions. Touché, Lois. Touché.

The answers did come later – in Messenger and Son – but Lowry was clearly less interested in writing a series than she was in writing books. Each book in the series more or less stands on its own, following new characters in a new city, somewhere within the remains of the post-apocalyptic world Jonas grew up in. It’s only in Son that the reader finally returns to the old Community of Jonas’s youth and, luckily, the experience as a reader is once again horrifying.

If I had to identify Lowry’s two greatest strengths in her series, it would be those two things – that each book stands somewhat separate from the others, and that at their best, the strongest books in the series have this slow building sense of dread. And those two reasons are why The Giver was meant to be read more than seen.

For a book I’ve loved since childhood, I cannot tell you how not excited I was to hear about when it was finally adapted for film. The stories just don’t lend themselves to the razzle-dazzle, Katniss Everdeen style battle sequences and special effects we currently associate with YA dystopias. Jonas isn’t in a life or death situation. Death, in some sense, is an acceptable outcome for him, since his death would still force the memories he holds to revert back to the Community. It would have been a kind of noble sacrifice. So there are no life-or-death stakes in the book, no point in threatening his family and no emotions.

Let me repeat that. THERE ARE NO EMOTIONS. Well, there are some, but they’re vague approximations of the real things, or they’re new and fragile. They’re not grandiose. No one is threatening anyone. No one is falling in love. Turning this sort of story into a film would require a pretty restrained and sophisticated hand. I’m not saying it can’t be done, just that it would be incredibly hard and the current YA film market was not up to it.

On top of that, while yes, there is an ongoing series, it’s one that kind of eschews the whole notion of a franchise. There are four separate main characters. There are long time lapses between each book. By the end of the series, twelve-year-old Jonas has aged up to his mid-twenties, has kids and has kind of retired from the whole “saving the world” thing. If they wanted to keep Jonas as the focal point, there’s a lot of shifting around that would need to be done to the later books. He doesn’t even make another appearance until Messenger. And if they did do that, the movies would stop feeling like adaptations so much as full-on rewrites.

“But Emily!” you say, “surely you’re being too narrow minded! Surely something about these wonderful books could still make it onto screen!”

And to that I say, yes, it could, but a lot of the books best moments by necessity couldn’t. The series is best suited to the written word, no matter how you look at it. In fact, some of what made it so powerful results from techniques that are only available to the written word.

The first book in the series relies on a reader creating their own idea of what Jonas`s world looks like. We get plenty of details about this stark world, where everyone cuts their hair the same and wears the same clothing. We can tell it`s bleak and empty. But how bleak and empty we know not, until Jonas starts receiving the memories of the past. Startled by what he is experiences, he asks the Giver for an explanation and in return, he hears one of the most powerful lines in literature.

“You’re beginning to see the color red.”

I remember at twelve what a knife to the gut that line was. I’d never noticed that in the whole front half of the book, Lowry never used a single color to describe her characters. Blue eyes were “light” eyes. Nothing more. There isn’t even any black or white or gray. There’s just an absence. The reader is denied color just as fully as Jonas is.

And this is something film could not replicate. Filming the movie in black and white tips you off that something is wrong. Again, the world ISN’T black and white. It’s colorless. The characters lack the ability to understand the contrast. The whole devise relies upon the reader needing to imagine the world on their own. The moment a film maker’s vision intervenes on behalf of the reader, the power of the revelation is dampened.

Oh yeah. This clearly looks normal. This CAN'T be symbolism!

Personally, this is something I love about The Giver. We live at a time where people use movies to substitute for reading. Or where people rely upon films to visualize stories. Sometimes it can be hard to argue with them that the best way to experience the visual aspect of a story isn’t through visual media. To me, The Giver is potent proof that the power of a reader’s imagination is even greater than the power of film.

Writerly News: Masters of the Universe

Okay!

So the blog has been a bit sparse for updates lately, but for good reason.

Right after I wrote my last post - the one mentioning my course in seriated speculative fiction (oh, how could you forget?) I got a nice surprise in terms of current "life trajectory." My older sister needed some help with her children, due to her husband getting a long distance job. He would be commuting for the next several months, home only on week-ends, and so poor big sis would be all by her lonesome.

EXCEPT SHE WASN'T!!! Why? Well, because instead, yours truly flew to the other side of Canada to be with her. What resulted was a whirlwind trip where I finished my Masters, wiped my nephew's noses, helped my sister move from Montreal to Ottawa and then, to cap it all off, I flew out to Halifax to celebrate Christmas with my brother's family.

So with my past several months amounting to a "who's-who" of Canadian cities, I didn't have much time for blogging. With how limited my free time was, I tended to need to be either working on school assignments, or plugging away at revisions on other manuscripts. I do enjoy keeping this blog, but at the end of the day, I'm a fiction writer and that has to serve as my priority. Also, I figure you're all so used to my erratic update schedule that in some sense, I would "get away with" these blogging transgressions.

Oh and did you notice something up there?

Behold the thesis!

So technically I defended this thesis all the way back in April and this photo is almost a year old, but whatever. I do my Master's in my own order. The point is that I am done! Yes, the day you are waiting for has come. You may all refer to me as "Master and Dark Lord of the seven realms of Children's Literature." I'm pretty sure Chatham stipulated somewhere that this was the official title given to graduates of my discipline.

Obviously, this is an exciting time. I'm thrilled to be done, and yet still close to those I shared my program with. I'm thrilled to have been a part of Chatham. And it also means that now I'm looking forward to whatever comes next. I'm still in eastern Canada, and we'll see how that goes. Maybe there's something exciting for the Little Writer That Could to do here. Like drown in the snow.

What does that mean for this blog? Hopefully more regular updates. And luckily... I still want to do the series I promised you! So stay tuned for those promised posts on seriated speculative fiction. Don't worry. You'll get all the goods from me. You'll be sick of it in no time.