Telling Stories

I went to the annual Bay Area Storytelling Festival this past weekend. This year it was held in a new venue, the Craneway Pavilion on the Richmond waterfront, rather than at the Kennedy Grove Recreational Area. No matter; the space is still perfectly suited to the act of storytelling. The Craneway Pavilion is a huge building, part of the Rosie the Riveter National Historic Park, and the USS Iowa, a huge mothballed battleship from WWII, hadn’t been towed out yet to its new home in San Diego. Pelicans skimmed overhead and dived for fish into white-capped waters full of sailboats. Brooks Island lay just offshore, looking like a perfect place for Pirate treasure.

Since I was a bit late, I missed the very beginning of Patrick Ball’s story about a magic golden ball and the haunting lovely girl who pursues it. No matter. Ball is truly a master teller, and when he doesn’t enchant with words he enchants with beautiful playing on an Irish harp. I could have listened to that harp all day!

My favorite performer, though, was a man named Gene Tagaban—part Cherokee, part Tlingit, part Filipino. The once-black locks flowing down his back are now flecked with gray, but as a storyteller the man is in his prime. He used a hand-held drum to introduce his story, about a woman who drowns and comes back to life, but that was just a warm-up for his…grandmother. “I see my grandmother in the crowd,” he announced. “Grandmother, could you come up and take a bow?”

He then slipped on a shawl and colorful dress and proceeded to channel his grandmother, who with his grandfather is a major inspiration for his stories. And from the transformation that took place on stage, his grandmother is obviously a real character. Gene had us in stitches from the moment his “grandmother” scolded a festival organizer for not setting up her chair in the proper place, and the howls of laughter reached their crescendo when Grandma proceeded to read from the book that helped her overcome the pain she felt inside: Taro Gomi’s picture book Everyone Poops. Though most of the audience members were white and no longer young, I couldn’t help but think that Tagaban’s act truly crosses cultural and generational lines.

And isn’t that what a storyteller should do?

I’m a writer, not a storyteller, though I do enjoy reading stories to the kids who attend my wife’s home preschool. But like storytellers, writers must also face their audience full on, look them in the eye, and find what touches them.

Once Upon A Season

And so Once Upon a Time, ABC’s modern fairy tale mashup, has completed its first season. The finale had a distinctly different feel from previous episodes: with Henry under a sleeping spell, Emma and Regina have to drop their personal battle in an attempt to save his life. This leads Emma to finally accept magic for the first time—although in a humorous moment she tries to slay a dragon with a gun instead of a magic sword, with predictable results. The true love’s kiss that awakens Henry comes not from a lover—how could it?—but from his mother Emma. This breaks the curse, and suddenly everyone in town remembers their fairy tale selves—including Snow White and Prince Charming, who (despite the “end of magic,”) magically fall into each other’s arms, true lovers again at last. Even Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin seems to catch the Love Bug, reuniting with his lost love Belle.

The entire series appeared to be wrapped up in a neat tidy bow, and I thought to myself, “So everyone lives happily ever after? Really, it was that easy?”

Ah, but I underestimated the deviousness of Mr. Gold, who turns the tables on the scenario by casting one last evil spell (you can tell it’s evil because the smoke it produces is purple) in a quest for power. What that spell is, and how it affects the residents of Storybrooke and their fairy tale alter egos, will have to be revealed in Season Two (unless, of course, an evil sorcerer from ABC axes the program).

Plotting out a show like Once Upon a Time necessitates a different approach than your standard single story. Rather than a story arc, it has more of a story circle, or rather a series of nested circles. Hmm, how about a gyre? Story gyre, I like it. How challenging a plot like this would be to brew up! The overall story must propel forward, yet take numerous sidetrips with secondary characters, both in Storybrooke and Fairy Tale Land. And then, in the finale, everything has to tie together.

Once Upon a Time accomplishes all this remarkably well. Not perfectly, though. The Emma/Regina battle got repetitive at times—how often did Emma challenge Regina for the rights to Henry, then meet up with Henry with hardly a peep from Regina? Why wouldn’t Regina contact Child Protective Services? How many times did we have to hear Rumplestiltskin say, “but magic comes with a price, Dearie”? How many times did a car run off the road when one of the characters tried to escape Storybrooke?

Then there’s the character of Henry. He tirelessly tries to convince his mother Emma that she is the key to breaking a curse that she doesn’t even believe in. He is apparently the only person in Storybrooke that Regina has any love for, even as she tries, very ineffectually, to control him. Henry is adorable and acts like a kid…or does he? Where the hell are all his friends? At times he feels more like a plot device than a real person.

His mother Emma seems to have one expression on her face all the time: a look of harried disbelief, with the corners of her mouth firmly pointing south. Prince Charming is fine, but his Storybrooke counterpart is just confused. Snow White makes a dashing princess, but her mild, persecuted teacher persona in “real life” is pretty sad. I found myself hoping desperately that they’d find their inner kick-ass, but time and time I was disappointed, and when they finally got back together at the end it felt somewhat manufactured for convenience.

My favorite “good” character is none of these, but August/Pinocchio, who rides a motorbike and whose body slowly turns to wood. He’s also a writer. Cool!

Speaking of writers, I do wonder how the writers for this series will maintain our interest in the coming Fall series. Will they continue undercutting the Storybrooke action with more Fairy Tale stuff? I don’t see how they can’t. Will they continue introducing new characters with dangerous desires and confusing conflicts? They must. Will they make it all seem fresh and interesting and non-repetitive?

I sure hope so. Because despite it’s faults, I love this show.

That’s What She Objected/Announced/Whispered/Replied/Interrupted/Insisted/Hissed/Growled/Grunted/Added/Groused/Pleaded/Boomed/Sputtered/Muttered/Confessed, Said Tom Bookishly

“Said bookisms” is a term I ran across recently when a critique partner wagged her finger at me for using them in my fiction. Also know as a “dialog tag,” a said bookism is when a writer substitutes another verb or verb phrase for the word “said” in dialog. The intent of a said bookism is to inject emotional content, emphasis, or visual and/or sound information into a piece of dialog, thereby helping to bring the interaction to life. Thus we have, “Come back!” she pleaded, “I’ll get you yet!” he huffed, or “Out of my way!” she boomed.

A variant of the said bookism is modifying “said” with an adverb or adverbial phrase: said nervously, said hopefully, said with a lump in her throat. This practice has been used a great deal in pulp fiction in an effort to pump emotion into a scene, so much so that it spawned an entire pun category, known as the Tom Swifty. (Tom Swift was the hero in a series of books for young people in the early 20th century, similar in style to the Hardy Boys. Tom hardly ever “said” anything; his words were always modified by how he said them. A “Tom Swifty” replaces “said” with a verb or verb clause that puns on the words actually spoken. For example: “Happy Birthday,” said Tom presently.)

In general, said bookisms belong to that class of prose that can be described by three words: tries too hard. Instead of letting the action and words speak for themselves, the author tries too hard to make the story meaningful, exciting, or vivid. A similar device, one which many writers employ, is the adjective splatter, a practice I consider boring, meaningless, tiresome, unnecessarily overwritten, and rankly amateurish. I’d never resort to adjective splatter myself.

None other than Stephen King Himself (everybody Tebow) has decried the use of the said bookisms, so they therefore must be avoided whenever possible. And yet…I find them creeping into my writing, despite my vigilance. As a writer I enjoy using words, verbs especially, and “said” is a pretty pedestrian word. And as a contrarian and a curmudgeon, I declare that said bookisms have their place, if used sparingly, especially in comic scenes where how what’s being said is as important as the words said themselves.

It’s not as if said bookisms are going away, either. I notice that they are particularly plentiful in children’s fiction, especially picture books and chapter books in which an easy way to show a colorful character is to describe how they say things, and a said bookism has the value of doing this is a compact manner. Misadventures and comic fairy tales for early middle graders are frequently packed with said bookisms.

Insisted the blogger.

Random Thoughts about The Hunger Games

(spoiler alert!)

Today I finished reading this It novel, so these are somewhat unfiltered reactions. I have yet to read any of the sequels (though I’m pretty sure from the title that “Catching Fire” is about Katniss as a fugitive), nor I have seen the film yet.

1) The ending is spot on. There is no happy ending here—how could a romance forged during a bloodsport have any substance? Things are unresolved after Katniss and Peeta have returned home, as well they should be. It also sets up a sequel nicely, BTW.

2) Katniss is a media star at the end, and like many child stars she’s confused and uncertain about her identity. So even though she accomplished her immediate goal—survival—she’s yet to define the rest of her life.

3) The people who stage these games must have psyches as warped as the muttimal wolves they turn loose on the three remaining tributes at the end. They’re kind of a blend of Nero’s Rome and contemporary, cynical TV executives. We never meet them, of course. My take on the contrived romance angle is that they only encouraged it because of popular opinion—and Katniss and Peeta are wildly popular.

4) Part 2, in which all the horrible stuff happens, is my least favorite part of the book. It’s unrelentingly grim and disgusting, and not my idea of either entertainment or elucidation. Yes, there were some moving parts—Rue’s death and Katniss’s reaction to it come to mind. But did we really have to have those wasps? Most of it I read as quickly I could, just to get through it. And then at the end, turning the dead tributes into killing werewolves? Sorry, that was just overboard for me.

5) The story is a comment on the role of violence in entertainment, which in America is considerable. Ironically, the story uses violence as part of its entertainment, while simultaneously condemning it. Can you have it both ways?

6) Conversely, my favorite parts were when Katniss has to deal with the slick horror of the Games officials before she’s tossed into the arena. This is the only place where I actually laughed as I read.

7) Is this an allegory for how we treat our young people? How we cynically take them from their families and send them off to wounds, madness or death in foreign wars? How we create icons of girls that other girls cannot possibly hope to approach? How would a high-society debutante feel reading this?

8) Until I actually finished reading, I had conflicting feelings about whether I actually liked it. At times it seemed like the TV show Survivor on steroids. What elevates it at the end is Katniss’s character. She’s not only clever at surviving, she recognizes the psychic peril she’s in, and she’s always trying to sort out what her attitude is. Her “romance” with Peeta is beautifully nuanced, really different from what one typically finds in YA fiction.

9) Other stories came to mind while reading: Harry Potter, in particular how the Games projecting the images of the dead in the sky echoed the Dark Mark. The Truman Show, a movie starring Jim Carrey, in which a man’s entire life is followed by hidden cameras. And 1984, the granddaddy of future dystopias.

10) Finally, I have to throw out a few comments on Suzanne Collins’ world she’s created here. Some readers have expressed disbelief that the Capitol could possibly be so cruel, but one only has to look at history to see that it’s possible. The real question is, what do these games accomplish for them? Did they have a good reason to fear a revolt by any of the outlying districts? If so, why not just use, say, occasional bombing to keep the citizens in line, rather than this elaborate “entertainment”? I assume we’ll find out more about Panem and the evil at its heart in the sequels. In the meantime, I’m willing to cut Collins some slack. I just hope the sequels don’t have nests full of deadly psychosis-inducing wasps.

A Tense Situation

One the surface, the difference between writing in past tense and writing in present tense is simple: if it already happened, it’s past tense; if it’s happening now, it’s present tense.

Of course we all know it’s not that simple.

I recently ran headlong into the subtle puzzles our language throws at us when it comes to choosing what tense to use in writing a novel. The problem with my WIP is that the first third is in past tense and the rest of it is in present tense. I’d intended only a small part in the middle to be in present tense, but when it came time to switch back to past tense I couldn’t do it. Once my first-person narrator made the jump to present tense, I didn’t want to abandon the immediacy that it brings.

Two different camps will offer a solution here: The mainstreamer will frown and say, “It’s obvious, put the whole thing in past tense. It’s what most readers expect. Too many writers these days think that putting their story in the present tense will somehow make it more expressive, more hip, and more contemporary.” The mainstreamer will go on to say that, ironically, writing in past tense actually makes the events more immediate to the reader, because the reader will be more distracted by the pretense tense gimmick, as well as confused because the present offers only a narrow window through which to view events. The present tense may work fine, says the mainstreamer, in poems, dreams, or recipe books. Otherwise, stick with the tried and true.

The other camp will politely point out that it’s precisely this stuffy attitude that has resulted in so much boring fiction these days. And check out how many successful novels are in the present tense now. Exhibit A: The Hunger Games. No, says the fabulous indie writer, the present tense is perfect for drawing the reader in and holding her there. We live in a world full of video stories that grab the viewer’s attention, and if our novels don’t do the same, they’ll wind up gathering dust.

Of course we all know it’s not that simple.

Even a story written in present tense will have dialog in the past tense, and the narrator may well describe something that happened in the past using past tense. Then there’s the whole subjunctive thing, with its implied future tense: if such and such is true, then this will happen. The main problem I have with present tense is the difficulty finding a suitable framing device.

But for you? For you, the solution is simple: If you were to use the second-person future subjunctive tense, your work would immediately acquire that distinction we all crave, if not an actual paying readership.

Want more? Check out Peter G. Pollak’s blog article, Writing First Person, Present Tense? Think Again. The book Pollak describes, On Writing Fiction by David Jauss, is also worth checking out.

A Brief Canticle for our Legless Friends of the Reptilian Persuasion

On St. Paddy’s Day,
while our thirsts we slake,
here’s a toast full of cheer
to the misunderstood snake!

Just ‘cause they slink
on their magical bellies
there’s no reason to think
we should send them to hell—

He’s worshipped, St. Paddy,
for making them flee,
but Ireland’s worse off for it,
If you ask me.

Worlds of Longing at Asilomar

A day after returning from my yearly trek to Asilomar for the SCBWI SF conference, I’m still tumbling ideas around in my head that I can use to put the experience into the proper perspective.

Like previous years, a wide spectrum of emotions went through me as the conference unfolded: excitement, hilarity, nervousness, disappointment, butt-numbing exhaustion. Most of the attendees—fellow aspiring artists and writers, some published, some not—I see only a few times a year. So this has the feeling of a reunion about it, but it’s more like a high school reunion than a family reunion, at least for me.

Still, there are those who don’t make it back. One of them, a wonderful woman named Nancy O’Connell who was always glad to see me at Asilomar, didn’t come because she passed away last October. She had ALS, which I know is brutal—my sister-in-law had it and I saw how it ravaged her body before it took her life. Last year Nancy came to Asilomar, but I could tell then her time left was limited. Though I only knew her from our brief encounters at the conference, I was profoundly touched and sad to know I’ll never see her again.

On the other hand, there were lots of people I recognized, and of course part of the fun is driving there and back from Berkeley with a couple of fellow writers (thanks, Jean and Jane!) and sharing all kinds of stories, opinions, jokes, and observations. At the conference itself I find it more difficult to engage in these long, unwinding conversations—there are so many events going on, and slack time requires the talents of an expert schmoozer to break the ice and wade into the waters of conversation with that editor, agent, or fabulous writer whose brain you’d love to pick. Alas, I’m no expert.

But I did experience some high points. Though I didn’t sign up for a professional critique group, I did get some solid, positive feedback from some fellow writers of YA fantasy. I learned a few things about Twitter I hadn’t known, and I had the pleasure of being both hilariously entertained and inspired during a wonderful talk by novelist M.T. “Toby” Anderson, author of Octavian Nothing (among other books for middle-graders and young adults alike). Mr. Anderson startlingly described how a near-death experience while choking on a piece of chicken inspired his writing, as did breaking into old, abandoned buildings in Detroit. His zaniness and uniquely witty observations on the writing process had us all howling. And I mean that in a good way.

Which brings me to worlds of longing.

The final presentation of the conference was given by editor Sara Sargent, and was entitled “Inspiration, World-Building, and Other Indoor Sports.” All fiction requires some world-building, of course, whether indoor sports are part of it or not. What I didn’t expect was how Sara would link world-building to the element she most values in fiction for young people: longing. This concept went off in my brain like a fire cracker! Of course—the worlds we live in we create ourselves, and we see them through the lens of desire. In fiction, the worlds we authors create for our characters also have to reflect those characters’ desires in order for the reader to make emotional sense of the story.

She also briefly mentioned a concept I found tantalizingly interesting: from a single character’s perspective, a story actually has TWO different worlds: the world the character knows, and the one he/she doesn’t know. The two can come together in the mind-blowing reveal or plot twist, or remain a cypher. And it’s longing that sets those worlds in motion, longing that sets characters onto collision courses with each other and their own destinies.

It was an appropriate way to end the conference, because what were we if not mortal coils of longing ourselves? Newbie, pre-published writer, struggling artist, commercial successful artist, published author, agent, editor…no matter our level of success, we’ve all experienced the heady taste of triumph at some point in our lives, and want more. We all long for something; those of us who learn to share the joy of success with others are the ones who can feel the longing and not be defeated by it.

Not to be preachy or anything…