Describing Characters

When reading subs for TC, sometimes I come across a line like, “Bob, a 40-ish black man, walked down the street whistling…” I’ve always disliked this style of description, but I couldn’t pin down why exactly. It isn’t that these writers are being (overtly) racist; the descriptions themselves aren’t negative. I thought maybe I didn’t like it because it was too police-blottery: Robert (Bob) Smith, age 40, height: 6’2″, etc. But I’ve been thinking about it off and on and I realized that wasn’t it (much as that is irksome). No, its because people NEVER write: “Megan, a 20-something white girl, opened her guitar case…” Characters are never generically described as white. It’s the underlying assumption that, if you don’t say otherwise, they are, that bugs.

Now, it’s true that kind of thinking may be appropriate with certain first person narrators. But in third person? No. In third person it’s just lazy writing. A short-cut, rather than taking the time to look at your character and *see* them. Is it even necessary for us to know that the character is a particular race/ethnicity? And if it is, how else could you reveal it other than bonking the reader on the head with it? Plot? Dialogue? Names? A more nuanced description of the character’s appearance? There are so many other options.

Variations on Kali

Jam pointed out that we both have characters named Calle/Calli. I meant to mention that. It was completely unintentional, therefore I have to take it as some kind of sign. Of what, I have no idea. As mentioned, my Calle was an old character pulled out of hibernation. Kali & variations thereof has long been one of my favorite names, ever since I first read The Arm of the Starfish, probably. Even though I didn’t know the significance of that character having that name at the time.

Also: I just wanted to make a note… on the slim chance that this NaNo does get written and published, Jamly gets the dedication.

Nano update

So I actually registered for NaNo. My username is yeah but (original, I know) if anyone is looking for me. Not that I’ve posted anything there yet. The forums (especially the YA boards) seem to be dominated by teens & sf/f writers and I haven’t really found a happy niche. I looked at lit fic and it’s mostly “what’s lit fic?” or “how do I know if my novel is lit fic?” so that’s not terribly inspiring. So mostly I check out the local board. They’re planning a get-together: bowling. Hrm.

I was going to say something else, but I forget. Oh, yeah. After the first “chapter” of the NaNo, I’ll probably filter the entries. I have a TC filter for actual writing, as opposed to blithering about writing. If you’re already on my friends list, you’re already added. Anyone else, just ask. If you don’t have a lj, well, then you have a little problem, don’t ya?

Anyhow, I think I’m set for this thing. I’m registered. I don’t plan to do any more in the way of outlining. I scheduled in writing time for every day in November. My earliest class is 10:30 T/Th, so I really should be able to manage an hour in the morning. It’s not like it means getting up godawful early or anything. Seriously, if I wrote instead of reading blogs & visiting TWoP, I’d be done already 😉 So no blogreading or TWoP-visiting until I’ve finished my quota for the day. (Yeah, I say that now…)

The Evolution of a NaNo Idea

So Jam says she’s going to do NaNoWriMo this year. Me? I hadn’t really thought about it. We talk about writing, about just doing it. She shows me a publisher that’s looking for YA novels, specifically ones targeted at boys. Length? 30-40K. Hmm. That’s short. A 50K NaNo, edited, would be the perfect length. Too bad I don’t have a boy-oriented story in mind.

I think, if I did NaNo, I’d want it to be something completely fresh. At the same time, I think, why would I want to start another new story when I already have so many started, so many in need of finishing. Then, in Friday’s newspaper, I read about Joel Libin. He was 17 when he was randomly attacked by 3 people four years ago. He was critically injured, in a coma. When he came out of it, he had to relearn everything. Physically, he’s almost back to where he was before the accident, but he suffered permanent brain damage. Still, he managed to complete high school, has taken up running marathons, and is back playing golf.

So I’m thinking about writing a NaNo after all. I’m letting stuff bubble around in my brain. Newton’s Law pops into my consciousness. I’ve always wanted to title a story “Newton’s Law”. You know, as in Newton’s first law of motion: An object at rest will remain at rest and an object in uniform motion in a straight line will maintain that motion unless an external resultant force acts on it. (I knew I kept my physics textbook for a reason.) We watch Adaptation on Saturday night. (Aside: Loved it! erm, how many times have I said there are two kinds of writers? I about died when I realized what the movie was about. The ending was hysterical. Anyhoo.) So John tells Susan about the car accident, that his wife almost died, and when she got well, she left him. And she says that she thinks if she almost died, she’d leave her husband too. It’s like a free pass, she says. No one can say anything, because you almost died.

I’m on the B-Line, on my way to school. I picture a boy, doing the same. I see the bus as my framework, the structure for the story. The boy’s mother has been his primary caregiver since he was critically injured in a random attack 3 years ago. His physical injuries healed in about a year, but he’s suffered permanent brain damage. He had to relearn everything from walking to talking. She’s finally allowing him to do some things on his own. He’s finally *ready* to do things on his own. But she’s scared. She makes it a rule that he has to check in every two hours; if he doesn’t, she calls him. He’s not allowed to turn his phone off, so he has it on vibrate. He doesn’t think about breaking his mother’s rules; he needs the structure.

Each day he’ll go out to the university and back home. He’s going to use the gym or the pool. His physiotherapist has given him exercises to do. He likes the university gym/pool where there are people his own age around. When he goes to the public pools during the day, it’s all old people and moms with little kids. He feels like they’re staring at him. Maybe they are. He wears his hair stubbly short, so his scars show. They would mostly be hidden if he grew it out, but he doesn’t.

In order to graduate from high school, he’s been taking one class at a time by correspondence with the help of tutors. He has one class to go before he has enough credits to get his high school diploma. He needs a science credit if he wants to leave the option to go to university open. His parents encourage this. He chooses physics, because it seems the simplest science to learn without a classroom.

Before the incident, he was an all-round good student, but somewhat stronger in left-brained, analytical stuff. After, it’s all switched around. When he was at the rehab center, his OT wrote his name on a piece of paper, then set the pen down on the table and asked him to copy it. He picked the pen up and tried. His mom and the OT stared at him. Reason: he used his left hand. Before, he was right-handed. Now, not so much. He also starts to draw, something he never did before. He sees things differently. The lines and shapes of people on the bus. He notices things he wouldn’t have before. (Note: jot down one thing from the bus each day to use in story.)

It’s fall. He’s arranged to meet his tutor at the library. Koerner. But the first day, he’s early, so he has some time to kill. He’ll pluck a book off the shelf. He’ll read some every day while he waits, then replace the book on the shelf. It’ll take him a long time. Reading is hard now. (What’s the book? Something mid-20th C, with compelling boy-characters, but not a YA book. I’m thinking East of Eden.) One day he goes to pull down his book and it’s gone. He freaks out, starts tearing books off the shelf, causes a scene. Librarians try to kick him out, call security. His tutor arrives to rescue him, explain to the librarians. Later, she buys him a copy of the book from the bookstore so he can finish it.

His mother is patient and caring, but she clearly has expectations. She constantly reminds him of how he used to be with her “almost” and “so close” comments; she means to be encouraging, indicate how well he’s doing, but to him it only rubs in how different he is now. And there’s something else.

He’s recovered most of his memory, but several weeks prior to incident are gone and several months prior to that are a jumble. As he rides the bus, stuff triggers the jumbled bits. He’s still piecing together who he was before. He’s realizing he wasn’t exactly the person his parents/teachers/etc. have led him to believe: the golden boy, destined to follow in his dad’s footsteps. That there was another side of him, a darker side that he didn’t let them see.

One day he freaks out at his mom wanting him to be like he was. He has a short attention span, flashes of uncontrollable anger, short term memory loss. Biglaw is out of the question. Drives him crazy the way she uses his name, because he can tell she equates the name with the person he was, not the person he is. And now he’s realizing that the person his mom wants him to be again never even existed except in her mind. He lashes out at her. He says maybe he needs a new name so she realizes. Tells her he won’t answer unless she calls him… Takes new name from the book he’s reading. If it’s EoE, then probably Cal. (That’s good, isn’t it?)

He bumps into one of his old friends on campus. The “friend” realizes that he remembers more than he had in the beginning. All of a sudden he starts to “bump into” more people from his past than he’s seen in the entire 3 years since the incident. Vaguely threatening confrontations. Warnings. This leads to him finding out that while to his parents and teachers he was prepster of the year, to his friends and classmates he was their dealer. He had a thriving business going. Maybe the attack wasn’t so random after all (hey, it’s a story, random is boring). His former customers are anxious because they don’t know how much he knows, whether his parents know, etc. Everyone figures that his parents *must* know, and they’ve kept quiet to protect their son. They can see he’s a loose cannon now, and they’re not sure what he’ll do.

The thing is, his parents clearly *don’t* know. They didn’t find his stash, any record of the transactions or money. He was just that good at covering his tracks. But once he realizes the gist of his past, he starts looking, and eventually finds what he’s looking for. He’s not capable of doing the dual-personality thing anymore (he’s pretty much brutally honest, no white lies, kind of childlike in that way), so eventually it comes out in an argument with his parents—throws it in their faces that they had no idea who he was—leads to a climactic confrontation. They react… badly. They don’t understand at. all. Take it to mean that he was doing drugs (he wasn’t… first rule of business: don’t consume your own product). Keep saying stuff like that’s all behind us, will get him help if he needs it, etc.

Stuff starts converging. Newton’s Law. Joel Libin. The B-Line. EoE. Bump. I remember a character of mine: a young, brain-injured male. Can I even call him a character? I never actually wrote anything down about him except for his name. The story he was going to be in never got much past the idea phase. I had the characters, but I didn’t really have a plot. I wrote fewer than 1500 words back in the era when I never finished anything. It’s weird to read it now, my voice before I started interacting with other writers… Anyhow, he was actually meant to be a secondary character; Calle, whom I wrote a short story about once, was to be the main character. I realize that if I flip the characters, I’d have a story.

Calle? Cal? Well, that’s a coincidence. Or is it?

Anyhow, Calle is clearly the tutor. That makes so much sense. In the one little snippet that I actually wrote, I wrote about how Calle was at loose ends after her graduation, how all her friends had moved on and she didn’t know what she’d do next. It makes sense that she’d move to the “big city” just for the experience of it.

The thing about Calle and Jonah is that they’re related. Jonah is Calle’s mother’s cousin. (Originally, this was integral to what little plot I had; it was the reason they meet… I don’t think it is so much any more, but I’m going to leave it, because it just seems to be so.) They don’t know each other, though. The family isn’t close and they’ve never met. They don’t realize the connection until Calle learns Jonah’s little sister’s name (her mom’s family name).

He’ll have to find the money at some point. That’ll come in handy when he’s cut off. Oh, and graduate. I imagine his old school will throw some sort of hoopla-ish ceremony for him. Something cheesy/sappy. Definitely after things start to break down between him & his parents. That’ll be interesting. Should be messy. The friends who aren’t really friends anymore will be invited of course. The media will show up.

The end I think will be him choosing to enroll p/t in a visual arts program, rather than the liberal arts-followed-by-law path his parents had envisioned for him. He’ll also move out of the family home in an upscale neighborhood to live with Calle and some roommates in a rather more downscale neighborhood. This causes a huge rift between him and his parents, but you know, it’s time. However, he has enough sense to know he’s not ready to live alone, and that he needs someone stable to be with him and he’ll bond with Calle. Maybe the fact that Calle is a relative will give his mom some peace.

*

Jonah Elliott is 19. His parents are Laura & Joe. Joe is a senior partner at Big Bigger Biggest. Laura graduated from law school the same year as Joe, but never practiced. She’s a SAHM. They have 2 other children, daughters Laurelyn (16) & Mahone (13). The Elliotts live in the Shaughnessy neighborhood of Vancouver.

Jonah means “dove” (Hebrew) … sometimes interpreted to mean ”peace” (dove = symbol of peace). Jonah was a prophet who was swallowed by a whale/fish—moral of story = realizing the futility of resisting God’s will. Hmm.

Calle Campbell (23) graduated from UVic in the spring. After spending the summer pondering what next, she moved to Vancouver. She supplements her temping income by tutoring. Calle grew up in Kelowna; her parents Jane & Ryan still live there. Jane’s father Gray Mahone is Laura Elliott’s older brother. He lives in Calgary.

Callie means “beautiful” (Greek :: kallos). Kali (Sanskrit) = goddess of destruction & creation. Calle = street in Spanish.

Editorial Nudging

Sallie started a discussion at TC about Anne Rice and her aversion to having her work edited. Apparently she thinks she’s so beyond that. As in, she’s not in need of an editor because her work is sheer perfection. Ya, right. Now, it’s true, I’ve never read Ms. Rice. However, there isn’t a writer out there who couldn’t use the assistance of an editor from time to time. So you can probably figure out what I think her swelled head needs. *kick*

I much prefer what Madeleine L’Engle had to say on the subject of editing. From Two-Part Invention:

[M]y first novel [A Small Rain] was optioned by Vanguard … I was fortunate at Vanguard to have a fine young editor, Bernard Perry, who later founded the University of Indiana Press. Bernard somehow managed to make me understand what I needed to do with the shapeless mass of material I had given Vanguard, to refine it and tidy it until it became a novel.

Then a little later:

[M]y second novel [Ilsa] was accepted, with enthusiasm. But, alas, Bernard Perry was gone. There was nobody at Vanguard at that time to tell me that what I had submitted was an excellent first draft but that my manuscript needed work, a lot of work.

I have been blessed with editors who have pushed and prodded me, made me go back to the typewriter and rewrite and revise. This second novel needed that kind of editorial nudging and didn’t get it.

You’re with us or you’re against us.

A few weeks ago, I hit on what bugs me about the usual liberal vs. conservative arguments as we have them today. I will use abortion as an example.

With the abortion issue, you are either “pro-life” or “pro-choice”. Pro-lifers see the issue as black/white. All abortions are bad. Period. No one should ever, ever, ever have an abortion. No discussion, no exceptions. They paint pro-choicers as their polar opposite when the two “sides” are not opposites at all. The opposite of the pro-life stance would be: All abortions are good. Every woman who ever gets pregnant should have an abortion. Clearly, that’s not what pro-choicers believe. Yet, that is what “pro-life” implies. It also implies that pro-lifers believe in the sanctity of all life, however, I’ve noticed that the most fanatical anti-abortionists also tend to be pro-death penalty. How do they reconcile that?

Anyhow, pro-choice is not the opposite of pro-life. It encompasses the pro-life view. It allows for it. A person who is pro-choice could be personally for, against, or undecided about abortion, but irrespective of her personal views, she respects the rights of others to make their own decisions about the matter. A person who is pro-choice doesn’t think, “abortion! yay!” She understands that a pregnancy is more often than not a gray issue. A baby could be much-wanted but endanger the health of the mother, or have a severe genetic defect. A pregnancy could be the result of rape. A family could already have more children than they can support. A pro-choicer understands that there may be situations when abortion is the best—not the easiest—choice for all concerned.

This is where the true meat of the argument lies: In what situations do you think it would be appropriate to have an abortion? When would it not be okay? If everyone could accede that people have the right to hold their own opinions on the matter, then we could have a true, rich, nuanced debate on the moral, medical, philosophical, etc. implications. Instead we just have two factions yelling at each other.

So that’s what bugs me. It seems no matter what the issue, you’re “conservative” if you have your opinion and you’re sticking to it and goddamn it so should everyone else, and you’re “liberal” if you allow for the fact that everyone has opinion and that there is a whole spectrum of ways to look at an issue not just two (see: “you’re either with us or against us”). It’s just impossible to have a real debate on anything if that’s what the two “sides” are.

Window Tax

This is so weird. I just finished reading this book of short stories by Carol Shields. One of the stories is about a window tax (tax is based on how many windows people have, so naturally people board up their windows). So I figured it as some kind of 1984-ish type thing: this is where we’re going. Except not. Today in Tax (first day of school, btw), I learn that there actually was a window tax, way back when. Who knew?

The Count’s Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

It started with a simple affection for counting and the terror it induced in others, didn’t it? But now it’s turned into a full-blown life-consuming chaotic nightmare of order, repetition, zealousness, and perfectionism. You used to be so grand, but now you find yourself obsessively worrying over the littlest things—like, maybe if you don’t check the light switch at least once every two minutes, the electricity will go out (and damnit, you’re a vampire—that shouldn’t be a problem!), or maybe if you don’t wash your hands until your seams are coming out, you’ll get some fatal disease. Get yourself some treatment.

Which Sesame Street Muppet’s Dark Secret Are You? brought to you by Quizilla