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book density
Aug. 21st, 2006 11:11 pmMy very first blog entry!
I’m a mother of four, an American expat living in Germany (NOT associated with the military), and a writer of mostly YA novels, plus the occasional picture book (none of which are published yet, but I’m learning, and some day I hope this changes). I’m also a Buchfresserin, like Meggie’s aunt in Cornelia Funke’s Inkspell novels—i.e, reading books is as important as eating or breathing. In my spare time I also like exploring castle ruins that your average American tourist has never heard of. This blog will likely cover all of these topics at one time or another. Today, it’s about writing.
I’m tweaking a novel after some good feedback, and so I’ve been thinking a lot about several things: strong beginnings, binding plot and characterization together tightly, and engaging a reader’s emotional interest right from the first. As part of my self-education, I recently read Thomas McCormack’s book The Fiction Editor, a very technical (!) but excellent book for editors (hence, for writers, since we all need to be able to edit our own work). He talks about making scenes dense, making important things happen as simultaneously as possible, for maximum effectiveness. Mostly he aimed this at endings (ie, making your subplots climax as close to your main plot as possible, creating a Fourth-of-July-like finale), but if I remember right, he recommended it for beginnings as well. To me, this means that every scene should play more than one part. Advance the plot + develop character. Hook a reader emotionally + give window dressing details that turn out to be vital plot points, only the reader doesn’t know that yet. And so on. (JK Rowling does a great job of using innocent details that are actually vital plot points—the whole series is there in the details in book one.)
So I just watched The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe again, and was struck by how well this film succeeds with this, especially at the beginning. Some book-to-film translations skip over the beginning to get to the action later on, unfortunately eliminating the emotional setup that will give the rest of the film meaning. Not so here. Two scenes come to mind that set up the movie for me are the very opening scene, and the scene where Lucy meets the Faun.
Opening: What do we get out of the bombing scene? 1) This is a real war. Seeing the personal danger filtered through the eyes of the kids there (their neighborhood was being bombed) brought this to life for me. You don’t just feel generic human fear of war. You feel their fear. And that theme of war isn’t just an attention-getter; it carries through the whole movie, and even the German bombing methods are echoed in the last battle scene. 2) Edmund’s emotional conflict. He is terrified of losing his father, so scared he runs back into a house that’s getting bombed to rescue a photo of his father. His brother doesn’t understand this, and gets mad, which only creates resentment in Edmund. Edmund sees Peter as trying to step into their father’s shoes as the alpha male, and Edmund resents that, too. Edmund might be grumpy, he might be mean to Lucy, and he might betray his family, but because of that initial emotional investment, we can still feel deeply for him.
The lamppost scene: In this simple scene, you find out where Lucy is (Narnia), the fact that she and the Faun are the same kind of people and are set up to become good friends, that the Faun knows something dangerous that Lucy doesn’t (he’s supposed to kidnap her), that Narnia is so very different that they don’t even know what it means to shake hands (Narnia is a totally different universe), and that there are going to be multiple levels to this story (“This is an awfully big wardrobe,” says Lucy.) Some really profound things are kept from sappiness by funny lines at just the right moments, too. (“Actually, I’m tallest in my class.”) I love this scene for its density and the way it makes the characters come alive.
So stack your novels. Now back to stacking mine some more.
I’m a mother of four, an American expat living in Germany (NOT associated with the military), and a writer of mostly YA novels, plus the occasional picture book (none of which are published yet, but I’m learning, and some day I hope this changes). I’m also a Buchfresserin, like Meggie’s aunt in Cornelia Funke’s Inkspell novels—i.e, reading books is as important as eating or breathing. In my spare time I also like exploring castle ruins that your average American tourist has never heard of. This blog will likely cover all of these topics at one time or another. Today, it’s about writing.
I’m tweaking a novel after some good feedback, and so I’ve been thinking a lot about several things: strong beginnings, binding plot and characterization together tightly, and engaging a reader’s emotional interest right from the first. As part of my self-education, I recently read Thomas McCormack’s book The Fiction Editor, a very technical (!) but excellent book for editors (hence, for writers, since we all need to be able to edit our own work). He talks about making scenes dense, making important things happen as simultaneously as possible, for maximum effectiveness. Mostly he aimed this at endings (ie, making your subplots climax as close to your main plot as possible, creating a Fourth-of-July-like finale), but if I remember right, he recommended it for beginnings as well. To me, this means that every scene should play more than one part. Advance the plot + develop character. Hook a reader emotionally + give window dressing details that turn out to be vital plot points, only the reader doesn’t know that yet. And so on. (JK Rowling does a great job of using innocent details that are actually vital plot points—the whole series is there in the details in book one.)
So I just watched The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe again, and was struck by how well this film succeeds with this, especially at the beginning. Some book-to-film translations skip over the beginning to get to the action later on, unfortunately eliminating the emotional setup that will give the rest of the film meaning. Not so here. Two scenes come to mind that set up the movie for me are the very opening scene, and the scene where Lucy meets the Faun.
Opening: What do we get out of the bombing scene? 1) This is a real war. Seeing the personal danger filtered through the eyes of the kids there (their neighborhood was being bombed) brought this to life for me. You don’t just feel generic human fear of war. You feel their fear. And that theme of war isn’t just an attention-getter; it carries through the whole movie, and even the German bombing methods are echoed in the last battle scene. 2) Edmund’s emotional conflict. He is terrified of losing his father, so scared he runs back into a house that’s getting bombed to rescue a photo of his father. His brother doesn’t understand this, and gets mad, which only creates resentment in Edmund. Edmund sees Peter as trying to step into their father’s shoes as the alpha male, and Edmund resents that, too. Edmund might be grumpy, he might be mean to Lucy, and he might betray his family, but because of that initial emotional investment, we can still feel deeply for him.
The lamppost scene: In this simple scene, you find out where Lucy is (Narnia), the fact that she and the Faun are the same kind of people and are set up to become good friends, that the Faun knows something dangerous that Lucy doesn’t (he’s supposed to kidnap her), that Narnia is so very different that they don’t even know what it means to shake hands (Narnia is a totally different universe), and that there are going to be multiple levels to this story (“This is an awfully big wardrobe,” says Lucy.) Some really profound things are kept from sappiness by funny lines at just the right moments, too. (“Actually, I’m tallest in my class.”) I love this scene for its density and the way it makes the characters come alive.
So stack your novels. Now back to stacking mine some more.
