There’s an old saw that posits, “Stick a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters for a million years and they’ll type every book in the Library of Congress.” Every book, huh? Does that include every single revision of every book? Because I’ve written about a million revisions of each of my own stories. Multiply that by the 130 million books already published and you’ve got 10e6 x 130*10e6 or about 130 trillion possible books and their revisions. (Of course, if you disregard all the ones Sarah Palin hasn't banned - they can't be that good if she thinks they're okay - then the number of good books is probably closer to 100 trillion.)
It’s got me thinking about what it takes to be a good storyteller, if maybe it’s just chance and persistence, that if you work long enough at it, a good story will eventually be produced. Because, yeah, sometimes I do feel like little more than a monkey, picking away for hours at my unworthy manuscripts. Obsessing over one particular word or phrase. Correcting misspellings. Inserting commas and colons and removing misappropriated apostrophes. And that’s not even talking about any major structural edits.
Persistence? Okay, I got that. Patience, too.
Luck... well, if it’s like flipping a coin, then there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.
Okay, but what if you don’t have a million monkeys and a million typewriters and a million years to write a good book. What then? The answer to that question haunts me.
Many others before me have talked about our natural proclivity to tell stories. It’s part of our social DNA and is woven into our evolutionary fabric as human beings. But does that mean anyone can be a good storyteller? And if so, what’s keeping each one of us from doing so? Societal blinders? Self-censorship? The third grade teacher who told you lacked the skills to write a decent obituary? I don’t feel like an instinctive writer. In fact, if I had to pay for every letter I typed and retyped, I’d be in as much debt as Bill Gates is worth.
Maybe it’s a gift. Maybe you either got it or you don’t got it. Honestly, though? I don’t even want to go there. I don’t like thinking that there’s nothing I can do to control whether I can write a good story. Outside of renting a few million monkeys and typewriters, that is. No, I can accept that for some people, writing comes naturally, but I refuse to believe the rest of us are just flapping our gums in the wind.
So that leaves skill as the last resort of the determined storyteller. Well, I can deal with that. Skill is just something you acquire by dedicating yourself to becoming better at something. I once asked an old buddy of mine who had this amazing ability to run a pool table— that’s how he made his living— what it took to be a good pool player, and he told me, “Skill, simple as that.”
“Yeah, but what exactly is this thing, skill?” I asked.
“Dude, skill is nothing more than luck, perseverance and instinct. Oh, and you have to have been born with it.”
Great. Anyone know where I can rack up a million monkeys?
What do you think? What does it take to be a good storyteller?
Showing posts with label technique. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technique. Show all posts
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Little Bunny Foo Foo: An Example of Good Intentions, but Poor Editorial Advice
Most of you are familiar with the children's poem, the one where a mischievous rabbit abuses a tribe of supposedly innocent field mice whilst on his way to whatever unknown and undocumented nefarious woodland activities little bunny foo foos engage in:
The story starts off well enough. The main character is introduced early and the conflict is clearly established. The tension begins to build when the antagonist intervenes:
The tension rises to fever pitch as Little Bunny Foo Foo continues his abusive ways for two more days, apparently entirely undeterred by the fairy's threats (though we can only guess at this, as there's no internal dialogue to help us understand our MC better).
But then, having run out of time, what does our deliciously naughty protagonist do? Defies the Fates, of course, leaving that meddlesome G. Fairy with no choice but to turn our poor defenseless friend into a goon (which, by the way, wiktionary defines as "a thug." I mean, isn't that a bit redundant?). Anyway, the point is, that's how the story ends, all just so we can say (go on, I know you wanna do it):
But, really, is there anyone else who thinks this is just gratuitous word-play at the expense of good story development? Don't you feel cheated? Didn't you want LBFF to just bop that obnoxious fairy do-gooder on the head and shut her up once and for all? And maybe those field mice deserved it. Ever think of that? Hey, maybe they liked it! Maybe they asked the darn bunny to bop them. He was set up! And we'll never know if money exchanged hands because, well, the story ended too soon.
My grandfather, rest his soul, thought it wise to provide his own editorial touch when he recounted the tale to me many years ago. A former boxer-turned-Baptist minister, he was, paradoxically, probably one of the gentlest men I ever met (he preferred to let my grandmother carry out the fire and brimstone activities), but despite his good intentions, his version of the story was even worse than the established one.
First, he had the fairy threatening to turn our MC into a broomstick. Er, say what?
Then, LBFF actually becomes reformed just before the witch's - excuse me, the fairy's - spell can take hold. His story ends with the bunny patting the field mice on the head. Blech. How perfectly bland.
I never knew the real ending until I came across an old dusty record of it when I had my own children to tell it to. Imagine how cheated I felt, all because my beloved g-pa thought I wouldn't be able to handle fluffy Foo Foo getting turned into a "thug."
But perhaps my biggest argument against any of the established and nontraditional versions is that they all lack one thing: Sequel Potential.
Really. I mean, think about it. What if LBFF set a trap for G. Fairy? He captures her and makes her do his bidding, magically bopping all the field mice in the entire world, not just the forest, so he can concentrate on further developing his evil plans to take over the world? Hey, who wouldn't like to see their favorite evil politician bopped on the head by a rabid rabbit?
And think of the possibilities! Book Two has LBFF and G. Fairy teaming up against their will as they struggle not to be bopped by mutant field mice in a televised game for the entertainment of the priviledge few. Call it Mockingmice.
And the third book? I don't know. Maybe something with vampires, perhaps.
The point is, whoever came up with "Hare today, goon tomorrow," wasn't looking at the big picture.
Little Bunny Foo Foo
Skipping through the forest
Scooping up the field mice
And bopping them on the head
The story starts off well enough. The main character is introduced early and the conflict is clearly established. The tension begins to build when the antagonist intervenes:
Down came the Good Fairy, and she said:
"Little Bunny Foo Foo I don't want to see you
Scooping up the field mice and bopping
them on the head.
I'll give you three more days, and if you don't
behave, I'll turn you into a Goon."
The tension rises to fever pitch as Little Bunny Foo Foo continues his abusive ways for two more days, apparently entirely undeterred by the fairy's threats (though we can only guess at this, as there's no internal dialogue to help us understand our MC better).
But then, having run out of time, what does our deliciously naughty protagonist do? Defies the Fates, of course, leaving that meddlesome G. Fairy with no choice but to turn our poor defenseless friend into a goon (which, by the way, wiktionary defines as "a thug." I mean, isn't that a bit redundant?). Anyway, the point is, that's how the story ends, all just so we can say (go on, I know you wanna do it):
"Hare today, goon tomorrow."
But, really, is there anyone else who thinks this is just gratuitous word-play at the expense of good story development? Don't you feel cheated? Didn't you want LBFF to just bop that obnoxious fairy do-gooder on the head and shut her up once and for all? And maybe those field mice deserved it. Ever think of that? Hey, maybe they liked it! Maybe they asked the darn bunny to bop them. He was set up! And we'll never know if money exchanged hands because, well, the story ended too soon.
My grandfather, rest his soul, thought it wise to provide his own editorial touch when he recounted the tale to me many years ago. A former boxer-turned-Baptist minister, he was, paradoxically, probably one of the gentlest men I ever met (he preferred to let my grandmother carry out the fire and brimstone activities), but despite his good intentions, his version of the story was even worse than the established one.
First, he had the fairy threatening to turn our MC into a broomstick. Er, say what?
Then, LBFF actually becomes reformed just before the witch's - excuse me, the fairy's - spell can take hold. His story ends with the bunny patting the field mice on the head. Blech. How perfectly bland.
I never knew the real ending until I came across an old dusty record of it when I had my own children to tell it to. Imagine how cheated I felt, all because my beloved g-pa thought I wouldn't be able to handle fluffy Foo Foo getting turned into a "thug."
But perhaps my biggest argument against any of the established and nontraditional versions is that they all lack one thing: Sequel Potential.
Really. I mean, think about it. What if LBFF set a trap for G. Fairy? He captures her and makes her do his bidding, magically bopping all the field mice in the entire world, not just the forest, so he can concentrate on further developing his evil plans to take over the world? Hey, who wouldn't like to see their favorite evil politician bopped on the head by a rabid rabbit?
And think of the possibilities! Book Two has LBFF and G. Fairy teaming up against their will as they struggle not to be bopped by mutant field mice in a televised game for the entertainment of the priviledge few. Call it Mockingmice.
And the third book? I don't know. Maybe something with vampires, perhaps.
The point is, whoever came up with "Hare today, goon tomorrow," wasn't looking at the big picture.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Paradigm Shifts - Epilogue
I'm always amazed whenever the subject of paradigm shifts comes up, people seem to be in one of three camps: there are those who are aware and open to the idea of the "book" evolving, those who seem, by virtue of their knee-jerk reaction to decry it, and finally those who seem to think this is old news.
Some comments from Absolute Write members my post on the subject:
My response:
I hope my post didn't come across as alarmist. In fact, my intent was not to bemoan the evolutiontoion, but to 1) celebrate the changes we're seeing and 2) to inform and encourage providers of children's content to think beyond the printed word (and, as I've blogged about before in the case of picture books, the illustrated page). I don't think anyone can deny that information content is reaching us in new and varied ways; our children will have access to more knowledge brought to them in more forms than we enjoyed as children. This is a good thing. But as providers of content, we must evolve as well in order to stay relevant.
Anecdotal claims to the contrary aside, these new forms do compete with one another for our attention. To put it in modern terms, it's about bandwith. Believe it or not, our ability to take in information is limited, and when the preferential mechanism for doing so shifts, it does so at the expense of something else. This is not a bad thing, but it is real. And while I do believe (and have consistently stated in the past) that traditional forms of the book will be with us for a long time to come, we cannot simply recite History and claim that these new paradigms won't change anything. That is simply naive.
My response:
It's a disservice to those new to the business, as well as veterans firmly entrenched in traditional written forms, to understate the significance of the phenomenon by implying only earth-shattering events warrant notice. The evolution of literature, and especially children's content, is an on-going process. It's not something that happened at some point in the past and we've moved on from, but rather something that is happening and continues to happen. Children's lit is especially susceptible to flux as its forms are so varied, from picturebooks and videos to GNs to novels; children today are much more keyed into digital (NOT, I firmly believe, at the exclusion of analogue), which means that they are actively seeking content in these forms. It is our responsibility to meet those expectations.
A thorough read of my blog would have shown that it's not a call to arms against change, but a call to embrace changes, to broaden our horizons as content providers and to stretch those boundaries.
Some comments from Absolute Write members my post on the subject:
Quote: Originally Posted by JudScotKev
I think people love to shriek about one medium REPLACING another, but in reality that doesn't often happen. True, TV makes more money than radio, but people are still listening. Even in the iPod age, radios are still included in every new car.
My first graders love a website called starfall.com that has interactive books. But I've never had a single student complain about "real" books. They LOVE picture books. They LOVE reading. AND they love video games.
My son has an iPod Touch, an Xbox, a PS2, and satellite TV. And he reads every day, over 2 million words this year alone. He will actually turn off the TV to read.
I don't think it's a competition. I think it's a smorgasbord of choices. Some stories and activities work well in one medium; some work better in another.
Personally, I thank my lucky stars I'm alive in an age that gives me Google, iTunes and Harry Potter, all at once.
My response:
I hope my post didn't come across as alarmist. In fact, my intent was not to bemoan the evolutiontoion, but to 1) celebrate the changes we're seeing and 2) to inform and encourage providers of children's content to think beyond the printed word (and, as I've blogged about before in the case of picture books, the illustrated page). I don't think anyone can deny that information content is reaching us in new and varied ways; our children will have access to more knowledge brought to them in more forms than we enjoyed as children. This is a good thing. But as providers of content, we must evolve as well in order to stay relevant.
Anecdotal claims to the contrary aside, these new forms do compete with one another for our attention. To put it in modern terms, it's about bandwith. Believe it or not, our ability to take in information is limited, and when the preferential mechanism for doing so shifts, it does so at the expense of something else. This is not a bad thing, but it is real. And while I do believe (and have consistently stated in the past) that traditional forms of the book will be with us for a long time to come, we cannot simply recite History and claim that these new paradigms won't change anything. That is simply naive.
Quote: Originally Posted by Ineti
I think it's pretty much a given, and business as usual. Books compete against movies, television, video games, and plenty of other forms of entertainment. Electronic readers that can do color and sound and so on are just the latest hotness. Some new technological marvel will come out, and print books will have to continue to compete. Nothing really earth-breaking here.
My response:
It's a disservice to those new to the business, as well as veterans firmly entrenched in traditional written forms, to understate the significance of the phenomenon by implying only earth-shattering events warrant notice. The evolution of literature, and especially children's content, is an on-going process. It's not something that happened at some point in the past and we've moved on from, but rather something that is happening and continues to happen. Children's lit is especially susceptible to flux as its forms are so varied, from picturebooks and videos to GNs to novels; children today are much more keyed into digital (NOT, I firmly believe, at the exclusion of analogue), which means that they are actively seeking content in these forms. It is our responsibility to meet those expectations.
A thorough read of my blog would have shown that it's not a call to arms against change, but a call to embrace changes, to broaden our horizons as content providers and to stretch those boundaries.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Fusion of Image, Audio and Word - Paradigm Shifts and the Future of Children's Lit
I just finished two books that incorporate innovative forms of content beyond the printed word (and no, I'm not talking about digital ink, either). I'll get to those titles in a sec, but first I wanted to take a litle trip down Memory Lane, to the good ole days of 2007 and a little known book called The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Of course I'm being facetious. If you're one of about a dozen people who haven't heard or read this book, do it. But the point I want to make about Brian Selznik's "massive," 533-page middle grade novel is this: it won the Caldecott. You might recall that the Caldecott is awarded for illustration of a children's book.
Wait a minute. A novel winning an award for illustration? Well, yeah. And at 25K words, it's an easy guess (if you haven't read or seen the book yet) what fills those 500+ pages.
Selznik's book wasn't the first to mix word and image, but I think with the Caldecott win, it really ushered in the idea that the novel as we know is evolving to become more mixed media. (This ignores, for the moment, that graphic novels, or GNs, have been becoming more and more popular and complex of late. But GNs are separate thing altogether. I'm talking more about how the traditional novel is changing.)
Without a doubt, we are well along in a revolution where the written, printed word is becoming heavily encroached upon by images, video and audio content. And while traditional novels (both paper and ebook) will be around for a long time to come, they will have to compete more and more with stories that incorporate mixed media.
For example, I just finished Malice, Chris Wooding's paranormal 68K-word mixed novel/graphic novel. The interesting thing about this book is that, while the story could easily stand on its own, the graphic novel really adds a new dimension that children today will connect with, especially boys. And if that gets them to read, great. Remember, to publishers more readers means more sales.
The other book is Patrick Carman's Trackers, released last week, about a group of four teen tech geeks. The story follows an interview of the MC as he recounts the events leading to the present (I'm being purposefully coy here to avoid giving anything away). The book could be read from cover to cover without leaving its pages, but the reader is cued to logon to a website, enter codes, view videos and crack codes, thus becoming a participant in the story.
It's an interesting concept and a challenge for the traditional writer to consider. Will it be successful? In my opinion, as long as the reader has to physically leave the comfort of their chair/bed/hammock or whatever, no. But we are fast approaching an age where all these sources of content will soon be available all at once and from a single device. I think stories where the reader (soon to become "audience participant") can seemlessly shift between the active experience of reading and the passive experience of watching/listening, while also enjoying a little bit of both in interactive ways too, will become more popular.
Why is this happening?
I don't think this has anything to do with shorter attention spans or being bombarded with information from a hundred different sources all at once, or sensory overload. I think it's only natural to want to experience things more fully. And if a story can be experienced more fully (which is not to say totally passively, as films do), then it will succeed.
What does this mean to the author of next generation stories?
Well, first and foremost, I don't think it has to mean anything to any one author. As I said before, traditional books will be around for a long, long time. But they will compete with mixed media going forward. I think authors of children's lit content should keep all this in mind. Writers should think about whether and how they should access these new media to assist them in telling their stories, whether through image, video, audio or whatever comes next (olfactory?). Do you see an opportunity to turn your novel into a mixed novel/GN or tie-in the internet for expanded experiences?
Wait a minute. A novel winning an award for illustration? Well, yeah. And at 25K words, it's an easy guess (if you haven't read or seen the book yet) what fills those 500+ pages.
Selznik's book wasn't the first to mix word and image, but I think with the Caldecott win, it really ushered in the idea that the novel as we know is evolving to become more mixed media. (This ignores, for the moment, that graphic novels, or GNs, have been becoming more and more popular and complex of late. But GNs are separate thing altogether. I'm talking more about how the traditional novel is changing.)
Without a doubt, we are well along in a revolution where the written, printed word is becoming heavily encroached upon by images, video and audio content. And while traditional novels (both paper and ebook) will be around for a long time to come, they will have to compete more and more with stories that incorporate mixed media.
For example, I just finished Malice, Chris Wooding's paranormal 68K-word mixed novel/graphic novel. The interesting thing about this book is that, while the story could easily stand on its own, the graphic novel really adds a new dimension that children today will connect with, especially boys. And if that gets them to read, great. Remember, to publishers more readers means more sales.
The other book is Patrick Carman's Trackers, released last week, about a group of four teen tech geeks. The story follows an interview of the MC as he recounts the events leading to the present (I'm being purposefully coy here to avoid giving anything away). The book could be read from cover to cover without leaving its pages, but the reader is cued to logon to a website, enter codes, view videos and crack codes, thus becoming a participant in the story.
It's an interesting concept and a challenge for the traditional writer to consider. Will it be successful? In my opinion, as long as the reader has to physically leave the comfort of their chair/bed/hammock or whatever, no. But we are fast approaching an age where all these sources of content will soon be available all at once and from a single device. I think stories where the reader (soon to become "audience participant") can seemlessly shift between the active experience of reading and the passive experience of watching/listening, while also enjoying a little bit of both in interactive ways too, will become more popular.
Why is this happening?
I don't think this has anything to do with shorter attention spans or being bombarded with information from a hundred different sources all at once, or sensory overload. I think it's only natural to want to experience things more fully. And if a story can be experienced more fully (which is not to say totally passively, as films do), then it will succeed.
What does this mean to the author of next generation stories?
Well, first and foremost, I don't think it has to mean anything to any one author. As I said before, traditional books will be around for a long, long time. But they will compete with mixed media going forward. I think authors of children's lit content should keep all this in mind. Writers should think about whether and how they should access these new media to assist them in telling their stories, whether through image, video, audio or whatever comes next (olfactory?). Do you see an opportunity to turn your novel into a mixed novel/GN or tie-in the internet for expanded experiences?
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Everything I Know About Writing, I Learned in Kindergarten
Here's a challenge: write a story in 600 words or less, one that'll make me laugh or cry (or, even better, make me do both in quick succession). One with fully developed characters, a mature plot and a complete story arc. And then make it the kind of story I'll want to read six dozen times in as many nights, laughing or crying each and every time.
That's what makes writing a good children's picture book so challenging.
It's also what has helped me become a better novelist. No writer agonizes over every single word - not just the meaning and appropriateness of the word, but the sound of the word as well - as the writer of the successful picture book. No author is so attuned to the melody of a story, the tightness of the plot, the bare essentials-yet-completeness of the characters.
Now, to be honest, I don't give my novels the same level of scrutiny as I do my picture book manuscripts. It would be impossible to finish anything if I did. But the habits I learned in writing picture books have conditioned me to more readily recognize weaknesses in my longer works, to listen to the sounds of the language, to write tightly.
Writing is, to mangle a phrase, ten percent inspiration and ninety percent constipation. We all know how hard it is to produce good writing. For me, developing the skills and habits to write a good picture book has helped (ahem) loosen the process of writing novels.
And if you don't believe me that shorter is harder, then why is it so damn difficult to synopsize your novel in just a few pithy sentences? Well, PBs are pretty much like that.
That's what makes writing a good children's picture book so challenging.
It's also what has helped me become a better novelist. No writer agonizes over every single word - not just the meaning and appropriateness of the word, but the sound of the word as well - as the writer of the successful picture book. No author is so attuned to the melody of a story, the tightness of the plot, the bare essentials-yet-completeness of the characters.
Now, to be honest, I don't give my novels the same level of scrutiny as I do my picture book manuscripts. It would be impossible to finish anything if I did. But the habits I learned in writing picture books have conditioned me to more readily recognize weaknesses in my longer works, to listen to the sounds of the language, to write tightly.
Writing is, to mangle a phrase, ten percent inspiration and ninety percent constipation. We all know how hard it is to produce good writing. For me, developing the skills and habits to write a good picture book has helped (ahem) loosen the process of writing novels.
And if you don't believe me that shorter is harder, then why is it so damn difficult to synopsize your novel in just a few pithy sentences? Well, PBs are pretty much like that.
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