The Nature of Arcs in Writing

I was looking for a particular post on the Kung Fu Monkey blog and found this review of the Star Trek 2009 movie, too, which does a nice job discussing transformative and revelatory arcs. John Rogers is a TV writer and he makes some fascinating points. There are some interesting comments, but most are focused on the merits or lack thereof, of the movie and not the writing points, and as expected from some folks in fandom, some of the comments get rather irksome. Still, this is a good springboard to thinking of the importance of heroes and character development.


And for the record, in the original Star Trek series, I thought Kirk was the hero, and the star of the show was the Enterprise, itself. :)

Elizabeth Moon

This post on Joseph Mallozzi's blog is an interview with Elizabeth Moon. Mallozzi (Stargate) holds a monthly reading club and Moon's The Speed of Dark was a recent read. Moon was nice enough to answer reader questions, some of which shed light on her writing process. She's a "write to see how it turns out writer." So, another one for my side of the writing equation! And the book, about autism, is excellent, btw.

Owning Your Characters

An aritcle in the June 22, 2009 issue of Publishers Weekly about the Catcher in the Rye case -- a Swedish writer wrote a book based on J. D. Salinger and his famous character, Holden Caulfield, at age 76, which he claims is not a sequel despite the publicity to the contrary. What the author, Fredrik Colting, says in the article:

"My only intention was to explore the relationship between Caulfield and Salinger." ... "I wanted to explore what happens to characters. When a book is finished, do the characters cease to exist, or do they live on somehow."

Isn't that what fan writers do? Isn't that the core issue for fanfic writers for tv shows no longer being produced, movies already made, books already written? The whole "further adventures" thing? Even if there are official sequels?

And is it realistic of Salinger, who, according to the article, has refused over the years to ever allow any adaptations of the book, because, as explained by his agent, Phyllis Westberg,

"He feels strongly that his fiction and his characters remain intact as he wrote them."

How does that reconcile with classroom discussions of Catcher in the Rye, which is a longstanding staple of school reading lists, and book discussions groups, where readers will bring their own interpretations of the characters? Who really "owns" the characters once they're released into the wild and find an audience? Legally, it's the author? But emotionally? Spiritually? The readers. Like it or not, the reality is that characters become a collaborative entity of the creators and the audience. Who I think Caulfield is and who Salinger thinks he is and who Colting thinks he is, and who any other reader thinks he is might be very different or similar yet subtly different characters. And for many in the audience, the character doesn't cease to exist when the book is already read, the movie or tv show viewed. They live on in our minds, our hearts, our imaginations. And some of us write about them.

It'll be up to the courts to decide if we have the right to distribute those works. In Colting's case, if he has the right to distribute them in the US.

To Be Free

This article in Publishers Weekly (May 18, 2009) -- Rip My Book, Please -- is an interview with Chris Anderson, auhtor of Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Anderson makes some interesting points about the benefits of giving away content -- for FREE!!! -- online as a way to stimulate sales.  In an excerpt from the book, he quotes Tim O'Reilly, a publisher:

"...the enemy of the author is not piracy, but obscurity."

Neil Gaiman's offers of free downloading of a couple of his books for a limited time to promote them, resulting in increased sales of all his books, is also mentioned. There's some real food for thought here re: the changing economics of publishing online that could change the publishing industry for the next few decades. I might have to read the book. Maybe on the Kindle I'll be getting. :)

Suggestions for the Publishing Industry

Jonathan Karp offered his ideas in the recent issue of Publishers Weekly.

A Writers' Glossary

Too much fun, had to share.

Prologues

My recent post on the rec.arts.science fiction.composition usenet group about prologues that I want to save, so I'm posting it here. I've probably posted similar things here over the years, but that's never stopped me before and won't now. ;)

In response to a post about immediacy of books that don't have prologues.

I've read prologues that quickly set up something intriguing that turns out to be in the past yet will play a vital role in the actual story and I've read openings that are first chapters that read like infodumps or meander through setting up the ... uh, setting. Many books without labeled prologues have them. They end up being the first few paragraphs or the first scene of the first chapter. Even the use of a "Galactic News" or "Encyclopedia Galactica" item at the start of a chapter serves that purpose.

I've always read prologues as first chapters. Just because there's a particular label on it doesn't make it any less a part of a book. Some books start in the wrong place but that's true for ones with a labeled prologue or that start with chapter 1. Some books don't even have chapters.

One of the more delightful books I've read in years -- and a first novel, I believe -- is The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue, a fantasy that starts with a few pages of first person narration explaining hobgoblins and what they prefer to be called and so on. I thought it was a slow start, yet it was intriguing enough for me to keep reading. Fortunately, it wasn't too slow and I was well rewarded for sticking with it. And given how much info the opening pages covered that were vital and how much more info needed to be covered as the book progressed, it worked. It set the tone, and pulled me into the story. Everyone I've recommended it to has loved it.

And I think I knowing something the characters don't doesn't eliminate surprise because there are all sorts of other things to discover. Books with multi povs work that way. In my WIR, I have pov for the protag plus one of the not so good guys and the reader, due to reading scenes from the not so good guy's pov, knows things the protag doesn't. Yet I like to think I have surprises there, too, because I don't show everyone's pov.