Formula One

Last night we watched Mark Wahlberg's thriller THE SHOOTER, which got me to thinking about formulas. The film is highly watchable and enjoyable, especially if you go in for people being shot in the head and set on fire, but it's almost cookie-cutter in its adherence to formula. There's the One Guy against the whole corrupt system. There's the one not-corrupt guy in the corrupt system trying to help him. There's the somewhat tacked-on love interest with a nice rack. And, by the end, all is set to rights, at least personally, for the One Guy. He's gotten revenge on everyone who was giving him grief, and he drives off with the well-endowed love interest. B+!

How can something so structurally transparent be so satisfying? I think because we love the structure. The description I gave could easily fit dozens of books and movies, with little variation. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, for example. It'd be fun to put possibilities for each element into a paper bag, draw them out in different combinations, and write your thriller:

PROTAGONIST: man/woman/ child
PROTAGONIST'S SPECIAL SKILL: knows a dangerous secret/can blow people's heads off from a mile away/ is the only nice person in a world of meanies/ can see the future
SETTING: the Wild West/ outer space/ high school/ the workplace
VILLAIN(S): the "Man"/ the system/ the bullies/ the Mafia or gangsters/ the PTA/the Mean Girls

Then there are the little elements you can throw in for fun, but which also seem to have become standard fare:

PRODUCT PLACEMENT: Mark Wahlberg's character drinks a Budweiser. I wonder if their advertising exec said, "This is our target market! Sharpshooting, embittered, holed-up-in-the-mountains-with-their-dogs ex-Marines."

ANTI-BUSH TIRADE: Not quite sure why Hollywood was so eager to get rid of Bush when this became a prominent feature of movies made in the last several years. How will they fill those five minutes now?

Unfortunately for me, not having my own weapons stockpile or experience with forensics, I'd probably be limited to megachurch thrillers, if there can be such a thing. Lone pastor champions something controversial, and the corrupt Presbytery tries to oust him. Oh, wait--Anthony Trollope already did that 150 years ago in THE WARDEN. Rats.

Have a favorite thriller, formulaic or not?

Control Freaks

Once, when my husband's cousin was driving on crowded, winding Highway 17 toward Santa Cruz, he lost control of the car and went into a high-speed skid, headed straight for another car. "Oh, no," thought Mike to himself, pulling up his legs toward his chest, "this is gonna hurt!" (Will Mike escape unharmed, or be paralyzed for life? Tune in at the end of this blog.)

Last night, while discussing Eric Weiner's THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS, my book club came to the conclusion that illusions of control contribute mightily to our sense of happiness. Moments of bliss can be serendipitous, yes, but miserable times feel less miserable if we feel we can do something about it.

Laurence Gonzales echoes this in DEEP SURVIVAL: WHO LIVES, WHO DIES, AND WHY. Gonzales studies people thrown into life-and-death situations and why some people pull through while others go fetal or run around like nutjobs until they fall off the lifeboat or whatever. One key determinant is the illusion of control--having a little task or goal outside oneself. For example, if you think to yourself, "My job will be to keep that one nutjob from falling overboard," that higher cause might just keep you alive long enough for the rescue boat to pull alongside.

But as much as we love control, we are fascinated and horrified by the loss of it. I've been reading Isaac Asimov's I, ROBOT, and all the stories of robot-human interaction involve our loss of control over robots. (I'm having one of those moments like when I read LORD OF THE RINGS after HARRY POTTER, thank you very much, and realized Dumbledore and the dementors were heavily inspired by Gandalf and the Ring-Wraiths. Asimov's robots similarly inspired everything from HAL to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA's Cylons to that darned little self-propelling floor vacuum that doesn't go where you want.) Loss of control makes for great conflict in stories. Control regained makes for great plot resolution.

This even applies to my book, which is this very second sitting, completed, at the printer's! Cass loses her life as she knew it in one fell blow, spends a fair amount of time drifting helplessly, then finds herself re-engaged when she begins making choices again.

Anyhow--about Mike. He miraculously escaped not only death but even injury. And not because he regained control of the car. No, it was that other slippery factor involved in our survival and happiness: dumb luck.

In Memoriam

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, everyone.

In honor of Memorial Day, I was thinking we could swap favorite book memoirs. A lady at the pool recommended SWIMMING TO ANTARCTICA by Lynne Cox as very inspirational, and I'll have to check it out, since it combines danger and adventure in a cold climate.

My aunt recently translated my paternal grandmother's memoirs, and I begged her for a copy because, with language barriers and all, I only knew the same five stories about my grandmother, and they tend to lose something when delivered repeatedly in broken English to an unappreciative child. Unfortunately, she now says she can't find the file and "will have to do it again." Sigh. We all know how that goes.

Anyhow, I'd have to say my two favorite (fairly) recent memoirs are THE COLOR OF WATER by James McBride and THE GLASS CASTLE by Jeannette Walls. Still can't wait to "check out of a hospital, Rex Walls-style"!

Your favorites?

Should You Be Thirsty on a Raft in the Pacific

There's plenty more to say about the SCBWI Conference (see previous post), but I've chosen to preempt that with Important Survival Tips, should you be adrift on a raft in the ocean, awaiting rescue which may never come (did I mention I'm reading KON-TIKI by Thor Heyerdahl?).

1. If your body is losing lots of salt through perspiration, and freshwater supplies are limited, you may dilute your ration with 20%-40% salt water. This will replenish the depleted salt in your body, conserve the fresh water, and slake your thirst. Feel free as well to take plenty of morning and evening dips in the possibly shark-infested waters to keep the skin cool.
2. No need to starve to death, even if fish aren't constantly circling your raft or flipping up onto the raft itself, as Heyerdahl and his compadres experienced. They simply dragged a fine-mesh net behind the boat and trapped plankton. Toss out the phytoplankton, keep the zooplankton, and you're set. Heyerdahl compares the tiny micro-shrimp to "shrimp paste." Hey, it works for whales.
3. To satisfy both hunger and thirst, should time be an issue, put a fish in a piece of cloth and just suck on it, raw. (This may have inspired that nasty baby product where you put any piece of food you're too lazy to cook and puree into this mini-bag and give it to the baby to suck on.)
4. Don't harpoon whale sharks in the head. This ticks them off.

Hope this helped! The great thing about being an armchair survivor is that, should these dreadful things like being castaway, being swept away in an avalanche, finding myself in a blizzard, etc. ever happen to me, you won't catch me not knowing what to do.

Gatekeepers

This past weekend I heard some amazing declarations that had to be taken on faith, and I wasn't even at church. Uh-uh. I was attending my first professional writer's conference, organized by the snappily-named Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI--pronounced Scieszka, I think).

The hands-down most incredible statement was by one agent who, having been raised by generations of independent children's bookstore owners, ended on the battle cry, "Don't buy your books on Amazon! If we don't support independent bookstores, then Amazon gets to decide what everyone reads."

Huh?

I see Amazon as the great equalizer: anyone with a few bucks ($29.95/yr) can sell whatever they like on it. Take me for instance, and my soon-to-be-launched first novel--after serving up MOURNING BECOMES CASSANDRA to be ignored by three agents and impersonally rejected by a fourth, I've gone ahead on my own. If you can't get the gatekeepers to notice you, much less open the gate, just try pushing on it yourself and see if it won't swing wide.

And what gatekeepers they are! One agent did a session entirely on her pet peeves--things that make her reach for the auto-reject button. My own writing contains these gems straight off her no-no list:

1. Don't talk directly to the reader. ("Reader, I married him" is straight out, Charlotte Bronte.)
2. Don't have characters cry. One tiny teardrop will do ya.
3. Don't have characters' faces "drain of color" when they're upset. (Okay, I don't actually have this one, but I can imagine doing it. Perhaps opt for "Gerald went all blotchy with stress.")
4. Don't have characters blush. (Whoops. Blushing.)
5. Don't write about your pet or grandchild or child. (Heck, almost everything I write has personal inspiration. Not for me the disclaimer about "any resemblance to any person living or dead is a figment of your over-active imagination." Mine would more likely read, "Yeah, that's her.")

One editor said she was primarily interested in morbid and strange stories because she found children morbid and strange. She must have been signing new writers right and left, then, because I heard at least three teen oracle/witch stories being pitched, as were tales where the protagonist had been raped/assaulted/lived in foster care/lived on the streets/witnessed a death/come from a long line of women who had been so treated, or, preferably, all of the above. Whew. I guess I understand, though--if there's anything teenagers need more of, it's angst.

I wouldn't have you think the weekend made me abandon my middle-grade novel project, but it did alert me to people I would never show it to. Which saves us all time and effort, I suppose. But I can't help thinking I'd love to whip something up that contained all twenty kisses-of-literary-death from that one list and seeing what happened if I shopped it around.

We're all gatekeepers in the end (unless your book club forces you to read stuff you hate). I'd love to know what makes you slam a book shut and throw it on the floor, and if I'm out of line here.

WWBD?

It turns out the film LOST IN AUSTEN is three hours long--I neglected to notice this. Who knew I was signing up for something of GONE WITH THE WIND and THE LAST EMPEROR proportions? Maybe it was a nod to the length of the 1990s BBC version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE because it's filmed, tongue-in-cheek, in exactly the same locations (Bennets' house, Netherfield Park, Pemberley).

Anyhow, having watched three 1.25-hour installments so far, I stand by my enthusiastic recommendation. We have all loved books so much that the characters take on a life of their own, and Austen's well-rounded ones stand up to exactly this question. What are some of their underlying motivations? How would they behave if circumstances didn't work out so neatly as in the book? Bingley is a wonderful case in point--what happens if there's no loving author around to save him from the weaknesses in his own character? And Lydia--was it really Wickham that made her so naughty, or did she have the potential to trash her life in any case, and he just happened to be handy?

And, for all you lovers of the Colin-Firth-wet-shirt scene, there is a hilarious nod to it.

Can't wait to get the kids in bed tonight and finish this movie off!

Wishful Thinking

Rented a fun movie last night and threw it in while Scott was at Session, in case it was going to be too "girly" for him: LOST IN AUSTEN. Along the lines of Woody Allen's THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO or his hilarious short story THE KUGELMASS EPISODE or even INKHEART, the modern-day heroine finds herself within a fictional work, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, to be specific.

If you can't get enough P & P, this movie's a good way to spend an evening. Will our heroine fall for Elizabeth Bennet's world (not to mention Mr. Darcy) and that world for her, thus screwing up a much-loved book for everyone else? Or can she resist and keep the plot on track?

As "Amanda Price" points out, the Darcy in this movie is no Colin Firth, "but even Colin Firth is no Colin Firth." Which reminds me of the best line from PURPLE ROSE: "I met the perfect man today...he's fictional, but you can't have everything."

Pi-ka-chuuuuuuuu!

Are any of your kids (or you) into all this anime business? One surefire way to start a fight in our household is for me to bring home the latest Avatar book from the library shelf, and even once they've settled on a reading order, if the winning reader goes for a bathroom break, s/he inevitably returns to find someone else reading the book, and the battle re-commences.

They read, watch, and collect Pokemon (sorry, can't do accent marks), Avatar, and now someone has recommended Naruto to them. Heaven forbid we run out of bones of contention.

Life was more peaceful in my childhood home because my sister was the big comic books reader, devouring Fantastic Four and The X-Men, along with the occasional spin-off, while I read my BETSY-TACY series and ALL-OF-A-KIND-FAMILY. I'd read the comics, sure, but peacefully, when my sister was done with them.

At least curvaceous babes don't seem to be the anime norm. It looks to me like oversized eyes are the thing. Eyes are the new boobs, as it were.

Anyhow, anime books, like comic books, aren't really designed for reading aloud with everyone nestled around, but we've found a happy compromise: the EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ORDINARY BOY series by William Boniface. Mostly book with some comic book thrown in. This is the first book since HARRY POTTER where the kids groan and protest when I stop reading. Take that, WHEEL ON THE SCHOOL. Sigh.

Waving the White Flagg

Okay, so I've given up on FRIED GREEN TOMATOES AT THE WHISTLE STOP CAFE. I know, I know, lots of you have read it and loved it and still wax nostalgic when people mention it, but I found a copy of KON-TIKI at Goodwill, and I'd rather read that right now.

I was reading TOMATOES to brush up on books that go back and forth in time (hence JOY LUCK CLUB a little while ago) because I have grand ideas about writing such a book to capture stories from my husband's family, but it has started to bug me that so many Southern novels have characters-who-were-all-about-civil-rights-before-civil-rights. In TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD it was fresh and moving, but now it's become run-of-the-mill. Cliche. Every book seems to have its Atticus Finch, which makes you wonder why there needed to be a Civil Rights Movement in the first place, if everyone was secretly already so stinking progressive.

One day I might try again, since trusted friends recommend it--THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV took me about five attempts to get through, after all--but for right now I think I'll go hang out with Thor Heyerdahl on his raft.

What's the latest book you've given up on, and why? Anything you later returned to and loved?

One Brief Shining Moment

Two days ago I was digging around on the Barnes & Noble website and noticed they were listing my book, MOURNING BECOMES CASSANDRA, which is slated for release June 16, 2009. This was odd because I had never contacted B&N to list my book and had no idea how they planned on getting any copies, not to mention how they planned on slashing the member price to what it costs me to print a copy!

When I commented on this in my Facebook status update, I unwittingly started the pre-order feeding frenzy on Amazon. Kidding about the frenzy, folks, but for one Brief Shining Moment, at my very, very peak, MBC hit #9,983 on the Amazon sales ranking! At this writing I've dropped back to #36,296. (We interrupt this blog to ask those of you who live in WA State NOT to order on Amazon because I can just hand you a copy when I see you--saves you shipping and me the hefty 55% cut Amazon takes. Either way there's no avoiding state sales tax, but take that up with Ms. Gregoire.)

In any case, I quickly discovered I could become an Amazon rankaholic: all my self-worth determined by my hourly ranking. Like BRIDGET JONES and her diary entries, but instead of counting my cigarettes and shags and weight, I could list my rising and falling ranking. This is unhealthy. Moreover, the sales ranking calculation algorithm is a deeply-shrouded mystery and not one to build self-esteem around. (See http://ezinearticles.com/?Navigating-the-Amazon-Sales-Ranking&id=41607 for an interesting article. I was still confused after reading it.)

What does this have to do with literature? Lots. The moral of the story is, brief shining moments are not maintainable in books because BSMs that go on and on, becoming Lengthy Shining Eons, get b-o-r-i-n-g. We either like our BSMs to open books and then be lost forever, as in GONE WITH THE WIND or THE FUGITIVE, or we like to end with one after much Strang and Durm, as in just about every comedy, fairy tale, romance you've ever read. (Did anyone else just have a "doh!" moment and realize, for the first time, that Rowling's name for Viktor Krum's school is a joke on Strang and Durm? Sheesh, Christina! Okay, I'm awake now.)

Sorry about all the parenthetical comments in this post. I have a real question for you Friday, if I still remember it then.

Movies on Mary Kay LeTourneau's Top 10

In a given year, Scott and I manage to watch about 25% of the Best Picture nominees before they release a new batch to get behind on.

We're ahead of the game this year because, in the past week, we've managed to see SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and, as of last night, THE READER. While I usually dislike seeing book-adaptation films before I've read the book, I make exceptions for books I either a) never heard of, or b) didn't make it through. THE PAINTED VEIL fell in the former category, and THE READER in the latter. Both excellent movies, by the way.

I don't know why I didn't make it through THE READER (book version). I tried. I'm almost positive it wasn't because of the MaryKay-Vili-style affair between the two characters. But seeing the movie made me want to try the book again, if only to get inside Michael Berg's head. What are you thinking, you big clunk?

My first question is, who is the reader? Is it Michael? Is it Hanna? Is it me? All three of us? The story is so much about sitting in judgment on other people, and the complicated sympathies we have for each other. Books famously have a way of getting us inside heads alien to our own and making them sympathetic to us. Think of Milton's Satan.

And what is reading? For Hanna it's a metaphor for self-awareness. Michael asks her, on the eve of her prison release, if she has "learned anything" about her war crimes, and she replies, "I've learned to read." Critics have claimed the author excuses Hanna's behavior because of her illiteracy, but I would argue that her illiteracy represents her unthinking, unexamined actions. When she is read to, and when she learns to read, she learns to join the human experience, to reflect. For Michael (at least in the movie), reading becomes inseparable from intimacy. Reading, like sex, becomes a place for two emotionally and sometimes physically separated people to connect, and yet only one person gets to do the talking. Even when Hanna learns to write and tries to communicate through letters, he continues to send tapes. To see her, years later and beaten down (or at least, wearing lots of cosmetic prostheses) is too rude a shock for him, and you sense he'd rather limit reality to books on tape. Hanna, with her different approach to reading, recognizes the twain shall never meet. Sigh.

Anyhow, that's just the title! No time even to get into the whole war-guilt business...Anyone else see the movie? We can talk on-or-offline.

To Err is Human

Received the first proof of my upcoming book a couple days ago. Very exciting. There were some formatting issues, which is fine, but, in combing through it, there were also six tiny editorial corrections I had to make. Probably whenever some of you read the book, you'll find more, since my eyes are so jaded at this point I'm surprised I caught anything. After all, these six tiny things, which included a missing "a" and a missing single end quote and a word that shouldn't have been capitalized--these six tiny things had eluded me and my various readers/editors up till now.

I think it's just about impossible to catch everything, but since I'm one of those weirdos who will edit (in pen) a library book, I'm trying to catch as much as I can. (For example, THE HISTORY OF LOVE had a "you're" that should have been a "your." There were also several times when the narrator said "I" when it should have been "me," but I didn't mark those because I didn't know if they were supposed to be deliberate grammatical errors.)

Besides editorial corrections, it's hard to know just when to STOP with something. I wrote my back cover blurb, which I then had to shorten for the website, and then agonized over whether I should change the back cover. The other night I thought of a sentence that would have been nice in Chapter 39. Leave it. Leave it leave it leave it.

Anyhow, should I really be straining out these book gnats, when my children have been running around neglected for the past several months? They're fed and clothed, yes, but honestly that's been about it. Like the poor Jellyby children in BLEAK HOUSE, their mother has had her eye fixed on faraway things, while everything went to pot at home. At least my oldest is only 9-1/2, too young to run off with any Prince Turveydrop, but another couple months like it's been and she may consider it. So if you read my book and think, "Oh my gosh, here's an extra comma," at least you can comfort yourself that the author's children have not yet been taken away by CPS.