Livia Blackburne

Announcing the Alternate Version Blogfest (aka, I turn my YA fantasy into a steamy romance)

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:44:00 +0000

First, a quick announcement. Suzette Saxton and Bethany Wiggins are hosting a contest on their blog. The main prize is a 40 page agent critique, so do go take a look. Contest ends March 14, 2010.

I recently submitted a scene to my critique group with some sexual tension between two characters. They all thought it was too abrupt and suggested I sprinkle in some tension in previous scenes to make the development more gradual.

Well, you know how these things go. I went back home and started fooling around with an earlier scene. One thing led to another ... and before I knew it, a very different version of that scene was born.

For comparison, here's the original scene, from my YA fantasy Midnight Thief. It's an excerpt from the scene I posted for the Fight Scene Blogfest.

“Most times you won't have the luxury of resting after a fight.” At first she thought it was Riley speaking, but then she realized the voice came from off the mat. She sat up to see James watching from the side. This was the first time she had seen him here during her practice. Hastily, she climbed to her feet as Riley also stood.
James stripped off his outer tunic, tossed it on a nearby box. and walked onto the mat. He reached a pale but well muscled arm towards Riley, who tossed him the dagger he had been using. James caught the dagger and in the same motion beckoned Kyra toward him. She stood, frozen in place. He motioned again, more curtly. This time she obeyed, muscles tense as she approached him.“Let's see what you've learned.”

And here's Midnight Thief: Torrid Romance Version

“Most times you won't have the luxury of resting after a fight.” Kyra looked up to see James on the side, his cold blue eyes boring into her with an intensity that she felt down to her very bones.She watched in fascination as James stripped off his tunic, revealing a well muscled chest made all the more interesting by two scars that ran across his chiseled abs.

His eyes swept over her, taking in first her face, and then lowering to appraise the rest of her body with a calculating eye. She flushed. He was just evaluating her as a fighter, she knew. But still, her breathing became quick and shallow.
James stepped aggressively onto the mat. "Let's see what you've learned so far," he murmured, his voice husky with anticipation.

Hehe...

And once I started, I couldn't stop! I call this next one Midnight Thief: The Thriller

“Most times you won't have the luxury of resting after a fight.” At first she thought it was Riley speaking, but then she looked up and saw how wrong she was.

Chapter 35

It was James. This was the first time she had seen him here during her practice. Hastily, she climbed to her feet...

I learned several things during this exercise. First, that I probably don't have a future in romance. And second, this is really fun! And thus, I'd like to invite you all to participate in the Alternate Version Blogfest.

Here are the details:

1. The Blogfest will take place on April 1st, 2010. Yes, the date is intentional.
2. Sign up on the Mr. Linky Widgit below.
3. For your entry, post a short passage from your WIP, and then an alternate version of it in a different style. It can be funny, but doesn't necessarily have to be.
4. Post your entry on your own blog on April 1st, and go surf around to see what everyone else has come up with.
5. And of course, I'd appreciate it if you could retweet/blog/share about this blogfest. It's always more fun with more people :-)

Tips for Developing Character Voice from Dee Garretson

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:16:00 +0000

I recently attended a workshop at a Central Ohio SCBWI meeting with middle grade author Dee Garretson*. She gave some good tips for developing character voice.

Just to clarify, people talk about several types of voice. One type, what Garretson refers to as authorial voice, refers to the author’s writing style. A while back I blogged some tips from Cathy Yardley for developing your own voice. Dee’s presentation focused instead on character voice, which is the style of a specific character in your story.

So on to the tips:

1.What kind of observations does your character make? What would that character notice about someone they just met, or a room they just entered? It would be different for a 12 year old girl than it would be for a middle aged man.

For example, if a character were to say:

“She was a German and made brilliant meatballs,” - Gideon, the Cutpurse

What impression do you get of the character? What kind of person would mention meatball making ability as a defining characteristic?

2. How does your character react to situations?

“I felt a drop of sweat trickle down my side like a spider and disappear into the waistband of my itchy, brand-new suit pants, which I hoped never to wear again.” -I,Q

From this reaction, we can tell the character is young and uncomfortable in formal clothes.

3. Word choices In the first example, change "brilliant" into “yummy” meatballs and you get a very different voice. There are also some good word choices in the quote from I,Q -- spider, for example.

Another example:
“The fog hung over Booker Mountain like an old ragged coat.” - The Dragon Heir

If you change “old ragged coat” to “malevolent ghost”, again, you get a different feel.

How do you invoke character voice in your own writing?

*Garretson’s middle grade adventure book Danger’s Edge: Wildfire at Camp David will be released in September.

Multiple Posts About Multiple Comparisons

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:06:00 +0000

So the Anonymous winner of the Neuropublishing Joke Contest has revealed himself now as Todd, brilliant MIT neuroscience graduate student and my officemate at lab.

He wrote an explanation of multiple comparisons in the comments section of the last post, and I thought I'd repost it here because I know y'all want more statistics on the blog. Actually, I should have just made him write the explanation for me rather than trying to do it myself. It's the least he could do for a free book*, right?

Anyways, here's multiple comparions take two. If you want to see the joke that started it all, click back to the last post.

* Apparently Todd already owns a version of The Graveyard Book, but requested it as a prize to throw me off his trail. However, I didn't know he owned it, so that strategy failed. After everything was sorted out, I ended up giving him Pillars of the Earth instead.

------------------------

Todd's explanation:

I feel compelled to write my own short explanation of multiple comparisons for a lay audience, because I think I'm going to need it again some day...

Imagine you have a quarter and you want to know if it always comes up heads. You flip it 5 times, and it comes up heads every time.

Because you're an expert in stats, you know that that will only happen 1 out of every 32 times with a normal quarter. In other words, the probability of getting that result with a normal quarter is around 3%. In other words, as Livia pointed out very well, we're going to say that we think this is a trick quarter, but we acknowledge there's a 3% chance that we just got a strange set of coin flips.

In scientific terms, the "null hypothesis" is that the quarter is normal. We tentatively "reject the null hypothesis", because there's only a 3% chance of a normal quarter. This is a key point about science -- EVERYTHING is tentative. We're never, ever sure about anything. We can never directly prove our hypotheses are correct, we can *only* disprove other hypotheses. And we always do this while acknowledging there's a certain chance that we're wrong. Hopefully, that chance is vanishingly small, but not always...

Now, on with the story. Say you go to the bank teller and tell them to open up the vault, because you heard a rumor they might have some counterfeit coins in there. You insist that they flip each of their 20,000 coins five times each, and if any of them come up with heads all five times, you're going to call the cops.

See the problem with this? While there's only a 1/32 chance that any one quarter will come up all-heads, when you do this 20,000 times, you expect several hundred quarters to have all-head results, through pure chance alone.

You need to be much more careful with your threshold for a counterfeit coin because you're testing so many, and so you "correct for multiple comparisons". The simplest way of doing this is just to change your mind about when you're sure a coin is counterfeit. If you're satisfied suspecting a single fake coin after 5 throws, you'd require, say, 18 throws to satisfy yourself that the bank really had a bad quarter.

Livia's explanation was great, but if you didn't get it the first time around, maybe that helped?

The Winning Neuropublishing Jokes and a Statistics Lesson

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:44:00 +0000

Okay, I know I'm a day late to announce the winners of the Neuropublishing Jokes Contest. Unlike other bloggers with convenient excuses for delayed posts, (cough, cough), I have no excuse except, well, I'll explain later. So sorry about the delay, and without further ado...

*drumroll*

The Grand Prize goes to Anonymous, for the following joke:

A brain scientist, an agent, and an editor walk into a bar...

The brain scientist stubs his toe on the bar and yells, "Ouch! I really felt that in my free nerve endings! My somatosensory cortex is going nuts!" The agent says, "Your screaming has far too much jargon. I can't sell it." And the ScienceDaily editor rewrites it to, "Leading scientists prove toes cause pain; suggest removal."

This one got the most votes from random people I pulled to my blog to help me judge. In an unexpected twist, though, this joke is actually not eligible for a prize because Anonymous chose his/her other two jokes as the official entry. But this just received so many compliments that I wanted to award the prize anyways, if just for bragging rights.

The book prize will go to the runners up (yes, there was a tie).

From Liana Brooks:

Q:How many brain scientists does it make to write a bestseller?
A: None. They taught the lab rat to do it.

Again from Anonymous:

Q: How many brain scientists does it take to write a best-seller?
A: Thousands! Of course, after you correct for multiple comparisons, only a handful are doing any real work.

Congratulations! Both runners up requested The Graveyard Book as their prize. So Liana, I'll be contacting you about your mailing address, and Anonymous, I have a good guess about who you are, but please contact me as well.

Okay, and here's the reason I've been procrastinating on the results. I guess, *sigh*, I'm going to have to explain Anonymous's second joke. I know I'm going to explain it slightly wrong, and some statistician will come out and tell me I'm dumb, and it'll be embarrassing for all involved (where by "all involved" I mean me). But I'll give it a try...

*rolls up sleeves*

In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to do statistics on experimental data. If we were doing an experiment on whether morning or evening testing would result in better scores, one ideal data set would be if all morning tests were better than all evening tests:

Morning: 99, 97, 92, 95, 98
Evening: 85, 90, 82, 70, 88

However, that's never true in the real world. In reality, our data is noisy because of factors like individual variation, testing conditions, phase of the moon, etc. Therefore, rather than a clean difference between the datasets, we usually end up with two overlapping datasets:

Morning: 99, 97, 92, 82, 55
Evening: 85, 92, 70, 95, 88

So see how Morning tests are mostly better, but there's alot of overlap? With datasets like this then, there's two possible interpretations.

1. Morning testing is better on average than Evening testing (ie, the experimental conditions are Actually different)
or
2. The two testing conditions are the same, and the difference you get is just a fluke of the specific samples you took. (ie, the experimental conditions are Actually the same, aka the Null hypothesis)

To get an answer, we perform a statistical test that calculates the probability of getting our data set if the conditions are Actually the Same. This is called the p value. In other words, if the p value is less than 5%, there is a less than 5% chance that the conditions are Actually the Same.

It's standard in the sciences now that if the p value is less than 5%, we conclude that our experimental conditions are probably different.

With me so far?

Okay, so the whole p value and statistics thing works fine if you just do one experiment with one statistical test at a time. However, when you're analyzing brain imaging data, you're interested in a whole bunch of different areas. Usually, we divide the brain into tiny cubes a few millimeters wide, and perform a statistical test on every single one. Now we have a problem, because even if every single one the cubes are Actually the same for the two experimental conditions, 5% of them are going to pass our test, just because of random chance. Say we're testing 100,000 voxels -- that's 5000 voxels that will light up in our brain image due to random chance!

Therefore, for neuroimaging, we have to do a more stringent statistical test, and this is called Correcting for Multiple Comparisons (cuz, we're testing multiple cubes, see?). So if you're doing an expeirment, you might get activations in a whole bunch of voxels, but once you correct for multiple comparions, only a handful are actually activated.

Get it? Funny huh?

Um, get it?

Eh, well, it's really funny to neuroscientists. Just take my word for it.

Thanks to all the good folks who entered the contest. Do go over to the contest and check out all the entries. It was fun :-)

Transition Between Storylines Without Losing Your Reader (Sky Village and Lost Mission)

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:37:00 +0000

Note: Thanks for all who entered the neuropublishing jokes contest. Winners will be announced on Saturday.

Presenting multiple storylines with different point of view (POV) characters is tricky. It’s hard to ask the reader, who’s already invested in one narrative, to start again with a new one. I find that if I’m looking for a reason to stop reading, I often do so at a storyline break.

Many novels use a clean break (new chapter or section) between storylines. While that works, I’ve seen some books attempt smoother transitions. These transitions tend to be plot specific, so they won’t work with any book, but I’ll describe a few here as brainstorming fodder. I find that a good transition keeps me interested for the following reasons:

1) Keeps the momentum: There’s less of a psychological break between sections. Sometimes a good transition will also introduce a hook that motivates me to read the new storyline.
2) Plot refresher: If we’re returning to a previous storyline, the transition makes it easier to reorient myself. I don’t have do the work of remembering what happened and where the plot is.
3)Emotional refresher: A good transition will remind me why I’m interested in going back to that other storyline -- why I care.

The first example is from Sky Village by Monk and Nigel Ashland, which Peta Andersen lent me to help with POV changes in my own manuscript.

Sky Village begins with the story of Mei, also called Dragonfly, who goes to live with relatives when her mother is captured. She has a book, called the Tree Book, that her mother used to read from. When Mei opens the book, she finds that the stories her mother read to her, about a boy Breaker and his sister Riley, were real. What’s more, she realizes she can speak with Breaker through the book and learns that Riley has been captured by demons.

“I can’t believe this,” she said, her finger still tingling. Somehow, all this time, the Tree Book had been sharing stories about real kids. But why? And would she be able to talk to the others?

You’re really her, Breaker said. You’re dragonfly.

Mei was speechless. Finally, she asked, “Where’s Riley? Is Riley okay?”

After a moment of silence, Breaker responded. She will be soon.

The next chapter launches from Breaker’s point of view, starting from a point in time before Riley’s capture. Because of this transition, I'm invested in Breaker before his section even begins.

The storylines switch back and forth in a similar way throughout the book. At the end of a character’s section, Mei and Breaker talk, and we transition into the other character's story. As a reader, I found it helpful because it reminded me where we were in the other narrative.

For example, here’s another transition.

[Mei speaking] “Morning Man says my mother was able to communicate with the birds. But why is this happening to us? What if we can’t control it, Breaker?”

[Breaker speaking] In a few hours, I have to conjure a demon for the first time. So I guess I’ll find out.

[Start of Breaker's chapter]

As a reader, I remember, “Oh yeah, last time, Breaker was trying to conjure demons.” It’s much easier to rejoin his story that way.

What if characters from two storylines don't communicate? Athol Dickson uses a different approach in Lost Mission. He has several related narratives, some of which take place in different centuries. He transitions between them by means of an omniscient narrator. Here is one such transition between the story of an 18th century Franciscan friar to a present day woman in Mexico.

But let us be more patient than the friar, for this is just the first of many journeys we shall follow as our story leads us back and forth through space and time. Indeed, the events Fray Alejandro has set in motion have their culmination far into the future. Therefore, leaving the Franciscan and his solitary ship, we cross many miles to reach a village known as Ricon de Dolores, high among the Sierra Madres mountains of Jalisco, Mexico. And we fly further still, centuries ahead of Alejandro, to find ourselves in these, our modern times.

I have mixed feelings about this approach. It was fine for a few switches, but after 345 pages of this , I got a little annoyed. However, these transitions did manage to keep the momentum going better. It’s almost like, since there wasn’t any white space between two sections, the eye just keeps going.

Would anyone like to share good ways of transitioning between storylines?

A 100% Absolutely and Completely Realisitic Neuroscience Love Scene (Love At First Sight Blogfest)

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Brain scientists wonder about many things. Besides obvious mysteries like whether or not we'll ever solve the problem of consciousness, there's also the perennial question of why we're so underrepresented in the romance genre.

Think about it. When was the last time you went through a checkout aisle and saw a Nora Roberts with a dreamy fMRI technician on the cover? The sad truth is, our research generally has more sex appeal than we do.

So when I heard about the Love at First Sight Blogfest, I knew it was my responsibility to up the percentage of steamy brain scientist love stories available. So without further ado, I present:

A 100% Absolutely and Completely Realisitic Neuroscience Love Scene

He rushed in five minutes before scantime, hauling a laptop bag over one shoulder and flashing an apologetic grin.

“Sorry I’m late. I went to the wrong scanner.”

She forced a polite smile but didn't try too hard to hide her annoyance. “The patient’s name is Alicia. I've explained the procedure, and she’s in the bathroom changing. Can you help me set up?”

“Sure.” He strode past her only to stop outside the control room door. “I don't think I know the combination.”

“Four eight three.” The panel flashed green, and the lock clicked.

“Four eight three,” he muttered as he followed her in.

“You’ve scanned before?”

“Yes, but we used a GE system at Stanford, not the Siemens.” He reached into his pockets, fishing out cell phone, keys, and wallet and dumping them onto the back table. She glanced at his shirt pocket and scanned his waist for a belt before demetaling herself as well. Both of them paused at next doorway, automatically patting their hip and back pockets before entering the air conditioned scanner room.

“And this is the magnet,” she said over the soft thrum of the helium pump. The scanner took up a good portion of the room, a giant horizontal cylinder with a man-sized bore.

She pointed at the bottom cabinet as she walked by. “The linens are in
there.” He opened it, bending his lanky frame in half to peer inside. By the time she finished plugging in the headcoil, he had covered the scanner bed with new sheets, readied a pillow, and placed a packet of earplugs for the patient on top. She felt slightly guilty about her rudeness earlier. The imaging center was notoriously hard to navigate.

A knock sounded from the control room. “That's probably the patient.”

He stayed out of the way as she performed the final safety checks, gave instructions to Alicia and rolled her into the scanner. “Squeeze the emergency ball if you need us,” she told her as they returned to the control room.

She settled in front of the scanner controls and dove straight into the preliminary scans. A low mechanical buzz came through the intercom, and a grainy brain image loaded onto the screen. Halfway through setting up the next scan, she paused.

“Sorry I'm not explaining more, but we're running late and this is a long paradigm. I'll try to walk you through next time.”

“No problem. I'll just look over your shoulder.”

“Thanks.” For a few minutes, there was no sound except for keyboard, mouse, and the low pitched scanner noise.

“How many subjects have you run on this paradigm?” he asked when her typing slowed.

“Seven.” She scanned the screen, double checking the parameters. “The pilots were promising, but now the group analysis doesn't show any activation. I'll try a few more before I give up.”

“Well, we'll keep our fingers crossed then.”

The scanner made a high pitched, repetitive trill as it began its functional runs. She monitored the display for a few more moments before speaking again. “To be honest, I think I'm shooting myself in the foot by using SPM's volume based normalization. The VWFA is variable enough as it is. I really should look at it again with--”

“Surface based normalization.”

She cocked her head and glanced in his direction. He looked down at his hands. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. “I feel the same. Exactly the same, in fact, about volume based normalization. It doesn't make sense why we still stick with it--”

“When surface based normalization is so obviously superior.” Impulsively, she swiveled her chair to face him. Their eyes met.

In the next room, the scanner continued to sing.

* * * * *

Whew (*fanning self*). That's about all I can handle for now. And now you have some insight into the love lives of neuroscientists.

Thanks to Simon Larter for alerting me to the blogfest, Courtney Reese for hosting, Lady Glamis, whose recent bit of flash fiction inspired the ending line, and Good Omens for inspiring the second to last paragraph.

Be sure to check out the other entries in the Blogfest for some less nerdy fun.

How the Brain Responds to a Loved One's Pain

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:57:00 +0000

Note: Remember to submit your entries to the Neuropublishing joke contest by the end of Saturday!

In Tender Morsels, Liga's daughter Urdda grew up not knowing the circumstances of her birth. When Urdda was fifteen, her mother finally told her of the brutal gang rape that led to her conception. Urdda ran out of the house weeping, unable to deal with the new knowledge. The following passage describes her feelings.

Why couldn’t there have been … some small tale of betrayal or bad luck for which Urdda could have consoled Mam. This was too great a pain, too monstrous a series of injuries. It lumped in the past like…. Like a bear on a hearthrug, impossible to ignore.

When we hear about a loved one suffering, we often suffer along with them. Like Urdda, we feel their pain as if it were our own. Today, I'll talk about the neural basis of this phenomenon.

Tania Singer and colleagues from University College London conducted an experiment on pain and empathy. They recruited couples and put the female partner in the scanner. The significant other remained outside the scanner. During the course of the experiment, they either gave the woman electric shocks, or showed her signals indicating that her significant other was receiving a shock. (Don't worry, volunteers get to set the maximum level of shock themselves, and they get paid a lot of money.)

When the woman received the shock, many pain processing regions became active in her brain, including those that processed the physical sensation as well as the emotional aspect of receiving pain. When the woman saw that her partner was getting shocked, she showed activation in a network that only included the areas that processed the emotional aspects of pain. What’s more, the amount of activation correlated with self reported empathy scores.

In summary, when you hear about a loved one’s pain, you don't activate the regions that process physical sensation, but you suffer the emotional consequences of the pain.

Can I extrapolate some writing advice from this? Not in a scientifically rigorous way, but it's probably a good reminder to make your readers care about your characters. The closer they feel to them, the more they will suffer along with them. But don't worry, even if your readers are groaning in sympathy, you can rest assured that they're not actually feeling physical pain. :-)

What do you think of these results. Do they mesh with your personal experience?

Oh yeah, I have a new blog now...

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 02:56:00 +0000

It occurs to me that I never announced my new science blog "Reading and word recognition research."
The main purpose of the new blog is to force myself to read up on my dissertation topic (nothing like the threat of public humiliation to force you to get your facts right). The articles are therefore pretty academic and have a much narrower focus. If you're curious (or just a glutton for punishment), feel free to hop on over and poke around.

Invoking Strong Emotions in the Reader (Tender Morsels)

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:16:00 +0000

Note: There are already some hilarious entries in the Neuropublishing jokes contest! Be careful to follow the rules though. Remember 2 jokes per person, and choose your book before the deadline.

I recently read Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan. It’s not for the faint of heart, but I admire the way Lanagan invokes mood and strong emotion in the reader.

Tender Morsels tell the story of Liga, a girl who lives with her sexually abusive father. Every few months, Liga gets pregnant and her father forces her to abort the pregnancies. When Liga's father dies in a freak accident, she finally carries a pregnancy to term and gives birth to her daughter Branza.

Newly freed from her father, Liga thinks about destroying the bed they had slept in but leaves it because it is her only reminder of her mother. However, Liga's good fortune doesn't last. Not long after Branza's birth, a gang of village boys invade her house and rape her.

(Oh, did I mention this book is marketed as YA? I’m not going to go into why Knopf was smoking crack with this designation, but Peta Andersen has a nice discussion on her blog on the limits of YA.)

But back to the discussion at hand. The following passage broke my heart. This passage appears right after the town boys leave Liga.

Liga only walked, only walked away. Slowly, because to walk was to hurt, she put the distance, step by step, between herself and her father’s house, where all her troubles had happened. No matter now that Mam had died in that bed. At least Da had called on Mam’s memory as he misused it. But that strangers should come, and with no awareness of its sacredness, one by one, have of Liga there, and think that that was the place to do such things – well, Mam must be truly dead and gone, and not watching from anywhere; clearly she was of no help to Liga now.

What was it about this passage that made me feel so deeply for Liga? I think it’s several factors.

1. It taps into the universal mother-child bond and the pain of losing a mother.
2.It invokes a well known symbol (mother as protector), and declares it useless. “Clearly she was of no help to Liga now.” Remember the first time you realized your parents couldn’t protect you from everything?
3.It takes away the one sliver of hope that remained to Liga. Her mother's memory was the only thing that kept Liga going during the years of abuse, and it was really effective to declare that memory useless now. It sent a clear message that Liga had no emotional reserves left.

I imagine these techniques and would work for emotions other than sadness as well. For example, you could have one thread of sadness throughout the story that gets resolved in the end. Actually, there's a good example of that in Princess Academy. Perhaps fodder for a future post

Do you remember a passage that made you really sad? How did it do that?

Fight Scene Blogfest, in which Kyra gets beat up

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:12:00 +0000

I may regret this later, but I just found out that there's a fight scene blogfest going on right now. If there's one thing my manuscript doesn't lack, it's fight scenes -- I'm always wracking my brain trying to come up with more original angles. So even though I'm super late, joining in the fun.

Most of my fight scenes are based on my real life experience in jujitsu. My most convincing fight scenes also happen to be the ones where the heroine gets beat up. I'll let you connect the dots there...

Since I'm doing a last minute copy and paste from my office, the writing's still a bit rough. But I guess that's why they call it a work-in-progress.

And here we go!

* * * * *

He had already set up some straw mats on the floor in the big warehouse at the back of the building and was leaning against the wall now, tossing a dagger into the air with his right hand.

“Am I late?” she asked, watching the light reflect off the blade as it spun.
Riley shook his head and motioned her toward the mat. She stepped carefully on, feeling the rough strands through the bottom of her shoes. The mats were better than the hard stone floor, but they still were not a welcoming surface to fall on. As they stood on the mat facing each other, he grabbed a sheath from his belt and sheathed his dagger, tying it well with a leather thong so it wouldn't slip off during the fight.

“You got yours?”

“Yeah.” She reached down to her ankle and released her knife from its bindings, slipping it out from the leg of her trousers. It was a small one, with a plain handle and a blade the length of her hand. By now, she was getting a sense for its reach in a fight.

Riley attacked as soon as she stood up, coming at her with an overhead thrust. She easily avoided it, stepping sideways and backing lightly out of his reach. She had learned early on to stay far away from him. At close range, pretty much anyone in the guild could overpower her with brute strength. However, she was faster than most, and if she stayed alert, she could sometimes catch her opponent off guard.

“What are you, a dancer?” Riley said. “Pretty movements, won't do any good here.”

He rushed her again, this time with a more controlled attack. She stepped aside. As he passed, she dropped to the ground and hooked her ankle around his knee. She didn't move away in time, and he fell on top of her, pinning down her knife arm with his left side. As he shifted to bring his own knife around, she realized her legs were free. She kicked up and wrapped both ankles around his head and under his chin. The unexpected move snapped his head back and made him release his pin on her arm. Twisting her wrist, she grabbed her dagger and passed the sheathed blade across his throat. Once she determined it a satisfactory kill, she flopped back down, staring at the room's high ceiling as she caught her breath. Her elbow felt raw from being pressed against the mat, and she waited for Riley to get off her so she could inspect it.

“Most times you won't have the luxury of resting after a fight.” At first she thought it was Riley speaking, but then she realized the voice came from off the mat. She sat up to see James watching from the side. This was the first time she had seen him here during her practice. Hastily, she climbed to her feet as Riley also stood.

James stripped off his outer tunic, tossed it on a nearby box. and walked onto the mat. He reached a pale but well muscled arm towards Riley, who tossed him the dagger he had been using. James caught the dagger and in the same motion beckoned Kyra toward him. She stood, frozen in place. He motioned again, more curtly. This time she obeyed, muscles tense as she approached him.

“Let's see what you've learned.”

She tried to ignore the pounding in her ears as they circled each other. She had never seen James fight before. He moved deliberately with no wasted motion, and his eyes never deviated from her face. There was no taunting or boasting. James just circled her with cold, unswerving focus. He said nothing, and face gave no indication of his thoughts.

A long time passed with no attack. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that activity around the warehouse had stopped. People were watching.

James continued to circle her without attacking. She wiped her sweaty left hand on her trousers. Was he expecting her to take the first move? She felt slightly lightheaded. Her breathing became quick and shallow, and she struggled to slow it down.

Finally, she lunged at him, thrusting her blade toward his torso. He moved aside just enough to avoid the tip of her sheathed blade and then rushed her. She felt a stunning blow on the side of her face at the same time her legs swept out from under her. She had the presence of mind to slap the ground to soften her landing, but the fall still knocked her breathless. She lay there for a few moments, eyes closed, not wanting see who was watching.

“Stay within the perimeters for now,” she heard him say. Painfully, she rolled onto her side, keeping her eyes on the ground as he walked away. A loud laugh sounded from the corner of warehouse. She felt her face flush with shame, and she was horrified to feel tears threatening to spill. She forced them back by sheer will and made herself look up toward the source of the laughter. It was Bacchus, slapping his thigh in amusement before following James out.

* * * * *

Comments and suggestions welcome! Once I get home, I'm looking forward to reading everybody else's entries.

A Brain Scientist, an Editor, and an Agent Walk Into a Bar

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:48:00 +0000

My husband, astronomer and literary snob Jeffrey Blackburne, welcomed the new year by growing his "winter coat." He argued that beards were basically de rigueur in academia now. All the respectible academics have one.

Given that news, I figured I should probably get one too -- might help me graduate quicker. But alas, after weeks of not shaving, my chin was still silky smooth. I think it's because I'm Asian.

Then later in January, I learned from Simon Larter that it was de rigueur to have a blog contest once you reach 100 followers. Still smarting from my facial hair failure, I thought "By golly, I may have to disappoint academia, but I don't have to disappoint the blogosphere!"

So with that little story , I'm announcing the Neuropublishing Joke Contest. Here are the details:

Open to: Residents of any country for which shipping from Amazon is $10 or less (That includes US, Canada, Europe, and Australia.) You can find more about their shipping here.
Since most of my followers are on RSS rather than Google Friend Connect, I won't make following me a requirement. But if you do use Google Friend Connect, follow me, will ya? It'll give you good karma.

Prize: The winner can choose any book that's been reviewed thus far on my blog.

Rules:
1. Complete one of the following beginnings. You only have to complete one, but feel free to work more than one in.

a) A brain scientist, an agent, and an editor walk into a bar. . .
b) How many brain scientists does it make to write a bestseller?
c) Why did the neuroscientist cross the editor?

2. Post your entry as a comment.

3. After your entry, post the book that you would like if you win. You must specify your book before the judging occurs if you wish to receive a prize. Pretty much any book mentioned in any post is fair game. You can browse through the archives on the right hand sidebar.

4. Up to two entries per person. If you submit more than two entries, I will judge the first two.

5. The contest will end on February 13th 2010 at 11:59pm EST.

6. Tweeting or linking the contest is not required, but encouraged.

7. If you know me personally (ie, I have real life conversations with you on a regular basis), please enter under a pseudoname with a hyperlink to your real website so I'm not swayed by your dashing personality.

Thanks all! This should be fun :-)

Is Fast Paced Always Good?

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:55:00 +0000

First, let me emphasize that I liked the beginning of Graceling. In fact, I wrote an entire entry explaining why I liked it. So this is not about what Graceling did right or wrong, but rather the tradeoffs we make when going from one set of storytelling conventions to the other.

A while ago, I wrote a guest post at Guide to Literary Agents on seven reasons agents stop reading your first chapter. Reason number 2 was "slow beginnings." Some manuscripts start with too much pedestrian detail and unnecessary background information, losing the reader.

Upon reading the article, my husband (astronomer and literary snob Jeffrey Blackburne) asked me, “But what about all the old classics that begin really slowly?” I told him that many classics would not be published in today's market. He said that was dumb. I said he was dumb. And we continued with dinner preparations.*

That discussion didn't bother me that much. While I do enjoy some classics, and while I appreciate the literary value of all of them in principle, when I actually sit down and try to slog my way through 30+ introductory pages about a clergyman who isn't even a main character**, I get impatient and reach for ~~Stephenie Meyer~~ ~~Harry Potter~~ the latest Newbury winner***.

It wasn't until I started thinking about Graceling for my blog that the conversation came back to mind. Graceling’s beginning is well done in the modern sense. It begins with action at a point of change, grabbing the reader and engaging them right away.

The book is about Katsa, a girl graced with an ability to kill, who grew up as a thug for the King because of her deadly talent. The narrative opens at a point of change, as Katsa begins to realize she doesn’t have to be under her uncle’s control. A major character arc involves her gradual realization that she’s not the savage she always thought, but someone who can choose to do good.

While I appreciated this change in Katsa, I don’t think I experienced it to its full potential. Why? Because the story started with Katsa at the point of change. When I met Katsa, she was already making her first steps of rebellion against her uncle. With the exception of a few flashbacks, I never saw those years when she was doing his dirty work, torturing and killing people. Therefore, when she wondered whether her past crimes made her a monster, my reaction was, “What are you talking about? I’ve only seen you perform good and heroic acts.”

Would my experience as a reader have been different if Graceling had been written under a different set of expectations for plotting and pace? What if it had been written in an era where it was okay to just spend time with the character without advancing the plot? Could I have met her earlier, and thus appreciated her transformation more?

What do you think? Are we losing out on parts of the story because of the fast paced modern novel?

*As you can tell, we're madly in love.
**I know, I know, it's really good. I'll try again to read it at some point...
*** Don't judge me.

The Role of Repetition in Prose

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:26:00 +0000

Note: Thanks to everyone who took part in the Haiti fundraiser! We had 32 donors -- woot! You can see the final update and donor list here.

I love it when people see new discussion points in my examples. In my last post, I used a passage from Graceling to illustrate creative internal narration. If you didn't read that post, you may want to hop over to get the full passage and context.

Peta Andersen noticed something else about that passage:

Great examples - it's kind of cinematic, isn't it?

I'm wondering, though, about this section:

"She didn't see where Giddon came off feeling insulted. She didn't see how Giddon had any place in it at all. Who were they, to take her fight away from her and turn it into some sort of understanding between themselves?"

The rest of the text is so tight that adding "she didn't see" is distracting. Katsa doesn't need to explain that she doesn't see something because we're in her head. She doesn't need to frame her thoughts as if they were dialogue, either.

Cashore is a strong writer; if I had to guess, I'd say she left the phrase in for two reasons:

1. Cadence - spoken aloud, the lines sound better, and give the text a more aural feel.

2. Atmosphere/tension - the repetition builds tension, leading into Katsa' frustration with Giddon. It's almost like a refrain.

Thanks for the observation, Peta! Anyone else have good examples of selective repeating?

Creative Showing in Graceling

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:13:00 +0000

Kristin Cashore does a great job of narrating the main character Katsa's thoughts in Graceling. For lack of a better term, I'm going to call it indirect internal observation. You could also think of it as creative showing -- conveying the character's state of mind without simply stating it, but also without going to the physical descriptions we often fall back on when we're trying to "show, not tell."

Here's the first example. Katsa just met Po, a prince who is graced, like her, with combat skills. They have a fight that ends amiably but leaves them both pretty bruised. Later, they run into Giddon, a friend of Katsa's, who is furious to see that Po scratched Katsa's face in the fight. Giddon reaches for his sword and accuses Po of disrespect.

"Lord Giddon." Po had risen to his feet...."If I've insulted your lady," he said, "you must forgive me. . ."
Giddon didn't take his hand from his sword, but his grimace lessened.
"I'm sorry to have insulted you, as well," Po said. "I see now I should've taken greater care of her face. Forgive me. It was unpardonable." He reached his hand across the table.
Giddon's angry eyes grew warm again. He reached out and shook Po's hand. "You understand my concern." Giddon said.
"Of course."
Katsa looked from one of them to the other, the two of them shaking hands, understanding each other's concern. She didn't see where Giddon came off feeling insulted. She didn't see how Giddon had any place in it at all. Who were they, to take her fight away from her and turn it into some sort of understanding between themselves? He should've taken more care of her face? She would knock his nose from his face. She would thump them both, and she did would apologize to neither.
Po caught her eyes then, and she did nothing to soften the silent fury she sent across the table to him. "Shall we sit?" someone said. Po held her eyes as they sat. . . he mouthed two words. It was as clear as if he'd said them aloud. "Forgive me."
Well.
Giddon was still a horse's ass.

That last line cracks me up every time. I love how Katsa's personality comes through here, and I love the indirectness of the last line, like she's arguing with herself about whether to be angry or not. The thought that's conveyed is "Well, perhaps Po wasn't all that bad," but it's so much more colorful to say "Well, Giddon was still a horse's ass."

Here's another example from later in the book, when Katsa spends time with an attractive man who has the grace of mind reading. To save herself from embarrassment, she has to keep herself from thinking about his good looks in his presence.

She glanced up at him, and in that moment he pulled his wet shirt over his head. She forced her mind blank. Blank as a new sheet of paper, blank as a starless sky. He came to the fire and crouched before it. He rubbed the water from his bare arms and flicked it in the flames. She stared at the goose and sliced his drumstick carefully and thought of the blankest expression on the blankest face she could possibly imagine. It was a chilly evening; she thought about that. The goose would be delicious, they must eat as much of it as possible, they must not waste it; she thought about that.

It never once explicitly says "Katsa did her best not to be distracted by his rippling muscles," but we get the idea.

What's your favorite non physical description way of showing a character's thoughts?

A Long Recovery For Haiti

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:27:00 +0000

Update 5: And the other donor has sent me her confirmation email too. I'm not going to post it because once I blur out the personal details, it looks exactly the same as mine.
Update 4: Made my matching donation!

Update 3: Thank you to all 32 donors who participated! Will update with the final wrapup in a couple days.

Update 2: There seems to be a trend of anonymous donors now. It's totally fine to donate anonymously, but if you do, could you give some kind of nickname or hometown just so it's more personalized? Thanks!

Update: An additional donor has also agreed to match donations, so now, for every donor, $20 will be donated to the American Red Cross, up to a limit of $1000. Because of this new development, we are extending it one more day, to the end of Friday night. Thanks to all who have participated already.

Recovery efforts are underway for the Haiti earthquake, but they still have a long way to go. Please consider making a donation to relief efforts. To try to jump start things, we're going to try a fundraiser of sorts on the blog.

Here's how it will work.
1. Please make a donation to Haiti relief efforts. You can donate to the American Red Cross by texting "HAITI" to 90999 (A $10 donation will be taken off your phone bill). Or, make a donation via their web page* or another charity of choice.
2. Leave a comment in this post noting that you made a donation. My husband and I will donate $10 to the American Red Cross for every donation listed in the comment section between now and the end of Thursday, up to a limit of $500 dollars.

We're just going to go by the honor system here. Please do consider making a donation. Thank you!

*I've heard that with text donations, the money doesn't get there for 90 days, so a web page donation is better, but if you're short on time, a text donation is better than nothing! Also, if you choose to make a web page donation, I recommend specifying the International Relief Fund rather than earmarking the funds for Haiti specifically, so that it gives the Red Cross some freedom to be flexible as circumstances dictate.

Current techniques for brain research

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 01:32:00 +0000

This is part two of a series of a posts in which I provide background knowledge for evaluating neuroscience findings reported in the news. This post is rather basic, but it's important groundwork for my future posts on neuroscience and writing.

When evaluating experimental results, you have to understand the techniques used to get them. Here is a summary of three ways neuroscientists learn about the brain.

Lesions - Lesions are probably the earliest way people learned about the brain. Injuries to certain brain regions allowed scientists to draw conclusions about the region's function. Some fascinating case studies include Phineas Gage and HM.

Pros:
1. Lesions make a strong case for arguing a causal relationship between a region and a function. For example, if you can't form new memories after the hippocampus gets destroyed, then the hippocampus was probably involved in memory formation.

Cons:
1.Lack of control/precision: For obvious reasons, ethical scientists can't conduct lesion experiments in humans. We only learn from lesions when they occur by chance in a relevant region. Because lesions don't happen for the convenience of neuroscientists, they are often messy and cover multiple brain regions, making it hard to make precise conclusions.

Electroencephalography (EEG) - In this technique, electrodes are placed on a participant's scalp to measure the electric fields produced by neural activity as the he performs different tasks.

Pros -
1. EEG is a direct measure of neural activity (as opposed to fMRI, described next).
2. EEG has very good temporal resolution (It can detect fast activity on the millisecond scale.)
3. EEG is non-invasive, so we can perform EEG experiments on volunteers without causing them harm.

Cons
1. Bad spatial resolution. While there are algorithms to compute the source of an EEG signal, it is mathematically impossible to calculate for certain what part of the brain a signal is coming from based only on readings from scalp electrodes. In other words, with EEG you can tell when something is happening in the brain, but have a very fuzzy idea of where.
2. EEG is a correlational measure, so it's harder to establish causality. For example, if you get a pattern of activity when someone is speaking, the activity might be due to speech processing. However, the activity could also be due to something else that is happening at the same time (listening to your own voice, for example).

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) - Most of the brain imaging techniques reported in the news, in which the brain "lights up", are fMRI studies. fMRI uses an MRI machine to measure blood flow to the brain as participants perform different tasks.

Pros -
1. fMRI has pretty good spatial resolution. You can pinpoint things down to the millimeter range. This is currently the best we can do in humans without opening up the skull.
2. fMRI is noninvasive, like EEG. Also, unlike PET or CT scans, fMRI doesn't require radioactive substances.

Cons -
1. fMRI is an indirect measure. This technique measures blood flow, not neural activity. We can use blood flow as an indicator of neural activity because neurons require more oxygen and glucose as they fire. The cardiovascular system therefore sends more blood to active brain regions. However, the exact nature of the connection between neural activity and blood flow is still an active area of investigation.
2. Like EEG, fMRI is a correlational measure.
3. fMRI has bad temporal resolution. Activation is averaged over windows of roughly 2 seconds. This is many orders of magnitude longer than the actual timescale of neurons. Thus, we lose a lot of information.

I hope this made sense. Please let me know if you have any questions, or if any of my jargon was not confusing. We will return to our regularly scheduled program in the next post.

Flash fiction should matter

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:32:00 +0000

Note: Today we have a guest post on flash fiction from Simon Larter. Some of Simon's flash pieces include Twister (published at Per Contra) and Rise, Lazarus (Flashquake). In this article, Simon shares about a piece that didn't make it to publication and draws some principles about what makes good flash fiction.

Thus far in my writing career (such as it is), I’ve specialized in flash fiction. That’s mainly due to my fiction writing class in my last term of college, which focused almost exclusively on flash, but I’ve found I enjoy the form. It allows me to explore small, yet important ideas without the burden of a minimum word count or expectations of elaboration.

Despite the low word count, though, flash fiction has to tell an interesting story, or it won’t work. The same strictures that apply to novels apply to flash, they’re just distilled and amplified due to the brevity of the form. Characters have to be immediately interesting, or at least identifiable; situations must be compelling, or at least evocative.

With those things in mind, why don’t we look at a bit of flash fiction? Hop on over to my blog to read the piece I’ll be examining. (I’m posting it there because I don’t want to clutter Livia’s blog with an epic-length post.)

(Waits. Whistles. Taps toes.)

You’re back? Good. Thanks for reading that.

So did you see anything wrong with it? On the surface, it’s not so bad. I feel that the prose is fairly decent, and I like a couple of turns of phrase in it—I kind of dig the “porcelain crescent” bit, and I’m quite pleased with the flashback scene in the bathroom. The editors at Flash Fiction Online thought it was all right too: this piece made it through the first round of editorial review, which places it in the top 20% of all submissions in a given time period. So again, is there anything wrong with it?

Needless to say (since you haven’t seen this piece in FFO recently), Cake and Coffee didn’t get accepted. In the second round of editorial reviews, I got some pretty crushing feedback. Here’s one of the comments:

The writing was good up to the ending. Even if I could figure out what angered Jean so violently, the story would still have no plot.

And that was the best of it. “Totally miserable and unappealing MC,” was another comment. Yeah. Not so good.

But what can that teach us about what good flash fiction should be? For my part, I think it tells us that something significant must happen to the characters. You might say that allowing someone to be scalded and possibly disfigured is significant, and in real life, yes, it is. But in fiction, being burned by hot coffee is only significant if it produces a change in the characters. Feeling “small and cruel inside” is not a significant change. And have I really set Jean up as capable of this kind of cruelty? I don’t think I have. It seems almost arbitrary, and at the very least, it’s a disproportionate response to the loss of a slice of cake, of all things.

Another problem—and all the rejecting editors noted this—is that I have a seriously unlikable main character. I might have been able to get away with that in a novel, where there’s potential for development and change. But in flash? There’s not much room for that. My main POV character was neither interesting nor sympathetic, and that brings the whole story down.

I hesitate to draw any concrete conclusions about flash fiction from this one example, since with all art, there are exceptions to every rule. A more talented writer might have been able to easily surmount the difficulties I’ve presented. Still, in my own fiction, I want to be able to learn from what I perceive are my mistakes.

In the end, I feel that Cake and Coffee turned out as a glorified anecdote, and not a particularly pleasant one. Flash fiction should be more than that. I feel it should mean something, express something true, tell an important story. Flash fiction should matter.

Simon is rediscovering writing after a 15 year hiatus, and wondering why he waited so long. He is a husband and father of three whose day job in lightning protection may someday provide a wealth of anecdotes for the next great American novel (although he’s Scottish by birth). Between work, home renovations, and child duty, he still manages to find time to write short stories and flash fiction. He graduated from Drexel University with a degree in Civil Engineering.

Three Ways the Opening of Graceling Draws the Reader In

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:28:00 +0000

I recently attended Kristin Cashore's reading of Fire at the Harvard Bookstore. Afterwards, I bought a copy of Graceling and started reading it as I waited in the signing line. By the time my turn arrived, I was hooked. Cashore does a great job of engaging the reader right away. Here's why I think it effectively drew me in:

1. The story starts with movement.

In these dungeons the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind. One that had so far proven correct, as Oll's maps tended to do. Katsa ran her hand along the cold walls and counted doors and passageways as she went...

The opening paragraph puts us in the middle of something interesting -- a heroine running through a dungeon. A few paragraphs later, she single handedly defeats 5 dungeon guards. Intriguing. I wanted to know more.

2. The opening establishes the main character as worth rooting for.

...Oll and Giddon, and most of the rest of the secret Council, had wanted her to kill [the dungeon guards]. But at the meeting to plan this mission, she'd argued that killing them would gain no time. . . .
She wouldn't kill, not if she didn't have to. A killing couldn't be undone, and she'd killed enough....

For a reader to invest several hours in a character, he has to be convinced that the character is worth rooting for. Given that our first impression of Katsa is fairly violent, it's not clear immediately whether she is likeable or sympathetic. Therefore, it was helpful for Cashore to establish early on that Katsa, though deadly, has principles and sticks to them.

3. There is a Sexy Mysterious Guy on page 12 -- ahem, I mean -- It ends with a mystery.

...She caught the fall of every leaf in the garden, the rustle of every branch. And so she was astonished when a man stepped out of the darkness and grabbed her from behind. He wrapped his arm around her chest and held a knife to her throat. He started to speak, but in an instant she had deadened his arm, wrenched the knife from his hand, and thrown the blade to the ground. She flung him forward, over her shoulder.
He landed on his feet.

We spent the first few pages watching Katsa beating multiple armed men senseless with her bare hands. Now someone manages to sneak up on superhuman Katsa without her knowing, and when she throws him, he lands on his feet? Who is this guy? The scene ends without revealing the mystery man's identity, an I keep reading to find out more.

In your story openings, do you give thought to drawing the reader in? What are your strategies?

Kristin Cashore on Adverbs

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:35:00 +0000

We're going to have a few posts on Kristin Cashore's Graceling and Fire coming up. To start us off, here's a funny quote (paraphrase) from her recent author reading at the Harvard Bookstore.

Kristin Cashore: Some people say that adverbs are bad in writing. I think that's a stupid rule. If used correctly, adverbs can be a really useful tool--
Audience member interrupts: How useful?

Hehe.

How do you feel about adverbs?

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Three Exercises for Character Development from James Frey

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:35:00 +0000

I recently ran into a road block on my work-in-progress. While my critique group enjoyed scenes involving my main character, they didn't feel invested in a second story arc involving another second character named Tristam.

Peta suggested I didn't know Tristam well enough and recommended that I flesh him out. At the time, I was reading How to Write an Damn Good Novel by James Frey (Which I won in a drawing on Jordan McCollum's blog. Thanks Jordan!), so I decided to try his methods. They were fun and helpful. I'll share them with you here.

1. The Autobiography - Not just the facts of a character's life, but a character's autobiography in his own voice, complete with ramblings, tangents, pontifications, and commentary. Frey suggests that for a main character, this could be 10-50 pages long!

2. Psychoanalysis - Pretend to be your character's therapist, sit them on the couch, and start asking them questions. You can have fun with this. How do they feel about their mother? Will they be offended when you ask? Taking the roll of psychoanlalyst helped me get under the surface to the issues that were important to Tristam.

3. Ruling passion - What is your character's one driving passion, the "sum total of all the forces and drives within him?" Power? Career? Self worth? Love? Figure it out and write it down.

Epilogue -- I tried all three exercises (plus an additional one, see below*) and then revised the scenes in question. The critique group all thought they were much improved.

What is your favorite way to get to know your characters?

*I rewrote the scenes in first person, present tense even though the manuscript is in 3rd person, past tense. I was able to use phrases and details generated from first person version to add immediacy to the final versions

A Brain Link and Blog Holiday

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:42:00 +0000

The holiday season is here, along with the sporadic internet access that it often entails. Therefore, the blog is also on holiday until after the New Year. I have grand plans of hunkering down with the work-in-progress during my downtime -- we'll see if that actually happens

I leave you with a link. Denver Bibliophile wrote an article about the same study that Narrative and the Brain was based on. He has some interesting things to say about using scripts in narrative.

See you in 2010!

Theory of Mind and Character Interaction (When You Reach Me)

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:59:00 +0000

Note: Thanks to Iapetus for inspiring this post with his comment on The Fundamental Attribution Error and Character Sympathy

The False Belief Task is often used by psychologists to test social cognition. One version goes something like this.

1. Sally has a favorite marble. She puts her marble in a basket, and then leaves the room.
2. Anne, being very mean, enters the room when Sally is not there and and moves the marble to the cupboard.
3. When Sally comes back into the room, where does she look for her marble?

If you answered, the basket, then congratulations, you have well developed theory of mind abilities. Of course, Sally doesn't find the marble there. She has a false belief about the location of the marble.

The tasks seems trivially easy for adults, but kids below the age of five consistently say that Sally will look for the marble in the cupboard, where Anne put it. It seems that the ability to represent someone else beliefs as something different from what you know about the world develops later on in childhood.

But even though adults can do the Sally-Anne task, we sometimes still fall prey to the mistaken notion that other people think the same way we do. Lets take an example from When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead.

Sixth grader Miranda doesn't like Julia because she's annoying. When making self portraits in art class, Julia asks for "cafe au lait" construction paper to match her skin. She also brags about the fancy vacations she takes with her parents and shows off all the souvenirs her parents buy her. Miranda can't understand why her friend Annemarie used to be best friends with Julia.

One day, Julia shows up at the restaurant where Miranda and Annemarie work. Miranda first worries that the restaurant owner will invite Julia to work with them. But to her surprise, Jimmy (the restaurant owner) immediately kicks Julia out of the restaurant and tells her never to come back. Miranda is delighted.

"Out," Jimmy said, practically growling. "Now."
After she left, I pretended along with Annemarie that Jimmy was a little bit crazy, but as we walked back to school with our cheese-and-lettuce sandwiches, I carried a new warm feeling inside. Jimmy could be a grouch, but he saw right through Julia, just like I did.

See how Miranda automatically assumed that Jimmy disliked Julia for the same reasons she did? It's only later that she realizes Jimmy had completely different reasons. Julia was black, and Jimmy didn't want her around because he believed black people were genetically wired to be dishonest. It was a nice twist and an important moment of growth for Miranda.

Have you ever read or written anything that used false belief to good dramatic effect?

What killed omniscient POV?

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:12:00 +0000

Today's post is inspired by a conversation I had with Simon Larter and Jordan McCollum in the comments of Subtle Narration in the Graveyard Book.

Omniscient viewpoint, where the narrator can access the thoughts in every character's head, was popular in older literature. Nowadays, however, most books are written in a limited viewpoint, confined to the thoughts of one or a few characters.

So lets speculate. What do you think killed omniscient point of view?

A few possibilities from our discussion:

1. It's a natural progression. The visual arts progressed from 2D cartoonlike ancient and medieval drawings to realistic 3D images as artists learned from the ones who came before them. Perhaps similarly, the art of storytelling has progressed from omniscient viewpoint to a more realistic limited viewpoint. (Jason Black has an interesting post on a similar idea.)

2. Changing societal norms. In How to Write a Damn Good Novel, James Frey says that society was important in Victorian times. Therefore, it was important to know everybody's thoughts in order to get society's viewpoint. Is limited POV on the rise now because society's role is less important?

3.Individualism - This is related to point two. Perhaps a rise in individualistic culture makes modern readers want to identify with one person at a time.

4. Freud - Is it the rise of Freudian thought and the desire to know the various motivations, conscious and subconscious, within an individual?

5. Just random chance - Or maybe we're overthinking things, and limited POV is popular for the same reason bellbottoms were popular in the seventies and crocs were popular a few years ago.

What do you think? Are there any literature folks who know of research on this?

How to Pull Off an Amazing Plot Twist (When You Reach Me)

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:00:00 +0000

I wasn't quite sure what to do about this post. When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead, has the best executed plot twist ending I've ever read. I want to pick it apart and blog about why it's amazing, but it's such a good ending that I don't want to ruin it for people, even if I put up a spoiler warning.

So I opted for a compromise -- I'm analyzing this plot twist in very abstract terms. If enough people tell me that this post makes no sense, I might post a version with concrete examples and the world's biggest spoiler warning in red flashing letters.

When You Reach Me had all the elements of a good twist ending. For me, this means three things.

1. The ending was hard to predict.
2. Even though the ending was hard to predict, it fit in with the rest of the story. My pet peeve with TV shows is when crazy things happen with no warning (*cough* 24 *cough*). Anybody can write in a completely unpredictable plot twist, but only with the good ones can you go back through the earlier portions and find elements that foreshadowed it.
3. The ending adds a new dimension to the story. A good twist ending will introduce new questions or themes. For example, the ending to the classic movie Planet of the Apes brought up questions about the nature of humanity. Ender's Game also does a good job with this, taking time at the end to explore the implications of its plot twist.

What really made When You Reach Me exceptional was the sheer number of clues Stead managed to cram in the the rest of the book without giving away what happens in the end. How did she manage to pull that off?

Well, here are some contributing factors.

1. Out of order narration -When You Reach Me is narrated in two interwoven threads. One is narrated in present tense. The other tells the backstory and is narrated in past tense. A while back, I blogged about A Northern Light, which also uses this strategy. I thought the approach was confusing in A Northern Light, and I also thought it confusing here. However, it did mix things up enough so that it was hard for a reader to piece the story together.

2. Clues that blend in with the rest of the narrative - Stead's narrator and the world she lives in (1970s Manhattan) are rather quirky. This makes it easier for Stead to work in bizarre clue elements without having them seem out of place.

3. Multiple storylines and red herrings - The main storyline revolves around some notes sent to the main character (Miranda) that seem to predict the future. In addition to this mystery, however, there are multiple subplots, as Miranda loses old friends, makes new friends, gets a job, and generally navigates 6th grade life. The subplots make it hard for the reader to guess which details pertain to the main question. Also, there is at least one red herring -- a seemingly important detail that turns out to be irrelevant.

4. Everything hinges on one thing, and that thing is really hard to guess -- Ultimately, what makes this plot twist so unexpected was just that it was really out there. The possibility just doesn't occur to people. Because the revelation was so unexpected, Stead was able to cram the beginning with all sorts of clues without having readers make that final leap.

What makes a good plot twist? How do you handle yours? (Please do your best not to give things away about this book or others in the comments!)

Conversation with Alan Rinzler About Reading and the Brain

noreply@blogger.com (Livia) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:37:00 +0000

I recently spoke with Alan Rinzler, an editor with John Wiley & Sons, about reading and the brain. You can check out the interview on his blog.