July Skirmish

Hello, Skirmishers!

No, I haven’t received edits for the latest draft of my middle grade novel. So I’m distracting myself by stuffing my summer with travel (Alaska!), reading (both fiction and nonfiction), trying to maintain a tan on way too Irish/Scottish skin, and whisking my son into his swim romper as often as possible. Let’s get to it!

Alaska, Land of Unsettling Light

I’m used to escaping to the tropics mid winter, but June’s shock was ducking back into cold weather just when Idaho was heating up. Our Alaska cruise felt like time travel. In terms of wardrobe, my life rewound to March. For sun-starved creatures like my husband and me, such whiplash was a little harrowing.

But our cruise (which was for work) was lovely, Alaska is indeed the Last Frontier (remote, untamed, unspeakably huge, bald eagles everywhere), and I am completely smitten with traveling via giant ship surrounded by eternal waves. Or frozen fjords, as the case may be.

We sailed from Vancouver, BC (criminally over-priced city…I’m sorry if I just dissed your home town) to Icy Strait Point, Skagway, Endicott Arm (Dawes Glacier!), Juneau (kayaked on a 33-degree lake and touched an ice berg), then Ketchikan. For seven days, we didn’t see the sun, yet the sun simultaneously never seemed to set. We went to bed close to midnight—I never saw it get dark. The picture below was taken at 9:30 pm.

On our Caribbean cruise last February, Cedar was a pudgy 13-month-old baby. On the Alaskan cruise…behold, Cedar the young man:

Will I sailing through arctic green waters between towering fjords necklaced with fog and ribboned with waterfalls go in a novel someday? Yes. Yes, it will.

Tip: Making Your Novel Unforgettable

I just finished the (very helpful) The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass. It’s full of tips on how to write a book that readers never forget…in a good way.

The key to writing that unforgettable novel isn’t just to make the stakes super high and your hero super interesting and your descriptions super amazing. That’s all great, but it’s still lacking. On paper, it’s soulless. Readers don’t connect. They don’t care.

The key is to put your reader on a emotional journey of their own. “When a plot resolves, readers are satisfied, but what they remember of a novel is what they felt while reading it” (p. 4, emphasis mine).

How do you describe a scene where your character feels an emotion that defies quick description? How do you write a beat where your character must sacrifice something, or maybe receive someone else’s sacrifice? When writing a big battle or action scene, when do you describe the details, and when do you pull back and describe the effects of the battle/action on the landscape and the survivors instead? How (and when) do you allow your character to deceive themselves…and the audience? These are all questions answered by this book.

Maass provides many solid principles and suggestions for making your readers invest themselves desperately in your story. He provides tons of examples from literature and copious writing exercises—which may or may not end up in your novel, but which will 100% benefit you if you do them.

I found his exercises especially helpful now that I’ve finished a second strong draft of my novel, and I can parachute into various scenes, strengthening beats here and there. (If you haven’t yet finished a draft, Maass’s suggestions might prove overwhelming, making you feel like you need to accomplish them all your first time through.)

Here are a few examples of his exercises:

Caveat: If you want to weave your hero’s inner journey with the plot points of the outer journey (a major step in making your story potent), then Maass does fall a little short. He basically waves his hands and says, “Make sure you weave them together.” For this, I recommend the brilliant, life-changing The Anatomy of Story by John Truby, who teaches step by step how to do this.

But on other levels, The Emotional Craft of Fiction is great. Buy it.

Podcast Alert! The Big Lesson Forbidden Child Teaches Young Readers

I had a blast last week talking with Esther and Lydia Edmonds on their delightful Feminine Glory podcast. We covered all the things. What made me write Forbidden Child, and what big lesson did I hope readers would take away from it? (Hint: Stonewall Jackson said it first.) What modern prince inspired the villain in the MG novel I’m working on now? How does learning how to be a better cook help you become a better writer?

Watch “Duty Is Ours, Consequences Are God’s,” and find out!

What I’m Reading

I recently finished Wyrd Sisters—one of my favorite Terry Pratchetts yet. I loved the cast of wildly hilarious characters: Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat, the Fool, the Duke, his horrible wife… Pratchett’s metaphors were particularly on point in this book: “Every morning her hair was long, thick, and blonde, but by the evening it had always returned to its normal worried frizz. To ameliorate the effect she had tried to plait violets and cowslips in it. The result was not all she had hoped. It gave the impression that a window box had fallen on her head.”

I’m also reading In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire, as I prepare to write (hopefully) compelling seafaring/piratical fiction. We shall see. Want to sample the flair of Sir Francis Drake without reading a book? Watch The Sea Hawk. Errol Flynn’s character is modeled after Drake in all the swashbuckling ways.

All Things for Good by Thomas Watson has been full of that famous Puritan hope, faithfulness, and insight. “God does not bring his people into troubles, and leave them there.” “If it is good for us, we shall have it; if it is not good for us, the withholding of it is good.” “If God be your father, you can never be undone.” “God often helps when there is least hope, and saves his people in that way which they think will destroy.” “If we love God, we shall obey him in things difficult and in things dangerous.” If you haven’t read any of the Puritans before, All Things for Good is an easy, accessible place to start.

Quote of the Month

“Write hot, revise cool.” - James Scott Bell, The Art of War for Writers

Movie Recs/Reviews

I’ve seen four new movies since the last Skirmish. Three were worth seeing.

Plane (Gerard Butler) - Surprisingly good, mostly because it feels like a true story. Gerard Butler plays a commercial airline pilot whose plane goes down in the tropics, whereupon he must take care of everyone and save the day. Butler is good at that. Perfect movie for beach vacation or a long flight. (Language/violence warning.)

News of the World (Tom Hanks) - Gentle, rich, sweet story told in a non-saccharine way. Tom Hanks, a Confederate veteran with a secret sorrow, escorts a little orphan girl across the lawless Texas wilderness to her nearest relatives. Based on the book. Man, those post-Civil War days were rough. And the soundtrack! James Newton Howard strikes again. (No content warning.)

Maverick (Mel Gibson) - With a screenplay penned by William Goldman (The Princess Bridge, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), can you really lose? This was clever, funny, interesting, with twists to the last minute. The titular role seems to have been written for Mel Gibson: the perfect combination of comedy, drama, masculinity, and “he drew first” bravado. (Minor content warning.)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (James Franco, Andy Serkis) - My husband was a film major and worked in motion graphics and is generally more patient and gracious of other people’s failings than I am—all of which means he will sometimes make me watch movies like Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Let’s see. What can I praise. The colors were vibrant? I wanted the apes to survive? The movie is almost completely devoid of both vice and virtue. No objectionable content, but lame characters, unoriginal action sequences, and no clear idea of what it was trying to accomplish (the curse of prequels). It was a mouthful of regurgitated ideas. It was the cinematic equivalent to room temp tapioca. I didn’t hate it. That would require more energy than the movie was worth. Honestly, watching Andy Serkis perform the motion capture would have been more memorable.

Go write win!

Cheers,
Gwen