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Üleeile toimus meie suurima ja pikima traditsiooniga (juba 25 aastat!) Eesti Looduse fotokonkursi lõpuõhtu. Konkursile saadeti 1250 pilti 195 autorilt ning üldarvestuses pälvis auhinna 24 fotot. Mul oli rõõm saada auhinnatud kolme pildiga! :) Juuresolev pilt hinnati parimaks veelooma fotoks! Meie vetemaailma tippkiskja – haug. Reaalselt oli tegu umbes 4-5kg kaaluva haugiga, kellel pikkust peaaegu […]

Before I start talking about Victor LaValle's beautiful book, a point of housekeeping: Now that an eon has passed, I've finally updated my praise and awards page for Jane, Unlimited. I have a bad habit of never getting around to this task until it's time to start clearing things out for the new book. The nice thing about it is that I get to revisit a book that's dear to me, years after I've stopped thinking about it. Jane is a book that divides readers for sure. I want to thank everyone who got that book and took it into your hearts and brains. If you don't know about Jane, Unlimited, here's a quick intro: An orphan named Jane arrives at an island mansion owned by a friend, then quickly starts to get the sense that strange things are afoot there. At a certain point, when Jane needs to make a decision, the book breaks off into five different decisions she could make — and each decision takes her into an adventure in a different genre. There's a mystery story, a spy story, a horror story, a sci-fi story, and a fantasy. They're all connected and interwoven; and yes, the multiverse exists :). It's a weird book and I'm very, very proud of it! If you're curious, I'll point you to the NYTBR review, which is concise and generous and does a good job expressing its flavor.


So. Today I want to talk about the craft of using existing, well-known stories to fortify your own story — thus building ready-made narrative magic into your story's foundations.

Reimagining a classic story is, of course, an age-old tradition. There was a time when I read all the King Arthur retellings I could find, though this list shows me that I missed a great many. Some of my all-time favorite books come from this tradition: Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, a retelling of the old Scottish ballad that takes place in a fictional college in Minnesota in the 1970s; Deerskin by Robin McKinley, which I held close to my heart while I was writing Fire and which is based on the Charles Perrault fairy tale Donkeyskin; Ash by Malinda Lo, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella. Every writer who goes down this path has their own take on whatever story they're reimagining, disrupting the familiar in their own unique way so that we can get some objective distance and consider the story again in a new light. One of the best things about stories is the way they all change and grow in meaning and significance with every new story that joins the pantheon.

Victor LaValle's The Changeling is a modern-day, New York City-based retelling of the old changeling folktale. In the classic version of that tale, fairies steal a human baby and replace it with something else, usually a (creepy) fairy child. In LaValle's retelling, the focus is the emotional journey of the baby's father, Apollo Kagwa, whose wife Emma Valentine starts acting odd after their baby is born. Horror ensues. In the wake of the horror, Apollo must figure out what the heck just happened, and how to move on.

LaValle's take on the changeling story is unique in plenty of ways. For example, the way race and gender factor into the power dynamics. The choice to center the point of view around a father. The extreme horrificness of the violence that occurs. The story's broad-ranging modern-day New York City settings, from a fancy Manhattan restaurant to Apollo's home in Washington Heights to an abandoned island in the East River to upscale suburbs and a forest in Queens. These are the sorts of alterations commonly made by writers retelling old stories: time, location, culture, tone. When we know we're reading a retelling, we expect changes in these categories.

But LaValle does something else too: he infuses this book with many, many stories that aren't the official story he's retelling. The Changeling is a book positively swimming in story. And one of this book's charms is that as a consequence, Apollo spends a lot of the book making mistakes about what story he's in. LaValle uses stories to illuminate, but also to mislead. I think it makes for a really unique approach to characterization.

It also steers Apollo through a character transformation that I find exquisitely touching, for reasons I'll try to explain without spoiling the plot too much.

Apollo Kagwa's father, who disappears before his fourth birthday, is a white man from Syracuse. His mother, Lillian Kagwa, is a Black woman, an immigrant from Uganda, who raises him and who recognizes early on that her son lives and breathes stories. Lillian can't find enough books to satisfy young Apollo. He also has a mind for business. When Lillian discovers that Apollo has been selling his books after reading them, she helps him establish a used bookselling business. In due course, he grows up to be a rare bookseller.

Unquestionably, this is the story of a man who knows all about stories. As a rare bookseller who spends his time digging through rude and racist people's basements looking for valuable treasures, Apollo deals in stories. He seeks stories out, recognizes their value, owns them, sells them. He also builds stories around himself as protection and comfort, often repeating to himself, in moments of anxiety or fear, the mantra, I am the god, Apollo. I am the god, Apollo. And he uses stories to comfort and ground himself — particularly Maurice Sendak's picture book Outside Over There, a changeling tale that Apollo believes his missing father lovingly left for him.

So. Apollo knows stories. And yet, as I said above, as this story plays out, LaValle gives us evidence that Apollo is often wrong about what story he's in. He admires the wrong people in his life as heroes (for example, his father). He misses the incredibly powerful sorcerers right in front of his eyes: his wife Emma; Emma's sister, Kim; Emma's friend, Nichelle; his mother, Lillian. As he moves through the world, he imagines he sees fairy tale traps where there are none, and he misses the huge, important fairy tale turning points, the moments that really matter. The clues are right in front of his face. Sometimes the women in his life even announce them aloud to him, and he still disregards them. Like all of us, the story Apollo tells himself about his own life is flawed and distorted by his own wishes, heartbreaks, assumptions, and biases. Among those biases, by my reading, is the tiniest edge of unconscious condescension to women. Or maybe even that's going too far; maybe it's simply that Apollo fails to see and appreciate the women around him fully. He's a good man. But he doesn't quite get it.

And yet, Apollo's story is one of transformation. Over the course of this book, through a great deal of trial and tribulation, Apollo learns to see what story he's in, who the heroes are, and who has the power to create a safe world for him and his family. And who are these heroes? Ultimately, women. What Apollo learns is that he's in a story in which he needs to see and respect the intelligence, insight, and power of women. Black women, specifically. By my reading, this is a tale of a well-meaning, vulnerable, flawed man learning feminism.

Maybe you can see why I love it?

And I also love how it's done. I love the way this book swirls with stories, and the way both the reader and Apollo are moving along on different paths through the stories, trying to understand which of the stories matter to Apollo's story, and how.

It makes me think in a fresh, new way about how to weave other stories into one's story, whether one's story is a retelling, or just a story with narrative influences. There's no end to the creative approaches to this — but if you're imbuing your own story with other stories, I do think it's a good idea to choose a deliberate approach. There's a danger in trying to use other stories in your story as a shortcut for creating mood and meaning. The author who throws lots of existing stories into a book might create the impression of depth, but you want to make sure it's not just an impression. You don't want to use other stories to obscure an empty hole or a weak foundation in your own story, or make it seem like your story has meaning it doesn't have. I say this as a writer who's familiar with that moment when, after trying to shoehorn a known story into something I'm writing, I realize I'm being lazy. I'm trying to make someone else's work do my work. Or maybe I realize that I simply don't know enough about my own story yet, and I'm using those other stories to obscure that fact from myself.

If you're alluding to another story in your story, there needs to be a reason. Ask yourself, what structural function are these references performing? What manner of tool are they? What do they accomplish? Why have I chosen the stories I've chosen?

There doesn't need to be a profound or complicated answer, but there needs to be an answer. For example, in Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, Miranda's favorite book is A Wrinkle in Time, for what turn out to be some pretty straightforward textual reasons. In the space of that book, it ends up being a perfect allusion. In the review of Jane, Unlimited I linked to above, the reviewer notes that it turns out there's a reason Jane wears Doctor Who pajamas. Though I wouldn't call Jane my most straightforward book, there are some pretty straightforward reasons I dressed her in those pajamas! You can have simple or complicated reasons for referring to other stories in your story. It can be a reason that's quiet, subtle, and small. It doesn't have to be groundbreaking. But you have to link those stories to yours in meaningful ways, and you also have to make sure that your own story is the biggest and most relevant story in the book. If you find yourself trying to create depth in an insubstantial story by borrowing someone else's story, then I recommend spending some time focusing on the hard work of your own story.

And if, in the process, you find yourself jettisoning some of the references to that other story, or even abandoning that other story altogether? That's fine too. One of my current works in progress started out as something of a Peter Pan retelling. It's now come so far from that point that the only remaining allusion is a couple of names — that I'm probably going to change, because the book doesn't need them anymore. That book needed to grow the way it did. J. M. Barrie's book was my path in; my story needed to start with his, then diverge. Another example: Earlier in this post, when I explained that Jane, Unlimited is about an orphan named Jane who comes to a mysterious house, maybe you thought of Jane Eyre. In early drafts of that book, I kept trying to work in versions of actual scenes from Jane Eyre. For example, I tried hard to find a place for a scene paralleling the one where Jane almost gets run over by Mr. Rochester in the dark. Eventually, I let all that go. At a certain point, the needs of my story became a lot more important than strengthening allusions to Jane Eyre (or Rebecca, or Winnie the Pooh, or any of the other texts that Jane, Unlimited references). I found a balance with all the allusions — or I hope I did, the reader is free to disagree! — and tried hard to focus on my story, my versions, my point. I think Jane still swims with those other stories, hopefully in ways that create depth, and part of getting to that point was letting some of it go. Often it doesn't take much to invoke a story that's part of our cultural consciousness.

To demonstrate that often it doesn't take much, let's return to The Changeling. I want to show an example of what I've explained about how this book uses stories to elucidate Apollo's failure to recognize his own story. I'll focus on one scene that I think encapsulates the skill with which LaValle layers story over story over story — to tell Apollo's story about misreading his own story. It's also wonderfully written, so that'll be fun to talk about too :).

The scene I'm going to look at takes place over the course of Chapters 11 and 12. The setting is a fancy New York restaurant that evokes a fairy tale aura. If you want to read along, you'll find this scene on pages 41 through 51 in the 2017 Spiegel & Grau hardcover edition. Point of view shifts in this book, but these two chapters are told from Apollo's point of view.

First, some context: in the scene after this scene, Emma Valentine gives birth to their child. (That's an incredible scene too! It happens in a stopped A train on its way to Washington Heights!) This means that the scene I'm about to talk about is Apollo's last chance to understand his own story before everything changes. As I think you know by now, he fails. He barrels into  parenthood still unable to see what's in front of his eyes, and the consequences are catastrophic.

But first, he has dinner at a restaurant! Or rather, he doesn't have dinner, because the items on the menu are terrifyingly expensive, so he just fills up on bread — but we'll get to that.

Let's start with the opening of Chapter 11. We're on Duane Street, a fancy street in lower Manhattan. Apollo has just been digging through the old, abandoned books of some rude people in Queens. Now he's meeting Emma and Emma's friend Nichelle for dinner at Bouley, which is a real New York restaurant. Or rather, it used to be; it closed in 2017, the year this book was published.

Here's how the chapter starts: "Entering Bouley Restaurant felt like stepping inside a gingerbread house. .... when he opened the door and stepped into the foyer, he found himself surrounded by apples. Shelves had been built into the wall, running as high as the ceiling; rows of fresh red apples and their scent enveloped him. The door to Duane Street shut behind him, and Apollo felt as if he'd stumbled into a small cottage off an overgrown path in a dark wood" (41).

(By the way, if this room sounds too playful, magical, or wonderful to be true — here's an article that includes a photo of Bouley's apple entrance: "What's David Bouley Going to Do With all Those Apples When He Closes His Flagship Restaurant?")

So. With these opening lines, LaValle accomplishes two things: (1) he fixes a real-life restaurant firmly in the world of fairy tale. And (2) he signals to us what story Apollo thinks he's in. Because we all know that when Hansel and Gretel step into a cottage off an overgrown path in a dark wood with walls made of gingerbread, cake, and candies, things do not go well for them.

I don't want to take any of the fairy tale references in this book too literally or drag them out too far. Though LaValle can be pretty explicit sometimes about what he's referencing, his touch remains light, and I don't want to beat it to death. But as I said before, Apollo doesn't eat anything but bread during this dinner. He tells himself it's because he's afraid of the bill, but we also know that on some unconscious level, he thinks he's inside the story of Hansel and Gretel. And if you're inside that story, you know damn well that it's not safe to eat the food! Of course, as it turns out, Apollo could eat anything he wants safely, because Nichelle is paying for the dinner. Apollo's wrong: his story isn't Hansel and Gretel.

This is a pretty straightforward example of how this skilled writer uses a conscious and deliberate reference to a widely-known story that then shows us that Apollo is a little bit lost inside all the stories of his life. Also, as settings go, this description of the foyer of Bouley is evocative and beautiful. The sentences of this book are eminently readable. It's something I noticed again and again: despite a fair amount of description, my eyes never glazed over and I never struggled to picture what was being described to me. LaValle doesn't use flowery language or waste words. He tells you what it looks like and he tells you how Apollo experiences it. And he attaches it to story spaces we already know, spaces that are part of our cultural language of stories, so it feels familiar and right. For me, at this point in the book, it was enjoyable to be a little bit lost with Apollo, because the language was so lush and the setting so fairy-tale familiar; because I myself, sitting outside the story, could go eat something if I got hungry, without worrying about evil witches; and also because I had some grounding that Apollo doesn't have. Apollo doesn't know that his own book is called The Changeling. He's just trying to survive each new story, whatever it turns out to be, as he steps into it.

LaValle does a good job creating sympathy in the reader for Apollo's mistakes and confusions. Consider Apollo's experience as he moves further into Bouley: "The dining room's vaulted ceilings had been laid with eighteen-karat gold leaf sheets, and on top of that a twelve-karat white gold varnish, so the ceiling seemed as supple as suede. The floors were Burgundy stone, overlaid by Persian rugs. If the foyer felt like a woodland cottage and the waiting area a haunted parlor, the dining room became an ancient castle's great hall.….Apollo felt as if he was trekking through realms rather than rooms. If there had been men in full armor posted as sentries, it wouldn't have surprised him. And in fact, when the maître d' reached the right table, there was a queen waiting there. Emma Valentine, too pregnant to stand" (42).

This is one of the dangers of being a story man: If your entire life is steeped in story, you're going to see those stories everywhere. Surely that makes it confusing to isolate which story is yours?

On the other hand, Apollo totally notices that Emma is a queen — but then he dismisses it. This is another danger of a life steeped in story: you make associations and assume that they're metaphors. Emma isn't like a queen. She is a queen — or if not a queen, some other category of extremely powerful and important woman. Maybe one of Apollo's problems is that he's so steeped in story that he can't get hold of what's real? Or maybe he believes in magic within the context of a story, but he doesn't believe in magic in real life? Or maybe he lives too much inside stories, and needs to wake up and live his real life?

This is what good layering does. It leaves the reader with lots of fascinating and fun questions!

By the way, Emma has her favorite stories too — and LaValle's choices for her illuminate her character to anyone who's paying attention. The most important movie from Emma's childhood, which she watched repeatedly in her hometown library in Virginia, is a Brazilian movie called Quilombo, "the only movie in the entire library that had black people on the cover. Of course I wanted to watch it!" (28). It's a movie about the slave uprisings in Brazil, and it "shows tons of Portuguese people getting killed by those slaves" (28). At dinner, Nichelle brings it up: "This girl tried to get me to watch a movie about a slave uprising when I was busy trying to figure out how to marry that boy out of New Edition" (47). While Apollo is worrying about eating the food, LaValle reminds us that Emma is engaged in matters of disruption to major power structures. Ding ding ding! Pay attention, Apollo!

But Apollo is too hungry and anxious to pay attention. The dinner progresses as dinners do. Apollo, not knowing that Nichelle is buying, becomes more and more horrified as Nichelle and Emma order delicacy after delicacy. Nichelle gets roaring drunk. Emma, who rarely sleeps anymore, is drifting, half-asleep in her seat. "Apollo, meanwhile, had ingested nothing but tapwater and the restaurant bread. While the bread tasted magnificent, it wasn't enough. By dessert, Apollo and Emma had low batteries, but Nichelle seemed wired to a generator" (46).

Near the end of the dinner, Emma leaves the table to find the bathroom. She's thirty-eight weeks pregnant and "That flan wants to come back up," she says quietly (47). When she leaves, Nichelle, like any good soothsayer in any good folktale, takes the opportunity to try to tell Apollo what matters.

First, she tells Apollo that "There's a nude photo of your wife in an art gallery in Amsterdam." Then she explains that before Emma married Apollo, Emma went to Brazil, where "she had a few adventures" (48). In particular, "Emma met this Dutch photographer down there in Brazil" (49).

Nichelle goes on to explain that one day while the photographer was taking photos in an abandoned factory, he needed to pee, so he left Emma alone with the equipment. And she decided to take a picture of herself, setting up the shot with a timer. "She makes the shot in front of a wall that's been half torn down so you can see she's standing inside a man-made building that's gone to the dogs, but over her right shoulder you can see the forest that surrounds this factory. Two worlds at once. Crumbling civilization and an explosion of the natural world. / "Emma walks into the shot, and just before the shutter clicks, she pulls off her dress and takes that photo nude!"

What's the photo like? How does Emma look? "Wiry and fierce, naked and unashamed. She's looking into that camera lens like she can see you, whoever you are, wherever you are. She looks like a fucking sorceress, Apollo. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen" (50).

So, here's Nichelle, telling Apollo what he's glancingly considered before in a fond, condescending sort of way: Emma is a sorceress. Nichelle is saying this to Apollo in simple, straightforward words: Emma is a sorceress, with a great capacity for adventure.

What is Apollo doing during this conversation?

He's sitting there thinking to himself, "Dutch photographer? / Dutch fucking photographer?" (49)

And when he finally speaks, what does he say?

"'And the Dutch guy?' Apollo asked. 'What was his name?'" (59)

This moment is, of course, the stuff of everyday real life and the stuff of fairy tales. Jealousy and possessiveness, leading to a character's blunder or misbehavior. In fairy tales, we see jealousy as an archetype — like the queen who decides to destroy the young woman who's usurped her position as the fairest of them all. In Apollo's life, it comes across as fairly typical and annoying sexism.

Nichelle's response to this question contains everything. Everything this book is about; everything that leads to catastrophe, and ultimately to Apollo's growth and transformation: "Nichelle watched him quietly for seconds. She narrowed her eyes when she spoke. 'I'm trying to tell you something important, and you are focused on bullshit'" (50).

For just a moment, Apollo gets it. He falls "back into his chair as if Nichelle had kicked him" (51). He tells her he's ready, he's finally listening.

And then the maître d' appears, sprinting across the restaurant, shouting for Apollo, because the baby is coming. Which means that everything is about to change, and it's too late.

Apollo's failures in this scene are familiar and understandable, even when they're annoying. He's hungry, distracted, and worried about his wife who's probably vomiting flan in the bathroom. Also, Nichelle is completely, obnoxiously drunk, so why should Apollo recognize the power or truth of her words? Maybe I should clarify that at this point in the book, I didn't appreciate that Emma was a legit sorceress either. We haven't learned the stakes yet, and we don't know how much we're going to be needing a sorceress later. But more to the point, most of this book is from Apollo's point of view, and right now Apollo is hungry, distracted, and worried. There are more important things to worry about, or so he thinks. And I care about him. Even though as the reader, I'm better positioned than he is to recognize his mistakes, I'm right there with him.

This all comes down to LaValle's skilled balancing of story and character. So much comes across in this one scene, and there are so many other equally rich scenes. If you like to sit in that place where spinning stories come together, you should read this book.

I'll close my study of The Changeling by adding this: I know enough from my own experience as a writer to suspect that while LaValle was writing this book, he wasn't always certain what story he was writing either. As we write, our story keeps surprising us, interrupting us, frustrating us and sending us off in the wrong direction. But not only did he find his own story (and Apollo's too), but he did a beautiful job weaving all the other stories in.

If you're writing something that alludes to other stories, I hope you'll find LaValle's use of classic stories exciting, rather than intimidating. When you ask yourself, Why this story?, it's an opportunity to figure out how far along you are in establishing your own story. If you don't have an answer yet, maybe you need to be focusing less on the classic story and more on your own story. If you have a few answers, but you're completely overwhelmed and not sure how many references you should make or where anything is going — take a moment to congratulate yourself, because that sounds to me like progress. When you're in the middle of writing something, there's always a sense of overwhelm and confusion about how well you're balancing things. You have a few potential answers? Great! Soldier on, and after a while, check in again. What's your story now?

And that's that. I hope you've enjoyed my post about the balance of story in Victor LaValle's The Changeling!

Reading like a writer.

Today in my craft post, I'm going to talk about a straightforward skill… while referencing a book that's wonderfully un-straightforward.

H Is for Hawk is a memoir by Helen Macdonald that weaves together several threads, the three biggest of which are: her experience of training a northern goshawk; her analysis of T. H. White's memoir about training a northern goshawk; and her grief following the death of her father. In terms of balance and weaving, it's beautifully done. In terms of psychological insight, it feels searingly true. And in terms of the expression of emotion, it's stunning.

It's also an uncomfortable book at times, in ways that recommend it. And it's a fascinating memoir for a fiction writer to read while thinking about how to write character. H Is for Hawk left me with a lot of questions, for the book and for myself.

If you just want the straightforward writing lesson, which is on the topic of writing emotion, jump ahead to the *** below. If you're interested in a fiction writer's thoughts about memoir, read on.

I sat down to read H is for Hawk because a friend had described its structure and I was intrigued. I'm not a memoir writer; it's far too personal a style of writing for me. But I like to read books that differ greatly from my own writing, and I especially like to learn to write from them. After all, the more a book diverges from your own writing, the more it can stretch you into a broader perspective of what's possible. I was curious about what a memoir that weaves separate but related threads could teach me about writing a work of fiction that weaves separate but related threads; but I was also curious about what it could teach me that I didn't know about yet.

Here are some of the unexpected questions that arose for me while reading this book:

In terms of writing character (if one can use that word with a memoir, and I believe one can; more on that later), what are the differences between memoir and fiction?

For example, what advantages does the memoir writer have? Does a reader come to a memoir with a greater willingness to believe in a character than they bring to the reading of fiction? A fiction writer often has to go through a lot of contortions to keep a character believable while also fulfilling the necessities of the plot. Push the character's behavior too far outside the characterization you've so carefully established, and the behavior becomes unbelievable. The reader is left thinking, "I don't believe they would actually do that."

In contrast, in a memoir, a character is an actual person. They did what they did. The memoir writer reports what they did and we believe it, because it's a memoir. Any "unbelievable" behavior consequently brings power with it: amusement, surprise, shock value. (This is not to minimize the work it requires to make any character in any kind of book engaging. I don't mean to suggest that a memoir writer has an easy job creating character, only that they may have a believability advantage.)

Okay then, what advantages does the fiction writer have when writing character? Well, the fiction writer can make shit up; that's a pretty huge advantage. The fiction writer also generally doesn't have to worry about getting sued for defamation of character :o).

Another huge advantage: Though it's true that as a fiction writer I sometimes encounter readers who mistakenly assume I'm like my characters, for the most part, fiction readers remember that fiction is made up. This means that the fiction writer is unlikely to be accused of having done the things their characters did, or judged for that behavior. In contrast, a memoir writer writing about her own actions is opening herself to all kinds of very personal judgment. All writing requires courage and involves exposure… But this takes things to a whole other level! Fiction writers have some built-in emotional protections that I tend to take for granted, until I read a memoir and remember.

This leads me to another question that arose while reading this book: What is the place of the memoir reader when it comes to judging the people inside the memoir? For example, Helen Macdonald writes a compassionate but blistering exposé of T. H. White in this book. It's an exposé that T. H. White wrote first; anyone can learn from White's own memoir that he was heartbreakingly, sometimes sadistically abusive to the goshawk he trained. But Macdonald presents it anew, and she presents it with an analysis of White's psychology that shows us more about White than he ever meant us to know. She shows us the abuse, familial and societal, that brought White to this place. She shows us his heartbreak, failures, and shame. White feels like an integrated, complete person in this book.

But also, she shows us what she wants to show us — she shows us the parts of White that fit into her own book, about her own experiences. She's the writer, and this is her memoir. To be clear, I don't mean this as a condemnation — I'm not accusing her of leaving things out or misrepresenting White! This is a part of all book-writing. You include what matters to the rest of your book. Everything else ends up on the cutting room floor. As far as I know, Macdonald did a respectful and responsible job of incorporating T. H. White into her book, and I expect she worked very hard to do so. I believe in the T. H. White she showed us. But I think it's important to remember this part of the process when reading any memoir. Even when a writer is writing about themselves, their book has plot and themes, it has content requirements. There'll always be something specific the writer is trying to convey, about themselves or anyone else, and there'll always be stuff they leave out. No book can contain a whole person.

Personally, when I read memoir (and biography and autobiography), I consciously consider the people inside it to function as characters. It's hard to read H Is for Hawk and not come away with some pretty strong opinions about T. H. White. But I keep a permanent asterisk next to my opinions, because White was a real, living person, but I only know him as a character in this book. No matter how many books I read about him (or by him), I'll always be conscious of not knowing the whole person.

As a fiction writer, I find all of this fascinating. I think it's because I see connections between how hard it is to present a compelling character study of a real person and how hard it is to create a believable character in fiction. What are the differences between a memoir writer who's figuring out which part of the truth matters, and a fiction writer who's creating a fiction that's supposed to invoke truth? Also, I'm fascinated by how much all of this lines up with how hard it is to understand anyone in real life. How well can we ever know anyone? How much can we ever separate our own baggage from our judgments of other people? There's a third person getting in the way of my perfect understanding of T. H. White: me.

Next question: How does a writer (of memoir or fiction) make a character ring true to the reader? How does the writer make the character compelling and real?

A writer as skilled as Macdonald knows how to bring her characters, human or hawk, alive for the reader. One way she does this is by keeping her characterizations always in motion. White is many, many things — kind and cruel, sensitive and sadistic, abused and despotic. Macdonald's hawk, Mabel, is also constantly growing and changing. Mabel is a point of personal connection for Macdonald, but she's also always just out of reach. And of course, Macdonald herself is a character in the book. Macdonald lays bare her own successes, failures, oddities, cruelties, kindnesses, insights, ambivalences, and delights, and lets us decide. Personally, as I read, I felt that I was meeting a human of sensitivity and compassion; an anxious person whose need for both solitude and connection was starkly familiar to me; someone consciously composed of contradictions; a person of deep feeling who cares about what matters; a grieving daughter; a person I can relate to. Or should I say, a character I can relate to? Having read this book, I don't presume I know Helen Macdonald.

Here's something I do know about Helen Macdonald though: She's a damn good writer. In particular, as I read, I kept noticing one specific thing she does so well that it needs to be called out and shown to other writers.





All page references are to the 2014 paperback published by Grove Press.

Okay, writers. When it comes to writing a character's emotion, there's a certain skill at which Helen Macdonald excels. Namely, she conveys emotion via action.

Put differently: rather than describing an emotion in words, Macdonald shows us a behavior, one so meaningful that we readers feel the associated emotion immediately.

Here's an example. For context, Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly one March, throwing her into a deep and unexpected grief. Listen to this description of one of the things that happened next:

"In June I fell in love, predictably and devastatingly, with a man who ran a mile when he worked out how broken I was. His disappearance rendered me practically insensible. Though I can't even bring his face to mind now, and though I know not only why he ran, but know that in principle he could have been anyone, I still have a red dress that I will never wear again. That's how it goes." (17)

While there is some effective emotional description here — like when she's rendered practically insensible — the real punch in this passage is the red dress. Macdonald tells us that there's a red dress she'll never wear again, and immediately I get it. I get that the identity of the man is irrelevant; what's relevant is the passion she had for another person and how it connected to her grief, and I feel that passion and grief because there's a red dress she'll never wear again. I can see the dress, hidden away in the back of her closet. I don't have a dress like that, but I could. I get it.

Here's another moment. This one takes place at a much later point, when Macdonald has been grieving for a long time and is finally noticing that she's capable of happiness again:

"But watching television from the sofa later that evening I noticed tears running from my eyes and dropping into my mug of tea. Odd, I think. I put it down to tiredness. Perhaps I am getting a cold. Perhaps I am allergic to something. I wipe the tears away and go to make more tea in the kitchen" (125).

It's hard to write about tears in a way that doesn't feel like a cliché shorthand for sadness, grief, catharsis, whatever you're trying to get across in that moment. Macdonald succeeds here. This dispassionate report of tears conveys what Macdonald needs to convey: that grief is layered; that a person can have many feelings at once; that sometimes your body knows what's going on before the rest of you does; that when you're grieving, sometimes happiness brings with it a tidal wave of sadness. But imagine if Macdonald had listed all those things I just listed, instead of telling us about her tears dropping into her tea. Her way is so much better, and it conveys the same information!

Let me be clear, it's not bad to describe emotion. In fact, it's necessary in places. You need to give your reader an emotional baseline so that they'll know how to contextualize how plot points feel for the character. But if you can find a balance between emotional description and the thing Macdonald is doing here — using action to convey emotion — it will gives the emotion in your writing a freshness, an impact, a punch that you can't get from description alone. It will also give the reader more opportunities to engage their own feelings — to feel things all by themselves, rather than merely understanding what's being felt by the character.

It's hard to write emotion. It's especially hard to figure out non-cliché ways to explain how a character feels. Sometimes it's fine to use a known shorthand or a cliché. Sometimes it's fine to use emotional description. You want a mix of things. But Macdonald's book reminds me that whenever I can, I want to look for ways to use plot to convey feeling. Show what my character does in response to a stimulus. Let the reader glean the emotions from behavior. Your character is happy? Show us what they do with their body. How do they stand, how do they walk? Does it make them generous? Does it make them self-centered and oblivious? Remember that an "action" doesn't have to be something physically, boisterously active. If you're writing a non-demonstrative character, it's not going to ring true if they start flinging their arms around or singing while they walk down the street. But maybe instead of "feeling ecstatic," they sit still for a moment, reveling in what just happened. Maybe instead of "feeling jubilant," they listen to a song playing inside their own head. Internally or externally, show us what they do.

Here's Macdonald describing her childhood obsession with birds:

"When I was six I tried to sleep every night with my arms folded behind my back like wings. This didn't last long, because it is very hard to sleep with your arms folded behind your back like wings." (27)

I can feel the devotion to birds. She doesn't just love birds; she wants to be a bird.

Macdonald goes on to report that as a child, she learned everything she possibly could about falconry, then shared every word of it, no matter how boring, with anyone who would listen. Macdonald's mother was a writer for the local paper. Here's a description of her mother during the delivery of one of Macdonald's lectures:

"Lining up another yellow piece of copy paper, fiddling with the carbons so they didn't slip, she'd nod and agree, drag on her cigarette, and tell me how interesting it all was in tones that avoided dismissiveness with extraordinary facility." (29)

What an endearing depiction of a mother's love for her tedious child :o).

And here's a scene that takes place at a country fair, where Macdonald has agreed to display her goshawk, Mabel, to the public. Macdonald is sitting on a chair under a marquee roof. Mabel is positioned on a perch ten feet behind her. There are so many people at the fair, too many people for the likes of both Macdonald and Mabel:

"After twenty minutes Mabel raises one foot. It looks ridiculous. She is not relaxed enough to fluff out her feathers; she still resembles a wet and particoloured seal. But she makes this small concession to calmness, and she stands there like a man driving with one hand resting on the gear stick." (206)

Oh, Mabel. I get the sense that when it comes to the writer's need to convey emotion, Mabel is a challenging character. Macdonald does such a wonderful job creating a sense of the gulf between a human's reality and a hawk's reality, the differences in perception and priority. But she also gives us moments of connection with Mabel. Since Mabel is a bird, these moments of connection are almost always described through Mabel's behavior.

I wonder if Macdonald's intense connection with the non-human world, and with hawks in particular, is partly what makes her so good at noticing behaviors and gleaning their emotional significance? And then sharing it with us, the lucky readers.

That's it. That's my lesson: When you're trying to convey feelings, find places where an action or behavior will do the job.

And read H Is for Hawk if you want an admirable example of writing emotion! Also, Helen Macdonald has a new book, just released: Vesper Flights. I'm in.

Reading like a writer.

Winterkeep is now out in the world, and can be purchased at your favorite book retailer. I am happy for you to buy the book wherever you prefer, but do keep indie retailers bookshop.org, Libro.fm, and Kobo in mind!

This week, I'm on the podcast First Draft with Sarah Enni... Sarah is so skilled at insightful conversation, and so warm, too. We had a lovely chat. Check it out!

I have two more virtual events to round off book release week, and you're invited. The first is Sunday at 5PM ET (2PM PT), with Malinda Lo, moderated by Tui Sutherland, and presented by Mysterious Galaxy Books in San Diego. The nice thing about this event is that Malinda, Tui, and I are all in the same book group. So we're used to getting together to talk about books. Just not usually our own books! Of course, our last eleven meetings have been virtual, but normally, the group meets in one of the homes of our lovely members. If I were hosting book group in January, I would have a fire roaring in the fireplace… So I'm going to light a fire for Sunday's event.

It's free to join us, but you do need to register ahead of time. Also, note that though I'm not personalizing books via my local indie during the pandemic, you can purchase books through this event and get signed or personalized bookplates. But you need to do so pretty soon, so if you're interested, follow the links! Instructions for ordering are here.

My final event, on Monday at 6PM ET, will be a conversation with my agent Faye Bender, moderated by editor Andrew Karre, who is my new editor! So this conversation will certainly involve some publishing talk. This event is hosted by Books & Books and the Miami Book Fair. This event is free, but you do need to register ahead of time.

Finally, for those of you not on Twitter, I'll share some pictures of my Winterkeep-writing process. Here's a drawing I made on November 10, 2013, while I was planning this book while on a writing trip in Akureyri, Iceland. At the time, I'm pretty sure I imagined that this picture encapsulated the entire plot of the book. (Don't worry, there are no spoilers! Especially since most of the stuff didn't make it into the final draft…)

Next up, here's a picture from the first page of my first draft, started on April 21, 2014. I wanted to share this because at the top, I've written, "I am writing a book and today I will write 2 pages." That's something I learned from Linda Sue Park, who gave a speech about writing once years ago in which she talked about the emotional weight of trying to make progress through such a long and gigantic project. You don't sit down thinking to yourself, "I need to write this entire book." You sit down thinking to yourself, "today I will write two pages." When Linda Sue said those words, it changed my writing life. So much pressure disappeared! (By the way, if you enjoy seeing pictures of my notebook, you might like the detailed post I wrote about writing Bitterblue.) (Oh! And if you read that post, then read the writing carefully below, you will notice that ONCE AGAIN, I tried to write an earthquake into a book. Like the earthquake in Bitterblue, this Winterkeep earthquake did not make it through to the final draft. Why am I obsessed with earthquakes?)

Finally, years later — almost 3 years ago, in February of 2018 — I was far along in the writing process, but I still hadn't figured out what this place was called, what this book was called, what the undersea beast was called…. At a writing retreat with friends, I kidnapped this gigantic easel notepad thingamajig and started writing down possibilities. Everyone voted. You'll note that "Winterkeep" isn't even on this list (though some pretty silly things are; I wrote down every possibility, no matter how bad), but you'll also see that I was getting pretty close to "Winterkeep!" I don't remember exactly, but I must have come up with "Winterkeep" while we were at dinner one night, and everyone agreed it was the winner. (For a while after that, I was calling the book Winter Keeper, but when it came time to decide for sure, my team at Penguin decided to go with Winterkeep, so that the title would line up nicely with the other single-word Graceling Realm titles.)

And that's my Winterkeep update for today! I hope we'll get to see you at one of my upcoming events!

Connie Willis's Doomsday Book is one of my favorite books, and also one of the best books ever written. It is a masterpiece.

It's also extremely sad, and happens to be about deadly epidemics. So I'll start by saying that depending on what you've experienced in the past year, this may not be the book for you right now. Alternately, it might be exactly the book for you right now. I think it depends on whether and how much you're grieving, whether you've been traumatized, and whether it helps you, as you process, to share those feelings with people inside a book. For me, this can be a touch-and-go sort of question… When is a book comforting, and when is it exacerbating my difficult feelings? I've read this book before, so I knew what I was getting into last week when I sat down to reread it. For me, it helped me access, and settle, my own overwhelmed, confused feelings from the last year. But I say that as a person who is not a COVID nurse or doctor and has not lost a loved one to COVID-19. I am, however, a person with PTSD. As such, I'd advise that if you've been spending anxious time at someone's sickbed — or not been allowed to spend time at their sickbed, only allowed to imagine it — or if you're one of the overworked caregivers — this might be a book to save for another time. Among other things, it contains a lot of graphic descriptions of human sickness and suffering. It also puts you inside the head of a character who's gradually being traumatized by the sadness and death around her. Please spare yourself, if that's not a good headspace for you right now. (This post, on the other hand, will contain no graphic descriptions, and I don't linger on the trauma.)

I'll also say that, maybe moreso than the other posts in my craft series, this post will contain some plot spoilers. Not all the plot spoilers! Willis does some excellent weaving that creates surprises for the reader I won't reveal. But it's impossible to talk about this book without revealing some important plot points. If you don't want to know, stop reading now. (If you're undecided, I can say that it's thrilling reading even if you know what's going to happen.)

First, a little background: The conceit of Connie Willis's time travel books (each of which is wonderful) is that in the mid-twenty-first century, historians in Oxford, England conduct fieldwork by traveling back in time to observe other eras. This is not the kind of time travel story we're all used to in which the plot hinges on the time traveler changing the course of history, or the story getting wound up in complicated paradoxes. The "net," which is the machine that makes time travel possible in this book, doesn't allow time travel that will alter the course of history. And though some of Willis's other time travel books do deal with the paradox issue (sometimes hilariously), that's not the point of Doomsday Book. This is a different kind of time travel book.

In Doomsday Book, Kivrin, a young Oxford historian in December 2054, is set to travel back to the Oxfordshire of December 1320, to observe the lives of the locals at Christmas in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, on the very day of Kivrin's travel, a new influenza virus arises in 2054 Oxford, and the tech responsible for running Kivrin's travel coordinates (or, "getting the fix"), Badri Chaudhuri, falls ill. He doesn't know he's ill — no one knows Badri is ill — until it's too late. In the disorientation of his illness, Badri gets the coordinates jumbled, and Kivrin is accidentally sent to December 1348 — which is when the bubonic plague reached Oxfordshire. The circumstances of Kivrin's passage ensure that it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to get her back to 2054. Kivrin is trapped.

The novel then alternates between 2054/55, where a frightening new influenza epidemic is arising, and 1348, where Kivrin is gradually coming to realize what's about to befall the people around her. Connecting the two timelines is an Oxford historian named Mr. Dunworthy, a deeply caring and pessimistic man who is desperately trying to figure out how to rescue Kivrin from her accidental fate, and bring her back to 2054/55. (For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to keep referring to the future timeline as 2054 from this point on, even though the year turns to 2055 partway through the novel.)

Incidentally, that plot twist I just casually revealed — the one where it turns out Kivrin is in the year 1348 instead of 1320 — isn't revealed to the reader until page 384. Willis's slow and brilliant pacing, her careful, drawn out reveal of the horror that has happened and the horror that's coming, is one of the magnificent accomplishments of this book. It's not what I'm planning to talk about today, though. In truth, I could write a long series of craft posts about "Things a Writer Could Learn from Doomsday Book." But today I'm going to single out one of the things I took from my latest reading: namely, her construction of parallel characters in separate timelines.

All page references are to the 1992 Bantam Books mass-market edition, though I've also listened to the 2008 Recorded Books audiobook narrated by Jenny Sterling, which is excellent (and deliciously long!).

Before I dive deep into Willis's construction of parallel characters, I want to speak more generally about the potential for parallels — echoes — inside a book, when that book takes place in multiple timelines. Many books do take place in more than one timeline, of course, whether or not they involve time travel! And there's so much you can do with that kind of structure. As you can imagine, life in Oxfordshire in 1348 is dramatically different from life in Oxford in 2054. But Willis weaves so many parallels into these two stories, big and small things, connecting them deftly, and showing us that some things never really change. I suppose the most obvious parallel in this particular book is the rise of disease. The less obvious is some of the fallout that follows the rise of disease, no matter the era: denial; fanaticism; racism and other prejudices; isolationism; depression and despair; depletion of supplies (yes, they are running out of toilet paper in 2054). She also sets these timelines in the same physical location, the Oxfords and Oxfordshires of 1348 and 2054 — the same towns, the same churches. Some of the physical objects from 1348 still exist in 2054. She sets both stories at Christmas, and we see that some of the traditions are the same. She also weaves the most beautiful web between timelines using bells, bellringers, and the significance of the sound of bells tolling. 

Simply by creating two timelines, then establishing that some objects, structures, and activities are the same and that some human behaviors are the same across the timelines, she can go on and tell two divergent plots, yet create echoes between them. These echoes give the book an internal resonance. (Are you starting to appreciate why it was so thematically smart for her to bring bells to the forefront of her story?) They also give the book a sense of timelessness. It becomes one of those masterworks that presents the best and worst of humanity in all times, for the reader to see and recognize. Epidemics lay us bare. In all times, people are bound by the limitations of their scientific knowledge. In all times, people (the good ones and the bad ones) struggle to find a bearable framework, a way to conceive of the horrors without succumbing to despair. And in all times, some people respond with kindness and generosity, working themselves to the bone in order to help others; and some people allow their fear to turn them into selfish, craven, unfeeling hypocrites, striking out at others in defense of themselves. By letting these echoes ring across the timelines of her book, Connie Willis captures her themes magnificently.

And now I'm going to focus on the echoes in her character-building: on the way she creates characters who are unique individuals, yet who strike the reader with extra force because of the ways they parallel each other across time. I'll offer a range of examples. Some are small, isolated moments in which characters from 1348 and 2054 perform similar activities. Some are people who have similar attitudes or spirits, even as they perform different roles. Most of them are loose parallels, drawn with a light touch. One of the parallels is quite clear and deep, two people who are characteristically similar, to the point where you feel like one could practically be the 2054 version of the other. This is one of Connie Willis's special skills: she draws her parallels lightly in some places, heavily in others, never hamfisted, none of them tied too tightly, all of them open to interpretation, and all of them reaching for her larger, more timeless themes about what it means to be human. 

 

Smaller Parallel Moments

I'll start with a few moments that are brief, but also plainly deliberate.

Here's one: There's a moment when Agnes, a five-year-old girl from 1348, tries to feed hay to the cow, but is clearly afraid of the cow. First she holds the hay out "a good meter from the cow's mouth" (304), then she throws the hay at the cow and runs to safety behind Kivrin's back. 

Skip ahead to page 551, where Colin Templer, a twelve-year-old boy from 2054, is trying to feed a horse. He offers "the horse a piece of grass from a distance of several feet. The starving animal lunged at it and Colin jumped back, dropping it" (551).

Moments like this are brief and might seem insignificant, but they do a lot of heavy lifting in the text. This particular parallel is funny, but also sad, because while Colin Templer is one of this book's bright gifts to the reader — he's incorrigible, he's funny, he lives — by the time we see him feeding that horse, Agnes has died of the plague.

Here's another detail that resonates within the book, and will also resonate with present-day readers: Both in 1348 and 2054, people with medical knowledge implore laypeople to please, please, put on their masks. (This happens here and there, but see pages 345 and 440 for a couple examples across timelines.)

And here's one last small behavioral parallel: In 2054 Oxford, Mr. Dunworthy's assistant, Mr. Finch, is stuck caring for a team of American bellringers trapped in the Oxford quarantine. The bellringers, who start out as pretty annoying characters, gradually begin to endear themselves to Finch (and to the reader), and Finch begins to practice bellringing with them. He gains a true appreciation for how heavy the bells are and how challenging the art of bellringing is. Then we see the bellringers begin to come down with the influenza, and cease to be able to ring their bells (Chapters 21 and 24). 

At the very end of the book, this is echoed when Kivrin, still in 1348, is trying to toll the church bell to send the souls of the dead to heaven, and Mr. Dunworthy, who's traveled back in time to find her, is trying to help her. She's injured. He's having an influenza relapse. Between them, they can barely manage it (pages 566-567). The physical challenges of bellringing connect across time.

Broader Character Parallels

There are also some broader parallels drawn between characters, especially between characters' roles in their respective pandemics. For example: In Oxford 2054, Dr. Mary Ahrens is at the head of the effort to locate the source of the influenza, sequence it, and find a vaccine. She cares for her patients tirelessly. Her 1348 parallel is Father Roche, who of course has none of her scientific knowledge, but has a similar fervent devotion to helping other people. Roche hardly sleeps in his efforts to care for his parishioners as they fall sick with the plague. 

The reader cares deeply for both of these characters, probably because of their tireless competence and their selfless dedication to other people. When first, Dr. Ahrens dies of the influenza, and then, Father Roche dies of the plague, it is, at least for this reader, the book's most heartbreaking echo.

I'll note that one of the things that makes this parallel so effective is that it doesn't map perfectly. Dr. Ahrens and Father Roche are drastically different in their approaches — one is pure science and one pure religious faith — and also, they aren't each other's only character parallels. Kivrin, too, tirelessly cares for the plague victims in 1348, with a lot more scientific knowledge than Father Roche has. In 2054, many different kinds of doctors and nurses are caring for lots of patients, in lots of different ways. Twelve-year-old Colin is also caring for people, in his cheerful and forthright way. Mr. Dunworthy's overburdened and tireless assistant, Mr. Finch, is constantly in the background of the 2054 timeline, moving mountains to turn college halls into infirmaries, find food and supplies for everyone stuck in quarantine, and care for the American bellringers. A lot of varying people step up to become caretakers, differing from each other and paralleling each other in all kinds of fluid and inexact ways.

Also, the book is chock-full of characters who don't necessarily map onto parallels with anyone, but have other important functions in the book. In 2054, a young Oxford student named William is having liaisons with practically every female nurse and student in the quarantine perimeter. Also in 2054, archaeologist Lupe Montoya is excavating a historic site nearby. A secret love story is unfolding between a married woman named Eliwys and her husband's servant, Gawyn, in 1348. Also in 1348, Rosemund, Agnes's twelve-year-old sister, is struggling with her obligation to marry a leering older man. All of this character development matters, but often for purposes other than creating echoes and resonance. 

When done well, this kind of layered, complicated character development — some characters paralleling others, some not, and each character having more than one function in the text — goes a long way toward making a fictional world feel real. It also allows the author to touch on themes without beating them to death. And yet, sometimes this kind of light touch is one of the hardest things for a writer to achieve. In my experience as a writer who often writes complicated plots, it isn't until later drafts of a book, when my structure is more solidly in place, that I finally have the space to sit back, breathe, and look for places where I can create little connections, or spots where I'm pushing a theme too hard.

Deeper Parallels: Mr. Gilchrist and Lady Imeyne

There's one character parallel in this book that I find to be drawn with a heavier pen, and appropriately so.

In 2054, Mr. Gilchrist is the acting head of the History Faculty. Self-important, self-righteous, ignorant about how time travel works, and focused on his own glory, he supervises Kivrin's travel to the Middle Ages with little care for Kivrin's safety. Ultimately, it's largely Mr. Gilchrist's fault that Kivrin ends up in such a dangerous and traumatizing place, and gets stuck there. 

When Gilchrist's culpability becomes clear, he blames and threatens everyone else. For example, when the tech, Badri, collapses onto the net consul, clearly ill, Gilchrist decides, out of nowhere, that Badri must be a drug user. Here's the way he talks (to Mr. Dunworthy): "You can't wait to inform [actual head of the History Faculty] Basingame of what you perceive to be Mediaeval's failure, can you?… In spite of the fact that it was your tech who has jeopardized this drop by using drugs, a fact of which you may be sure I will inform Mr. Basingame on his return…. I'm certain Mr. Basingame will also be interested in hearing that it was your failure to have your tech screened that's resulted in this drop being jeopardized…. It seems distinctly odd that after being so concerned about the precautions Mediaeval was taking that you wouldn't take the obvious precaution of screening your tech for drugs..." (64-65). Agh. Every time he opens his mouth, he says something pompous, repetitive, obnoxious, and untrue.

In 1348, Lady Imeyne is part of the household where Kivrin ends up living. Self-important, self-righteous, sanctimonious, selfish, and ignorant, she ignores the imprecations of wiser people, and, for the sake of her own status, invites visitors to the household — who turn out to be carrying the plague. It is essentially Lady Imeyne's doing that the plague comes to her town. 

When this becomes clear, Lady Imeyne blames everyone else. While others in the household are working themselves to exhaustion trying to care for the sick, she kneels in the corner, ignoring the need for help, and praying. "Your sins have brought this," she tells her daughter-in-law Eliwys, the one who's in love with her own husband's servant (432). Later, she turns on kind, patient Father Roche. "You have brought this sickness," she says. "It is your sins have brought the sickness here." Then she begins to list his sins: "He said the litany for Martinmas on St. Eusebius's Day. His alb is dirty…. He put the candles out by pinching them and broke the wicks" (444).

"She's trying to justify her own guilt," Kivrin thinks. "She can't bear the knowledge that she helped bring the plague here"… But Kivrin can't summon up any pity. "You have no right to blame Roche, she thought, he has done everything he can. And you've knelt in a corner and prayed." (444-445). Similarly, Mr. Dunworthy sees right through Mr. Gilchrist, even at one point considering him Kivrin's murderer (484).

Mr. Gilchrist and Lady Imeyne are UNBEARABLE. They're the characters in this book that you most hate, or at least that I do — maybe especially in 2020/21, when we're plagued in real life by dangerous people like them. Later, in possibly the book's most satisfying moment, we learn that Gilchrist has died of the influenza. The book doesn't revel in his death; none of the characters revel. But I sure do. Good riddance, you harmful, self-important, lying hypocrite. This is one of fiction's safe spaces: the intense, guilt-free satisfaction of an asshole being punished.

Similarly, Lady Imeyne dies of the plague. It's a relief. But it's also a bit harder to revel, because with the exception of Kivrin, who's immune, every character in the 1348 timeline dies of the plague. Every single character. It is so desperately sad, not least because it's exactly what happened in 1348. As the book reminds us repeatedly, entire towns were wiped out. There was no one left to toll the bells, or bury the dead. No one is left but Kivrin. Our hearts break for her.

I'm glad that Connie Willis teases out the parallel between Mr. Gilchrist and Lady Imeyne more than she does with a lot of the other character parallels. I think it's important; I think that these two characters embody a clear and recognizable type of human who will always exist in eras of human suffering. I'm relieved she kills them; and I'm relieved she doesn't kill everyone we love. In particular, she doesn't kill Mr. Dunworthy and she doesn't kill Kivrin… Which leads me to one last powerful character parallel in this book.

 

Mr. Dunworthy and Kivrin, God and Jesus

This character parallel is in a different category from the others. It doesn't stretch across the 1348 and 2054 timelines, or not exactly, anyway. It exists on a different plane: It's a parallel between the story of Mr. Dunworthy and Kivrin, and the story of God sending his son, Jesus, down to earth to live among humans.

The people of 1348 believe the story of God sending his son down to earth. They believe it literally; it's one of their guiding principles. Kivrin, Mr. Dunworthy, and many of the people of 2054 do not believe that story in the literal sense. Kivrin and Mr. Dunworthy don't believe in God. 

And yet, there are times when the vocal recordings Kivrin is making for historical purposes begin to sound like pleas to God: "Over fifty percent of the village has it. Please don't let Eliwys get it. Or Roche" (467). "You bastard! I will not let you take her. She's only a child. But that's your specialty, isn't it? Slaughtering the innocents? You've already killed the steward's baby and Agnes's puppy and the boy who went for help when I was in the hut, and that's enough. I won't let you kill her, too, you son of a bitch! I won't let you!" (493). 

And Father Roche, who finally reveals to Kivrin that on the day she arrived, he saw the net open and Kivrin appear, believes with all his heart that Kivrin is a saint, sent by God to help his parishioners in their time of need. "I feared that God would forsake us utterly," he says, as he's dying. "But in His great mercy He did not… But sent His saint unto us." He says, "Yet have you saved me… From fear.… And unbelief" (542-543). He means what he says. Kivrin's ministrations to the sick and to Roche do save him from despair.

And back in the Oxford of 2054, Dunworthy lies sick in his hospital bed, considering Kivrin, whom he's sent to a terrible place. As a rather unbearable character named Mrs. Gaddson stands at his bedside "helpfully" reading him Bible verses, Dunworthy thinks to himself, "God didn't know where His Son was.... He had sent His only begotten Son into the world, and something had gone wrong with the fix, someone had turned off the net, so that He couldn't get to him, and they had arrested him and put a crown of thorns on his head and nailed him to a cross…. Kivrin would have no idea what had happened. She would think she had the wrong place or the wrong time, that she had lost count of the days somehow during the plague, that something had gone wrong with the drop. She would think they had forsaken her" (475).

I love the questions these moments raise for the reader. Who represents what here? What is God, really? Why, when Badri became ill, did the net send Kivrin to that particular time? Who, or what, are we talking to, when we shout our fury to the universe? Maybe Mr. Dunworthy, sending historians into the past from his lab in Oxford, is a kind of god. And maybe Kivrin is a kind of Jesus, or a kind of saint. Maybe Father Roche has the right idea when he believes what he believes, even if he has some of the particulars wrong.

Near the very end, Kivrin speaks into her recorder addressing Mr. Dunworthy: "It's strange. When I couldn't find the drop and the plague came, you seemed so far away I would not ever be able to find you again. But I know now that you were here all along, and that nothing, not the Black Death nor seven hundred years, nor death nor things to come nor any other creature could ever separate me from your caring and concern. It was with me every minute" (544).

And then, with great difficulty, Mr. Dunworthy comes for Kivrin. He finds her in 1348, heartbroken and surrounded by the dead, and he brings her back home. "I knew you'd come," Kivrin says (578). There's a way in which the justified faith of these characters — Father Roche's faith in God's saint Kivrin, and Kivrin's faith in Mr. Dunworthy's care — show the reader that even in the darkest, most death-ridden times, love doesn't forsake us.

That's a pretty timeless theme. 

***

If you've made it to the end of my post about character parallels in Connie Willis's magnificent Doomsday Book, I hope I've given you a sense of what a powerful tool this can be. It's pretty closely related to some of my other writing lessons here on the blog. Creating webs like Tiffany D. Jackson did in Monday's Not Coming; creating connections like Victor LaValle did in The Changeling. Writing is often about finding the internal connections that'll best support the themes of the story you're trying to tell. I think that especially if your book takes place in multiple timelines, character parallels can go a long way!

Usually I end my craft posts with a photo showing the book filled with post-it flags from my careful rereading, but this time around, I reread by listening to the audiobook. My paper copy is flag-free — but I took eight pages of notes while I was listening! So here's a different photo of my process.

 

Listening like a writer.

 

 

 

Just a note to those readers who receive my blog post via email: The service that provides this, Feedburner, is shutting down in a couple of weeks, so I'm going to be migrating my subscribers to a new service. If you get an email from me in the next couple of weeks, please pay attention, because you may need to reconfirm your subscription with the new service! 

Thanks, and stay tuned!

Hi again everyone,

Just an announcement that I think I've successfully migrated all email subscribers to a new working email service (MailChimp). I tried my best to transfer all verified subscribers to the new list -- and not to transfer any unverified subscribers. Time will tell whether this blog post goes out successfully as an email. (There's a box in the dropdown menu on the left of my homepage for anyone who wants to subscribe to my blog posts via email.) 

If there are problems with the new service, I expect I'll realize it pretty soon, and I promise I'll do my utmost to rectify them quickly. Apologies in advance if anything goes amiss! 

In the meantime, I have another craft post planned, and a few other thinky posts too. So, more soon. Thanks for your patience with all of this, everyone!

Hi again folks. Just announcing some upcoming events for the release of Gareth Hinds' graphic novel adaptation of Graceling:

Today, Gareth Hinds's beautiful graphic novel adaptation of Graceling hits stores. Join us for an event! Here's a link to all your options.

I'm so very happy to announce that my next Graceling Realm book, Seasparrow, will release on November 1, 2022. Scroll down for my beautiful covers in the US and the UK! I'll also include links for pre-ordering at the bottom of this post.

Seasparrow is told from the point of view of Hava, Queen Bitterblue's secret sister and spy, who has the Grace of changing what you think you see when you look at her. In other words, the Grace of hiding in plain sight. In Seasparrow, Hava sails across the sea toward Monsea with her sister, the royal entourage, and the world's only copies of the formulas for the zilfium weapon Hava saved at the end of Winterkeep. As in all of my books, adventure ensues — the kind of adventure that will cause Hava to do some soul-searching. While Bitterblue grapples with how to carry the responsibility of a weapon that will change the world, Hava has a few mysteries to solve — and a decision to make about who she wants to be in the new world Bitterblue will build. Seasparrow was edited by Andrew Karre. Thank you, Andrew, for helping me help Hava find her wings!

Prior to today, I've only been talking about this book on Twitter, where I don't have a lot of space to say meaningful things. I have space on this blog, so here are a few non-spoilery bits of info about Seasparrow.

* Unlike my other Graceling Realm books, this one is told from the first-person point of view. Why? Because it was right for this book. Hava is a character who's so internal that often other people don't even know she's there. I suppose I can't entirely explain why, when I started writing, I knew I needed to write in first person, but maybe it's because in order to write about Hava, I needed to get deep inside, where she was. I don't think I've ever written a book from the perspective of someone so hidden before. And yet, from the start, Hava let me in. It felt like she was the one making the decision about what point of view we needed.

* Though the page count is higher (624!), the word count is not higher than any of my other Graceling Realm books. That's because Hava's story is told in a lot of pretty short chapters. That felt right for Hava and the way she processes things; again, it felt like she was the one making this decision. Short chapters have a way of creating a sense of empty space inside a printed book, which is an effect I've always liked, so I went with it.

* The interior art that Ian Schoenherr created for Seasparrow is spectacular. Maybe more than any of my books prior to this, I'm excited for the day when I'll have the finished product in my hands.

* Four years ago, I spent some time in the Arctic on a tall ship. I planned this book while I was on that trip. I started writing it the moment I got back. I could not have written this book were it not for my experience doing an artist residency with the organization The Arctic Circle. Here's a link to the blog posts I wrote about my Arctic experience, which are mostly compilations of pictures. Click on "More Posts" at the bottom to see them all.

 

And now for the covers! Here's the US/Canada cover for Seasparrow, which will be published by Dutton/Penguin Random House. Kuri Huang is the cover artist. Jessica Jenkins is the cover designer. And as I've already said, the interior will include beautiful art by Ian Schoenherr.

 

And here is the UK/Australia/New Zealand cover for Seasparrow. My editor at Gollancz is Gillian Redfearn. Micaela Alcaino is the cover artist and Tomás Almeida is the in-house designer.

Finally, here are some direct pre-ordering links! Seasparrow can be ordered in the US at:

Bookshop.org

barnesandnoble.com

Target

Amazon

 

And in the UK at:

UK.Bookshop.org

Waterstones

Blackwells

 

...and wherever books are sold.

 

Happy holiday weekend for those celebrating. And happy reading!

Here are four AI voice models from Google Arts & Culture that offer a new way to experience and engage with art, history and culture.

Our new online platform and summit will help students learn more about product inclusion and equity.

Explore RIBA's online collection with Google Arts & Culture, featuring new virtual tours and stories.

We’re expanding flood forecasting to over 100 countries and making our breakthrough AI model available to researchers and partners.

Years ago while trying to explain that a bad remake does not ruin your childhood, I described modern remakes as attempts to make money by “strip-mining nostalgia.” And before I explain the metaphor further, let me clearly state that BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F is a much, much better movie than that.

Strip-mining is how you destroy the landscape to get at just one thing. The strip-mining nostalgia metaphor kind of means “ruin my affection for the franchise.” And BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F did NOT ruin things.

I watched all three Beverly Hills Cop films before watching this, and then I watched the first one again, with Sandra, who hadn’t actually seen it.

She agreed with my assessment of the first film: the original BEVERLY HILLS COP is a very good movie, and the music deserved acting credit because it was not just instrumental (hah!) to the atmosphere of the film, it helped tell the story in ways that almost-but-not-quite crossed into the line of musical theater.

BEVERLY HILLS COP II was a competent, 80’s-era sequel. The production team knew how to make a good movie, but they didn’t really understand the science of a brilliant sequel. This was the 80’s, almost nobody understood that.

BEVERLY HILLS COP III was awful, and its biggest sin lay in the orchestral variations on Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” theme. They were competent¹ arrangements, sure, but they sounded like they belonged in “Axel Foley Goes to Silverado.” Which I would watch, provided it was not made by the people who made BEVERLY HILLS COP III.

BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F was made by people who do understand the science of a good sequel. It follows the beat chart of the first movie, but it doesn’t just go through the motions. It knows what those beats are for, and why they worked, and it leans into that understanding to deliver what, for some people, can serve as a master-class in making a franchise film.

I’ve read several articles about the production of the film, and the most interesting thing I learned was that they re-recorded the Axel F theme using the original synths, which they got from a museum. This meant the theme had the same *exact* waveforms, delivering that familiar sound even after giving it the deconstruction and theme-and-variations treatment. That one song could now support multiple scenes without making us feel like they were just playing samples of the same song over and over. (Which, thanks to Crazy Frog², is a treatment we have definitely seen applied to Axel F. )

BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F follows the same basic plot as the first two films, in that the audience and the protagonist know who the bad guy is, and the detective work lies in accumulating the right evidence, and then surviving to deliver it³. It also improves on the scene-to-scene flow⁴ of that formula, giving us snappy dialog and dramatic moments that run straight up against action.

I should sum up. I’ve watched BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F twice now, and I have no regrets. I’m not tracking my thresholds lately, but this one definitely clears the Threshold of Awesome. It was better than just “better than I expected it to be,” and that might sound like low praise, but I’ll definitely watch it a third time. Hopefully that helps you calibrate your own expectations.

— notes —

¹ I used ‘competent’ twice because it’s the right word. In the arts it kind of means “knows how to hold a paintbrush, mix colors, and create a painting, but doesn’t know how to make actual art.”

² Google “Crazy Frog” at your peril. It was silly fun twenty years ago, but now it just leaves me annoyed, and ashamed for having liked it once.

³ The third film messes with the formula, giving us a plot twist right at the end. It was a nice idea, but it was not executed well. Just take my word for it. Don’t go watch BEVERLY HILLS COP III. Sure, you can go listen to “Crazy Frog” at your peril but BHCIII is a different level of DO NOT.

³ “Scene-sequel” format, which comes to us from Dwight Swain’s TECHNIQUES OF THE WORKING WRITER, is perfectly employed here. You don’t need to know that to enjoy the movie, but if you are a writer then it’s something you should pay attention to.