How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of lame female protagonists. By lame I mean that they don't do anything. They sit around and wait to be rescued. They whine, they moan, they complain, but they don't get up off their asses and make decisions about anything . They don't act - they are acted upon. (My undergraduate classes in feminist theory are snickering in the back of my head. "See," they're saying. "We told you!") Look, if you're going to have a woman as a protagonist then I had better be able to understand her. This is not the same thing as "liking" her. I'm not a big fan of the "Your Main Character Has To Be Likable" school of thought. I think "likable" in that case is a stand-in for "relatable." I have to be able to relate to your female protagonist.* One of the ways that a lot of writers do this is by making their female protagonists "kick-ass." This is cool. I like the K...

I'm afraid that, since I spend so much time talking about what's wrong with This Book or That Book, I'm going to come across as one of those ceaseless critics who never likes anything and thinks no one can live up to her ideals. This is sooo not true. So, to counteract that impression, from time to time, I'll write an entry about a book I love. For my inaugural entry, I want to talk about one of my most favorite books ever -- The Changeover by Margaret Mahy. I read this book for the first time when I was a sophomore in high school. It was given to me by my friend Ginger, and I initially thought that she was on crack, because the cover of this book was Super Cheesy. The version that she gave me, which can still be found in used book stores, has a girl on the cover gazing up into the eyes of a guy who is glowing with what I suppose should be an ethereal light, but really just seems sort of faded out. To make things worse, the book is subtitled "A Supernatural ...

It will come as no surprise, I hope, to learn that I am a huge fan of E.M. Forster. His writing is excellent, his understanding of motive is divine, and he's a sappy romantic - what's not to like? So when I came across plot problems in my reading of late, I immediately thought of Forster's simple parable of plot. It goes something like this: The King died and then the Queen died. This is not a plot; it is a story, a mere recitation of events over time. The King died and then the Queen died of grief. This is a plot. The key is causality - one event caused the other. Lately, in my reading, I've come across two different plot problems that have been bothering me. These are those: 1. All story, no plot. I recently read a book that, when I started, I was totally psyched about. "Finally!" I thought to myself, "I will get to talk about a book in my blog, because I love this book! It's so insightful and well-written and fresh and I heart it!...

Most YA writers today did not have cell phones when they were 15 years old. Think about that for a second. The people writing books for teenagers right now - the ones who aren't still teenagers I mean - didn't spend hours and hours on the phone talking or texting. They didn't IM, or at least not to the degree that teenagers do now. They weren't "wired." And this lack of technology has been a problem in some books I've been reading lately. Not that every book has to be TTFN, focused on the new technologies of the day. In fact, I personally prefer to keep the tech in my books to a minimum, because nothing will date book faster than technology, except pop culture references (more on this in a later post). So I get why an author would decide not to have his main characters chattering away on cell phone all the time. Watching a character do it is not necessarily more interesting that listening the guy in front you at line Starbucks do it. But there'...

Yesterday I read this YA novel, and, before I cracked it I was really excited about it because it was hugely popular and seemed like something right up my alley. I was all "ooh, I'm going to be able to review it in my blog, because I'm really going to like it!" Except I didn't. I hated it. Like, a lot. And here's why - the main character is deep like a puddle. Unfortunately, I can't be as specific as I would like here, since I'm panning this book, but basically, the protagonist is a high school girl who, apparently, has no interests, no life, no thoughts, and no feelings except for the boy she likes. Her parents barely figure into the story at all, she has no friends, her boss at her part-time job hardly speaks, there are apparently no teachers, she never watches tv or listens to music ... In short, she's BORING. Of course, the romance is the primary driver of the story and should be the main focus, but a character this empty seriously impede...

I am a very opinionated person. Very. VERY. Like, super a lot opinionated. So, naturally, when I read a book, I have opinions about it. I like it, or I love it, or I hate it, or there are just these certain parts where I would have done it differently. And, since this blog is about writing, I want to talk about those opinions here. But I can't. See, I'm not a published author. And it's just my luck that the agent I want to represent me when I'm ready to be represented, will also be the agent for what's-her-name, who wrote that book about that thing that I thought totally SUCKED and I wrote about that suckitude at great length here. And so then, when I send my pages to this agent, she will come to this blog and see that I slammed her wildly popular client and, even though I am right in my criticisms (hey, it's my hypothetical, I can be right if I want to), she cannot in good conscience offer to represent me, what with my shooting off of my big mouth and ...

I've been working on the project I'm focused on right now for about a year and a half (which includes time taken out for my job(s), a relationship, walking my dog, sleeping, all that good stuff). It's an old idea that was born when I was in high school (someday I'll tell you that story), but never really came to much until I started working on this draft. Anyway, I've always loved all the characters, and the setting, and I've always thought that there should be a sequel to the story, although I've always been hazy on what, exactly, that sequel would look like. I think I've a got a little case of that Author Crush on her characters, so I didn't want this to be the end. So, from time to time, I've had ideas for scenes that I liked, but they never really hung together because I never had a plot to hang them on. Then, this weekend, while I was proctoring an LSAT practice test for my students, it hit me. I was working out a problem relating to my ...