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

This past weekend, I fell in love with a character.* Not one of my own, someone else's . And it got me thinking, why do certain characters work for me and others don't? What is it about a character--my own or someone else's --that makes me want to spend time, sometimes endless amounts of time, with those characters at the expense of my housekeeping and my dog and my job and even, sometimes, my relationships with other people? What does it? And after thinking about it for a little while, here's a (partial, incomplete) list of the things that can hook me into a character:**, *** 1. They have a troubled past. I'm a sucker for a character who has suffered in the past and has come out mostly okay on the other side. Not totally okay, as you'll see from the rest of this list, but mostly okay. Most of the time. 2. They have secrets. I'm a firm believer in the idea that everyone has secrets. Sometimes big secrets, sometimes little teeny ones, sometimes e...

1. Public Enemies is not a good movie. I know. I was all hyped about it myself, because PotC 2 & 3* notwithstanding, I usually find Johnny Depp interesting to watch. Plus, Christian Bale, who I will watch in any piece of crap he chooses to take on (including, yes, Reign of Fire and Equilibrium ). Plus the story of John Dillinger, who had a pretty exciting life. But, despite all of this, Public Enemies was boring. BORING. There was no plot to speak of, ninety nine percent of the characters had no motivation (when you could even tell who was who, that was)**, and there were a bunch of famous or semi-famous actors in the movie (Lili Taylor, Billy Crudup, LeeLee Sobieski, Stephen Dorff, Giovanni Ribisi, David Wenham***, and bunch of people from television shows) whose casting was really more of a distraction than anything, since none of them actually had any parts. Michael Mann tends to use stunt casting like this to distinguish the characters in the movie, which is distracting....

By far the most practical class I had in law school was a course called Personal Real Estate, in which our professor, a practicing attorney, walked us through all the documents that you use to buy or sell your house or a small commercial property. It was very useful, especially when it came time for me to buy my own house, but the thing that stuck with me out of all of the helpful things we learned in class was this: Everything is negotiable. Let me repeat that one more time: EVERYTHING IS NEGOTIABLE. Some of you might be objecting to this right now. "Oh Jay," you might be thinking. "That's not true. When I go into the grocery store and buy milk, that's not negotiable. I just pay the price that's marked." Sure. Of course you do. So do I, for that matter. But that doesn't mean the price isn't negotiable. It means you haven't asked . (There's also a corollary: just because everything is negotiable doesn't mean you should negot...

Earlier this month, Lynn Viehl had a lovely post about antagonists called, hilariously, " Ten Things I Hate About Your Protagonist ." In that post, she talks about the number of ways that antagonists can be two-dimensional or just plain boring. My favorite of hers? In the middle of the final crisis in the story, when she has the upper hand over everyone, the antagonist proudly delivers a full confession of all the wrong she's done. Hmmmm. Maybe she's Catholic. In the world of The Incredibles , this flaw would be called "monologuing." :) Seriously, though, this should never happen anymore. Not even in James Bond.* My own personal problem in writing antagonists is that I don't spend enough time on them. My villains aren't two-dimensional, exactly, but I don't have a good idea what's going on with them in the early drafts. Like, they just show up for plot purposes and I don't know enough about their internal lives to know why they w...

1. I don't have anything of relevance to say about Michael Jackson's untimely (but not necessarily unexpected death) except these two things: (a) dude, the same day as poor Farrah Fawcett? NOT COOL, MJ. Not cool at all. (b) my favorite Michael Jackson song is "The Way You Make Me Feel." It's a simple happy little pop song, and it's perfect. 2. "Her Majesty's Dragon" is a delightful novel. It's like Horatio Hornblower, but with dragons! I got it on a whim with a gift certificate from work, and was charmed by chapter two.* I look forward to picking up the other installments. 3. My favorite Janet Jackson song is "Miss You Much." It's a song about a girl who's psycho for her boyfriend and can't let him out of her sight, but it's got a hell of a beat. 4. I hate doing laundry. I object philosophically to paying someone else to clean up after me, but every weekend when I do laundry I reconsider that p...

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of posts about appropriate content in YA novels. Over at Fangs, Fur, and Fey, for example,* Jackie Kessler had a post about how her new main character swears a lot , which she's wondering about. And then there's this insightful post from the delightful blog Hey, Teenager of the Year, wherein blog author Steph (an ACTUAL TEENAGER gasp ) talks about what she thinks is appropriate content for teenagers.** It's a tough question, right? Because there are essentially two audiences for YA literature--the YAs themselves and the parents and guardians of the YAs. And these two audiences don't always have the same ideas about what the YAs should and should not be exposed to in literature.*** Parents and guardians of YAs (hereinafter P&Gs) are often shocked by what shows up in YA literature. "There's so much swearing," they say. "And dirty parts!" They're right, at least about some books. There is a lot of ...

I'm back!* During my hiatus from the Internet, I caught the pilot episode of Glee, which was...amazing. (You can see the whole episode here .) So this Monday Miscellany is not going to be that miscellaneous, as it's going to be all about Glee. 1. "You think this is hard? Try being waterboarded. That's hard !" 2. "Since when are cheerleaders 'performers'?" 3. "Your resentment is delicious ." 4. "I'd like to take over Glee club." "Would you like to captain the Titanic, too?" 5. "You might laugh because every time I sign my name I put a gold star after it, but it's a metaphor. And metaphors are important." 6. "You might think that all the boys in school would totally want to tap this, but my MySpace schedule keeps me way too busy to date." 7. "Nowadays, being anonymous is worse than being poor. Fame is the most important thing in our culture now." 8. "Okay,...