Skip to main content

Five Signs A Book Was Written By Jay

Over at Fangs, Fur & Fey, they've got a great topic of the week: Five Signs a Book Was Written By You.* Here are mine:

1. One of the boys has a girl name. :) Or, if not, know that one of the boys did have a girl name until my readers told me to "just change it already, Jay. Jesus!"

2. The main character will be the oldest child or an only child. I may branch out at some point, but this is true of all of the stories I'm working on right now.

3. At least one of the male love interests will be tall. Tall is good. :)

4. No one will save the world. Something may get saved at some point, like a house, or a cat, or mybe even a whole town, but the world? No. No way.

5. The mother will be scary. Scary mean, scary smart, scary talented, scary hot...or just plain scary.

~~~

* If you read that blog, you might have already seen this entry, since I cross-posted over there.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hmmmm, have never really given this much thought but it might go something like this:

1. There will be at least one or two words you don't know. Annoying words, like "interregnum."

2. There will be passages that drive you bonkers. "Am I supposed to read this? Really?" I like to challenge my readers. Perhaps too much, hee hee.

3. There will be a sex scene. It might be funny, it might not. Sex is very, very hard to write about and few writers ever pull it off without sounding like complete idiots. It's a challenge to the writer.

4. There will be a Dogue de Bordeaux in the book. If you own one, you know why. If you don't, you'll never get it. They are not normal dogs.

5. The ending will either make you cry or, if you're made of stone, get a little choked up. I don't know why, but I have a knack for this sort of thing. Think about it: you think it would be easy to make somebody cry but it's actually harder than it looks. Making somebody feel sad is pretty easy but getting actual tears to flow is hard.

I have one to add to your list, Jay:
--you will laugh at something one of the characters says
Yes, this is true! You have a good feel for humorous retorts and I chuckled more than once while reading a draft of the book.

Popular posts from this blog

Jay Takes A Stand

Moonrat, still at Editorial Ass, is making me think a lot lately. She did a recent post here about sexualized violence in print ads, and connected the dots to sexualized violence in books and other media, which got me thinking about how I treat girls and women in my books. To be clear--I'm a feminist. I believe in equal pay for equal work and reproductive choice, and the whole ball of wax. I'm not going to go into detail about all that here because, frankly, there are people out there whose blogs are dedicated to that kind of thing (like Jezebel *) and they do it way better than I ever could. But that's my political orientation, in case you care. So when I was writing The Book, it was very important to me that my female protagonist S did not fall into any of those "heroine needs saving by the hero" tropes that so many books for teenage girls do. Sure, there's something very "romantic" about the hero swooping in and rescuing the heroine, right? ...

Monday Miscellany -- The New Year Edition

1. I saw "Harold and Kumar Went To White Castle" this weekend. It's not really my kind of movie, but it was mildly amusing and the scene where they sing "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips? Totally worth the price of admission.* 2. This? This is an awesome video: The United States of Pop 2009, by DJ Earworm. 3. Janet Reid has this to say: The Perfect Time Is Now . 4. I don't mind winter so much,** but I hate it when my feet are cold. Seriously. I will go to any extreme to avoid cold feet. 5. Happy 2010! ~~~ * I got it on Netflix, so there wasn't admission. But you get the point. ** This is true. I spent four years in New Mexico, where there really isn't winter, per se (we would sunbathe in February, no joke) and I really missed winter. I don't mind shoveling snow, or driving in it, and I love winter clothes. And cocoa, of course. So winter's all right with me.

On Mary Sue

I recently read a Very Popular Book in a Very Popular Series, which I was going to talk about here until I read the second book in the series and realized--OH NO--that the main character of the book is a total Mary Sue. sigh. For those of you who didn't spend time in the fanfic world, a Mary Sue is a character who everyone else loves. She's a stand-in for the author (fanfic is written mostly by women, which is why "Mary Sue," although there are some Gary Stus out there as well).She's beautiful (but not too beautiful), she's funny, she's self-deprecating, she's smart, and all the other characters will fall head over heels in love with her and think she's awesome. (An example, if I wrote Friday Night Lights fanfiction, Mary Sue would move to town and become Riggins' girlfriend, and Jason Street would have a crush on her, and Lyla Garrity would like her and even Tyra would must us some grudging respect, and their lives would all be better for k...