The Confabulator Cafe

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  • Naughty by Nature: Character and Plot’s Love-Hate Relationship

    “Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

    The idea of plot-driven versus character-driven writing seems, at first, to be as opposite a question as nature versus nurture. Does your character develop out of the necessity of the plot, or does the plot drive forward because of your characters.

    The convention, or at least the one I see most commonly preached in the endless stack of writing books I read, is that your plot should develop out of your characters. Essentially, if you put interesting characters in an interesting setting and watch what they do, you will have an interesting plot. With all due respect to the amazingly talented and knowledgeable writers of those craft books, that isn’t entirely true.

    Your plot will be meaningless without good characters. No one will care if you have an amazing plot line if they don’t feel close to the characters involved in it. They have to see, smell, hear, and even feel the characters you write. But no one will care about your characters unless they do something interesting. They must be involved in an interesting conflict or it is all for naught.

    This is not life. This is art. It isn’t enough to be reality television and have cameras following your characters around catching all of their torrid trysts and failings as if it is some textual Jersey Shore episode. Art is about the constant meshing of character, plot, and prose. That is what makes the medium of writing special.

    Generally speaking, I approach most stories with a sort of screenwriting mentality. I know my premise and at least one or two plot points. I will have a general ending in mind, although it isn’t always the one I end up writing. Writing is like starting on a trip to the beach without knowing how you are going to get there. If you somehow end up on a skiing trip in the mountains, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as you still have fun.

    I have to at least have a premise before I know what sort of characters will serve my plot. As characters begin to develop, the plot will flesh out, maybe even change a bit, but still the needs of the plot are integral to deciding what characters my story will require writing.

    It isn’t an either/or process. Storytelling is architecture. You need blueprints. You need to know what the building will look like, but you can’t go breaking the laws of physics because eventually the damn thing is going to have to stand on its own. If your plot and characters don’t work together, your story will suck.

    Most writers will consider themselves good character writers or good plot writers. They will be more comfortable with one or the other, and they will concentrate accordingly. I’m sure some of my colleagues will swear by one or the other. But ultimately, the thing we all have in common is that we are willing to make sacrifices to our characters for the plot and vice versa.

    Do our personalities shape our actions or do our actions shape our personalities? Who knows? Who cares? Leave the life questions to the philosophers. You have a story to make work. In writing, the answer to the question is always “Yes.”

  • Character or Plot? (Week of 19 March 2012)

    It’s a classic argument: Which is more important – character or plot?

    At the halfway party for NaNoWriMo back in November, there was a spirited discussion amongst our group and by the end of it, nothing had been definitively settled and we all ate and drank well that night, savoring the company of our good friends.

    Now that the Cafe is open, the discussion is up again. It should be every bit as spirited and interesting as all the writers here are now five months farther along and we all know that time gives us some perspective we might otherwise have had. It also builds character because of things that happen in that time. Though if one looks back upon a particularly nasty run of bad luck, the plot that conspired against one could be seen more clearly to have set events in motion that led to those character-building moments.

    Or maybe not.

    Regardless, the coffee is hot, the pastries are fresh and everyone’s paying attention this week. Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts.

  • Who is your favorite literary vampire?

    Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula is the book that started it all. Though he was far from the first literary vampire (Wikipedia lists Lord Byron’s The Burial: a Fragment published in 1819 as the first of the breed), Count Dracula was sexy, seductive and primal. He’s been the subject of stage plays, musicals, comic books and – of course – films. He’s been the inspiration for countless imitators. Authors from Byron to Charlaine Harris have added their little touches to the mythos of vampirism. From Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles to Charlaine Harris’ The Southern Vampire Mysteries, there have been dozens of variations of Stoker’s classic in the last forty years alone. This week, we’re asking the Confabulators who their favorite literary vampire is. Read on to find out if your favorite is mentioned.

     

    Kevin Wohler:

    If you only know Dracula from the movies, you don’t really know the whole story. Reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the first time, I discovered a world unlike anything I imagined. The thing that surprised me most was the richness of his minor characters, like the vampiric “Sisters.” I loved the Sisters, both for their animalistic hunger and sexuality. Like sirens, succubi, and other mythological femme fatales, the Sisters entrance and lure unsuspecting men to their death. For me, they were more memorable than Dracula himself. Of course, they’re in the original 1931 film with Bela Lugosi, but they get overshadowed by the Count in endless film and television adaptations.

     

    Jason Arnett:

    I have a very soft spot for Louis and Armand from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series. They both changed how I thought about vampires and what they wanted from life. That said, my very favorite vampire is Fred Saberhagen’s version of Vlad Tepes in The Dracula Tape. He’s really humanized in that book and Saberhagen does a great job of combining history and Bram Stoker’s book.

     

    R.L. Naquin:

    Asher from the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton. Hot, tortured (but not in a sparkly-emo way) and he’s got that sex-magic thing going for him. Okay, maybe he’s only hot on half his body, since the other half was severely burned hundreds of years ago with holy water. Also, he’s always going to be second fiddle to Jean-Claude. I prefer the sidekicks and underdogs of the world. Don’t judge me.

     

    Jack Campbell, Jr.:

    My favorite literary vampires are the sisters from Dracula by Bram Stoker. If you go back and read that scene, it is smoldering with sexual overtones. As a teen reading Dracula for the first time, it was enough to make me a fan of the three sisters for life. If you are going to become the latest vampire victim, what better way to go than triple-teamed by hot, ravenous hellspawn?

     

    Sara Lundberg

    Ever since my Dad told me my very first vampire story when I was little, I’ve been obsessed with vampires. His vampires were proper vampires: vicious, terrifying, bloodthirsty, and disintegrated into dust in the sunlight. I will read every vampire novel I can get my hands on now because I find all of the different versions of vampire mythology to be fascinating. My favorite thus far is Matthew Clairmont from Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, however I love him more as a character than a vampire. My favorite literary vampire is probably the evil Smoking Vampire from my own vampire novel The Monsters of Lawrence. He is a true monster, and a true vampire.

  • Because shut up, that’s why!

    Every time I try discussing the issue of censorship with people they always bring up the same argument: “Some things aren’t appropriate for kids!” So let’s get that out of the way right now.

    1) Yes, children should be exposed primarily to age-appropriate material.

    2) #1 is no excuse for watering down material intended for adults to that which will not confuse a five-year-old [0].

    3) Relax. The kids are going to be fine [1]. Kids are more resilient than you think.

    The correct remedy for poor, offensive, or dangerous speech is more and better speech. Particularly speech that mocks the offender mercilessly [2].

    Politician/pundit lying through where the sun don’t shine [3]? Call them out on it. Protesters showed up at your cousin’s funeral? Take pictures, Photoshop the signs to read, “I’m with stupid,” and post them to your Tumblr feed. Read one too many romance novels where the heroine falls in love with the pirate who raped her? Write your own where she grabs his cutlass [4], forces him to walk the plank, and then seduces the handsome Royal Navy lieutenant she found chained up in the orlop [5]. Because everybody has the right to make a fool of themselves in public, and the rest of us have the right to respond.

    On a more serious note, literature allows us to explore themes, situations, and perspectives we are not likely to encounter in our daily lives. It’s an antidote to provincialism. The Dexter novels by Jeff Lindsay put us into the mind of a serial killer. The novel Push, by Sapphire, puts us in the shoes of a barely literate, impoverished, student living in horrific circumstances, a life that will ultimately kill her. But by reading her, seeing the world through her eyes, she becomes humanized to us. As a result, it is much more difficult to “other” real people living similar lives.

    Every year or so there’s a collective freakout about 9th graders reading Huckleberry Finn because it contains the dreaded N-word [6]. You would think this would be an excellent time to talk about language, how using language shapes thoughts and behaviors, how it can unite or divide people, how language changes over time, and the appropriateness of using other offensive words of the four-letter variety to describe people. However, for too many, it seems simpler to just not read the damn book [7].

    The problem with censorship is that it halts communication in its tracks. In its worst incarnations, it’s a form of bullying. At best it’s a form of social control. And it sells the reader short— for every troubled teen who wants to be a Dexter, there are thousands who realize they’re a Huckleberry, and that’s OK. They have their own humanity and something to contribute.

    [0] More likely, from what I’ve seen of five-year-olds, amaze and enthrall them.
    [1] As a kid in the 70s and 80s I got most of my practical sexual education the old fashioned way— by dumpster diving for porn. I also played unsupervised in the street, went swimming less than an hour after eating, and got spanked when I deserved it. I turned out just fine.
    [2] A heck of a lot more fun and productive than getting your knickers in a knot.
    [3] *cough* Rush Limbaugh */cough*
    [4] No, not that cutlass. The actual, you know, cutlass. Get your mind out of the scuppers.
    [5] Note to self: next Nanowrimo plot?
    [6] Seriously? We can’t even say the word “nigger” when we’re talking about the word “nigger?”
    [7] It amazes me that the book is viewed as racist. Well, it is, but the controversy at the time it was published was that the main characters, Huck and Jim, outsiders within their own society, were portrayed as actual, dignified people, their lack of surface respectability notwithstanding. That is still a lesson worth teaching.

  • Don’t Ban What You Don’t Understand

    Our literary taboos tend to reflect the things that terrify the majority of society. I vividly recall July 3rd of 2008, when I got cornered by two friends while discussing the required reading list for a middle school in Olathe (or somewhere in that area). One, a father of a child a couple years away from middle school, ranted that one of the books has homosexuality and bestiality in it, and damn it, that’s not okay for kids! Except the whole discussion (if it could be called that) became about sex education in schools and, eventually, political conservativeness.

    This discussion wasn’t about homosexuality or bestiality or even the book1 but about the fear that someone else, some stranger, was going to teach this man’s son about sexuality — and in his personal dogma, that’s a moral issue.

    I’m okay with people being offended by the content of a book — everyone cannot like everything. I’m troubled by the message a lot of teen books send to teenage girls, but so be it. My friend is troubled by certain books in his son’s curriculum, and he is welcome to discuss alternative reading with his son’s teacher. These are personal issues, and we are by all means free to take these personal soapboxes and engage in discussion with whoever will listen. We are welcome to say, “No, Child, you will not be reading Abraham Bosnick’s book,2 because I don’t think you should be reading about one zombie’s battle against syphilis.” (more…)

  • Out of the Box

    I’ve never been one to go with what’s necessarily popular or even mainstream. I like my entertainments to challenge me a little bit, to be outside my comfort zone.

    Monsters and mutants! How can you go wrong with that? Art by John Byrne. Copyright owned by Marvel.

    That’s weird, I think. At least it’s weird to the thinking of the rest of the world.

    Well, that and the fact that I want to be a full-time writer sooner or later.

    (more…)

  • Free expression, not oppression

    Freedom of the press is one of the seven wonders of America*.  As far as my understanding goes, our national belief in freedom of speech and of the press is one of the few beliefs that still unites our imagined national community, one of the few things that Americans of all political persuasions hold sacred.

    Now, often we go to the marginal cases to consider how far this freedom goes, and Amazon’s virtual publishing site has prompted many discussions of censorship and taboo literature since any idiot can now publish a book.   (more…)

  • What’s taboo? What’s bannable? What’s in good taste?

    I am behind schedule for this week’s blog post, so instead of wrapping my ideas in a clever structure, I’m just going to address this week’s questions head-on. I know, it’s a bold choice. That’s just how I roll.

    Commence the Answering of Questions!

    What’s taboo in literature:

    Nothing. I denounce censorship in almost every form, and I welcome authors to write about any subject. That doesn’t mean that I won’t personally find certain topics to be uninteresting, or distasteful, or downright abhorrent. However, I learned a long time ago, even without the advantage of Middle Ages Tech Support, that if I don’t like a book, I CAN STOP READING IT. Just like I’m able to turn off the television (or, even better, change the channel) when I don’t like a program.

    Is banning books ever appropriate?

    I can’t think of a single scenario where a book should be banned. Researching this question, I discovered that the American Library Association notes, “Books are usually banned with the best intentions—to protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and information” (see this site for more info).

    Should children be guided through (or steered away from) certain materials? Absolutely! That’s the job of parents, teachers, and other mentors. Should books be banned? Absolutely not.

    Who are the tastemakers and why do they matter?

    Today, some of the tastemakers fall into broad categories. Apparently we can thank thirteen-year-old girls for bad books like Twilight and good books like The Hunger Games. There are plenty of middle-aged housewives (or housedivorcees?) that devour trashy romance novels by the dozen every month. Teenage boys manage to poison the internet and online gaming services with vitriol that makes my hair smoke if I even think about participating.

    Sure, those are insulting, pigeonholing stereotypes. And yet, they seem to be steering many big dollar books, movies, games, and musicians. So do they matter? Of course! As an author, do I consider my (potential) audience? Some, sure. But at the end of the day, I know next to nothing about being a prepubescent girl or a middle-aged woman. Writing for those audiences would pose a challenge for me. I have a vague recollection of being a hormone-swamped teenager. I do my best to ignore those recollections, however.

    So, I follow the mantra, “Write what you know,” (which means something quite different than what most people think), and I hope that, by staying true to my own vision, I create stories that avoid the taboo, are unbannable, and meet with the approval of the tastemakers.

  • It’s None of Your Business!!!

    Censorship is a double-edged sword. There are several books on the banned books list that I’ve read simply because they were banned whereas I’ve never decided not to read a book because somebody else banned it. I never really paid attention to what book was and was not banned. For most of my life, the bookstore, and occasionally a public library, was where I found most of my new reading material, not a school library.

    The only people who censored what I read was my parents. And that’s precisely how it should be.

    I don’t think it is right that any single person, or group of people, should be able to decide that a book is inappropriate for the masses. That decision should be between a parent/guardian and his or her children. It should be a boundary that fluctuates as the children grow older and can decide for themselves. Something that isn’t appropriate for a seven year old shouldn’t necessarily be banned from a seventeen year old.

    There were several books my parents told me I couldn’t read until I was older, then they pointed me in the direction of other books to read that would have more appropriate content for someone my age but a high enough reading level to challenge me. The problem arose when I’d read through my parents’ collection and still wanted to read more. I was too advanced a reader to read Animorphs or Goosebumps with my classmates and the YA sections at libraries and bookstores didn’t offer the same variety of books they do today. I wanted more than two hundred pages in my books, so I turned to the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section. Picking a book off the shelves, it was impossible to tell from the cover if it was going to be rife with gratuitous sex and violence. The chick in the chainmail bikini on the cover was going to be there regardless of the content on the inside.

    Books should be rated and labeled, not banned. Movies do it. Video games do it. Why don’t books? Don’t just slap an arbitrary letter or age on it. Is the rating high because the characters all swear like sailors? Or is it because ten pages in there is a graphic torture scene? Is there more sex than in a romance novel? Give a clear rating of what a reader can expect to find in the book. Put it on the back flap by the bar code.

    Then let the parents decide what their kid is ready to be exposed to. Because really, it’s nobody else’s business.

  • Who Moved My Book?

    It bothers me that the year is now 2012 and book-banning is still a topic of conversation. Shouldn’t we, as a society, have moved past this by now? We have not. And as long as we have individual thinkers, censorship will exist. There will never be a time when everyone agrees on everything.

    For most people the term “book banning” causes a knee-jerk reaction of outrage. And it should. But maybe the term is over-used. “Censorship” is probably more accurate. To my knowledge, there’s no big government agency out there insisting that all copies of an “offensive” book be destroyed and that no one is allowed to read it. Most of the reports of book banning are in regards to schools across the country. Parents and/or school boards find something inappropriate for the kids under their protection, and they insist on having it removed from the curriculum and/or the school library. (more…)