So, I owe someone a post about 'control'...

...and boy, has this post been kicking my ass...

I've never spent so much time writing and re-writing a single blog post before... On-and-off I've been working on this since the middle of January, and this is the 5th time I've completely deleted/re-written everything because there are a lot of angles I could come at this from, and none of them really worked.

BUT, I promised someone I'd write this and I don't like breaking promises, so here it is.

In the end, I think this is the best I can do, and I'm also going to apologize in advance because I switch between 'voices' in this post, from my 'casual voice' to my 'nerdy post voice', which is going to make it feel choppy, but I hope the thought process flows in a logical-enough way that it's easy to follow.


This isn't intended to be just a writing-related post, this is more of a lifestyle thing, a state of mind I continually work towards, and that's one of the reasons I found this so difficult to write... combining how I see/understand the world with the world of writing.

And, as always, this is 100% opinion, right? And yes, I believe in the fluidity of growing/changing opinions. This is what I believe today, while writing this, but tomorrow or next week, these thoughts may evolve in a new direction.


So, what's my deal with control? I'm kindof obsessed with it, especially when writing characters. One of the first thing I figure out is, what they have control over, what they don't, how they deal with both sides, and what coping mechanisms they might have.

Strangely enough, thinking about control so much doesn't make me a control-freak...

It's actually the opposite. Understanding control is why I joke about being so 'zen' and how I'm always looking for the silver-lining, because the thing with control is, we have way less of it than we think, and by accepting that, it's easier to focus on the 1% we do have control over and not stress about the other 99%.


And, think about it. As a writer, what do we have control over?


Words on the page.

And very little else.



A while ago I posted a somewhat nerdy series about the difference between risk and uncertainty which, at its heart, is really about how little control we actually have because our lives are filled with uncertainty, even though we want to pretend that uncertainly doesn't exist.

You don't need to re-read that linked post (or the entire series of posts that follows it), but I'm assuming you remember the difference between risk & uncertainty, so here's the jumping off point:


By definition, you can't plan/manage/expect uncertainty, so rationalizing and blaming others isn't helpful. They are both self-comforting mechanisms to convince yourself that you have more control than you really do. Being out of control is scary, and usually that makes people panic and get angry.


The idea I want to start with is that we get scared when things are out of our control, but I also think part of that is because there's this false idea floating around telling us that, to be successful, we must have active control over as much as possible. We tell ourselves and we tell others that, if we failed, it's because we didn't work hard enough, or we weren't talented enough. We're so completely terrified of things being out of control that we pretend that uncertainty doesn't exist, so if something goes wrong, it must be someone's fault.

But that's a load of BS.

If we can first recognize that uncertainty is a reality, accept that much of what affects us is completely out of our control, and that there's an innate impulse to blame others or rationalize when we feel out of control/scared, we can try to stop this bad behaviour before it starts.

Because blaming someone else for something they have no control over is just as bad.

It's only when we stop reacting that we have the ability to learn, to transform 'uncertainty' into 'risk', and if it's a 'risk', that means we can act rather than react.

So, what started me on this obsession with control that zenned-me-out?

Haha. Yup, dyslexia.

A learning disorder doesn't necessarily make you blame others, but it can make you blame yourself, which is probably more damaging in the long term. When I was younger I didn't know what dyslexia was, so when I couldn't keep up with my classmates or made absurd mistakes, I was afraid because, no matter how hard I worked, I couldn't gain control and stop making those mistakes. When given a test that didn't "work" for my brain, my teachers thought I was lazy or rebellious because I would score perfectly on other tests and because I have a pretty high IQ.

(seriously, you do not want to look at my high-school Math or French grades... and I started, and transferred out of, Chemistry 11 three times)

I think if I did poorly on every test, in every subject, it would have been easier. I would have just accepted I was stupid and quit trying so hard.

...but it was those success-highs interspersed with the failure-lows that drove me crazy because it made that simple, easy answer illogical, and therefore impossible to accept... how could I be both stupid and smart at the same time?

And because I never actually got a proper answer, I don't think I ever stopped trying to figure it out, and I think that's kinda what saved me.

Somewhere within the suffocating frustration, despite the crippling and relentless kicks to my fragile ego, I got really bad at giving up and really good at testing/pushing my limits, and from there, I learned to give myself permission to fail when I recognized something was out of my control.

(like Math, Chemistry, and French...)

The hardest thing for me to accept was the fact that hard work doesn't equate success because that's always the lesson we get from the time we're children. We're told to work harder and our failures are usually blamed on us not working hard enough. From a young age, we have it pounded into our heads that we should have control over our successes and failures. We are taught that uncertainty doesn't exist just as several hundred years ago we were taught that the earth is flat.

So, first I had to un-learn that load of BS.

Then I had to learn that someone else's perception of my successes & failures didn't mean squat. I was the only one who could (somewhat) objectively determine whether I was being lazy or whether I was trying my hardest.

And I had to accept this:

If we can’t tell the difference between risk and uncertainty, we aren’t able to adapt or make choices that will position us to adapt in the future. In other words, we are more likely to rationalize/blame others instead of accepting that uncertainly is a reality which happens to everyone.

If we believe it's someone else's fault, it'll remain an 'uncertainty' for us instead of a 'risk' we could manage better in the future. So we're less likely to learn from it and less likely to anticipate a similar situation happening in the future. History repeats itself, yes?

(from this post)

Really, we have very little control over what happens in the world, even what happens to us directly, but another thing we do have control over is our attitude. If we refuse to accept that uncertainty exists, we'll continue to get angry, frustrated, blame others, or rationalize. That's the same as hitting a wall, falling over, getting back up and doing it all over again. We are not learning from our mistakes, we are not looking to better position ourselves for the future so we don't hit the same wall and fall down again in the exact same way. If we only focus on what went wrong, we don't look for what could go right if we made a few adjustments to our strategy.

For me, adapting meant creating a lot of work-arounds and accepting that I had to ask for help when, for example, I couldn't read a teacher's handwriting on the board. I think this probably makes it easier for me to accept criticism of my work because I know all too well that I'm fallible, I understand there's no such thing as perfection, and I've learned to put aside my ego and ask for help when I need it.

And that's a really hard thing to do... be honest about our failures.

(but I already wrote a post about that :p)

I try to keep this in mind with every aspect of my life, but let's keep to the particular example I've been using: my dyslexia. I'm 'zen' about it because I accept that the larger issue, the learning disability, is firmly out of my control. Just like I can't control the weather, I can't control gravity, heck, half the time I can't even control my beagle!

So, what am I going do, worry about it all the time? What does that accomplish? All that would do is stress me out and make me feel like a failure over something I logically have no control over.

(so, exactly like being back in elementary/high school again...)

Should I also feel like a failure because I can't control gravity?

Another thing I learned was, when you're stressed about everything that is out of your control, that's when you get overwhelmed with negative thoughts/feelings and flounder. That's when it's easy to blame someone else or rationalize the situation, to try to push a little responsibility onto someone else's shoulders.

...but that goes back to the 'reacting' vs 'acting' thing again. Unless we first accept that uncertainty is a reality that happens to everyone, we can't let it go. We can't look at a situation, step back and ask, "can I realistically do something about this or not?" ...and 'if not', let it go.

So, I'm not worried anymore about gravity or about being dyslexic. Well, not most of the time at least. I endeavour to only worry about the things I can actually control and focus my energy there. Of course, this is not a fixed decision. It's easy to say, but in practice it's about asking myself every day, about a million large and small things, "can I actually do something about this or not?" ...and if it's a big/complicated thing, ask: "if I break this into smaller pieces, can I do something about one single piece?"

...and when I can't, it's about doing my best not to hang onto it and the frustration I might feel at not being able to fix/change whatever it might be. It's about reminding myself that there's only 1% that I have control over, so I shouldn't waste my energy on the other 99%.

It's a state of mind that you have to 'actively' choose until it becomes second nature.

(like driving stick shift)

I think a healthy life is about managing your own expectations for yourself, learning and testing your own limits, and being honest about those expectations and limits, both with yourself, and with the people you live and work with.

And winding back around to the whole writing thing, yes we have control over our words, but we have absolutely no control over what other people think when they read our words.

We write our first draft, but we have no control over what our beta readers/critique partners think about it. If we don't accept it's out of our control, it would be easy to get angry, it would be easy to blame those readers and say, "you just don't understand".

But is that helpful? Is it really the reader's fault if they don't get what we're trying to say?

No. When you blame someone else, you push the responsibility onto them. You willfully give up a fraction of that 1% you DO have control over.

(seriously, why does anyone drive automatic when they could drive stick?)

So what we can do is step back and try to ask intelligent questions like, "what didn't you understand and why?" We have to take the attitude that, if something isn't coming across on the page, it's because our words aren't clear enough. And then we have to re-write, re-write, and re-write again until our readers understand what we're trying to say. That's on us, as writers. That's all we have control over: the words on the page.

And I think the same is probably true at all levels of publishing.

We have no control whether an agent will like/connect to our query letters, but we can re-write our words until they are as clean and clear as possible, get others to read them and ask, "what didn't you understand and why?" The same with editors, and again, with readers if our books ever hit the shelves. We have no control over what they think. That's the 99%. Our 1% is the next book we write.

And in the end, we have to accept that hard work doesn't equate success. Not everyone is going to understand what we tried to put on the page and not everyone is going to love it.

(...and I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't want to be one of those authors who feels the need to 'explain' to readers who 'didn't get it'...)


So, part of the reason I re-wrote this post so many times is because this is a really hard topic for me to talk about seriously. It's much easier to joke about the dyslexia thing, but in all honesty, it's something that I'm still learning to be okay with, still learning to accept that some people are going to assume I'm lazy or stupid if I make mistakes that appear silly, and yeah, that assumption still hurts.

Knowing that people are going to wander onto my blog, or into my twitter feed, and leap to that conclusion without all the facts, yeah, that's an ongoing struggle.

But that's one of the main reasons I started blogging in the first place and why I (finally) got a twitter account, because the more I'm honest about it, the more mistakes I make, and the more eyes that see those mistakes, the less stressed I'm going to be. It's going to be less 'uncertainty' and more 'risk', because with experience, I can learn to manage my reactions and adapt.

One of my online writing buddies recently told me that I always sound so calm in my emails and blog posts, that it seems like nothing really bothers me, and I kinda laughed... because yeah, I have the ability to edit blog posts and emails. I can go back and correct my wording, clean up my sentences, and erase as many mistakes as I can before sending it out into the world.

And maybe there's something inherently dishonest about that... editing words so that I give the impression of being calmer and more in control than I really am.

But there's something honest about it too. First drafts are known to be messy and ugly, but editing is about finding that core of beauty, the heart of the story, and pruning away the excess.

I am okay with admitting my words need pruning, perhaps a little more than others, because that's where my control ends -> with the words I put out there, so I should take the time to try to make them as clean, as clear, and as honest as possible.

Your impression of them, and of me, is your own.


And I'll admit that some of these blog posts are a way of taking a storm of thoughts and trying to distill them into a teacup, to make an idea more manageable for myself. Even though I think about control a lot, in writing and in my daily life, I still found it a struggle to turn those thoughts into a coherent blog post, and I don't think I entirely succeeded today...

BUT, I did my best. I kept my promise.

Sorry if it's messy & ugly, but that's just the way I am ;)

A small tribute + orchids

I was already planning to put up a short series of posts about orchids because a few people have asked me about my ever-growing collection.

The reason I decided to do it now is because the dear family friend who just died was also an orchid lover. One of her favourite things to do was go plant shopping with me and my mom, so it seemed fitting to write these posts as I am coming to terms with her very sudden death.

For all of you who have private messaged/emailed/texted me, thank you so much.

Orchids, pt 1

Orchids, pt 2

Orchids, pt 3

Why I don't review books

I have a brain-wrenching quandary.

Ever since I started hanging out online and chatting about writing, I've had a clear policy of not talking about books I've read.

There are three main reasons for this.

#1) I find it incredibly disrespectful to dump on something I don't like because it might be someone else's favourite thing in the world, and because the (in this case) author worked darn hard to get their book in print.

#2) As part of the whole respect-thing, I will never lie or exaggerate. If someone respects me enough to ask a question, I want to respect them enough give them an honest answer. I want to own my words.

 #3) I (unfortunately) know myself.

The first one is easy. It's pretty self-explanatory. Disrespecting others is about the one thing that snaps my usually calm/patient state of mind and has, on the rare occasion, gotten me so furious that I can't speak/articulate a single word. I could write an entire post (or several) on why I care so much about respect/disrespect, but it boils down to: when you disrespect someone, you're essentially treating them as less-human than yourself, which is a very slippery slope upon which can be found the greatest atrocities in human history.

But let's avoid a hearty dose of over-analysis for today, yes?

And the second reason is also pretty clear. I'm not going to talk-up a book I didn't particularly like. I might suggest it to someone who I think will like the book, but I will avoid talking about my own reading experience.

So what do I mean with the third reason?

I (unfortunately) know myself.

From #1 & #2, you should be able to guess that I don't want to talk about books I have not liked.

So that narrows the potential list to review and leaves the books I tolerated, I liked, and I loved.

All of which come down to personal taste. "Would I have it again?"

...and I'm not shy about admitting I may have bad taste.

Because the things I like, the books I am attracted to are... strange. Or the reasons I am attracted to them are strange.

Like, I've read Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' probably 50+ in my life and it is one of my favourite books, but probably not for a reason anyone else likes it...

I love that, through the entire book, no character ever tries to sympathize/reason with him. They simply label him as a monster (which I'm not arguing, he is, and that's awesome), but at the time when Dracula was written, most intelligent people still judged those from other cultures as sub-humans and sought to destroy them with the same level of dedicated arrogance as Van Helsing & co set out to destroy Dracula.

I have a set of world mythology books published by professors from Yale/Harvard/Oxford/etc in the early 1900's where they consistently refer to other cultures/people as barbaric, etc and how difficult (and necessary) it was to 'civilize' them. That's only a hundred years ago...

So, assuming Dracula is a monster, sub-human, and not worth trying to empathize/reason with, fits perfectly in with the world-view at the time. It's a nearly-honest, non-white-washed, non-PC-glossed glimpse into how people actually thought about those outside their culture at the time.

Now... to anyone out there who's read "Dracula", is that something you noticed, or cared about? And for those who haven't read it... does that even remotely entice you to read it? ...I'm guessing "no".

Let me reiterate that I read it for the first time when I was 9, and I couldn't articulate all of this back then... but I did ask myself why they didn't just talk to Dracula. So even way back then, this was the odd reason I connected to the book and the reason I re-read it... because I couldn't understand why they didn't just sit down and have a conversation. It seemed the obvious thing to do.

I almost never lend books to other people because usually the books are returned... unfinished. Most of the books I love and re-read,no one has ever heard of. But I don't really care. Just like I want to own my words without being ashamed, I also want to own the things I love without being ashamed.

Which makes me want to write reviews for books I love...

...but...

I like books for weird reasons. Like a character who is creepily OCD. Or the author is amazing at playing with words to create sentences that have multiple meanings. For clever description. For philosophy, for irrationality, for humour, for the way words are strung together so they look good, or sound good or taste good. I like books that are so ridiculous that they hit a level of absurdity that's baffling. Characters who are arrogant, or dense, or broken. I like seeing how skillful an author is at emotionally or psychologically manipulating readers. And subtext... shovel on the subtext and I will revel in it :)

There's no set reason why I like a book, other than, maybe, it gets me to look at something from a new angle. Good, or bad.

Now, add in the fact that I'm prone to over-analysis...

...so if I wrote a book review...

...and focused on what I liked...

Like, analyzing the use of 'I' in 1st POV. Or cataloguing the use/frequency of colours. Or how the author uses a specific word which manipulates the reader into thinking "x". Or how I like the taste of a set of letters/sounds/words in a particular sentence. How the order/arrangement of a couple lines can completely change the subtext. Or the progression/arc of emotional intelligence or self-awareness in a side character.


...can you imagine the result?

Well, most likely any potential readers' eyes would glaze over and they would die of boredom. The things I seem to like and care about are not generally things that others are interested in. Thus, not enticing others to buy my favourite books... which would be the opposite of what I set out to do.


And therein lies the quandary. How to go about sharing books I love, while being honest/true about why I loved them, yet also succeeding in not actually scaring people away...

Suggestions? Advice? Thoughts?

(other than I'm crazy and you feel the intense need to run far, far away)





As a curiosity, here's a random/short list of some of my favourite non-YA books. Three gold stars for anyone who has heard of, or read, more than two of these:


Edward Carey's "Observatory Mansions" and "Alva & Irva"
Jostein Gaarder's "The Solitaire Mystery" and "Sophie's World"
Helen Oyeyemi's "Icarus Girl"
Banana Yoshimoto's "Amrita" (and nearly everything else she's written)
Elizabeth McClung's "Zed"
Catherynne Valente's "Orphan's Tales" (books 1 & 2)
Nicholas Christopher's "A Trip to the Stars" and "Veronica"
James Thurber's "The Thirteen Clocks"
Kris Kenway's "Bliss Street" and "Too Small for Basketball"
Lulu Wang's "The Lily Theatre"
Joe Coomer's "Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God" and "A Pocketful of Names"
Sean Dixon's "The Girls Who Saw Everything"
Stephen Walker's "Danny Yates Must Die"
Jim Munroe's "Angry Young Spaceman"
Emma Donoghue's "Room"

Probably the last one, Emma Donoghue's "Room", is the only one you've likely heard of/read.

Personality tests

Every few months, a conversation about the Meyers-Briggs personality text pops up on social media somewhere.

Now, my dad used to be a consultant in the Human Resources field. He would be brought in to speak to companies, to analyze problems between co-workers/teams, etc at both small and large companies, and things like the 2010 Olympics bid discussions.

Often he would bring home work-related research, including tools like personality tests, and because it was fun, I played along. So, I've taken all the major personality tests, including the MB one. I think I first took the MB one when I was in grade 4 or 5.

They're interesting, but I don't necessarily *believe* in them. To me, they're slightly more scientific than astrology charts, and if you look up your astrological sign, I'm sure there are going to be some aspects where you go, "Amazing! This is just like me!"

...but the thing is, if you read up on the other signs, you're just as likely to find qualities/similarities that also fit you. They're so vague, you can always find something that 'fits' with your self-image.

And personality tests aren't a heck of a lot better.

A big problem is the way questions in personality tests are worded. They're vague, and often you're choosing an answer you really don't necessarily agree with because there's no option to leave it blank.

For example, I thought it would be fun to take the 1st personality test ever:

Galen, who lived in 129-201 AD is thought to have created the first personality test, based on the four humours.

Of course there's no way to get the actual original questions, but to get close, I Googled 'Four Humours Personality Quiz', took 4 different tests, and ended up with these results:

Sanguine, Melancholic, Choleric, and the last one was almost a perfect split between Phlegmatic, Choleric & Melancholic.

And I'm going to use one of the quizzes, this one (because at the end, it tells you which answer you gave falls into which personality category), to illustrate how the wording of a question can/could easily skew the answer.

The options for question #7 under Strengths are:

Planner - One who prefers to work out a detailed arrangement beforehand, for the accomplishment of a project or goal. This person much prefers involvement with the planning stages and the finished product rather than the carrying out of the task.

Patient - One who is unmoved by delay - calm and tolerant.

Positive - Characterized by certainty and assurance.

Promoter - One who can compel others to go along, join, or invest through the sheer charm of his/her own.


And, honestly, I could check every single one of these because, depending on the situation, I could see myself choosing each of these possibilities.

In the case of this quiz, you'll notice each option begins with the same letter... a cute device, but it clearly skews/limits the choices by adhering to this pattern.

On the other end of the spectrum, the options for question #35 under Weaknesses are:

Messy - This person is messy because it isn't fun to discipline him/herself to clean. The mess is hardly noticed. There is another personality that gets messy when depressed, and yet another that is messy because it takes too much energy to do the cleaning. Be sure you are the first one mentioned if you check this word.

Moody - One easily slips into moods. This person doesn't get very high emotionally, but does experience very low lows.

Mumbles - This person may mumble quietly under the breath when pushed. This is a passive display of anger.

Manipulative - One who influences or manages shrewdly or deviously for one's own advantage. One who will find a way to get his/her own way.

And this was a question where I did not want to check any option, as I don't think any of these apply to me. Also, due to ensuring all choices start with the letter 'M', they don't even relate to each other, so it's pretty meaningless to choose between them. If all the options related to the cleanliness of your room, that would be consistent, which would make your answer actually worth something. Comparing apples to peaches gets you nowhere.

While the Meyers-Briggs test is better about comparing apples to apples, there are still many questions on the test where I can potentially see choosing several of the options, depending on the situation, especially since it relies on a sliding scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Seriously, how can you logically separate 'disagree' from 'slightly disagree'?

For example:

You often get so lost in thoughts that you ignore or forget your surroundings.

Well, it thoroughly depends on the situation. Even if I narrow all the possibilities down to a single activity: swimming. Well, it depends if I'm swimming at the lake, if there are boats around, or if I'm at the pool whether I'm sharing a lane, swimming alone, have only a little time or have all day, etc. There are a ton of factors that will ultimately change whether my focus is narrow or wide.


So, while astrology and personality quizzes are interesting, I also don't think they're worth much, other than, possibly, a clever tool to entice someone to do a little bit of self reflection/self-analysis.

But that's not exactly something I need encouragement/enticement for, since I am prone to over-analysis.



Now, HOPEFULLY you're going to get a good laugh at this next part...

The fact that I'm deconstructing personality quizzes into what works, what doesn't, and 'why', is pretty classic for the Meyers-Briggs INTJ personality type, which is what I've 'scored' ever since I took the very first test as a kid. It's also classic for a Virgo, which is my astrological sign, and Earth Sheep from Chinese astrology. In Numerology, my Personality Number is 1 (based off your name), which again, lists qualities like level-headed, analytical, confident, etc.

...but that's just me pulling common elements together. There's an equal portion of 'traits' within these that don't apply at all :)

All-in-all, personality tests are a bit of fun, and an excellent time-waster. Don't ask how long it took me to search out all these different quizzes, take them, etc, because, y'know, I never want to half-ass something, even when it's analyzing something I don't believe in... like personality tests & astrology.

...sigh, yes. INTJ.

Hopefully my dyslexia and high emotional intelligence balance me out a little ;)


So, what do you think of personality tests, numerology, astrology, tarot, etc?

Personally, I'm a little curious if there's any correlation between personality types and genre of writing...? I'm guessing 'No', but it would be a fun poll to waste a little time ;)

Uncertainty/risk in terms of plot

I am a pantsing-type writer, so my characters always come first. Their choices change the course of the plot, which is why, for me as a writer, knowing a character’s field of focus is essential.

Which is why this particular post is going to feel like it bled over from yesterdays... plot & character are inseparable in my mind. I get writers block when I disconnect when a character, when I don’t know how they would react, what choice they would make, etc.

Probably, one of the main reasons I’m not very good at understanding structure is because I write this way.

The last post on character already talked a bit about plot, about how the character must have a believable set of experiences/knowledge by the time they hit the climax, and similarly, this post is going to waver between plot & character.

You can break plot down into character reactions/decisions. When a character is hit with something they are unprepared for (uncertainty), they’re going to react.

When a character is hit with something they are prepared for (risk), they are going to make a decision.

Now, I’m not guaranteeing that every time your character comes up again uncertainty they will fail and every time they come up again risk they will succeed. There are always outside influences that affect the outcome, good or bad.

Many of those outside influences will be like a trail of breadcrumbs through the story, insignificant on their own, but when the MC gets to the climax, they realize they’ve got an entire loaf of bread. (Note-to-self: hydras probably like bread, yes? What about pit-vipers?)

As writers, we are (or should be) masters at manipulation.

In ‘Who-dun-it’ novels, facts are the breadcrumbs. Essentially, a series of sensory data that the MC observes, then puts all those pieces together in a cohesive pattern. When the MC is clear on what happened, s/he fingers the butler as the killer.

We provide clues to the reader, not just observational data (which you can consider, for the purpose of my point, hard data. As in: facts), but with emotional and psychological filters through which that data is absorbed (as in, your character’s field of focus). They may notice a room full of things (the list of hard data) but will only focus on some of it (the field of focus).

You can provide all the facts in the world, you can tell a smoker the statistics of how many people die from cancer, if the data exists in the realm of ‘uncertainty’, they’re not going to stop smoking. They are going to believe they’re that 1% who will survive, so they pull themselves out of the trenches and run forward into machine-gun-fire.

To hook a reader, we have to transition ‘uncertainty’ into ‘risk’ We have to bring it into their personal field of focus, and the best way to do that is to make them care.

YES! Emotional manipulation!

But… how do we do that?

We mine our own experiences. We break our own hearts, we bleed on the page, we mourn the loss of a favourite pet.

Personally, I’m really sick of the phrase ‘save-the-cat’, but I’m going to use it anyways because it’s a general concept I think most people are familiar with. For those who aren’t, the general principle is to show an unlikable character doing something nice, like rescuing a vulnerable kitten who is alone in the rain -> to show they are only mean-and-prickly on the outside but are really a marshmallow on the inside.

Alternatively, there’s ‘kick-the-dog’, where a seemingly nice character is seen secretly being mean to someone else, therefore letting the reader/viewer know that that character is super evil.

It feels like bad/poorly done emotional manipulation... it's so obvious, I tend to roll my eyes.

I don’t like these terms because they simplify things into *good* and *evil*, but they are easy to work with/explain, and in terms of actual writing, you can get similar impact in a much subtler way.

Example: In TRoRS, Triss steals a bag of chips to share with N... not Triss' favourite flavour, N's favourite. Small acts of consideration, of putting another character first, are a lot more subtle, and a lot more realistic than literally saving a cat in the rain.

And characters don’t have to be likeable. Most of my characters... I seriously think I'm trying to make readers hate them (what's wrong with me?)

But think of the term anti-hero, or flawed main character. How many people like Spiderman and Batman more than Superman? Batman, especially, because even with all his fancy toys, he’s human, he’s mortal, he has no superpowers. He has to work harder than other superheros, and we kindof admire that.

(I don’t like “heros”. Heroes often make me angry when they justify horrible deeds because ‘they have no choice’ or are simply horrible people, but it's justified 'cause they are 'saving-the-world')

I am a huge fan of both Courtney Summers and Laurie Halse Anderson. These amazing authors (and others) write interesting and realistic characters, and it's their characters that made me want to write YA in the first place. If you’ve never read CS’s thoughts on “unlikable female characters”, read this and this and this.

There are reasons you keep turning the pages in CS’s books, not as obvious as a ‘save-the-cat’ thing, but there are moments where you understand the prickly, mean, selfish character… and that’s enough to keep reading.

Emotional manipulation. That’s how we let a reader see through the emotional/psychological lens of our characters. So what’s that all about?

Prepare to groan…

It’s in showing, not telling.

Essentially, it’s about letting the reader live in the character’s skin, letting them view the data through that character’s field of focus instead of simply summarizing what happened. When you summarize, there’s no emotional connection. When you live in the character’s skin, that’s where you experience the sights, smells, and emotions of the character.

And that’s how/why you care. Because you are gaining experience. That character’s life transitions from ‘uncertainty’ to ‘risk’. You learn the ability to plan/manage/understand the character's choices.

It’s no longer a statistic printed on a cigarette carton, it’s discovering your 6 year old daughter has asthma because of your smoking. Suddenly an uncertainty, something so unlikely to happen you don’t even think about it, becomes a risk. It enters your field of focus and becomes important.

You can't un-learn knowledge/experience.

Yeah, I know it seems like I’m wandering all over the place. Like trying to walk a beagle right? They’re constantly weaving all over the place, stopping short, and getting underfoot.

(also eating gross things on the ground… shiny tangent? where? /gives self minor whiplash...)

My point is:

Each plot point/progression has to have an emotional stake, something that matters to the character. To use another very common/familiar example, in ‘The Hunger Games,’ Katniss had no reason to volunteer to be tribute… but why did she?

She had all the facts, she knew whoever went would die, there was a statistical chance her sister could be chosen, but the thought never even occurred to her as being in the realm of possibility until her sister’s name was called and the idea, and the risk/outcome, entered her field of focus. It suddenly became important.

Then she had to make a decision.

And this is why I say that, for me, a character’s choice changes the course of the story, and to know what they would choose, first you have to know their field of focus. What constitutes risk and what constitutes uncertainty? What are their past knowledge, experience, and interests?

...and what about the characters around your MC?

And with that food-for-thought, I'll leave you. Have a good weekend, all!

/end nerdy-series-of-posts.

Uncertainty/risk in terms of character

We build up our own understanding of risk through experience: how we react to uncertainty/risk and how others react to uncertainty/risk.

So when we look at characters, what experiences do they have with risk/uncertainty, and how can we use our own experiences as writers?

Sorry for another Margaret Atwood quote, but: “Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there's a little utopia.”

I’m not really a fan of dystopian books. Part of this is because I prefer personal/intimate character journeys rather than ‘save-the-world’ ones. I’m also not really a fan because dystopian world are often simplified to the point where a blind monkey could poke logic holes all over the place.

Note I said often, not always. I have read a few fabulous dystopian books.

Logic is my thing. It’s how I write (I could probably link 2 dozen+ posts about writing), how I read/edit/critique (and another 2 dozen here), and how I think (seriously, you’re already neck-deep in another nerdy-over-analytical-series-of-posts and you should know I'm prone to this type of behaviour).

Like my favourite writing-group-ism, the “Pizza Popsicle”, I drive everyone crazy with the number of times I ask “why” and "I can't quite imagine that."

And I think a huge part of this is I want to believe. I want to get so caught up in a character or world that I lose the impulse to ask “why” and just live in the story.

So bringing my point back around again (darn you, shiny tangents…)

The Margaret Atwood quote is about uncertainty/risk. If the lights went out, for those to whom that was an ‘uncertainty’ would have no way of managing/planning, and that situation would be a dystopia. For those to whom the lights going out was a ‘risk’, for them, because they have the ability to manage/plan, that situation could be their own utopia. 

Hey, what an awesome chance to whip out a shotgun and loot/pillage or kill that neighbour who always lets his dog poop on your lawn.

So, why am I talking about dystopian literature and Margaret Atwood when I promised a post about characters?

Well, because I think that can be the basis for how you position your main character within your world (and I’m not specifically meaning sci-fi/fantasy, I’m being inclusive of contemporary/our world/etc as well when I use this term).

Zombies attack. For your main character, is this situation ‘risk’ or ‘uncertainty’?

Your MC’s brother overdoses. Is this situation a ‘risk’ or an ‘uncertainty’?

Your magician got cursed and now his wand is a self-aware, snarky pit-viper (with its full latent magic).

Your orphan shark MC has just been adopted by a vegan parrot fish couple.

All of these characters in all of these situations could react in an innumerable number of ways depending on what their background is, but switching it from 'risk' to 'uncertainty' ups the stakes.

When you get to the climax and your magician is facing a demon-princess transmogrified into a giant hydra, and has to convince his wand-turned-pit-viper to help when it would rather slither into a cool, dank hole or sunbathe on a sunny rock, as a reader, I want to believe it when your magician pulls a badly whittled flute from his robes and hypnotizes that pit-viper into saving his ass…

…but if you haven’t lead me to believe it’s logical, that he can whittle a flute, that he has past experiences with hypnotizing snakes, or fighting giant hydras, I’m not going to believe it. Sure, he can flub up every one of those things along the way, but he has to gain experience in those areas.

The trick of convincing a reader into believing something as absurd as that (by the way, that pit-viper story idea is now copyrighted*… so no stealing) is possible.

No matter what you throw at your character, there has to be a balance between ‘uncertainty’ and ‘risk’.

Well, no, I’m going to amend that. I think the inciting incident can be an ‘uncertainty’, and other events/challenges in the story can also be 'uncertainties', but the climax has to be a ‘risk’. The character must have the experience to manage/plan to take down that giant hydra. He can’t suddenly just take off his shoe and throw it in the air in the hopes that the hydra will choke on it… if that hydra does choke, or the magician suddenly becomes enlightened (even though he has never meditated a day in his life) and can cast killer-destructo-spells without his pit-viper-wand, then I’m throwing your book across the room.

Okay, not really, because I’d probably be reading it on my Kindle.

There must be a logical progression/absorption of knowledge/experience.

And I’m not just talking about big stuff, I’m talking about little stuff too.

Y’know I will pick apart every word in every sentence (which is why I don’t do line edits). One thing I am particularly anal about is are *how* characters view the world. Metaphors/similes that are out of character, phrases ‘too old’ or ‘too young’, observations that are ‘too juvenile’ or ‘too self-aware’, I’m going to take those apart really fast.

A character in a sci-fi story is probably not going to compare a distant planet or technology to something common from Victorian England, just as a character who has grown up in the mountains isn’t going to describe things with visuals from, say, the ocean, or the plains. Your seventeen-year-old valley girl who grew up in the city and is into shopping and makeup won’t compare the sound of her heels to gunfire and the sound of her friends talking shouldn't be compared to barnyard animals. Those things are not in her field of focus.

People talk differently, depending on their background/experience, and so should characters.

And this is another way to think about/write an authentic voice, by knowing what your character’s field of focus is.

I’m not saying I an expert, I am in no way claiming I’m right or I never make mistakes, but this is one of the things I work towards (read: obsess over) in my own writing. Heck, my own taste in characters is pretty questionable...

(seriously... I'm not even going to bother linking because there are too many examples I could use here)

How your character understands the world and makes choices is based on their past experiences. 

You’ve heard the line, “To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

So what tool** is your character?

And what do the problems you (the writer) throw at them look like? Are they all nails (risk), or did you throw a few screws and a staple in there (uncertainty)?

If you're having a problem with tension, maybe your 'hammer' character has been given all 'nails' and every problem is too easily solved.

* Wouldn't that magician story make an awesome bedtime story?

** Hahaha, I totally called your character a tool! (can you tell I'm over-tired?)

Uncertainty/risk as a writer

The biggest reason I think uncertainty/risk is good for a writer to understand is that, in general, I think it's good to recognize larger patterns. We are a community of thinkers, and by stepping back, stripping away all the BS, and analyzing about how we think, how we make decisions, how we gather information, how we react, how we view reality, I think those are worthwhile pursuits, because they help us create more vivid and realistic characters and subtext.

Personally, for writers, risk/uncertainty enters our daily life, maybe in ways we don't think about.

For example, some agents post year-end query stats, which I always find really interesting to read. I’m going to make up some numbers, just to give you an idea of what I mean.

Agent A received 250 queries/week in 2014. Out of those 250 queries, s/he requested 5 manuscripts. That’s 1000 queries a month, 20 manuscripts to be read/considered. In a year, that’s 12,000 queries, 240 manuscripts to read/consider.

Out of those 240 manuscripts, Agent A takes on 3 new clients.

Do you want to do the math?

Just like wave after wave of Canadian soldiers getting gunned down, the success rate is dismally low, but every writer sends off a query letter convinced that they are going to be that 1% who survive.

Now, I’m not saying that to be discouraging.

Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

If we believe we’re going to fail, we will.

But I think it’s important to think about in terms of managing our expectations as writers. Writing is an extremely solitary state, and it can be really discouraging when others around us are succeeding -> but they are that 1%. By understanding the numbers, it puts into perspective how many other writers are in the exact same circumstance as our own. It transitions from ‘uncertainty’ to ‘risk’ when we have that awareness, when we allow it to enter our frame of focus.

Another writer I follow recently re-tweeted this article by Robin LaFevers, and the author Laini Taylor linked to a post about the blessings of not being happy all the time.

As a culture, we don’t like to talk about failure. We don’t like to be seen as losers, or whiners. It hurts our pride to be proven wrong. It’s the prevalence of this attitude that propagates stigmas around mental illness, infertility, addictions, etc. It's why people put up with abusive relationships or jobs they hate.

I myself am guilty of this. I try to only post about good things in my life, and not dwell on the bad. I often talk about my dyslexia, but it’s framed in such a way to focus on what I’ve learned, what I’m better at, or simply for humour to lighten the mood.

But for years and years I wouldn't admit to anyone that I had a learning disability because I thought people would think I was stupid. And I'm not. There's a reason I was able to hide it for 20+ years of my life.

I haven’t been blogging consistently for a while, partially due to the number of deaths/illnesses in my family, but partially because I separated with my soon-to-be-ex-husband a little over two years ago (yes, it is STILL not done...). It’s been a heavy/stressful couple of years, and often I don’t have the emotional/mental capacity to re-frame things in a good light or to see the humour in it.

I choose silence out of embarrassment, out of not wanting to look like a failure, or a whiner.

It’s out of fear.

And I’m not alone in that.

This is why we deal with uncertainty the way we do: we rationalize it or we blame others. It’s to protect our fragile ego, and all that does is propagate more uncertainty.

So, again, what does this have to do with writers? Well, as I said, we’ re pretty solitary, so we're already prone to the dangers of uncertainty. When we are hit with something bad, especially failure or rejection, what do we do?

Well, if we talked more as a community, shared more of our collective experiences, ‘uncertainty’ becomes ‘risk’. We would have the benefit of other people’s experiences, and knowing that we are not alone is a big deal in making something more manageable.

And I’m not just talking about our mental/emotional/psychological state, I’m talking about our writing.

I wrote a post last year about mining emotion from past experiences and recycling them in stories. Well, why not mine other people’s experiences as well? Wouldn’t having that range give us a wider perspective on what is and could be possible for characters, for plot?

Earnest Hemingway famously said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

The thing is, it doesn’t have to be our blood on the page. We can reimagine our own experiences/emotions, it doesn't have to be 'write what you know' in the literal sense. We can ask other people questions, especially about the hard stuff we don't usually talk about out of fear, so we can gain knowledge/experience from them.

Do you know how many people have thanked me, in comments or via email, for being so blunt in these posts about my struggles with dyslexia? I really have no idea... but a lot.

Something I felt ashamed of for years... talking about it has helped other people.

And it's changing my perspective on it. I still will never be proud of having a learning disability, but by not hiding it, by having that conversation, it puts into perspective how many other people are/have been dealing with similar things.

Maybe my experiences can be something I pass along, for others to use.

Margaret Atwood said, “Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don't go there to swim, then those young people don't have to find out by trial and error.”

Writing is about sharing experiences, especially in YA/MG stories. There’s a huge push for authentic characters, authentic *voice*, authentic reactions/actions. We want readers to connect to our characters, to our stories.

And for that to happen, there has to be an emotional connection. Now, that doesn’t mean everyone has to love your main character, but they have to be interested in them, they have to understand why a character chooses something and why they react to something else. 

If the character is “too dumb to live”, the reader will put down the book in anger/frustration.

We want to believe the character is real, that if a reader was placed in a similar circumstance, with similar knowledge/skills/experience that they might make similar choices.

Notice what I did there?

Next post will be about uncertainty/risk in terms of character.

Uncertainty/risk in terms of focus

I read something quite a while ago, and I’m sorry but I can’t recall where, so I can’t link to the original… but it was an article about WW1.

It was about all the young Canadians who served in the trenches, and the question was, how did they convince wave upon wave of young men to pull themselves out of the trenches and run forward towards the enemy, and get gunned down?

How come the men in the trenches didn’t watch that first wave of men get gunned down and go, “heck no, I’m not doing that”?

And the answer was something along the lines of:

If you tell a group of one hundred young men that, out of all of them, one will survive the battle, every single man in that room will completely believe that they are that 1% who will survive.

The key being, these are/were all young men.

These guys were young teenagers, none had any experience with war, with extinction/death on a huge scale, with pain, disease, fear, or killing other people, many of them also young men. They did not have the experience to recognize/manage risk. Just like in the example I used yesterday about the teenager driving in the rain for the first time, they know rain makes the road slippery, they would have had to learn that in their drivers test, but just because you ‘know’ something, doesn’t automatically make it a ‘risk’.

I think the main difference between risk and uncertainty is the idea of focus.

Humans are bombarded with information/stimuli, and over time we learn what’s important and what we can safely ignore. We can either focus really well on one thing, or we can step our perspective back a little and focus at a wider range, but we lose the specifics that we would get through focusing on a single thing.

Like with a camera lens. You can focus on a person’s face, and everything around it will be blurry, or you can focus on the ocean/sunrise, where nothing specifically in the frame is intensely sharp nor blurry.

So, when it comes to risk/uncertainty, ‘risk’ would be something we have in our viewfinder because we have experience, so we know it’s important to pay attention to. We keep those in our peripheral vision, aware of them, but not focused on them… but we can quickly switch focus because we know they are there. Like, while driving, we are aware someone is beside us and behind us, but we mostly focus on the person in front of us unless, say, the person beside us starts swerving into our lane, then our focus shifts to the side.

If we’re using the camera lens again, ‘uncertainty’ are things not visible in our viewfinder. They exist, but maybe they’re behind the camera, or too high/low to be in the frame. Going back to the driving example again, we’re aware of drivers behind/beside/in front, but we pay no attention to what’s above us. That is out of our frame of focus. This is also why a lot of accidents happen at intersections. We are so focused on the light in front of us, we fail to give proper notice to what might be coming at us from the side.

We can’t focus on everything all the time, it's impossible, but as we gain experience, we are better able to position ourselves to react when hit with the unexpected, hit with ‘uncertainty’.*

Which is why I think understanding the terms is the first step in widening that focus. If we can’t tell the difference between risk and uncertainty, we aren’t able to adapt or make choices that will position us to adapt in the future. In other words, we are more likely to rationalize/blame others instead of accepting that uncertainly is a reality which happens to everyone.

If we believe it's someone else's fault, it'll remain an 'uncertainty' for us instead of a 'risk' we could manage better in the future. So we're less likely to learn from it and less likely to anticipate a similar situation happening in the future. History repeats itself, yes?

So what does this have to do with us, as writers?




* If I was mean, this is where I would have included some stuff about Gadamer's Hermeneutical Horizon theory, but I figured this was nerdy enough.

Uncertainty/Risk

I always feel like I should put a giant blinking “warning!” sign up when I click into over-analytical-mode.

These posts never get many comments, but I do get more emails than normal. Please, as always, comment, question, criticize, or throw ripe fruit in my general direction. Go all out, and if you send me an email, I will answer.

And the disclaimer: these nerdy posts are 100% opinion, please read all instructions carefully, keep away from small children, and have Poison Control on speed-dial.

I was nearly positive I’d already written a nerdy post in the past about uncertainty/risk, but searching my posts for the words turned up nothing.

The difference between uncertainty and risk is super interesting to me, and I think quite relevant to writers.

So let’s start off with how they’re different?

Risk is something you can manage. For example, if you get in your car when it’s pouring rain, you will mentally tell yourself, “The roads are slippery, my control will be less than normal, so if I slow down by 10km (or 5 miles for you Americans), I will be better able to react if the car in front of me slams on their brakes.”

That’s risk. Weighing the boundaries of what could go wrong and where the safe zone is. Those boundaries are things we learn through experience, either our own (slamming on the brakes, but going too fast to stop properly and hitting someone/etc) or through other people’s experiences (watching that happen to someone else, or having a friend/family member tell you).

We learn what those boundaries of safety are through experience, which means the younger you are, the less experience you have, therefore the younger you are, the less able you are to judge the safety/success of something.

This is why we get more conservative as we get older. We understand risk, and we manage it by slowing down 10km in the rain.

Uncertainty is when something unexpected slaps you in the face. This is the teenager driving in the rain for the very first time and maintaining the usual driving speed/distance as if they were driving on a dry/clear road. The car in front of them slams on their brakes, the teenager slams on their brakes… and someone behind rear-ends them.

Uncertainly is something we don’t have experience to plan for/manage. It’s something hypothetical that could happen, but is so unlikely we don’t even consider it possible.

Like, we take out house insurance for flood/fire, but we don’t take insurance for an asteroid striking the earth and obliterating our new above-ground pool.

Depending where we live, depending what our everyday lives and experiences are like, risk vs uncertainty can be very different things.

For example, I live in Vancouver, BC (Canada). Something that I would think so unlikely that I don’t consider possible would be a massive terrorist attack, like missiles crashing down on the street 50 feet away. For me, this falls into the ‘Uncertainty’ category. I would have no idea what to do, no past experience to draw from, no plan of how to manage this.

Now, if I lived in a different part of the world, missiles falling in the street might not be an uncertainty, they could be a risk. It’s a very real possibility when most people would have experienced it or heard about it happening to someone else. They would have a plan, they would know how to better manage this kind of event.

This is why we have fire drills and things like that, to gain experience for an unlikely situation.

Another example would be the terrible tragedy that happened almost 10 years ago in New Orleans. Yes, there was the potential of the entire city flooding, but it seemed so unlikely that no one had a plan for it, no one knew how to manage it. It wasn’t a ‘risk’, it was an ‘uncertainty’.

Now, the funny thing about uncertainty is that people generally deal with it in two ways.

1) They rationalize it. If we think back to the New Orleans tragedy, how many people after-the-fact said, “I knew that would happen.” That is them rationalizing the situation. Yes, the information was there, yes, people knew there was a possibility of flooding, but because it was unlikely, they did nothing about it and then it slapped them in the face. The teenager in the car knows rain makes the road slippery, but still doesn’t slow down/manage the risk because they feel it’s unlikely to happen, and doesn't consider that someone behind them won't be able to stop very well either if they unexpectedly slam on their brakes.

2) They blame someone else. When surprised, one of the most natural things is to look for a scape-goat. New Orleans? I’m sure you can think of a dozen people, maybe more, who were blamed… but it's not like any of them were directly responsible. They, like hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, just didn't think a flood was likely to happen. The same with the teenager getting rear-ended by another car, their first reaction will probably be to blame the other driver, but if the teen had been driving safely and planning for poorer driving conditions due to the rain, it's very likely the accident could have been avoided. But due to their lack of experience, the thought wouldn't even occur to the brand new teen driver.

By definition, you can't plan/manage/expect uncertainty, so rationalizing and blaming others isn't helpful. They are both self-comforting mechanisms to convince yourself that you have more control than you really do. Being out of control is scary, and usually that makes people panic and get angry.

The thing is, if we understand the difference between 'risk' and 'uncertainty', when we are hit with something unexpected we would be better able to recognize the difference, and rather than panic/blame others, instead we could learn -> gain experience, and be better able to handle a similar incident in the future.

If you don't learn from it, well, it's pretty likely you'll be rear-ended again in the future...

So, are we all clear on the difference between the two words?

Okay, so in the next few posts, I'm going to talk about:

Uncertainty/risk as a matter of focus

Uncertainty/risk as a writer

Uncertainty/risk in terms of character

Uncertainty/risk in terms of plot

These posts are going to be a progressive series, one leading into the next, but I’m breaking them up because I know my nerdy posts are heavy-reading. Hopefully they will be more palatable in smaller bites.