Progress: exciting & scary

This messy new story is starting to fall into place, in my brain at least, if not yet on the page.

(maybe at the point to write a temporary blurb & throw it up on my website soon)

EDIT: a VERY loose/rough blurb is now on my website. You'll notice there's almost no mention of plot  as I'm not far enough into it to know that yet :p *forever-pantser*


So, where am I at?

Mostly it's the idea(s) behind the story that are coming together. See, every time I start a new story, it's because there was something in the previous story that I wasn't able to fully explore.

And, coming out of TRoRS edits... I've already admitted I was craving a super emotionally messy story/MC because N was so emotionally stunted, and neither of the MC's in SCARLIGHT or AotD were satisfyingly 'messy' enough... (of course I will go back to those stories at a later date).

Other things I'm going to explore:

More on the notion of fluidity in relationships. The boundaries/lines between 'friend' and 'lover', and how/when those lines blur. Like with N from TRoRS, I'm not overly interested in writing a story in which a character 'labels' themselves, instead what I like is a self-identity paradigm shift.*

Another aspect is, I'm building off some long email conversations with a writing buddy about things like vulnerability & power imbalances, something we're both really interested in (hence the obscene length of said email exchanges...). 'Roles' we play in our relationships, ruts we fall into -> especially 'bad' ones we come to accept as 'normal'. Things like consent and emotional manipulation/abuse... so, 'y'know, 'light' topics.

To balance that out, this is also (possibly) the funniest story I've ever written...

And... physical intimacy.  Literally there is more physical intimacy on the first couple pages than in the accumulated total of everything else I've ever written. And this scares the crap outta me, 'cause this is a whole new dimension that I've never worked with and am afraid I'm not going to be able to do it justice.

(I've made jokes before how, if I ever write a 'normal relationship', it'll be one of the surest signs of the coming apocalypse)

This story also has the biggest cast of characters I've ever worked with (which is daunting!)... or maybe it just feels like it? Well, secondary characters with their own arcs...

...when all these things add up together, I feel like this is going to be the most emotionally complex story I've written... and I'm already no slacker when it comes to that.

So, uhm, yeah. Lots of reasons to be terrified, but also lots of reasons that I'm crazy excited and obsessed with this new story. It still doesn't have a proper title though :p


But voice? Oh yeah, that's totally the easy part ;)

BeBe (the MC) is already coming off the page, just the way I like 'em ;p




* This may be an unpopular belief, but I tend to think that labels are often more about the people around us than about ourselves. As in, we label ourselves to make it easier for the people around us to understand us ...and we are so much more than a string of easily-memorizable labels.

I move tomorrow! and writing! (and bad grammar!)

Well, technically my furniture moves since I'm house-sitting until October 2.

But still exciting!

I've moved so many times before that I've kinda got this whole thing down. I've got everything ready and the truck isn't even showing up until tomorrow afternoon, so I've had time this morning to get a little more writing done.

Writing... uhm, y'know how in my last post I was excited because I felt I had a clear view of the next, largish portion of the book?

Well, yeah. Then I wrote myself into a corner yesterday when a reveal that wasn't supposed to happen until the climax suddenly grabbed a scene by the throat and jerked it in the opposite direction...

...and when an apology might have directed the story back on track, Sikka says, "I'm not sorry for lying to you."

...which then made the already-misdirected scene turn yet again... in yet another wrong direction.

BUT, this morning I skimmed back to earlier scenes and reread over the dialogue/actions/body language/etc and... and... and...

...yeah, this 'corner' I have written myself into completely makes sense and there are little hints all along the bunny-trail that build up to this exact thing/confrontation happening.

So, it wasn't a momentary skew in this direction, the story has been heading this way for a long time and my conscious brain knew nothing about it while my unconscious brain has been sniggering and pointing mockingly at the idiocy of my conscious brain behind its back for being such a fool.

Ahem. And yes, I think they have medication for that.

Also of note: like the apology that might have directed the story back on track, there was also a really good possibility that this scene would have drawn Sikka & Komil closer together and been a major step towards an actual 'normal' romantic relationship arc... and uhm, yeah. Not happening. Or should I say, it didn't happen.

(I don't want to assume it won't happen...)

If I could write stories like normal people it absolutely would have happened because it's the right 'time' in the story arc for it to happen.

/tears out a handful of hair/

Yup, my brain is trying to kill me. Especially with this story. It's the reason I stopped writing it in the first place and moved on to other stories, yet here I am, coming back for more punishment because my damn brain is on a suicide mission and is trying to take me with it.

...and because I'm a masochistic freak who loves a challenge, I can't get enough of it...

SOOOOOO, uhm, yeah. Apologies for the probably worse-than-usual grammar in this post as 95% of my brain is currently dedicated to unpuzzling this corner-that-is-not-a-corner that I have written myself into, and the other 5% is mired in a heady-state of self-shaming.

Okay, not really :) But it's still fun/funny to think about!

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.

Rituals

I've been thinking a lot about rituals.

We all have them, but it's easiest to recognize the big ones like religious, cultural, or holiday-related (not necessarily religious*), but we all have smaller rituals as well that infest our daily lives.

Maybe because I've always been crazy interested in cultures/mythology/etc, I tend to think about rituals more than most. It's not the elaborate ceremonies (although death rituals around the world is always a fun topic to Google) that I love, but the small series of actions that are repeated over and over until they become habit, or are even passed on to become traditions at a certain point.

When I moved away from the lower mainland for the first time, I purposefully started a ritual to maintain contact with my mom and sister. In that case it was the resurrection of a childhood tradition. Even though we all now live within a 20 minute drive of each other, we still do it. Not every month, but when one of us does remember, it packs a lifetime of shared memories and laughter into a single 10 word text message.

...and I'm going to break my rule a tiny bit here... since I generally make it a point not to talk about/name the books I've read.

You can tell when a book is written by a person who spent 10 minutes and Wiki'd a city/culture versus someone who has actually lived there, or has taken the time to research it in depth. A Wiki'd story feels shallow/flat, like the 'Coles-notes' version. A veneer thinly spread and easy to chip if you pick at it a little.

"Drift", by MK Hutchins is a good example of a book that does not feel Wiki'd. I know the mythology was based on Mayan/Aztec, but it was entirely its own thing... so layered, so textured that I wanted to crawl into the world and live there.

A non-YA book I love is "Bliss Street", by Kris Kenway, who actually moved/stayed in Beirut for a year or so while writing the book. It's full of these tiny moments, tiny peculiarities and details that make the book a much richer experience and you can really feel how alien these are to the main character, a British citizen temporarily stranded in Beirut.

Whenever I read a book like this, where I can really get a taste of the world, I get insta-writer-crush. Especially when authors use rituals to not only world-build, but manage stuff like this.

Rituals give depth and, I think, especially with fantasy books (meant as an umbrella term, including, but not limited to: magic, alternate world, steampunk, alternate history, dystopian, etc), it's too easy to fall back on our own familiar patterns rather than step back, take a look at the world we've built, and create some new rituals/traditions to fit. I've read many fantasy books where I have been disappointed that the flavours were too North American (sorry, is that understandable?).

Often this is because writers are imposing their own personal thoughts/morals/ethics/etc on these fantastical worlds. They have a certain tone of modern-judgement, especially when the stories involve things like arranged marriages, slavery, etc.

...but it's in the smaller things as well. Subtle things like gestures related to local superstitions or religions. How people greet each other. Eating rituals or what they snack on. How respect or rudeness is conveyed. What's joked about and what's taboo.

It's all the tiny everyday details that really enrich a story and make it feel 'real' instead of flat.

It's easier to notice rituals in Fantasy because they can be quite different from what's familiar to us, but I think rituals are just as important in contemporary books. They just aren't as noticeable.

Often small rituals evolve to centre a person, so they can be a great device to show the emotional state of a character.

To use a (perhaps) familiar example? (so I'm not spoiling other people's enjoyment of other books by over-analyzing them to death)

Triss, from TRoRS, licks her lips when she's putting on the pretence of confidence. So, before she tells a lie, to someone else, or to herself. When she's preparing to do something she doesn't want to. When she's unsure of a decision she's about to make. In times like that, she licks her lips.

Similarly to how some girls chronically check their makeup. Or someone might adjust their clothes or wipe their hands (to check for sweat).

These are all tiny, self-soothing rituals. A preparing of the mind and the body. Some may start out as intentional (like checking make-up to be battle-ready) some not so intentional. I, for example, have a bad habit of cracking my fingers/wrists/elbows/knees... for a similar reason as someone might wipe their hands... I'm nervous and it's a self-soothing ritual to break my own tension/anxiety. Sometimes I do it semi-intentionally because I know it shocks people -> so it's a good way to break the tension of an awkward silence, or to get a laugh (or shiver of disgust).

Just to be clear, what I'm talking about is different from a character-specific beats/actions** to modify dialogue... y'know, like how you shouldn't have more than one character always rolling their eyes or running a hand through their hair*** while speaking... those are often meaningless, other than making dialogue a little more visually interesting. They don't necessarily have an emotional/psychological reason behind them.


In the case of Triss, she also has her driving rituals, her music rituals, her drinking rituals, her weird-condiment rituals, and more. Some of which are intentional, some not so much, but all ingrained in her life to make her feel more in control.

Because that's what rituals do. Even if it's only in our minds.

Triss' rituals are all repeated series of actions/behaviour that make her (perhaps) a far richer character than N (the main character) since N is observing Triss' behaviours and is less aware of any self/personal rituals (though they do exist).

But that's fun too... because rituals so often become habits and we cease to notice our own until someone else points them out (like my joint-cracking-thing).


And y'know what, maybe this is just something that I like, that I care about. And I'm fine with that.

No matter what, I'm still going to get writer-crushes on authors who layer their stories with habits, rituals, etc.

...and I'm going to write characters this way too.

...and I don't care if anyone else notices them.****

I get to be selfish like that :)

Write what you love, yes?



What about you? What do you think about rituals, either in your own life, or those in stories? Can you recommend any books where you've noticed repeated actions/behaviours used as subtext to hint of a character's emotional state, or books where you've really been impressed by the depth of the world-building?


Hmmm, I also am super interested in totems/items of great sentimentality... but there's been enough nerdy-ponderings for one post, so I'll leave that for another day :)





* As a kid, the Christmas Eve ritual/tradition would involve homemade clam chowder, opening one gift which would always be new pyjamas, then my sister and I posing in front of the fireplace/stockings wearing the new pjs. Seriously... like even as teenagers we had to stand there and get our picture taken (less giddy smiles, more eye-rolling, but still...)

** There's probably a better/more specific term for this, but it's late (will do a quick dyslexic-error-hunt tomorrow before posting) and I'm tired :p Anyone who knows the term, please tell me in the comments (I love hearing when/where I'm wrong)

*** OR, the one I hate the most... the dreaded eyebrow or lip 'quirk'. If I see this more than a couple times, I will not read another book by that author. Seriously, I am not kidding. Especially if every character's face is quirking... gah!

**** Seriously, a crate full of virtual cookies to anyone who can name N's rituals. There are 3 major ones that repeat a lot and several smaller ones as well. Okay, I'll give you the most obvious one: repeating the rules when stressed out/uneasy/afraid.

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.

I think I finally got her...

Stress + insomnia = state of delirium...

And... and I think I finally got Kell. Don't know if you remember, but this is the character that never smiles. I didn't write much, it was more like I edited a pre-existing scene.

(first-draft, very rusty since I haven't been writing in a very long time... so be kind)

“Tell me,” I say, and flip to a new page.

Her gaze slides off to the side, refusing to meet mine, but her face is slowly composing itself again, the tattered shreds of her calm exterior re-knitting. It doesn’t look easy, but it looks… skillful. Well practiced, but not rehearsed. Necessary. Essential.

“There was a fire.”

“An accident?”

She starts to shakes her head, then nods instead, a deliberate chop of her chin. Her wind-ripped eyes are tired now, all the storm in them suddenly blown out, exhausted. Beaten. She hugs herself, like she’s cold.

Then she stares straight at me and her lips twist, they twist into something grotesque. This is a smile, this is what a smile should look like, lifted corners, curved mouth, rounded cheeks, but there’s nothing soft or sweet here. Not a line or shape or shadow that isn’t sharp, festering, and radiating hostility.

Voice & Character Motivations

Of all the components that add up into a good story, 'Voice' is probably the one I'm most confident in.

Grammar and pacing are the two biggest things I struggle with, but let's go back to the whole Voice thing.

I love Voice.

If Voice is good, a reader can forgive a lot...

But there's a downside (or so I've learned) to being able to easily slip into the Voice of a character.

You can get sucked so deeply into the main character's Voice, that you lose the big picture. You can't pull back the focus and examine the other characters, see what they want, how they will naturally react, etc.

Your perception narrows to a single viewpoint.

Good for Voice, bad for plot progression when you need another character to move/act and push the story forward.

...and I wonder if I get too indulgent...

Especially when I read back through a scene and realize that I've referred to a very famous (and respected) artist as, "... suckling at the addictive teat of Jungian psychotherapy..."


Jay's no-filter Voice is... perhaps a little addictive for me?

...'cause it takes a lot for me to lose my own filter, and when it's gone, I really do say things like:

"I wouldn't climb into a stranger's van for candy, but if he held up a nice bordeaux, I'd hop right in!"

(This is why I should not ever be on Twitter. I am not to be trusted with communication methods that are not editable)


This post has a point, I swear.

I've been character-motivation-blocked in SCARLIGHT because Jay's Voice is so... addictive? I can't break away and figure out what Kell wants, and where I currently am in the story, she's just wrestled control away from Jay. It's now her move to call the shots and... and... and...


'Out, damned spot, out I say!'

(cue loud throat clearing)

'Out, damned Jay, out I say!'

(casually thwacks side of head to rattle brain back into position)


Okay, this is getting me nowhere...

Any brilliant ideas/suggestions?

Music, walkies, and one of those Eureka! moments

I'm taking care of my parents' house/pets/etc while they're out of town for a couple of weeks. One of the great things about that is Tynehead Park is (temporarily) within walking distance. I'm probably going to take my phone with me one day soon to snap some fall pictures of the park, which will appear on Bailiwick in the future.

In my stories, the contemporary ones at least, there are often a lot of music references. I love music, but never when I'm writing. I need quiet for that. I only listen to music when I'm in the car or when I'm walking Eva... and walking Eva is when story ideas bubble around in my brain like mad scientist's laboratory.. I think that's why music tends to show up in the stories (even though I write in silence), as they're connected to the moment the scattered puzzle pieces suddenly fit together into a cohesive picture.

So, today I was walking Eva (yup, the ribs have been staying in for the last week or so) with 'Black Black Heart' by David Usher (the faster remix, not the original) blasting through my headphones...

...and I was hit with a sudden moment of perfect clarity.

I now know how SCARLIGHT ends... everything with Jay's character arc, his relationships with Donny, Kell & Aricia. The results of the art competition, and the university/art school he'll end up in because of those results. Thankfully it will only require a few minor changes to what's already been written. Most of the pieces were already laid out like Easter eggs just waiting to be found (I really do think my unconscious brain is much smarter than my conscious brain...).

Even though I consider myself a pantsing-style writer, even though the thought of writing down story notes or (god forbid) an outline instantly turns the crisp deliciousness of a freshly plucked story idea into the culinary equivalent of wallpaper paste, I can admit that somewhere in the cracks and crevices of my brain synapses are firing and putting together connections that will one day spring out fully formed.

A little like Artemis, I suppose. Fully grown and heavily armed.

Yup, my unconscious brain can totally kick my conscious brain's ass... which is probably why I trust it to do it's own thing and don't condescend by allowing my conscious brain to do (stupid) things like write outlines... 'cause then the unconscious brain gets all pouty, bored, and wanders off to build new worlds in a dark corner somewhere...

Okay, I just reread that last paragraph, and I think I may be a little dehydrated/loopy :)

(forgive me?)

Hope you are all enjoying this wonderful autumn weather :)

Character Values

Most stories I write have a bent towards philosophy and the question of what's 'right', without ever really coming to a definitive answer.

Themes of trust, sacrifice, choices, and love are always in there, because you can't tell if something is really a 'value', unless it's tested.

For example, most of us 'value' honesty, but if you find a $50 bill on the street, and no one is around, would you leave it there since it's not yours?

Most of what we claim are our values, are really only 'aspirational values' -> where, if it was tested, we would not actually choose to stay the path. We might aspire to be honest and never steal, but really, how many of us would leave a $50 bill on the street if there was no one else around?


In 'TRoRS', the anonymous main character is constantly cycling back to what s/he should have done differently, and at one point, thinks this:

You can starve to death on principle. To steal successfully is to understand that morality is like a warm jacket you can put on and take off. 

You want to be all resolve and desire with no other emotions jamming up your head. Tension means your brain is getting in the way of your gut and thinking only slows you down. To thoroughly cut off the baggage of morality, you can’t be human. You can only be a bag of meat that needs to survive.

And people understand that more than they let on. Whenever there’s a riot, or a natural disaster, or a war, the same people who would lecture you for stealing a bag of beef jerky will loot stores, trample children, destroy property, and beat to death anyone who gets in their way.

In 'AotD', Sikka only starts to care about being seen as a different person than her twin sister after Issa kills a god.

In 'SO', Simon constantly puts a higher value on his brother Hector, but he will risk his own life, or Faith's life, without question.

...and in 'SL', Jay wrestles with a different moral question: Can he give up painting to save Kell? Painting is his entire identify, his scholarship depends on it, and, in his mind, it's all he has, all he trusts, all he can rely on.


I've said on here before that I don't particularly like trilogies because they (by necessity) inflate the stakes with each successive book, until it's nearly always a matter of 'saving the world'.

To me, that almost always turns the more interesting, personal moral quandaries into black-and-white matters of 'good versus evil'.

One line that particularly irks me is when a character says, "I had no other choice", because there always is a choice.

Phrasing it like that turns the situation into a 'moral' decision, which usually means elevating a personal choice by making it a universal claim.

Okay, I don't know if that explanation was clear... so let me try to explain it in a different way...

Going back to 'AotD', after Issa kills a god, she disappears. To track down her sister, Sikka has to tell a lie: that she was the one taken, not Issa.

Obviously, it isn't a lie she has to tell, but if she told the truth, no one would let her leave the village and track down her sister. Telling the lie makes it easier for her to accomplish her goal by allowing her to avoid dealing with the people in her village that she is indebted to.

When you get right down to it, she's making a selfish decision. Sure, she justifies it by telling herself that, if she told the truth, no one would let her leave, so she's lying to save her sister.

But really, is that the only choice she had?

No.

Similarly to when 'the good guys' in movies drop their weapons because a 'bad guy' is holding a gun to a child's head.

Do they really have 'no other choice'?

No.

If the bad guy gets away and kills a thousand people, that's on the good guy's head... but it's more abstract for a bomb to kill a thousand people than it is to actually watch a child being shot in the head.

It's a personal moral choice the good guy is making -> to save one child he can see, instead of theoretically saving a thousand people he can't see. He's putting a higher value on the one person his choice will directly impact. If the child dies, he will be considered a bad person.

It's the whole idea of when we're told we "should" do something, instead of asking, "what could we do?"

"Should" turns the situation into a binary choice: you should do the right thing, as in, take the higher road, which suggests that if you don't make the decision you 'should', then you're taking the low road.

The good guy 'should' drop his gun to save the child.

...but turning the decision into a binary question leaves no room for alternative paths.

What 'could' the good guy do instead? He could stall, he could shoot the bad guy in the foot, he could shoot the child in a non-lethal part of the body, like the shoulder or leg, because really, would the bad guy want to bother with a hostage who can't run/move and needs medical attention?

...and those are just a few examples that popped off the top of my head. But all of those would be much harder on the hero. It's easier just to put down the gun and say, "I have no other choice." He's laying the blame on the bad guy, turning a personal decision to make life easier on himself into a universal decision of what's 'right'.

We tend to whittle questions of value down to binary ones, because they justify what we want to do.

And since humans are lazy, usually that means making the choice that's less work for us.

When we claim we took the moral high ground, it's an indirect accusation that whoever disagrees with us is taking the low road.


Next time you hear a politician, a journalist, or anyone else loudly throwing around the word 'should' (or its alternatives 'have to', 'must', etc), take a step back and think about it. Why are they trying to turn it into a binary question, a question of high/low ground? Why are they trying to justify their position in terms of value/morality?

And think about the practicalities.

Turn the question into 'what could we do?'


To make a character well-rounded, we always need to think about values, but rather than slapping on some universal ones like 'honest', or 'brave', I think it's always worthwhile to think about whether your character actually stays the path when in a point of temptation or crisis. Are those 'values' you assigned true values, or are they only aspirational values?

I think about this a lot in YA books. It's easy to find clear examples in 'save-the-world' type genres, but they still exist in quiet contemporary novels, because there's almost always a 'best friend', and more times than not, when you actually look at the behaviour of the main character, they treat their best friend like crap, or the best friend only appears in the story when the main character needs advice, or needs to complain, and otherwise conveniently disappears from the story, especially if there's a budding romance in the works.


Okay, time to wrap my arm in a heating pad for about an hour... typing even just this post is still a huge problem.

Thoughts on diversity

Okay, I picked away at this post over three days, very late at night, so forgive me if there are weird leaps or poor use of language. I have been so busy/stressed, that after this post I'm going dark until the end of May when the convention is over (except there might be some pictures up on Bailiwick), but I really wanted to write this one last post as this is something I very much care about.

There's a campaign starting tomorrow about diversity in YA. Not sure if you already know about it, but I first read about it here. The topic of diversity been popular lately. Here's just one page with links, but it's been all over the internet for the past couple of months.

Now, I've thought about writing a post about diversity before... I know I've touched on it in several other posts, but it's never been the foremost topic, and for the sake of keeping this at a reasonable length, I'm going to concentrate on racial/ethnic diversity.

Two things that need to be clear up front:

1) Yes, I'm Caucasian. I'm 1/2 Irish, 1/4 Scottish, and 1/4 FOB British (My grandmother married a Canadian pilot during the war).

2) I grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. The 2011 census puts Caucasians at 46.2% of the population.

If we're only using race as a plumb line, I've never experienced 'not seeing myself' in a book.

BUT, unless an author keeps reminding me what the characters look like, repeating how blonde someone's hair is, or how dazzling blue their eyes are, I pretty much imagine the cast as the world I grew up in.

Caucasian Population 46.2%

Visible Minority Population 51.8% (Chinese 27.7%)

Aboriginal Population 2%


I've been asked before why there's almost no physical descriptions of character in the stories I write, and well, I'd have to say it's because it's something I don't pay much attention to in real life, so I don't pay much attention when I write.

If I'm shopping at Metrotown in Burnaby, I don't think about the fact that I'm one of maybe 10% Caucasian shoppers, or one of maybe 3% in a T&T Supermarket. If I'm walking downtown on Robson Street, I won't even give a thought to passing through a group of women fully decked out in burqa.*

Because it's so normal to see so many different kinds of people.

The only time I really started noticing ratios of white-to-non-white, was when I moved away from Vancouver, first to Calgary, AB, then to Victoria, BC.

...and then I felt a little creeped out.

I'm being 100% serious. It was like being dropped into that movie with all the creepy blonde blue-eyed children ('Children of the corn'???).


I live in a racial and ethnically diverse city, and therefore, when I'm reading books, I naturally populate them with diversity unless expressly told otherwise.

When I'm writing, I figure, the less description, the easier it is for the reader to put themselves into the book. The only time I describe someone, it's for an important reason.

But this campaign for diversity raised an important question for me:

Is 'not noticing' and 'not describing' part of the problem?


When you don't specifically identify a character's ethnic background in a book, readers are going to make assumptions and populate the book naturally, just as I do, by what's 'normal' for where they grew up.

A Caucasian kid from a primarily Caucasian city is probably going to imagine a white-washed cast.

...BUT, is a minority kid from a primarily Caucasian city also going to imagine a white-washed cast?


To me, the conundrum of how to approach 'diversity' comes down to this:

Do I want to intentionally identify racial/ethnic (or other) groups in the stories I write, or continue to leave it up to the reader?


Pointing out, or singling out one group calls attention to which other groups are, or are not there. (For a discussion about this in 'Harry Potter', read the comments on this post, but I'm sure you can find a million other similar articles by using the magic of Google).

For example, in TRoRS, Spence is Indian, and by that, I mean his parents/grandparents are from India. I know some people refer to Aboriginals as 'Indians', so I wanted to clarity my terminology.

Should I have to give him a more traditional name like Bupinder when most of my non-Caucasion friends growing up all had 'Caucasian' names like Jennifer, Andrew, Susan, and Eric**? Should I have made a point to describe his hair, his skin colour, etc when I didn't do that with any of the other characters?

...and if I did, would I have to give Triss an authentic Jewish name to balance it out, even though only her mom is Jewish***? What about Jackson, who I imagine to be mix-race? Should I have to specify the racial background of both his parents and ruminate over the 'right' word to describe his skin-tone? Should all the Caucasian characters also be broken down into which part of Europe their ancestors came from?

And even if I did all of that, there would still be people asking, "where are the gay, transgendered, handicapped, and mentally ill characters?"

...or whether my story passes the Bechdel test****?

...and in the end, what does any of that have to do with the story if none of it is integral to the plot?

You can't please, or include, everyone. If you do, it'll just be a poorly contrived mish-mash where it feels like the author has created a checklist for 'diversity' and filled in all the character blanks in their story from that list.

If I'm intentionally adding in extra words for the sole purpose of showing how diverse the cast is, it pulls away from the story just as badly as a to-remain-nameless-author who spent pages and pages worth of words describing the FMC's clothes.


Going back one moment to Spence... there's a twist in the story involving him and another character. If I concentrated a lot of time (and words) on his background, it would make the reader assume that having an Indian at the party was a singularity. Not only is that incorrect, but then the twist wouldn't work.


I think it's very important for everyone, not only teens, to read about characters they can identify with.

As a writer, I think, the issue with diversity (gender, race, sexual orientation, etc) can be approached from many different angles, and that you can't say one is necessarily more 'correct' than another, as long as the writer is putting some thought behind it.

I think it's important for there to be books published with a Chinese or Indian main character struggling to find their identify as a minority.

I think it's equally important for books where Chinese or Indian characters are not considered minorities at all.

And there should also be books where racial/ethnic diversity is such a normal thing, that no one notices or cares about singling out one group or another based on race/ethnicity/skin colour/etc.


In Vancouver, so many are second or third generation immigrants that people of all ages are more likely to band together and group themselves in terms of jobs, wealth, religion, hobbies/interests, omnivores/vegetarian/vegan, etc rather than 'race/ethnicity'.

That's the culture of the city I grew up in, so that's the kind of culture I'm naturally going to write.

But this campaign on diversity, and the question that got raised for me, is probably going to change how I write, at least a little bit, to make sure the diversity of the cast in my head is better translated onto the page... without it feeling like I'm shoe-horning it in just so I can wave a flag around and shout, "my story is diverse!"

I want the culture I grew up in to permeate the atmosphere of the book. That's my goal.



To leave you with one more link to an older post, I believe it should always be 'character first', not 'gender first', or 'sexual identify first', or 'racial background first'.



What about you? How much do you think about diversity, and if you write about it, what angle are you coming from?


...and I very much hope this campaign for diversity goes well. Personally, I'd also love to see more books written in other parts of the world end up on the mainstream bookshelves here. I still have the (English translated) tattered copy of Banana Yoshimoto's "Kitchen" that I re-read to death as a teenager.



* A couple months ago I was out for lunch with a dog-walking friend of mine who recently moved here from Russia, and he pointed it out later at the restaurant.

** No, I didn't use their actual 'real' names, but close ones.

*** Hopefully there are enough clues with Triss that careful readers would have figured that out.

**** I guess that depends on whether the reader imagines the gender-unspecified MC as male or female.