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Just skimming through poets born in November, and here we are: William Blake. Fine. No tygers burning, however; let’s look for something less well known. Hmm. How about this one? It seems appropriate for November. It also reminds me of this other “mad song.” Possibly the whole concept of “mad songs” strikes me as appropriate for November!

Mad Song

The wild winds weep
And the night is a-cold;
Come hither, Sleep,
And my griefs infold:
But lo! the morning peeps
Over the eastern steeps,
And the rustling birds of dawn
The earth do scorn.

Lo! to the vault
Of paved heaven,
With sorrow fraught
My notes are driven:
They strike the ear of night,
Make weep the eyes of day;
They make mad the roaring winds,
And with tempests play.

Like a fiend in a cloud,
With howling woe,
After night I do crowd,
And with night will go;
I turn my back to the east,
From whence comforts have increas’d;
For light doth seize my brain
With frantic pain.

***

***

And, as we move toward winter, perhaps this one:

***

***

To Winter

O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs,
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.’
He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathèd
In ribbèd steel; I dare not lift mine eyes,
For he hath rear’d his sceptre o’er the world.

Lo! now the direful monster, whose 1000 skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and in his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.

He takes his seat upon the cliffs,–the mariner
Cries in vain. Poor little wretch, that deal’st
With storms!–till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driv’n yelling to his caves beneath mount Hecla.

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The post Poetry Thursday: William Blake appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

All right, I’ve used the beginning paragraphs of Greenglass House several times as an example of a nice opening. This has kept the novel in my awareness — lots of novels just settle gently, sinking lower and lower into the virtual abyss that is the infinite number of books and samples I’ve picked up over the years. This one has stayed up kinda toward the top. Here’s the first paragraph:

There is a right way to do things and a wrong way, if you’re going to run a hotel in a smuggler’s town. You shouldn’t make it a habit to ask too many questions, for one thing. And you probably shouldn’t be in it for the money. Smugglers are always going to flush with cash as soon as they find a buyer for the eight cartons of fountain pen cartridges that write in illegal shades of green, but they never have money today.

So, although the world is sort of similar to our world, you can see it’s not exactly our world, because … illegal shades of green?

I picked this book up originally because someone here recommended. For a change, I remember who that was, so thanks for the recommendation, Mona, and yes, you were right, this is a charming, fun, easy-to-read story. It’s also a MG story, by the way, so this is MG week, I guess.

Overall impression: This story is like a breath of fresh air.

That’s how I felt as I settled into the story. I’m trying now to sort out why.

I think it’s fundamentally probably simple: I spend a surprising amount of time not reading. I also spend a surprising amount of time looking at the first paragraphs of novels, many of which aren’t very good. When I do read a novel, sometimes I’m beta reading and don’t like the novel, or sometimes I get halfway into the novel and then just sort of peeter out for one reason or another and don’t quite go back to it. The writing’s okay but not great, and the plot isn’t interesting enough to compensate. The plot’s okay, but extremely predictable and the writing isn’t good enough to compensate. Something happens that seems just silly, or I’m fairly sure I’m watching the author set up an element of the plot that I’m not going to like, or some element of the plot actually occurs and I flinch, or nobody is ever nice to anybody else, or SOMETHING.

And then I read this story and it was just … like a breath of fresh air. It’s smooth. It’s fun. It’s light and witty without being silly or shallow. I’m not saying there aren’t silly moments – there are a couple – but the quality of the writing means this wasn’t painful. An important plot element is predictable, but an ENORMOUS plot element took me completely by surprise. There’s this tremendous clutter of characters, a HUGE clutter, but the author handles them skillfully and I didn’t get lost. And a whole bunch of people are nice to each other, especially Milo, who’s a really nice kid.

As far as I’m concerned, the only kid in fiction named Milo is the kid in The Phantom Tollbooth, so this isn’t a name I would personally give a kid in a MG novel, but fine. Milo was adopted as a baby. He wonders about his birth parents, but he’s not traumatized. Thank heaven the author didn’t subscribe to the notion that every protagonist should have an emotional wound and be broken. He has a great relationship with his parents, who are competent and nice and thank you, author, for presenting a solid family that is not traumatized or traumatizing.

They are expecting to spend the Christmas holidays quietly as a family because Greenglass House, the inn, is never busy at this time of year. Then a whole bunch of guests arrive, mostly not smugglers (five) and Milo’s parents call in some people to help run the inn (three), and a couple smugglers do in fact arrive (two), and thus we have, altogether, counting Milo and his parents, THIRTEEN characters cooped up in the inn, and lots of them have secret agendas, and they get snowed in, and the power goes off, and my goodness, there’s a lot. The author handles this beautifully, and she handles it beautifully in a MG type of way. Let me see. All right:

–She doesn’t EXPLAIN stuff. Ink cartridges that write in illegal shades of green? Just go with it. This is the kind of barely-there worldbuilding that works beautifully in MG fiction.

–She keeps the characters simple. She gives each of the five guests one important goal and one important identifying characteristic, and she makes the names distinctive. This makes it possible for the reader to keep them straight without going nuts. They are not complex. They don’t need to be complex. She lets two of the people recruited to help with the sudden influx of guests fade completely into the background. She keeps the parents busy (very, very busy), so they can stay mostly out of the way. This allows Milo to stay in the foreground, along with Meddie, a kid who is also staying at the inn and who is by far the most important secondary character.

–She keeps the plot moving. Almost everyone is searching for something. There are treasure maps. There are mysterious thefts. The guest at the inn tell stories in the most utterly classic fashion of travelers-stranded-together-in-an-inn, and of course all those stores mean something. Is there a name for this classic storytelling structure? It seems like there should be a name for this.

–Meddie pulls Milo into, basically, a LARPG that involves the treasure hunt and figuring out what everyone else is up to, and the author invents her own fictional version of D&D for this purpose, which is clever and fun, and of course this intersects with Milo being adopted, and gosh, here we are, adding subtext about identity and choosing who we want to be. But gently! There’s nothing heavy-handed about it.

–And then there is a fairly remarkable plot twist that I personally did not see coming at all.

–And on top of all this, Milo’s parents are both competent and nice, the grumpy guests who seem like they’re unpleasant turn out to be nice, lots of stories intersect, and lots of people choose to do nice things for each other without a lot of fuss or any preachiness whatsoever. Did I mention this story is like a breath of fresh air?

There’s a bit of semi-believable violence because, I mean, there’s a bad guy who is, I’m sure this will surprise you, up to no good. This is why I question those suggested criteria for MG (no sex, no profanity, no violence). It’s true that the reader cannot possibly believe that anyone is going to get killed, but that doesn’t mean the violence is quite as cartoonish as I think that post implied. I think the six criteria I listed better reflect what this story is like. Plus one more that is most certainly not true of all MG, but is true of this novel:

–It’s very well-written. It’s delightful. It’s delightful for adult readers as well as young readers. It reminds me of DWJ, and if you like a large percentage of her books, I expect you would probably like this one as well.

I picked up the next book in the series at once, though I haven’t read it yet.

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The post Recent Reading: Greenglass House by Kate Milford appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Here’s a post at Kill Zone Blog: MG is for Middle Grade

I think a novel is MG if:

–The protagonist is under fourteen or so.

–The protagonist is a child at the beginning and still a child at the end.

–The novel is shortish and relatively tightly plotted, with relatively little worldbuilding.

And I am at the moment reading a stellar MG fantasy novel, which I will finish soon and then write a post about. But meanwhile, what does this post — which seems sort of out of place at Kill Zone Blog — say about MG?

Most authors define “middle grade fiction” as being written for ages 8 – 12 (third grade through sixth grade), and containing no sexual content or realistic violence. I think that another way to look at it is the intelligence and information processing skills of the reader. “Children” of this age are reaching the age where they can understand adult logic and reasoning. And they are not yet filled with the adolescent hormone-driven physical and sexual attraction that is found in young adult material, and that clouds their thinking.

They differ from books for younger readers in that they are more like adult books, longer, with plot and structure. And they differ from books for YA and adult in that they usually contain no profanity, sex, or overt violence.

This is all very well, but I think “no profanity, sex, or overt violence” is (a) not really true, and (b) not nearly as important as the three points I laid out. It’s the violence that I think is least true. Think of Patrick Lee’s MG thriller Wild Night, which I have mentioned before and in fact discussed at some length. There is considerable violence in this story and it is at least semi-realistic violence. Lee tones the violence down in a bunch of ways, but nevertheless.

It also irritates me no end to have people insist that YA is all about hormones and sexual attraction, but that’s a different issue, so never mind. It’s true, I think, that you aren’t likely to see explicit scenes in a MG novel. Also, I recall Merrie Haskell mentioning that she had to remove a little bit of profanity from The Princess Curse when it was placed with a MG imprint. So I’m mostly thinking about the violence, I suppose. I will just say that there is some violence in the MG novel I’m reading and it’s not all that unrealistic, either, though the tone is reassuring. I mean the overall tone of the story. No one can seriously expect the protagonist or his parents to die, and I think that’s actually the thing about violence in MG novels: whatever violence may occur, the tension is reduced via the tone of the story.

Meanwhile, the linked post says 30,000 to 80,000 words for MG novels, which I guess, but technically The Floating Islands is a MG novel — PRH shows the age range as a tremendously silly and restrictive 12-15 years and one does wonder how reasonable that can possibly be — and I can tell you that this book is over 100,000 words. However, I guess at the very youngest end of MG, 30,000 words is perhaps reasonable. This is about 100 pages, incidentally, and I wouldn’t call it a novel no matter how young the readers might be.

The age ranges given for the novels I’m mentioning seem kind of crazy, by the way. Eight to twelve for The Princess Curse; twelve to fifteen for Islands; twelve to eighteen for Wild Night. Raise your hand if you think any of these ranges actually makes sense when you think about actual real-world kids who like to read. They all seem strange to me. I’d say any age for the first, any age for the second, and twelve and up for the third — depending on how sensitive the kid is. Contemporary setting, kids dropped in a death trap by a murderer who wants to play games, strikes me as a lot more intrinsically disturbing than the other two books, which is why it seems more reasonable to me to put a lower limit on Lee’s book.

But I grew up reading whatever I wanted, pretty much. Age categorization wasn’t nearly as much of a thing at the time as it is now.

Ah, here’s one point that I think is perhaps reasonable:

–As romance isn’t really a thing in MG, close friendships move to center stage.

This is a big plus for MG over YA, which … I wouldn’t say YA has ever been ENTIRELY subsumed into Ansty Romance For Girls, but it sure tends to lean pretty heavily in that direction, and has for at least fifteen or twenty years now. In fact, this leads me to remember another criterion … that’s too strong … another tendency that we see more in MG compared to YA fantasy:

–The main plot in MG is about saving the world.

This is because, once you remove the angsty romance, you have room for something else. That something is very frequently a heroic saves-the-world plotline. Or, I mean, not necessarily the actual world, but something. Something worth saving, and it is indeed successfully saved, because as a rule MG is also upbeat.

–Upbeat or positive in tone.

Nihilistic, grim, ineffectual failure is either rare or essentially nonexistent in MG. I’m striving not to say something really snarky here, but I’m going to give up and say it: Young readers probably have to be trained to reject heroism and favor self-absorption, ineffectuality, despair, and self-destructive narcissism combined with a conviction of one’s superiority. I’m thinking of the Young Werther attitude, which is either really common today or at least seems that way to me. Anyway, MG is far more likely to be positive in tone than any other marketing category, and no doubt this is one reason the best MG novels appeal to vast hordes of readers of all ages. It’s highly noticeable how beloved MG classics can be, and often are. A Little Princess. Five Children and It. Howl’s Moving Castle. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The list is endless, and every single MG classic has a positive tone. I’m pretty sure that’s true.

Oh, interesting — the linked post winds up with practical considerations. Self-publishing is difficult for MG authors — the post doesn’t actually say that, but it lays out reasons why this has to be true: Teachers want books that have won awards; young readers can’t easily buy their own books; young readers can’t leave reviews at Amazon.

Ouch. I don’t know how MG authors handle any of this. I guess I’d suggest taking a real stab at traditional publishing for a good while while investigating possible ways to market MG … and writing MG novels that readers of every age can and will enjoy.

Regardless, six more-or-less strict criteria:

–The protagonist is under fourteen or so.

–The protagonist is a child at the beginning and still a child at the end.

–As romance isn’t really a thing in MG, close friendships move to center stage.

–The novel is shortish and relatively tightly plotted, with relatively little worldbuilding.

–The main plot in MG is about saving the world.

–Upbeat or positive in tone.

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All right, so, in the first half of November, I wrote 48,000 words, so I’m on track to quote win unquote my personal NaNoWriMo goal of more or less writing the complete Tuyo #12 in November.

Am I actually at the halfway mark, you may ask, and the answer is, I have no idea. It depends on whether stuff happens more quickly as we move toward the denouement. I don’t feel I’m quite halfway, but could be. Might be less. Honestly, who knows?

Also, I’m not actually 48,000 words in. I’m actually 72,000 words in because I had approximately 20,000 sitting here waiting. So if I’m at the halfway mark, that means the draft will hit about 140,000 words, which is fine. Knowing me, it’ll go longer. I will probably trim, because while I enjoyed writing the slogging-through-unpleasant-scenery part, you may not need to spend quite so much time with that. We’ll see. I’m not worrying about that yet.

As I am this far, I guess I will start calling the novel by name, meaning Bereket. This book takes place two years before Rihasi, and obviously I will include a note about timing and series chronology in the front. Maybe a short note in the front and a link to series chronology in the back. Bereket’s arc is nearly flat. It’s like the arc of the hero in a Western: he’s in the same place at the end as he was when he started. The reader will know where he is heading and will now have a much better idea about the choices he makes later, which should be very fun — I hope it is! I intend it to be! I intend for these two books to work perfectly read in either order. That’s the plan.

Meanwhile! Magdalene is fine and has been fine for 12 days, but there’s an awful lot of Doxycyline left in the bottle. It’s like the infinite bottle of Doxycyline. I feel like it’s the sort of miraculous bottle that could cure malaria for a whole continent. I’m pretty sure Magdalene agrees with me about the Neverending Torment of Doxycyline. I tried the yogurt thing, but we both vote for the faster syringe method.

Also, the cats are unhappy to shift to winter-indoor mode. As you see, Maximilian is pining for the warmth of summer more than Magdalene.

Sleeping away chilly weather

Wishing for warmth

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From Fantasy Book Cafe: Real History for Fantasy Worlds

Which can you imagine more clearly: Middle Earth or ancient Mesopotamia? Which feels more real?

I’m guessing a lot of us (including me!) answer Middle Earth. Because a lot of the time, real world history is a dry, distant land populated by a few important dates and a few powerful kings.

This is a great idea for a post — I think a basic awareness of real history is a fine, fine thing for an author, especially in fantasy. And maybe SF too. This post is actually not defending that idea. It’s about some of the books this guest author found especially helpful.

This reminds me of a Great Courses course I listened to a few years ago: The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World.

However, I do want to add, I think an author can learn a ton about history AND absorb storytelling craft by reading good historical novels. By good, I mean both well-researched, brings the era to life, AND good stories, stories that are well put together as stories. So — here are a handful of my personal favorite historical authors and novels:

Gillian Bradshaw, as for example the stellar Cleopatra’s Heir.

Hild, and no doubt the sequel, which I admit I have not read, by Nicola Griffith, who is such a tremendously gifted author.

All sorts of novels by Pearl Buck, such as Pavilion of Women.

The Benjamin January historical mysteries by Barbara Hambly, and these are frequently quite grim, by the way, so be warned.

And I’ll wind up with one I’d like to read and have recently added to my TBR pile: Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott.

If any of you have a favorite Historical, drop it in the comments! Personally, I prefer back a good distance; anything set in, say, the 1920s, doesn’t strike me as historical enough, even though — shockingly — that’s suddenly become a hundred years ago.

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Another poet I’ve never heard of: Steen Steensen Blicher.

Prelude

The time approaches for me to part!
Now winter’s voice is compelling;
A bird of passage, I know my heart
In other climes has its dwelling.

I have long known that I cannot stay;
Though this is no cause for grieving,
So free from care as I wend my way
I sing at times before leaving.

I should at times have perhaps sung more –
Or should perhaps have sung better;
But dark days crowded oft to the fore,
And gales my feathers did scatter.

In God’s fair world I would fain have tried
To spread my wings out in freedom;
But I’m imprisoned on every side
And can’t escape from my thralldom.

From lofty skies would I fain have tried
To blithely sing and not fretted;
But for my shelter and food must bide
A jailbird poor and indebted.

At times I make the consoling choice
To let my gaze outward wander:
And sometimes send my poor mournful voice
Through prison bars yearning yonder.

Then listen, traveller, to this song;
To pass this way please endeavour!
It might, God knows, not last very long
Before this voice fades for ever.

This coming evening, I can foretell,
May see my prison bars breaking;
For I will sing now a fond farewell,
Perhaps my final leave-taking.

***

Surprisingly, I don’t see an entry at Poetry Foundation. Here’s a Wikipedia page instead.

Blicher was the son of a literarily inclined Jutlandic parson whose family was distantly related to Martin Luther. He grew up in close contact with nature and peasant life in the moor areas of central Jutland. After trying his hand as a teacher and a tenant farmer, he at last became a parson like his father and from 1825-1847 served in the parish of Spentrup.

Steen Steensen Blicher never enjoyed international interest on the scale of Hans Christian Andersen or Karen Blixen, but in Denmark he is almost as well-known. In 2006, his novel Præsten i Vejlbye was adopted in the Danish Culture Canon, which means, officially one of the 10 Order of Merit novels in Danish literature of all time.

I see he was a novelist as well as a poet. The novels sound rather grim. Possibly the poem above might strike a reader as grim as well.

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A rather facile post at Writer Unboxed: Good News About Bad Reviews

There is so much that a post with this title could do, which this post doesn’t do. This is a trivial post that declares, “A review that expresses a negative opinion might make your book appeal to other readers.” This is true, but if that’s all you’re going to say, why even bother? Let’s try to do a little more with this basic topic. How about –>

Top Ten Reasons Bad Reviews Could Be Good:

1) Just as the linked post points out, one person’s negative opinion could of course make the book sound appealing to other prospective readers. This is common, as I think we all know. It works like this:

“I couldn’t get into this book because the sentences were beautiful, but the pace was far too slow” = Response: Oh, I usually like books described as slow-paced.

“Literally nothing happens” = Response: Great, I’m totally in the mood for slice-of-life.

“Not nearly enough spice” = Response: Thank heaven, finally, a romance that doesn’t insist on describing in excruciating detail what goes where! Worth another look.

And so on. This is basically always going to happen with practically any review that includes any thought at all from the reviewer. Anything other than “Cover was torn, one star.” (Which I have in fact seen; I think most authors have a couple one-star reviews in this basic category.)

2) The occasional negative review makes the rest of the reviews look honest.

If a novel has quite a lot of reviews that are all very brief and all glowing and all vague, that looks fake. Incidentally, Amazon will come down hard on anybody they suspect of review manipulation, so I’m not sure exactly how easy it is to get away with buying fake reviews these days. Buying real reviews is not rare, but it sure seems like a bad idea to me. If you google “Where can I buy book reviews?”, you find quite a few services that will be happy to charge you a shockingly large fee in exchange for, quote, honest reviews, unquote.

Speaking as someone who picked up several starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist for traditionally published books, I personally feel that the reviews Kirkus sells to self-publishing authors are, basically, a scam. Or at best entirely too scam-adjacent. There are lots of reasons for this, beginning with the huge fee, but not stopping with that.

Oh, I think I drifted off topic there. Never mind. My point was, negative reviews make the whole set of reviews look more honest, ALTHOUGH really solid, thoughtful positive reviews over 50 words (or so) do the same thing and are even better for the purpose.

3) If a review says a book is “too dark” or “too graphic,” some readers may take that as a challenge and therefore pick it up.

4) If a review says, “I loved it, but the author REALLY NEEDS to learn how to use lay and lie,” then the author might read that and learn how to use lay and lie, thus improving the reading experience for all her readers forever.

As a side note, the review will sit there forever, so the kinder method would be to email the author and say, “I love your books, but for crying out loud, can’t you sort out lay vs lie?” I personally am too inhibited to do that. If I knew the reader personally, I might, but otherwise, probably not.

As a side-side note, there’s a “report” option for Amazon ebooks via which a reader can report typos and other errors. I HEAR that sometimes Amazon will unpublish the book and this would be bad for the author, but I don’t know how often that sort of thing happens? I’ve only had the “fix something” panel light up once at KDP personally, when an exceptionally alert reader spotted a typo in Tuyo after the book had been out for four years. I fixed it and that was it, no problems.

5) “I can’t believe a book THIS BAD is even possible” can obviously cause readers to buy the book to see just how terrible it is.

I don’t recommend this as a sales strategy, but I mean, it’s a possible way negative reviews might get readers to buy a book.

6) The review specifically mentions a trope that is a draw for a significant number of readers. That is, the words “prison break” or “ghost story” appear in the review, and at once a certain number of potential buyers perk up.

I’m pretty sure this has happened for me, but I can’t think of the specific instance.

7) There’s a “Team A” vs “Team B” dynamic of some sort, this appears in the reviews, and some number of readers become curious about which team they’ll wind up rooting for.

I grant, plenty of readers are tired of love triangles, but I bet plenty aren’t. Also, there are probably other sorts of “Team A vs Team B” things that would work, although love triangles are certainly what spring to mind.

8) A negative review mentions a different author in a way that is intriguing to potential readers. That is, “Reminds me of Patricia McKillip, but with too many talking cats.” Then readers who don’t mind talking cats and do like McKillip think, “Great!” and pick it up.

9) Negative reviews boost the number of reviews just as much as good reviews. Sheer numbers of reviews produce a credibility all their own.

10) A negative review strikes other readers as unfair or off-base, and inspires those other readers to write their own reviews contradicting the negative one.

***

Whew, fine, ten turned out to be a lot. I was trying to think of actual plausible reasons without repeating myself too much or getting too silly. I was starting to think I wasn’t going to get there, but then I thought of a few more after all.

While on this topic, a few related posts certainly spring to mind, so:

Why authors shouldn’t read reader reviews

Why Authors Should Listen to Readers: About the importance of reading reader reviews

Why Every Writer Should Be Writing Book Reviews

I used to post more reviews at Goodreads and Amazon. I gradually stopped because of concerns about the appearance of tit-for-tat review swaps and review manipulation. The thing is, if authors genuinely like each other’s books and review each other’s books at all frequently, I don’t see how to avoid the appearance that you’re swapping reviews. I don’t know, maybe it would be safe to go through my “recent reading” posts and adapt some of those to post as reviews — but only for authors who haven’t ever reviewed my books. Not like such authors are in short supply.

However, I do believe that I become FAR more analytical when I’m writing a review. I see TONS of stuff I wouldn’t have consciously noticed if I hadn’t written the review. I think that alone is at least interesting and possibly useful, so I lean toward agreeing with the third of the linked posts above: Writers ought to be writing reviews.

I used to visit and read FAR more book review blogs than I do now because, as my TBR pile threatened to implode and become a black hole, the last thing I really wanted was a lot of reviews of great-sounding books. I used to visit Charlotte’s Library routinely — she reviews MG books, especially novels involving time travel, of which there are A LOT, apparently. Glad to see her site is still going. So is Fantasy Book Cafe, another one I used to visit a lot. I should glance in at both of these sites from time to time.

If you’ve got a favorite book review site, how about dropping it in the comments?

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From Writer Unboxed: The Art of Propulsive Fiction

I like this post a lot. It’s by someone named Cathy Yardley, who is a book coach and an author. Checking Amazon, it looks like she’s written lots of contemporary romance in the basic category of “short romance novels, priced low, published fast.” That’s something of a guess because I only glanced at a few of her titles, but I know that can be a highly successful strategy for authors who have a knack that way.

Anyway, I do like this post. The reason is: Yardley isn’t declaring she is Promoting The Truth or declaiming that This Is The Secret. She’s saying this: plot and character intersect. Generally speaking, you will probably be focused on both. But maybe not, and that’s also fine.

Yardley says: For fiction to be propulsive, you need fully fleshed characters, pursuing something the reader becomes personally invested in, that changes that character as a result (for better or worse) through the crucible of addressing the story’s conflict.

When I teach, I always advise starting with character, because no matter what theme you want to explore or premise you want to set up, the protagonist is the vehicle through which the reader experiences the story. … Because the ongoing action is going to result from your character’s choices in pursuing their goal and the logical and increasing conflict you introduce as the story progresses, the resulting responses and new decisions will be organic and engaging, forming a natural and immersive plot.

This seems like a good way to put that.

She also adds that some writers don’t want to follow three-act structure because they think it’s too cliched and predictable. She says, Pride & Prejudice and Fight Club (the novel) both use three act structure. Few are going to say “Wow, those are basically the same book.”

I agree. The concept of three-act structure is so broad and so vague that it’s not possible for it to be either cliched or predictable, because it barely exists at all.

Most importantly, Yardley winds up by saying essentially: What if you don’t want to make your story propulsive? Then don’t, because it’s your book and that’s fine. I’m glad to see that because nothing irritates me more than The One True Way style of writing advice.

AND, she actually intersects with a post here from last week, thus:

Literary fiction quite often abandons what would be considered classic three act structure, because it isn’t the aim of the piece. The same could be said of experimental structures like slipstream, some kinds of microfiction, or the very real rise of LitRPG (which I am devouring like potato chips at the moment! Although that actually is very propulsive, but compressed, and by its nature not broken into “acts.” That’s a different post, though!)

And that caught my eye because of the LitRPG post last week, and I’m starting to feel like I should read something in the general neighborhood of LitRPG just to see what Yardley means by “very propulsive but compressed” and “not broken into acts.” I think that latter probably means “neverending episodes,” but I’m not sure.

Anyway, good post, click through if you’d like to read the whole thing.

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Okay, so progress is progressing! With a few unanticipated bobbles provided by life.

So far, I’m managing 2000 to 3000 words per workday, 4000 to 5000 per day on weekends, for an average that is about where I’d hoped. No super annoying slowdowns, as I mostly know what I’m doing. SO FAR. I’m likely to hit something I’m not as sure about eventually.

Quite a few characters, but relatively few super-cluttered crowd scenes, so that’s not as bad.

Two plot lines, plainly related but very separate so far. A vague notion how to get them to converge, which is, of course, taking longer than I hoped, but I’m moving toward the convergence. A much clearer idea of what happens when they do converge. I mean broadly clear, not crystal clear. A reasonably good idea of the roles Aras and Ryo will play, which need to be peripheral and might be semi-off-screen. Not sure. The dramatic ending, yes, that’s all set and has been since I realized I could set up something neat for Tathimi’s second book. Not her first. I’m thinking incredibly far ahead. Far for me, I mean.

***

Also, last week Magdalene, my gray tabby, abruptly got sick.

Very sick, very abruptly. I whisked her to my vet for the day, they worked her in and called me to discuss her excitingly high fever (nearly 106F).

Wow, I said. Abrupt onset, very high fever, that sure sounds like Connor a few years ago, and we decided that was a tick-borne disease. Maggie was bitten by a tick a week or ten days ago; I made a mental note when I took the tick off her.

Hmm! said my vet, and immediately added delicious liver-flavored Doxycyline to Maggie’s daily schedule.

Two days later, Magdalene was much better; two more days, back to normal. She gets to finish the whole bottle of Doxycyline, which seems enormous at one cc per day. She does not agree that it is delicious, but she is thankfully The Cooperative Kitty. If this were Maximilian, it’d be awkward. Ticks were just absent during the drought, but I Frontlined the dogs after it rained and ticks once more appeared. Now the kitties have been Frontlined as well, for this last month before cold zaps the ticks again for the winter.

This was not dramatically distracting, in fact. There wasn’t a lot to do for Maggie except coax her to eat and wait to see whether the antibiotic worked. I now have a list of treats she especially likes, which no doubt she will enjoy for the rest of her life.

I know of two Cavaliers who developed seizures that were clearly, obviously caused by flea preventatives, by the way. (Application of flea treatment on the first of the month, seizures only during the first week of the month, seizures stopped after flea preventative was discontinued.) This is conclusive, full stop, and that’s why I don’t want my guys continually on anything when that’s unnecessary, despite the risk of erlichiosis (probable culprit). Frontline Plus has the best safety record I know of, which is why I use it.

MEANWHILE

Magdalene is now just fine, this is a four-day weekend for me, and therefore I’m going back to work. We are breaking out of a prison. It’s not a huge part of the story, but I have always wanted to do a prison break, and now here we are.

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Commenter Heather requested a table of sorcery and slang terms for sorcery. Here you go, and I hope you all find this useful and/or interesting.

Name  SlangMinor forms of varying strengthTrue sorceryPerceptionGetFleetingly perceiving thoughts

Perceiving strong, clear thoughts

Perceiving glimpses of emotions

Impressions of presence and distance  You can see almost anything you want to see. People can block you, but if you don’t mind exercising overt sorcery, you can break through almost any defense.  CharismaPullPeople admire you and want to impress you and earn your approval, leading them to take your orders.  
Stronger, but similarAllure  PullPeople like you and want to please you; they want you to like them; they want to be close to you.  

People want to be friends with you, but friendship tends to shift toward devotion.  
Stronger, but similarPersuasionPullPeople find you persuasive, obviously. But the effect, as with any kind of minor pull wears off when people aren’t near you.  
Stronger, but similar

False memories might fall into something like this category.Coercion  NudgeInfluencing people to do things they might have been inclined to do anyway.  

Influencing people who are on the fence about something to decide one way or the other.  

Causing people who are moving fast and depending on reflexes to take actions you want them to take, especially if they have no strong contradictory motivation.  
You can force people to do things they don’t want to do, even act in ways they despise, even when they know exactly what you’re doing.  

You can impose your will on people for an extended period even if you’re asleep or they leave your immediate vicinity; eg, setting people to guard yu while you sleep or forbidding people to speak about you.  

Minor forms of sorcery can be nebulous and hard to define even for Lau. Anything in the ballpark of “people like you and want you to like them” or “people want to be close to you” or “people generally listen to your advice” is going to fall into the general category of pull.

Nudge doesn’t require people to like you or want to please you, though the edges between pull and nudge can be blurry.

Pure nudge is easiest and most effective when people simply aren’t paying attention, or aren’t making conscious choices, or are moving fairly briskly and thinking about other things. It’s easy to use nudge to make someone glance momentarily away from something or keep walking the way they’ve been going and miss turning down a side street.

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