Category: Musings

Musings

Weekly Musing: Retirement Home

DH Hanni

This week’s musing is inspired partially by a book I recently in addition to my own observations and discussions of writers and general readers alike. Of late I’ve been thinking more and more about tropes I see in books or in the shows and movies I watch. A few months ago I touched upon tropes in romance that make me not want to read much in that genre, but this musing is much more general.

Recently I finished Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett and while it kind of confused me and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not as a reader, as a writer I appreciated what the author did. The book centers around a trio of witches and it is immediately clear these are not your typical witches and this book isn’t going to be your typical mash-up of fairy tales and fantasy. He twists so many of those tropes on their heads that it honestly keeps the reader guessing at how it will end.

This got me thinking about tropes I see a lot of that really annoy the hell out of me. Below are some of those I wish would be retired, or at the very least, if they continue to be employed, take a cue from Pratchett and others and flip the script.

Lying: I don’t know why but I’m noticing this in a lot of late. When I say lying, I’m referring to the kind where one character doesn’t want to tell another character, usually a loved one, a secret because they want to protect them. Yet they have no problem being truthful to a relative stranger or a new acquaintance mainly because that new person has quickly figured out what the big secret is from the start. Naturally wayyyyyyyyyyyy too much time is devoted to whether or not the loved one(s) will find out/be told the secret. Spoiler alert: Yes. Yes, they will. They always do unless they happen to die.

So why freaking bother with this crap? I know it’s about drama but it’s so colossally annoying. I’m not saying people need to be 100% because no one is, but to string the truth out for hundreds of pages for no reason other than to manufacture drama is damn taxing. How about layering the lies? Or telling half-truths? Or slight omissions? Or if a character must go down the lying route, delve deeper into the motivation beyond the character believing they are protecting others because we know they aren’t.

Perhaps the character should start with the truth from the beginning. That, in and of itself, can generate all kinds of drama. When we think about our own lives, there are times when we feel comfortable telling the truth to someone that later on it turns out to have been a big mistake. Yet for some reason when it comes to literature and TV and movies, characters constantly lie, lie, lie. The burden is enormous and causes bigger problems then there really needs to be.

Nerds: While I believe the geek shall inherit the Earth, I would like many of the stereotypes and tropes associated with nerds to be retired. As a nerd I will admit that while it’s nice seeing my fellow geek brothers and sisters represented, it’s also annoying because so often the various degrees of nerdiness is ignored.

Some nerds are born, gifted with high intellect and naturally drawn to certain things. Some nerds are made, discovering the older they get they really are a Doctor Who and Star Trek fan because that stuff resonates finally. Not all nerds wear glasses. Fun fact, near-sightedness is actually the dominate gene, not perfect vision. Not all nerds are dateless and sexless. Not all nerds are adverse to showers and personal grooming. Not all nerds are stick thin or morbidly obese and have a diet which consists solely of Mountain Dew and Cheetos. Not all nerds are fashion adverse or horribly awkward.

Like every other stereotype out there, yes, there are people who fit the mold but by and large, nerds are a diverse group of people. Some are really into comics but not computers. Some are really into computers but not into science fiction. You get the idea. So let’s try to retire the nerd trope especially as more and more things associated with a fringe group have become mainstream and socially acceptable.

Angsty hero/heroine: While I’m all for a well-rounded and well-developed character, I’m getting a little bit tired of a hero/heroine who either starts off full of angst or through the course of the story becomes more emo. Oddly enough this is usually related to all the lying the hero/heroine does. Hmmm, wonder if there might be a correlation?

I think this became popular because it’s a quick and easy way to add depth to a character. Kill off someone close to them or have them be forced to kill someone, bam! Instant guilt and darkness. Oh, but some of us in the audience are getting tired of that. Again, it comes down to how to add drama to the story and make the hero’s life as trying as possible. But for all the darkness very little thought is put into bringing light into the hero’s/heroine’s life unless through a love interest. This in and of itself is something that should be relied upon less.

Heroes don’t have to be Mr. or Miss Happy All the Time types of people because no one is. The appeal of a hero is how they pick themselves up when things get bad. The hero’s journey can inspire us, but if you make the hero too full of angst we just don’t care.

Women Who Kick Ass: Let me preface this by stating I have fond memories of 1990s/early 2000s TV as having a lot of great female characters. It was awesome and great as a girl growing up seeing women who had something to offer beyond looks. However, partially as a result of this I noticed a trope developed. It was Women Who Kick Ass. The main problem I have with this is it gives the impression that the only way to be a strong woman is to literally be a strong woman. Apparently a woman who isn’t physically strong isn’t a strong woman even if her strengths come in other areas.

I get why this became popular especially over the last couple of decades. For too long history, society, culture, literature, TV, and movies have treated women as something so weak physically that this must mean women are the lesser.

So how do we fix this problem especially with the massive social and cultural upheaval the 1960s and 1970s bring us? Go in the complete and opposite direction. Yet even with women embracing the idea they aren’t weaklings, there is still a struggle on how to present a strong woman as feminine.  Xena may have been a warrior princess but let’s face it, her outfit wasn’t the most practical. We can kick ass as long as we look good doing it.

Hmmm, but what if you are un-athletic? Or not cute? Or both? What if you are the quiet female? Not necessarily passive and full of no self-esteem but just someone who’s more introverted? In an attempt to pump up the self-esteem and image of women that we can do anything that somehow got translated into in order to be able to do anything, you must be physical and kick ass. I get not wanting little girls to grow up believing they need a man to solve everything for them. Or to give little boys the impression females are dumb but Women Who Kick Ass ignores other things that make a female strong.

 

Like everything else, these tropes are what I see most commonly that I’m getting tired of. These things are cyclical and a few months or years from now it’ll be another set of tropes that will be popular. Granted the reason why these exist and continue to be used is because as a reader or viewer we still respond to them. I’m not trying to say that using any or all of these tropes are a bad thing for a writer because there are plenty of writers who do a great job with tropes to make them feel fresh and still relevant. Again that’s when taking a trope and adding some kind of twist to it.

Yet part of me can’t help but think buying into these tropes is just cheap and lazy writing. It’s far easier to go with people’s expectations rather than digging deeper and deeper into characters and story. It feels like to me it’s a way to shut the door on the endless possibilities that exist within the infinite universe of a writer’s mind. For my own works, there are times when I do make a conscious decision to at least try something different. Sometimes I think it works but admittedly there are times it doesn’t work. At least it’s worth giving a try.

Musings

Weekly Musing: Frustration

DH Hanni

Of late I’ve been frustrated. Not necessarily so much with my work per se although a couple of stories have been giving me revision fits. No, what has been gnawing at me are comments and discussions I see on the internet about the level of accuracy in books. In particular criticisms leveled at historical fiction.  Admittedly reading comments and participating in discussions on the internet is a pointless exercise since a good chunk of people are stuck in their ways.

I guess why it’s been bothering me more and more is because I’m getting closer to starting the arduous revision process of my historical fiction book. Seeing how petty and nitpicky people get over relatively minor flubs angers me. It gets tiresome to keep pointing out that authors are humans too and therefore things will get overlooked. What I mean by minor flubs are errors that don’t have an actual effect on the overall plot or story. Just little things like a particular dagger wasn’t in style in year XYZ but a couple of years later. Or an article of clothing was out of fashion by a few years before a character wears it. People harping on things like that drive me nuts.

Granted there are times to get legitimately annoyed with errors. For example, an author referencing a character using a gun that hadn’t been invented at that time. Or assuming everyone knew or was using a piece of technology that, while may have technically been around during the time period in question, wasn’t well-known.

Another source of frustration, and this one isn’t anything new but is a huge pet peeve, is when people complain about a female character displaying ‘modern woman’ characteristics. Usually this character fits the trope of being feisty, headstrong, unwilling to accept the societal norms, smart, and who may or may not desire to be a wife and mother. Apparently there is this incredibly flawed assumption that the idea of women desiring to explore their potential beyond a narrow scope is something that is only unique to last 50 to 100 years of human history.

Let’s open up a history book shall we? Look at how many women through history have behaved in direct opposition to societal norms. Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, famously never got married no matter how much her council pressured her and no matter how much the lack of an issue could throw the governing of the country into chaos upon her death. Ancient history shows Queens ruling just fine thank you very much. Women have been heads of states in countries such as India and England while the US hasn’t even come close. Joan of Arc led a freaking army. Mother Teresa wielded quite the influence when she was alive. Well-behaved women rarely make history indeed.

Expanding our net beyond queens, we have Harriet Tubman constantly risking her life to help others to freedom with the Underground Railroad. If caught she would face death but it didn’t faze her and this was during a period in American history where only wealthy white men mattered. Or to some of our First Ladies known for actually being involved in helping the world rather than being a fashion icon. Scientists such as Marie Curie, winner of not one but two Nobel prizes.

These are just a scant sample of women who have defied what was normal so why is it so difficult for people to wrap their brains around that a woman in the lower classes, for lack of a better term, could feel and act differently from what society tells them how they should behave? Yes women in lower classes lacked the socio-economic resources to better themselves but it doesn’t mean none of them couldn’t or didn’t at least try.

While we have all sorts of laws and other evidence showing what was expected behavior for both genders and all classes, think about it this way. In our own modern times, do people follow laws? Follow what society expects? No. So why do we think that our ancestors were all such goody-goodys? They weren’t and some of us wouldn’t be alive if they had been. Granted, the stakes for failing to fall in line could result in death or banishment from the community but people did it anyway.

And it’s not just female characters I see getting criticized. To a far lesser degree a male character considered enlightened for his views on women being more than just being on this planet solely for their amusement gets called out for not being realistic. Apparently men have been nothing but thick-headed, abusive asses until the last few decades when a bolt of lightning or something struck them in utero and rewired an enter gender’s brain.

It’s insulting and again, while laws are still largely created and enforced by males does not mean that all men follow societal ‘norms’, past or present. It’s asinine to believe no man in the whole of human history didn’t appreciate a non-doormat woman or didn’t appreciate a woman who was his equal and treated her with respect.

Another source of frustration and concern are when readers can’t, or who flat out won’t, either look at the historical context of when a book was written or the world the story is set in. There are attitudes and language which today wouldn’t fly but which were somewhat normal in other places and times. As a reader it is your responsibility to read something in the context of what makes sense for that world. This is regardless of genre. If you want to read books which agree with your view of what is right and wrong in the world then there are plenty out there but don’t be surprised if you read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Gone With the Wind and they use the word nigger and treat blacks with zero respect. Or if you read The Scarlet Letter and are puzzled as to what the big fuss was about Hester Prynne and that damn A she had to wear.

These things bother me as a writer because people get way too upset too easily nowadays over the silliest crap. I also see way too much pressure from some in the general public for everything to be 100% perfection even though no one is perfect. From my own experiences in research I can tell you I’ve encountered discrepancies. Historians can’t agree so why expect authors to be perfect? As far for personality types, we’ve had a rainbow of differences going back to the caveman days.

Instead of harping on the little things, instead look at the content and context of the story. Really using critical thinking skills to analyze something while keeping in mind there may very well be changes from what we think we know of the history of a time period. Feel free to check the accuracy of something but before going off on an inaccuracy, look at it. Is it something that was a simple mistake? Was it a big change and if so, why do you think it was done? Was it done to help the fiction of the story? Chances are the author did it knowingly but it’s not as if it changes actual history. After all, friction equals fiction.

Musings

Weekly Musing: 2015 Rock Hill Writers Intensive

DH Hanni

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending my first conference/writers workshop of 2015. What made it even more pleasurably was that it happened to be in my backyard. The 2015 Rock Hill Writers Intensive presented by the SCWW association was one day but as the name suggests, it was intensive.

My day started with me thinking I was late as I thought I overslept. In reality I was on time which allowed me the opportunity to get settled and talk to the people at my table. What was quickly apparent to me was just how many people attending it weren’t locals. For some reason, several people from Greenville, SC made the nearly two hour drive as well as people from small communities in both North and South Carolina.

After the opening address it was time for the first session. For mine I choose a topic called Whose Head is This? presented by Barbara Evers. It was about point of view and determining which one is appropriate for the story. Ms. Evers gave simple questions to think about for our characters such as how do they speak, think, what traits they use in life, etc.

Another suggestion, and one that I am still shy about using, are finding pictures of what we think our characters sort of look like but also pictures or physical objects which represent something about a character. For example, if a character wears a fedora, get a fedora and keep it nearby while writing.

Along with other reminders about making sure characters sound and think differently from each other, using a scene break if switching POV within a chapter, and whatnot, she gave a great suggestion. When going through the revision process, change the font for each character. For example, I’m working on a novel with two POV characters. Their chapters alternate in telling the story. By using a different font for each, it not only gives your eyes a break but it also is a visual representation of how much each character contributes to the story. This doesn’t mean the book should be 50/50 necessarily but if you thought character A had as much equal time as character B but they don’t, it can help you make some decisions.

The second session I went to was another one put on by Barbara Evers. This one was regarding the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and how to use that for developing characters. I’ve been pretty familiar with the Myers Briggs test since high school when I was first took it. Since then I have taken it several times during my life with the same results. INFJs unite!

But this wasn’t a presentation on our own personality as just a very condensed version of what the components that go into a MBTI personality. The main focus was how writers can, and should use it, with our characters and their stories. One of her suggestions was to try and take the MBTI test as one of our characters. I can’t honestly imagine being able to do that without my own personality biasing the test. However, because of the presentation I am more interested in picking up an official book on the different types. I also want to challenge myself to have characters who aren’t so introverted like me yet I do worry that I will go over the top and write a one-dimensional character.

After lunch was the third session. Unfortunately this was the dullest and least helpful one of the four I attended. It was also the one I was looking the most forward to. It was simply titled Historical Research and presented by Tally Johnson a very well-informed and knowledgeable presenter about South Carolina history.

This was one of the biggest issues I had with the presentation. In the program it wasn’t listed as being specific to just South Carolina history but general historical research. I was looking forward to perhaps getting some advice for different resources, how to go about approaching experts in a particular field, challenges of writing historical fiction, things like that.

If I was interested in South Carolina history, and I may very well be down the line, I have a very exhaustive list of resources I can turn to.

The fourth and final session I attended was titled Breathing Life Into Setting presented by Barbara Claypole White. Late in the afternoon after a long day, she still managed to have lots of energy which propelled her lecture.

I picked this session since setting is one of those things I feel is tricky to get right. Depending upon genre, setting might be just as important as characters, acting as another character if you will. That being said, setting, or world-building, can quickly take over the narrative in a bad way something Ms. White admitted is one of the things in her own writing she has a tendency to do.

She gave us some advice to think about as we revise:

  • Setting should never feel too comfortable and calm all the time for the character
  • Objects in a story should have some kind of meaning for the character
  • Opposites in preferred setting can provide a lot of conflict for the character. For example, a character who loves the beach goes nuts being holed up in a ski chalet.
  • Memories a particular place evokes in a character, whether good or bad

I was glad she went beyond the typical use of the five senses and went more into how setting helps the psychological make-up of the character and the story.

Since this was a local conference, I was pleasantly surprised at how many people attended as well as the overall quality of the sessions I attended. It was incredibly well-organized, must have been run by authors who are outliners rather than pantsers, and had a very welcoming atmosphere. I’m looking forward to next year’s intensive, knowing it will cover a variety of topics.