All posts by A. L. Phillips

Savvy Saturday – A New Year!

Uncategorized

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and that your 2014 is off to a fantastic start. For me, 2013 was an incredible year as an author, a year of big changes and lots of learning experiences. I’d like to begin this year’s Savvy Saturday blog posts by sharing with you a few of the things I learned.

First: It takes a lot of work to get a book published. I’d theoretically known this before, but it’s incredibly different reading about all the steps (e.g. formatting, cover art, back cover copy) and actually going through it. I’m grateful to the folks at BorderStone Press, then, for taking care of the myriad details that went into turning The Quest of the Unaligned from an electronic Microsoft Word document into a real paperback book.

Second: It takes a lot of work before and after a book is published to get anyone interested in buying it. In other words, marketing matters – and it’s time consuming. This is a side of being an author that many people aren’t aware of. Even big-name authors are being required to do some of their own marketing now, and authors that work with small publishing firms are responsible for nearly all of their own publicity. This realization led me to creating an online social media presence – from Facebook and Twitter to LinkedIn, Tumblr, and this blog.

Unfortunately, it’s also really hard to figure out which aspects of marketing one’s book work, and which are just a waste of an author’s writing time. The best strategy, novelist marketing gurus say, is to keep writing and publishing. A first book is rarely monetarily successful, but with every new book, an author can attract new fans who will then (hopefully) want to purchase the other books he or she has written. If one is a full-time writer, coming out with a book every year or two is a great plan. If one is a graduate student, it is a laughable plan. Sorry. Rest assured that I plan to continue writing and pursuing publication for my work, but it has to happen in between Ph.D. research papers and teaching undergraduate classes.

Third: No book is ever perfect. There are a few typos in The Quest of the Unaligned which still irk me every time I see them, and that book was gone over with a fine-toothed comb by professional editors as well as my friends and family. But that’s life. A misplaced comma isn’t going to kill anyone, and – here’s another thing I learned – most people don’t care. This leads to the fourth point.

Fourth: Even if it isn’t perfect, there’s nothing like holding your own published novel in your hands, and knowing that you’ve brought enjoyment to other people by doing something you love – telling a story. Seeing my Amazon ratings change when people buy a copy of my book, interacting with fans, and answering questions about my world and characters asked by people who actually care, is an amazing experience. My goal with The Quest of the Unaligned, as I’ve mentioned before, was to sell at least one copy to someone I didn’t personally know and have them enjoy it. This goal – modest, I admit – has been more than exceeded. And that’s fantastic.

As I go forward into 2014, my goals as an author are realistic rather than optimistic. During this season of my life, I’m a Ph.D. student first and a novelist second. I plan to finish the set of five short stories set in Alepago, and either write a new set of short stories or keep working on my novel set in that world. It depends on how much mental energy I have. In addition, I plan to continue doing these blog posts, though the day on which they are published may change from Saturdays to a week-day. My last goal is to continue building relationships with you, my readers. I look forward to continuing interacting with you on social media and through this blog. On that topic, if you have anything you specifically want me to write about – any questions to answer or ideas to explore – let me know in the comments or on Facebook! Whatever I am able to write this year, it is my hope that it will eventually give you an adventure that grips you, characters you can fall in love with, and a story that sticks with you long after the book is over. Many thanks for your continued support, and happy 2014!

Always Winter, and Never Christmas…Until it Was

Reviews and Exemplars, Tween the Weekends

TweenTheWeekends_banner

 

 

Merry Christmas! December’s “Tween the Weekends” falls today, on December 25, so I thought it would be appropriate to discuss a wonderful tween book/series that incorporates the celebration of Christmas: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. I have mentioned several times on this blog that one of the hallmarks of a good tween book is its ability to speak to multiple groups of readers, providing surface and deeper level meanings that can spark conversations and provide food for thought for tweens and adults alike.

For those few of you who might not have read Lewis’s classic series, it is set in Narnia, a magical country that has been cursed. The evil White Witch has by her power made it always winter – always winter, in the sorrowful words of Tumnus the Faun, and never Christmas.

This horrible scenario speaks to young readers at a visceral level, and also to adult readers on a more intellectual and theological plane. Christmas, the time in Western Civilization marked for joy and love, for gift-giving, laughter, and light, is done away with. In its place is winter, a time of cold and heaviness and death. Young readers are struck by the unfairness of it all. No time off of school. No carols. No holiday spirit. No Christmas presents! Truly, the White Witch is thoroughly evil and must be defeated. Similarly, the great lion Aslan first reveals his goodness from afar, as Father Christmas appears in Aslan’s name and gives presents to the book’s protagonists. All will be all right, the book indicates, now that Christmas has returned.

On a deeper level, this taking away and return of Christmas also speaks powerfully to the theological themes that C.S. Lewis purposefully weaves into his Narnia series. As a Christian theologian, Lewis wrote The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to be a reimagining of the gospel story. In Christianity, Christmas is celebrated in remembrance of the fact that God came to Earth as a man, becoming one of His creatures in order to fulfill the promises that He made: that He would redeem them from their sins and bring them back into fellowship with Him. Without Christmas, there is no incarnation, no redemption, and no hope for mankind. “Always winter and never Christmas” is in fact a profound lament of the state of the soul of Narnia: cold, hard, frozen, and without hope.

The appearance of Father Christmas, therefore, not only is a tangible show of the joy and “Christmas Spirit” that return to Narnia as the White Witch’s power wanes, but also a nonverbal foreshadowing of the incarnation and redemption that will come in the rest of the book. Aslan is revealed to be the savior of Narnia, a talking beast who lived among talking beasts, the king of all and the son of the great Emperor Beyond the Sea, the good and faithful one who is willing to die in the place of a traitor and in doing so overturns death itself. The redemption of Edmund, the overthrow of the White Witch, and the establishment of the Golden Age of Narnia all flow directly from Aslan’s choice to enter the world which He sang into existence as a beast of flesh and blood. They flow directly from Christmas, which the White Witch cannot hold back once Aslan decides to return to Narnia.

And all of this wrapped up in a tween fantasy book loved by generations of children and adults. Wow. Now that’s a level of meaning-making for an author to strive for!

A Sampling of Sadistics (Part 1 of 4)

Academics

Greetings, all! Happy December! In honor of the holiday season (i.e. Finals Season for those of you who are students), I’m going to give you all a treat for the next few weeks. That is, an opportunity to suffer through not only a punny story that I wrote, but a punny story about STATISTICS. Yes, friends, this is the meeting of my worlds. Read at your own risk. I dare you.

A Sampling of Sadistics (Part 1)

by A.L. Phillips

Copyright 2013

Naturally, the worst snowstorm of the season arrived during finals week. I shivered against the malevolent wind as it howled its way right through my winter coat. “Wind-resistant,” I noted bitterly as I put one freezing foot in front of the other, was clearly the coat-manufacturer’s devious way of not saying “wind-proof.” Nevertheless, my statistics final wouldn’t wait until the storm was over. Sighing heavily, I shoved my hands deeper into my coat’s giant pockets and shuffled through the ever-shifting mounds of snow that obscured the paths, bushes, and grassy fields of the campus landscape.

There should have been a sidewalk somewhere. Given that I’d taken it to class nearly every day for the past five semesters, I should have been able to find it with my eyes closed. Which was more or less necessary at the moment – the snow was currently flying horizontally at my eyes and glasses, shrouding the world in a thick white blur. The color reminded me unpleasantly of the blank white sheets of paper that would currently be sitting on each desk in my statistics classroom.

My stomach went queasy at the image. In just a few hours, I knew, those papers would be covered with equations, graphs, and seemingly-cultish symbols, hopefully arranged in a meaningful-enough pattern to convince the professor that I’d been paying attention in class all semester. In just a few hours, I’d be done with statistics forever. In just a few hours, I’d never have to worry about –

– The sheet of ice on the ground had been hidden by a thin layer of snow. My boots slipped forward. I tried to catch myself, and realized too late that my warm deep pockets weren’t always an unmitigated blessing. Both my hands were still enveloped in fabric when my head hit something very cold and very hard.

So there was the sidewalk, I realized ironically, before the blinding white of the snowstorm was replaced by a velvety darkness.

“Doc! We’ve got another one!” I blinked my eyes against the brilliant lights that were assaulting my optic nerves. For some reason, their cheery yellow color did nothing to brighten my mood.

“What happened?” I murmured to myself, in part just to hear my own voice and to assure myself that I was awake. At that stimulus, my memories came back in a rush and I sat up with a start. “My final!” I gasped, adrenaline and dread hitting my system as if I’d downed a triple-espresso in one swallow.

“It’s okay, you’re fine. Your final will still be there when you get back.” The voice belonged to a young man, and it reminded me that I had quite inexplicably changed locations. While my last memory had been of a blizzard at college, I was now in a warm brightly-lit room, seated on an old, springy couch. The air felt heavy, and tasted faintly of perfume. I looked down and blinked: for some reason, the couch was upholstered in a print of Greek letters.

As I took in my surroundings, I soon realized that the couch’s patterning wasn’t the only strange thing about this room. To my right, a large number of unfamiliar machines were aligned in neat, gleaming rows, and to my left, a large number of empty picture frames were hanging on the wall in columns. The walls themselves were painted with a multitude of geometric designs: lines, symmetrical curves, and sets of patterned dots. For some reason, it reminded me of my high-school algebra and geometry classes.

“Where am I?” I asked, my voice a touch shrill. “This doesn’t look like a hospital.”

“It’s not,” came the young man’s voice again, finally drawing my eyes to the doorway where he was standing. As I looked at him, I felt some of the tension ease from my shoulders. Whoever the man was, he seemed relatively normal. He was probably about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, dressed in a blue buttoned top and white slacks, with slightly unkempt brown hair and intelligent eyes that matched his shirt. Shooting me a grin, he leaned out the doorway.

“Doc?” he called again, then shrugged and relaxed against the wall. “Sorry,” he said with an apologetic smile, “but you’ve come at a bit of a busy time for us. Normally the doc would have been here and sent you back by now, but he’s trying to deal with Tant’s crew. We’ve got them locked up in the basement, but they aren’t talking yet.”

“What?” I stared at the man, repeating to myself what he’d just said. It still didn’t make sense. “You have people locked up in the basement? What’s going on? Where on earth am I?”

“That’s a good question,” the young man replied frankly, maintaining his cheerful expression. “In fact, it’s a fascinating subject that requires a bit more depth to do justice to than I can spare at the moment. However, I’d love to discuss it with you at a time that’s convenient for both of us.”

I didn’t know quite how to respond. For some reason, this young man reminded me strongly of my history professor. Every college has one, I’m sure: the kind who tends to go off on tangents in class, and is always inviting students to come by his office to discuss deep issues. But in this situation, I needed answers, not office hours. “Can you give me the one sentence version?” I asked through clenched teeth. “I was in a snowstorm, and now I’m here, wherever this is, and I want to know what happened to me!”

“I know,” the young man said with a sympathetic expression. “I understand, really.” He looked out the doorway again, and exhaled in relief. “Finally,” he said. “Doc! We’ve got another one, and she’s asking questions.”

“Good, good,” I heard an older voice echoing from beyond the room. Strangely, it again reminded me of school – my stats professor always used that expression when someone gave a correct answer. Was I dreaming?

I pinched myself. It hurt. Okay, not dreaming. For some reason, that realization didn’t make me feel better.

I heard heavy footsteps approaching, and stood up to meet “Doc.” A moment later, an older man entered the room. Instead of the white coat I’d expected, the doctor was wearing a business suit.

“Hi,” I said hesitantly. “Um…” I trailed off, trying to figure out what to say. For some reason, I was finding it hard to think. Maybe it was the air, with its odd perfume and heavy taste. Or maybe it was Doc’s intimidating face: his pursed lips, heavy gray eyebrows, trimmed mustache and beard, and green eyes that seemed to be calculating my intelligence based on my demeanor, appearance, and apparent lack of communication skills. I automatically stood up straighter, trying to appear more confident than I felt.

But then the doctor spoke, and even the best posture in the world wouldn’t have helped me impress him. I had no idea what he had just said. The man had obviously been addressing me, since he was still holding me under his intimidating green gaze, but I couldn’t make out the words. “I’m sorry?” I squeaked.

I listened carefully, straining my ears as he repeated the question, but it was no use. He wasn’t speaking English. Sighing, the doctor beckoned with a long finger to the young man behind him – the panicked look in my eyes must have been pretty obvious.

With a smile of pity, the younger man stepped forward. “He asked if you’re a student,” he said.

“Oh,” I replied. Of all the questions I had anticipated, that was one of the furthest from my mind. “Yeah, of course I am. Can he tell me what’s going on?”

The older man said something else in his strange not-quite-English dialect, accompanying it with a stern look in my direction. I glanced in helpless confusion at his assistant.

“He understands English,” he said apologetically, “and would appreciate it if you’d address him.”

“Oh.” I turned back to the doctor. “Yes, then. I mean, yes, sir,” I added, since it seemed appropriate.

His eyebrow twitched, and he launched into another sentence. Listening to him was aggravating. I felt like I should be able to understand what he was saying, but somehow the sounds that entered my brain just didn’t turn into words. Fortunately, the young man kept translating. “He says you may call him Doc, and he hypothesizes that this is your first visit to these fair fields. Is that correct?”

“I…don’t know,” I answered, trying to both keep my eyes on the doctor, and also look around the room to get my bearings. There weren’t any windows, so I couldn’t tell where I was, but I’d never heard anyone describe the suburban town in which my college was located as “fair fields.”

The doctor’s eyebrows twitched at my response. He said something else in a dry tone, to at which his assistant hid a smile before translating. “By your response, Doc says, it appears that his hypothesis is not able to be rejected. On the basis of this, we both welcome you, student, to the Realm of Academia. More specifically, we’d like to welcome you to the main office of the Fields of Sadistics.”

Maybe I was dreaming after all. Then the last word of Doc’s welcome registered, and my stomach tightened. “Sadistics? You don’t mean statistics, do you?”

Doc interjected something in a dismissive tone, making a brushing motion with his hand. “No, that’s only what perts call it,” his translator said. “He would normally send you back immediately,” he continued as Doc kept talking, “but he says that if you’re willing to assist us first in a matter of grave importance, he can assure you that the whole kingdom will be eternally grateful.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows, his green eyes glittering as he waited for an answer. I, on the other hand, was still finding it hard to think. “Perts?” I asked. Then the rest of Doc’s message sank into my brain. My eyes widened, and I met the doctor’s gaze for a moment, then looked down at my fingernails. “Oh. I’d love to, but I don’t think I can. I have a final in forty minutes. Sorry.” I felt my cheeks turning red as I spoke. For some reason, I didn’t want to disappoint these people, strange as they were.

Doc’s response, however, was the opposite of what I anticipated. He started chuckling, then spoke a few decisive sentences. “Oh, don’t worry about your final. We’ll get you back in plenty of time,” his assistant translated. “Time in Academia is an elastic substance. Everything takes the same amount of time here.” Doc’s tone indicated that I should have already known this.

I glanced over at his assistant, hoping for explanation. He gave me a helpful smile. “No matter how much time any task is supposed to take in Academia, it gets done half an hour before it’s due.”

Doc nodded in agreement, then began to speak again in a breezy tone.

“So since your final isn’t for forty minutes, you’ll be fine,” the translator said.

For some reason that made sense, though a part of my brain told me that I had clearly hit my head too hard. Even more surprising to that part of my brain, I found myself agreeing to help.

“Good, good!” Doc said with another sharp head-nod. I wondered if that was only real English he could speak. Doc then turned back to his assistant, ticked off some items on his fingers, and left the room. Though his speech was still incomprehensible, I thought I caught one word.

“Did he call you Timothy?” I asked once the sound of footfalls had receded down the hall.

“Yes, short for Timothy Allen,” the man said. “Sorry, I should have introduced myself earlier. You can call me T.A.”

For some reason, that name rang a bell, but my head was spinning too much by now to put the pieces together. “Nice to meet you,” I said, half-hoping that the use of well-worn pleasantries could counteract the strangeness that this place exuded. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

“Likewise,” T.A. responded, his blue eyes sparkling as if he understood exactly where I was coming from. It was annoying, actually, how cheerful he was. “Follow me down to the kitchen: Doc told me to explain everything to you on the way, then meet him and the others in the basement.”

(To be continued)

 

***

Did you like this story? Enter A.L. Phillips’ Christmas giveaway to receive an all-new short story set in the world of The Quest of the Unaligned!

Savvy Saturday – Tropes, Themes, and More!

The Quest of the Unaligned, Writing Tips

A friend of mine posted this video on Facebook the other day – it’s pretty amusing, if you have time to watch it.

This video (subtly) brings up the issues of rip-offs, clichés, tropes, and themes. These four are what I’ll be talking about in today’s Savvy Saturday post, and they go in a sort of progression from bad to good. Rip-offs are probably just what you think they are. Someone likes someone else’s idea, writes their own version of it that’s really similar to the original, and tries to market it as their own unique work.

For instance, any time you’ve heard something called “A Lord of the Rings rip-off,” you can bet that it probably involves an everyman type of protagonist in a world full of magical creatures (likely including elves and dwarves), who has to join a quest to rid the world of some dark magical evil that threatens life as we know it, the life-force of which is bound to some object that the questers must hunt down and destroy.

Rip-offs, by their nature, are of lower quality than the original; it is also typically clear that a rip-off was trying to emulate the original work and didn’t do as good a job as the first author. For something to be a rip-off, then, it has to have enough specific elements in it that were also in the original book that it’s clear that the author of the rip-off book couldn’t have gotten them from another source.

Clichés are elements that get included in so many stories that they’re no longer new or interesting. We’re most used to clichés being figures of speech (e.g. “it was a dark and stormy night,” “she was good as gold,” “when hell freezes over”), but they can also be settings, situations, or characters. Fairy tales that include two older sons who are bad and a third son who is good are invoking this classic cliché. Meeting an old woman who turns out to be a witch/sorceress/fairy is a similar fairy tale cliché. (Double points if she’s met by a well and asks the hero to draw water for her!) Similarly, black hair or attire is a clichéd mark of a villain, while blond hair and simple peasant attire is a clichéd mark of The Chosen One. (For any of you who are interested, countering this cliché is one reason why Alaric’s hair and security chief uniform in The Quest of the Unaligned are both black.)

 

Disney movies take the idea of a character-situation-setting cliché to an extreme: probably half of their heroes and villains end up fighting on a perilously high location (likely in the rain), the hero saves the villain’s life, and the villain ends up falling to his death. (See Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Tarzan, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc.)

From this example, you can see that stories can have clichés in them and still be fun to read. The problem with clichés is that you as a reader know what’s going to happen already in the story, so it will be less able to keep your interest. Clichéd stories have a tendency to fall into the realm of “mindless fluff” and entertainment, and therefore less of a tendency to be remembered more than five minutes after the reader puts the book down.

Tropes are the ideas that the video above is using to amusing effect. A short definition is that tropes are a typology of the ways in which plots, settings, and characters can play out. For instance, if you’ve already read The Quest of the Unaligned, or if you don’t mind spoilers, you can check out http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheQuestOfTheUnaligned, which lists all of the tropes readers have found (thus far) in the novel. The idea that George Lucas and J.K. Rowling have “the same protagonist” in their books is because they both use a number of classic tropes about “The Chosen One.” This is a particular kind of hero who has particular kinds of adventures due to his particular background. However, the descriptions of the trope are broad enough that authors can interpret tropes in creative and entertaining ways, such that the reader base can’t determine exactly what will come next.

Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker

Finally, themes are broad, general messages that can be drawn out of stories to make a statement about the world at large. “Good triumphs over evil” is one theme that is found in many stories. “The transforming power of love” is another, as is “Freedom is more important than peace.” (Here’s looking at you, Hunger Games.) Themes might be purposefully included in a book by an author, or they might just work themselves into a story without the author’s knowledge, to be later found and teased out by eager English teachers.

In fact, themes are one of a book’s most powerful weapons for shaping readers’ opinions and the culture at large. When you read a story, psychologists say that you are “transported” with the story and are susceptible to being influenced by the morals and messages of that story. Even after the story is finished and the reader comes back to the real world, experiments have shown that people are more likely to agree with the ideas from the story than they were before they read it.

To summarize, stories have power. They have more power when they’re not rip-offs or clichéd, and they use their power via telling stories with tropes to express themes that they can use to change readers’ minds, and hopefully change the world.

Now you know my secret plan. Change readers’ minds, and change the world. In what way? Find the themes of my stories, and you’ll have a pretty good guess.

Thanksgiving Cadaeren Countdown

The Quest of the Unaligned

In case any of you missed a day of my Facebook Thanksgiving Cadaeren Countdown, or want to see what the characters from The Quest of the Unaligned are thankful for all in one place, here’s the entire list. Enjoy!

High Guardian Ruahklon:

“I am grateful for the breath of fresh air that is the next generation of Cadaeren’s leadership. Brave, enthusiastic, and eager to go where the winds of the future are blowing, Prince Alaric and those he touches – including my apprentice Naruahn! – will take good care of our beloved country after we have moved on. And for that I thank the Balance.”

Baretz:

“Every day I see new things to be thankful for. Today, crisp apples fresh from the trees. A good harvest. The smell of fall and the feeling of the earth preparing to rest.

“But more important than these are the people who are my life. My lovely wife and precious daughter. Our neighbors and friends. The wise leadership of Lord Deshamai, who keeps us safe and cares for us all. And the ability to give back to them in a way that brings health and wellbeing to our community. I am thankful for that.”

Lord Deshamai:

“For what am I thankful? The list is long, indeed, but it can be summed up in the single item: Cadaeren’s Maintained Tradition of Balance.

“For eight hundred years, our land has prospered because its nobles have maintained the practices taught to them by their fathers, and their fathers, and theirs. All that we have is given to us because our ancestors fulfilled their duties and taught the next generation to do the same, while recording their own successes and failures so that future generations could learn from them.

“My lands, my people, my responsibilities, my privileges, have all been passed down to me because of our traditions of Balance, as have been the ways in which I am expected to care for my lands and people, to carry out my responsibilities, and to use my privileges. Because of our traditions of Balance, I know that Cadaeren, my people, and my household will prosper for generations to come.”

King Kethel and Queen Tathilya:

Kethel: “Why, I’m thankful that I’m king! With the power of the Balance at my command, my life is never boring! Everyone else’s lives must be so…so…non-regal and powerless. Whereas I get to do new things every day! Yesterday, for instance, Tathilya and I popped over to Lord Deruahk’s new castle, just for fun. He was so surprised to see us, but who doesn’t like surprises? Enjoy life while you can. That’s this king’s motto.”

Tathilya: “Well, I’m thankful that I’m queen, of course, but also for the lovely people that are here at court to make our lives better. I just don’t know what I would do without my ladies in waiting, and my seamstresses, and that wonderful cook you hired last month, Kethel – have you tried his new raisin tart? It’s to die for – and the people who plan our balls, and the ones who come and sing and dance for us.

“Oh, and I’m thankful that Alaric’s finally found. It was so distressing for so many years when he was lost in that horrid city. Even if he did come back with strange unbecoming ideas and that aesh peasant bride of his, he’s still here and the other nobles can stop fretting about the future.”

Naruahn:

“I’m thankful for the wind and the freshness and energy it gives you, especially when you’re out in a big open field and it just whips around you like it wants to play tag and it thinks you’re ‘it’. And I’m thankful that I’m still apprenticed to High Guardian Ruahklon and that he’s teaching me how to care for the Temple, even though it includes a lot of chores and I don’t like those.

“Oh – and I wasn’t even thinking about all the things that happened this past year that I’m thankful for! I’m really thankful that I met Prince Alaric and Princess Laeshana and that they like me and they let me come visit them in the City of Balance and that the prince made me a level one security chief, just like him, except that he’s level nine. And I’m even more thankful that he saved my life when I thought I was dead down there in those horrible caves. Wow. I have a lot to be thankful for!”

Laeshana:

“It’s amazing to think back over this past year and realize how many profound changes have occurred in my life – changes for which I’ll be forever grateful. I am so thankful for Alaric, the most wonderful, princely man I know, and for the privilege of being his wife.

“I’m also still amazed at the gift he gave me, the knowledge and power for good that I’ve always dreamed of. I am so thankful to be in a position where I’ll be able to influence my country for good, to continue to learn and serve without restrictions or discrimination, and to explore the nature of magic itself and better understand the world in which we live. There are many other things I’m thankful for, of course, but those are the two big ones. Alaric, and Light.”

Alaric:

“Like Laeshana said, so much has changed in my life this past year that I’m grateful for, I don’t even know where to start. I’m a prince! With magical powers! A year ago my life’s ambitions were to someday be in charge of a sector of Tonzimmelian security. Now, I know that I’m going to be responsible for the security of an entire country someday. How many people get to say that? I’m just thankful for the opportunity to do something meaningful with my life.

“I’m also thankful for the people who have brought me to where I am today. My educators in Tonzimmel, who taught me how to be a security chief. Naruahn, who taught me how to be a prince. And most of all, Laeshana, who taught me how to be a whole person. To be honest, the thing I’m most thankful for in this past year is that she agreed to marry me. And I think that will remain the thing I’m most thankful for for the rest of my life.”

Tween the Weekends: Good, Evil, and Tween Books

Tween the Weekends, Writing Tips

Tween_the_weekends

There ought to be a bright yellow sign that pops up whenever an author sits down to write tween fiction. Caution! Develop with care! Why this warning? Because tween fiction is harder to write than it looks.

This “Tween the Weekends” post addresses one of these problem areas. If handled correctly, it helps your tween read become a powerful, memorable, and satisfying story. If mishandled, however, it makes readers want to gag and throw the book out the window. What is this problem area? The stark handling of good and evil in typical tween fiction.

It’s well known among psychologists that developmentally, children think in far more black and white terms than do adults. Things are either wonderful or terrible. They love brussel sprouts, and they hate whipped cream. (Or maybe that was just me.) More relevantly, people are either good guys or bad guys: there is no in between.

Most beloved tween fiction, even if not written specifically for children, maintains its broad appeal because of its strong good versus evil characterization. Harry Potter versus Voldemort. Percy Jackson versus mythical monsters. Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader. Aslan versus the White Witch. Even historical figures and ancient myths are made “child-friendly” by simplifying motivations or characterizations and painting individuals as either good or evil. Robin Hood versus the Sheriff of Nottingham. King Arthur versus Mordred. Hercules versus Hera. (That one’s fun to read in its childproofed versions…) As a note, non-tween fiction may also employ the use of good versus evil, but also tends to feature characters who are far more gray. Examples include the popular Game of Thrones series, or even C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces.

A problem, however, comes in when authors see the form on its surface, but fail to look more deeply at the characters beyond the form. “Oh,” says this prospective author, “I can write a tween book! Captain Perfect versus General Despicable, here we come!” The result, unfortunately, is ghastly. Once you’ve met one perfect character, you’ve met them all. The same goes with reprobate villains. I won’t name names, but I recently put down a tween book halfway through because its Evil King who poisoned the rightful heir to the throne did nothing except, well, be evil. It was simply boring.

But, you ask, how are Voldemort, Darth Vader, and the White Witch any different from General Despicable? The same way that Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, and Aslan are all different from Captain Perfect. They’re all people. And that’s the trick. A talented author of tween fiction writes a person and uses him or her as an embodiment of good or evil in a given context. A less talented author writes an embodiment of good or evil and calls it a person. People are complex; embodiments are flat. People are interesting; embodiments are boring and predictable.

Going back to examples from popular tween literature: Harry Potter has anger issues, is impulsive and stubborn, and doesn’t take school seriously. But he’s still “the good guy.” Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar from Tamora Pierce’s The Circle of Magic are “the good guys,” even though Sandry is imperious, Tris is hot-headed, Daja looks down on those of other cultures, and Briar is, well, a convicted thief. Even those protagonists who don’t have major flaws still have personalities: Jonas from Lois Lowry’s The Giver is a very different person from Lucy in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Matthias the mouse in Brian Jacques’ Redwall. (And not just because of differences in sex and species.)

Similarly, villains can be presented as “pure evil” and still have a personality. Voldemort fears death, hates those of impure blood, and cares for Nagini his snake. Darth Vader fears no one but his master the Emperor and serves him loyally – until he has to choose between the Emperor and his family. The White Witch is eager to claim her rights and fearless when she knows the law supports her, but terrified of the Lion who can break her curse.

These are the stories that children and adults enjoy together. The ones where good triumphs, where evil is vanquished, and where an ending is unambiguous. But just because good triumphs, evil is vanquished, and an ending is unambiguous doesn’t make a story enjoyable. Caution. Develop with care. Your readers will thank you.