nindogs

As writers we know there is an explicit relationship between the stories we craft and the perspectives of our audience. And we can manipulate this relationship to convey a delicious subtext or to hint at (and when I say hint, I don't mean preach) a social comment to an open-minded audience who are looking to learn, to enjoy an intellectual pursuit, and have their growing perspectives challenged and further developed. Take Austen. In Pride and Prejudice , she endorses the value of independent thought in a society which enforces collective thought, of a "truth universally acknowledged". Think about it. Transformation stories, novels and films reminiscent of Pygmalion, or My Fair Lady , or Pretty Woman , are about the movement from independence and ostracism into collective thought , a common role. Pride and Prejudice , however, documents a fantasy in a classist society - 19th century England. Elizabeth and Darcy would never  have happened. Never. I'm not saying...

A friend recently recommended the BLUE BLOODS series (not some sort of novelisation of the cop show with Sergeant Lipton, unfortunately) to me. I scanned the blurb and found my processor not passing beyond two words. Schuyler Van Alen. Schuyler Van Alen . It took me a while to figure out how you're meant to pronounce that. Skew-ler van Halen. Yes, my mind read that as Van Halen. That, dear readers, is a teacher's worst nightmare in four syllables, or what I presume is four syllables. Who knows? I still haven't figured out how to say it. Is it Skyler? If so, why isn't it spelt Skyler? Basically, if I can't figure out how to say a character's name within a fraction of a second of reading it, I am going to put the book onto the Gifts pile. (Yes, I actually have a pile of books which I give to people for their birthdays which have only been used to the fifth page.) It isn't so bad for character names which I abhor. Usually, I'll suffer through a book ...

Psychologist Carl Jung named the face which we present publicly, which we use to hide things we don't like about ourselves, the persona . He also coined the flip-side, the shadow , which is something similar to the three-dimensional version of our physical shadows. This is teeming with everything that we try to hide, sometimes even from ourselves. In order to create a three-dimensional character, we need to individuate , or integrate, their archetypal parts into a cohesive sort of unit-y whole. This, of course, includes both their persona and their shadow. Now, the mark of a good villain in any story falls under his ability to force his opposition, the hero, into the spotlight where he'll find ways to highlight and criticise the things your hero would like to hide. Now, Shadow: Recognising It The shadow is upsetting the acknowledge, so we shove our awareness of it down to an unconscious level, thereby making the only way to truly know the contents of your shadow to co...

I'm warning you in advance: this post includes a damn lot of face-palming gifs. Prepare to be face-palmed. Face-palm. So, I know what you're thinking: Q word? What are you talking about, Nina? The only word you deal with is the R-word. Revision . That's why I'm here, that's why we're all here. Ah, you are quite correct, faithful reader. But now, here comes my end-of-school-holidays news. I finished . Well , I finished in the uncommon sense of the word. The whole it's never really finished even when it gets on the shelf sense. But in regard to plot, character, pacing, blah - Yeah, I'm finished. As far as you're concerned, and as far as my search browser as of Wednesday is concerned: Yeah, I'm finished. So, do we have any bets on the dreaded Q-U word? Oh yeah. QUERY . Oh, it makes you shiver in fear, in anticipation, doesn't it? Even if we're stuck in the perpetual cycle of idea-writing-editing-drop-repeat or we're editors forever, w...

In short: I'm AWOL a lot, I've abandoned you a lot, I'm a terrible person - Yes . To clarify: I'm really trying to finish this godfucker of a novel so I don't have to wait ten weeks again before I can hack at it, having forgotten every idea I have devised now, if I don't get it done before the new school term begins. Oh, and it's been killing me to find a topic I can actually stand for long enough to write a post. (Breathes) Oh -kay. Shall we? My novel is a glorified hybrid of YA, Urban Fantasy, Action and Thriller, with a smidge of Drama to keep things interesting. Because of the Thriller aspect, the prelude to my action sequences at the climax are often overwrought and chilling, and as you begin to tease your protagonists, you need to assume your antagonist's shoes. You need to figure out why he's doing what he's doing. So, today we're going to have a wee bit of a look at some types of villains and what it is that they really want, and if ...

I'm starting to think that my titling has become counter-productive and are really an unhelpful way of attracting no one to my posts. Your other option was, of course, A Day in the Life of a Chest-infection , which, you know, I've suffered over the past week. ANYWAY. Having (finally!) seen X-Men: First Class , I was going to use it for a pleasant "perfect villain model" post. The brilliant Janice Hardy, however, already beat me to it and did a better job , so I shall save that post for another film. Instead, today I tear you away from your work and your children, and myself from my writing and my studies, to talk about climaxes . I had a chat the other day with a classmate, who's planning on writing a story for her English Extension 2 Major Work in the HSC next year. She wanted my opinion, as a writer, about the necessity of a climax. (I may or may not have made a few sexual jokes first, of course) She had this idea to have the larger climax toward the beginning...

Surely, surely , by now you have seen Darren Aronofsky's Oscar-nominated Black Swan; oh, you know, the one about that dark, twisted ballerina? Right. Now we're on the same page. So as someone who probably spends far too much time analysing film and novels for the hell of it, I can tell you now that Black Swan has a lot of depth to it. I, however, will not be reviewing it or talking about any concepts you could expect; rather, I will be using it to talk to you about character perfection . I don't like the term 'Mary Sue'. Like paranormal , or star-crossed or danger , it's misuse or even its overuse in YA has led to loss in its meaning. To defame a character by crying "Mary Sue!" is not as much of a scandal as it once was, and to some extent, the misunderstanding amongst the literary world has only led to repeat-offenders and the persistence of a worn formula in not smothering itself in its vapid-ness. Yes, in my own way, I'm talking about dimension...

( Psssst : Did you get my terrible punny joke?) I love series. (Eugh, plural rules, why do you rain on my autumnal parade?) I really do. HARRY POTTER, INFERNAL DEVICES, CURSE WORKERS, MORTAL INSTRUMENTS, etc. When it comes to YA, there is nothing that does it for me better than a good series. But I stand before you today, perched upon my shiny soapbox in my Sunday best (And yes, by that I mean slippers, pyjama bottoms and a Doctor Who t-shirt) to tell you that some later additions to these series are amazingly unnecessary. Yes, you heard me. Unnecessary . And to sum up the general feeling toward these unnecessary additions that are only in place because the publishing industry are cash-cows that really like to milk things until they're about as dry as an infertile woman's uterus (Bare with me: it's late and my metaphors and similes come to me from a strange place that's only visible to the naked eye at midnight.) you could have a quick look here , here and well, here ...

We all have our sub-genres and we all know that feeling when someone tells us some other author just got a seven-figure advance for a novel in said sub-genre or when an agent refuses your sub-genre on their webpage. We know that feeling that melts your gut and makes your arms feel cold like when you get a flu injection when you see a novel on Goodreads.com that has rave reviews and falls into your sub-genre just as well as your own work does. It might not even be that. It might be that you're inspired with what you believe to be an original story that is plaguing your dreams and your waking moments that falls into the sub-genre that was so two minutes ago. You're having a small heart attack when you're not creating this story, because you know that anyone with half a brain would laugh and spit in your face if you proposed this story to them. Everyone understands this. They can empathise. But you need to take a step back and have a good think about this. Almost every bestse...