nindogs

taken from Marie Calloway's " Criticism " The journalistic and self-effacing tone of burgeoning literary voices, particularly in the US, is beginning to impart a stigma on we writers of a certain criteria - young, and often, female. Take Marie Calloway, who, mostly through her controversial piece Adrien Brody  has been criticised as "a lazy boring writer who i know through a friend to be histrionic, predictably 'unpredictable' and most likely autistic". again, from "Criticism" Some of the debate that has arisen around writers such as Calloway has gotten me thinking about the expectations and, thus, the limitations of young writers, particularly of the female persuasion. More or less a direct result from brilliant minds and strong voices, such as Zadie Smith, Miranda July, etc., there is a preconception that any twenty-something female who decides to penn articles or stories will be inconceivably witty, well-read, insightful and...

There is the infamous tar and feathering of SMeyer for her dream guy by the online community, and the condemnation of Mary Sue's and a fair amount of Crucible  witch hunting for author insertion. But it begs the question: what exactly is the spectrum of wish fulfilment, and is it ever okay? In many ways, writing itself is a form of wish fulfilment, beside the cathartic relief, in which you as a writer experience pretty urgent desires for adventure, love and triumph that you share with your readers. That  is the secret to the runaway bestseller, to the eleven-year-old at heart wanting to belong in a magical school for wizards, or a misfit thirteen-year-old girl who's beginning to believe boys think she's ugly and repellent. But it's when wish fulfilment detracts or damages the novel that I have to stand against it. It's almost inevitable in new and/or young writers, and is something that you grow out of with experience and practice. It is important to keep in ...

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 ...

Okay, story time. In July, I attended the  Harry Potter midnight session for  Deathly Hallows Part 2  with a crowd who were dressed for the occasion, had brought chants, cutouts and books with them. Who, for the hour beforehand were prepping themselves for tears, laughter and the overwhelming reaction to the very end of these annual outings. We laughed through Hermione as Bellatrix, bawled through Fred's deathbed, sniffled through the Resurrection Stone scene, and rolled around in our seats laughing when Voldemort hugged Draco. But do you know what had half of the audience on their feet, the audience shrieking with cheers and laughter and drowned-out jokes? The kiss. Ron and Hermione's kiss. I am not exaggerating. It was, debatably, the most anticipated event of the entire film series. When it comes to YA, love interests and the baiting of a potential couple to the readers is basically what drives our trends and our most popular books. And you can argue the...

This is going to be me semi-ranting and mostly advising. Which is nothing new on this blog, as you all know. Particularly with YA, we are a little obsessive with our trends. We latch on to them and then people get tired and then quality downgrades with mass production within those trends and then we find something else and it all starts all over again. That, or we have tropes so deeply ingrained in us that they just crop up and we can do nothing else but throw up our hands and hopelessly theorise about what we could have done to avoid this. Everyone tries to put something fresh on old plots, or common plots, and make them work and brilliant by their own standards. But, especially with these YA trends, sometimes it's the core idea which traps us writers and inhibits our ability to see beyond the seeming conventionalities of said trend. Here's one. Let's see if you can name it. A seemingly normal girl encounters a mysterious, gorgeous boy who sucks her into a supern...

Recently, I've been addressing the beginning of my novel, finding that it's almost like dragging two semi-trailers through the snow with one of those elastic leashes that parents use for their children. So, I did what I always do whenever I find myself disenchanted by my capacity to form words, or incapacity therein - I turned to my bookshelf. And what did I find there? I realised there are a few that snatched my interest basically from the get-go. You may not have heard of JASPER JONES by Craig Silvey, but it's a cosy Australian mystery set in the 1960s, not technically YA, but starring a teenager. It's rather humble and deeply character-driven, with a sense of precociousness, but a desperate, childish ignorance and desire for understanding. The novel opens with Charlie, our protagonist, who is visited in the middle of the night by the mixed-race Jasper Jones at his window. Jasper takes him out into the bushland surrounding their town, to his "spot",...

You know the saying. Write what you know . People do it. People don't do it. People advise it and against it. People debate about it. Well, I'm here to slide my two cents across the table to you, and tell you that what you might perceive as writing what you know isn't necessarily writing what you know. Oh, and the caption on the poster to the left? It says Anyone is a weapon if you twist them.  So, today I sat down in my Extension English I lesson to a discussion with director Adam Blaiklock, whose first feature film Caught Inside  (It's actually phenomenal. Support him and Australian film and try and catch it wherever you are if it's nearby) I saw a couple weeks ago. Its theme surrounds the concept that we don't want to take responsibility for the monsters we create . Essentially, this film is about a surfing trip off the coast of Indonesia, where the only law is set by one's skipper, and a group of Australian tourists find themselves faced with a ...

Pretty 100 per cent sort of certain that I have never participated in a YA Highway Road Trip Wednesday in any form but that of lurking on a Friday afternoon thinking "Well, Thursday's bluffable. But this is just slow" . Anyhow, this "blog carnival" topic this week is Favourite All-Time Covers. And I've talked previously about my snobbiness regarding the physical appearance and/or first impressions of people books. So, without further ado. THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER has a similar floating feel, but the air of suffocation and constriction, as well as the crowded text just conveys this subtle darkness that really appeals to me. If it were possible to marry a book cover and its premise, I would have been wedded to Julie Cross' TEMPEST a long time ago. I know many link this to HUSH, HUSH with the zero-gravity nature, but it's the entire composition that really links with the time-travelling premise of the novel.  I was always rather ...

In this day and age, the broad scope that is sex  comes with the YA territory. For example, contemplate the utter anarchy that follows Cassandra Clare's "Dirty Sexy" sneak-peak scenes. Kiersten White says something along the lines of or you can just go back to the kissing scenes  in her acknowledgements section. I have noted a number of readers lamenting some books for their lack of sexy time or opportunities for fantasised fanfiction of such a nature. One could argue that any book, any television show, any movie, won't see any tremendous success without sex appeal. (And to further my point, this post shall be punctuated with images of Adam Levine. ) In my final draft of PRAETORIAN, I recently wrote, reviewed and rewrote a steamy scene between two characters that soon turned rather ironic and pivotal to the plot climax. Did I do it because I felt as though it were important for any possible sale of my book? No. I did it because my characters are just like that, and ...

Bam . And she makes an appearance. You really can't look anywhere without the word Mary Sue plastered on something, or slipping over in its messy trails and into the pool of endless circular arguments. And if you try and take all of the arguments off of the table and ask one of these people what their perception of perfection was, they'd just stop and smile at you. They might be able to tell you someone's name, or something vague like success or like too pretty or something, but the truth is that we all strive for some degree of perfection, whether it be mentally, physically or emotionally, and there are many perceptions of that big word: perfection . Some may view perfection as an unfaltering sense of humour. Some may view perfection as a cellulite-free hourglass figure of a tanned 20-year-old. Some may view perfection as an ability to see the best in everyone and everything. Some may view perfection as Adam Levine deciding to strut about semi-naked and sing about ...

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...