All posts by Jordan

News & Contests

Blog RSS Contest!

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Are you an RSS or email subscriber to this blog? If so, you’re in luck. One day in the next two weeks, there will be a message in the footer of the post for subscribers only.

But that’s not all 😉 ! The more subscribers we get by August 15, the more prizes I’ll give out. So spread the word—tweet, email, Facebook, MySpace, whatever. As more people subscribe to this blog by email or RSS, I’ll post the secret message with final instructions more than once. (I can’t give an upper limit, because even I’m not sure how high I’ll go right now 😉 .)

Prizes

Like I said, the more subscribers we get, the more prizes we’ll have. Prizes may include:

Not a subscriber yet? Let’s fix that! You can subscribe to JordanMcCollum.com via RSS or email.

(And if you’re wondering “What’s RSS?,” you’re in luck once again. Here’s a simple explanation of how to get updates from your favorite blogs delivered to you for your reading convenience:

)

See? It’s easy and convenient. So subscribe today for a chance to win fabulous prizes!

And stay tuned for the stunning conclusion of our series on deep POV next week, followed by reviews of aspiring author websites!

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Uncategorized

Deep POV: What do you think?

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This entry is part 8 of 14 in the series Deep POV

So far this month, we’ve taken an in-depth look at deep POV. We’ve looked at why deep POV is popular, and a number of techniques to establish deep POV and stay there. And soon we’ll discuss when not to use deep POV with a guest post from an amazing author.

But before we finish up, I want to know what your thoughts are on deep POV in general. What do you think about deep POV? Does it jar you to read a book with inconsistent POV depth (ie in one sentence we’re getting the character’s thoughts directly and in the next it’s like we’re watching the scene from 10 feet away)? Do you enjoy writing in deep POV? Do you find it easy or challenging?

Is there anything we haven’t covered yet that you’d like to see explained here? Are there any nagging questions or “mistakes” that you see (or make) that you’d like to see answered/cured?

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Reading

Lockdown by Traci Hunter Abramson – Review

So this book has been on my TBR pile for the longest (well, of the books I was really going to read, anyway). I bought it right after it came out, since I’ve read everything by Traci, and since she was going to be in town for a book signing. So I’ve had it since April.

Hooray for car trips for TBR-busting! I was excited to finally read this book, since I like Traci’s books (obviously), and since it meets one of my July challenge goals to knock out one of my Summer Reading Thing books.

As with all of Traci’s books, Lockdown is full of suspense and tension with a big dose of romance (or is it the other way around?). She always researches her situations, and there’s always something new in her books. Lockdown is no exception, showcasing everything from school-shooting crises (real and fake, as part of a training course), to water rescues to medical interventions.

Plus, it was set half an hour north of my hometown. And most of the details weren’t too bad, though I could get nitpicky if you want me to (but nobody wants to hear about LDS wards in Durham, Durham hospitals, or the “correct” name of Kerr Lake to Virginians currently living in North Carolina).

As always, I note anything that I pulled me out of the book. With the blog series this month, I might have been a little more sensitive to this than normal, but a few times I felt that the POV wasn’t as deep as I’d like it—especially in some tough-to-convey emotions (shock, for example) and the instances where the narration suddenly told me about something the POV character had not noticed. There were also a few instances of passive voice or general wordiness. However, I was involved enough in the plot that I wanted to keep reading. It was a pretty fast read, like the rest of her books, and I enjoyed joining her characters for this adventure.

In all, Lockdown is a fun read, and a solid addition to Traci’s “stable.”

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Technique

Why some great books just don’t make good movies: powerful POV

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This entry is part 7 of 14 in the series Deep POV

For some strange reason, The Jacksons: An American Dream was on TV a couple weeks ago (gee, I wonder why). My dad and I got sucked in near the beginning, expecting to understand Michael’s descent into . . . well, madness.

It started off promising. The beginning showed the Jackson 5 practicing their music and dancing, and the rigors of their lives. It showed the psychological relationships of the characters. But instead of delving deeper and deeper into Michael’s psyche over time, the movie seemed to pull back. As Michael seems to push his family away to pursue a solo career, we see less and less of him—and it feels like we’re being pushed away, too. We go from seeing his insecurities and fears to looking in at Neverland from the outside, just like we always have.

Part of the problem was that this movie was made in 1992, after Michael established a successful solo career, but before he began the descent into . . . well, you know. But as my dad and I discussed how disappointed we were with the movie’s lack of depth or resolution, I realized that sometimes our attempts at deep POV do the same thing to our readers. We leave them watching from the outside when what they really want is to be inside the characters, living and understanding them.

I think part of the challenge with writing deep POV, as Alicia Rasley points out in The Power Of Point Of View, is that many of us see the action of a story in a very cinematic way—as if we were watching a movie (185). In a movie, the camera follows a character, but jumps around between perspectives easily. You can be in the front of the courtroom watching Jack McCoy as he questions the witness, then quick-as-a-flash, you’re in the gallery, watching the witness crack.

While this is a powerful technique, point of view has always been a limitation of film. There has never been and may never be a satisfactory adaptation of Jane Eyre or The Great Gatsby, because in those works and in works like them, the experience isn’t just about what we can see happening—it’s about what happens inside the narrators.

Without narration, we can’t see that Gatsby’s smile assumes the best of us, as if he had faith in us. When Robert Redford smiles, it’s attractive, of course, but it’s just a smile—because that assertion, that his smile assumes the best of us, isn’t rooted in empirical fact. It doesn’t come from just what Nick Carraway sees. It’s rooted in Nick’s perception and interpretation of what he sees.

As writers, we can give our readers the connection they want with our characters’ thoughts and feelings. We don’t have to just watch what has played out on the screens of our mind. We are not camera men! We can get into our characters’ heads, show their thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, and truly transport our readers so they feel like they’re living the experience with us. This is a strength of the medium—so use it!

But that’s not to say deep POV is always best or even right for our story. Soon we’ll have a guest post on when not to use deep POV!

Photo credits: movie—G & A Scholiers; cameraman: Jannes Glas

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Uncategorized

Book Blogger Appreciation Week

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Here’s a free PSA: have you heard of Book Blogger Appreciation Week? It’s a week to recognize any and all bloggers who write about books—making books, reading books, loving books, etc. This year, it’s September 14-18, 2009.

In addition to bringing book bloggers together, BBAW also sponsor some awards, contests and giveaways. So if you’re a blogger writing about books, check them out!

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at why we have problems writing in deep POV sometimes.

Will you participate in BBAW?

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Technique

Plot spinning from pop psychology

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Man, I wish I could remember what book this idea came from, but the author of one of the many craft books I’ve read (or at least skimmed) recommended a way to come up with a plot premise.

Open to a random page in any pop psychology book and you can find a sentence to weave into a plot. Throw in characters that embody those attributes, or make the theory a central device in the story.

So since I have Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus on hand and I heart Random.org, I thought we could try this. So I pulled up three random numbers in the page range—let’s spin some plots!

From page 58—oh, how convenient, there’s a subhead:

It is difficult for a man to listen to a woman when she is unhappy or disappointed because he feels like a failure.

From page 134—another subhead!

Fulfilling a primary need is required before one is able to fully receive and appreciate other kinds of love.

A man becomes fully receptive to and appreciative of the six kinds of love primarily needed by women . . . when his own primary needs are first fulfilled.

And from page 285:

To be successful in our relationships we must accept and understand the different seasons of love. Sometimes love flows easily and automatically; at other times it requires effort.

How do you envisions these scenarios becoming central or sub plots? What kind of characters would people these plots? Share your plots in the comments!

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Technique

Using head words the right way

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This entry is part 6 of 14 in the series Deep POV

Deep POV is popular—almost to the exclusion of any other kind of third-person POV. And as such, there have been a lot of rules promulgated about how to create and maintain deep POV.

But, in case you’re new here, I’m an iconoclast when it comes to arbitrary writing rules. Some of those arbitrary rules that help no one include “never use the character’s name in deep POV,” and “never use ‘head words’ including ‘he thought,’ ‘she assumed,’ or ‘he realized.'” Although head words can often distance our readers from our writing and should often be avoided, I’m with editor/author Alicia Rasley on this one:

I don’t know how to say it any better than this (and you know it anyway, so this is aimed at those others), but you cannot create deep POV by following a list of rules like “Never use the POV character’s name” or “never have the narrator report that she saw something; just say what she saw.” You can only do a good job with deep POV if you know your character so well you know how she thinks, and she will not think the same way another character does, and she might not think the same way in every situation!

Sometimes these verboten head words are actually useful: they can keep from ejecting your readers from the deep POV you’ve worked to hard to establish, and they can add nuances to the character’s thought processes. Both of these are examples of the technique of using detail, then drawing the conclusion.

Nuanced thought processes

Granted, in a lot of amateur writing, there are a lot of gratuitous head words: “His suit looked like a bad ’70s prom tux, Jenny thought to herself.” However, specific head words can add nuance to our characters’ thought processes—they can show how our characters came to their conclusions, rather than just . . . well, jumping to conclusions.

Would these sentences convey the same thing without the head words (and yeah, I’m being a little tricky in using a so-called “head word” as the main verb here, but whatever)?

  • She could never understand him.
  • She realized she could never understand him.
  • She thought she could never understand him.
  • She knew she could never understand him. (And is that different from “She just knew she could never understand him.”?)
  • She could never understand him, she reminded herself.
  • She decided she could never understand him.

Each of those head words adds something to the meaning, showing us how this character came to that knowledge—it’s something new, or something she should have learned by now, or something she’s trying to convince herself of. That’s an important role for head words—unless we just want our characters to have constant epiphanies.

Reading other characters’ minds to not eject readers

Another example of using detail and then showing the conclusion is how we show other character’s emotions and even movements through the eyes of our characters. If we fail to do this, it can frustrate our readers and push them out of our character’s POV.

Now, this is a time to avoid head words (and scaffolding). At the same time, however, we have to be careful to make it clear that we’re not hopping heads. One example of this is in observing other characters’ emotions. If we’re in Timmy’s POV and we just flat out state “Jane felt sad,” (aside from being telling instead of showing), it seems like we’re suddenly in Jane’s POV.

Other characters’ movements can also present this problem. Another example from Alicia Rasley, on the sentence “Joan walked in from the kitchen,” disrupting the deep POV from Tom’s viewpoint [emphasis added]:

Sometimes as I read a passage, I feel ejected, like suddenly I’m not in Tom’s mind, I’m in Joan’s mind, or dangling helplessly in between. When I go back and read to figure out why, it’s often actually a deep POV issue, where the writer has Tom interpreting something from the way Joan speaks or behaves… but because there’s no “Tom thought” in there, it sounds like JOAN.

Okay, let me backtrack. While Tom cannot know what Joan is thinking, he can definitely interpret. This is not weird for the reader, as of course, the reader also cannot read minds but can interpret body language, tone of voice, facial expression, etc. But of course, Tom might or might not be good at this. He might be really empathic and intuitive and see a twitch of her lips and know she’s lying, or he could be the clueless type who thinks he knows what that lip-twitch means (“Oh, she’s going to sneeze!”) but is wrong. But… the important thing is that if it’s significant, if you want the READER to interpret also, the POV character has to notice and narrate it.

As I said before, this is another example of detail-conclusion. Just like we interpret other people’s emotions from their tone and body language, our characters can note other characters’ expressions and then interpret how they’re feeling. Or maybe they don’t need to interpret at all—maybe leaving it to the readers is even better in some cases.

What do you think? Are there any other uses for “head words”? What makes these uses okay but so many other uses bad?

Photo credits: plunge—Konrad Mostert; frustrated—John De Boer

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Technique, Works

Naming names: how to give characters names

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What’s in a name? Well, as it turns out, it can be quite a bit. I recently read a couple contemporary works where the heroine, aged 20-30, was named Peyton. Peyton is an adorable name—in fact, a little too adorable. It was the 370th most popular first name for girls in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, it jumped to the top 200 and has soared to #60 for girls last year.

So what, you ask? Well, those statistics mean that the average girl named Peyton is less than five years old right now. When I read these, I couldn’t help but thinking of the curly-haired toddler down the street. Although a strong, androgynous girls’ name is awesome and Peyton hits all the right notes with parents and authors alike today, that’s exactly what makes it all wrong when naming a character who’s supposed to be an adult today.

Personally, I love naming characters. I’m in the process of casting my next book right now, and I’ve spent considerable time searching for just the right name for each character, making sure their names fit their ages, backgrounds, and characteristics. Here are a few of my favorite resources for finding the perfect name. (Note: some of these resources are US-centric, but I’m sure that you can find similar data for other countries.)

Character Naming Books

The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg. I picked this up while pregnant with my son, even though my husband and I had the names of our first four children already picked out (two down, two to go).

Why I like this: It give little profiles outlining why and when each name was popular, as well as assigning names to groups according to style and popularity, and lists similar names. (That’s especially good when you have a name you really like but it happens to be your brother-in-law’s name.)

Baby Name Personality Book by Bruce Lansky and Barry Sinrod. The authors of this book surveyed 75,000 parents about 1400 popular names to see what perceptions and connotations the names carried. I picked this up (again, while pregnant) at a thrift store for $2, and I was a little hesitant at first to spend that much (no, seriously), but it’s definitely paid off.

Why I like this: Seriously, where else will you find someone to tell you that a female Jerry calls to mind “a friendly, fun-loving brunette who enjoys being the life of the party” while some see the male Jerry as “likely to wear flashy gold chains and may come on a bit too strong.” Drawbacks of this book? My edition was written in 1992; I think there was an updated edition in 1998. Either way, it’s a little out of date (I mean, seriously, were you naming your character Jerry?).

Character Naming Websites

BabyNames.com. I use this to look up name origins and meanings. Why I like this: I like to be able to search by meaning and/or culture of origin.

US baby name popularity from 1880 from Social Security records. You can look at the popularity of a name over time, or popular name lists by birth year. Why I like this: This is the best way to find age-appropriate (American) names for characters.

Nymbler from The Baby Name Wizard website. Like the book, this helps to find similar names. Why I like this: It makes it easy to find names by “style,” including origins, popular time period and the more subjective “feel.” I do still prefer the book version, but the website is also fun to play with.

The Baby Name Wizard’s Name Voyager, which generates graphs of name popularity over time. The data is based on the SSA. Why I like this: It’s a visual representation of popular names over time, which is a little more accessible than just the lists from the SSA. (The blog also talks about naming trends.)

The US Census Surname Distribution to find last names, and to check if the sometimes crazy last names I want to use are really last names. (Real names include Police, Outlaw, Saint, Notice, Justice and Riddle. Only one of which I’ve actually used.) Why I like this: when I’m stumped on a last name, reading through the list or using a random number generator can help me finish my character’s name.

Be sure to check in tomorrow for more on using head words, and be sure to sign up if you want your website reviewed!

How do you find your characters’ names? What are your favorite or least favorite character names? Would you ever comment on a character’s name in critique?

Photo credits: Name tag—Henk L; Jim—Deon Staffelbach

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