A little Doctor Who-inspired wallpaper! My plans tonight include the Doctor and mochi ice cream. The photo of the book is by Matt Edward, though I did the writing on the cover..
Click to get it. 1440×900
July Wallpaper: Bigger on the Inside
Tag: writing
What’s as Dangerous as a Fairy Tale Ending – and How to Avoid It
Photo by Joe Penna
Today’s topic comes to us from Jubilare:
“I worry a lot about the dysfunction of my characters being taken as an approval of dysfunction in relationships.…One can avoid idealizing the flaws, sure, but how does one accept that humans and relationships are flawed without sending out the message that people should be satisfied with potentially abusive relationships…without seeming to say ‘look at the nice romance you can have with people who have X dangerous flaws’?”
We have a tendency to write about seriously flawed people. Depressed addicts with childhood scars and abandonment issues. Let’s face it: they’re just more fun.
But through this, we risk giving our readers a skewed view of the world. Just as sugary-perfect princess endings can train little girls to believe their lives will be perfect once they get married, moving tales of troubled souls can lead readers to believe dysfunctional relationships are the only real kind; that the best they can hope for is to find poetry in the pain. Worse, they might even believe such relationships are romantic, something to chase after.
What guy doesn’t want to hold the manic pixie dream girl when she cries?
What girl doesn’t want to soothe the nightmares of the war-torn bad boy?
Now, some readers will romanticize dysfunctional relationships no matter what you do, just as some will find sexual innuendos, political statements, or religious dogma in places you never intended to put them. That can’t be helped.
But we have a responsibility to do what we can: both to faithfully represent reality and to give readers the courage to improve that reality.
Here are three ways you can do that when writing about dysfunctional relationships. Try using at least two wherever the need arises.
Know the signs.
Read up on the signs of abusive relationships so you know whether or not you’re writing about one. Also research the typical physical and behavioral struggles that come with your character’s flaws. Show realistic consequences; don’t pull any punches when it comes to the pain of living in an unhealthy relationship, even if your hero is the one inflicting that pain.
Show an alternative.
Use secondary characters to show a healthier version of the flawed relationship in question. For instance, if your hero’s parents had a horrible marriage, and he struggles with knowing how to treat the girl he loves, give him a happy aunt and uncle, or a best friend with a good marriage. Give him (and your readers) something to aspire to.
Include a victory.
Every story has a physical plot and an emotional one. A dysfunctional relationship is an emotional plot. Don’t just leave it as-is at the end: make your hero come to terms with these problems at the climax, have him make an ultimate decision, and lead him to at least a small victory in the end.
A note about victory:
Be careful how your hero comes by that victory. Real healing is difficult and painful; it doesn’t happen instantly. Her love alone can’t make him stop drinking. His love alone can’t pull her out of a clinical depression.
But maybe it can help them take the first step.
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Got a writing topic you want talked about? Drop it in the Suggestion Box.
What is Suspension of Disbelief?
Photo by Adam Hodgson
I felt awkward as the photographer told me to turn my head this way and that, and our production director played AC/DC from her iPhone to set the mood. Between instructions, the photographer kept up small talk about Jethro Tull and praised my modeling abilities. “You’re a natural!” he said.
I knew, of course, that wasn’t true.
But I was willing to let a part of myself believe it was true, because I’d be more comfortable if I thought I was doing well. Therefore I would take better pictures. He knew that. I knew that.
We had entered into an unspoken contract known as a suspension of disbelief.
This contract requires something from each party. I had to agree to believe, on a superficial level at least, something I knew was not true. He, in turn, had to keep the lie within the realm of plausibility. It was not too far-fetched an idea that at least one person out of several he photographed that day would be good at tilting their head at aesthetic angles.
But if he’d said I was the prettiest, most talented subject he’d ever had the honor of photographing, he would have broken the contract. I’d become uncomfortable, suspicious he was mocking me or insulting my intelligence with such a brazen lie.
So how does this apply to fiction?
Well, here’s another example.
I was in the third book of the Inkheart trilogy, reading about a couple of characters escaping from a dungeon. I’ll redact names to prevent spoilers:
——- threw a rope down. It’s didn’t come low enough, but at a whisper from above it began growing longer, lengthened by fibers made of flames…They would have to climb fast to keep from burning their skin.
“That’s ridiculous,” I scoffed under my breath, “They’d burn their hands as soon as they touched it.”
And then I burst out laughing at myself. This was a story about people who could read things into being. Where women could turn into birds and back again, where men could command fire to take the forms of animals. And I hadn’t had trouble believing in any of that. But climbable fire – this was too much?
Yes. Because magic doesn’t eliminate the necessity of rules in a story. Anything can happen within fiction—but only within the framework of the fictional world and the tone of the story.
It’s perfectly acceptable in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s trilogy when Arthur Dent discovers the secret to human flight is to throw yourself at the ground and miss–because that nonsensical-yet-witty logic fits in a universe where six times nine equals 42.
But in a serious story—even a magical one—fire cannot support weight or fail to burn the skin instantly when grasped. Otherwise it’s not fire.
The moral of the story
Don’t blame your readers for failing to suspend their disbelief if you write something that breaks the laws of your own world. Most readers pick up a book with every intention of suspending their disbelief.
It’s up to you to make it possible for them to do it. Take it from Mark Twain:
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
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Inspiration Monday: time is a relative
I think maybe the best days are the ones in which you are just happy for no particular reason. Of course, I have a million everyday reasons to be happy, but I don’t always feel the effects, if you know what I mean. I’ve just been in a good mood lately, and I’m so grateful for that.
I mean, look at all these amazing pieces of art people created for us to enjoy – aren’t you glad to live in a world where stuff like this happens every day? Check them out:
Also, today’s title prompt comes courtesy of Jubilare. Thanks, Anne!
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The Rules
There are none. Read the prompts, get inspired, write something. No word count minimum or maximum. You don’t have to include the exact prompt in your piece, and you can interpret the prompt(s) any way you like.
OR
No really; I need rules!
Okay; write 200-500 words on the prompt of your choice. You may either use the prompt as the title of your piece or work it into the body of your piece. You must complete it before 6 pm CST on the Monday following this post.
The Prompts:
TIME IS A RELATIVE
INCH WORM
MODEST FANFARE
THE FACE OF THE FUTURE
REPLICA
Want to share your Inspiration Monday piece? Post it on your blog and link back to today’s post (here’s a video on how to do it); I’ll include a link to your piece in the next Inspiration Monday post. No blog? Email your piece to me at bekindrewrite (at) yahoo (dot) com. (I do reserve the right to NOT link to a piece as stated in my Link Discretion Policy.)
Plus, get the InMon badge for your site here.
Happy writing!
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* MC = Mature Content.
Opinions expressed in other writers’ InMon pieces are not necessarily my own.
Review: Dictionary.com’s “Writing Dynamo” program
If you’re on Thesaurus.com (owned by Dictionary.com) as much as I am, you’ve probably seen their Writing Dynamo program advertised. Tagged “Your personal writing coach,” the program professes itself to be “Accurate, effective, web-based proofreading.”
Were you excited?
I was.
Thesaurus.com is hands down better than MS Word’s synonym tool, so why shouldn’t they be better at everything else? Especially if they charge you for it every month! It even says it tests for overused expressions, sentence length and voice!
I signed up for the free trial to find out. I only played around with it for an hour or so, but here’s what I found out.
Disclaimer: It looks like the program was designed for students writing essays, not for fiction writers. But I only tested it on fiction. Take it as you like.
What it looks like.
Problems
- Can’t handle large text – it won’t offer feedback on much more than 3,000 words at a time.
- “Upload Text” button didn’t work – the window popped up, but none of my documents were even visible.
- Small writing area – the text box is kind of small and not adjustable.
- Useless dictionary – The spell-checker flagged foreign/made-up words (like MS Word would), but when I clicked “Add to Dictionary” the red underline disappeared on that instance of the word only. Where the word appeared elsewhere in the text, it was still flagged.
- Didn’t flag all of the foreign/made up words, which indicates it might not catch all misspellings, either.
- Set to American English – and I couldn’t see a way to switch it to British English.
- Flagged em dashes as spelling errors.
- Flagged sentences longer than seventeen words – which could encourage you to be more concise, but there’s no law against eighteen-word sentences.
- Suggested changing “would have” to “had.” Wrong!
- Sometimes gave false apostrophe corrections – telling me plurals should be possessives and vice versa (don’t people have enough trouble with this already?!?)
Closeup of the sidebar.
It called the em dash a spelling error.
The Best Part
It flagged words repeated in close proximity. If I used the same word twice—or even two words with the same root – within a few sentences, it flagged both and offered a synonym suggestion. It’s a pretty useful feature; one MS Word doesn’t offer. Wordle can help you identify words you use too often, but not at this level.
Quick tips appear beneath the sidebar.
Conclusion
It didn’t live up to “accurate,” and I don’t know what parameters it uses to judge voice, but I don’t think the world has yet seen software sophisticated enough to judge voice as we define it.
Don’t use Writing Dynamo if you don’t already have a solid grasp on grammar and punctuation; you’re likely to get led astray by false flags. But if you just want a second pair of eyes – particularly for repeated words – this program is worth the free trial and possibly a one-month subscription ($4.99). I’d suggest waiting until your story/book is in its final editing stages, sign up, edit 3,000 words at a time, and then cancel your subscription.
However, the program is fairly new and they are accepting feedback, so they may improve it. I’ll keep you posted if I learn anything.
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