The winter people

We moved to Alaska eight winters ago, partly in search of a place where snow wouldn't melt irritatingly frequently, and partly to get away from the crowds in the Lower 48.



At Reflection Lake

It didn't take long to discover that most of us up here thought the same thing. We LOVE winter. We're not too fond of...well, lots of people. Or most people. Some of us don't like people at all, which is fine. There's lots of room to be by yourself.

There's lots of room to BE yourself. One example is the guy who stands at the main intersection of my town, holding a hand written sign that reads: LAROUCHE SAYS: IMPEACH OBAMA. Obama's face has a Hitler moustache on it. On the guy's camper is written: don't feed the old hippies! (No idea what that means.)

During hunting season, it's not uncommon to pass a pick up truck pulling a trailer of snow machines with gun racks and a blood-stained game bag containing a dismembered moose. When it's mushing season, you can park next to a dog wagon full of racing dogs at Walmart. In the summer, people stop to buy fish eggs wearing waders, boots and camoflage because it's too much work to take it all off on the way to the river to fish.

It's not propaganda to say that Alaska is a home for rugged individualists. It's also a breeding ground for conflicted idealism, a lot of hype, a few crazies and a little hypocrisy. But as far as the land goes...it is the home for winter people. And it is so beautiful, you'll have trouble believing it's real.

I just finished my MS, RUNNING WITH WOLVES. It is set in Alaska, which is also a huge character in the novel. The more time I spent writing it and considering what and who to include in the plot, the more I fell in love with my adopted home state. It is an unusual, spectacular, frustrating place to live and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I live here because I choose to. And this Thanksgiving week, one of the many blessings I'm thankful for is being an Alaskan.

How about you? Did you choose where you live, or did you fall into it? And how does that impact your sense of place in your writing?

In Juneau on the Inside Passage

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Why It Works: Rip Tide

Rip Tide is the sequel to Dark Life, a YA scifi written by Kat Falls. I read Dark Life last year and got sucked into the author's vision of a future planet covered with water (a la Waterworld) and humans that grow gills. Falls's book didn't get a whole bunch of press - or at least if it did, I missed it - but it has a few things to recommend it. It's from a boy's POV, it's pretty clean language-wise and it doesn't focus too heavily on romance. Yeah, I know that can be a bummer for a female audience but frankly, there just isn't enough out there in YA for guys... that's a topic for another post.
Anyway, the first few graphs of Rip Tide:
Easing back on the throttle, I slowed the submarine's speed. The light-streaked ocean around us seemed vast and empty, but I knew better. We were heading into the biggest trash vortex in the Atlantic. A piece of history could broadside us at any time.
  
Sure enough, a shape swirled out of the darkness, glimmering in the sub's head beams. Gemma leaned onto the viewport. "A bicycle," she said with amazement. "Just like in old photos."
"That means we're almost there," I told her.
"We're hiding a wagon full of crops in the open ocean?"
"In the middle of the trash gyre," I explained. "Genius, right?"
Red: time indicator - the characters are in a submarine, which tells us this takes place in the 20th century at the earliest. Then Gemma mentions that bikes are pictured in old photos, which propels us past the present and into the future.

Green: setting - we're not only in the Atlantic, we're in a trash vortex. Since we wouldn't call our oceans a 'trash vortex' today, this solidifies the clue that we're in the future. Even if I hadn't read the first book, my mind would combine lots of water + trash = a global warming future.

Blue: occupation/reorientation - The characters are in a submarine but Gemma mentions a wagon full of crops...which the sub must be either pulling OR Gemma is calling the sub a wagon, meaning it is used as farming equipment, meaning farming is done underwater. This solidifies the setting in our mind. It also tells us that our characters are involved with growing crops.
Pink: mystery/why we keep reading factor - Why in the world are these two hiding crops in a trash gyre? (What is a trash gyre??) What kind of world allows them to not only grow crops underwater, but then forces them to hide what they've produced.

 Hooked yet?

Have a great week!

Why It Works: Daughter of the Forest

I discovered author Juliet Marillier several years ago the way I usually do - by checking out her book at the library. It was the first time I'd ever read her stuff. She's a fantasy author and honestly, fantasy isn't really my thing. But I was caught by the cover of Daughter of the Forest and by the blurb, which mentions an evil enchantress, a spell and a kidnapping. Marillier retells the Celtic tale of siblings who are turned into swans....only in her novel, there are six brothers and a sister, who must save them.

Here is how it starts:
 Three children lay on the rocks at water's edge. A dark-haired little girl. Two boys, slightly older. This image is caught forever in my memory, like some fragile creature preserved in amber. Myself, my brothers. I remember the way the water rippled as I trailed my fingers across its surface.
"Don't lean over so far, Sorcha," said Padraic. "You might fall in."
He was a year older than me and made the most of what little authority this gave him. You could understand, I suppose. After all, there were six brothers altogether and five of them were older than he was.
I ignored him, reaching down into the mysterious depths.
"She might fall in, mightn't she, Finbar?"
A long silence. As it stretched out, we both looked at Finbar, who lay on his back ,full length on the warm rock. Not sleeping: his eyes reflected the open grey of the autumnal sky. His hair spread out on the rock in a wild tangle. There was a hole in the sleeve of his jacket.
"The swans are coming," said Finbar at last. He sat up slowly to rest his chin on his knees. "They're  coming tonight."

Blue: Setting - although there is little to suggest where these characters are, it's clear they're in the woods by some amount of water (river, stream, pond?). Some of this is spelled out on the cover and the blurb, but they're obviously not in a city or any crowded spot.
Pink: narrator explanation - the girl called Sorcha is telling this story as an adult.
Orange: backstory - Sorcha has six brothers and she is the youngest. Padraic is the nearest brother to her in age. From Finbar's clothes and hair, these children are either poor or not well cared for.
Yellow: character reveal: The dark-haired Sorcha doesn't listen to Padraic, who appeals to Finbar for authority. So we know that Sorcha has a mind of her own, and both she and Padraic respect Finbar.
Green: mystery/foreshadowing - Why should Finbar care that the swans are coming? It's an odd thing for a boy to say.

Notice how Marillier works in these key elements using only a few hundred words. The Sevenwaters Series was supposed to be just a trilogy, but it's been so popular, Marillier is has written five books so far. 
Her sixth, Flame of Sevenwaters, comes out this November. Find out more about her here.
If you've read any of Marillier's books, share your favorite in the comments!
Have a great week,

The brilliance of Graceling, a bloghop and a winner

 Thanks to everyone who stopped by last week and voted in an informal poll. I had to take it off my blog due to a weird formatting glitch but the results were helpful.

 Tied for first place was diagramming of successful YA, and a fun bloghop. For the next several Mondays, I'll be examining passages from popular YA books (if you have a title suggestion, let me know) and preparing for a Most Embarrassing Writing Moment bloghop sometime in July.  I need a co-host or three. It'll be a one-day hop with a People's Choice prize-to-be-determined. If you're interested in co-hosting, email me.

Random.org choose Michelle of Books on the Run to receive an ARC of ARTICLE 5. Yay! Michelle, I'll be emailing you soon.

Now, on to examining the brilliance that is Kristen Cashore's Graceling...
I first read this book as an ARC when I was working in a middle school library in 2009. The cover caught me first - that shiny, glinting sword with the girl's eye peering out at me. And then the blurb mentioning a female spy/fighter who was Graced with kick ass power.  (I mean that literally: Katsa is able to kick anyone's ass.) Right away, Cashore appealed to the latent ass-kicker in me because even though I've never been in a physical fight in my life, that hasn't meant part of me didn't want to be. I'm just too small (and too smart) to pit myself against the odds. My teeth are fine where they are, thank you. But if I could kick ass with impunity...well, then, BRING IT ON.
So I was hooked enough to flip open the cover. The first paragraph is all about setting - the dungeon, the smell of moss and damp, the feel of cold stone and flickering torch light. As a reader, I love tactile hints of setting  - they draw me in, give my brain lots of clues to trick myself into going into that hypnotic state only good writers create. But Cashore doesn't stay here long. She tells me in the third paragraph why we're here: Katsa has been sent for the guards. It was for them she was sent first.

As a reader, I'm wonder what the heck that means and turn the page. Katsa dispatches four guards before amazement had even registered in their eyes. There was only one more guard, sitting before the cell bars at the end of the corridor. He scrambled to his feet and slid his sword from his sheath. Katsa walked toward him, certain the the torch at her back hid her face, and particularly her eyes, from his sight. She measured his size, the way he moved, the steadiness of the arm that held the sword toward her.
"Stop there. It's clear enough what you are." His voice was even. He was brave, this one. He cut the air with his sword, in warning. "You don't frighten me."
He lunged toward her. She ducked under his blade and whirled her foot out, clipping his temple. He dropped to the ground.

Cashore shows me four things in this short piece of writing. (There would be five if I'd included the first two graphs of setting but I didn't want to make this post super long.)
BLUE - character building -  Katsa is a fast and efficient fighter. She's been trained and she doesn't waste time.
GREEN - play to engage reader sympathy - Katsa notices the guard's behavior with approval; it shows us both her business-like attitude and her fairness. It's important we root for her despite her ass-kicking abilities and showing us her other qualities makes us like her. A few sentences later, this impression is reinforced when she treats the knocked-out guards gently.
YELLOW - backstory/worldbuilding. Her eyes give away what she is, although her attempt to hide this from her next opponent isn't successful. He's guessed it from everything that's just happened. This tells us that her ability is widely recognized and feared in her world.
RED  - mystery. Why does she hide what she is? It isn't for her protection (she obviously needs none) so I have to read on to figure it out.
Cashore does all this in less than 500 words. Her writing is tightly designed to give your brain all the tools it needs to stay engaged - setting, sympathy, intrigue, mystery, a hint of a world to explore. This is exactly what agents are talking about when they say: write tight, keep it moving, hook me fast.

What are some other examples of great opening scenes?

E is for: Exotic - writing a place you've never been

(The lovely Taryn Albright interviewed me re: revision techniques on her blog today. Check it out: http://tarynalbright.com)

Write what you know.

View of the old city, Jerusalem

We've all heard that, right? Fortunately, few writers take that to mean 'write only what you've experienced'. Because if we did that, Michael Crichton would never have written Jurassic Park. Hunger Games would still be an idea. Lewis and Tolkien would never have started The Inklings.

So what does that phrase really mean? IMO, it means that if you don't know it, and you want to write about it, do some research. Or even if you have been to your desired setting before but it's been years, you'll need to brush up on certain things. Check out this list:

Weather. Use local weather to influence your mood.  If the scene was happy or romantic, the sun was shining or setting. For murder/mayhem - fog/sandstorm/rain, depending on your setting's climate.

Speech patterns. Check idioms and regional phrases - do people say 'some' instead of 'very?' How would someone from Australia say, "That's really cool" ? Authenticity will deepen the appeal of your writing.

Architecture. What's the typical home look like in your location? What makes it unique - high roofline, arched windows, cedar siding, big porches? Is there a widely known building/location you could write a scene around?

Local customs. Do people kiss each cheek when greeting each other? Do they kick off their shoes before entering a stranger's house? Maybe there's a favorite bumpersticker a lot of people from one area have. (Where I live, it's "Alaska Girls Kick A**" among others....) How could you work those customs into your writing?

Food. If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, the same is true for a reader. Tell us everything about a meal - the scents, the flavors, the textures and colors - and we're right there with you. Everybody loves a good meal. Think: Under the Tuscan Sun. Mmmmmmm....if you can make it work with your plot, go for it.

Clothing. I hesitated to add this last bc seriously, nobody walks around naked even in fiction, but I think clothing is an important part of setting - especially if you write anything but contemporary. From Katniss to Scarlett O'Hara, what our characters wear says a lot about what's happening to them and when.

What have I missed? What do you add to make your setting addictive?

The elements of setting



Matanuska Peak and Lazy Mountain


My house is surrounded by two ranges - the Chugach and Talkeetnas. Mat Peak and Pioneer Peak are over 6,000 feet. You can hike them if you dare but there are no roads through either range. Each year, a dozen or so people die from reckless snowmachining - usually bc they caused an avalanche. And avalanche beacons don't work in 50-feet of packed snow.

My parents live in Nova Scotia on the other side of the continent.



Random Nova Scotia fishing village



Their 'mountain' is a 3,000-ft gradual slope in the middle of the province. I didn't notice it for years until my mother told me about this snowstorm that stranded about 50 motorists. Apparently cell service got knocked out and people waited for hours in their car for help that never came. Of course, it being a maritime province at all, the storm passed, the snow melted and nobody died. (Thankfully, you can't die from a hissy fit.)

Alaska: rugged, trackless terrain. 85 mph winter windstorms that last for days are common.
Nova Scotia: gentle, road woven coast-line. Windless, foggy winters are common.

So how does this setting affect people? In a very general way:

Alaskans (non-Native): ornery, independent, occasionally on the lam or half-crazed with stubborness, gun-toting individualists who are always on the move.
Nova Scotians: polite traditionalists, insular, law-abiding, family centered folks who live in the house their great-grandparents built.

While I started to write my last MS, I knew I had a lot of culture clash to work with. What I didn't know was how the conflict would develop my setting. Or how the setting would push my conflict. My MC is yanked out of her Alaskan lifestyle and into a new Nova Scotian family. On the surface, they're her blood relatives. But underneath, she couldn't be more different. One of my goals was to show how setting, where you live, the culture whose values you share, drives character.

Beyond knowing the basics of each culture (which is key before any of the rest of this will work) here are a few techniques I used:

Weather. My characters' moods were mirrored in the weather. If the scene was happy or romantic, the sun was shining or setting. For murder/mayhem - fog/wind/rain.

Speech patterns. Check idioms and regional phrases - do people say 'some' instead of 'very?' How would someone from Australia say, "That's really cool" ? Authenticity will deepen the appeal of your writing.

Architecture. What's the typical home look like in your location? What makes it unique - high roofline, arched windows, cedar siding, big porches? Is there a widely known building/location you could write a scene around?

Local customs. Do people kiss each cheek when greeting each other? Do they kick off their shoes before entering a stranger's house? Maybe there's a favorite bumpersticker a lot of people from one area have. (Where I live, it's "Alaska Girls Kick A&*" among others....) How could you work those customs into your writing?

Food. If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, the same is true for a reader. Tell us everything about a meal - the scents, the flavors, the textures and colors - and we're right there with you. Everybody loves a good meal. Think: Under the Tuscan Sun. Mmmmmmm....if you can make it work with your plot, go for it.

Clothing. I hesitated to add this last bc seriously, nobody walks around naked even in fiction, but I think clothing is an important part of setting - especially if you write anything but contemporary. From Katniss to Scarlett O'Hara, what our characters wear says a lot about what's happening to them and when.

IMO, these are the writers whose worlds make mine fall away, whose setting wraps me up in a nice blanket of escape: LM Montgomery, Elizabeth George, Beverly Cleary, PD James, Rosalind Pilcher, Maeve Binchy...plus two Alaskan writers, Dana Stabenow and Heather Lende. (Heather is joining me Friday in honor of Alaska Book Week. *squeal!* Check out this link for more goodies showcasing authors from the Last Frontier.)

So who are your favorite atmospheric writers? And how do they do it? What are the elements of your setting? (And DO sign up for the Casting Call blogfest over at Carrie Butler's blog. It's going to be a blast!)