In Memoriam

Posted on January 17, 2016 by jenniferscoullar

My big brother passed away without warning over Christmas. I’ve been paralysed, unable to write since. So my dear friend Sydney has written this wise, beautiful post for me. It’s about Rod. Thank you Sydney. Somehow by your gracious act, I’ve been set free to write again. I just needed a little help 🙂 xx

In Memoriam by Sydney Smith

Jenny’s brother Rod died in late December, suddenly and out of the blue, and since his going, I cling to a small yet persistent belief that he isn’t really dead. It’s involuntary. In my mind I “know” he’s gone. But that knowledge lives on the surface of my consciousness. In my heart, he lingers gently yet persistently.

I went to his funeral thinking that would put a full stop on this feeling that Rod isn’t really dead. A friend picked me up from the train station, and as we drove to the church, I told her how, three days after Rod’s death, my computer hid my Start menu, that every time I minimised a document or a browser, it vanished from view, and I didn’t know how to get any of it back. ‘Ghost in the machine,’ I said. Normally, I would call Rod for help and he would sort out my problem. He did that for lots of people. That’s how to get to know computers in a deep-down way, by fixing them when they get sick. I said to my friend, ‘Rod’s telling me I can’t live without him.’

The funeral went along as these thing usually do. Rod’s friends and family stood to speak about his life, his achievements, his effect on them. The minister invited people to come up to the lectern and add their piece about Rod. I wanted to say something but didn’t know what that should be. These people had told anecdotes of Rod that captured aspects of his mischievous, independent spirit, his charm and his talents. I wanted to say something else, but what, I didn’t know.

As I travelled home after the funeral, I was aware that it had not done what I hoped it would do. I still didn’t “know” Rod had died. As I write this blog, ten days after the funeral, I still don’t “know” it.

Death is a strange thing. No matter how often it happens, it remains a foreigner in our midst. It speaks a language we each have to learn. The spark that once animated a body is wrenched free, and what is left is familiar and at the same time shatteringly inadequate.

This “not knowing” Rod is dead is a kind of haunting. It’s an awareness of a space that used to be filled by a flesh and blood person, and which is now filled with the fact of absence and an ongoing, elusive presence. Rod is hovering in this room where I work at my computer. The air tingles with the voice that is about to speak. The air shifts with his movement. From the corner of my eye I almost see his beige and oatmeal plumage. This haunting isn’t oppressive. It simply is, gentle and lingering.

Rod 2 Death isn’t a single, decisive event. The body loses its life, and we are led to believe that this is the end. But it isn’t. There is no end, no finality. There is a gentle shifting into another kind of perception, where each of us in the intimacy of grief meet him again.

Thoughts On Dialogue

Posted on November 16, 2015 by jenniferscoullar

cross blog It’s that time of the month for general writerly chit-chat with author and writing teacher Sydney Smith.

This month, we analyse a passage of dialogue from The Red King, by Victor Kelleher, to see what makes effective dialogue. Here is the passage itself:

‘Petie was sitting on a low wooden stool in the centre of the clearing, the mist and the smoke from the camp fire curling about him. There was no sign of the animals. His thin body was hunched over a flat piece of rock which he was using as a table; and his long fingers, heavy with rings, were busily drawing gold coins from a leather pouch which she had often seen hanging at her Master’s belt.

‘So!’ she hissed at him. ‘You’re nothing but a common thief!’

He swung towards her, gold coins spilling from his cupped hands, a mischievous smile forming on his lips. ‘Do I deserve no payment for saving you from the fever?’ he asked. ‘Not even a few paltry coins?’

‘It’s not just the coins!’ she shouted, and pointed to the collar encircling her neck. ‘This didn’t belong to you! It wasn’t yours to use like this!’

‘But it was also part of your master’s property,’ he countered. ‘The collar and the gold together. Why should I keep one and give up the other?’

‘I’ve already told you,’ she protested. ‘He made me free. Free! You had no right … no right …!’

‘No right?’ he interrupted. ‘Without me you would be dead. And there’s little freedom in the grave, Timkin, I assure you of that.’

‘I’d rather be in the grave than wearing this again!’ she replied hotly.

‘That too can be arranged,’ he answered, and all at once there was a sinister undertone to his words that matched the chill of the morning.’

SYDNEY:-
One of the first things I noticed about this passage of dialogue is the power transfer. At the start, the power balance is fairly equal between the two characters, with a slight leaning toward Timkin, who has taken the moral high ground.

‘So!’ she hissed at him. ‘You’re nothing but a common thief!’

By the end of the piece, Petie has taken power by adopting a menacing tone of voice.

‘That too can be arranged,’ he answered, and all at once there was a sinister undertone to his words that matched the chill of the morning.

The Red King Kelleher underlines the menace in Petie’s tone by describing it. This has at least two functions. The first is to emphasise the power transfer. Emphasis is a vital part of good narrative. The second function is to draw a line under the dialogue sequence. The scene goes on but this bit of power transfer has been framed and divided from the next bit of the story by the description of Petie’s sinister tone of voice.

JENNY:-
This is an excellent passage to show how dialogue should convey an underlying tension. The conflict here is obvious – one character has the other captive. Timkin is moving in the direction of her desire – freedom. Petie is maintaining his desire – to hold her prisoner – and upping the ante by making veiled threats. Readers expect dialogue to have this kind of purpose and direction. They expect to be led somewhere and Kelleher does this.

Tom Chiarella

But is tension always necessary? Yes. Good dialogue is a combination of desire on the part of one character weighed against the tension inherent in the scene. You may think there isn’t always tension when people speak. A family conversation, for example, where people love each other. Does that sort of dialogue need tension? Of course! (For many of us, family causes more conflict than anything else.) It doesn’t have to be grand conflict. In his wonderful essay on writing dialogue Tom Chiarella puts it this way.

‘Tension is more like the energy between charged particles. It’s always there, even when two people agree. Think of two cars traveling a reasonable distance apart from one another along an interstate at sixty-five miles an hour. Safe distance.Same direction. Same speed. No tension, right? Wrong. We all know it only takes one little bump in the road, one touch of the brakes, a deer in the headlights for everything to be completely and suddenly redefined.’

SYDNEY:-
Yes, dialogue always has to have tension. I would only qualify what you said, Jenny, by saying that BOTH characters have desire. They are clashing desires. This is what causes the tension. In Kelleher’s excerpt, you can see that each character states their position clearly and so they fight it out through dialogue. Other pertinent information is shown through the narrative bits that frame the dialogue. What you get is a layered piece of storytelling through dialogue.

JENNY:-
Each line of dialogue simply responding to the previous one, bloated dialogue, is one of the most common mistakes of new writers. Speech in novels should be stylised. It should sidestep the obvious with off-centre responses, questions, silence or body language.

So ‘This is wonderful fruit cake. Sue.’
‘Thanks Jill.’
‘Can I have the recipe?’
‘Of course.’

Could become …

‘This is wonderful fruit cake, Sue.’
Her sister never handed out compliments. What was going on?
‘Can I have the recipe?’
Sue shoved her chair back from the table. ‘I need a drink.’

Much more interesting!

SYDNEY:-
Indeed! I switched off at the first passage between Sue and Jill, but at the second passage, I sat up straight and paid attention! Dialogue is meant to have that effect. Readers know they’re meant to sit up and pay attention when dialogue comes into it.

JENNY:-
I do have one problem with the Kelleher excerpt, and that’s his use of dialogue tags. I strongly believe that said becomes invisible and is all that’s needed. The occasional whispered or shouted is okay, but not protested, countered or replied hotly. It just distracts me.

I’m not a fan of loads of dialogue in fiction. No response is often the best response, so sometimes it’s good to simply shut your characters up. Silence can show confusion, pain, determination, anger – any number of emotions. It allows the rest of the scene to carry the weight via action, sensory description, physical details, thoughts or even the rhythm of words themselves.

SYDNEY:-
Dialogue 3 Yes, dialogue gains in texture if the writer uses other ways of conveying what’s going on with the characters, or if they’re inventive with their character responses. It takes practice and confidence to know when to use words and when an action will do the job just as well or better.

Also, dialogue does not replace action. As a manuscript assessor, I read many, many manuscripts by writers who thought dialogue was always showing, not telling. So they wrote reams of dialogue in which this kind of thing happened:

Joe said, ‘Look who is coming down the street. It is Leonard, carrying a bazooka. He is talking to a woman. A police car is following them.’

Sam said, ‘I am filling the kettle and putting it on the stove. Do you want coffee? I have a bad feeling about that bazooka. I was in Nam as a kid of eighteen and weapons make me think of those days. That is why I became a Federal police officer.’

The purpose of this sort of dialogue is to inform the reader. It isn’t about an exchange between two characters with clashing goals. But dialogue shouldn’t be merely an info dump. Dialogue has a dramatic function that must be fulfilled at all times.

When a reader starts reading a story, they enter into a contract. This contract involves trust – the reader gives the story their trust that it will do its job properly and carry them away on a wave of enchantment. If a story breaks that contract, it loses the reader, who stops reading or switches off or gets distracted. Dialogue that lacks dramatic tension breaks that contract.

BB14

Hook The Reader With Your First Sentence + Giveaway!

Posted on September 20, 2015 by jenniferscoullar

It’s that time of the month for general writerly chit-chat with Sydney Smith. This week there’s also a giveaway, to celebrate the completion of my new manuscript.

JENNY-
Hurray, I’ve finished my latest novel! One hundred thousand words of carefully crafted narrative. From Afghanistan’s last wilderness, to the rugged ranges of Australia’s great eastern escarpment – an epic tale of love, loss and redemption. Writing it was like running an emotional marathon.

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. But when I began my rewrites – horror of horrors! A boring first paragraph stared me in the face. I needed to fix it, and fast. The manuscript is due at my publisher in two weeks. How do I hook my reader with that first line? Sydney Smith and I were down at Phillip Island on a writing retreat. We began a game – take a random novel off the shelf, read the first line, and rate it out of ten.

SYDNEY-
And what an eye-opener it was! So many of them started with a reference to the weather. About sixty percent, don’t you think, Jenny? Descriptions of weather aren’t in themselves bad. If they strike a note of tension, they can be very good. A storm can be great if it opens, say, a haunted house story or a tale of pursuit and capture. But if the weather is there simply because the writer can’t think of a better way to open their novel, it’s Dullsville. Here are two examples:

-‘The day is hot, the air thick with the smells of the rain-forest.’ The Inevitability Of Stars, Kathryn R Lyster
– ‘He could hear nothing while the storm lasted, everything blotted out by the steady drumming of the rain on the iron roof.’ Papio, Victor Kelleher

Then there were the openings that drop you right into the action through a piece of dialogue or movement.

– ‘They threw me off the hay truck about noon.’ The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
– ‘We should head to a bar and celebrate.’ Bared To You, Sylvia Day
– ‘The manhunt extended across more than one hundred light years and eight centuries.‘ A Deepness In The Sky Vernor Vinge.

I know many readers like this. I never have. But, as my friends are at pains to tell me, I’m weird. You can’t go by what I like.

Then there are the opening sentences that were just plain dull for no particular reason. I opened Sylvester, one of my favourite Georgette Heyer novels, and there before me lay a sentence utterly devoid of thrill:

‘Sylvester stood in the window of his breakfast-parlour, leaning his hands on the ledge, and gazing out upon a fair prospect.’

I forgive her because her novels were amongst my early teachers. If I have any skill at all as a writer, it’s thanks to her. I learned wit from her. I learned the long and vivid character introduction from her. I learned the thrust and parry of dialogue between hero and heroine from her. And let us praise the heroine who can take care of herself. That’s not Ms Heyer’s invention, but she ran with it as no one had before. So I tried another Georgette Heyer, this one The Corinthian.

‘The company, ushered by a disapproving butler into the yellow saloon of Sir Richard Wyndham’s house in St James’ Square, comprised two ladies and one reluctant gentleman.’

Better. The disapproving butler, and especially the one reluctant gentleman, strike notes of tension. The reader is invited to wonder why they’re there, and why the gentleman is reluctant. But it’s too long thanks to the nonsense about Richard’s posh address. Still, it’s a well-balanced sentence. Ms Heyer was a prose stylist of the first order.

But when I look at first sentences, I want something more. I want a sentence that snags me on a strong yet delicate hook with a barb on the end that hurts if I try to wriggle free.

JENNY-
I’ve listed my favourites below. Some encapsulate the conflict, compacting the entire story into a single sentence. Others state a truth or surprise me in some way.

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.” Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” The Dark Tower, Stephen King
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
“He shouldn’t have come back.” Dark Country, Bronwyn Parry
“When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable child ever seen.” The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
“It is said that in death, all things become clear; Ensei Tankado now knew it was true.” Digital Fortress, Dan Brown
“The idea that love is not enough, is a particularly painful one.” The Unknown Terrorist, Richard Flanagan.
“Every summer, Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife.” Waiting: A novel, Ha Jin
“Bett-Bett must have been a Princess, for she was a King’s niece, and if that does not make a princess of anyone, it ought to do so!” The Little Black Princess, Aeneus Gunn
“So I’m standing at my front gate and I’m soaked and it’d been the worst day in history.” Rough Diamond, Kathryn Ledson
“I see my father with that shovel.” The Woods, Harlan Coben
“This was the way a world died.” Ice Guard Steve Lyons
And my personal favourite: “All stories are about wolves.” The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood

Stephen King proudly boasts that he spends months crafting a first line. What do you think, Sydney? What is it about these lines that made them stand out?

SYDNEY-
I go with most of your choices, Jenny. I have to say, though, that Richard Flanagan’s contribution strikes me as weak, thanks to its construction and verb choice. “The idea that love is not enough, is a particularly painful one.” It might read better if it went something like this: “It hurts to know that love is not enough.” The construction here is stronger first because of the verb: in his version, he uses “is”, which is a nothing verb, while mine is “hurts”, which throbs with vitality. The position of the verb matters, too: mine is the second word in the sentence, which is a strong place to put it, right after the subject pronoun. His verb is buried in the middle of the sentence. Verbs are engines: they drive sentences. The stronger the verb, the stronger the drive. The fact that his version uses “is” twice merely compounds the problem.

Stephen King’s contribution is good: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” First, it’s about pursuit. Predators pursue their prey. At the same time, the moral ambiguity threatens to tumble it on its head: the prey wears black, the colour of villainy. Does the gunslinger pursue him because he’s done something evil? A two-hook sentence, the moral and the visceral, is an embarrassment of riches. Maybe I should read this novel!

As for Margaret Atwood’s selection, “All stories are about wolves”, the initial hook is the sheer mind-blowing breadth of the statement. That very fact caused me to pause and ponder. “Wolves” is a metaphor; she means all stories are about predators, and therefore, about their prey, since a predator is nothing without the creatures it kills and devours (wolfs down). In which case, contrary to first impressions, Ms Atwood is absolutely right. And yet I can’t overlook the whiff of facetiousness in the sentence either. It begins to look as though I personally like a sentence whose layers can be unpacked and spread on the table.

JENNY-
Interestingly, Margaret Atwood’s line holds very true for my latest novel! I don’t expect a first line to do as much as you do, Sydney. It must hook the reader, true, but it can do this in a variety of ways.
– Summarising the conflict, like the first line of Lolita.
– Stating a general truth, like Leo Tolstoy and Richard Flanagan do. (I do like Flanagan’s first line, despite its double use of ‘is‘).
– Stating a simple yet interesting fact. “I had a farm in Africa,” Out of Africa Isak Dinesen. I also love the ‘They threw me off the hay-truck about noon.’ line 🙂
– Establishing an intriguing voice, Lolita again.
– Or a line that surprises, like Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

These work for me. And thanks to this fun research and analysis, I now have my new opening line – one of the encapsulating-the-conflict variety. Now you’ll all have to buy my new book next year to find out what it is!

For your chance to win a two-pack of my books (your choice!) just leave a comment telling us your favourite first line from a novel, and which two books you’d like to win. The first line can be one that we’ve already mentioned, or a new one altogether. The prize will be drawn on the 4th of October. (Aust & NZ residents only)

The Magical Middle

Posted on June 14, 2015 by jenniferscoullar

Time for some writerly discussion on craft. Today, writing mentor Sydney Smith and I discuss a novel’s mid-point.

JENNIFER –
I’m approaching the middle of my new manuscript, although still a few thousand words away. Since reading Sydney Smith’s wonderful new book, The Architecture Of Narrative, I’ve been giving a lot more thought than usual to structure. So many writing gurus emphasise the significance of the magical midpoint. James Scott Bell, in his clever book, Write Your Novel From The Middle, calls it the mirror moment, when the main character looks at himself, and takes stock. What kind of person is he? What is he becoming? How must he change in order to achieve his goals?

My favourite film example of this is Casablanca with the fabulous Humphrey Bogart. At the exact midpoint of the film, Ilsa comes to Rick’s bar after closing. Rick is drunk and bitter, remembering how Ilsa left him in Paris. Ilsa tries to explain, pleads with him to understand, but Rick essentially calls her a whore. She leaves in tears. Rick, full of self-disgust, puts his head in his hands, thinking, ‘What have I become?’ Will he stay a selfish drunk, or regain his humanity? This goes to the central theme of the narrative, and the second half of the film answers that question.

Alexandra Sokoloff calls the midpoint the Call to Action, or Point of No Return. It heralds a major shift in the story, and is one of the most important scenes in any book or film. Something huge might be revealed. Something might go disastrously wrong. A ticking clock might be introduced, heightening the suspense. This fits in well with James Scott Bell’s analysis. In Casablanca, Ilsa reveals something huge at the midpoint―that she found out her husband, Viktor Lazlo, was still alive. This information leads Rick to a moment of self-reflection, then locks him into a course of action, thus linking the external and internal conflicts.

SYDNEY –
The midpoint of a novel can be a powerful place where change happens. In Pride and Prejudice, the midpoint is the chapter where Darcy first proposes to Elizabeth and she rejects him, citing his pride and arrogance, his interference in her sister’s romance with Bingley, and his cruelty to Wickham as her reasons for rejecting him. That propels him into writing the letter in which he reveals the truth about Wickham but admits to meddling in Bingley’s business. That in turn leads Elizabeth to realize she’s been prejudiced toward Darcy, which had blinded her to the truth about Wickham. And it leads Darcy to modify his behaviour toward others. That’s a powerful about-face for both of them, and a vital hinge. All that follows is a consequence of that. It’s interesting to note that this hinge is also the most memorable part of this time-honoured novel.

Gregg Hurwitz, thriller writer extraordinaire, uses the midpoint in his novel, Don’t Look Back (dull title but don’t be fooled―it’s amazing!). Eve Hardiman has lost her nerve in life after her husband leaves her for a younger woman. She gives up the low-paid nursing job she loves and takes a highly-paid post with an insurance company, turning down applications for medical treatment by seriously ill people. She goes on a holiday in a distant outpost in Mexico, and for the first part of the novel, she collects clues that point to the mysterious disappearance of Teresa Hamilton, and hands them to others to deal with. Then smack in the middle of the novel, something happens. A member of the holiday party is seriously injured. Eve takes charge of the situation and the threat to all their lives, and she doesn’t let up until she’s destroyed the villain. High-octane is not the word for it.

Lesser novels can employ the midpoint effectively, too, though in a different way. Philip Pullman uses it in his Sally Lockhart mysteries. For the first half of each novel, questions pile up. After the midpoint, they’re resolved one by one.

JENNIFER –
All these examples show just how crucial the midpoint really is. The sagging middle is a frequent trap for novice, and not-so novice writers. A lot of brainstorming is usually put into the start of a story, and to the climax, but the middle is neglected. It meanders, becomes boring, and loses the reader’s attention. As a manuscript assessor Sydney, you must have had a lot of experience with this all-too-common problem.

SYDNEY –
The thing to understand is that, if a story sags in the middle, it’s weak at the start. The weakness is the lack of a character flaw in the protagonist. In many, many examples of the midpoint, the critical moment is the protagonist’s realization of their character flaw. When Eve recognizes that she lost her nerve, that’s the moment she gets it back. The midpoint in Casablanca is the moment when Rick realizes his character flaw―his bitterness over Ilsa. This kind of self-knowledge always leads to a dramatic change in direction for the story because the protagonist is now able to change internally and act externally without the nagging hindrance of their character flaw.

To highlight my point by contrast, why is it that many, possibly most, series novels don’t employ the midpoint this way? Because the series hero will lose the very character flaw that drives him or her to do what they do. Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch is obsessed with catching murderers. But his obsession keeps him from connecting at a deep level with others. He’s single and can’t be with the woman he loves. His friendships are superficial. If he lost his obsession, he would no longer be driven to solve crimes. Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent is ashamed of his dyslexia. He is driven to compensate for it by solving crimes. If he lost his shame over his disability, he might become a more balanced human being, but he would lose the drive to compensate for it by being a super-duper crime-solver.

Look at the Sally Lockhart series: the midpoint is the hinge where the questions amassed in the first half begin to be answered. It’s cute. It’s obvious. It works. But it lacks that power-pack oomph that comes from a midpoint resting on the protagonist’s recognition of their character flaw.

JENNIFER –
Love these examples Sydney. They illustrate the importance of mid-points and character flaws in such a practical way. I’ll be sure to keep this discussion in the front of my mind as my manuscript grows.

Foreshadowing

Posted on March 15, 2015 by jenniferscoullar

It’s the time of the month for some writerly discussion on craft. Today, author and writing mentor Sydney Smith and I discuss the literary technique of foreshadowing.

SYDNEY:
Foreshadowing is the seeding of minor precursors to some greater event in a story. This is how believability is created. If you want the reader to believe an event in your story that might not seem altogether credible, foreshadow it and the reader will believe it. Even if the major event is already believable, foreshadowing will draw the reader in and make it even more convincing.

For example, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is set in Old China, where every aspect of life is arranged according to strict rules and customs. The narrator, Lily, has a special friendship with Snow Flower, one that was arranged especially to improve Lily’s marriage prospects. In fact, this friendship is dearer to Lily than the wealthy marriage she enters into as a girl of seventeen. But at the climax of the story, Lily humiliates Snow Flower out of jealous vengeance, and she loses the one relationship in her life that matters more to her than any other. Without foreshadowing, this climax might have been unbelievable, since Lily loves Snow Flower. Why would she do such a thing to the woman who matters most to her? Lisa See foreshadows it in a confrontation between Lily and her mother, one that reveals her vengeful spirit. She acts spitefully in this confrontation, and thus, her greater spitefulness in humiliating Snow Flower in the climax is foreshadowed. We have seen her behave vengefully once before. So at the climax, when the story needs us to believe it without question, we do thanks to foreshadowing.

JENNY:
I see foreshadowing as a two-part affair―first the hint (or hints), then the payoff. If a jewellery store is to be robbed, there might be a suspicious customer in the day before. If a man is to leave his wife, he might be reluctant to make holiday plans. Keeping the hint and payoff firmly linked in my mind, will make the setup more straightforward. Sometimes I write myself notes about it. And the more significant the payoff event, the earlier I like to plant hints.

As a reader, I always love when crucial events are deftly foreshadowed. That Ahh, I get it! moment is immensely satisfying. The classics are full of them. In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men, the killing of Candy’s old dog hints at the later killing of Lennie. In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the witches and their prophecies to foreshadow events. They warn that ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet complains to her nurse ‘My grave is like to be my wedding-bed.’ And in the wonderful Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte the spider explains to Wilbur that all living things eventually die. This foreshadows the main plot conflict, which is saving Wilbur from the slaughterhouse. Charlotte weaves a web over the barn door with a message that startles the humans into sparing Wilbur’s life. In the process of spinning her web, Charlotte expends all her energy and dies, just as she had hinted to Wilbur at the beginning of the story.

I will often read a novel containing clever foreshadowing a second time, in order to fully appreciate the author’s skill. But as a writer, I find it a fine line to tread. Too blatant a hint might give the game away. Too subtle, and readers might not make the connection at all. These days I err on the side of subtle. Readers are clever and sophisticated creatures! Sometimes writers forget this.

Of course the wonderful thing about foreshadowing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time. It’s rare to nail it in a first draft. I’ve often gone back through a manuscript and added clues. That’s when a good chapter summary document – a road map – comes into its own. Sometimes too, my editor suggests I either tone down or ramp up the foreshadowing. It takes a lot of practice.

SYDNEY:
The funny thing about foreshadowing is that if done well, it happens all the way through. EVERYTHING is foreshadowed. You realise this if you study closely the favourite novels that you read again and again. I’ve been studying Snow Flower with one of my students and we keep stumbling across instances of foreshadowing. It becomes the cement that glues a narrative together. It makes the story stronger, more solid. It putties in the gaps.

Foreshadowing is not to be confused with predictability, though. Predictability arises out of clichéd characters who act in clichéd ways. Foreshadowing is the trail of breadcrumbs you follow, not realising they’re breadcrumbs. You think the forest is thick with trees, that the way stumbles right and left. But in fact there is a path, and that path is foreshadowing.

The Animal Characters Of ‘Turtle Reef’

Posted on March 1, 2015 by jenniferscoullar

Today, author Sydney Smith interviews me about the animals in my upcoming release, Turtle Reef.

SYDNEY: Jenny, your latest novel, Turtle Reef, will soon come out. As with Currawong Creek, the story contains plenty of animal characters and a child with an intellectual disability. One of the interesting things about your fiction is the theme of “wise” animals and children like Jack in Currawong and Josh in Turtle Reef―wise because they feel comfortable in their place in the world, comfortable with themselves, while adult humans stuff things up left, right and centre. Can you talk about how you see these wise animals and children?

JENNIFER: I believe children haven’t strayed as far from the animal, and thus instinctively understand the natural world and their place in it. I struggle with our modern disconnect from nature. Most of us live our lives so removed from the elemental that we rarely even touch the earth. We tell ourselves that we are separate from the natural world. But I worry about the cost to our declining environment. Not to mention the cost to our hearts. The rural fiction genre is so popular because readers are hungry to re-engage with nature, to ground themselves. Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild tapped into this vein. The wildly successful movie, Avatar, did the same. For me, losing touch with wildness means losing touch with ourselves. In a review of my debut novel, Wasp Season, Diana Jenkins (News Editor, Varuna National Writers’ Centre) put it this way :

‘Jennifer’s a changeling, in my mind, someone who’s not really human at all, or at least not in the conventional sense. She’s too alive to the possibilities and voices of other living things for that. But with what eyes does she see? How does she so convincingly inhabit the wasps? I think it’s because she’s somehow emerged with her childlike wonder intact. Remember foraging around at the bottom of every garden or wood or forest or glen you came across as a child? How fantastic it seemed, how secretive? How full of drama and exquisite beauty? I remember it really clearly, and when I think of Jennifer’s eye on the natural world I imagine that I just might be able to reach that magic garden again.’

SYDNEY: So when you started to think about writing Turtle Reef, how did you come to choose which aspect of the drama of the Great Barrier Reef to write about? Would you say part of your role as a writer is to educate readers about how to correct old mistakes in the management of the natural world?

JENNIFER: The Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral ecosystem on our blue planet, holds a special place in the hearts of most Australians. As you suggest in your question, it has so many aspects that lend themselves to dramatic stories. I tell human and animal tales side by side, exploring how we exist together in one habitat. Choosing a cane farmer and marine zoologist as my main protagonists allowed me to look at the varied parts the reef plays in the life of coastal communities. It was also an excuse to write about dugongs and dolphins!

My aim as a writer is to entertain. It’s not my role to educate readers in any way. I simply present issues that confront people in regional areas on a day-to-day basis. However, we are so often on a collision course with nature. If my stories spark debate about conservation, that’s a bonus.

SYDNEY: Can you talk a bit about how you build an animal character? You’ve told me already about Einstein, the octopus. I was instantly captivated (and still think about inklets, baby octopi!). How much anthropomorphism goes into it? Or do you think the key to creating an animal character lies elsewhere?

JENNIFER: The first thing I do when building animal characters is to learn everything I can about their lives. This is my favourite part of the writing process. I’ve been an amateur naturalist for as long as I can remember, and love nothing more that immersing myself in the world of a brumby, or goose, or dolphin. Then I build my animal character much like I would any other, imagining its personality, back-story and motivation. In my view, anthropomorphism is a useful tool for navigating this planet that we share with other animals.

Take the recent documentary film, Blackfish, for example. It tells the story of Tilikum, a captive Orca who killed several of his trainers. It’s an emotionally-wrenching, tightly-structured tale that relies on us empathising with the whale’s plight. Thoughtful, balanced anthropomorphism helps us perceive the kinship shared by humans and animals. Can I add, Only The Animals, by Ceridwen Dovey, has been long-listed for the Stella Prize. In this astonishing anthology, the souls of ten animals that died in human conflicts over the last century tell their own stories. The old taboo against anthropomorphism is lifting, and it’s a good thing too.

SYDNEY: Hm. Only the Animals sounds like a must-read to me. Only, I’m scared I’ll bawl my eyes out! Getting back to how you build an animal character, you immersed yourself in the worlds of several marine animals. Have you got any insights to impart about your discoveries?

JENNIFER: Yes Sydney, Only The Animals may not be for you. It’s very confronting and you’d probably cry. I did!

Getting back to the animals in Turtle Reef, I too am intrigued by my octopus character, Einstein. These misunderstood creatures are usually cast in an evil light. Take the giant, murderous octopus from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, for example, or Ursula the sea witch from The Little Mermaid. I think the octopus gets such bad press because it is an alarmingly alien animal. Eight suckered arms. Three hearts pumping blue, copper-based blood around its boneless body. However, I’m a big fan of this jet-powered invertebrate. Master of camouflage, a shape-shifter, and with an intelligence approaching that of a dog. And when it comes to maternal self-sacrifice? Well, you’ll just have to read the book …

I also learned a lot about dolphins. Recent scientific research suggests they have a wider range of emotions than humans, a culture that is handed down through generations, and personal names. Unlike us, they are conscious breathers. This was discovered in the 1960s, when researchers tried to anaesthetise dolphins. As soon as they fell unconscious, they stopped breathing and died. Depressed captive dolphins have been known to commit suicide by simply deciding not to breathe. In fact, the more I learned about dolphins, the more firmly opposed I became to them being held in marine parks. For example dolphins have a sixth sense, sonar, which becomes problematic when they are confined. Sound bounces off the concrete tanks, confusing and irritating them. Sonar is dolphins’ most effective tool for learning about the world around them. Thwarting their ability to use this sonar is tantamount to blinding them.

SYDNEY: That is so interesting, Jenny. Isn’t it funny how suggestible we are. If we’re presented with an animal as a hostile being, we become scared of the whole species. But present us with a friendly version and we love the whole species. How much of the drama that unfolds in Turtle Reef is shaped by human preconceptions about certain animals? Maybe you can talk about the contrast between the way Josh responds to these animals and the way some adult humans do.

JENNIFER: There are lots of preconceptions being made about the characters in Turtle Reef, some negative, some positive, but mostly unwarranted. The instant aversion people feel towards Einstein, the octopus, for example. The automatic assumption that Kane the dolphin, with his perpetual smile, is peaceful and happy in captivity. Josh has a brain injury, so it’s assumed he is slow. Aisha, the Arabian mare, is branded a rogue, and nobody challenges this. However, with one exception, Josh isn’t guilty of pre-judging the other characters in Turtle Reef. He takes them as he finds them. So does Zoe. This is their strength. They can see past these preconceptions to the truth.

Thank you for your thought-provoking questions Sydney, and I look forward to sharing the story of Turtle Reef with my readers very soon!

Pre-order Turtle Reef here at Bookworld, Booktopia and Amazon

The Devil Inside

Posted on January 4, 2015 by jenniferscoullar

Sydney Smith

While I’m editing Turtle Reef (out with Penguin April 2015) writing mentor extraordinaire Sydney Smith has been guest blogging for me. Here is her second last post, an insight into her creative process and why I call her the Story Whisperer. Her mind is always choc-a-block with plots!

The Writing Devil

Every time I finish a writing project I go through a period of anxiety where I’m waiting for the next project to materialise. That sounds banal, like waiting at a train station for the 6.15 to pull up. That is far from the case. My life feels pointless and empty. I tell myself this is how my life will be when I’m too old to write anymore. (Jennifer – Don’t worry Sydney I don’t think you ever get too old to write!)

So I play plot games with myself.

I’m a plot geek. I can work up a rough plot―protagonist, antagonist, premise, setting―in a matter of minutes. I can develop it over a few days. By the end of the week I’ll have what looks to outsiders like a workable story. While I’m doing this I believe in it utterly. I believe it’s real, believe it’s ready to write. All it needs is that final step, that teeny tiny step into commitment.

I will talk to my friends about this plot, that plot, like an Old Testament prophet possessed by a vision. They are as convinced as I am that the novel is poised to flame from my mind onto the computer screen. They ask me about these novels. ‘Have you started writing yet?’ My answer is always a dismal, ‘No.’

Every night I go to bed hoping to wake the next morning with the writing devil in me, the one that propels me to my computer and dictates to me words of fire. And each morning, I wake un-possessed.

I go for coffee with a writing friend, I get an email from a friend about her novel-in-progress, I have a session with a student, and every time, they ask me if I’ve started writing yet. Some of them understand why I haven’t. Some are baffled. There are novelists for whom writing is a matter of will. (Jennifer – Yep) For me, writing is always an act of demonic possession. If the devil hasn’t crowded into my mind, raving in tongues, there is no way I can write. Writing a novel is a huge undertaking, demanding hundreds of hours of screen time, and many hundreds of hours of thinking. I can’t do it without the writing devil.

In the last three months, since I finished The Architecture of Narrative, I have worked on the following plot ideas:

Dusk – a supernatural creature who enters a family and destroys it one member at a time.

The Bridge – crime novel about a man who was wrongly convicted of murder.

Rosings – a sequel to Pride and Prejudice.

Atthis – a fantasy novel about a girl who trains as a monster-slayer.

Leila – a woman who works as an assassin.

The Water Serpent – a fantasy novel about a young woman who can manipulate Time.

I’m not a religious person―despite all the religious imagery I’ve used―but as week followed week and none of these plot games turned into something more, I went to bed praying to the god of my imagination to bring me a story to write. I got to the stage where I was frightened I would never write again.

Then a week ago, I woke one morning with the writing devil prodding me with his red-hot pitchfork. The novel was a plot game I had briefly played with back in 2013, while I was visiting the Blue Mountains. It hadn’t even whispered to me while I was playing with the plots I listed above. Yet it must have been growing in a corner, because here it is and I’ve written over 30,000 words.

Well done Sydney. Hope the devil won’t desert you!
Sydney Smith is a writing mentor, teacher and author of short stories, essays, and The Lost Woman, a memoir of survival. She will soon be releasing The Architecture of Narrative, a book about how to plot and structure fiction. She offers writing tips at www.threekookaburras.com. If you have a question on any aspect of writing, feel free to visit her website.

The Butch Tales 2: The Boy King.

Posted on December 29, 2014 by jenniferscoullar

Well, Christmas has come and gone, and I’m still madly editing Turtle Reef to meet a January 7th deadline. Author and writing mentor Sydney Smith is guest-blogging for me over this period – about her cats! Here is the second instalment …

The Butch Tales 2: The Boy King

I left the shared house where I met Daka and the two of us moved into a flat in Brunswick. It had gardens for her to play in, with lots of places she could hide and spy on other felines. I left the lounge room window ajar to let her climb in and out as she pleased. She was an old cat and arthritic. I placed a chair outside the window, to help her get inside.

Two years later, Daka sickened. It hurt her to eat and she left messes outside the door of my upstairs neighbour. I took her to the vet, a man with wildly romantic looks and a sharp tone of voice. Though he was irritable with humans, he was firm and gentle with Daka. He told me she had to be put to sleep. He let me stay with her while he shaved her forepaw and injected the drug. All the strength melted from her body.

I cried over her. Then I went home, and the moment I lay down on my bed to grieve properly, a cat flea, one of Daka’s little tenants, jumped onto my arm and bit me. I cried even more. Inside that flea a little bit of Daka lived on, and that somehow was more heart-wrenching than her death.

It took me two years to get over Daka. It was lonely to live in my flat with no animal. But every time I thought about adopting someone new, that grief for Daka welled up again. But grief will go, if you let it, and after two years in mourning I was ready. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted a cat. Maybe I’d get a dog. Or a budgie. Whatever it was I’d call it Butch. In particular, Butch the Budgie tickled my sense of humour. But I wasn’t set on getting a bird. I would see what caught my fancy.

One day I was walking along Rathdowne Street in Carlton, one of the routes I took on my expeditions into the big world after a morning spent at my computer. A vet clinic there kept a big cage of kittens. I had often stopped outside the window to watch them climb the stairs inside their cage and tumble through the trapdoor. On this day, I went inside.

I wanted a female, but they’d all been taken. I was ready for an animal, and wouldn’t be put off by a little matter of gender. The vet nurse opened the cage. A black kitten with a bushy tail as big as he was stepped out and allowed himself to be carried, a boy king riding his human palanquin to the counter. From there he jumped to the floor and explored the reception area with such a singular air of eccentric personality that I fell for him.

His ragdoll mother had bequeathed to him the distinctive white markings on his black face, his white shirt front, the dab of white at the end of his black tail and his king-sized paws. I took him home. He meowed all the way.

Daka was my first pet, and she had come to me as an adult, set in her ways. I consulted my cat-owning neighbour. What should I do with a kitten? How should I train him? Where should he sleep? Daka had slept with me but I thought I ought to train Butch differently. ‘Shut him in the kitchen at night,’ she said. ‘He’ll learn to sleep by himself.’ I made up a bed for him with an old jumper in a cardboard box, and added a toy cat so that he wouldn’t feel lonely.

Butch had lived all his short life with his brothers and sisters. He had never been alone. A synthetic toy cat didn’t count as company. Moreover, he had a strong sense of what was due to him as a boy king. The moment I shut the kitchen door, he set up an imperious meowing. I hardened my heart for about ten seconds, and then gave in. From then on, it was Butch who trained me. He knew exactly what he wanted and would stop at nothing to get it.

In those days I was working part-time at the writers’ centre. Every morning when I went to work, Butch sprinted around the flat, screaming at the top of his lungs. After two such mornings, I couldn’t take it anymore. I packed his lunch and some kitty litter, put him into his carry case, and took him to work on the tram.

As Butch grew bigger he wanted to go outside. I opened the front door for him. I’d sit there reading a manuscript I was assessing while he ventured out into the big world of the garden. Every few steps he’d look back at me and meow. ‘It’s OK, Butch. I’m right here.’ Soon I stopped sitting at the open door and he would come and go as he pleased. Once I heard him plaintively calling. I went outside and found him in a tree. I thought he was stuck and climbed up to get him. He meowed his protests, and as soon as I put him on the ground, he quickly scaled the trunk and sat on a branch, singing.

When Butch was confident in the garden, he wanted to go further afield. In the evening, soon after dark had closed over Brunswick, I took him for walks around the block. Was this normal? I knew of only one wandering cat, a Russian Blue who went for walks on the end of a leash. Butch seemed to think it was perfectly natural, and by this time, I knew better than to argue.

Other cats were out there, adult cats, big cats with territories. They hissed at him, but maybe because he was a kitten, they didn’t hurt him. One night we met a woman taking her seven cats for a walk to the local school playground, where they could run around. The beefy grey tom built like a rugby forward, who was really in charge of the expedition, strolled across the road to greet us with his round, smiling face. He looked benignly on Butch before sauntering back to his team.

One evening Butch demanded his walk twenty minutes before a show I wanted to see came on TV. I asked him to wait, but he insisted. The boy king had never heard of delayed gratification. I kept an eye on the time, thinking we could do the walk quickly and I could get back for my show. Butch had other ideas. He lingered in every interesting nook and cranny. He especially loved a rose garden up the street. At five minutes before my show started, I left him there and raced home. An hour later, riven by guilt and worry for his safety, I returned to the rose garden. ‘Butch?’ An answering meow. He had waited for me all that time, hiding under a bushy fuchsia.

Coming soon – The Butch Tales 3: Mouse-hunter.

Sydney Smith is a writing mentor, teacher and author of short stories, essays, and The Lost Woman, a memoir of survival. She will soon be releasing The Architecture of Narrative, a book about how to plot and structure fiction. She offers writing tips at www.threekookaburras.com. If you have a question on any aspect of writing, feel free to visit her website.

BB14

The Butch Tales 1: Daka

Posted on December 22, 2014 by jenniferscoullar

Well, it’s almost Christmas. Instead of relaxing into a new year, I’m madly editing Turtle Reef to meet a January 7th deadline. Author and renowned writing mentor Sydney Smith will be guest-blogging for me over this period. I gave her an open-ended charter: book reviews, publishing information, publicity for her upcoming writing craft book, The Architecture of Narrative – all great topics. ‘Or you could write about your cats.‘ Now we have six stable cats here on the farm, most of them acquired quite by accident. They are great characters, so I understand Sydney’s love for these creatures. Without further ado, may I present to you the first in a series of city cat stories – a little tale about loyalty, and how it needs to be earned.

The Butch Tales 1: Daka

Every time I think about writing the Butch Tales I think first of Daka, Butch’s predecessor.

Daka came to me late in her life, when she was twelve. We met when I was sharing a house in Brunswick with Nell. I had been house-sharing for years and was used to having a pet around the place. In these situations, there was never any question of whose responsibility the animals were. They were fed and walked and petted in the usual way, and I never gave it a thought.

But soon after I moved in with Nell I realised something was wrong. Nell had two pets, black, feline Daka and a white bitser called Gina, named after La Lollabigida. Daka is one of the nonsense words Indian musicians and dancers use to count out beats. Her full name was Daka Dimi, which is the four-beat mantra.

Nell used to let Gina into her bedroom first thing in the morning for some private communion and kept Daka, meowing angrily, out in the passage. Nell said, ‘Daka has to learn to be loyal.’ Every afternoon when Nell cycled out to her second shift at work, Daka crouched at the front door, waiting for her to come home. She waited for something that would never come, for though Nell never hit her animals, she didn’t pat or praise them either. She didn’t understand animals and their needs.

Daka was a shrewish cat who scratched anyone who tried to pat her. She’d take a swipe at people as they walked past. She’d squat in an armchair, a cranky look on her face, like a little devil waiting for some unwary mortal to stray too close. People were nervous around her. All animals need love, and her uncouth manners kept her starved of it.

The problem for me came to a head over food. Nell fed her pets once a day, sometimes at five o’clock, or nine, or midnight. She thought a cat could live on rice and vegetables cooked with a bit of mince. But cats are carnivores, and Daka used to go hungry. It caused me a lot of distress to see her starve. I kept telling myself she was Nell’s cat, that it was none of my business how she treated her pets.

Then late one afternoon Nell packed her bag for an overnight stay with her partner and cycled over to Kew. She didn’t make provision for her animals. She didn’t feed them before she left. I waited for her to call and ask me to feed them. I didn’t know the number at her partner’s house. I waited and waited, watching Daka and Gina grow frantic with hunger. Every time I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water or to make dinner, they crowded around my legs. Finally, I fed them.

Once I started, I kept on doing it, every day on the dot of five o’clock. If Nell was home, I’d ask her permission. It felt weird. They were her pets, not mine; I had no rights over them. Yet she didn’t object. I’d trot up to the milk bar to buy some cans of food and fill the pet bowls at home. As Daka ate, I stroked her to help her associate human touch with something good.

I never felt comfortable about feeding Nell’s pets, but I felt worse not feeding them. Nell complained more than ever about Daka’s “disloyalty” while accepting with imperial serenity that feeding her pets was now my duty.

Before long, Daka took up residence in my bedroom. A curtain hung over the doorway, and whenever people came into the house, she’d poke her head from behind the curtain and meow. Nell would look at her, aggrieved, as if Daka had struck her a painful blow.

Daka never became a cat whom people could pick up or pat, but since she spent most of her time in my room, people could walk about without fear of her claws. After a few months, Nell went to live in Kew with her partner. She took Gina and left Daka with me.

Two weeks later, Nell returned to pick up some things. We sat on the glory chest in the kitchen to have a cup of tea and chat about her new situation. In strolled Daka. She froze at the sight of Nell, one paw in the air. After a little think, she walked over to Nell’s side of the glory chest, jumped up, trampled across Nell’s legs, and sat down beside me, her flank touching me, her Byzantine head turned away from her former owner.

Nell, looking more baffled than ever, said, ‘I don’t understand why she’s disloyal.’

Coming soon, The Butch Tales 2: The Boy King.

It is my great pleasure to announce the book giveaway winners – Karen McDermott and Laura Boon. I shall email you both privately for your postal address. Many thanks to those who commented and a very merry Christmas to all!

The Wound (plus a book giveaway!)

Posted on December 14, 2014 by jenniferscoullar

Welcome to our monthly blog chat about the craft of fiction. Today, writing guru Sydney Smith and I talk about that great character driver – the psychological wound. (Fellow Penguin author Kathryn Ledson will be back on board in the New Year)

SYDNEY –
Some characters in fiction have suffered a psychic wound before the story opens, or suffer it at the time the story opens. They spend the rest of the novel trying to heal it. This effort at healing is what the narrative is about, and is a great motivator.

The psychic wound and the healing activity are a common feature of crime fiction. Harry Bosch, for example, Michael Connelly’s series hero, suffered a psychic wound in his boyhood when his mother was murdered and her killer was not found. Thirty years later, now a homicide detective with the LAPD, he is driven to stand up for all victims of murder, no matter who they were, and do his utmost to find their killers. His work is his attempt to heal his psychic wound.

Jenny, your next novel features several characters who have suffered a psychic wound.

JENNY –
Yes, Sydney, in my next novel more than one character will be suffering from psychic wounds that have happened before the story opens. I like to call them their back story ghosts. Since I know what they are already, I can work backwards to give characters convincing and relevant emotional arcs. These wounds will determine their flaws, how they see the world, what they think they want, what they actually want, and how they go about trying to get it. Their search for healing will drive the narrative forward. They’ll go (hopefully!) from being haunted by ghosts, to resolution and living their fullest lives.

SYDNEY –
You make a good point, Jenny. There is a vast difference between what a character thinks they want and what they really want. They create plot by doing things in pursuit of what they think they want―and wonder why their wound isn’t healing. It’s only when they finally understand what they really need that they are able to start the healing process.

Again, Harry Bosch is a good example of this. He thought what he really wanted was to solve the murders of people he has never met, doing it as part of his job. It’s not until he realises that he has been overlooking the one murder that matters most to him, the murder of his mother, that he is able to start the healing process by searching for her killer. He does this in The Last Coyote. The novel signals in the first chapter that something is wrong. He’s been placed on stress leave and must see a police psychologist three times a week. He’s having a breakdown. Michael Connelly shows it very powerfully and poetically (yes, crime novels can be poetic!) through his house, which has been irreparably damaged by an earthquake. Though it’s too dangerous to be lived in, Harry keeps trying to fix it. He’s doing the wrong thing to heal his psychic wound―that is, he’s trying to fix something that is broken beyond repair in order to go back to the old way of living. It’s only when he sets out to find his mother’s killer that he is able to begin the long and painful process of healing.

JENNY –
In my characters’ case the wounds will be big ones, but small ones can also be great motivators. A man may be ridiculed for being small, and develop a Napoleon complex. The story goes that Napoleon compensated for his lack of height by seeking power, war and conquest. A woman might have had to raise her siblings, due to the neglect of their alcoholic mother. The perfect recipe for a control freak who believes if she doesn’t do it, it won’t get done. It’s only when wounded characters develop some insight into their lives, that they can see the world as it really is and begin to achieve their goals. I’ve outlined my new book very roughly, and this insight will come in the middle, which I think is just about right.

SYDNEY –
I absolutely agree with you, Jenny. Insight comes in at around the midway mark. That gives the characters time to sort out all the mistakes they made and begin to set things right.

The wound can apply to antagonists, too. I love a good antagonist. To me, a novel stands or falls on the strength and complexity of its antagonist. The wound can be a great way to give this character a back story ghost that keeps haunting them. A wound they feel driven to heal. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr Wickham has a wound. This was caused by Mr Darcy when he discovered at the eleventh hour that Wickham had plotted to elope with Georgiana Darcy. If Wickham had succeeded, he would have got his hands on her rich dowry, thus giving him a life of ease and luxury to the end of his days. His actions in the novel are his attempt to heal that wound by punishing Darcy. It doesn’t work. It never does for antagonists. Only protagonists are capable of insight and healing. But Wickham’s wound and his efforts to heal it through vengeance make him complex and formidable.

I suppose one of the many differences between a wound in a protagonist and a wound in an antagonist is that the former is sympathetic. It’s possible to imagine that Wickham felt wounded just because he was born the son of a steward and Darcy was the scion of a rich and illustrious family. It’s not very sympathetic, although in fact, I think this kind of wound to a person’s self-love is very common. A Napoleon complex might look different on the surface, but it comes from the same source, a wound to the sufferer’s idea of what is due to them.

But anyway, the point is that healing a wound is a great character driver, one of the best out there.

Thanks Sydney. Excellent advice as always! … To celebrate my new contract, and reaching 40,000 views on this blog, I’m giving away 2 copies of Billabong Bend. (If you’d rather another one of my books just say.) Thank you to all my readers! To go in the draw, just comment on this post. (Aust and NZ only) Winners announced 22nd December.

Jennifer Scoullar – Bestselling Author of Australian Fiction

'A love affair with the wild …'

Tag Archives: Sydney Smith