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Reading Plays
About This Show
Show Info:
Reading plays is like a book group, but for plays. Each episode features an in depth discussion of a new or classic modern play.
Each week we do a close reading of a play, discussing it’s merits, themes, issues raised, and so on. You can play along by reading or watching a production of the play before you listen to the show.
Join Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal for a light hearted but in depth discussion of theatre, from classic French farce, to post modern drama.
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Lets Write a Film – EP2 – Badgers
A new podcast in which two writers attempt to develop a film in real time, with no preparation. Featuring Gareth Stack & James Van De Waal. Download: Let’s write a film – Episode 2. Previous episodes.
Episodes of This ShowFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Artist Tavar Zawacki painted a site-specific wordplay painting in , commenting on the
Word play or wordplay (also: play-on-words) is a
and a form of
in which words used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or . Examples of word play include , phonetic mix-ups such as , obscure words and meanings, clever
excursions, oddly formed sentences, , and telling character names (such as in the play , Ernest being a
that sounds exactly like the adjective earnest).
Word play is quite common in
as a method of reinforcing meaning. Examples of text-based () word play are found in languages with or without alphabet- for example, see .
This section needs expansion. You can help by . (January 2010)
Some techniques often used in word play include interpreting
literally and creating contradictions and redundancies, as in :
"Hurry up and get to the back of the ship," Tom said .
are often manipulated for word play, as in :
"We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car.
Another use of fossils is in using antonyms of
– "I was well-coiffed and sheveled," ( from "disheveled").
Many businesses use word play to their advantage by making their business names more memorable. This business is located near the
and plays on the term .
Most writers engage in word play to some extent, but certain writers are particularly committed to, or adept at, word play as a major feature of their work . 's "quibbles" have made him a noted punster. Similarly,
was hailed by
as a "comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce" for his own acclaimed wordplay.[] , author of , is another noted word-player. For example, in his
Joyce's phrase "they were yung and easily freudened" clearly implies the more conventional "they were young and easily frightened"; however, the former also makes an apt pun on the names of two famous ,
An epitaph, probably unassigned to any grave, demonstrates use in rhyme.
Here lie the bones of one 'Bun'
He was killed with a gun.
His name was not 'Bun' but 'Wood'
But 'Wood' would not rhyme with gun
But 'Bun' would.
often employ wordplay to challenge solvers.
especially are based on elaborate systems of wordplay.
An example of modern word play can be found on line 103 of 's "III. Life: The Biggest Troll".
H2O plus my D, that's my hood, I'm living in it
used a play on words in his verse on "" by
I'ma use her name, like, "Who is he?"
You get it? I said I'ma username, like, "Who is he?"
Word play can enter common usage as .
Word play is that is, games in which the point is manipulating words. See also
for a linguist's variation.
Word play can cause problems for translators: e.g. in the book
a character mistakes the word "issue" for the noise of a , a resemblance which disappears when the word "issue" is translated into another language.
. Askoxford.com. 31 July .
. Genius.com 2017.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to .
: Hidden categories:Gosh, I love a good word. I love one as much now as I did when I was nine and learned the meaning of the word intercourse. (It means the connection or dealings between persons or groups, or an exchange, a discussion, especially of thoughts or feelings. Of course.)
I also loved learning the meaning of penultimate. And it seems like a really well-kept secret, that one. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen (and heard) it used in the sense of something being “the ultimate ultimate” (’cause that’s what it sounds like, no?) but—and I’m certain this may come as a shock to some readers—it actually means next to the last. (The penultimate chapter of a book with thirty chapters is chapter 29, for example.)
But the word I want to talk about today is epistolary. Adjective. According to my , it means: 1) of, relating to, or
2) contained in or carried on by letters (“an endless sequence of epistolary love affairs”); or 3) written in the form of a series of letters (as in an epistolary novel).
Although it sounds fairly simple, this is not a technique for beginners—just imagine the POV challenges, for starters. Or how to keep the plot’s action moving. It can come off as nothing more than a gimmick if not done well—yet some of the most delightful books I’ve read are epistolary novels. Here’s my list:
(Elizabeth Kostova, 2005). Not strictly epistolary, but the plot hinges on a series of mysterious letters. Vampire novels have been given a bad name recently, but this is what a vampire novel should be: weird, creepy, and lyrically beautiful. Highly, highly recommended.
(Stephen Chbosky, 1999). Every generation has its teenage angst novel, and this one was on the Boy’s school reading list (which is how it came to my attention). Shy, introspective Charlie writes a series of letters about his first year of high school.
(Daniel Keyes, 1966). Speaking of high school reading lists, here’s one that was on mine. This poignant science fiction novel is a series of progress reports written by a man with an IQ of 68 who has experimental brain surgery to make him smarter. Moving and, in its day, controversial.
(Helene Hanff, 1970). In 1949 a woman in New York writes to an antiquarian bookseller in London to buy books she cannot find locally. Over time, a friendship develops, including the exchanging of Christmas and birthday gifts. This is a touching true story.
(Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, 2008). In 1946 an English writer receives a letter from a stranger who lives on the island of G what follows is a history of the Nazi occupation of this tiny British Crown Dependency in the English Channel. Sweet, funny, light—loved it.
(Lionel Shriver, 2003). After their teenage son commits a massacre at his school, his mother writes a series of letters to her estranged husband as she tries to understand what led to the horrific event. Shriver is a fearless author
I also loved her The Post-Birthday World.
(Nick Bantock, 1991). A gorgeous art book, the letters and postcards—an exchange between two artists—are real. The reader opens envelopes to remove letters, and reads the writers’ individual handwriting. The first in a trilogy, the story continues in a second trilogy. Beautiful.
(Lee Smith, 1988). I love everything Smith has written, but this is her masterpiece. A young Appalachian mountain girl’s life is revealed in the letters she writes to family and friends. Interesting also for any writer who wants to study how best to use vernacular. This is one of my all-time favorite books.
(Mark Dunn, 2001). I love this book of linguistic gamesmanship so much I don’t even know where to start. A fictional town council bans the use of certain letters of the alphabet, and Ella and her friends and family find ways to cope—and fight back. Imaginative, humorous, pure delight.
Have I missed your favorite? Let me know. Otherwise … Go buy a book! Read! Enjoy!
NOTE: This article was first run in 2011.
As I read over the list of titles here, several others spring to mind:
Attachments (Rainbow rowell, 2011)
Dear Mr. Knightley (Katherine Reay, 2013)
Gilead (Marilynne Robinson, 2004)
I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith, 1949)
Where’s You Go, Bernadette (Maria Semple, 2012)
Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
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Posted in ,
Yes, I’m still reading light, just as feather-light as I can get. Back in 2014 I pursued , and it’s looking like 2018 may well be my year of reading light. (Reading lightly? My Year of Indulging in Guilty Pleasures? But that implies … nah. :) No guilt! No. Guilt. #NoGuilt)
Where was I? Oh, yes. I cannot for the life of me recall, now,* where I stumbled upon Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions, but I bought it, pulled it up on the Kindle, and I’m halfway through and loving it. : “On her sixtieth birthday, Auntie Poldi retires to Sicily, intending to while away the rest of her days with good wine, a view of the sea, and few visitors. But Sicily isn’t quite the tranquil island she thought it would be, and something always seems to get in the way of her relaxation. When her handsome young handyman goes missing—and is discovered murdered—she can’t help but ask questions.”
Auntie Poldi, it should be noted, is German, born in Bavaria to a Munich police detective and his wife of Sicilian ancestry. Not unlike … the author Mario Giordano, one of Germany’s best-selling authors of fiction and screenplays, who was born in Munich of Italian immigrants. (On my birthday!) This is his first fiction translated to English,** brought to us by a London-based independent publisher, , which specializes in “high quality thrillers and other contemporary crime fiction books from abroad.”
The novel is written in a wry style with European in-jokes that has grown on me and that I now find appealing and hilarious. Here Poldi is going mushroom-gathering with her sister-in-law and the sister-in-law’s husband:
Like any private undertaking in Sicily, the playlet began with a delay of two hours or more. Sicilians can be as punctual as Prussians in the professional sphere, but personal arrangements are subject to an elastic expansion of the concept of time. It is as if those hours must be sacrificed to a demanding god who measures his subjects’ lifetime by the extent to which they waste the lifetimes of others. Besides, every sensible Sicilian allows a margin of at least two hours where private assignations are concerned, but Poldi still hadn’t reached that stage.
I’ve also enjoyed the characterization of Poldi. I identify with her! Especially in this passage, also on the mushroom-seeking jaunt:
Poldi surreptitiously swallowed two aspirin, stared out of the window and strove to ignore brother-in-law, sister-in-law and dog. A thought had flitted past her like a shooting star trav it had flared up and died, leaving only a fine striation on her memory. She suddenly realized that she had overlooked something, possibly something important, but she couldn’t with the best will in the world recall what it was. She fished out her notebook and searched for some pointer hidden among the entries. But nothing. Nothing save the faint skid mark of a brief flash of inspiration that might never recur. This disturbed Poldi beyond measure—so much so that all she wanted to do was go home and concentrate. But she could forget about that for the moment, because they had by now reached the target area for mushroom-picking.
Being in my seventh decade myself, I know well the maddening aggravation of the Brilliant Thought that Got Away, and this captures it perfectly. The writing is nice, too, yeah? Props to the translator (John Brownjohn***) as well as the author.
So I’m loving it. But this is not just a review lite. :) A few weeks ago we were talking about literary devices—specifically about the device called authorial intrusion. And this is a fine example of it. In this instance, the narrator is Poldi’s nephew, a young man in his twenties, an aspiring writer who has been suffering from writer’s block.**** The family has been passing him around from spare bedroom to spare bedroom to give him encouragement and room to write. And thus we have this tale!
As usual, he simply turned off the road at some point and drove straight through the trees until the Fiat came to rest. Then they all got out. My Auntie Poldi, my Aunt Teresa, my uncle and Totti emerged into the cool, shady hush of the ancient oak trees, stretched their limbs, breathed deeply, and said “Ah” and “Che bello” the way one does when entering an old and almost pristine place.
See the authorial intrusion here? My Auntie Poldi, my Aunt Teresa, my uncle and Totti emerged … As I noted in my previous article, “authorial intrusion can add a quaintness, a comedic element, a winsomeness”—and that’s exactly how I feel about these little look-ins by the purported author, who mostly stays out of the story but occasionally reminds you he’s right there, living in Poldi’s attic bedroom and writing this story down day by day, as Poldi reports it to him later. It’s charming. And you might enjoy this book.
* It came to me later: the Times of London!
** He has had a book of essays translated to English: 1,000 Feelings for Which There Are No Names, which was born out of an intense bout of writer’s block. I’ there will be a full report later.
*** What a great name!
**** Again with the biographical similarities!
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A friend of mine posted a series of four photos on Facebook the other day, showing pages in a book she’d checked out from the library. (The book was Sue Grafton’s N Is for Noose, which I haven’t read.) Someone who’d read the book previously had taken it upon her- or himself to (ahem) re-edit the book.
Yes, friends. A big book from a big author with a big New York publishing house (Henry Holt and Company)—and some yahoo out in Arizona believed he needed to do a little copyediting. Sure, errors sometimes slip through the editorial process, but—as you’ll see—these weren’t errors. They were “corrections.”
My friend, who is not in the publishing industry, drew my attention to it because she thought these corrections were legit. She thought perhaps she was learning something. “I wonder if any editor or English teacher has ever been banned from a library for doing this?” she asked, only half joking. “The combination ‘if/was’ seems to be frequent error in this book.”
Umm … OK. I set aside my knee-jerk reaction (how dare anyone mark up a library book?) and took a look. I’m including the photos here so you can see what I saw.
The corrections here look like our editorial expert is correcting the dialogue of someone speaking a rural vernacular. “Send her the bill direct” and “the ground gets tore up”—these both sound like the speech of a character who is less well-educated. Remember, dialogue is one avenue by which a character is revealed.
As I was writing this article, I sussed out the plot of N Is for Noose on Wikipedia. And guess what—the setting of the murder investigation is a small (pop. 2,356) coastal California mountain community. So it fits that perhaps this is a small-town, rural, remote speaker. Our amateur corrector, though, doesn’t recognize the concept of character voice. He’d prefer “the ground gets torn up” and “send her the bill directly.” He wants all the characters to speak in grammatically correct sentences.
This, too, is an error on the corrector’s part, not on the author’s part. It’s clearly dialogue, and we’ve already established the milieu to account for a less sophisticated speaker. Moreover, the quick in “quick as I could” is . (Examples: Drive slow. Run fast. The moon is shining bright. Stand close to me. Hold on tight. I came as quick as I could.) Flat adverbs are perfectly legit, and the person who marked up this book should be embarrassed.
This photo got a lot of comment from my friend’s group. My initial reaction was “gold” (as opposed to “golden”) is a perfectly ac there’s nothing wrong about it. However, let’s take a look at the sentence:
The fields in between were gold with grass and tufted with weeds.
On a second read, I understand how a reader who fancied himself a better writer might have wanted “golden” in that sentence. It’s essentially a parallel construction issue—although in this case it’s more about rhythm: two two-beat words in side-by-side clauses: golden with grass and tufted with weeds. But I like gold. If you’ve spent any time in California (I grew up there) you know that California has a lot of gold—which is to say dead—grass. Hills and hills and hills of it.
The other folks commenting all leaned toward golden, for one reason or another. But my friend said, “At first I now these presumed corrections are taking away from my reading experience. All that thinking about something where I normally would have just been caught up in the moment ruined the read.” And then she added, “But it is strange and tantalizing to enter into your world. Makes me appreciate a good book that much more when I think of all the agonizing choices that writers and editors make with every word.” And she warmed the cockles of my cold little heart. :)
My friend noted that the if/was combination was corrected throughout the book. And she said, “Actually, the further I get into reading this, it’s becoming quite annoying. Like a know-it-all person—after awhile you just find them exhausting.” Yep.
But in the example we see here, our library corrector is wrong. (Again. See a trend here?) Notice in the sentence before it, “If you were questioned as a witness …” doesn’t bother our corrector, but he/she wants all instances of if/was to be if/were. However, this usage depends on context. We say, If you were questioned as a witness because we are suggesting something that’s not really possible or not going to happen. It’s hypothetical, imaginary. (Think of the premise of that old song: “If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady …” The singer here, is a rich man wondering if his lover would still be true without his money.) The Chicago Manual of Style calls this concept “contrary to fact.” CMOS also calls these types of sentences by their real names—subjunctive versus indicative mood—but I’m not going
it’s 5.124 if you want to read it.
This corrected sentence here, though, isn’t positing something that’s contrary to fact. Look: “If he was like the other law enforcement officers of my acquaintance, he was capable of being implacable …” It’s in past tense, and it’s saying if he is like the others I know, he’s implacable, sarcastic, and relentless. So the author and her editors were, again, correct, and this pedantic correcting person is wrong.
The conversation on Facebook went on for several days, as my friend continued to read through the book. “At first I found it amusing,” she reported, “but now these presumed corrections are spoiling the reading experience.” Another friend commented, “Writing in a library book is a sign of an over-inflated ego, by my thoughts.” I couldn’t agree more. And it’s defacing someone else’s property, for the love of Pete!
Here’s a reminder: Sue Grafton’s books no doubt received the very best copyediting money can buy—and experienced copyediting, probably someone she’d worked with for years who knew her well. After the pages were typeset, proofers were hired to catch typos and anything the copyeditor missed. This process is tried and true and catches most errors.
But some do sneak through. If you think you’ve caught one and want to (ahem) complain about it, make a note of the page number, take a snapshot, and send an email to the publisher. You’ll get a polite thank-you … and if the book ever goes to reprint, the error (if it’s legit) will no doubt be corrected.
What you should not do, ever, is mark up your local library’s book.
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I am continually amused (?) by the ads my Kindle displays when I open it for use. With two exceptions (Norelco men’s electric shaver shows up occasionally, and the Phillips Wake-up Light), they are always books (which would make sense), and I can tell at a glance they are self-published.*
How? Um, let me count the ways: the cover, the title, or the blurb. But let’s break it down, shall we?
1 Cover: It’s either plain, ugly (badly designed), dated, hackneyed, uses free stock art we’ve seen before, or a combination of all those things. Doesn’t match with the title or the hook/blurb. Bad graphics, bad typesetting. Just looks amateur—like the author’s brother-in-law did it.
2 Title: Too much, too little, doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t match with the cover or the hook/blurb. Doesn’t intrigue. Doesn’t tell the reader anything.
3 Hook/Blurb: Doesn’t make me want to read the book. Makes me roll my eyes. Tells lies (i.e., calls the book “literary” or “best-selling” when one can tell by looking it is nothing of the sort). Is woefully badly written. Has mistakes in punctuation.
It’s that last one—the blurb—that is truly important to discriminating readers. I keep a pen and paper on my nightstand just so I can write these things down, because really, these Bad Kindle Marketing blurbs (presented here uncorrected) are showstoppers, y’all.
“When Jack stumbles upon a secret that could fracture the country, only his brother can save him. Is Tom Up for the job?” (What does Jack need to be saved from? I thought it was the country that needed to be saved. I could go on and on.)
“Charlie, the mouse detective hears a loud noise. He discovers that Comet has fallen into their dumpster. How? Why?” (Your Editor wonders, not without good reason, who “their” is in this sentence.)
“Kayla was kidnapped as a child and led to believe the couple who bought her were her real parents. Her life changes when she learns the truth.” (No, really? Give me something intriguing, please.)
“Literary novel about the fateful return of a young B&E artist named Adelaide, hip deep in drugs, sex and open houses. Love is a victim, too.” (Telling me it’s a literary novel doesn’t make me believe it is. And I had to look up B&E—does this mean I don’t watch enough television?)
“Knights, Dragons, Demons and Sorcerers … what more could you want? How about a well constructed story?” (No. Just no. Show me, don’t tell me.)
“You’ll love book one in this detective series because Henry is a guy you can cheer for. And there is just the right amount of humor, too.” (Again, let a reviewer say this stuff. Tell me about the plot.)
“A gifted footballer’s life is blighted by bad luck until he meets an Englishman in Africa. Discover where good and bad luck comes from in this novel.” (Whaaaaa …?)
“After the sudden death of her husband, Adele is vulnerable. Falling prey to Danny, who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Her life falls apart.” (OK, don’t need to read this one.)
“Searching for his mother, nine-year-old Jasper faces danger and corruption in 1950s Detroit.” (This actually could be intriguing but my immediate reaction was Why is a nine-year-old searching for his mother? Did he wake up and she wasn’t there? That should be in the blurb.)
“It was supposed to be a glorified vacation. Then the aliens showed up.” (My snorting is probably not the reaction the writer sought.)
“‘A masterpiece’ and ‘spellbinding page turner’ are some of the praises showered on this Gold Award winning thriller. Many unexpected plot twists.” (What is a Gold Award? And what is the plot? I’ll make up my own mind, thanks.)
“London, 2044. Britain has a new president—a celebrity with little brains, a giant ego and no idea about politics. What could possibly go wrong?” (Britain has a president?**)
Whether it’s the cover, the title, or the blurb, these problems guarantee that I will never take that one little click to go to the selling page with the buy button. They show me—well, they show me a lot of things—that the person doing the marketing (likely the author) is an amateur, and whether you’re a handyman, a lawyer, a baker, or an author, I tend to not do business with amateurs. Here are a few other revealing problems:
Your book is not a “fiction novel.” This is redundant. And it reveals: I don’t even know the definition of novel.
Putting “Book 1” on the cover when there’s only one book. Perhaps there will be a book 2, but for now, just let it be. A good marketer will update the cover of the first book when the second releases, and talk about it then. A second wave of marketing! And that saves you looking foolish if it takes another five years to get book 2 out. Or if you never get book 2 out.
Identifying yourself as “award-winning author, Donna X” on the cover. That’s just tacky. Also it’s vague. If you’ve won an important award (one your readers will recognize, I mean), add a starburst to the cover, announcing, “Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.”
But advertising that you’re a winner of off-brand awards is off-putting. Let it go. Spend your time making the book good, not bragging about something few readers care about.
Everything in your blurb is hyperbole, such as “the largest conspiracy ever to face mankind!”
“Revised edition” or “2nd edition” somewhere on the cover absolutely screams that you brought the book out once and it was so bad you had to fix it. Forgive me for saying this, but it’s probably still bad.
Mentioning another author in the hook: “For lovers of Stephen King comes …” (Harlan Coben is another name I see a lot.) But trust me: if I love those authors (and I do) I am pretty sure I won’t love your book. (Also, that’s such an awkward sentence: “For lovers of Stephen King comes another great thriller …” Ugh. Rewrite it, for the love of Pete.)
Using a fake name that looks fake, like Jane Stain. Or some odd spelling that draws attention to itself.
The blurb reveals the plot has already been done: “A modern American woman goes back to when the Celts were pushed behind Hadrian’s Wall and falls in love.” Uhhh, really? Sounds like Outlander fan fiction to me. Also I find the notion of a modern American woman bonding emotionally with a first-century Celt ludicrous. (And that’s a horribly written blurb sentence too.)
The list of previous book series (which Amazon conveniently provides) reveals release dates that are far, far too close together: Dunskey Castle series (21 Jan 2017; 18 March 2017; 13 May 2017); Kilts at the Renaissance Faire series (17 Apr 2015; 10 July 2015; 21 Dec 2015); Time of … Celts, Picts, Druids series (15 July 2017; 30 Sept 2017; and TBA). Let’s parse this: in 2017, this author (Jane Stain, if you must know) released books in January, March, May, July, and September. What do you think? Are they any good? I doubt it.
I could go on and on—it’s an endless treasure trove of bad marketing—but you get the idea.
I’m not sure how these ads end up on my Kindle—is the author paying for them? is Amazon choosing them at random?—but it’s clear many self-publishing authors are getting no professional advice whatsoever. I’m in the biz so these things stick out like sore thumbs, but they’re not fooling experienced readers either. Think about it.
* Every once in a while, a book I’ve heard of, from a publisher I’ve heard of, shows up. But mostly … not.
** My husband says: “It could happen.”
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Kids, we need to talk. You’ve just got to stop with the locking eyes.
They locked eyes.
Their eyes locked.
It’s cliché, it’s overdone, it’s so stinkin’ melodramatic it makes me want to throw a fit in the middle of your manuscript.
So I’m doing it here instead. A little Cranky Editor meltdown.
No, seriously. Even though I am a big proponent of simplicity in writing—and what could be simpler than two people locking eyes, right?—this phrase is running rampant in the fiction I’ve been working on lately. This and its awkward little variants like their gazes locked. (Ugh.)
You’ve heard me say this before: to be a good writer, you must be a good reader. Why? For the language. Vocabulary is built when you read great literature.
That last bit is key. You must read authors who are, frankly, better than you.
Find a book you wish you’d written. Study it. Then write.
But if your scene includes a highly charged moment in which your lovers or would-be lovers first see each other, just say no to locked eyes.
Here’s what I want you to do instead. Think creatively about what happens in the scene. Give us body language (or movement), sure, but don’t use the same old thing time after time. , yes, but remember that many of the words are not direct substitutes. (Aspect does not always work for face; it depends on the context.) Write a you can trim it up later when you know where you’re going.
Watch for rhythm too. Sometimes a simple he saw is perfect.
He saw her sigh.
He saw her look away.
He saw her eyes shining.
He saw the heart she wore on her sleeve.
He saw inside.
Other times you really need a fifty-dollar word to shake up the rhythm and make the moment last.
He scrutinized her face as if she were withholding key evidence in a crime of the heart.
(It’s a little over the top, but you get the idea.)
To help you think outside the lock box, I’ve collected some words that might stimulate your imagination.
look / gaze
admire, audit, behold, blink, consider, contemplate, decipher, discern, examine, eye, face (he faced her), flirt, focus, gander, gape, gawk, gaze, glance, glare, glimpse, glower, goggle, inspect, leer, look, make out, note, notice, observe, ogle, overlook, peek, peep, peer, perceive, pore, rate, recognize, regard, rubberneck, scan, scrutinize, see, sight, spot, squint, stare, study, survey, view, visualize, watch, wink, witness
hold / lock
appropriate, arrest, arrogate, bind, capture, check, claim, clench, cling (to), clutch, coerce, commandeer, compel, confine, confiscate, constrain, contain, control, convert, dominate, embrace, expropriate, force, grapple, grasp, grip, have, hijack, hold, impel, inhibit, keep, lock, make, obligate, occupy, possess, preserve, press, pressure, restrain, restrict, retain, rule, seize, sequester, stay, support, sustain, take, tame, usurp
You shouldn’t look to me for vocabulary instruction when there are lots of interesting websites about words and language out there. Here’s one: . But what I really want you to do is read outside your favorite shelf in the library and challenge yourself to some literature. Over and over. Keep reading. It will make a difference.
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Why, yes—I am still “reading light.” Or lite. As you wish.
This seems to include a lot of romance—though don’t make assumptions when you read that word. Romance is a wide, wide category. And a popular one.
So popular, in fact, that the Washington Post devotes
to it, helmed by , a graduate of Smith College and Harvard University. And, I should add, a writer of best-selling romance novels herself. (None of which I’d read when I first made MacLean’s acquaintance.)
I stumbled on MacLean
in my print edition of Entertainment Weekly, my interest piqued by the ideas in these sentences: “The romance industry—which rakes in $1 billion a year—is poised to become more politically relevant than ever. … Romance works on an accelerated timetable, which means authors can react more quickly to cultural shifts than what’s typical in publishing.” (The political climate is a part—but certainly not all—of the reason I’m engaged in light reading in the first place, so articles like this are always of interest.)
Then I reviewed the books mentioned in the article, decided MacLean’s book—The Day of the Duchess—most interested me, and I purchased it. And read it. Had a little more “somewhat explicitAE sex than I normally read, but it wasn’t offputting. (It’s a fine line. Individual results may vary.) For me, the book got the right blend of romance and sex and emotion, conflict, suspense, twists, and so on. I did enjoy it.
OK, OK—there were maybe a couple more
than I would have liked, and “” was used too many times, and there was far too much unwillingness of the two main characters to just speak frankly to each other, for heaven’s sake, but it was funny, and surprising, and satisfying, and I’ll buy another of MacLean’s books with the heroine’s sisters in them (The Rogue Not Taken*) because I really loved the sisters as a supportive feminine group.
So I recommend it to you, in spite of the fact that I don’t really like
you’ll see on Amazon (or on the author’s website) because the details are just slightly off** and they make this romance seem a little more pat and average than it really is. That is, having read the book, I just don’t feel the blurb does it justice.*** Read it and let me know what you think.
* Which I have also read and was satisfied by. Note also that a character in Duchess is the protagonist in Wicked and the Wallflower, which releases June 2018.
** That, in and of itself, doesn’t matter—as long as the words fairly represent the story. You could take the other position on this particular book and I’d cheerfully concede. This is just my opinion.
*** Can you tell I also have written a lot of cover copy in my day? HarperCollins needs to hire me to write Sarah MacLean’s copy. Just sayin’. :)
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A friend of mine wrote:
I’ve never been able to decide for certain whether it’s “April Fool’s Day” (i.e., a day belonging to a fool or fools) or “April Fools Day” (i.e., a day celebrating all the fools in the world).* What’s your opinion?
I confess I’d never really given it much thought. It’s not a “holiday” I particularly celebrate. I don’t do jokes of any type very well. It’s not that I can’t be funny or have no sense of humor. But there’s something about the planning and execution or delivery that makes it the wrong vehicle for my humor.** Some people can I can not. Not my spiritual gift.
Anyway, it’s never come up in anything I’ve worked on, either, so … Let’s do the research, shall we? Thank goodness for the Internet.
it’s “officially called April Fools’ Day in the United States. Each word of the title is capitalized and the fool is plural possessive” while “the singular fool’s is listed as a variant.” (Not sure where that “officially” surely Grammarist doesn’t mean to imply the US government.***) The article goes on to note that not all American dictionaries are in agreement—some list April Fool’s Day as the main entry. (I use Merriam-Webster Collegiate for professional reasons, which prefers Fools’ and remarks “or less commonly April Fool’s Day.”)
actually breaks out some dictionary listings, concluding that both variations are acceptable, but notes “AP Style and Chicago Style both call for the use of April Fools’ Day when writing the holiday in text.”
So—question answered: April Fools’ Day it is.
But what is April Fools’ Day? That’s the only fun left in this question, and now I’m really stretchin’, y’all. Because no one really knows. You can read a variety of theories in
and elsewhere, but there’s no one story more plausible than any other. It probably originated in the Middle A it involves jokes or pranks played on the unsuspecting. I grew up in a family with a great sense of humor and lots of laughter, but we weren’t pranksters, so I’m no good at April fooling.**** However, I saw a fabulous April Fools’ prank play out on a friend’s Facebook page last year, so I’ll share it with you.*****
Here’s the setup. My friend is an executive at a publishing company, and has been as long as I’ve known him, more than twenty years. He’s a reader, and he loves bringing good books to market. He is a casual guy, definitely low maintenance, easygoing. He and his wife live in a land-locked state, so when they take a vacation, it’s invariably to the beach.
So last April, a photo of the front door and window of a small but clearly well-loved and much used bookshop, appeared on my friend’s timeline. The caption read: “Excited to be assuming ownership of this beachfront store today. Flip-flops, shorts & bestsellers, baby! [Wife’s name] is working on forwarding address.”
And we all believed him. :)
* Lordy, we could be here all day, right?
** I can’t dance either.
*** Which at this writing is pretty much all fools all the time.
**** I can’t tell a joke worth a darn, either.
***** For your amusement, here are some other successful (or not) April Fools’ Day pranks from the Telegraph and USA Today.
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I love learning the names for editor-y things. Like parallel construction and
and . Sometimes I make up names for problems I encounter when I don’t know the Official Editor-y Terminology—like
and . I’m not too proud to look like a goof. I’m just trying to communicate.
Of course, sometimes I learn phrases that aren’t all that helpful, like breaking the fictive dream, which is brilliant stuff but, like the situation it purports to describe, has the effect of bringing many readers to a screeching halt. What did she just say? And what does it mean?
Like deep POV—have mercy. (I still haven’t figured out what I think about that one, but you’ll be the first to know when I do.) Or authorial intrusion, the concept of which I thought I had a clear understanding, just not a name by which to call it.
Until I got a slap-down from an author.
I started it, of course. :)
The manuscript we were working on was full of . It was told in first person and propelled forward by the narrator asking a bunch of questions at the protagonist’s every turning point. On every stinkin’ page (that’s hyperbole, mine), usually several at a time (not hyperbole). Like this*:
I looked at my father’s flashy new uniform. Did he want me to join the gang alongside him? Or was he simply trying to keep an eye on me? Would he kill me if I said no?
That’s three questions clustered together. Narrative question clusters like this happened, sometimes, every few paragraphs and definitely every few pages. When I mentioned it on the first pass, the author sort of blew me off, so on the next pass I highlighted all the question clusters. Why? Because folks tend to not believe Your Editor when she says they’re doing a thing unless she shows them. So to prove the point and shut down argument, Your Editor shows them the data.
It was a very colorful manuscript.
I suggested the author reduce the number of these narrative question clusters by 75 percent. There were so many of them, it just jumped off the page and was annoying. I’m not sure where this sort of thing comes from, frankly. But, hey, I’m here to help.
Next I encouraged the author to recast many of the questions into statements. Like this:
I looked at my father in his flashy new uniform. Maybe he really did want me by his side. Or it could be a way to buy my silence. Saying no was out of the question—he’d kill me for sure.
Other times I compromised by editing the several questions into just one. Like this:
I looked at my father’s flashy new uniform and wondered what he really wanted of me. Would he be angry if I said no?
That last one—even though it was a compromise—got me the slap-down.
The author deleted wondered what he really wanted and added back the other questions. (An aside: Your Editor doesn’t care if you don’t like her it doesn’t bother her in the least. She’s offered up a lot of better lines than this one that smart authors rejected.) The author changed it all back and left me a note that said wondered what he really wanted was authorial intrusion.
I confess I said few bad words, dear reader. Then I scratched my head. Maybe I was wrong. (The horror!) So I googled authorial intrusion, of course. (Duh.)
I read that it is something you should avoid.
I read it’s something authors did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but we don’t do it now.
I read that it’s OK in omniscient POV.
I read it’s OK if it’s intentional.
I read long lists of things that were cited as authorial intrusion, none of which were correct.
But we’ve talked about the dangers of trusting a)
and b) many times. You know this, right? Just because it’s there on someone’s web page doesn’t make it right.
So let’s start here: authorial intrusion (sometimes called narrative intrusion) is a literary device (i.e., specifically chosen to create an effect**) in which the narrator intentionally steps away from the story she is telling and addresses the reader directly, as an aside. She might refer to “the book in your hands” or to the sadness of the tale she’s about to tell. She might say something like, “And then, dear reader, I kissed him.”
Authorial intrusion was popular in literature until the twentieth century. Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Nathaniel Hawthorne—all these and many others employed it. Charlotte Bront?’s Jane Eyre is the textbook example. Here, Jane is the first-person narrator, but Bront? often intrudes and speaks directly to the reader. For example, chapter 11 begins:
A new chapter in a novel is something like a and when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on th such a carpet, such furniture, such ornaments on the mantle-piece … All this is visible to you by the light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and by that of an excellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet …
Gosh, I loved that book back in the day.
Authorial intrusion can add a quaintness, a comedic element, a winsomeness. And yes, this literary device is still used today. Roald Dahl used it in The Witches (1983), which includes a (fictional!) author’s note, “A Note About Witches”:
In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks. But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about real witches. … if you remember [this] always, then you might just possibly manage to escape from being squelched before you are very much older.
Lemony Snicket (a pseudonym used by author David Handler) employs it in his middle grade novels A Series of Unfortunate Events. Here’s a bit of The Bad Beginning (1999), chapter 1:
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I’m sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.
There’s another intrusion here: Lemony Snicket is also a character in the book narrator. You see this trick in William Goldman’s The Princess Bride (the 1973 book, not the movie, charming as the latter is), which is filled with asides by the narrator.
You see authorial intrusion also in The Book Thief, Markus Zusak’s 2005 novel in which Death is the narrator. This is from page 309:
In all honesty (and I know I’m complaining excessively now), I was still getting over Stalin, in Russia. The so-called second revolution—the murder of his own people.
Then came Hitler.
They say that war is death’s best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view … To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thing, incessantly: “Get it done, get it done.” So you work harder.
You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.
Often I try to remember the strewn pieces of beauty I saw in that time … I plow through my library of stories.
In fact, I reach for one now.
We could go on and on like this, but the fact is, authorial intrusion is a literary device. It can be used to great effect. Remember the
franchise? “The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.” The narrator spoke directly to the viewing (or listening) audience. In the theater there’s also a technique in which a character addresses the audience. It’s called breaking the fourth wall, and, yes, that’s the authorial intrusion literary device at work.
So you see, it’s OK to use authorial intrusion whether you’re writing in the 1800s or the 2000s. A literary device is not an error.
But my author was of the something-you-should-avoid school of authorial intrusion, and was applying it to … to I don’t know what s/he saw in that revised sentence. Characters are allowed to have opinions and to express them, they’re allowed to wonder if their interpretation of events is correct as they move through the plot. What made the author call it authorial intrusion? I’m not sure, but now that I’ve done all this research, I’ve begun to think s/he’d read one of those articles with the long list of errors that were being called authorial intrusion.
In fact, these errors are just crappy writing. Your Editor points them out on a regular basis. Here are some examples:
1 The point-of-view character knows, hears, or sees something he or she can’t possibly know, hear, or see. (I s I’d call it a POV error.)
2 A character does something implausible that arises from the author’s omniscient knowledge of the story. (It’s a continuity error. Or a lack of foreshadowing. Or simply bad plotting.)
3 Characters who figure things out too soon or otherwise get ahead of the plot. (B needs more tension or foreshadowing.)
4 Shoehorning in some obscure piece of knowledge, a famous quote, or a strongly held opinion. (Just
it’s bad writing. Perhaps you failed to catch it in that crappy first draft.)
5 Slipping a piece of backstory into the narrative. (Where else is it supposed to go? Perhaps it could be more gracefully done—Your Editor has been known to tell authors, “You’re stepping on your own action here”—but, again, this is just bad layering, bad tension, or, as I’ve said, crappy writing.)
5a Slipping a piece of backstory into the dialogue. (When two characters tell each other something they already know just so readers will know it, too, it’s narrative masquerading as dialogue, and it’s just plain ugly. Don’t do it.)
See the difference? These are writing craft errors, reader. They reveal inconsistency they’re telling
they’re mistakes in characterization or POV or layering of details or plotting. Your Editor (or perhaps the line editor) will help you fix them. Your Editor just objects to your calling it authorial intrusion as if this perfectly lovely manuscript was magically writing itself until you, Ms. Author, came along and inserted this mistake.
* You do understand I’ve changed details in this story, right?
** A flashback, for example, is a literary device.
Thanks to Joyce Magnin for some great conversations, suggestions, and insights on this topic.
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The day the Irishman was born, his mother watched the St. Patrick’s Day parade from her room in the Rotunda Hospital overlooking O’Connell Street and the Parnell monument. I’d love to be in Dublin for this parade, although they say some of the best St. Patrick’s Day parades in the world are here in the States: Boston, New York, Chicago, and Savannah, Georgia. (Who’d a-thunk it?)
One thing we Yanks can’t seem to get right, though, is the spelling of Patrick’s nickname. Browse any greeting card display, for example, and you’re bound to see this: Happy St. Patty’s Day!
No, no, no.
It’s spelled Paddy. That’s the diminutive of Pádraig, which is Gaelic (which is to say, Irish) for Patrick. , as well as a scrolling monitor of “eejits” who are using the unacceptable version on Twitter—just in case you’d like to call them out on it. :)
Unfortunately, Paddy has too often been used as an ethnic slur in reference to an Irishman. (Paddywagon, for example, of American origin, refers to a police van, either because so many Irishmen became policemen in American cities, or—and here’s the slur—due to the high crime rate among Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century. You can look for it even in the lyrics of children’s songs, like “This Old Man”: Wikipedia tells us the term paddywack was used from at least the early nineteenth century to describe an angry person, specifically a “brawny Irishman.”)
Interestingly, Paddy can just as easily be an affectionate term for that same I it just depends on who’s saying it and how it’s said. Nonetheless, if you find yourself in Dublin on the grand day, you (with your American accent and all) should probably be circumspect.
The route for the Dublin St. Patrick’s Day Parade is 2.5 kilometers (about a mile and a half) long and leads from Parnell Square on the city’s Northside down O’Connell Street, over the River Liffey via O’Connell Bridge into Westmoreland Street, past Trinity College at College Green, and on to Dame Street. It then turns left at Christchurch Cathedral into Lord Edward Street, Nicholas Street, and Patrick Street before finally finishing at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. If you can’t make it in person, .
Wherever you find yourself on March 17, though, just remember—it’s Paddy, not Patty. And stay away from that green beer.
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I read a lot of great books last year, . It’s interesting to look at my I can see things like what I was working (editing) on and also things that were troubling me, or how stressed I was. Just a little review of my life, you know? And then I pick a favorite and write a blog post about it.
It’s never easy to pick a single title as my year’s favorite, so I always start with a list and that’s usually enough—the favorite will reveal itself then. It’s the story I’d love to read again for the first time.
That criterion made it easy: my favorite book of 2017 was . Why? I’ll tell you: the closer I got to the end—and observed how neatly and tightly this novel had been constructed—I wanted to start reading it again, just to see how he did it.
Here’s Towles’s first accomplishment: the majority of the novel’s action—which occurs over the course of thirty-two years—is set inside Moscow’s Metropol Hotel. Outside it, the communists solidify their hold on Russia, the Second World War comes and goes, and people and time march on. It’s a richly detailed historical novel, and we see it all through the eyes of the protagonist, Rostov, and the people who visit him over the years.
Let me offer the setup: In 1922, after a bloody revolution that dismantles the peerage and monarchy of Emperor Nicholas II, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, age thirty-three, is sentenced by the Bolsheviks to house arrest for life at the Metropol, a prestigious hotel in the theater district of Moscow. He has been living there for some four years—in a posh suite surrounded by family heirlooms and antiques brought from his grandmother’s dacha—so this doesn’t seem like too much of a hardship until the Communist Party apparatchiks realize he still lives better than they do, and have him moved to what was once a maid’s room on the top floor. The room is tiny, and the Count must choose carefully what to keep …
One thing Rostov “keeps” are lifetime friendships with people inside and outside the hotel. And therein lies the complicated (but not uncomfortably so) plot. Watch—that is, read—carefully. The book is filled with characters and incidents and objects and side stories, and every last one of them is important to the denouement. It has humor and wisdom and tenderness in every moment. Lucky for you, the writing is delightful too. Savor it. Read it slowly so you can delight in the fact that literally every detail, every scene has meaning. It’s simply exquisite. Read it, if you haven’t already.
Honorable Mention
It was hard to
I read a lot of great books last year (and a couple not-great ones, but nevermind). Nonetheless, I’ve narrowed my “honorable mention” titles to three:
& A God in Ruins (Kate Atkinson)
A “companion piece” to Atkinson’s Life After Life, which I , A God in Ruins had a lot to live up to—and, boy, . I will read anything Kate Atkinson cares to publish, because she’s simply a spectacular storyteller and writer.
& We Were Eight Years in Power (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
(and eight new essays that introduce them) by a brilliant writer who writes so beautifully and thinks so deeply. I was alternately in tears and angry, but I’m glad I know what was in this book.
& Plainsong (Kent Haruf)
I’ve recently posted , but I’ll say it again: exquisite writing, gentle humor, compelling characters and storyline make this book worth it for you to step out of your comfort zone.
#MyReadingYear
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I am mother to the Boy, wife to the Irishman, alpha-cat to Laddie, Spot, and the Bean, friend to a circle of Cool Chicks, and a developmental editor and copywriter by trade.
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