Do You Know This Girl?

/ Lisa / 4 Comments

When I was young Gloria Steinem took up the banner of feminism. My older sisters, especially my hippy-chick sister, led the way and I stumbled behind.

The older sisters.

The older sisters.

And now I know a girl. And she epitomizes for me how the times have changed since I was her age, shy, hiding in a corner, most often found buried in a book, or in daydreams.

When she was little she was our local wild child. Bare-butt naked, free soul, half fish in the river, half elf in the woods, bare feet in the mud, in the snow, in the grass.

She eventually had to put clothes on and go to school. I worried her spirit would be quenched by the bullies. And girls are so cruel when they bully. Grade school was hard for her. She grew taller than all the other girls. I saw her sitting alone, face buried in a book and was afraid.

Don’t turn into me. Stay free, stay wild.

Her mother made sure that happened.

One winter when the river edges froze and snow fell, she walked past my window dressed in black tights and tee shirt, her bare feet crimson red with cold, her long hair drenched. Coming back from her daily dip in the river.

Snow-melt water.

Snow-melt water.

Still free, still wild. Child on the threshold of girl.

Now, in high school, she’s taller than most students. She wild-forages for licorice root. She hikes. She defines gender by what it means to her, not by what society labels her. She stands firm against social media trolls, those who would tell her to change. She writes poetry that opens your eyes, that makes you pause as you glimpse her soul. This past weekend she walked, barefoot, through a festival, with her poetry.

Still free, still wild. Girl on the threshold of woman.

But one who is not bound by labels.

I can’t wait to see the next blooming of this flower. I worry that sometimes she is too hard on herself (like we all can be). So I want her to read this, to recognize herself, to see that being…just being, without labels of girl, feminist, lesbian, trans, woman, is beautiful. Just as beautiful as taking all those labels, fixing them to your chest, standing proud and saying, ‘this is who I am’.

Our little wild forest child.

She's not in this photo, but she was there when it was taken.

She’s not in this photo, but she was there when it was taken.

Those of you reading this, who recognize her, please do not name her in comments. It should be her choice to be named in such a public way.

Plot Holes

/ Lisa / Leave a comment

We watched Interstellar last night. Long movie – almost three hours. And there was a huge plot hole in the middle.

In the movie, the heroes travel through a worm hole to save the earth. They are headed to two stations where previous heroes went to see if places were habitable. One station has quit transmitting and the other has been transmitting regularly that the place is livable. So our heroes go there, having adventures along the way and losing one crew member. All good so far.

When the heroes arrive, they are met by the lone survivor of the earlier trip. This station is a world so frozen that even the clouds are ice. But the survivor tells them how the place is livable in a lower level so they start unloading all their stuff. However, he turns out to be the Villain who attacks the leader then steals their ship in order to get home because he’s lied and the station isn’t habitable after all.

So the Villain is desperate to get home. Understandable. But here’s the giant plot hole. All he would have had to do is tell them the place wasn’t habitable when they arrived. They would have loaded him up and moved on to the next station, or tried to go home. There’s a twist with going home, but that’s not relevant here and I don’t want to list too many spoilers. There was absolutely no reason for all the storyline maneuvering, the attacks, stealing the ship and all that drama. I mean, the heroes wouldn’t even have had the excuse that they couldn’t save the Villain because they would be over a weight limit on their ship since they lost a crew member earlier. And the Villain is an experienced pilot which they could have used.

In other words, no believable reason for the Villain to be a villain.

I lost interest at about that point.

It’s the same with books. A reader might let one, or maybe two, coincidences slip by. Maybe they’ll allow one instance where the point of view character does something that has no ties to the plot threads. But more than that and the reader will move on and probably never pick up something by that author again.

It reminds me of a book I read a long time ago about a knight on horseback who turns to his trusty companion and says ‘No shit, Sherlock’. Seriously. And that was only one of many such dialog issues. Oddly the author is well known and has a lot of books out with this same knight. He’s one busy dude, slinging contemporary slang as easily as his sword.

Anyway, if the action sequence raises questions because the route taken makes no sense, the author better insert a compelling reason that ties character and plot together. Otherwise the audience is going to move on.

Writing Sounds

/ Lisa / Leave a comment

Remember that hilarious video of two men talking, but the only word they say is ‘Dude’? The different inflections tell the listener what they are talking about.

But how does that translate to writing?

If that conversation were to be written, punctuation would help.

“Dude!”

“Dude?”

Then there are dialog tags. “Dude,” he said, on a long exhalation of beer-infused breath.

The idea intrigues me. I’m positive I miss opportunities by not thinking about the sound of a story. I don’t mean reading your work out loud, which is of course important. I mean, how do you convey sound without being bland (‘the car door slammed’) or corny (POW!!! Batman’s fist hit Robin’s jaw)?

If you do an internet search on writing sounds, you get some interesting hits. I found a few sites that actually had sounds attached to writing, where someone had done studies and assigned sounds to things like a pencil on paper.

I got distracted by that one.

Then there’s Onomatopoeia. At its most basic that means using sound to show the noise, as in hiss, meow, or POW!!! There’s a more subtle version of this where the word alludes to sound. Like Eeyore’s name in Winnie the Pooh. His name is a quiet nod to the sound a donkey makes. Think about that honking, braying sound. Can’t you hear ‘Eeeeeyooorrreee’ in there?

I got distracted reading up on Onomatopoeia, too.

With all the internet searching though, I didn’t really find what I was looking for. How do you imply sound through words, without telling the reader what something sounds like?

Well, body language works. Someone speaks and the other person cringes and covers their ears.

Description, of course, implies sound. If I said ‘fingernails on a blackboard’ you’d hear that sound. I think, though, that using that tool can cause writing to slide into clichés. And one can’t forget that too much description gets boring. Plus, description means you’re writing what you see, rather than what you hear, if that makes sense.

I’ve tried closing my eyes to eliminate the sense of sight and forcing myself to focus on just sounds. As I listened, I tried to figure out how I would translate sound into words.

I got queasy.

So I don’t know. Guess I’ll just keep using a mix of all of the above, hoping that somehow the reader, using imagination, can hear the wind in the trees or the scary sounds outside the door late at night.