Think Tank Tuesday: Commercialism

"I lit up like a Christmas tree, Hazel Grace."

"Real or not real?"

"Always."

"May the odds be ever in your favor."

"And in that moment, I swear we are infinite."

I'm guessing you can probably tell me which book these quotes belong to, who said them, and why. And you would probably be right about all of them. They're on t shirts, fanmade goodies, and every gifset and photo collage of that book or its movie adaptation on tumblr. But what about these quotes make them special? 

The answer: Their commercial value. 

These phrases aren't just any old string of words strapped together. They are great one-liners for t-shirts, good quotes to spout as you hug that beloved book to your chest. They're enormous money makers. Publishing houses love them, movie producers want them, and authors provide them.

Or...they try to.

You can see it especially in YA writing where an author is trying - really, really trying - to make that magical phrase happen. They repeat it. They try to put some sort of infinite wisdom in there, pack it with meaning. But it just doesn't work. As much as authors will tell you they write to tell a story,  the reality is that we're also trying to make money. Sure, we clearly aren't as money-hungry as other professions (if you're in it for money, writing is not for you.), but we gotta eat. So appealing to the commercial aspect of books should play a role. But that role has started to cause a deterioration of the writing it sells. How many times have you been reading a book you love, and suddenly there's a plot twist, ooh! And it's a complete sellout, clearly meant to propel the love triangle. Or a character says something ridiculously out of character for the sake of a quotable piece on their Goodreads page. It's like someone had taken a hatchet to their manuscript and filled in the slits with little commercialized bits to catch a publisher's eye. 

Do we need to acknowledge the necessity of a commercially valid piece? Yes. But we can't let it destroy our ideas and hold them captive. A good piece of literature should stand alone, be able to be good outside the industry. You're putting your name on this, don't you want it to be good?

So for the writers: keep doing what you're doing. Write. Revise. Edit. Query. Fight for your story, and don't sacrifice it for commercial success.

For the readers: venture outside the newcomer shelves. Look on Goodreads, ask an associate of Barnes and Noble, take charge of what you read. Read something. If you love it, tell others. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you're the consumer. You hold the power. Take it.

Viva la Revolución,

Brie

The Next Aristotle

Hi guys! I meant to post this and start off your weekend with a post that's not me flailing and just having crazy feelings, but Special Needs Prom, an event that my Key Club hosts for special needs kids around our area every year, swallowed up most of my time.

Anyway, my topic for this post is, as you might have guessed, philosophy.

And no, I'm not going to talk about whether I like Aristotle or Socrates better. That's what Philosophy courses are for and for you to decide. That's why it's philosophy, there's no right answer.

I mean the philosophy of characters, and those ever-coveted, quotable lines that characters seem to randomly spout that the book's fans will quote until the movie adaptation comes out. These tend to be the most memorable lines from a character or long bits of dialogue during one character's drawn-out monologue to make a point. You can find them all over tumblr, reddit, and even Facebook nowadays.

A few examples:

"Not all those who wander are lost." ~J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings series.

"My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations." ~Aristotle, NOT Augustus Waters from John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, said this.

"You cannot change your journey if you are unwilling to move at all." ~From the book Reached, part of the Matched trilogy by Ally Condie.

(You also have what are more like 'trademark sayings' by characters, such as Severus Snape's famous "Always", but we'll get to those another time.)

These kinds of ideas are wonderful to put in books, because they give books substance. Anyone can write a book about wizards and witches battling an evil master wizard trying to take over the world. It's been done and done again.

What makes Harry Potter different? J.K. Rowling's philosophy. She very casually slips in deeper meanings in the book, generally from Dumbledore or one of the other adults, while they're still alive. They're comments given when they're comforting Harry, or explaining why he's the Chosen One. You read them and then sit back and think, "Oh."

J.K. Rowling is a great example of good philosophy writing. However, there are many, many more authors who aren't so graceful. In fact, it's getting to be more of a problem in YA fiction, because it seems like the authors are trying too hard. Not everyone in a story is going to be wise and able to say these things.

For the sake of my argument, we'll take some characters from The Artist as an example.

As much as I love my characters, and believe me, I do, many of them aren't really qualified to be saying such deep things. A character with experiences, generally older or at the very least someone tried and tested, is a good character for this kind of writing. Therefore, someone young and inexperienced, like Razzo or Eoin's sister, Eire, are probably not good candidates.

We'll take Rowe, Collins' oldest brother, for example. He is twenty-four years old and a miner. In a normal case, he'd be considered rather young. However, he and his siblings were orphaned when he was eleven, when he was forced to become the head of house and try to provide for all his younger siblings, all of whom are ten or younger. He's been forced to do things he isn't proud of, face imprisonment and beg for food to provide for his siblings. He has had an extremely difficult run at life, and so him saying something to Collins would make sense.

However, Razzo is different. He was forced into exile around the time he was fourteen, and then has lived in Haven ever since. Haven sheltered the artists, including Razzo, from the outside world, allowing them to live almost like children. Therefore, Razzo probably wouldn't have many worldly things to say.

So, who would say, "Claro...It’s like he’s sticking his head into the beehive and is too distracted by the honey to see the bees." More than likely someone older, and who has seen that kind of behavior before.

Who would say, "Tough as nails, are we? I always thought there was something in the water over there."? Probably someone more immature, light-hearted, someone who is still pretty young.

So make sure that you're not giving someone like Razzo big, beautiful, deep-thinking lines. Wisdom comes from experience. Just because you want your love interest to be philosophical doesn't mean that he can say things like that if they're nothing more than a rich kid from old money at a prep school. Give them something they would know best about, and that's their source of wisdom. We can't all be Dumbledore, unfortunately.

Wishing you a most excellent adventure,
Brie

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones

And before you try and finish that line, no, chains and whips do not excite me. Ask someone who's read Fifty Shades of Grey if you wanna know more about that. (Raven quote) Ya nasty.

No, no, this writing gripe is about the overabundance of certain character flaws, namely in a character's family. More specifically, abused characters. Because, apparently, almost everyone who's anyone in popular YA literature gets beat behind closed doors at their home.

Is anyone else noticing this?

Tobias from Divergent, Peeta from The Hunger Games, you can infer many more characters that aren't specifically stated to be knocked around. And half the time, the abuse they're receiving doesn't make any sense.

Case in point: Tobias. Trying not to spoil anything for those who haven't read (if you haven't, I recommend it), Tobias' father 'does it for his own good'. But abuse is a selfish action, believing that someone else has wronged the abuser and must be punished for it. So would an Abnegation man beat his son, when he so prudently swore that his life would be one of selflessness? And what would a beating achieve? Pain is a selfish thing; is it selfless to inflict that upon another? It doesn't make sense to me. Does it characterize Tobias, yes, but it doesn't really serve a purpose other than a sort of guilt trip for us to like him more. I didn't need the guilt trip, Tobias is my favorite character.

Not to mention that there are so many other ways to give a character a bad home life or bad childhood without requiring belts, small rooms, bruises, or cuts. Not everyone has a nuclear family: mom, dad, children. There are stepparents, stepsiblings, half-siblings, love children, single parents, no parents, negligent parents. Perhaps even, like in Harry Potter, guardian relatives. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, godparents. These combinations don't appear often in popular literature to pose a problem, except perhaps for the cliche 'evil stepmother'.

I mean, Collins (of The Artist) has no parents, but has three older brothers. They've taken care of her as her parents, but now that she's older, her independence is causing a rift between her and her oldest brother and father figure, Rowe. Brigham (also TA) has a nuclear family, but with the amount of people in it, he's stressed by having to work long hours to feed them all.

You don't need to have an abusive parent or sibling to have family tension, it can come from even the most wholesome-looking group of relatives. So please, dear readers, by all means, take a look at the character's family the next time you read, or the next time you write. There are opportunities for tension everywhere, there doesn't need to be hurt and pain in every character's past. Can we resolve to find a more realistic form of characterization? Where we don't have to beat the living crap out of our characters to show that their lives are as flawed as ours are? I'd appreciate it, and I'm sure our characters would, too.

Band-aids and Neosporin,
Brie

So I walked into my library's teen fiction section today...

I'm not ashamed to say I died inside a little. Are we serious right now, YA publishing industry? You want to tell me what good is a bunch of different series with the same plot structure? I was hopeful I could find something relatively good or original, but after getting from A to the twelve or thirteen various copies of The Hunger Games and its sequels, I gave up.

Why are books getting so repetitive? Yes, people appreciate having a familiar aspect in a story, but am I the only one that wants to read something different when I take the time out of my busy schedule to read? This isn't even attributed to a small selection of books, my hometown library is ranked in the top five in the country. I don't think it's due to lack of resources.

Literally, almost 75% of the books I picked up had this plot structure:

1) The protagonist (always a girl, by the way) has some sort of problem, whether it's mental or physical, and is sent somewhere new, whether it's a new type of school, town, or even a new section of town.

2) Said protagonist meets a mysterious boy who just *happens* to be attractive.

3) Knowing/loving this boy puts the protagonist in danger.

Now, I don't mind reading something like that every once in awhile, but I can't believe that a good portion of my library's teen section is just that. It's like walking into a clothing store and seeing the same shirt in different colors. If it's just a plain shirt, the colors are the only thing you're looking at. And a lot of the colors of the books aren't that original, either. They'd be grays, muted purples, and blues.

So for those of us who read and write, do me this one favor. Stop buying these books. Look for something new, original. Because the only reason they publish these books is because people will buy them. Demand something new from the industry when you buy or read books.

Turning pages and stroking bindings,
Brie

I Can Feel Your Heartbeat.

I can. Every author can. And honestly, how can you not? When you create someone, a character that you name, clothe, raise, how can you turn your back on them and ignore the life you have just created from your imagination?
This is one of those things that I see some published authors do that makes me want to ram my head into the wall. How can they create characters and let them fall into such neglect and disuse?

As much as I hate to think of it, I'm using Bella Swan as an example.

Isabella Swan. One of what most writers I ask agree is the flattest, most boring and most pathetic protagonists we have ever met in popular literature. A seventeen-year-old girl who falls in love with a vampire and becomes defined by him.

But she could have become so much more.

She has a very strong, stubborn mind, and a very kind spirit. She could have been the diplomat between the wolves and vampire coven, or even the one who dealt with the Volturi when they came to take the coven. She's not stupid, even though in the Twilight saga she definitely has her moments.

Not to mention all of the wasted opportunities she had for characterization: her mother living in Arizona with her new boyfriend (what does she think of her boyfriend, is she mad her parents split, why Arizona?), her time in New Moon getting to know the wolves (does she agree with their philosophy, what does she think of their traditions, why don't the wolves frighten her like normal people, does she believe they're good, which omega wolf does she like best and why, does she worry about Jacob?), and even when she meets the Volturi face to face as an unchanged human. Does she fear them? Why or why not?

With all that characterization potential, what happened to Bella Swan? The answer: She was left. Whether it's the fault of Meyer for not further developing her or the editors or publishing house for not pushing for more characterization, Bella Swan was left a character as willowy as a stalk of sea oats. If she was standing by herself in the rain on a highway, what would she do? Turn around and march home, ignoring the cold Washington rains? Would she try and flag down a car and hitchhike her way home?

The answer: We don't know. If we ask the same question about Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter, or Percy Jackson, we would have a better time thinking up their reaction. But the problem is, Bella isn't fleshed out enough for us to know, and the fact that she is a character in a published novel kills me.

So for all you writers out there, please take a lesson from the unfortunate Mrs. Edward Cullen. Raise your characters, love them, nurture them, treat them well. Learn who they are and what they want. Become their friend. So that when your time comes to show your characters off to the world they're real and true. They're real people of a fictional story. Because that's what readers want to see.

Pencil calluses and sticky keys,
Brie