After reading Wolfram’s dramatic story I discovered his daughter’s wonderful art. Alexandra Milton is an animal artist and children’s book illustrator. She creates her creatures by collage, using hand-made papers with mysterious names: Korean mingeishi, Thai silk thread, Himalayan khadi, and Payhembury marbled paper. Her honey bee illustration below is warm and characterful (like bees).
I aim to celebrate all that is to be marvelled at in nature; to catch, in colour and form, a glimpse of the miracle of creation – Alexandra Milton
One year ago Christchurch was split apart by an earthquake. This Sunday on National Radio at 4pm there’s a remarkable interview with a survivor of the CTV building collapse. For now, I’m reposting my quake heroes from the day:
my 87 year old father who rushed into a madly shaking house to save his wife of 56 years
the doctors, nurses and volunteers who nursed my mother with such thoughtfulness under stress
the neighbours who gave us drinks and food
the motorists who behaved impeccably without traffic lights.
the neighbour who saved Dad when the house burned down 2 days later (electrical fault due to quake).
I’ve read many books about Hitler’s Germany but none as remarkable as Wolfram, The Boy Who Went To War, by Giles Milton (Hodder, 2011). It overturns clichés about the War and helps answer the old question ‘Why didn’t more Germans resist Hitler?’
Wolfram was the child of freethinking, artistic parents who resisted by not joining the Nazi Party and refusing to display a swastika flag – their Gestapo file described them as ‘dangerous eccentics’. Wolfram was 9 years old when Hitler came to power in 1933 and spent his childhood trying to avoid the Hitler Youth so he could draw and sculpt. Through his peace-loving family we see how the Nazis tightened their grip through brutality, laws, and a system of local informants.
One can’t help ask ‘Would I have had the courage to resist?’ Wolfram was conscripted and became part of the War nightmare in Russia and Normandy. The story of his survival is completely gripping (note: not a children’s book, but would interest teens). Wolfram is still alive and you can see his stunning paintings here.
This is a study in enforced conformity as Milton shows how the Nazis became increasingly intrusive in the lives of ordinary Germans– Guardian review
Following up on my review of Hugo, here’s an excellent interview with the author Brian Selznick. The article describes Hugo as ‘a perpetual motion of correspondence‘ between book and film. Fascinating too that The Artisthas emerged just now as another gorgeous recreation of silent movies (no talking, no colour, no widescreen, and yes, it works!). My favourite silent movies? Metropolis (photo), and anything with Buster Keaton. Read a New Yorker article about the acting style in silent films.
Silent film is another country. They speak another language there—a language of gestures, stares, flapping mouths, halting or skittering walks, and sometimes movements and expressions of infinite intricacy and beauty. –David Denby
Once you have decided which aspect of your story is care about most then it’s a good idea to signal this from the very beginning. Orson Scott Card suggests beginning with a question for the reader. A question does two things: it creates tension and it creates a desire to know the answer.
The beginning must make the reader ask questions that are answered by the stories ending. – Orson Scott Card
Examples from different aspects of story:
Milieu: Begin with the arrival of a stranger who asks “What makes this place tick?”
Idea: Begin with a mystery, such as ‘Whodunnit?’ or ‘Why is weird stuff happening?’
Character: Begin with a character asking ‘How can I change?’
Event: Begin with a character asking ‘How can I survive this/save the world?’.
Ray Bradbury is good at posing questions in the opening of his short stories. A Sound of Thunder begins with an explorer asking “Does this [time] safari guarantee I come back alive?”. The ending provides a satisying answer– ‘you will come back alive but you’ll wish you hadn’t.’
In his wonderful book How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (p.76), novelist Orson Scott Card says all stories contain 4 basic aspects: Milieu, Idea, Character and Event (MICE!). Here are some sci-fi examples (YA):
Milieu: about a world or a society. Eg. Running Out of Time by Margaret Haddix about time travel to a past society.
Idea: begins with a mystery to answer. Eg. Protus Rising by Ken Catran, murder mystery in space.
Character: about character transformation. Eg.The House of Scorpion by Nancy Farmer about a clone who develops values.
Event: when something goes wrong in the world. Eg. Box by Penelope Todd about an epidemic that strikes New Zealand.
Which aspect of the story matters most to you? That is the aspect that will give you the story’s structure. – Orson Scott Card
Tyrants…the more is given them, the more they are obeyed. If nothing be given them, if they be not obeyed, without fighting, without striking a blow, they remain naked, disarmed and are nothing.
– Etienne de la Boetie, 1577
You must marry the wind of inspiration with the bone of graphic clarity.– Chang Chong-Jen.
The Adventures of Herge is a must for Tintin geeks although not for children. It’s a Hergé (George Remi) biography done in the ‘clear line’ style of a Tintin comic book. Hergé fell in love with drawing in 1914 when his mother gave him some pencils to ‘calm him down’. The book is a fascinating insight into the influences on Hergé and the political and emotional difficulties he faced, especially during wartime working under the Nazis. Most moving of all is the story of his friendship with Chang Chong-Jen (which inspired Tintin in Tibet). Chang helped him refine his beliefs and drawing style. Before reading this book it might help to know a bit about Hergé, or to read the appendix first. Download a 5 page sample of the comic book here.
I’m writing a sci-fi novel and falling into two traps: Infodump and Unobtainium. Infodump is a when a character gives a mini lecture –telling instead of showing– usually in reply to “Tell me, Professor, how does your invention work?” Infodump can be reduced by editing out techno-babble; and by using characters to give brief explanations only when plot demands it.
Unobtainium is a plot device such as an alien substance or a future technology. Most sci-fi has them but too often they’re used to magic away a plot problem, as in “Lucky I brought my sonic screwdriver to do this impossible task.” (see also ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’– Arthur C Clarke). Possible solutions: make your ‘Unobtainium’ central to the plot (give it a cool back-story); or reduce it to a playful veneer of science. The characters in TV’s Fringe play nimbly with real science:
The latest on the pesticide threat to bees (see Nicotine Bees) is a small victory: a garden supplier has removed the words ‘low toxic to beneficial insects’ from an advertisement for Confidor. This pesticide is extremely toxic to the world’s most beneficial insect, the honey bee. These nicotine-based pesticides are banned in Europe because of links to bee deaths. They stay in the plant right through to flowering – so bees are poisoned by pollen, nectar, dust, and water. Latest research shows how the pesticides contribute to the bee crisis by exposing bees from multiple sources. Photo: Sarah Anderson.
5 Ways to Save the Bees:
1. Avoid chemicals such as Confidor, Poncho, Advantage, Marathon, Merit and Admire (grotesque names).
2. Buy local honey.
3. Grow bee-friendly plants, such as lavender.
4. Let there be weeds; let the broccoli go to seed.
Scorsese’s Hugo is a beautiful movie complement to Brian Selznick’s brilliant novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The book is in the style of a film, using pictures interspersed with tightly-wound prose –and the movie takes the style of a novel, with a leisurely pace and richly detailed scenes. Both movie and book successfully use a children’s character to pay tribute to Georges Melies, pioneer of cinema. And much of the story is true: about his magical movies, his rise and fall, even the automaton and the train crash. (Watch a video about how the special effects were done). This film, The Four Troublesome Heads, made in 1898, shows Melies having fun:
The King of the Golden River (1841) by John Ruskin is a children’s morality tale that still speaks loudly today. It’s unique among fairy tales in having a punchy environmental and social message as well as being highly atmospheric. It’s about two brothers who exploit their farmland and have no compassion for their workers:
They shot the blackbirds, because they pecked the fruit; and killed the hedgehogs, lest they should suck the cows; they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen; and smothered the cicadas, which used to sing all summer in the lime-trees.
Their fertile valley in Austria becomes a wasteland and is cursed by the Southwest Wind (illustration by Richard Doyle). To break the curse the brothers must take holy water up a mountain to the Golden River, but they fail to help the people they meet on the journey: “The water which has been refused to the cry of the weary and dying is unholy, though it had been blessed by every saint in heaven.” But a third, younger, brother gives the holy water away to needy people and as a result is saved from the fate of his brothers.
Ruskin was a Victorian thinker who Tolstoy described as, “one of the most remarkable men… of all countries and times.” He’s certainly very quotable: “When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.” Here’s a cool version of his story by the Californian Theater Center:
The reading brain is part of highly successful two-way dynamics. Reading can be learned only because of the brain’s plastic design, and when reading takes place, that individual brain is forever changed.– Maryanne Wolf
Readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative… using brain regions that closely mirror those involved when people perform, imagine, or observe similar real-world activities.– Washington University
From The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang (1938):
The ancient peoples called books ‘limp volumes’ and ‘soft volumes’; therefore the best style of reading a book is the leisurely style. In this mood, one develops patience for everything.
I regard the discovery of one’s favourite author as the most critical event in one’s intellectual development. Like a man falling in love with his sweetheart at first sight, everything is right…One’s favourite author is pollen for his soul.
The universe is one big book.
A good reader turns an author inside out, like a beggar turning his coat inside out in search of fleas…an itch is a great thing.
To be thoroughly enjoyed, reading must be entirely spontaneous.
Thoughts from The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang (1938), Chinese writer and inventor.
Writing is good or bad depending on its charm and flavour, or lack of them. For this charm there can be no rules. Charm rises from one’s writing as a cloud rises from a hill-top…
Every word has a life and a personality. A writer always has an instinctive interest in words.
There is a period of gestation of ideas before writing…when a writer rushes into print before his ideas go through this gestation, that is diarrhoea, mistaken for birth-pains.
Writing is but the expression of one’s own nature or character…style is not a method, a system or even a decoration; it is but the total impression that the reader gets of the quality of the writer’s mind.
A writer in the ‘familiar’ style speaks in an unbuttoned mood. He completely exposes his weaknesses, and is therefore disarming.
The great scholar, Ouyang Hsiu, confessed to ‘three ons’ for doing his best writing: on the pillow, on horseback and on the toilet.
A literary masterpiece is like a stretch of nature itself, well-formed in its formlessness, and it’s charm and beauty come by accident.
I’m reading a remarkable book, The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang, written in 1938. His thoughts on ‘The Scamp’ seem timely in a year when people have taken to the streets and dictators have fallen:
The scamp is probably the most glorious type of human being. In this present age of threats to democracy and individual liberty, probably only the spirit of the scamp alone will save us from becoming lost as serially numbered units in the masses of disciplined, obedient and regimented. The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of dictatorships. He will be the champion of human dignity and individual freedom, and will be the last to be conquered…
The scamp (or vagabond) is a type glorified in Chinese literature; and Lin Yutang describes the scamp-like qualities of humans as ‘a playful curiousity, a capacity for dreams, a sense of humour to correct those dreams, and a certain waywardness.’ There’s hope for us yet. (Year of Protest, New Yorker comment)
