In Which We Contemplate the ‘Strong Female Character’

“Strong female characters” also doesn’t mean “weak male characters.” I’m a feminist. We want women to be equal to – not better than – men. Writers: When I say I want “strong female characters,” I don’t mean physically strong (though they can be that too).

Queries I never want to read: “Girl feels invisible. Meets hottest guy ever. Finds self-worth through his love. OMG he has a secret.”

THINK OUTSIDE THE TWILIGHT, WRITERS.

BTW, a male protagonist who suddenly finds self-worth because a hot, confident love interest is totally into him is equally vomit-worthy.

- @sarahlapolla

but first, WHAT IS A ‘STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER?

Over at Google Plus, Chuck Wendig asked “What makes a strong female character?“ and got some interesting responses:

• Not fitting into stereotypes, of course. Being able to figure things out on her own. Being sexual without using her sexuality as a weapon or tool
• Determination, just like male characters. The only difference is that a strong female character will use that determination to fuel her feminine qualities rather than turn her into a man.
• I’d rather have an “interesting” character than a “strong” one, male or female.
• For me, it’s the gender competition convention that really turns it cliche…As soon as it’s a comparison of ‘like a man’ (sex, drinking, karate), the strength component is lost to ‘trying too hard’.
• Too many people confuse Strong characters with Tough ones.
• I’m very bored with the “strong = kickass chick” stereotype, and so are a lot of female readers. That’s not a strong woman, per se, it’s a male fantasy (and sometimes a female fantasy, admittedly!).
• What makes a strong female character is when you don’t treat them with kid gloves.
• The ‘strong’ qualifier tends to fuzz the issue. What I usually mean when I use the term is ‘a female character who has her own agenda and exists for a reason that is not just to sleep with the hero, inspire him, and/or die so he can be sad.’
• It’s hard to talk about A strong female character in isolation…One thing I look for in a story, or a writer’s body of work, is a variety of interesting female characters who are different from each other.
• I’m not particularly interested in whether the character is a good role model…I just care about whether or not I like them.

Chuck also asks if ‘female’ is even a meaningful identifier in fiction.

• Of course it is, inasmuch as being tall has anything to do with anything, or being French, or whatever.
• That may depend on her back story and the relevance to the plot as a whole.

Why do girls need to read proactive female characters in fiction?

The answer may be self-evident, but I highly recommend a thought-provoking article in the Sydney Morning Herald, from the wonderfully cogent young adult feminist author Emily McGuire:

Although we wish the world was a safer place and should work to make it so, we need to prepare girls to live in it as it is. This seems obvious when talking about boys: of course they need to learn resilience and determination and rebelliousness against those who would hold them back or harm them. But we’re still so damn precious about girls. We pretend that passivity and fragility are innate, even as we expend a great deal of energy on instilling and enforcing them.

- Sugar, Spice and Stronger Stuff.

WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE SICK OF THE PHRASE ‘STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER’

From Chuck Wendig’s thread, above:

Calling a character a “strong female character” in the first place comes from the older way of portraying women as helpless, weak, irrational, etc. It implies that seeing a woman who acts with strength is unusual. But trying to reverse that trend can be just as obnoxious. For an example of this, look at the women of the James Bond movies… Why is it that every single heroine we see from Victorian times just so happens to be the one-in-a-million who thinks that the entire way her society lives, from corsets to voting rights to how her husband acts, is hopelessly wrong? At that point, the character has become an anachronistic mouthpiece for the modern author’s personal beliefs, instead of a believable character who was raised in that society.

- Stevie Miller

See also: Thelma, Louise and All The Pretty Women by Carina Chocano, and a response to that at BlogHer: Are Weaker Role Models Better For Women?; Why one woman really likes loser women on TV. Carina Chocano also hates the phrase ‘Strong Female Character and explains why.

Maybe a strong female character is simply ’a good person’.

But what on earth is that?

I think it’s dependent on being courageous, compassionate, respectful, which in turn generates respect, standing up for what you believe in and having the courage of your convictions, staying true to yourself, standing up for the underdog and yes, being a little bit proud and selfish every now and then. ’Cause no one respects a “yes” (wo)man.

- from What Makes A Good Person? by Scarlett Harris

OR MAYBE STRONG HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GOOD.

See: 10 Legendary Bad Girls Of Literature from Flavorwire. Because it’s true: strong has nothing to with good, not for men, not for women.

SAY YOU’RE LOOKING FOR ‘GIRL FRIENDLY’ BOOKS. LET’S JUST CALL THEM THAT.

Over at About.com you can find an aggregated list of links to more lists, of books featuring Strong Female Characters. I’ve also been on the lookout for such books myself, but been it’s a surprisingly slow process. Maybe I’ll start making use of those lists. I’ll post when I’ve read ten.

Like all women of strong character, she loved it when someone gave her orders; it was so restful.

“No,” said Charles, smiling at her disrespectfully. “Now, are you ready, my dearest darling?”

- from Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Related Links:

1. Characters To Channel For Confidence. (Good idea. Let’s not call them ‘strong’.)

2. Badass Lady Quotes from Persephone

3. Strong Women In Science Fiction and Fantasy Television, an MA thesis in PDF format from Feminist Frequency

4. Moments Women In Comics Are Awesome from Wired

5. Geek Feminism asks Where are all the strong female characters in dystopian SF stories?

6. Feminist Fantasy is a website which collects fantasy stories featuring strong female characters. Some of the fantasy stories are even matriarchal, which I’m sure would cause its own (interesting) problems. You can submit your own suggestions.

7. In Defence Of Screwed Up Female Characters. Men have always been able to poke fun at themselves; now it’s women’s turn, from Slate.

8. Emily Blunt Thinks Women’s Roles In Superhero Films Are Terrible, from The Mary Sue.

9. 10 of the Most Powerful Female Characters in Literature from Flavorwire

10. Favourite Female Heroine Characters from Book Page (though I’m pretty sure ‘female’ is superfluous in that blog title).

The Depiction of Modern Schools in Fiction

Have you seen The History Boys (film or play), written by Alan Bennett?

Bennett went to school a long time before the 1980s, which is when this play is set. He writes in his 2004 diaries of some issues faced when depicting a modern(ish) school.

First he had to take out a gymnasium scene, because by the 1980s sixth formers wouldn’t have been enrolled in physical education.

(What a huge, huge shame for the health of the British Nation, I do feel, since the English kids I saw a few years ago were far less fit than their Australasian counterparts.)

LOCKERS

As part of his research, Bennett visited the London Nautical School to avoid outdated clangers.

My main impression is how burdened the boys are, humping all their possessions with them wherever they go so that they’re slung round with coats, togs, books and bags, none of them seemingly having their own locker or desk.

This is true in my experience too (both as student and teacher). This was to do with theft and vandalism, and no doubt also to do with the tendency for students to leave uneaten food in their lockers, to rot the wood and attract rodents.

I wonder how many schools still have lockers, compared to how many fictional students still have lockers. In American school dramas we always see scenes involving lockers. The lockers themselves are often used as a plot device, with plantings of drugs and offensive graffiti emblazoned across them, and love notes pushed through the cracks, and timid boys being locked inside… In fact, everything I know about lockers comes from fiction:

Now, it is possible to slip a note into a locked locker through the vents. Even, with some pushing, a pencil. Once, Tiny Cooper slipped a Happy Bunny book into my locker. But I find it extraordinarily difficult to imagine how Jane, who, after all, is not the world’s strongest individual, managed to stuff an entire winter coat through the tiny slits in my locker.

- from Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan.

But I have no idea how many North American schools still provide lockers for their students. (Perhaps one of you will enlighten me.) In New Zealand, as in England (like Bennett observed), most students lump around a bag full of textbooks all day. This can’t be good for the back. I think at some schools parents are starting to complain about this, and lockers may be making a comeback.

SARCASM

Bennett writes:

Nicholas Hytner has shown the script of The History Boys to one of his former teachers at Manchester Grammar School, who says that teaching these days is so circumscribed that many traditional tools of the trade are now impermissible. Sarcasm, for instance, is out, pupils are never touched and there are often viewing panels in the doors.

Each of these observations is very true, and it does frustrate me when I see sarcastic dialogue from teachers in modern fictional schools. We were taught firmly at teachers’ college that sarcasm is a no-no — and the objection doesn’t just come from above; today’s students detect sarcasm in a second, and will pull you up on it. I remember filling in for another teacher, turning up to anarchy and saying, ‘Some quiet would be nice.’

One of the students was listening, at least. She turned to me and said, ‘Watch the sarcasm, Miss.’

And if I hadn’t been so busy with the humdrum, time-consuming and dreary job of calling a class of unknown students to attention, I might have delivered a lesson on what ‘sarcasm’ actually means, and how it compares to ‘understatement’ but this was a maths lesson. (I also remember later in the hour being asked how to do quadratic equations, and I was of no help whatsoever with that.)

Yet authors of fictional teachers are still making heavy use of sarcasm in lessons, and this lacks authenticity to me… Which is problematic if authenticity is what they are going for.

PHYSICAL CONTACT

Regarding the touchy issue of touching, in every school you’ll probably find at one point in staff history:

• a teacher who gets away with quite a bit of physical contact because they have a wonderful rapport with all of their students, and it never gets them into trouble
• at least one teacher who crosses the line, and who seems to get a certain titillation out of mildly through wildly inappropriate touching of students. This is my own experience of schools.

But most teachers never, ever touch students, not even in kindness. So when I see a teacher in a fictional drama touching a student, even on the shoulder, even to gain attention, I notice.

I also notice when a teacher keeps a student behind after class for a talking to. Even if this is innocent — like ‘Where’s your homework?’ — I always think how unlikely it is, that a teacher would keep a student behind after class. Teachers know to keep their classroom doors open, and when speaking to an individual student, keep their friends along too, or just outside the door, within earshot. Isn’t every modern teacher ever-aware of fictional claims of sexual abuse and harassment? Even fictional characters? I get the impression that authors of fictional teachers underestimate this unfortunate and lingering anxiety.

BEFORE THE BELL

So often in American dramas the bell rings; students snap their books shut, stand up, walk out.

I have never seen this scenario (except with one teacher who, it was widely acknowledged, had major problems controlling her classes).

What usually happens is this:

1. The teacher is keeping an eye on the clock about every five minutes. (You don’t see this much in dramatised classrooms either.) The teacher is often more cognizant of the end of class than the students, and it is the teacher who orchestrates the wind-up of a lesson.

2. About ten minutes before the end, a good teacher will ask the class to contribute to a recap of the day’s learning material. There’s usually some boring admin stuff, like homework, but I can forgive a scriptwriter for leaving that stuff out.

3. A tidy teacher will ask students to pick up any litter on the floor, and if it’s the last lesson of the day, the chairs will go up onto the desks. (Can you think of a single time you’ve seen this on the screen?)

4. If students start packing up before they are requested, any teacher with middling management skills still knows to put the kybosh on that, or else students soon learn that they can pack up a good 20 mins before the end of each class and battle for position near the exit, ready to burst out the door with the first tinkle of the bell. Any teacher who lets this happen is not on top of things.

So why, in fiction, do students pack up and leave taking their cue from the bell, not their teachers, with ‘good’ teachers shouting over top of the ruckus in order to finish their sentence?

STUDENT CENTERED LESSONS

In modern classrooms, students have far more to say than in the classrooms of yesteryear. The teacher is no longer a lecturer; rather a facilitator. Students are frequently divided into groups, set to work on a task (often on a computer), then present to their peers.

What I see in fictional classrooms: The teacher yaks. Students listen. This is a particularly vexing scenario when the class is supposed to be ‘difficult’.

I can tell you for a fact, modern students have little tolerance for lengthy lectures. There are still lessons during which teachers do a goodly proportion of the talking, but they are not met with the bright and alert faces which are seen so often on TV and movies. What you definitely get during a high school lecture lesson is a teacher who is telling Amy to stop talking, Corey to refrain from tapping the desk with his pencil, Riley to quit rustling with whatever is in that plastic bag yadda yadda yadda.

The most realistic depiction of a fictional classroom that I have seen is Summer Heights High (Australia), closely followed by Seven Periods With Mr Gormsby (New Zealand). Matt Lucas as Vicky Pollard and Catherine Tate’s ‘am I bovvered’ are also scarily accurate. That, of course, is exactly why they’re funny. These are all parodies, yet they achieve a realism that serious drama can’t seem to match.

These depictions get a bit closer to what really happens in a modern high school lesson, at least in Australia, NZ and England. The Catherine Tate sketch is scarily accurate… A VERY similar thing happened when I went to teach English to the English with a New Zealand accent. I almost think Catherine Tate was a fly on the wall that day, especially since my main sparring partner was called Lauren.

Related Links: High School Hierarchy in YA Fiction; The Most Realistic TV Shows About High School, like, ever, from Flavorwire.

Blokes and Books

“I don’t read books. Last shit I read was Goosebumps.” – amazing stud on The Real World

- tweeted by @diablocody

Do teenage boys skip young adult fiction and jump straight to the adult section? It seems that way. Either that, or they often stop reading fiction altogether, never to return.

Why is that?

For those who keep reading, that may be because many boys are into science fiction, in which case they might as well be reading Asimov and Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. There’s little need for specifically YA science fiction. Or is there?

Is it because the young adult genre is romance heavy? Is YA literature really a misnomer? Should we call it ‘teenaged-girl-thru-soccer-mom’?

I’d really like to know what proportion of boys and men are interested in the YA genre. I suspect it’s very low. If boys are reading young adult fiction, it seems to be the heavy reading boys, who are reading YA from about age eight, then moving on to adult fiction as soon as their reading age allows.

Just a hunch.

Related Post: Writing for reluctant readers from Chris Morphew

Bush Tomato and Herb Sausages

pic by bmann

This hasn’t suddenly morphed into a food blog. We’re having sausages tonight, and I’ve been thinking about adjectives, is all.

Would our sausages taste better if they were simply Tomato and Herb (without the Bush?) Food seems to taste better when accompanied by adjectives of a high degree of specificity. You’ll see it at its best in sit-down restaurants.

What about when writing fiction? Might the same thing apply? Can we make use of adjectives without sounding like a restaurant menu, or a packet of Aldi sausages?

In fiction, the reasons for making use of specific adjectives are slightly different. Whereas the ‘bush tomato’ is designed to make me think my sausages are tastier than just plain tomato sausages, in fiction the specificity would help me to believe that those sausages really exist. I didn’t just make them up.

After all, who could make up such a thing?

by Sebastian Mary

 

“Well, how about some ice-cream? We’ve got chocolate chip, chocolate fudge, chocolate ripple, chocolate vanilla fudge, chocolate nut fudge, chocolate marshmallow swirl, chocolate mint with fudge chips, and fudge nut with or without chocolate chips.”

“Have you just got plain chocolate?”

“No. I’m afraid there’s not much call for that.”

- from The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson

Editing For Overexplanation

by Profound Whatever

 

From a book which shall not be named, lest this post be linked from its author’s fansite and bombarded with vitriol:

He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence.

X dropped the indolent manner and leaned forward, eager to communicate.

“Yes, yes Colonel, thank you.” X stepped forward, his arms outstretched in a gesture of bonhomie.

To me, the reason an author offers explanations of body language is to let the readers work out for ourselves what that means. We each live in this world. We’ve perfectly capable of reading body language for ourselves.

Therefore:

He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence.

X dropped the indolent manner and leaned forward, eager to communicate.

“Yes, yes Colonel, thank you.” X stepped forward, his arms outstretched in a gesture of bonhomie.

That’s not all.

The sight that greeted them was a gruesome one. Three roo dogs were feeding on the remains of a human corpse… la dee da dee da… more gross and disgusting stuff… The pack leader was feeding on the carcass at the graveside… la dee da you get the picture.

Therefore:

The sight that greeted them was a gruesome one. Three roo dogs were feeding on the remains of a human corpse… la dee da dee da… more gross and disgusting stuff… The pack leader was feeding on the carcass at the graveside… la dee da you get the picture.

There’s more:

X jumped quickly to his feet.

Is there any way other than ‘quickly’, of jumping to one’s feet?

X jumped to his feet.

Leave out that stuff. Please.

BECAUSE YOUR READERS ARE NOT STUPID.

That is all.

Why I Hate Romance

In full disclosure, it’s possible I’m the least romantic person you know.

This month I’m reading a romance novel for the first time in ages. I blame book club. But I happen to know there are other members of our book club who enjoy reading the romance genre, and even if no one admits to it, romance is the best selling genre of the lot.

So I’d better formulate some proper reasons for my aversion to it. Otherwise I might be mistaken for someone who joins book clubs just to have a good rant, with a captive audience (and cake).

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT ROMANCE

1. Liberal splatterings of adjectives. If there’s any genre that’s soft on adjectives it’s romance. I find myself reading with an imaginary red pen in hand. Once you notice them, you can’t stop noticing. (Sorry.)

2. Adverbs, ditto, and in romance it’s okay to make use of adverbs in dialogue tags as well.

3. This often leads to sloppy dialogue. If dialogue were apt and well-chosen, adverbs in dialogue tags would be unnecessary.

4. Chiseled features. (etc.) The authors of A Billion Wicked Thoughts analyzed the text of more than ten thousand romance novels published from 1983 to 2008 to determine the most common descriptions of the hero’s physical appearance. (Scroll down to A Tall Man With A Nice Tush and you won’t be the least bit surprised.)

5. Grey/blue/brown eyes that always have to ‘match’ something, like a tie or a suit or the sky. I’m sure people don’t go around matching things up with their eyes. Not men, at least. (Not the men I know.)

6. Stock standard beauty in the leading man and lady. I can’t complain too much about the unoriginal character sketches which are most often used to introduce a protagonist in romance because the rules of the genre are only as narrow as the well-known Western Beauty Ideals. The leading man must be attractive to female readers. The female must also be fuckable, in a female news anchor kind of generic way, but like all well-socialised women living in real life Western culture, she must have something wrong with her, but nothing that would put a potential suitor off. (Kinky hair or lanky legs are okay, but facial warts and alopecia are a no-no.) Little wonder all the men are even featured, chiselled, tall and muscular. And as for the women? There is some variation in hair and eye colour. That’s about it.

7. Heteronormative, matrimonial ideals, which are fine for some people, but which are somewhat outdated. There’s still the idea that success equals moving in together with the intent of spending the rest of one’s days together, having children, til death do them part. Whenever I get to the end of a romance novel I think, “Well, that ain’t gunna last.” (I thunk it of Pride and Prejudice, so there you go. I’m stuffed.)

8. The author’s job is to keep the female and male lead apart for as long as possible. In these times of premarital sex and mobile phones, it’s harder and harder to contrive a reason why the two of them shouldn’t just get together from the off. So instead you’re fed improbable reasons for keeping the hero and heroine apart, such as: He likes her but She thinks they’re just friends, or She starts off hating Him because She thinks he’s arrogant, but then she learns the Real Him. Conflict, like any other plot device, can feel like a contrivance, and in the romance genre, that’s what it most often feels like to this reader.

9. The actual sex scenes can feel cringe-worthy or wrong, because everyone’s sexual response is different, and no one author is going to appeal to each and every reader. Nor should they even try to. My point is, it’s hard to find the exact thing that does it for you. That might mean sticking to one author. You better hope they’re prolific. The problem with sticking to one author is that genre authors tend to get a bit same-same after ten novels, plot-wise. As a side note, if you’re reading romance for the steamy sections, why not just read erotica? Romance strikes me as erotica for people who wouldn’t be seen dead reading it.

10. Romance authors tend to propagate sexual ideas I don’t agree with. I don’t think it really does much for women’s sexual liberation. For instance, the woman still works hard to look good for the man, and it’s still the man who does most of the admiring. The woman still exists for the man’s pleasure. Perhaps women like romance so much because it’s the one opportunity women get to gaze at themselves in the way a man enjoys in reality. Otherwise, why would Judy Nunn write this scene from the male point of view?

“You’ve always looked beautiful in red.”

In romance we’re fed this idea that the way a woman looks to a man is the most important thing in the sex act. This is always the way in novels, but in real life, how someone looks has very little to do with sexual satisfaction. As Naomi Wolf writes in The Beauty Myth, once two people are physically close, touch and smell become more important. If this weren’t true, ugly people would’ve died out.

The instant he said it, he saw the fear and insecurity vanish.

This is a strong female lead in many ways, but her sexual response still depends on the approval of a man. You could argue that it works both ways. A woman can crush a man by laughing at him. But do you see men in romance worried about that kind of thing? Like hell you do. Men wouldn’t read about it anyway. Men don’t have their own neuroses shoved down their throats and reinforced by escapist fiction in quite the same way as women do.

And as she slowly walked towards him he was reminded of that day in the park. This was a fantasy men only dreamed of.

Notice that this is written in close(ish) third person and that the reader is in the man’s head, admiring the woman and indulging in his fantasy, not in hers. The implication is that she is aroused because he is aroused. The female protagonist’s own fantasy isn’t mentioned, and I wonder if that would even be accepted by the target audience of this particular novel. I’m sure there are romance novels in which the woman owns her own fantasy, without reliance upon the gaze of a man, but I don’t happen to have read it.

The actual sex bit is judiciously skipped (thank christ).

He’d stayed the night, and they’d made love again the following morning, an easier, gentler experience than the first time, when he’d worried that he may have hurt her.

“Nonsense,” she’d said briskly. “It’s called losing one’s virginity, and it’s meant to be painful.” Although this is what the protagonist believes, and not necessarily what the author believes, this idea is never challenged. I’m not convinced sex is ever meant to be painful, not even the first time, since true arousal has the effect of dulling pain.

- Judy Nunn, from Maralinga

Slightly related link, from someone who does like romance: Believable Romance, and the problem with love at first sight; Life Is Not A Rom-Com – Finding a partner in the real world.

I’m so going to play this: Thrust & Plunge: The Lusty Game You Can Play with Romance Novels from Studies In Crap.

Also, I think this article might hit the nail on the head as to why I seem to not enjoy romance, because I do feel like a traitor to my gender by not liking much of it. As noted in the article, Hate the book, not the genre. I would also like to point out that I understand there’s a difference between romance and erotica.

It’s also possible that I’ve been steeping myself too deeply in YA romance which, as explicated adeptly in this article: YA, Romance And Rape Culture, perpetuates some ideas that I hate with a passion.

On Exclamation Marks

Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.

- F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

It makes the writer’s day if he or she can include the opinions of a truly stupid character or text in the story, punctuating those announcements with exclamation points, which are the icing on the cake. This situation is to be found in novels, too, but novelists are less likely to be immensely flattered if you have noticed their needle in the haystack(!). For particularly adept and judicious uses of the exclamation point, see the works of Joy Williams and Deborah Eisenberg.

- The Book Bench

The problem with exclamation marks is that they often have the opposite effect to that intended. When you’re aiming for tense! or amazing! what you end up with is, quite simply, friendly.

pic by Daniel1977

That’s because these days, across the interwebby, exclamation marks are most often used to express friendship, not drama. Especially between women. This open letter to McSweeneys explains it so very well.

One thing is clear

Writers cannot rely soley upon exclamation marks to heighten drama. One writing ‘rule’ I often hear is ‘stay right away from exclamation marks’. But that’s not necessary, nor is it even desirable. Some sentences just don’t hit the right tone without an exclamation mark.

Instead, I think good advice sounds more like: ‘Make JUDICIOUS use of all punctuation – except full-stops, which are not optional.’

So, how to do exclamation well?

It’s hard to write an angry argument scene without any exclamation marks. Here are a few excerpts from the pros.

**SPOILER ALERT**

from Peeling the Onion by Wendy Orr

There’s usually at least one such scene in all young adult literature:

‘You took them out of my drawer! What happened to privacy – or did I lose that along with everything else?’

Mum flares as fast as me; suddenly we’re both screaming. ‘I’m worried about my child’s life and you complain about privacy!’

Then just as suddenly she’s crying. So am I. Crying with messy tears and drippy nose and lots of noise. Because I know which child she means. The one that can open childproof locks. The one who might have been looking for a way out.

And I know I can’t do it. I can’t hurt them that badly.

‘It’s okay, Mum, I promise. I won’t do anything. Promise.’

observations FROM THAT

1. Question marks seem to have an ‘exclamatory quality’ when mixed in with sentences ending in exclamation marks. I might try mixing them up. (Interestingly, an exclamation mark was used here where a question mark would have sufficed. An exclamation on the end of a question is effective too – probably because it’s less expected.)

2. The dialogue is minimal but powerful, and surrounded by dialogue beats which never seem to need exclamation marks, by the way. Modern exclamation only ever seems to be used in dialogue, not narrative).

3. There is a come-down. There’s always a cooling/settling period after an outburst, and the lack of exclamation marks in that piece following is all the more powerful because exclamation points were utilised earlier in the actual fight scene.

p.s. For anyone who thinks there’s a rule against using semi-colons in fiction, Wendy Orr’s book is an example of modern YA fiction in which the semi-colon is used extensively, even in dialogue. Semi-colons are to do with personal style. (And probably editorial style.)

Here’s another example of an argument in which non-use of the exclamation mark is effective:

“Snooping?” Clio repeated. “I went down to tell everyone that lunch was ready, and no one was in there. I walked into the room, I saw the computer, and I touched it. I didn’t use it. I touched it.”

“You expect me to believe that?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I do. If you don’t believe me, why don’t you go and ask Aidan if there’s anything weird about his computer? And you know what? I expect you to believe me over Julia. I’m your daughter.”

Without realizing it, she had started to yell.

- from Girl At Sea by Maureen Johnson

The last sentence alerts the reader to the fact that the conversation was shouty rather than calm, and in this case telling rather than showing works better.

FROm two girls, fat and thin by mary gaitskill

Here’s a particularly tough scene to write if ever I heard one: A grown daughter tells her mother that she was raped by her father as a teenager.

“Mother,” I said. “I don’t want to go.”

She didn’t look surprised. Her body went into its habitual posture of readiness to receive pain, and then I saw her gather herself to argue with me. She began with the ‘difficulties’ between my father and me. We talked round the fact of what had happened; I felt angrier and angrier. I backed away from my feelings, using the conversation to parry and evade them. Unknowing, my mother cornered me, stripping away my defenses as fast as I could secure them. My feelings pressed against my control like the fists and feet of a baby trying to punch free of the womb.

We paused for a moment. There was a light sweat on my forehead. A thin layer of composure constrained my anger. If she had remained silent only a little longer, the layer might have thickened enough to protect us both, but she said, at that fragile moment: “Can’t you be big enough to forgive him, Dotty? Can’t you stop thinking of your problems just this one time?”

Her face recoiled from my expression, she put her hand to her throat as though in self-protection, and then my words garrotted her. “No mother,” I said, “no I can’t forget about everything but fuck me, again and again. You know, incest? You watch television, don’t you?”

Her face confirmed my worst fear; she was not surprised by what I’d said, but wounded to the death that I’d said it.

Whatever I noticed about Wendy Orr’s scene applies equally to Mary Gaitskill’s scene. In her book, Mary Gaitskill also makes much use of:

1. Detailed Description Of Body Language. Perhaps it is true of abused children that they tend to be hypervigilant of body language, tone of voice, facial expressions and so on. Dorothy Never (the first person narrator) is therefore a perfect example of a person who would be able to recall such details. The details themselves are gutwrenching, and their power would only be sapped by making use of exclamation marks.

2. Metaphorical Language. Here she makes use of an apt simile: ‘My feelings pressed against my control like the fists and feet of a baby trying to punch free of the womb.’

Later on, Gaitskill does make use of exclamation marks in an interesting way. One of the characters gets animated in a cafe, and embarrasses the woman she’s with with her enthusiasm:

“I’m not talking about that hippie free-love merde either. I’m talking about passion between responsible adults.” The shadows on the wall of teh Euella Parks Hotel! The traffic noise outside! The dark-haired girl stared at her as she got up to leave.

In this case, Gaitskill makes full use of the melodramatic qualities of the exclamation mark, which make one character seem crazy obsessive. The fact that the exclamation marks fall outside the dialogue somehow create more of this impact.

Related Post: Bang! How the Exclamation Mark Makes Us Into Comic Book Characters.

The 10pm Question by Kate de Goldi

I love this cover. One big image, interesting texture in the background and handrawn-looking text.

In every junior high school class there is a boy — and if he’s very lucky, he’ll have a partner in crime — who is sensitive, intelligent, nerdy and innocent, even beyond his years. He cares deeply about his family and things affect him.

This is Kate de Goldi’s main character, Frankie Parsons, who asks his mother a deeply troublesome question every night at bedtime. You may know a Frankie yourself. He has a love of words, and has even made up a secret language with his best friend (the language is called Chilun) and he hears a constant ‘rodent voice’ which annoys him constantly by rattling away in his head about his daily worries. If you’re familiar with Kate de Goldi’s (actual) voice from her Radio New Zealand slot on Saturday Morning With Kim Hill, you’ll recognise her sense of humour in Frankie and you’ll also recognise that Frankie shares de Goldi’s love of language and literature.

I highly recommend de Goldi’s children’s book talks — you won’t find a more enthusiastic  or articulate proponent of fiction for younger readers.

The 10pm Question is set in contemporary New Zealand rather than in 1970s North America, but reminds me of a Judy Blume novel. Blume also wrote a number of books which were a snapshot of one developmental stage in a teenager’s life. This novel begins almost as abruptly as it begins; we’re plunged straight in and pulled straight out of Frankie’s life, with the assumption that his life will continue, even after we readers have lost our hole-in-the-wall view of it.

Also, as in many of Judy Blume’s novels, Kate de Goldi’s Frankie Parsons struggles to reconcile family issues (illness — mental illness in this case), with problems in his own world of school and peer relationships.

Unlike many of Blume’s characters, Frankie has not yet reached the stage where he is confronted by his sexuality; the relationship between Frankie and Sydney is a platonic one.

At Frankie’s stage of maturity, he hasn’t quite got past the earwax and bogey stage, though by the end of the book he has started to move away from this and into another phase of his life, where a bf/gf sort of relationship with Sydney may or may not be on his mind.

The 10pm Question has recently been included on an American list of Outstanding International Books for children grades 6-8. And thoroughly deserves to be there.

A Cheap Trip Home

If you come from a big town in a big country (let’s say New York or London), you could spend your entire life reading nothing but books set in your own home town. I’m sure you don’t, but you could.

Certainly, if you come from America, you could spend your entire life reading American books and watching American TV, and although there are regional differences within America, those differences probably don’t constitute any sort of barrier.

Then there are those of us who come from very small countries. Those of us from New Zealand are rarely able to sink into a novel written in exactly our own culture. Instead, we develop the ability to deduce meanings from context. Sometimes I wonder how much harder we work. Sometimes I wonder how well I do.

Oh, there are a number of locally produced novels in my own home town of Christchurch, but not a lifetime’s worth. Only a subset of those are set in contemporary Christchurch, and only a smaller subset are grounded firmly in any particular setting. (I have blogged before about Literary Xenophobia.)

That’s why it is such a joy to read a book set locally. Kate de Goldi’s The 10pm Question is set in Christchurch; not only that, it’s set firmly in North West Christchurch, and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything — ever — in which the main character follows the same route to school that I once followed to school. (Albeit 15 years ago. Albeit, I think de Goldi’s fictional school is made up.)

It was so nice to open the first page and read about a cat eating ‘Go Cat’ rather than ‘Azmira’, or some other foreign brand I’ve had to guess many times from context. Likewise, Frankie Parsons is eating Just Right for breakfast, and I know exactly what Just Right tastes like, because I have eaten it too. I have never eaten Quaker Oats or Go Lean Crunch; and Cheerios are small red-skinned sausages as far as I’m concerned.

Kate de Goldi’s characters speak like people I know. They use the same phrases. I can really imagine the intonation, not just guess at it from what I’ve seen on TV.

When the Christchurch city library crops up, I know exactly what it’s like to sink into a beanbag in the children’s section because I’ve been there myself:

That was the great thing about the library. It was both teeming with people and very private. Everyone was either busy selecting books or returning them or was sprawled in a beanbag, lost in their own reading world.

I’ve been to Sparks in the Park and I remember certain Christchurch personalities:

Transistor man was IH and listened all day to a large old-fashioned transistor radio held on his shoulder.

In fact, it’s as if I’m a character in the book:

He knew the name of every person they passed by and seemed always to have some connection with them, no matter how minute. He knew someone they played Touch with, or who went out with their cousin, or flatted with their sister or had just dumped their brother.

I know the landmarks, sometimes very well:

Between the College of Ed and the Postal Services Centre they went to Havana and sat outside the heater lamps, waiting for hot chocolate.

I don’t know Havana, but Christchurch weather is less suited to al fresco dining than to sitting hunched outside around heater lamps. I know that culture very well.

I know people who grow trees of ‘black boy peaches’. I come from a family who keeps ‘earthquake water bottles and the bird flu bags of rice and pasta’. I know this book. That’s why I enjoyed it so much more than usual. I didn’t have to do any work.

So last week, just as I was absorbed in a Christchurch-centred book, revelling in its familiarity, it was the opposite of serendipity (zemblanity?) to learn that so much of my beautiful home town will never be quite the same again.

What I Like In A Fictional Character

More on character likability, something I’ve been giving much thought to since few of last year’s favourite books featured a protagonist I’d go to tea with.

Now, aren’t you glad I type more often than I write?