Today marks the end of the 2009 Banned Books Week. Call me jaded, but I can’t help seeing this as a massive publicity stunt cooked up by publishers and librarians in order to promote reading. Not that I blame them. In a society where every person is bombarded constantly by extreme messages from every conceivable perspective, it probably takes something like Banned Books Week to remind us of the importance of reading, to say nothing of the importance of free speech and the freedom of the press.

But I find it hard to take seriously the idea of books being banned in the United States. Sure, we have a few intolerant cranks here and there. What we don’t have is a trend, a movement of Fahrenheit 451 anti-book infidels.

Or do we?

Guess the title of this book.

First, it’s worth pointing out that “book banning” is, in reality, a fantastically inclusive term. A book can make it onto the Banned Books list if a couple of people per state mention concern about it to a librarian. An “Expression of Concern,” according to the American Library Association, is “an inquiry that has judgmental overtones.” And Inquiries with Judgmental Overtones, almost unbelievably, can be reported to the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. (Yep, in the interest of free speech, expressions of free speech are reported. Go figure.) These reports are then compiled into a confidential database and published in the Banned Books Week Resource Guide. (Yep, there is a Resource Guide for Banned Books Week.)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not coming to the defense of pitchfork wielding nut cases bent on burning down their local libraries–if indeed such people exist. I’m not even coming to the defense of people with Judgmental Overtones. I’m just wondering who cares enough to censor–of all things–books?

When kids are given condoms in school; when they’re afforded access to public computers, internet pornography, sexually graphic movies, reality television, cage fighting and, well, you name it; when they’re exposed to a veritable fountain of media stimulation 24/7, who cares about some random young adult novel that might happen to depict the violent rape of a young girl? (Yep, it’s out there.)

Okay, so maybe some books cross the invisible line of acceptability. According to the ALA, most objections about books are expressed by parents who have a natural and constitutionally protected right to protect their children from the constant stream of yuck that flows through our culture. Still, who are we to judge?

But we do judge. We apparently do think that some books should be banned.

Don’t believe me?

Consider the Bible, conspicuously absent from Wikipedia’s and the ALA’s lists of banned books. We don’t hear much about Bible banning in the U.S., mostly because it’s only banned in places like schools. But no book is more likely to draw the ire of communist dictators, who historically have used more than Judgmental Overtones to enforce censorship.

More importantly, you don’t have to live in China or North Korea to see the influence of what might be called the Okay to be Banned Books List.

Take the One Year Adventure Novel. In the interest of fairness, I must stress that banning and OYAN have only slightly more in common than do banning and Expressions of Concern. OYAN has not really been banned anywhere, but it has raised eyebrows and elicited Judgmental Overtones. Why? Because in it I mention a handful of stories from the Bible as excellent examples of storytelling. So far no one has Expressed Concern about my mentioning Buddha or Lord of the Rings. No one has mentioned my inclusion of Huck Finn, The Blood Ship, Zenda, Holes, The Book of Sorrows, A Christmas Carol, Tarzan, The Land that Time Forgot, Black Rock, or any of the other stories used in the curriculum. But teachers and administrators alike have told me that merely mentioning the Bible is a red flag. The context in which it is mentioned doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter if the content is informative and true. It doesn’t even matter if the curriculum works. It only matters that the Bible is mentioned.

Just as close to home is the case of Runt the Brave. The book sold well to school libraries when it was first released. No one seemed to have any problems with it until a school principal read a review with Judgmental Overtones that indicated RTB might be based loosely on the story of David & Goliath, which of course is from the Bible. The principal told the school librarian that she could not have students read Runt the Brave because someone might Express Concern.

No doubt these experiences color my thinking, for I have very mixed emotions regarding Banned Books Week. On one hand, the ALA is calling attention to the importance of reading, and quite possibly building a shield wall against any unlikely future tendency towards national censorship. On the other hand, our culture has already accepted national censorship, against which the ALA’s Banned Books Week is merely a Maginot Line.

As human beings we constantly make value judgments about what is acceptable and what isn’t. One person finds graphic depictions of child rape offensive; another finds a novel loosely based on a Bible story offensive.

Strange that the hammer of intolerance comes down on the latter and not the former. Strange that these concerns can’t, at worst, be treated equally.

I wonder why.

A student recently asked me how a writer decides what to describe and what to ignore when writing fiction. Do I mention the trees? The buildings? The people? Do I describe them in detail, or just give each a few words. How much is too much?

less is more...more or less.

The simple answer may be found in the cliche, “less is more.” But sometimes less isn’t more. We do need some description. If you applied the less-is-more rule to every novel, we wouldn’t have novels at all. We’d have loads of short stories.

As readers we experience the world of a writer’s story through the senses of the hero. This is particularly true in OYAN novels, which are told in first person. We see, hear, feel, taste and touch the story through the hero’s eyes, ears, fingers, tongue, nose. (And brain, of course). But too much information will bog a story down.

The best way to learn how much is too much is by writing. In other words, practice describing things and see what happens. But this isn’t all that helpful, which is why we spend two weeks studying description (chapters 41-45 in the Compass).

Remember that the goal of every story is to create emotion, and second-hand physical sensations–ones you experience through someone else–rarely evoke strong emotions. Yes, roller-coasters are fun. But how fun is hearing about someone who went on a roller-coaster? Exponentially less–except perhaps for those of us with weak stomachs.

A writer must therefore create emotion by giving his audience meaningful details. Details that point to something inside the reader that will trigger emotion. This is hard to do by merely describing rocks and buildings and variously purple bits of sky. It is true that we need to be able to see and hear and feel a story in order to be immersed in the reality of its world. But good storytelling description usually immerses us only in those details that are necessary to move the story and create the intended emotions.

Good writers often hint at things and rely on a reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks. A very strong technique for doing this is to think in terms of precise and unexpected details. Both, not either or. In other words, don’t be vague unless your story calls for vagueness. And don’t be predictable in your descriptions. Don’t describe things in a way that requires no insight. Don’t tell us something that we could have figured out for ourselves, like “the driver sat behind the steering wheel.” Instead, focus the lens of your description on details that are interesting enough to hold our attention and force us to visual the scene in a fresh way we would not have imagined ourselves.

Finally, action is almost always more interesting than description, which is why it can be effective to mix descriptions in with the action of your story.

Nation, by Terry Pratchett

Mau is a native of an island chain in the balmy southern seas, a boy about to go through the rites of manhood when a tidal waves wipes out his home island. The wave also wrecks a british merchant ship, leaving a young girl as the sole survivor. Together, Mau and Daphne will discover a secret that shocks the world.

Pratchett is a terrific storyteller, and Nation is a terrific novel. The plot, setting and characters are fully and beautifully developed, and structured around an idea grounded in the science-fiction genre.

The novel is a worth-while read and beautifully crafted. It’s also funny. And sombre. When I put it down, I wanted to pick it up again. Pratchett is brilliant at capturing small truths and making them real.

What a disappointment then when I realized the heart of the novel is an old lie - one that is common to sci-fi and almost as old as humanity.

Nation

The cover hints at a very compelling theme that I thought Pratchett was going to support: “When much is taken, something is returned.” It’s a great idea. A tidal wave kills everyone Mau knows and loves, erasing a culture and forcing him to re-examine his belief in the protection (and existence) of old gods. But the wave also brings the wreck of a british merchant ship and a single young girl. In effect, the wave brings science. The wave brings self examination. The wave brings truth. At last science replaces a belief in the old gods.

I like this sort of thing because I believe all belief systems ought to be examined and tested. The death of one’s family would be a catalyst for change, and if the old gods are really there, well, they ought to be able to stand under a little examination.

What bothers me about the theme of Nation is its humanistic hypocrisy. Faith is evidently the only thing that needs challenging. Science isn’t challenged at all, because science is Truth.

But is it? I don’t mean, is it in real life. We all know science isn’t Truth in real life. I mean, is it Truth within the framework of the novel? The answer is clearly No. What makes the story compelling is the tension between faith and science, and the best parts of the novel are those when faith actually seems to have something going for it. Mau talks to Death, and Death talks back. He walks in the spirit world. Daphne walks in the spirit world. Dead people speak to both of the characters.

None of which makes sense in the context of the novel’s theme. If it is explained at all, it is in the final chapters of the novel when we are told that “everything happens somewhere.” It turns out that Mau and Daphne live in a parallel dimension. Infinite other dimensions exist around them, so that at some point in one of those dimensions everything will eventually happen.

“Everything happens somewhere” is the rationalization atheists use to explain the vastly improbable design evident in the universe. It’s not a bad idea in terms of its usefulness in science fiction. My problem with it isn’t that I think it’s wrong, though I do. My problem with it is that it isn’t science. It’s faith.

Put simply, Pratchett uses faith to support the idea that science trumps faith. I suspect he is uncomfortable with this idea, because the end of the novel, which I will not spoil, has a mystical flavor to it that simply doesn’t work. It reminds me of the end of Inherit the Wind, when Drummond takes Origin of Species and the Bible, weighs them in both hands, and then places them together in his briefcase. This doesn’t work as an ending because Inherit the Wind isn’t about how Darwinism and Purpose can peacefully co-exist. It’s about how the Bible is stupid and people who believe it are stupid. Nation lacks ITW’s hostility, but its ending shows a faith-is-good-when-it-doesn’t-require-anything-of-us attitude common to western humanism.

I find it ironic. The best, most interesting parts of the story are those that require Something Beyond. The book wouldn’t work without them. It would be dull. It would be all answers and no questions. It would be facts and not mysteries, incidents and not adventures. Pratchett tells us (actually, Death tells us) that there is only what does happen and what doesn’t happen. Which renders the tidal wave and the death of Mau’s loved ones meaningless. Mau’s life is meaningless. Even the secret he and Daphne uncover is meaningless if this is true. Science is no better than faith; it’s just different.

But of course Pratchett doesn’t really mean this. He means that Science really is better than Faith… and everything really is meaningless. To prove it he will even resort to using both faith and meaning. No, it doesn’t make sense. But it does make a good read.

I do not need to agree with an author’s worldview to enjoy his work, and I thoroughly enjoyed Nation. Unfortunately, the story is inherently flawed because its theme isn’t proven by its events. What it calls Truth simply doesn’t work. It can’t work–even in a parallel dimension.

One of my old college professors once began a sentence this way: “If you were lucky enough as a child to have parents who read you the work of A.A. Milne…”

At that moment I knew he was going to be a great teacher. It would be easy, especially at the university, to remain a closet fan of Winnie the Pooh. But it was in college that I rediscovered the lovable bear and his genius for making profound truths very simple.

Milne isn’t the only pre-historic author of books for young people whose work is often overlooked. Rudyard Kipling wrote many admirable books that have been enjoyed for over 100 years by both adults and teens. Ironically, Walt Disney adapted a novel by each of these writers, and in both cases transformed something of incredible richness and depth for all ages into beautifully animated works targeted at young children. I’m not dis-ing Disney. But if your only experience with Mowgli and Baloo comes from an 80 minute video, you might need to reconsider your life.

The Jungle Books (there are two volumes) are, like all great children’s literature, easily deep enough to be read and re-read by adults. I sometimes dig out my ancient copies and thumb through the pages at random, looking for bits of literary genius and wit. Take the Road-Song of the Bandar-Log for example. Here’s part of the second stanza:

Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete in a minute or two-
Something noble and grand and good,
Won by merely wishing we could.

Remind you of anyone you know?

Kipling is more accessible than most of his contemporaries, both stylistically and thematically. So some day soon when you’re looking for a good read, crack open a copy of the Jungle Book(s) or Captains Courageous and plunge into India or the Atlantic.

Kipling’s prose songs are really the melodies of Wisdom’s laughing little cousin, Innocence. They will make you sigh, smile and think–at the same time.

Recommended Books

My Friend the Enemy by J.B. Cheaney

After meeting Ms. Cheaney at a local book signing in Kansas City, I was delighted to read My Friend the Enemy, a  young adult novel set during the turbulent years of WWII. The author is a native of Missouri (she lives in the Ozarks).

Hazel Anderson is a young girl who dreams about leading a squad of marines against enemy “jap” soldiers. When she isn’t in school, she’s scouring the skies above her Oregon home for signs of an expected Japanese invasion, or looking for signs of enemy spies.

Instead, she discovers a lonely Japanese boy hiding from the prospect of internment at a camp for Japanese-Americans. Hazel’s discovery will forever change the way she sees people. What does the enemy really look like? Can one tell friend from foe by the shape of a face, or the color of an accent?

Most of us who lived after WWII have ready access to facts and information about the events of the war. Countless books have been written; more than one cable channel delivers battles, dogfights, tanks, footage, and docudramas about the politics of the war.

In My Friend the Enemy we see instead a homeland America–a country that is at once beautiful and repulsive, quaint and disturbing, fearful and courageous. The book is not an attack on the U.S. during WWII, nor is it a dismissal of our past. It doesn’t rewrite history, and it isn’t one of those modern YA novels that sees all of history through the lens of one pet issue. Ms. Cheaney seems to have captured the flavor of the era without condemning it.

This comes up a lot in writing conferences when I suggest students avoid using the word “was” in their prose. I always get some blank stares.

Was? Are you serious?

I am. Even though it may be used to grammatical perfection in one’s novel, it usually weakens your narrative flow. The OYAN curriculum discussed this in more detail, perhaps because first person POV lends itself to a more casual style, and thus more frequent use of the conversational was.

The cat that was

Put briefly, was is a boring word. It denotes existence. The cat was. The car was. The knife was. Big deal. Lots of cats and cars and knives are. If you want to make me care, show the cat, car or knife doing something interesting: howling, crashing, stabbing.

I agree that in some cases this is impossible. In some places in your novel, you need to tell you audience that something merely exists. But was should be used sparingly, avoided whenever possible.

How do you do this? Two simple techniques may help. If one doesn’t work, the other probably will.

First, change the verb. Pick anything else, even if it doesn’t make sense, and plug it into the sentence. So instead of “The cat was black,” you’d have, “The cat sang black.” No, this doesn’t work, but at least it is less boring. Hopefully it will jump-start your brain into seeing the cat and what it is doing more clearly. What is the cat doing in the first sentence? It is being. What is it doing in the second sentence? Singing. Do cats sing? No, they yowl, or meow, or hiss, or run or fight or lick or nap. Now ask yourself which of these verbs might demonstrate the cats blackness, since that is clearly the intent of the sentence. Just to get the story moving, I might pick “lick.” So, “The cat licked black.” Does that make sense? Not quite, but it is closer. How about, “The cat licked its black fur.” Still not great, but infinitely more active, and therefore more visual, and therefore more interesting, than a cat that just was.

Second, change the subject. Instead of focusing on the subject of a was sentence, focus on something else. Ask yourself, what is it about the cat that my reader needs to know? What is this particular black cat doing in my story? Adding ambience? Spying for a wizard? Plotting to take over the world? When you know the answer, you may know what you need to focus on. Let’s say the cat is there for ambience. Now we can shift the camera off the cat and focus on something more ambient. Perhaps a shadow. “Shadows draped across a black cat that stared out at them from the corner with ghostly eyes.” This sentence delivers ambience AND the fact that the cat is black.

I should add that it is probably a mistake to think about was sentence constructions while writing a rough draft. If you let your internal editor jabber at you about was while you are writing, you will never get anything done. Save your was revisions for your second draft.

I am frequently asked what I mean in The Map when I talk about changing values. Here is a brief explanation that has nothing to do with politics or morality.

Every chapter you write ought to propel your plot forward. Something should change as a result of your chapter, or it isn’t necessary. Furthermore, whatever changes ought to be important to the story goal.

Positive or Negative?

Think in terms of values expressed as a single word: freedom, enlightenment, loneliness, forgiveness. Such values are what your chapter (or scene) is really about, because that value will change as a result of the action of the scene, either in a positive or a negative direction.

For instance, say your hero is imprisoned in the villain’s dungeon at the beginning of a chapter. By the end of the chapter he escapes and finds his freedom in the surrounding forest. The value of the chapter is freedom because the chapter is about the hero’s escape.

Now let’s say your hero tries to escape, but fails. The value of the chapter is no longer freedom. Why? Because his imprisoned state doesn’t change. He doesn’t get freedom. This doesn’t mean the chapter can’t work; it only means it can’t work if the focus is on whether or not he is physically imprisoned. One could write such a chapter and focus on a different value, perhaps enlightenment. In that case, the value would change from ignorant to enlightened as a result of his attempt to physically escape.

What would this look like? Well, say your hero discovers something of interest in his escape attempt. Maybe he finds out where the princess is being held in an old tower. Or perhaps he learns something about himself that causes him to renew his commitment to defeating the villain. Either way would push the story forward and demonstrate a change of values. However, it would NOT mean a change of values regarding his freedom. The change of values would center on enlightenment.

Let’s return for just a moment to the idea of freedom. You do have a second option with your escape from prison chapter idea, and that’s to focus on the hero’s internal state rather than his external state. Instead of making the chapter about how he escapes physically, you could make it abut how he escape mentally or spiritually.

Haralan Popov’s autobiographical account of his 13 year imprisonment and torture at the hands of  communist authorities in Bulgaria is an excellent example. At one point in the story he receives a letter from his wife telling him that they have made it out of Bulgaria. To Haralan this is the best news of his life; it means the authorities can no longer threaten to harm his wife and children. This is the change of values on which the whole chapter turns. The moment Haralan reads that letter, his whole outlook changes. Yes, he is still physically imprisoned. But now he feels free, and the difference is profound. His escape is emotional rather than physical, and the chapter works as part of the story. (Incidentally, the book, Tortured for His Faith, is well worth reading.)

One way to dramatically improve your manuscript is to go through it chapter by chapter and make sure the action of each brings about a corresponding change of values. Make sure the change of values you present to your reader is the one you intend.

Ask yourself three questions:

1. What’s different at the end of this chapter?

2. Is the difference because of the chapter?

3. Does the difference bring the hero closer to the story goal?

If the answer to any of the three questions is No, consider rewriting or deleting the chapter.

From my guest blog posting over at Kidlit Central:

“Many years ago I read submissions for a science fiction magazine. I freely admit that I didn’t read everything assigned to me. Reading everything simply wasn’t my job. My job was to pass along to the editor those stories that might be good enough to print. To do that, I only had to grab a story off the top of the slush pile and read far enough to know for sure that the story didn’t work. Sometimes I figured this out in four or five pages. Sometimes it took four or five paragraphs. Stories written in pencil didn’t get read at all. They were returned with a form rejection quoting the magazine’s submission guidelines.

The first pages of your manuscript are the most important ones you will write. If you do not capture an editor in the first few pages, she will not keep reading. Likewise with the casual reader. So how do you make the first pages interesting?”

For the rest, click here.

Anyone who reads science fiction with more than a passing interest will have heard of Robert Heinlein, grandmaster of the genre and writer of such classics as Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. More obscure are the dozen or so novels he penned for teens, many of which were published as serials in magazines such as Boy Life.

Robert Heinlein

Have Spacesuit - Will Travel is the best of these, though all of them are worth reading. Heinlein doesn’t write down to younger readers. His ideas, which are the focal point of any good science fiction story, are just as developed in his works for teens as are those in his adult novels. Absent, thankfully, are the sometimes crude sexual references that mar his adult works. If it weren’t for a thinly veiled humanistic worldview, Heinlein’s juveniles might be considered harmless. Indeed, one gets the idea that a pro-military and anti-communist Heinlein would have hated many of the current manifestations of political correctness.

This comes out in the opening chapter of Have Space Suit.  What? A father who isn’t a drunk? Teaching his son self-reliance? Unmasking the shortcomings of the public school system? I have no doubt that such a first chapter would never make it into print through traditional channels today.

Ultimately, however, the novel is not about public schools or responsible fathers or even self-reliance; it is about a boy named Kip whose yearning for space travel is unexpectedly fulfilled when–don’t laugh–he is kidnapped by aliens.

Have Spacesuit - Will Travel

The plot is not nearly as goofy as it sounds, nor is it captured well by the cover artwork, which only seems to confirm the book as an empty adventure story. On the contrary, the novel’s climax is so simple and so intriguing that it has been stolen more than once by Hollywood.

In the next few months I will periodically cover several of Heinlein’s books for young readers. Good reading material for teens seems, ironically, to be growing more scarce even as the number of published books increases.

A student asked, “”I always like to write long prologues that give the history and culture of my story worlds, and set the stage for each novel. Is this bad?”

Short answer: even a little is often too much.

Chaucer did it...but does anyone like reading Chaucer?

It is almost always best to leave out the history/backstory of any novel, especially in prologues. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know or even write the history of your world. The more you know what came before, the more real it will feel to your reader. But much of this is not meant for the reader. It is a kind of writing exercise that will help you tell your story with more color, more depth. Your reader mustn’t be overwhelmed with stuff he has to know in order to enjoy the story. In fact, he doesn’t want to know a bunch of stuff. He’d actually prefer to have questions.

Here’s how it works: you should only tell your reader things after he asks you about them. Always make him ask first. How will he ask? This is what makes writing difficult. You have to learn how to drop hints and create questions in your readers mind - questions he will grow curious about. As his curiosity mounts, he will start to become intrigued and demand (internally) that you provide answers. When that happens, you can give him those answers and he will thank you. But if you give him the answers before he asks the questions, he simply won’t care, or, worse, he’ll stop reading.

It is almost always best to plunk your reader down smack in the middle of a conflict that creates immediate tension and presents an immediate unresolved question. Prologues usually fail to do this, and therefore usually weaken a story.