February 6th, 2010

Net Noise

118 posts in, I’m still finding Twitter largely pointless. It’s just not *enough* for me to care about–Facebook has these big huge profiles and blogs have as much space as you would like, but there’s almost no way to determine who you are dealing with on Twitter unless you know them already. And most people *don’t* distill well into 140 characters (I count myself in this group)–Twitter is boring because most posts are a) links to articles or other people’s twitter posts that I am not going to follow because there is no commentary provided and I don’t know where the “tiny url” will take me, b) comments on other people’s twitter posts that I didn’t read at the time and now can’t find (why on earth don’t think link the comments to the posts? why?), so the comments make no sense to me, or c) boring.

February 4th, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews The Bagel House

Bagels are so often the default food of picky children, harried airport travellers, and breakfast-bar buffets, it’s hard to believe that 25 years ago my dad had to drive across Hamilton to Switzer’s so that my family could have them. And the kids at my tiny rural school, though not quite mocking, were fairly incredulous about my lunches of “bread doughnuts.”

Those were “New-York style” bagels–puffy with a moist crust, denser than bread, still a lot like bread. I don’t know if my New-York-born parents even realized there was another kind, and I don’t really know if, when I moved to Montreal, I realized I was eating a sweeter (they’re apparently boiled in honey water), less salty, denser smaller bagel–with a unique flavour that turned out to be smokiness from being baked in a wood oven. I knew they were a lot harder to cut for the toaster and that they had a wider hole, making it difficult to have a bagel sandwich or really any kind of tidy bagel topping. In the end, though, I also liked them better plain, untopped and untoasted, especially after I discovered Fairmont Bagels near the place I got my hair cut. There, you could buy just one bagel, just hot, and eat it as you walked across the mountain.

Montreal bagels are farther away from the dinner-roll pole, and closer to the soft street-vendor pretzel–I actually remember the Fairmont onion bagels having a bit of kosher salt mixed in with the onion bits–anyone else remember that?

*Anyway,* I’m not much of a bagel-eater on an everyday day–they’re more a special-occasion food for breakfast out in a deli (could also be a problem that I don’t have a toaster). But I searched out The Bagel House in pursuit of a treat for a bagel-loving comrade, and found it’s delightful. The Bayview location (there’s several, and I think they also stock a few grocery stores) is just a teeny store with a couple cramped tables, but you can watch a guy flipping bagels in and out of a huge wood-burning oven, the bagels are amazing and not *that* pricy, and you can get tonnes of Jewish pastries you don’t see anywhere else. Hamantast in winter is a bit dissonent, it’s good to know it’s any option.

The first time I went, it was a Saturday morning, unusual for a Jewish bakery even to be open, but this one was packed (note: every time I’ve been in, the counter staff was exclusively Asian, and the bagel baker African Canadian, but obviously *someone* in the background there is Jewish). There was a lot of quick in-and-out trade–people carrying coffee beans and buying half-dozens with a pot of cream cheese, obviously on the way to a bagel rendez-vous. The tables were all taken up, though, with people (often with kids) eating toasted bagels with a variety of toppings (from Hungarian salami to chopped chicken-liver to a wide variety of fancy-schmancy cream-cheeses.

Which is what the bagel-lover and I did last weekend. We went on a Sunday afternoon, when most people are already safely brunching (but the lady in line in front of us had a bag of Starbucks beans) but there was a still a nice small crowd. I got the most expensive thing on the menu, the classic cream-cheese-n-lox for $5.99, and I was seduced by the “healthy” multigrain bagel. No idea if it was healthy, but it sure was wonderful. Here, look:

(I had to get in that first bite before I bothered getting out the camera.)

February 2nd, 2010

In case you were wondering…

Sometimes I start off on things, and never let you know how they worked out. Probably, you don’t care, but for the sake of completeness–

1) I now mouse exclusively with my left hand on desktop computers (ie., all day). On laptops (ie., at night and on weekends) I occasionally succumb to the lure of the central touchpad with my right hand, but the (fuzzy heartshaped) mouse is placed to the left of the computer. I consider Alzheimer’s officially postphoned…for now.

2) I consider January’s “writing in the morning”s a failure, but not a dismal one. I *did* sometimes write in the mornings, not every day and never for very long, but as it would otherwise have been time spent asleep, I’m counting this one as a win. But I’m also pushing it forward as a February resolution.

3) My *new* resolution for February will be to limit my cereal consumption to two bowls per day. This will be difficult–I really like cereal.

4) Remember when I was teaching last year and obsessed with my teenaged students? We about to start all that again, as through the graces of the SWAT/Now Hear This program, I have been named writer-in-residence at Jean Vanier high school in Scarborough. If you went to Vanier, know someone who did, taught there, attended an OFSA badminton championship there, anything at all–I want to hear about it. For though I am very excited about this new adventure, I am also very nervous.

5) So the ground hog says, six more weeks of winter (warning: disturbing groundhog-nuzzling picture at that link). I should be sad, but I seem to have pulled out of my seasonal-affective funk from early January. Now I’m just really grateful that it’s been so dry and nothing is slippery underfoot. If that keeps up…well, I guess it can stay cold. If, you know, the rodent says it has to.

6) Remember when I wrote short stories? Well, I actually still do that, I just haven’t mentioned it in a while. Forthcoming RR publications included “How to Keep Your Day Job” in the summer issue of Room Magazine, “Sweet” in the summer issue of Canadian Notes and Queries and “Far from Downtown” in The New Quarterly. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that I’m just thrilled to be working with such amazing mags, and very looking forward to seeing my work inside them.

There, now I think you’re just about up to date…
RR

January 31st, 2010

How I Learned to Read

I am loving Kerry’s Family Literacy Week posts so much that I want to play. However, most of my knowledge of kidlit comes from when I *was* one, so I’ll be writing about that. My story actually fits in perfectly with the theme, since it’s about family and reading (also two of my favourite things).

All authors seem to have some seminal story about the moment they realized the words on the page made a story, and they could have that story, right then and there, by reading. You see such anecdotes in all the big bio interviews with writers, and they’re often tales of dweebish precociousness–“Oh, I couldn’t speak clearly or run without a helmet, but I was reading novellas by the time I was in kindergarten.” Or preschool. Or out of the womb.

My memory of the early years cuts in and out–I don’t think I’m missing much except a lot of apple-juice spills, but dates are distinctly sketchy. I know my mom taught me to read, and I can remember bits of the process, but I can’t exactly slot it into chronological time. I never asked about this, blithely assuming that I had been an early reader too–I certainly did well enough in the early grades, although some of those good marks may have been for not eating play dough (anyone who doesn’t retain a residual longing for play dough obviously somehow got hold of a can when no one was looking and *ate it all*, thus finally slaking that hunger all children experience).

Anyway! One day, and I think this might have actually been in support of an interview I was doing for *Once*, I asked my mom whether I too, had been a magically advanced, obvious-writer-to-be infant.

“Did I learn to read pretty early?”
“Oh, no, not really.”
“Like, only average?”
“I guess you were about…eight or so. I really had to push you, you didn’t want to learn.”

I was a single-digit illiterate! Oh, the shame! I finally managed to extract from my mother that I had in fact been able to read sentences in grade 1. But those were 40-word stories read aloud to the teacher, and my mom equated being “able to read” with being able to sit alone and turn pages, to immerse oneself in the story.

January 30th, 2010

Talking Stories

Last night at dinner, my friend Scott explained to someone, “Becky writes short stories–short stories are to the point, but you don’t always know what the point *is*.” Such a good summation of the strengths and weaknesses of stories.

This morning I read Andrew Hood saying in Canadian Notes and Queries that “What the short story can do better than any form is romance the effects of life without having to belabour the causes.” He went on to quote Clark Blaise’s comment that, “[short story writers] are not in the business of establishing any of the whys… The story traces what lingers after the whirlwind, after the fracture. Or before it. We’re not in the business of establishing the reasons…why things happen. They’ve already happened.”

Today is, I feel, a good day for stories!
RR

January 29th, 2010

Lit Bits

1) JD Salinger, literary hero of many youths (including this one) has died. I haven’t read a lot of the coverage, but I have seen a few references to the fellow as the author of “just one novel,” and while I loved The Catcher in the Rye as much as anyone (so much!), I am a bit miffed for Franny and Zooey and Nine Stories (one of my lifetime fave short-story collections), and even Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters and Seymour: an Intorduction, the first half of which I did truly enjoy (and the second…oh dear).

But I can’t feel quite as sad as I think I ought to about the passing of such a great author. Of course, I didn’t know him personally (though my cousin did meet him once in the library at Dartmouth, a fact I always try to seem unimpressed about, and fail). It’s more that I haven’t been reading straight along with him–he stopped publishing decades ago, and I haven’t read any Salinger for the first time since my teens. Unlike, say, Mr. Updike, we weren’t moving along together.

There is a bit of excitement going around that now all his output for the last many years will be revealed and published. I’m not sure that would happen, and anyway, though I greatly hope for something that can stun me like For Esme, with Love and Squalor, I fear a reprise of Hapworth 16, 1924, the last of his published work (in the New Yorker in 1965–that same cousin photocopied an old library copy). I hate that story, though in googling it just now I found some people like. Who knew? It is deeply boring to me. So I am worried that now lots of books will come out by Salinger and I will read them and not like them and be disappointed.

2) From a literary end to a literary beginning: I went with blogger and friend Kerry Clare and her daughter Harriet to Mables Fables in celebration of Family Literacy Week (which is, as it turns out, is not real–it is only Family Literacy Day except on Kerry’s blog. But I am still going to most my family-literacy post today or possibly tomorrow, in solidariy!

*Anyway,* our fieldtrip was wonderful, prefaced by cake and punctuated by the stroller blowing down the sidewalk past the store window. Even if you aren’t particularly interested in seeing photos of a bookstore (er, but why *not*?) you should click on Kerry’s link to see pictures of Harriet, a very lovely baby with great, if over-literal, taste in books!

RR

January 26th, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews *Bech at Bay* by John Updike

I first encountered Henry Bech in Updike’s first collection of stories about the fellow, Bech: a book, when I was about 10. I had pulled it off my parents’ shelves because the name was somewhat close to Becky and, likely, because I was very bored on some rainy day. I flipped around until I encountered the word “orgasm”–one of Bech’s mistresses could have one on the New York subway, but only certain lines–and I realized it was not a book I was up to. I put it back wishing I was a kid who went *towards* the dirty bits, rather than being alarmed by them and fleeing.

Imagine my surprise when, last winter, a fellow-writer enthused over Bech, and said I had to read it. Imagine my surprise when I loved it! Bech is such a slow, sleepy, dopey guy in this book, his life largely structure by the success of a book he wrote when he was so young he can’t relate to it, and by the baffling, aggressive, subway-orgasm-having women in his life. There’s tonnes of lit-gossip in the book–largely about fictional writers, but occasionally Roth or some similar mid century man will turn up. Bech can be a malicious gossip inside his own head, but terribly funny. The character is Jewish, and Updike isn’t, and I know some criticism has turned on whether this portrait is a caricature, but I find it too human, too intelligent and funny, for that. The Jewish thing does come up an awful lot, though. We keep get a few too many lines like, “It was hard to tell with Wasp males how old they were; they don’t stop being boys.” “Bech Presides”

I received the two sequels, Bech Is Back and Bech at Bay (that second link there has the book labelled “family saga”–what??) for my birthday, and read the first last fall and the second just now (I thought this would complete my Bech reading, but apparently there is one other story hiding in The Complete Henry Bech. They always do that with compilations of old work–how annoying! How am I going to get it??)

I really enjoyed *Bech Is Back.” It had all his usual staples, my favourite of which is baffled yet sardonic interior monologue while being on literary or “cultural” tours of foreign countries. And *Bech at Bay* promised more of the same, starting with, “Bech in Czech,” which is about what you’d expect (oh, that sentence rhymed!) Detractors of these Bech Abroad stories (there are perhaps half a dozen such stories; I’m not sure how many detractors) might claim that these seem to be too much simply Updike’s own observations on the book-tour life, thinly veiled in a Jew’d up, less-successful, more-venal form.

I don’t, usually, think that–Bech is a pretty well-fleshed, uniquely voiced character. And his work diverges pretty sharply with Updike’s (Bech is far less self-referential!) Occasionally, their sensibilities collide and you think either could be narrating, but that’s all right–all authors have at least a few things in common with all their characters. Also, then we get passages like this:

“The historical fullness of Prague, layer on layer, castles and bridges and that large vaulted hall with splintered floorboards where jousts and knightly elections used to be held; museums holding halls of icons and cases of bluish Bohemian glass and painted panoramas of the saga of the all-enduring Slavs; tilted streets of flaking plasterwork masked by acres of scaffolding; that clock in Old Town Square where with a barely audible whirring a puppet skeleton tolls the hour and the twelve apostles and that ultimate bogeyman Jesus Christ twitchily appear in two little windows above and, one by one, bestow baleful wooden stares upon the assembled tourists; the incredible visual patisserie of baroque church interiors, mock-marble pillars of paint-veined gesso melting upward into trompe-l’oeil ceilings bubbling with cherubs, everything gilded and tipped and twisted and skewed to titillate the eye, huge wedding-cake interiors meant to stun Hussite peasants back into the bosom of Catholicism–all this overstuffed Christian past afflicted Beck like a void, a chasm that he could float across in the dew-fresh mornings as he walked the otherwise untrod oval path but which, over the course of each day, like pain inflicted under anaesthesia, worked terror upon his subconscious.” “Bech in Czech”

Pretty good, huh?

People who know these books are often a bit surprised that I’m such a Bech fan–I mean, they get why I like the language and the structure and the jokes, but why do I like *Bech*? It’s the morality that gets a few, but I wasn’t troubled even when he cheated on his (very recent) wife at the end of *Bech Is Back*. In the third set of stories, Henry’s in his 60s and 70s, dallying with ever-younger women, who are quite susceptible to his charms. It’s unlovely behaviour, but he is as often seduced as seducer and I found I bought it–all the dalliances seemed in keeping with the character Updike created, and while a little yucky, I think one of the joys of fiction is finding empathy with people we would not care to resemble, or even know, in real life.

*However*, there was a story in *Bech at Bay* that broke all these rules, and I hated it. It’s the second-last in the collection–thus, in the series (except for that lost one in *The Complete*)–and it’s called “Bech Noir.” Straight from the title, the piece announces itself as a genre spoof, and though it hasn’t much to do with Dashell Hammett, it has only slightly more to do with Bech. The piece concerns the same guy we’ve been reading about straight along–smart but pretentious, shy but vain, lecherous, envious, easily swayed–only now he gives in to his worst instincts and deliberately shoves a critic who had panned his work off a subway platform.

!!!

Not only would the character of the last 2-and-2/3 books not have been capable of doing that, *no one* would have been capable of doing a lot of what comes next–this first success launches a murderous spree that, if not impossible, is at least preposterous. And silly, and totally out of keeping with the other stories in the series.

In truth, if I came upon “Bech Noir” printed alone somewhere and read it having never seen the characters, I would have enjoyed it mildly, as a piece of highly erudite showing-off–a literary author taking a kooky excursion into genre to see how well he does. And that probably *is* what this is–Updike doing an experiment with a character he knows and feels comfortable with.

Obviously, his editors didn’t find the disjoint too jarring to keep the piece in–but then again, it is Updike, so who would argue? But it doesn’t work, fictionally, to have most of the pieces be seriously realistic fiction, and then have one be a writing-workshop lark! I feel sort of maimed as a reader, as if I had a relationship with someone on the Internet whose photo turned out to be from the Sears catalogue. I invested in Bech as a multi-dimensional, nuanced character, and I feel like “Bech Noir” says, “ha, fooled ya–he’s not realistic at all!”

The thing is, you can’t even mentally excise it from the canon , because the final story in the collection, “Bech and the Bounty of Sweden” builds on certain events that took place in “Bech Noir.” What’s interesting here is that the latter story is a return to form–Bech baffled and passive and interacting with the world like human being instead of a plot device. “Sweden” is also very funny and wise, with an ending (thus, the ending of the book) that is just perfect–hopeful and funny and strange and true.

So, what then? A good book with one story I disliked, right–no problem? Except that one story casts doubt on my whole understanding of the fictional project the author was undertaking? Or the project of fiction, period? Or what? Mr. Updike, how could you do this to me?

On the whole, though, it was a pretty good book.
RR

January 25th, 2010

Mark Purvis, 1975-2009

When I was one, my family moved into a new house. The family moving out had lost their little boy to a car when he ran into the road. He was two.

When I was in grade five, a grade-six boy in my school died in what was either a bizarre accident or a suicide.

Someone in my highschool committed suicide when I was in grade 11, and we made a memorial page in the yearbook though I don’t think many people actually knew the deceased–I don’t even know what grade he was in–which might have been part of the problem.

About four years back, a boy who had been close to my family died under circumstances I never fully understood. He was two years younger than me.

Twice in past few years, I have come across “in memoriams” in my university alumni magazine of names I recognize–one a friend of friends, one a student politician. Both died in accidents in the mountains, years and continents apart.

Those above are, until now, all the people I know in my own age group who have died.

I met Mark Purvis when we were both involved in the short-lived Free Biscuit Theatre project (apparently no web-legacy remains) in 2007-2008. I joined despite not being an actor or theatre person because I thought writing words for someone to say as opposed to read would teach my something.

It did, but I also get pressed to perform, to serve shooters at a fundraiser, to do movement exercises and generally go way outside my comfort zone. I also got the great pleasure of shutting up and listening in presence of people who were educated and passionate about something I had only ever seen from the outside.

Mark was foremost in that regard–a dedicated actor who wasn’t serious about much else. He had endless energy to try *anything* anyone suggested–I never saw him perform as a clown, but he loved that as much as the “serious” parts I did see him in. He played Mathias in the play that’s linked there, *The Bells*, a massive and demanding and very bizarre role he did for Free Biscuit. He was wall-to-wall amazing and the production brought tremendous accolades (to be fair, all the Biscuits were outstanding, but Mark had the starring role).

Mark also had a fairly strong math and spreadsheet ability, gained in various dayjobs. He volunteered to use his not-much-loved gifts to do the Free Biscuit bookkeeping. He never complained about the extra work, and I’m pretty sure he used his control of our funds to make sure he was never paid at all for his performance in *The Bells*.

I didn’t really know Mark all that much–we hung out every few weeks for a year–but I always felt really amazed at how seriously he took me, and how much he wanted to help with my sad attempts at at performance. Once, he and his girlfriend took an entire evening to go through my 10-minute monologue over and over again with me until I no longer (quite) wanted to die at the thought of doing it in front of an audience, and I know they listened seriously and intently every single time.

Once, a bunch of us went out to the suburbs to see Mark perform in an outdoor Shakespearian festival. When the performance got rained out, we repaired to Crabby Joe’s in a not-ironic-enough urban gesture, where Mark regaled us with crazy, hilarious, filthy stories. I was so proud when we realized the couple at the next table had stopped speaking to each other entirely, the better to overhear.

Once, Mark and his girlfriend had a miniperformance at their place because they had built a *stage* in their living room (with lights!) Mark comforted me about my terror of performing by telling me the story of the time he met William Shatner.

This is a memorial to a person I didn’t know well–perhaps not even a friend but rather one of those wonderful acquaintances that make life joyful. I feel lucky to have met him, and shocked that he passed away. It is terrifying to me that someone could be my own age and no longer alive–I’m not nearly ready.

Of course, no one is ever ready. All we can do, I think, is as Mark did: everything we can for everyone we meet in the moment that we are.

RR

January 23rd, 2010

Bits

I have no major theme or connective tissue for today, just a little things I’ve been thinking of and would like to share with you. Please do not attempt to take them as a whole; they certainly do not come to more than the sum of their parts. I’ll try to visually separate everything on the page for you.

——————–

I like rules. Maybe more than a so-called creative person should or is expected to, I enjoy being told what to do. I gleefully tell potential employers that I take direction well, and I really mean it. My friend P calls this my desire to “outsource my thinking,” and she’s spot-on–I appreciate it when someone will bother to form a plan or opinion where I have none–saves me the trouble, and provides the illusion of an ordered universe. Obvious, this won’t work well with things that matter a lot to me (ie., my writing, my clothes, what I’m going to eat), but I am really appreciative of advice (or imperitives) on such low-stakes issues as where to put the butter dish, when to send thank-you notes, and where I may wear my hat.

Yep, I’m an etiquette junky. When I was a tiny, I somehow picked up the Emily Post Book of Etiquette a great aunt had given my mother for high-school graduation (in a much much different edition than pictured here). And I’ve been a lifelong devote to her newspaper columns, and now the family (there’s dozens of’em) have a website. Lately, when I’ve been feeling blue or harried or as if the world just weren’t up to the white glove test, I’ve been turning to the Post family’s Etiquette Daily blog, and it’s been making me feel better. I thought I’d share my story, and the link, in case it might make you feel better, too.

——————–

Kerry Clare wrote this amazing post I think you should read, called Escape the Ego. Don’t be alarmed by the fact that it seems to be about a book called Eat Pray Love–I’m not sure what that is either, but I’m wary enough of the title that I’m not going to Google you a link (sorry!). Anyway, the post isn’t really about that book–it’s about why we read, and write, and what happens when we do. And it contains this beautiful paragraph:

“…I read, I think, to break it down and enable me to see the world in miniature, as manageable. Which, however conversely, is to be able to look at the big picture and regard it all at once, perhaps for the very first time. Fiction is a study in the hypothetical, a test-run for the actual. An experiment. What if the world was this? And we can watch the wheels turn and this bit of sample life run its course to discover. And I don’t mean that literature is smaller than life, no. Literature is life, but it’s just life you can hold in your hand, stick in your backpack, and I’m reassured by that, because the world is messy and sprawling, but if you take it down to the level of story, I am capable of some kind of grasp. Of beginning to understand what this world is, how to be in it.”

To which I say, yes. Also, wow.

——————–

Paul Quarrington has died, another hard blow in a rough week for CanLit. I hadn’t, in truth, read much of Quarrington’s work, but I was a big fan of his live performances–a great reader, a great speaker, a surprising good singer (I saw his band, The Pork Belly Futures play in Winnipeg because I was all alone and it was either that or stare at my hotel-room wall–and they were brilliant!!) He had a wonderful big warm presence, and an off-the-cuff joy in performing. I actually went to so many Quarrington events, and just ran into him randomly at so many litsy things, that he started smiling and saying hi to me, even though he had no idea who I was. I was in the process of working up the nerve to introduce myself, and now I am not going to get to do it. Which is sad. But I will be reading the books.

——————

And so ends another miscellaneous week. Hope this finds you well!
RR

January 22nd, 2010

An end to villainy

This is not a new year’s resolution, because I was working on it in 2009 too, but something I’ve committed to in my fiction is to try never to write villains. Why? Because villains aren’t people. Well, no character in fiction is an actual person, much as I like to relate to them. Better explanation: villains are not characters that act like real people–they exist purely to thwart other characters, for reasons of plot, not emotion, context, or necessity. When they are done kicking the babies, chopping down the old-growth forest and eating the last cookie, they go into the cupboard and shut themselves down until the author needs them to go cause more havoc. That’s a reference to Vicki, the human-like robot on Small Wonder). When the family wasn’t interacting with her, she was in a cupboard, switched off, mindless and inert. Like Vicki, villains have little motivation or inner life; they aren’t really characters, because they exist only to act out the designs or wishes of others. When Vicki is not being seen by others, her own consciousness stops–she has no opinions of herself until she is flicked back to life for a new interaction.

Which is, of course, fine in certain sorts of writing–often in genre stuff, children’s stuff–who wants to know what the black-hatted cowboy or Gargamel should be so industriously evil?

But that’s not the sort of stories I’m interested in writing–I really am trying to mimic how real people actually are (sometimes I have less interest in real settings or plot elements–witness stories about urban flying lessons and cheerleaders from other planets). And I guess this is a personal assumption, but I don’t think people, even assholes, generally perceive themselves to be assholes. I mean, some people just *are* but I don’t think *they* think they are. Like the lady who shoves me out of the way to be first in line at the newly opened cashier at Metro–an unqualified loser move, but I very much doubt that her interior monologue says, “Ok, time for an unqualified loser move!” She thinks about her kids waiting at home for her, or maybe I cut her off somewhere else in the store and she’s getting revenge, or maybe she’s so absorbed in her thoughts of her next manicure that she doesn’t even see me.

I don’t actually care–I’m just annoyed for a moment and then I get distracted by a recipe magazine in the checkout stand and that’s the end of it. And I don’t have to care, being just a human, but as a writer I think I would–have to give any character occupying my stage a reasonable point of view, because nobody actually hops out of bed in the morning thinking, “Bwa, I’m a bitch.” Everyone thinks they’ve got their reasons. I think many of them are *wrong* in their reasons, but they still have them.

Anyhow, that’s how I see the world, so it bugs me when I read about characters that don’t seem to have a real moral compass. I don’t at all mind characters that are immoral or amoral (lots of people are) but I need a writer to either show me how that works internally, or at least strongly imply that there is a way it works. Maybe it’s been too many novels about vengeful ex-wives cutting the power supply and crazy employers extending work hours, but these villainous type characters often seem like a shortcut to manufacturing tension in a plot where none really exists.

I’ve definitely wrestled with this in my own work–sometimes I don’t know why a minor character did some jerky thing and I don’t really care, and then I realize that the whole section reads really false–manufactured plot. So I go back and think through the backstory and often have to change things, because no one except the truly deranged would spend that amount of time and energy trying to mess with someone for no apparent gain. So I write it differently–sometimes I take the villain out of the story, sometimes they get a little nicer, sometimes they remain total jerks but they get some logical motivations for their jerkiness. Once I wound up flipping the whole story to write it from the “mean” person’s POV. Some of these villains are pretty interesting, when you get to know them.

RR