A Quote I Like From Barbara Rogan

The harder we make life for our protagonists, the greater the obstacles they have to overcome, the more readers will care. One of the problems I see in a lot of student fiction (and occasionally in my own) is that writers feel too much for their protagonists and thus take pity on them. But writing requires a certain level of ruthlessness. Sometimes, to be kind to our readers, we must be cruel to our characters. 

*    Barbara Rogan 

View the complete article from her blog

Pipelines and Destruction

          Don't worry, they say, the pipeline is safe, and it will add jobs to your community. The trees will grow back, you'll barely notice the scar running across this beautiful landscape, and for those of you that remember what the coal companies did to the hills and the streams of Eastern Kentucky and Western Virginia, rest assured, this is different. Trust us.

Why do they put up with us?

           “I won’t be too late,” I say to her, and she scowls at me as she heads off to prepare herself for bed. I return to my writing, caught up in a whirlwind of new ideas, new characters, and plot changes, all of them, simultaneously, screaming for release. For hours, I’m consumed as the clock continues to tick away, completely unaware of time or space. Once the whirlwinds finally die down into a raging squall, I open the bedroom door and slide into bed, hoping she’s not upset. With trepidation, I ease myself between the sheets. 

            I then stroke her silky, soft hair and instantly find comfort, peace, and solace as I nestle myself up against her sleeping body. She stirs. I wonder, for a moment, if she knows how beautiful she really is, and I close my eyes as I gently trace the outline of her face, feeling her image in my mind. She purrs softly and I whisper, “I love you.” She pulls her pillow close and whispers back, “I love you, too, baby.”

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses by Mark Twain (paraphrased)

I have taken the liberty of removing most of Twain's comments that are aimed directly at Cooper's novel, "Deerslayer", and indirectly at Cooper's writing abilities. And while I, in no form or fashion, believe that I am worthy of editing anything written by Samuel Clemens, I do believe that these simple rules stand strong by themselves, without the scathing reviews. My apologies to Mr. Twain and, on behalf of Mr. Twain, my apologies to Fenimore Cooper. 


Here is a portion of the bastardized text with Twain's rules intact.

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction -- some say twenty-two. In "Deerslayer," Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. 

2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. 

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. 

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. 

5. The require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. 

6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. 

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. 

8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by either the author or the people in the tale.

9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. 

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. 

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. 

In addition to these large rules, there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

* Credit to Mark Twain