It’s amazing what a group of dedicated fans can do. Now, if only we could stop world hunger…

One of the craft books that I’ve read that has a lot of good pointers on point of view is TOOLS OF THE WRITER’S CRAFT by SANDS HALL. I got the book when I was at Squaw Valley. She has a lot of good pointers on how to use omniscient point of view and using sensory details to ground through the character. Also, there are some fantastic exercises in the back of the book.

One of the things I try to do is only shift POV at scene breaks because  a scene break is a clear indicator that something has changed. I also try to make sure the narrating character is always the one who has the most to lose, or is the only one with a specific piece of information, within the scene. Orson Scott Card suggests choosing narrators who hurt the most.

Whenever I open a scene, I try to tell my readers right away whose head they are in by 1) putting the narrating characters name somewhere in the first sentence, 2) including sensory details that immediately ground you in the narrating character’s body; as I’ll mention below, there is a hierarchy for how quickly a sensory detail will place you in a character’s body. Also, one of the authors I like to read suggests trying to use each of the five senses every two pages when writing a first draft in order to make sure you are grounded.

The hierarchy of sensory details are (this is from Sands Hall’s book):

1. Sight and Sound
2. Smell
3. Taste
4. Touch, tactile feeling
5. Emotional feelings and thought

For example, when a character notices some detail through sight or sound, it isn’t very personal because a whole bunch of people in a room can see/hear the same thing. Smell is a little more personal because smell is often attached to memory, but if you’ve ever walked past an ice cream parlor baking waffle cones you know that smell isn’t always very personal either—everyone else on the street is smelling the same thing you’re smelling. Touch is probably the most personal of the five senses because when you touch something, or feel your shirt dampen from sweat and stick to your back, you are the only person feeling that.

Thought and emotional feelings are the closest you can get to a character; I have to admit that I struggle with this one. One of the critiques I’ve gotten about my work is of having these free-floating statements wandering around my prose that sound more like author-intrusions instead of character-thoughts.

I recently read I AM LEGEND by RICHARD MATHESON and tried to underline every instance of thought, paying particular attention to when he slipped in and out of free-indirect discourse. I learned a lot.

“What if they were already waiting for him? How could he possibly get in the house? He forced himself to be calm. He mustn’t go to pieces now; he had to keep himself in check. He’d get in. Don’t worry, you’ll get inside, he told himself. But he didn’t see how. One hand ran nervously through his hair. This is fine, fine, commented his mind. You go to all that trouble to preserve your existence, and then one day you just don’t come back in time. Shut up! His mind snapped back at itself. But he could have killed himself for forgetting to wind his watch the night before. Don’t bother killing yourself, his mind reflected, they’ll be glad to do it for you.”

There is a lot of action in this paragraph: 1) he is shifting between thought and physical observation, 2) He is having a conversation with himself. Whenever the prose is presented as a question (“How could he possible get in the house?”), or exclamation (“Shut up!”), or uses repetition (“This is fine, fine”), it sounds like a thought. Switching to first and second-person in a new sentence (“You go to all that trouble to preserve your existence…”) has the effect of thought. Also, notice that when he zooms out into physical detail (“One hand ran nervously through his hair”) he has to use several clues to signal that the next sentence is a thought: repetition (“…fine, fine…”), and an attribution qualifier (“commented his mind”).

The best way I have to explain free-indirect discourse is to show what it is in relationship to the other forms of discourse. (I got these examples from Wikipedia).

QUOTED, OR DIRECT DISCOURSE: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. “And just what pleasure have I found, since I came into this world?” he asked.

REPORTED, OR INDIRECT DISCOURSE: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. He asked himself what pleasure he had found since he came into this world.

FREE-INDIRECT DISCOURSE: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. And just what pleasure had he found, since he came into this world?

Anyway, that’s all I know. It’s way harder in practice than in theory     I hope this is helpful.

Works Cited

Hall, Sands. Tools of the Writer’s Craft. 2005. Moving Finger Press: San Francisco, 2007.

Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend. 1995. Orb, Tom Doherty Associates: New York, 1997.

I think the reason I wanted to write a second novel before I was done editing my first was because I was nervous about the dreaded Second-Novel Hump. There are lots of people who can write one novel, but when it comes to writing a second…that seems to be harder because writing a novel is no longer an exciting new activity. I’ve heard of writers whose first novels were published and years passed before they could get up the guts to write a second.

I guess writing something new was my solution to avoiding writer’s block.

True Blood is an interesting show to watch because of the cliffhangers they use at the end of each episode and season. There are long and short moments of tension and when and episode ends, it always happens in the midst of a plot thread. Tension like this can be held indefinitely. It is like watching someone breathe in, and waiting for them to exhale, but the exhale never comes. It suspends our expectations.

The two major plot threads that follow the Godric and Maryann mysteries are knotted together by a their religious theme and parallel structure. They both begin during the daylight and reach their conclusions during the night. The refrain, “I used to be like you,” is repeated between someone within the fold—whichever fold that may be—to someone they are wishing to convert. Sarah Newlin says it to Jason in “Scratches” and Daphne says it to Sam in “Release Me.” The phrase is used to convey pity toward the person who has not yet been “saved.”

Orson Scott Card talks about something called the MICE quotent, which stands for Mileu, Idea, Character, and Event and he supposes that, while each are important components of a story, there is usually one main point the story is built around. Mileau stories are usually journey stories that begin when a character arrives at a place and ends when the character leaves—think Gulliver’s Travels. Idea stories can be rephrased as “What if” stories, or mysteries. The True Blood story concept is based on the idea model: What if Vampires “came out of the closet” and asked for regular rights as citizens? Who murdered the women? Who is the body in the car? Who took Goderic? Who took Bill? “A problem or question is posed at the beginning of the story, and at the end of the tale the answer is revealed” (51). The question must remain unanswered so that it maintains tension throughout the season, but no sooner is the question resolved, but a new question must be posed. The story of that began season 2 of True Blood was “who killed the woman in Andy’s car?” and the story is not finished until the answer is revealed, when Eggs confesses and brings the murder weapon to Andy Bellefleur. The very next scene is when Bill disappears…thus setting up the question for the next season. This is part of how True Blood maintains tension between episodes and seasons.

Some of the other tools that are used to create unity is to think about the various plot lines as threads in a braid that occasionally need to be intersected, or bound together to create unity (Dibell 65). Some of the major fractures that happen is when Jason leaves Bon Temps an goes to Texas to the camp. The way they keep the tension and make it seems like Jason hasn’t fallen out of the story is by repeating and mirroring scenes, dialog, and content. For example, in “Scratches” there is a scene that ends with Sookie screaming, and then Jason wakes up screaming, as if the two siblings are connected by psychic connection. Another way the plot threads are knotted together is that Jason talks about Sookie when she is not present. Or there are mirroring in events: like dinner at Maryann’s house, followed by Jason having dinner at the Newlins’. There are numerous repetitions: repetitions of phrases, music, images and sounds. The effect on this is a knitting together between each of the plot threads. Lots of cross-over.

One of the techniques is to have repeated locations, but with variations on a theme. For example, the scenes at the swimming hole between Sam and Daphne are repeated first in a sexy way in “Scratches”, and then in a menacing way when Daphne explains that the Maryann is a maenad in “Release Me,” and finally in a deadly way when Maryann greets Daphne by caressing her cheek like a lover while Eggs stabs her in the heart.

Repeated refrains are also used, as in the phrase, “What are you?” which is asked by Sam to Daphne, Tara to Maryann, Eric to Sookie, and Maryann to Sookie.

I also noticed that during each episode during the first two-thirds of the season there were alternating scenes that affirmed the information you already knew, and scenes with new information. During the last third of the season the story was basically about answering questions raised during the first two thirds. I don’t know if this is a special formula, but it seems to have something to do with the pacing.

• Card, Orson Scott. Elements of Fiction: Character & Viewpoint. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest books, 1988.
• Dibell, Ansen. Elements of Fiction: Plot. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest books, 1988.
• “Release Me.” Dir. Michael Ruscio. Writ. Raelle Tucker. Perf. Anna Paquin, Christopher Gartin, Ryan Kwanten, and Ashley Jones. True Blood. Season 2. 2009.
• “Scratches.” Dir. Scott Winant. Writ. Raelle Tucker. Perf. Sam Trammel and Anna Camp. True Blood. Season 2. 2009.

What works so well for True Blood is that it has alternate plots and alternate main characters. It is part of the nature of serial narrative that since the story is ongoing, the other characters can make something of the narrative space they are given. Even so, the narrative space certain characters are given depend on how much other characters rely on that main character’s plot line for unity.

At the top of the hierarchy is Sookie Stackhouse and we know this because so many of the other character’s plot threads connect back to her somehow. Everybody wants her: Bill wants her; Eric wants her; Sam wants her; Maryann, the maenad, wants her; and the Queen of Louisiana wants her. Each season begins and ends with Sookie and if she died there would no longer be a story. She needs to stay alive so that everybody can keep wanting her. The part of Sookie which is unfamiliar is her telepathic ability. This adds enough spice to keep everyone interested in her.

Next on the hierarchy of characters are Sookie’s supernatural love interests: Bill Compton, Eric Northman, and Sam Merlotte, in that order. These love interests are passionate, sensitive, a dangerous, and they seem to have plenty of money. Sex, death, love, and money are key ingredients to any object of desire—male, female, or other—and if you add mystery into the mix you have described every major love affair from Jane Eyre’s Edward Rochester to the Jay Gatsy to Edward Cullin in Twilight. Bill Compton is the frontrunner for Sookies affections because he embodies “a new combination of undead chum and unnaturally attentive lover, a sort of guardian angel with fangs” (Tyree 32). His courtliness toward Sookie and his respect for human life makes him unique among the vampires, and thus, special.

The rest of the major characters—Tara, Sam, Jason, Lafayette, Jessica, and Hoyt—are interesting enough that they could each be protagonists of their own show. Most of those characters long for intimacy yet have major handicaps they must overcome. Tara is handicapped by her relationship with her alcoholic mother and that she just can’t seem to get it together with men. Sam is handicapped by his abandonment as a child. Jason is handicapped by his stupidity. Hoyt is handicapped by his overbearing mother. Jessica is handicapped by how much she doesn’t know about being a vampire. Lafayette is the most self-realized in that he doesn’t hide who he is, “an unpredictable, impressible, and impish figure, a short-order cook, male prostitute, and drug dealer,” but unfortunately who he is makes him a target for many other people (Tyree 34).

They each have a lot to lose and each of their struggles puts them up against their Achilles heal, and “the more helpless the character and more terrible the danger, the more importance the audience will attach to the character” and the bigger the payoff promises to be at the end (Card 70).

•  Card, Orson Scott. Elements of Fiction: Character & Viewpoint. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest books, 1988.
• Tyree, J.M. “Warm-Blooded: True Blood and Let the Right One In.” Film Quarterly, Vol 6, No 2. pps 31-37. 2009.
• Woloch, Alex. The One vs. The Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel. 2003. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

With regards to history, True Blood has riffed off of our modern world by creating an alternate history, one where vampires have come out of the closet, so to speak. The power of this alternate reality comes from its attention to detail. For example, “the fake commercials and vampire-rights campaign spots included in the DVD extras are” arguably “wittier than the show itself” (Tyree 32-34). The style and rhetoric of the commercials are familiar to us, but the content is not. This creates a feeling that is both familiar and strange at same time, in a word: uncanny. Also, some of the details go beyond the show itself—like the fact that Jessica, one of the characters, has a video blog at www.babyvamp-jessica.com

There are other details, like in the episode “Nothing But The Blood” when Nan Flanagan, the spokeswoman of the American Vampire League, joins a “live” news broadcast with Reverend Brad Newlin. Everything about the set-up seems familiar: the news-crawl at the bottom of the screen, and the idea of a “live” bout between the ultra-conservative and the ultra-liberal spokespeople displayed for a national audience. The especially nice touch is that Newlin is in Alabama, and Nan is in Tokyo during. That she is in Tokyo emphasizes several things about their world: first, that she is a vampire and can’t come out in the daytime, and second, that Brad Newlin is unwilling to accommodate her by having the interview after dark, which means that Nan is inconvenienced by having to fly to the opposite side of the globe for a three-minute news broadcast; that she does it, and we see her with city lights gleaming behind her, emphasizes that she is in a class above Newlin and can afford the inconvenience.

There are other details that add to the realism of the world: the special vampire airplanes equipped to carry coffins, and the special light-tight hotel rooms, which have mini-bars stocked with overpriced beverages, and that there is vampire porn on pay-per-view. These are small details, but they have the weight of global economics behind them. All of these details—the cell-phones, the discussions between Eric and Bill about who has more money, and the hotel porn—add to the sense that the world we are watching is real. “Vivid detail is the life blood of fiction” (Gardner 26). This is a technique that any author can use when creating a world: elevating mundane details by giving it a twist.

Another thing I noticed about the True Blood world is that there are certain chronotopic centers of action where time slows down many characters are brought together. The one of the major chronotopic centers is Merlotte’s bar. “From a narrative and compositional point of view, this is the place where encounters occur” and multiple storylines cross (Bakhtin 246). During the scenes that take place at Merlotte’s, the camera will pan around the bar as we glimpse multiple plot threads intersecting: Sam looks at Tara; Tara talks with Sookie; Sookie talks with Jason; and Jason talks with Hoyt. Each time we see the different characters interact with each other, it’s like you’re taking the plot threads and knotting them together. Having a chronotopic meeting space like Merlotte’s solidifies the stories and shows that they are all related. Without a chronotopic space like Merlotte’s to ground the story, the different plot threads might separate and float away from each other. In stories with multiple points of view it’s good to have more than one unifying factor.

The vampires are also chronotopic. They are immortal and whenever the humans are around them, they begin to transform their daily routines to fit the vampires, as one character points out to Sookie in the episode “Release Me” during a discussion about what it’s like to date a vampire. Whenever the characters are in Vampire time they enter a countdown until dawn. During the vampires’ flashbacks the appear the same age even though the historic dress around them has changed. The vampires are in a state of non-time. There is a tension between the vampires as well since some of the characters, like Eric Northman, are better at adapting to modern technology and modern values, while other vampires cling to antiquity.

Mythology and chronotope are connected in that they have an impact in something that makes a story appear, both present and “timeless.” The mythological nature of immortal beings is part of what makes the vampires chronotopic. Anything with mythological connotations helps create the chronotopic weight, and I think it’s the weight of the chronotope that sucks the reader out of their daily lives and into the story. Chronotopes seems to be a major part of what sucks a person into a story, it tugs at our minds much in the way that gravity tugs at our body. This is an important tool for writers to know they have: to be conscious of situations, people and places that have chronotopic and/or mythological weight.

• Bahktin, Mikhail. Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel. 1973.
• Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction. 1933. New York: Vintage, 1991.
• “Nothin’ but the Blood.” Dir. Daniel Minahan. Writ. Alexander Woo. Perf. Jessica Tuck and Michael McMillian. True Blood. Season 2. 2009.
• “Release Me.” Dir. Michael Ruscio. Writ. Raelle Tucker. Perf. Anna Pawuin, Christopher Gartin, Ryan Kwanten, and Ashley Jones. True Blood. Season 2. 2009.
• Tyree, J.M. “Warm-Blooded: True Blood and Let the Right One In.” Film Quarterly, Vol 6, No 2. pps 31-37. 2009.

Fiction is better than film at replicating thought and creating the connective tissue between ideas. The novel-form excels at a certain kind of expanding perception, but cannot do the same things a movie can (Forster 81).

Even though there are many cinematography tools writers can’t use, a writer can still learn from watching a TV show like True Blood. Writers can learn storytelling techniques, such as the use of myth, plot, dialog, and pacing. Those are the tools I hope to deconstruct here.

The second point I’d like to make is that True Blood has many authors and I think it is the multiplicity of voice that gives the show its magic. The actors, the directors, the writers, the producers, the sound and set designers, the cinematographer…all of them are working together to create a unified vision.

What does this mean when it comes to picking whose name goes first on the credits? Far from being egalitarian, cinema is also a capitalistic enterprise and most good sales pitches involve some form of branding since “the author’s name is not simply an element in a discourse” but also “serves to characterize a certain mode of being of discourse” (Foucault 109). This is why True Blood is often referred to as belonging to Alan Ball even though he only wrote two out of the twelve episodes in season two—the rest of the episodes were written by Alexander Woo, Raelle Tucker, and Brian Buckner. Perhaps one of the reasons Alan Ball is given so much credit for True Blood is that its “gay-friendly conservatism” is found in some of Ball’s other projects, such as Six Feet Under, and American Beauty (Tyree 34). It’s part of his brand.

Even so, I think there is a lesson about cinema that shouldn’t be lost on aspiring authors: that truly vibrant stories are almost always the product of more than one mind much in the same way that myth is a part of our collective consciousness, even when it is being channeled through one person (Barthes 143). The more I learn about writing, the more I realize how much of a collaborative effort it is. It takes a village to raise a good story: from supportive spouses, to patient proofreaders, editors, publishers, and readers.

• Forster, E.M. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Harcourt, 1927.
• Tyree, J.M. “Warm Blooded: True Blood and Let the Right One In.” Film Quarterly, Vol 6, No 2. pps 31-37. 2009.
• Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image Music Text. New York: Hill & Wang, 1977.

In any case, that was when I first started feeling ashamed of the books I read for fun. Books acquired the same moral slant that food sometimes does: if a book was bland and bitter (like Brussels sprouts) than it was good for me; if it was sweet and airy (like birthday cake), than it was bad for me and I shouldn’t read it. I spent a decade cultivating my palate to appreciate the more delicate flavors of Camus, Steinbeck, and Tolstoy; while I can appreciate the classics now, there is still an element of doing penance for the books I’d rather be reading.

It wasn’t until I graduated from college that I really started diving back into that forbidden side of the bookstore, where dragons and vampires decorate dust jackets. As I began revisiting my childhood favorites, it quickly became clear that not all genre books are created equal. There are plenty of genre books that are packaged as entertainment but are actually quite smart.

As a writer, there is something that can be learned from “trashy” stories…mainly how to use their techniques to convey something with depth. I think Miss Persson was selling trashy stories short. There are a lot of techniques in pulp fiction—cliff hangers, heroes and villains, plot-driven story lines, sex and violence—that can be used to explore deeper issues…in other words, to make a literary story more interesting.

“Discourse has its units, its rules, its ‘grammar’” and much like grammar it is possible to learn the codes that storytellers use to make a story compelling and addictive (Barthes 240). Michael Chabon writes in his introduction to his book Maps and Legends that we writers must “take stories back” from charlatans and give our audiences stories that are both entertaining and smart. John Gardner, the author and teacher, suggests an exercise for his students to list typical genre elements and suggest ways those elements “might be elevated to serious fiction” (197).

In the next few posts I am going to attempt to “decode” how TRUE BLOOD manages to bridge the gap between entertainment and substance so that I can learn how to bridge that gap in my own fiction. One of the easiest ways to learn how to do it myself is by deconstructing and imitating the techniques of others whom I admire (Gardner 142).

• Barthes, Roland, and Lionel Duisit. “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.” New Literary History, Vol. 6, No. 2, On Narrative and Narratives. (Winter, 1975), pp. 237-272. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.
• Chabon, Michael. Maps and Legends.
• Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction. 1933. New York: Vintage, 1991.
• Ball, Alan and Charlaine Harris (creators). True Blood.  HBO. 2008-2010.