Nina Munteanu » literature

The Writing Life

Nina Munteanu — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:01:45 +0000

Hi there!

Nina Munteanu - The Writing Life

You’ve landed on the website of Nina Munteanu, internationally published Canadian SF author and ecologist. Nina is living her dream of the writing life! She is currently putting the finishing touches on her next science fiction novel. And if you’re lucky, you might catch her at one of her writing workshops where she coaches great fiction writing!

The Mentor: Nina is frequently sought after for one-on-one mentoring as well as personal coaching and group workshops on all aspects of writing and publishing. Because she has published frequently in both fiction and non-fiction, she knows exactly how to help her clients succeed in getting their works published.

The Ecologist: Nina currently does research and gives talks in science and limnology (No! That isn’t the study of limbs! She studies freshwater) and is driven by a passion to help keep our planet’s environment healthy. In April 2010 she will participate in talks with the Dalai Lama as part of the Mind and Life XX Conference on Altruism and Compassion in Economics in Zurich, Switzerland, where she will lead discussions on the use of ecological relationships in economic policy. Nina is a passionate traveler, and has tasted her way around the world from Bangkok to Paris.

The Author: Nina has published award-nominated short stories all over the planet (with translations into Greek, Romanian, Polish, and Hebrew). Her latest novel, “Darwin’s Paradox” (a science fiction ecological thriller by Dragon Moon Press), explores humanity’s co-evolution with machine intelligence and Nature’s intelligence. She also writes critical essays and reviews, several of which have appeared in Strange Horizons, IROSF, and The New York Review of Science Fiction. Her personal heroes include Dr. Lynn Margulis and author Ray Bradbury. Nina’s guidebook on writing, The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! is currently used in schools and universities across North America.

The Blogger: Nina is also The Alien Next Door, author of the award-wining blog which hosts lively discussions on pop culture, travel, science, writing and philosophy. Nina co-authors an environmental blog on climate change, Climate of Our Future. She frequently guest-blogs on Toulouse LeTrek, her feline friend’s travel blog.

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The Novelist–He said, She said: Using Dialogue

Nina Munteanu — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:11:00 +0000

One of the most important devices to spice up narrative and increase pace is the use of dialogue. There’s a reason for this: we read dialogue more quickly; it’s written in more fluid, conversational English; it tends to create more white space on a page with less dense text, more pleasing to the reader’s eye. Dialogue is action. It gets readers involved.

Good dialogue neither exactly mimics actual speech (e.g., it’s not usually mundane, repetitive or broken with words like “uh”) nor on the other extreme does it proselytize or educate the reader through long discourse (unless the character is that kind of person). Good dialogue in a story should be somewhere in the middle. While it should read as fluid conversation, dialogue remains a device to propel the plot or enlighten us to the character of the speaker). No conversation follows a perfect linear progression. People interrupt one another, talk over one another, often don’t answer questions posed to them or avoid them by not answering them directly. These can all be used by the writer to establish character, tension, and relationship.

Below, I provide a few tips when using dialogue in your story.

Show, don’t tell: a common error of beginning writers is to use dialogue to explain something that both participants should already know but the reader doesn’t. It is both awkward and unrealistic and immediately exposes you as a novice. For instance, avoid the use of “As you know…” It’s better to keep the reader in the dark for a while than to use dialogue to explain something. Which brings us to the next point.

Have your characters talk to each other, not to the reader: for instance, “Hello, John, you loser drunk and wayward son of the most feared gangster in town!” could be improved to, “You stink like a distillery, John! Wait ‘til papa’s thugs find you!”

Avoid adverbs: e.g., he said dramatically, she said pleadingly; instead look for better ways to express the way they said it with actual dialogue. That’s not to say you can’t use adverbs (I believe J.K. Rowling is notorious for this), just use them sparingly and judiciously.

Avoid tag lines that repeat what the dialogue already tells the reader: e.g., “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Do you have a dog?” she asked.

He said, she said: reduce tag lines where possible and keep them simple by using “said”; another sign of a novice is the overuse of words other than said (e.g., snarled, hissed, purred, etc.). While these can add spice, keep them for special places as they are noticed by the reader and will distract otherwise.

Pay consistent attention to a character’s “voice”: each character has a way of speaking that identifies them as a certain type of person. This can be used to identify class, education, culture, ethnicity, proclivities, etc. For instance one character might use Oxford English and another might swear every third word.

Use speech signatures: pick out particular word phrases for characters that can be their own and can be identified with them. If they have additional metaphoric meaning to the story, even better. For instance, I know a person who always adds “Don’t you think?” to almost everything they say. This says something about how that person… well, thinks… I knew another person who always added “Do you see?” at the end of their phrase. Again rather revealing.

Intersperse dialogue with good descriptive narrative: don’t forget to keep the reader plugged into the setting. Many beginning writers forget to “ground” the reader with sufficient cues as to where the characters are and what they’re doing while they are having this great conversation. This phenomenon is so common, it even has a name. It’s called “talking heads.”

Contradict dialogue with narrative: when dialogue contradicts body language or other narrative cues about the speaker, this adds an element of compelling tension and heightens reader excitement while telling them something important. Here are a few examples:

“How’d it go?”
“Great,” he lied.

“I feel so much better now,” she said, jaw clenched.
“It’s okay; I believe you.” His heart slammed.

Well, you get the picture, anyway. Hope this helps. Keep writing!

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Oryx & Crake–Book Review

Nina Munteanu — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:28:00 +0000

Margaret Atwood’s Booker Award nominee, “Oryx and Crake” is a sharp-edged, dark contemplative essay on the premise of where the myopia of greed, power and obsession with “self-image” and its outstripping of ethics and morality may take us. Replete with sordid subject matter and unlikeable but complex characters, Atwood’s gloomy post-apocalyptic tale follows the slow pace of introspection. It is a dark commentary rich with vivid, often viscerally provokative language, metaphor and symbolism.

“Oryx and Crake” is a dark “cautionary tale for a society addicted to vanity, greed and self.” Often sordid and disturbing, it depicts “an acquisitional era where everything from sex to learning is about power and ownership” (Sarah Barnett, Anglican Media). In her typical sharp-witted prose and edgy humor, Atwood “uses those rare birds, oryx and crake, like canaries in the mines,” says Victoria Bramworth of the Baltimore Sun, “to invoke a metaphor ? and warning ? for our times”.

The story begins with Jimmy, aka Snowman (as in Abominable), who lives a somnolent, disconsolate life in a post-apocalyptic world created by a worldwide biological catastrophe. Slowly starving to death, Snowman’s mind leap frogs back and forth between his haunting memories of an abysmally amoral past to his present empty existence as the apparent sole survivor except for a group of naïve genetically-engineered youths. They are called the children of Crake, Crakers (after his best friend, who ? you guessed it ? created them) and they regard Snowman as their caretaker-prophet-demi-god. He spends a great deal of time wallowing in mourning for his beloved, Oryx, and best friend, Crake, as he searches for supplies in a wasteland where freakish genetically-engineered animals ravage the Pleeblands (where ordinary people used to live) and the Compounds (that used to shelter the extraordinary). His journey back to Crake’s high-tech facility, where the genesis of the Paradice Project was conceived, is Snowman’s journey “home” to his past, which unfolds insidiously like a twisted version of Adam and Eve: And the Lord God commanded. . . “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”(Book of Genesis). And there was much of that. Dying. Decaying. Suffering. It plays out like a warped tragedy written by a toked-up Shakespeare, with Crake as the self-proclaimed god and snake in one, Oryx his ill-fated Eve, and Jimmy a callow and ineffectual Adam. Jimmy more aptly fulfills the role of the court jester, the Fool (there always is one in a Shakespeare play and he often fulfills the role of commentator).

Atwood fittingly paints Jimmy this way. He is basically an unappealing jerk (like most Fools); a debauched, morally dubious individual whose “life and circumstances,” according to critic Sarah Barnett, “beg our sympathy but many readers may be reluctant to give it.” Yet, by the last third of the novel, I found myself indeed sympathizing with him, despite his shortcomings, which began to wither next to the soulless actions of his best friend. It is at the same time that I also noticed I was no longer “observing” the book but “participating” in it. Somewhere around page 280 (the book runs 378 pages) I began to get involved. Up until then the story was mostly an exercise in literary cleverness, sharp dark wit, and smartly turned phrases ? my reaction being: “Ah, that was clever, Margaret! I see your point, Margaret!” Never, “Oh, my God, what’s going to happen next?” My patience was vindicated in the last third of the book, however, when this cornucopia of documentary-style detail ironically provided me with a wealth of material to draw and feel pathos for Snowman’s cascading plight toward the book’s inevitable and tragic climax. What Sawyer inneffectively attempts with detail, Atwood consumately achieves: she cooly subverts the reader into accepting and viscerally experiencing her “mundane” world.

So, why did Jimmy incite my compassion? Perhaps it was the mother in me hoping he’d find his way, his connection with his soul and the heart of humanity. Even the mother who abandoned him (to pursue her principals) makes a last feeble effort to instill this in him in her final message to him: “I love you. Don’t let me down, Jimmy.”

Atwood’s astute command of the grim subject matter explored in “Oryx and Crake” provides an edgy realism that is not found in much traditional science fiction. I think this is largely due to Atwood’s mainstream literature background and to her virtuoso writing style (yes, including all that detail!). This is why it works, despite not being terribly original within a purely SF context. What Atwood brings to us that is more important than originality is her gritty realism and a tone of visceral immediacy. Oryx and Crake is a poignant commentary of our disfunctional society of isolated, fearful people who have lost touch with what it is to be human. She has accurately captured a growing zeitgeist that has lost the need for words like honor, integrity, compassion, humility, forgiveness, respect and love in its vocabulary. And she has projected this trend into an alarmingly probable future. This is subversive SF at its best.

Atwood’s “Oryx & Crake” is a swift left hook in the gut from the darkness; for those willing to spend time reflecting on the dark poetry of Atwood’s smart and edgy slice-of-life commentary, there is much to gain in reading “Oryx and Crake”.

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The Novelist: Common Pitfalls of the Beginning Writer—Part 2: Language

Nina Munteanu — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:06:00 +0000

Are you just starting to write? Or better yet, nervously thinking of sending your cherished tome out? You may wish to do one more round of edits and apply these five things that I guarantee will improve your story:

1. Voice: This is the feel and tone that applies to the overall book (narrative voice) and to each character. The overall voice is dictated by your audience, who you’re writing for: youth, adults, etc. It’s important to give each character a distinctive “voice” (including use of distinct vernacular, use of specific expressions or phrases, etc.). This is one way a reader can identify a character and find them likeable—or not. In a manuscript I recently reviewed, I noticed that the characters spoke in a mixture of formal and casual speech. This confuses the reader and bumps them out of the “fictive dream”. Consistency is very important for readers. They will abandon a story whose writing is not consistent. So, my advice to this writer was to pick one style for each character and stick to it. Voice includes what a character says. It incorporates language (both speech and body movements), philosophy, humor. How a character looks, walks, talks, laughs, is all part of this. Let’s take laughter for instance: does your character tend to giggle, titter, chortle, gafaw, belly-laugh? Do any of your characters have conflicts with one another? Either through differences in opinions, agendas, fears, ambitions… etc. One learns so much from the kind of interaction a character has with his/her surroundings (whether it’s another character or a scene).

2. Point of View (POV): Many beginner’s novels are often told through no particular POV. Many first manuscripts often start in the omniscient POV (that of the narrator) and ever so often may lapse into one of the character’s POV briefly. This makes for very “telling vs showing” type of writing (not to mention being inconsistent again). 90% of writers do not write this way because it tends to be off-putting, it distances the reader from the characters, and is very difficult to achieve and be consistent with. Most writers prefer to use limited third person POV (told from one or a few key characters; that is, you get into the head and thoughts of only a few people: all the observations are told through their observations, what they see, feel and think). This bonds the reader to your characters and makes for much more compelling reading. I would highly suggest you adopt this style. That’s not to say that you can’t use several POVs… just not at the same time; it is the norm to use chapter or section breaks to change a POV.

3. Passive vs. Active Verbs: beginners often use a lot of passive verbs (e.g., were, was, being, etc.). Some use too may modifiers. Try to find more active verbs. Many writers fall into the pattern of using verbs that are weak and passive (and then adding a modifier to strengthen it…it doesn’t). Actively look for strong, vivid verbs. This is a key to good writing. I can’t emphasize this enough. For instance, which version is more compelling: ‘she walked quickly into the room’ or ‘she stormed into the room’?

4. Show, don’t tell: this is partly a function of POV and use of active verbs. Once you change to 3rd person, much of this will naturally resolve itself. An example of telling vs. showing is this: [He was in a rage and felt betrayed. “You lied, Clara,” he said angrily, grabbing her hand.] instead, you could show it: [His face smoldered. “You lied, Clara,” he roared, lunging for her.] Telling also includes large sections of exposition, either in dialogue or in narrative. This happens a lot in beginning writer’s stories. It takes courage and confidence to say less and let the reader figure it out. Exposition needs to be broken up and appear in the right place as part of the story. Story is paramount. “Telling” is one of the things beginning writers do most and editors will know you for one right away. Think of the story as a journey for both writer and reader. The writer makes a promise to the reader that s/he will provide a rip-roaring story and the reader comes on side, all excited. This is done through a confident tease in the beginning and slow revelation throughout the story to keep it compelling. Exposition needs to be very sparingly used, dealt out in small portions.

5. Unclutter your writing: There is a Mennonite adage that applies to writing: “less is more”. Sentences in early works tend to be full of extra words (e.g., using “ing” verbs, add-ons like “he started to think” instead of simply “he thought”). Cut down the words in your paragraphs (often in the intro chapters) by at least 20%. Be merciless; you won’t miss them, believe me, and you will add others later in your second round of edits.

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Bookseller burns books to protest low readership

Nina Munteanu — Thu, 31 May 2007 02:08:00 +0000

WOW! I can’t believe I’m still on this train of thought…but, thanks to blogger Joshua Varney (Cubicle Denizen), who sent me this news clip from the Houston Chronicle, I couldn’t help myself…It is so…well, you decide what it is. The story that ran in the Chronicle May 28, 2007 told of a Montana used books seller, Tom Wayne, who, after trying to give away surplus books from his store to no avail decided to burn them instead.

“This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today,” Wayne said as he lit his first batch of books outside his store. He quoted a 2002 study by the National Endowment for the Arts that revealed a reduction in ‘reading for pleasure’ by adults from 57% (in 1982) to less than half. Having supposedly exhausted his efforts to divest himself of these surplus books, Wayne added about the book burning, “…it’s a good excuse for fun.” AAK! Why don’t we just roast some marshmallows while we watch and tell ghost stories…

One of the horrified spectators, Marcia Trayford, paid Wayne $20 to carry away an armload of books. “I’ve been trying to adopt as many books as I could,” she said. Among them, ironically, Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. I found it ironic, too, that she used the word ‘adopt’, which breathes life into each book, echoing what Ray Bradbury said in my previous post.

When Josh fed me this story, he mentioned e-bay, charities, etc. Surely Wayne hadn’t even begun to exhaust the possibilities for finding these books a home! What about shipping them overseas? Another spectator suggested that Wayne “made the point that not reading a book is as good as burning it.” I’m sorry, but I don’t get that message at all. Wayne’s inept and destructive act of futility only further illustrates a feckless mentality that unwittingly condones censorship and lack of reading. He would have elevated himself to a hero and made a more powerful statement to America if he’d done something positive instead; presented a solution instead of a feeble complaint.

I liked the comment to the story by patrickindallas the best: “It has finally been proven. Just being around books does NOT increase intelligence.”

Thanks for the story, Josh!

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Banned Books–How many did YOU read?

Nina Munteanu — Sat, 26 May 2007 05:39:00 +0000

This Friday, in keeping with a literary theme, I’ve linked you to a Forbidden Library. This library boils overful with an oozing cornucopia of ‘demoralizing’, ‘blasphemous’, ‘racial’, ‘offensive’, ‘obscene’, ‘anti-Communist’, ‘Satanic’, and ‘anarchistic’ literature. Ah, yes, you say! How subversive. Check it out! Its librarian, Janet Yanosko, has indexed books by author and title with explanation of why the book was banned along with her own amusing rather pithy remarks. You’ll find books that people found offensive like:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: a book on censorship gets censored!

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl: promotes drugs and disobedience

Where’s Waldo by Martin Handford: for nudity

1984 by George Orwell: for being pro-communist

The Lorax by Doctor Seuss: because it criminalizes the logging industry

Zen Buddhism: selected writings by D.T. Suzuki: because it portrays Buddhism as appealing

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut: for its foul language

Books have been banned (and burned) on many occasions by many societies over humankind’s history of existence for various reasons. Books considered critical of governments or societies with power were a common target. So were books that dealt with criminal matter or promoted views counter with popular worldviews, or were considered distasteful or disturbing.

The Bible, the Qur’an and other religious works were banned (and burned) over the years. In Medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church dealt with dissenting printed opinion through a program called the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (index of prohibited books). Okay, here’s a partial list I got off Wikipedia with reasons for banning. I’ve bolded the ones I’ve read. How many did YOU read?

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: for portraying animals and humans on the same level
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine: banned in UK for blasphemy in 18th C
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remaraque: banned in Nazi Germany for demoralizing and insulting the Wehrmacht
Animal Farm by George Orwell: banned for anti-Stalin theme
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: banned in some U.S. schools for use of racial slurs
Bible: banned by the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in Catholic Church
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: banned in South Africa for using the word ‘black’
Brave New World byAldous Huxley: banned for centering around negative activity
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: banned for sexual content
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: banned in some U.S. schools and libraries for sexual situations, immorality and other themes of impropriety and anti-Christian sentiments
Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: banned in U.S. during McCarthyism
Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel: banned because of hardcore graphic sexual content
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: banned in anti-Communist countries during the Red scare
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak: banned in USSR for criticism of the Bolshevik Party
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: for issues on censorship
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway: banned in Spain during Francisco Franco’s rule for its pro-Republican views
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: banned in part of U.S. because of the use of the word ‘nigger’
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: banned in some U.S. schools for use of the name God and Jesus in a vain and profane manner along with inappropriate sexual references
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift: banned in Ireland as wicked and obscene
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: banned in Ethiopia
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling: banned in some U.S. school libraries for use of witchcraft and supposedly Satanic views
King Lear by William Shakespeare: banned in UK out of respect to King George III’s aleged insanity
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence: banned in U.S. and UK for obsenity
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis: challenged in part of U.S. for depicting graphic violence, mysticism and gore
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss: banned in parts of U.S. for being an allegorical political commentary
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury: challenged in U.S. for profanity
Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler: reproduction and sale is forbidden outside Germany, Austria and Netherlands for promoting Nazism
Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory: challenged in UK as ‘junk’
1984 by George Orwell: banned in USSR for political reasons; banned in U.S. for being pro-communist and for explicit sexual matter
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: banned in some U.S. schools and libraries for promoting ‘euthanasia’ and for profanity
The Odyssey by Homer: Plato suggested expurgating it for immature readers and Caligula tried to suppress it for expressing Greek ideals of freedom
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: banned in various places for promoting the evolutionary theory
Paradise Lost by John Milton: listed on the Indx Librorum Prohibitorum in Rome
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: challenged due to racial themes
Ulysses by James Joyce: banned in U.S. for its sexual content
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: banned in southern States and Czarist Russia for racist portrayal of African Americans and use of word ‘nigger’.

Okay, so I read a lot of them. Does that make me a subversive? How about you? I find it interesting to note that books published as recently as “Harry Potter” are banned as wicked or even evil.

This all begs the question of what art truly is and should be. Susan Sontag suggested that “real art makes us nervous.” The genius of art skirts the edge of propriety and comfort to ask the questions that help us define our own humanity. Oscar Wilde remarked, “an idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being an idea at all.” Benjamin Franklin suggested that, “if all printers were determined not to print anthing till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.“

Henry Steel Commager eloquently stated that, “censorship…creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.” John F. Kennedy further added that, “…a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

Lillian Hellman, who was subpoenaed to appear before the House of Un-American Activities Commitee in 1952, exclaimed, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”

Live and write from the heart.

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