Cryptid Wedding, Episode 12: A Success

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 12: A Success

Cryptid Wedding, Episode 11: Lord of the Cavern

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 11: Lord of the Cavern

Cryptid Wedding, Episode 10: A Dramatic Dinner

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 10: A Dramatic Dinner

Someone's Ranting about Dog Man

 The latest publishing drama/hate click bait is an article on The Cut.  I'm not going to give the link, because they don't deserve the traffic.

In the article, the author posits that there are no "good" children's books.  It seems they are specifically referring to middle grade books, although they don't use the term "middle grade."  They also never define what would make a "good" book.  They say that their children are voracious readers, and although the author seems to be pleased at how much their children read, they're upset that everything the children read is garbage.  They then go on to describe how it is impossible to find more books, as if they have never heard of librarians, recommendation lists, Goodreads, or Google.  

Now, there are many conversations to be had around this (the relatively small offerings in middle grade as opposed to young adult, how juggernaut titles take over genres, how adult sensibilities need to be set aside to write fiction an 8-year-old will love, etc etc).  But this article does not engage with any of those.  In fact it spends most of its word count singling out Dav Pilkey's "Dog Man" and complaining about how annoying it is.

If you're not familiar with Dog Man, let me give you the skinny.  The whole thing is a comic drawn by two middle school boys, George and Harold, who are the main characters from another Dav Pilkey series called Captain Underpants.  The art (in early books in the series) looks like it was done by middle schoolers, and there are spelling mistakes and words that are misspelled, crossed out, and then rewritten.  The story is that, once upon a time, there was a police officer and his K9 unit.  They were in a horrible accident caused by Petey the Cat, where the cop's head was died and the dog's body died, but someone had the great idea to combine the surviving parts, creating Dog Man!  Half cop, half dog.  The first few books are Petey having an evil plan (which are as ridiculous as you would expect from the Dog Man premise), Dog Man catching him and throwing him in jail, and then Petey escaping again.

But then, Petey has an idea.  He can clone himself and then there would be two of him to be twice as evil!  However, when he clones himself, he creates Little Petey, who is a little kid, hopeful and innocent, and with none of Petey's jadedness.  Petey is infinitely frustrated with Little Petey's childishness.  Over the course of several books, Little Petey starts to wear Petey down, thawing his icy heart.  And here the series starts to get into deeper themes: not just that Petey's literal clone is good and maybe there's good in Petey too if he just chooses kindness, but it also gets into cycles of generational trauma.  One of my favorite parts is that when Petey is in jail, Little Petey lives with Dog Man, which ends up being "on the weekends," which is a set up similar to kids with divorced parents who have to travel between houses.

Also there are a lot of fart jokes.  And fart songs.

The author of this article does not like the fart jokes (and yes, for me--an adult--they get old).  The author of this article doesn't like that the jokes repeat over and over again (and, yes, for me--an adult--they get old).  My kid cackles every single time, rolling around in his reading spot, scream laughing as he sings, "Stinkle stinkle little fart!"  But I think the author of this article fails to understand several points about the humor. 1. Kids think that's funny, and the book was written for kids and not for adults. 2. Even if the joke wasn't repeated multiple times across several books, your kid would read that one section over and over and roll around and cackle.  3. This actually is teaching children humor (now hold on a second, let me finish).  Kids learn by repeated exposure.  That's why a lot of modern curricula are set up as "spiral curricula" where you keep coming back to the same concept over and over and over.  Yes, these books tell the same jokes over and over, but each time your kid learns a little more about structure and expectation.  At one point, Petey (who is also furious that Little Petey keeps telling the same joke) explains about the structure of knock knock jokes and why they're funny, which in turn is a perfect set up for one of Little Petey's jokes that ends with "popped on your head."

And that got me thinking.  The writer of this article:

• Comically dislikes Dog Man.
• Hates that they keep telling the same bad jokes
• Wishes that everyone could just grow up already

Y'all.   I think Petey wrote this article.

And that makes me feel better.

First of all, even though I know this is click bait and I should ignore it, it's much easier to ignore it knowing that Petey wrote it.  It's just Petey being Petey. Ignore him.

But also, one of the big critiques of this article that keeps cropping up is a concern that this parent's disgust for their child's choice of reading material might result in the child feeling shamed and no longer wanting to read.  But if this is Petey writing this, then we know how that's going to turn out: Little Petey will not be deterred.  Eventually Petey will see the light and let kindness into his heart.

And if Petey didn't write this article, then at least these children are reading Dog Man, and they have Little Petey as a role model of how to not give up.

Cryptid Wedding, Episode 9: Twelve Plots

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 9: Twelve Plots

Cryptid Wedding, Episode 8: The Ceremony

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 8: The Ceremony

The Cryptid Wedding, Episode 7: Sabotauge

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 7: Sabotauge

The Cryptid Wedding, Episode 6: Seating Arrangements

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 6: Seating Arrangements

The Cryptid Wedding, Episode 5: The Rehearsal

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 5: The Rehearsal

The Cryptid Wedding, Episode 4: The Trickster God

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 4: The Trickster God

The Cryptid Wedding, Episode 3: The Flowers

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 3: The Flowers

The Cryptid Wedding, Episode 2: The Aunties

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 2: The Aunties

The Cryptid Wedding, Episode 1: Arrival

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 10: The Cryptid Wedding

Episode 1: Arrival

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 12: The Leafy Seadragons

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 12: The Leafy Seadragons

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 11: The Stonefish

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 11: The Stonefish

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 10: The Betafish

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 10: The Betafish

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 9: The Anglerfish

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 9: The Anglerfish

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 8: The Marlin

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 8: The Marlin

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 7: The Nautilus

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 7: The Nautilus

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 6: The Shark

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 6: The Shark

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 5: The Jellyfish

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 5: The Jellyfish

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 4: The Octopus

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 4: The Octopus

Starting and Stopping is Killing my Pacing

 

On my last revision of my novel, I was working through a lot of pacing issues.  Parts were accused of being slow, and I argued, "It can't be slow!  It's a fight scene!  It's exciting!" and "It can't be slow!  It's witty banter!  They're cute!"  But no, I was wrong, and it was slow.

In the past, when my critique group noted that a section felt slow, I would trim.  I would trim down interiority, and I would cut words and cut clauses and just generally shave down sections until the word count was lower.  After all, writing advice givers always talk about using strong verbs and cutting adverbs and filler words.  Surely I needed to scrape all that off to make the section more streamlined.

But then when I would send my critique group the section again, they would comment on how it was missing some of its charm.  I felt the same way, but when they said it I would get defensive.  They asked me to do this horrible thing!  They can't have it both ways!

But I realized on this set of revisions that that's not the issue.  To try to make the scene read faster, I was stripping out the voice, and the voice actually did work to propel the reader through.  The voice-y-ness, with all the words that people who give advice about writing hate, was not the problem.  I had not improved the pacing.  I had only made it slow and soulless.

So what was the problem?

The problem was stopping and starting.

So in this novel, there's a lot of sparring with a martial art that I made up from a meshing of other martial arts.  In a section towards the beginning, the main character is sparring with a bunch of people one after another.  He fights with one partner, notes a problem in their technique and fixes it.  He fights with the next partner and does something cool.  Through this we learn that he's great at this martial art and also a great leader and teacher.

And everyone said it was slow.  I didn't want to believe that because there's lyrical language all throughout this that should propel a reader forward, and we're learning about our main character, so the scene is doing two things: both character building and world building and with the final partner it forwards the plot.  Also it's cool!  Swords are cool!  Are you not entertained?!

The thing was that he would spar.  And then he would spar again.

Even though he executes a seamless transition from one partner to the next, any tension that has built during the first spar is cut with the next partner.  The tension has to build again.

The same with the sections of dialogue that felt slow.  I wanted to fit, say, four pieces of information into this conversation.  They are cute and flirty with each other and the first piece of information was presented to the reader.  And then the conversation would lull.  And then it would build again to get to the second piece of information.  It was one long conversation, and yet it felt as if it started and stopped.

That conversation needed to build throughout.  Instead of having the conversation around each bullet point resolve (which cuts tension), one piece of information needed to lead to the next.  This reminds me of that piece of advice that when you tell your story you should always use transitions like "because" or "so" rather than "and."  I always took this advice to be on the scene level.  For example, Luke Skywalker's family dies, so he has nothing holding him back from going on an adventure.  But I think it could also be used on a much smaller scale.  "So" acts to increase tension and push the reader along, whereas "and" is another thing for the reader to keep track of and separates them from the tension that was just happening.

Once I noticed this, I started finding it in my friends' writing too.  They'll have two scenes that do similar things.  The scenes "need" to be two scenes because otherwise the timeline of the story gets messed up.  But really the second one feels slow because the scene started and then stopped and then started again.  Or my friends will have a conversation that goes on a bit too long, and then I'll notice that actually they ended a conversation and started a second one.

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 3: The Lionfish

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 3: The Lionfish

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 2: The Clownfish

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 2: The Clownfish

Trouble at Mermaid Bay, Episode 1: The Angelfish

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 9: Trouble at Mermaid Bay

Episode 1: The Angelfish