The Effect of Heavy Editing on Atticus the Dog

With today's release of Go Set a Watchman, I figured it was a good time to talk about how the book's portrayal of Atticus Finch is not the fall of a hero.

In the months leading up to its release, Go Set a Watchman was promoted as the long lost sequel to the national treasure that is To Kill a Mockingbird.  It's set 20 years later, in the 50s, with an adult Scout returning home to Maycomb, Alabama with characters from Mockingbird making appearances, which certainly sounds like a sequel.  Then the early reviews started to come out, shocking absolutely everyone with facts that come to light in Watchman: Atticus Finch is a huge racist.

What? 

But--What?

Yeah. 

While Mockingbird presents issues of racism and the end of innocence by creating an upstanding moral hero for Scout to look up to, Watchman covers the same themes by having an adult Scout realize that her father, who she always considered to be a moral compass, is not as great as she thought he was when she was a child.  So Watchman pretty much ruined everyone's childhood, including Scout's, and has made things awkward for everyone who named their children and pets "Atticus."

Atticus the dog was a little awkward anyway.

For me, there are two ways to rationalize this.  First, take into consideration that Mockingbird is written from a child's perspective, and therefore her father was a great man who did great things and formed her into the person she became.  It's only after she grew up (in Watchman) that she was able to look back and see that things weren't the way she interpreted them at the time or that things weren't as shiny as they are in her memory.  And we, the readers, can go through this horror with Scout, since we too believed him to be a shining example of morality.

This way of looking at it makes sense, and may hold even more of an emotional punch than if Watchman hadn't been released at a point long after Mockingbird had become a renowned part of the American Literary Canon and Atticus had taken his place in our hearts.

But I prefer the second way to look at it: Watchman is not a sequel.  And not in the "Lalala pretend it didn't happen" kind of way.

Looking at the history, Go Set a Watchman was actually written first.  Then Lee's editors told her to rewrite it, focusing more on the charming stories of Scout's youth.  In rewriting, she came at the same themes from different directions, changing the point of view and time period, along with characters' personalities and plot points.  So it's as if Watchman is a first draft of Mockingbird.  (a lot of reviews are calling it a "bad first draft.")  We can see this in the fact that several sections (mostly descriptions of setting) appear verbatim in both books, like they were reused in Mockingbird because they were worth keeping and Watchman was never going to see the light of day.  Furthermore, some facts are altered between Mockingbird and Watchman, most notably the outcome of Tom Robinson's trial.  Yeah!  In Mockingbird, a huge plot point is that he was accused despite lack of evidence, but when it's mentioned in Watchman it's stated that he was acquitted.  That kind of continuity error doesn't make a lot of sense if Watchman really is a sequel.

So it's not that we didn't know Atticus or that we were fooled by an unreliable narrator.  It's that these Atticus Finches are different people with the name held over between the two drafts.

I prefer this way of looking at it, because it shows how much books change in the editing process, and I personally find that more fascinating.  How did these ideas start?  What did this book used to be?  What changed and what was kept?  How did it evolve?  We can actually look at the progression of To Kill a Mockingbird, like looking back through fossil records.  It makes me feel better about the massive overhauls I've done on stories and makes me feel better that even if what I'm writing is crap, there are ideas there that have the potential to flourish.

Audience Surrogates through Sequels

I was more excited for the premier of Jurassic World than I was of any other movie this summer.  I watched all the trailers and read all the articles.  I made sure we got VIP tickets at the Icon (the 18+ balcony attached to a restaurant, where you can bring your drinks and cake and fries into the theater and set the plate on the side table next to your comfy chair) so that the seat would be big enough that I could squirm around when my back got sore.  The publicity photo of Chris Pratt and the velociraptor has been my background picture for months. 

Not many other people were as excited, and I set out to figure out why.  Why was I so enthusiastic?  Why weren't other people?

The main reason, as far as I see it, is the audience surrogate in Jurassic Park.  I've long held the belief that Jurassic Park is terrifying, and it's more terrifying to me than it is to my mother because when we went to see it in theaters, I was the same age as the little boy and all the traumatic things happen to the little boy, Tim.  No, really.  Think about it.  A bunch of adults die, but they are mostly attacked and eaten suddenly.  They have time to think, "Oh no" and maybe scream and then they're gone.  With the kids, it's strung out.  The T-rex terrorizes them in the car before throwing the car over a cliff and into a tree.  Tim then has to escape the tree with the car falling on him.  He then gets electrocuted.  Then the kids are chased through a kitchen and then through the ceiling by velociraptors.  Even though Dr. Grant is with them through most of this, fewer traumatizing things happen to him.

Additionally, the kids act terrified, while the adults manage to keep it together a bit better.  As a kid, I reacted to their fear.

People who were older than eight-years-old when the film came out, didn't relate to the kids in the same way.  They had audience surrogates like Dr. Grant or Dr. Sattler or Dr. Malcom.  How boring.  They see some rough things, but they aren't as traumatized, so neither are the people relating to them.

It also, of course, has a lot to do with how, as a kid, this movie is just more scary than it is for an adult.  There were scenes I couldn't watch except from behind my fingers until I was in high school, at which point I got over it.  I was thinking when I came out of Jurassic World that I wasn't worried for the kids in that movie at all, because--Come on!--they're not going to kill a kid.  This is not that kind of movie.  There's an unspoken agreement between the film makers and the audience that this movie is going to be fun, action packed, have dinosaurs, and not kill children and puppies.  They're not going to violate that contract.  Which got me thinking (and I feel kinda stupid now for not realizing it sooner): they were never going to kill Lex and Tim in Jurassic Park either.  As a kid, I wasn't familiar enough with narrative tropes to realize this, but as an adult, I'm intuitively aware of it.

So this explains why Jurassic Park had such an impact on me and was just an okay movie to other people.  It explains why other people wouldn't be as excited about it, since the first film didnt have as big of an emotional impact.

But why was I so excited?  It's not just because I love the first movie, because I didn't care about The Lost World or Jurassic Park III.  The less said about them the better.

It's because I was terrified of velociraptors for years, and this movie--when I now relate more to Chris Pratt than to the little boy--has my audience surrogate clicker training the velociraptors.  Now that I'm an adult, my fear has been conquered, not just by my more mature brain that no longer needs to sleep with the light on and won't eat green jell-o, but by the movie itself.  The movie has taken these terrifying monsters, and put them under a measure of control, and done it while respecting that the velociraptors are still dangerous and still deserve respect.  It's a victory.

I'm Spending My Vacation at the Library!

I got a Chicago Public Library card yesterday, and spent probably too much time this afternoon transferring my To Read list from Goodreads to my For Later list on the CPL website.  Apparently, like Goodreads, on the CPL website you can write reviews, make lists, and follow people.  I haven't investigated it too much other than to see that four of the books I want to read are available right now at my preferred library location. 

Four out of ninety-six.  Alright!

When you select books for your shelves, you say what format you want: book, eBook, paperback, audible book, etc.  I said "paperback" whenever I saw it and "book" otherwise, and now I'm wondering if they maybe have more of the books on my list but in non-paperback form.  And I wouldn't mind checking out the eBook program, but that's a project for another day.  I'm also wondering if CPL has an inter-library loan, like if the book is at another branch and I request it, they'll send it over and I can pick it up.  So it's not as bad as the 4/96 stat makes it look.  All 96 books are in the CPL system somewhere, and it's a long enough list that I don't need every single one of them available to me right this second. (But that would be fantastic.)

So those are future reading projects.  Let me tell you what's going on with my current reading projects.  I don't usually read this many things at once, but--eh--what can you do?

• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  "A novel"  I picked this up from the library because I didn't feel like using the card catalog to look through my mighty list of books I need to read and I saw it sitting in the middle of the shelf and thought "hey, that's on the list."  The reason I noticed it is that it's less a book and more a raw material to build a small house.  I have three weeks to read it before it's due back at the library.
• Sandman.  I picked this up at free comic book day and since I've been interested in it and heard good things, I picked up the first volume to check it out.  Did you know that Batman is in this?  Also John Constantine.  The fact that this story is situated inside the greater DC universe turned me off tremendously, but I will keep going with it and maybe change my mind.
• To Be or Not to Be.  This is a Hamlet choose your own adventure written by Ryan North and it is fantastic.  Since it's a choose your own adventure, it's hard to read the whole thing, so I mostly do one adventure before bed.
• Baby 411.  This is a book about babies and all the stuff they do and don't do.  It's good because they use science and cite research and I like that.  But it's also overwhelming and my coping strategy is along the lines of "just not thinking about it" so it's taking me a while.

Prompt Bingo

I'm getting a new project off the ground, which has the working title of "Firebird Project."  It's a novel about a girl who has to put up with this guy who is a firebird.

Sometimes I have a brilliant idea and sit down and write for hours and stay up at night thinking about what I'll write next so I'm ready to go write it all down the next day.

This is not one of those times.  I blame it on being out of practice.  Like when you don't go to the gym for a week and you know it's going to suck when you finally go again so you put it off even more.  Or like when you forget to do the dishes one day and then might as well burn down your house because there's no coming back from that.

I also blame it on how this donut looks tragically unappetizing even though I'm sure it's perfectly fine.  I consider this a very good excuse, thank you very much.

So anyway, this procrastination cannot continue and it's time to get an action plan together to actually get this thing flying.

Step 1 is a little thing called "Prompt Bingo."  What you do is make yourself a bingo card and then fill it in with writing prompts.  These writing prompts can come from anywhere, including the many many writing prompt generators on the internet.  Some will even just spit out a random bingo card for you.

Here's my current one:

Safe and Sound	In the Park	The Kraken Wakes	Degenerate	Serpent
Finger	Mouth	Petal	Murder	Haiku
Hurt	Wife/Husband	Free Space!	Special Forces	A Quiet Moment
On the 4th Bridge	At Brimingham New St.	Summer	Labyrinth	Far Away
Window	Soft	In Battle	Belief	Jungle

You don't have to write in order.  So you find a prompt that jumps out at you and then write a scene using your characters and world and plot.  You can hone in on a prompt and think, "How does this word fit into my story?" or "What would my characters do with this prompt?"

The cool thing is that it first gives you some direction when writing if you start with very little (like me right now.)  Then once you have a string of these scenes, you can piece them together and start to get a better view of the plot and the story's overall structure.  Once you have a kind of skeleton, you can start to flush it out and fill in the gaps.

BYOT Blackout Editon

Bring Your Own Theater happened again last weekend. It was a lot of fun, especially since a bunch of writers went to Clarke's to write together and not only did it feel less lonely, but I also got to eat pancakes.

I felt really good about this one and the play ended up really close to the script. They added tinkly restaurant background music. When the lights came up, Vinny was sitting alone at the table, looking sad with sad music and the crowd went “Awwww!” Five seconds without saying a word, and he had the audience hooked.

So, for your reading enjoyment, here's "Glitching."

Breaking up is hard to do

Yesterday, for the fourth book in a row, I gave up on a book because of the second act breakup.  A second act breakup takes place after your main romantic leads have fallen for each other and everything seems like it's going great and everything looks like it might turn out okay. 

But wait!  She's suddenly had a brain wave that they're too different after all and maybe this won't work out.  Or the mobsters to whom he owes money track him down and he has to break up with her for her own protection.  And...did you lie to me about that thing???  Unforgivable! 

Also he's keeping his secret wife in the attic.

It's in most stories, especially most romances, and it has completely valid reasons for being there. 

1. Stories need conflict.  If they get together too fast and have a happy, healthy relationship and that's the entire focus of the story, then that's boring.  And also like 20 pages long.  So if you have a romance story, something has to keep them apart.
2. This structure lines up well with the hero's journey.  There has to be a low point of the story from which the hero or heroine can bounce back.  This initial failure usually mirrors the climax in some way: they fail at first, but then get stronger or learn and then overcome it at the end.

Now, I've written second act breakups, and I'll probably write one again.  But they've really been getting on my nerves lately.  I think mostly because I'll be enjoying a book and then this will come completely out of the blue.  One of them will suddenly go, "Wait!  I'm not good enough for you!" and run off without talking to their partner, who could reassure them that that's bogus.  One of them will need to do an outside thing and go, "I could talk to my partner about this and get their help with it, but instead I think I'll lie about what I'm up to and then go it alone." 

Gah.  Nope.  I'm done with this book.

If the conflict of your story could be solved with a single conversation, something's wrong.  This would solve a lot of stories' conflicts, but not all of them.  A chat between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader (although enlightening) isn't going to keep Alderan from getting blown to bits.

So I've been thinking (since I've written this and started wondering if I'm as irritating as the stuff I've been reading lately) and I've come up with some ideas to break out of this structure.

• They don't get together enough to break up until the very end.
• They get together and have a happy, healthy relationship that grows over the course of the story, but the main conflict is outside of their relationship and they face it together instead of having it tear them apart.
• They have a big fight, but work through it and they're back together by the end of the chapter.  Bonus points if this happens every chapter and every time the fight is different.
• The break up is a ruse!  They'd planned it together to confuse their rival families. 
• There's a second act breakup, but it's because of spiders.

Guess What

I have not been writing much lately because it turns out the first trimester of pregnancy is terrible.

That's my smooth way of telling you I'm pregnant.

I'll get back to the regular schedule of talking about writing and reading and whatnot next week, and this will hopefully be the only pregnancy post.  But since I haven't been doing much writing, I'm going to indulge today.

1.

I gave up caffeine.  It was terrible.  The week before I figured out I was pregnant, I made a big push to finish my latest novel.  I woke up, had a coke, went to the coffee shop, had a coffee, went to a different coffee place, had two more coffees, went to work, came home, and had another coke.  People keep telling me when I complain about it that I don't have to give up caffeine.  "If you just have one cup of coffee a day, you'll be fine :D"  Like one cup of coffee is a completely reasonable amount. 

As soon as I realized this routine had to stop, I froze and gaped indignantly at my only audience at the moment: the cat.  "I'm not prepared to change my lifestyle that much!"  

The cat stared at me, and I provided his side of the conversation.  "You think that's bad?  You ain't seen nothing yet." 

I hate it when the cat is right. 

So I just quit cold turkey and felt like crap for a while as I went through withdraw.  Or maybe it was the zygote making me nauseous and tired.  One or the other. 

2.

Prenatal vitamins are enormous.  Remember Flintstones vitamins?  You know those chewy vitamins they advertise on TV that look like fruit snacks?  I was expecting those. 

Instead they are horse pills.

My mother cackled when I told her over the phone.  Apparently they have not decreased in size since the 80s.

3.

I called and told my parents when I found out, and told them they could tell whoever they wanted, but they would be responsible for un-telling those people if it became necessary.  Then the other day, now that I'm out of the first trimester, I made an announcement on Facebook, because this is how we pass information these days.

My uncle saw it, and immediately called my dad to be sly.  "So...what's new with Cary these days?"

My dad is a firm believer that nothing is anyone's business.  This character trait added to my warnings, and he shrugged and said, "Nothing."

It made my uncle's day when he got to break the news to my dad. 

4.

Instead of calling the print outs of ultrasounds "photos", they should be called "soundos."  Because no photons are involved.

5.

Ron calls the fetus "Cary Jr." and refers to it exclusively with female pronouns.  Everyone else seems to think this is really funny and it's caught on.

6.

I've gotten aggressive about correcting people when they ask about the baby's gender.  Let me explain it to you.  "Gender" is about identity.  We won't be able to know that until the baby tells us.  "Sex" is about genitals.  The fetus right now has genitals, but you couldn't see them yet on an ultrasound.  And I don't know why everyone keeps asking about my fetus' genitals.