At a recent speculative fiction convention, a panel of fantasy writers discussed the topic of other fantasy entities:
Done with dragons? Fed up with fairies? What’s next. Three authors who’ve seen it all before talk about the other possibilities for fantasy creatures.
Lily Mulholland, an ACT writer of short stories which have appeared in local and international anthologies, one of the panellists, made a very interesting observation that applies to young adult fiction, however, at 4.30 in the afternoon of Day Two of a cram packed convention, I’d lost my train of thought and couldn’t get the observation that I wanted to express out of my head correctly.
Lily's point was that short stories need to be succinct due to the restrictions in word count. She can’t waste 500 words describing a creature or a plant if it isn’t the central point of the story, so one method she uses to tell fantasy stories is to draw on entities that the reader is already familiar with. This is also possibly the methodology behind the done to death’ titles that line many bookshelves. When one entity works, the readers makes themselves familiar with that entity, thus writers are free to tell stories on a subconscious level.
This is especially true of young adult fiction. When you look at the list of fantasy creatures provided to the panel as topic points, dragons, fairies, kings and queens are very much junior fiction entities. Young adult authors use entities their readers are already familiar because we generally need to weave a lesson amongst our work, and this lesson needs to be ‘the lesson that doesn’t look like a lesson’. Teenagers can sniff an ulterior motive a mile away. The way I weave a lesson through the story is to use a familiar entity (I used guardian angels in The Bird With The Broken Wing, and ghostly possession in Feedback) so that the load on the subconscious is lightened. This doesn't mean that the story is dumbed down, but the human brain best handles one task at a time.
By using familiar entities in young adult fiction, readers are able to pick up the thread of the lesson because the subconscious brain doesn’t spend precious time learning the rules of new and fantastical entities. In adult fiction, lessons aren't always necessary so fantasy writers can freely create strange worlds and characters that awe their readers. Perhaps the need for children and young adult writers to rely on familiar fantasy creatures is the reason that adult fantasy writers need to create the un-familiar. An analogy might be that the difference between a pony and a horse is the difference between a YA fiction writer and an adult fiction writer.
Many writers will pick apart Twilight, but you’ve got to remember that the intended audience was teenagers, not adults. Yes, vampires might be ‘done to death’ excuse the pun, but the reason they feature in a lot of YA fiction is because they are familiar. Perhaps this is the reason publishers can't confirm yet if vampires will vanish back into the crevices of darkness they crawled out of.
Generally, the entities in YA fiction need to look and act like humans because children are transitioning into adult, not into aliens. And if we do feature alien entities, then our aliens tend to have human traits. These alien entities still need to be able to explore the dark and light side of teenagers such as loneliness, isolation, bullying, rebellion, so writers can connect with our reader. That is first and foremost the job of a writer – connect with the reader.
Sunday, 30 September 2012
Sunday, 9 September 2012
Conspiracies in fiction novels
During my countdown to release of Feedback, my paranoral spy thriller released October 5, 2012, I have been posting conspiracy theories as teasers. As a fiction author, I love conspiracy theories. They make a great source of fact and fiction.
A classic among conspiracy theories is that the Apollo moon
landing never took place, and was faked by NASA with possible CIA support. Personally, I
believe Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, in fact I am in awe
of atronauts - they are amazing, but many don't believe anyone has ever landed
on the moon. The below are a range of explanations offered to debunk the conspiracies.
Number 1
The astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to radiation.
Explantion: This claim is largely based on a claim from a Russian cosmonaut. The short time it takes to pass through the belt, combined with the protection from the spacecraft, means any exposure to radiation would be very low.
Number 2
The
photos were altered: the Crosshairs on some photos appear to be behind objects,
rather than in front of them where they should be.
Explantion: Umm, I have none. I'm not a photograph expert.
Number 3
The quality of the photographs is implausibly
high for 1969.
Explanation: I think people are confusing what they saw on TV with the
quality of the film. VHS vs Beta is a classic example of what the professionals
use vs what the general public uses. While
consumers watched VCHS tapes, the TV stations were using Beta imagery. The
output was less quality than the input. Still, it could be argued that the photos produced are of exceptional quality. Plus they would have had the best equipment.
vs
Number 4
Explanation: The Apollo landing takes place during lunar mornings, with the Sun shining brightly. The stars are not bright enough in this light to be captured in the photographs.
Now, I have to say that I've looked up at the moon at
night and the light reflected off the moon is so bright that you can’t see
stars in very close proximity to the moon. Nor can we see stars during the
day. The truth is, the lunar landscape
is so bright that the camera exposure settings to take a good lunar landscape
photo are not sensitive enough to image the much (much Much MUCH) fainter stars
that are in the lunar sky. If the camera was set to record the stars, the
moonscape would be washed out white and featureless.
The below link has a list of photos taken from the moon:
The below link has scientific explanations on why there are no stars in the photos and some samples of what sort of light and exopsures you need to see stars and planets:
The rocks brought back from the Moon are identical to rocks collected by
scientific expeditions to Antarctica
Some Moon rocks have been found on Earth, but they are all scorched and oxidised from their entry into the Earth’s atmosphere as asteroids. Geologists have confirmed with complete certainty that the Apollo rocks must have been brought from the Moon by man.
Number 6
Identical backgrounds in photos that
are listed as taken miles apart.Explantion: Simple. The moon is made from cheese. All cheese looks the same.
Number 7
The moon's surface during the
daytime is so hot that camera film would have meltedIf you were to spend the night on the Moon (you might as well because it's a long trip home to Earth), you'd have to have a warm sleeping bag, because temperatures reach a low of -173 degrees Celsius.Since the Moon and the Earth are approximately the same distance from the Sun, they receive sunlight of the same strength. So the temperature of the Earth and the Moon should be the same. It is the Moon's lack of atmosphere that creates such extreme temperatures. The Moon doesn't have an atmosphere to absorb sunlight like the Earth does, and so the surface gets very hot. The Moon's lack of atmosphere also lets heat escape during lunar nights so that it gets rather chilly on the surface!
Submitted by Sean (age 8, Wisconsin, USA) (August 6,1997) to www.windows2universe.org
Number 8
No blast crater appeared from the
landing
Explnation: The landing module touches down on solid rock, covered in a layer of fine lunar
dust, so there is no reason why it would create a blast crater. Even if the
ground were less solid, the amount of thrust being produced by the engines at
the point of landing and take off is very low in comparison to a landing on
Earth because of the relative lack of gravitational pull
Number 9
When the landing module takes off from the Moon’s surface there is no visible
flame from the rocket.
Explanation: The rockets in the landing module are powered by fuel containing a combination
of hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide, which burn with no visible flame.
The flag placed on the surface by the
astronauts flapped despite there being no wind on the Moon.
Explanation: The flag is held up by a horizontal bar and simply moves when it is unfurled and
as the pole is being fixed into position by the astronauts. The flagpole is
light, flexible aluminium and continues to vibrate after the astronauts let go,
giving the impression of blowing in the wind.
Moon Master: An Easy Quiz for
Lunatics
Are these fact or fiction? Are other sources at play? Did the CIA really cover up this hoax in the race to make America the supernation?
Check out Feedback before you make up your mind.
Released October 5th, 2012
Wednesday, 5 September 2012
Top 100 young adult novels of all time
100 FAVOURITE YA NOVELS
Check out this poll of 75,200 people of the 100 best ever YA novels. It’s a US poll but a few Aussies (and others) make the list with J.K. Rowling bagging top spot.
Only the top 10 are featured below, you'll need to go to the link to see the top 100.
Your Favorites: 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels
Harriet Russell
August 7, 2012
It's almost a cliche at this point to say that teen fiction isn't just for teens anymore. Just last year, the Association of American Publishers ranked Children's/Young Adult books as the single fastest-growing publishing category.Which is why we were only a little surprised to see the tremendous response that came in for this summer's Best-Ever Teen Fiction poll. A whopping 75,220 of you voted for your favorite young adult novels, blasting past the total for last year's science fiction and fantasy poll at, dare we say it, warp speed.
And now, the final results are in. While it's no surprise to see Harry Potter and the Hunger Games trilogy on top, this year's list also highlights some writers we weren't as familiar with. For example, John Green, author of the 2012 hit The Fault in Our Stars, appears five times in the top 100.
Selecting a manageable voting roster from among the more than 1,200 nominations that came in from readers wasn't easy, and we were happy to be able to rely on such an experienced panel of judges. But deciding what does and doesn't count as a young-adult novel isn't an exact science. If you're surprised not to see some of your favorite books among the winners, you might want to look at this blog post, which describes the thinking behind the tough calls.
Summer, like youth, is fleeting. But the books we read when we're young can stay with us for a lifetime. Here's hoping that when the school bell rings in a few short weeks, it will find you engrossed in just such a memorable read, selected by the NPR audience. Enjoy. (For your convenience, here's a printable version of the top-100 list, and here's a list of the 235 finalists.)
Harry Potter series
The adventures of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and his wand-wielding friends at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry, Ron and Hermione must master their craft and battle the machinations of the evil wizard Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
The Hunger Games series
In the ruins of a future North America, a young girl is picked to leave her impoverished district and travel to the decadent Capitol for a battle to the death in the savage Hunger Games. But for Katniss Everdeen, winning the Games only puts her deeper in danger as the strict social order of Panem begins to unravel.
To Kill a Mockingbird
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from author Harper Lee explores racial tensions in the fictional "tired old town" of Maycomb, Ala., through the eyes of 6-year-old Scout Finch. As her lawyer father, Atticus, defends a black man accused of rape, Scout and her friends learn about the unjust treatment of African-Americans — and their mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley.
The Fault in Our Stars
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few more years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at the Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
The Hobbit
Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return.
The Catcher in the Rye
With the author's death, the classic novel about young Holden Caulfield's disillusionment with the adult world and its "phoniness" will only rise in popularity — and controversy, since it is a favorite target of censors, who often cite profanity and sexual references in their efforts to ban the book.
The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien's seminal three-volume epic chronicles the War of the Ring, in which Frodo the hobbit and his companions set out to destroy the evil Ring of Power and restore peace to Middle-earth. The beloved trilogy still casts a long shadow, having established some of the most familiar and enduring tropes in fantasy literature. Literary Award Winner
Fahrenheit 451
In a far future world, television dominates, and books are outlawed. The totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be burned by "firemen," whose job is to start the fires rather than stop them. But one fireman begins to see the value of the printed word.
Looking for Alaska
Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.
D L Richardson: Countdown to Feedback - 30 days
D L Richardson: Countdown to Feedback - 30 days: Fake lunar landings, CIA cover ups, conspiracy theories abound... A classic among conspiracy theories is that the Apollo moon l...
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