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Everyone knows how the internet has changed the American scene, as well as that of the rest of the world.

Students aren’t at the mercy of expensive literary searches at university anymore. Research is finished in half the time and is a more efficiently selective process. High school students can reap major rewards by having so much more educational information at their fingertips than ever before.

At the same time, the average person has the ability and wherewithal to generate blogs about nearly every subject known to man.

The Good

There are people with agendas out there, and there are lovely people who’re just trying to make it from day to day, surviving the onslaught of the modern age. And within all of these people there seems to be a surging desire to communicate with others about their lives, their ideas, and their aspirations.

A wife and mother can talk about her day and her frustrations with thousands of other moms around the world and gain solace in the knowledge that she’s not alone.

Kids can vent about how angst-filled their lives are, connecting with others who also feel the need to rip everyone around them. They can also find help and counseling online that they can’t find at home for various reasons.

And while all that “help” goes on, others are providing the stimulus for some already in-crisis kids to end their existence rather than face another day in the trenches.

The Bad/Down Side

The debate rages about limits on personal exposure and personal privacy. Entire volumes have appeared on all of these topics, both online and off. Writers don’t have to go any further than their desk to have enough material to span their lifetimes. Some of it is well-done, some dreadful, but always having a point.

As a writer, I watch news feeds each day, looking for tidbits to use for stories, articles, exploration, etc. Each day I shake my head in wonderment as I peruse the latest and greatest in the world of news. I wonder if everyone has gone totally insane, considering episodes like the one on the American Airlines flight this morning from Dallas to Chicago.

Soon I come to another story about a car costing nearly $300,000 that visited Harry Potter’s world and came away with his invisibility cloak. Yes, an invisible car is cool. We’ve had those kinds of military planes for a long time, but why would a person need one? The price tag along would make the car for the wealthy only. Do those going without adequate food on the table need another reason to resent those who’re living large?

There was the one about Coke and Pepsi changing their recipes to eliminate a particular chemical. I ask myself how long they’ve known about potential problems with that chemical and why they waited for a whistle-blower to press the issue.

We are bombarded with news 24/7 on CNN and other broadcast networks. We can’t escape from it, what with all the apps for phones now and hand-held computers. Dick Tracy watches/communicators are already on the market. How much more news do we need to fi

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Everyone knows how the internet has changed the American scene, as well as that of the rest of the world.

Students aren’t at the mercy of expensive literary searches at university anymore. Research is finished in half the time and is a more efficiently selective process. High school students can reap major rewards by having so much more educational information at their fingertips than ever before.

At the same time, the average person has the ability and wherewithal to generate blogs about nearly every subject known to man.

The Good

There are people with agendas out there, and there are lovely people who’re just trying to make it from day to day, surviving the onslaught of the modern age. And within all of these people there seems to be a surging desire to communicate with others about their lives, their ideas, and their aspirations.

A wife and mother can talk about her day and her frustrations with thousands of other moms around the world and gain solace in the knowledge that she’s not alone.

Kids can vent about how angst-filled their lives are, connecting with others who also feel the need to rip everyone around them. They can also find help and counseling online that they can’t find at home for various reasons.

And while all that “help” goes on, others are providing the stimulus for some already in-crisis kids to end their existence rather than face another day in the trenches.

The Bad/Down Side

The debate rages about limits on personal exposure and personal privacy. Entire volumes have appeared on all of these topics, both online and off. Writers don’t have to go any further than their desk to have enough material to span their lifetimes. Some of it is well-done, some dreadful, but always having a point.

As a writer, I watch news feeds each day, looking for tidbits to use for stories, articles, exploration, etc. Each day I shake my head in wonderment as I peruse the latest and greatest in the world of news. I wonder if everyone has gone totally insane, considering episodes like the one on the American Airlines flight this morning from Dallas to Chicago.

Soon I come to another story about a car costing nearly $300,000 that visited Harry Potter’s world and came away with his invisibility cloak. Yes, an invisible car is cool. We’ve had those kinds of military planes for a long time, but why would a person need one? The price tag along would make the car for the wealthy only. Do those going without adequate food on the table need another reason to resent those who’re living large?

There was the one about Coke and Pepsi changing their recipes to eliminate a particular chemical. I ask myself how long they’ve known about potential problems with that chemical and why they waited for a whistle-blower to press the issue.

We are bombarded with news 24/7 on CNN and other broadcast networks. We can’t escape from it, what with all the apps for phones now and hand-held computers. Dick Tracy watches/communicators are already on the market. How much more news do we need to fi

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Morgan Mandel Too Many Years Ago

 As a child, everything and everyone looked big to me. Then I grew older, and the world appeared normal-sized.

When I was growing up, I used to live next to a park. It seemed like an ideal location, because I could play on the monkey bars and making pretend cakes in the sand. Now, I'm glad the park in our neighborhood is a few blocks away, so I don't have to worry about the noise, or the older kids who hang around there at night.

Then there's the matter of age. Wow, 30 used to be awfully old, and 70 was ancient. Now I'm twice 30, so 70 is getting closer and not as old as before.

When it's winter and I'm freezing, 60 degrees seems warm. During summer, 60 degrees feels cool.

I used to work in Downtown Chicago, and thought nothing of joining the herds of commuters who got on the train, then off to march down the street to offices and other places of employment.
Now I'm retired, and going Downtown seems a big deal. Not only that, I wonder how I could have put up with all those people all over the place, getting in my way.

There are countless other examples I could give, but you get the picture. When crafting your characters, take into consideration such factors as age, physical characteristics, background, environment, and family.The more layers you can add  to round out your characters, the more their perspectives will make sense to the reader.

Morgan Mandel writes romances, thrillers and mysteries. Her current release is the romantic thriller, Forever Young: Blessing or Curse on kindle at  http://amzn.com/B006MO28CQ and Print at http://amzn.com/146815771X

For Excerpts and Buy Links to Morgan's 4 books, available on all electronic medica, go to http://morgansbooklinks.blogspot.com/

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by Deren Hansen

I've heard a number of published authors say they had a major crisis of confidence when they started their second book. They're haunted by the fear that they had only the one book in them and will never again be able to produce anything as good.

Why are writers susceptible to such fears?

Putting on my amateur therapist goatee and breaking out the bubble pipe, we have not one but two potential pitfalls awaiting us when we finish a project. The first is psychological and the second structural. They're a nasty pair because they feed off of each other. If you're not careful, you'll find yourself immobilized.

The Psychological Problem

In other professions, one can use a title only after a significant and demonstrable achievement. Lawyers have bar exams. Doctors have medical school, and internships, and residencies. Many other professions can't be practiced without a license. It's natural to assume that a published book is the writer's equivalent of professional certification.

Then there's the arduous process of turning ideas into prose, polishing the manuscript, and persevering through the publishing process, and you have every right to think that you've accomplished something significant. When you've done that, it's natural is to believe that you've learned something and are better at what you do.

The net effect is a tendency to believe that now you're good. You may have given yourself license to suck when you were starting out, but you're beyond that now, right? So you bang out the first few pages of the new project and ... they're not very good. And suddenly you have to question everything you assumed about your new identity.

The psychological trap is believing you've become something different than you were when you started your first project.

The Structural Problem

The more fundamental mistake is to forget the process by which you created your first book--the multiple drafts, the rounds of revisions, the hours spent agonizing over a key word or phrase.

You'll only succeed in depressing yourself if you compare your new project to the book you just finished. A project that's only a month old will always look primitive compared to one you've revised and polished for a year or two.

If you must compare something, compare first drafts. Chances are you'll find that the first draft for your second project is better than your first draft for your first project.

So What Can You Do?

Doctors, who have real credentials, practice medicine. Writers would do well to follow that example: we should see ourselves not as a someone who possesses some expertise but as someone who practices the art of refining words into stories through a patient process.

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People talk about attitudes every day. The subject is always revealing. This morning I came up against it yet again, but in a different way. Let me explain.

I was brushing my teeth a while ago when I heard the toilet flush. Ours is a split bath with the lavatory separate from tub and toilet. I was startled because I’d not noticed Sister moving past me, either going or coming back.

I immediately inquired if she’d done so, to which she said, “Of course!”

Color me surprised. I replied, “I must have been really focused, since I didn’t notice you walking past me.”

Her response was, “Oblivious would be a good choice of word, too.”

I’ll tell you what I told her. “I choose to take a positive stance on this one, rather than see it as negative.”

This whole exchange may sound silly, but it addresses an everyday choice we make as humans. I prefer to think of the episode as “being focused.” The opposite take is “being oblivious.” I was focused on what I was doing and what I was thinking at the time; which just happened to be what I was going to write for this blog post today.

Sister considered it as less aware. One the one hand, she’s correct. I was unaware of her presence behind me and of her proximate activity. From her perspective, what I was doing took little thought and, therefore, I should have noticed her movements.

At the same time, my perspective informs me of my concentrative ability to screen out irrelevant activity while working on the mental plane. This does not happen when I’m in unfamiliar terrain or in uncertain situations. I see it as indicative of how safe and secure I feel in my own home.

Different perspectives? Certainly. Different attitudes? Again, yes, though those attitudes are informed by expectations as well. My expectation was of safety in my home. Hers revolved around momentary awareness of my surroundings.

When we move around our world, we carry expectations, and perspectives based on them, with us and draw conclusions from those factors. Whether those conclusions are viewed as correct are, for wont of another explanation, dependent on how other individuals interpret those conclusions.

The behavior of the world’s populace is based on these factors. Until consensus of perspective arises, there can be little hope for consensus of behavior. At least, that’s how I see it.

If one small action—my brushing my teeth and not noticing someone move behind me—creates a schism between positive and negative interpretation, how much more dramatic are divisions surrounding vast actions?

Give me your thoughts on this question. How do you see perspective and its role in the daily behavior of those two-legged creatures called humans? Leave a comment below and join the discussion.

Until then, a bientot,

Claudsy

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11 Comments on Positive and Negative Perspectives, last added: 6/1/2012

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Meena Rose said, on 5/30/2012 1:44:00 PM

That was a funny episode. What I found intriguing was you validating that it was indeed your sister. Some would have accepted the assumption and moved on and as a result would not have sparked that particular schism between positive and negative.

On to the topic of alertness and obliviousness, there are so of us who by virtue of our life story remain vigilant and alert. Many times we expect everyone else to be that way. Admittedly at times, we tsk tsk the less alert people.

Obliviousness on the other hand implies that alertness to the external environment is diminished. I have noticed this word pick up negative connotations in this day and age of information. Unaware is probably a safer word to use and does not carry the same severity and expectation.

claudsy said, on 5/30/2012 2:42:00 PM

Hey there, Meena. I don’t know that I felt the need to validate who the other person was, so much as to set tone for the experience. I think of words having an undercurrent of negative/positive be the tone used when hearing them voiced. Certain vocal tones connote one or the other to me.

And yes, one’s background does influence how one perceives either perception. I think such experience is also what drives much of animosity/discontent/misunderstanding between people.

The mind’s ability to pigeon-hole emotive stimuli, as often, depends on the vocal tone one hears during conversation as it does visual impression during said conversation or presentation. What a person hears can also be emotively influenced by expectations as perspective.

Circular, don’t you think?

Meena Rose said, on 5/30/2012 3:40:00 PM

I think of it more like a spiral of escalation as anxieties rise with each lap.

What is heard via tone is key as even the nicest words can be said in the most negative way.

claudsy said, on 5/30/2012 4:00:00 PM

So very true, my friend. A compliment can turn into ugly accusation in an inflection. All reaction has the potential to spiral up or down according to personal investment and perceived situational position.

Veronica Roth said, on 5/30/2012 8:40:00 PM

I’m one to talk; today my post was about unhappiness while listening to a program all about hppiness. My partner Robert would say that I’m forever seeing the negative side. It’s true, I’ve thought about it a lot…a lot… but honestly my one bad habit is I write scripts in my mind. You know, scripts which when they don’t turn out the way my brain programmed them, results in disappointment, sadness and negativity. I can def. take a note from your book and chose to see things in a more positive way, I’m trying, but it’s me…and I don’t do this easily. The good thing is I never raise my voice and I always try to take myself away to solitude to minimise the damaging effect I have on those around me.

claudsy said, on 5/30/2012 9:09:00 PM

Veronica, there are many people who can’t quite let go of an idea, regardless of whether that idea worked for them or not. You’re not that unusual in this trait. Perhaps you need to concentrate more on the good turns that the scripts make rather than that turns were made in the first place.

For instance: you’ve got a script about a relationship that’s not working too well–that’s the crisis driving the plot. The twist comes when she realizes that the relationship has always been a bit faulty and not secured on a solid foundation. At this point the main character has to decide whether she really feels the need to “save” the relationship by dumping lots of time and effort into its salvation, or to find out what her life could be like outside the relationship.

If this is the kind of script change that drives you bonkers, you might re-evaluate the situation by realizing that Muse has given you as realistic and plausible an alternative for your story line as possible, one that might actually give you a better story in the long run. Why? Because Muse got a really strong emotional response from you–a response that can be used to fuel it to make your work into a killer script that will be snapped up in a heartbeat.

This is an example of using the positive perspective twist to encourage good things in your everyday work. Just a thought.

cloudfactor5 said, on 6/1/2012 3:33:00 AM

“When we move around our world, we carry expectations, and perspectives based on them”
“This does not happen when I’m in unfamiliar terrain or in uncertain situations.”
By isolating these two sentences that you stated, I would say to you that it is exactly when we put ourselves in unfamiliar terrain and in uncertain situations and then let go of our expectations and perspectives that we stand at the very threshold of magic where the question then becomes do you really believe what you are seeing? This then becomes the starting point where real experience is possible, just look at Carlos Castaneda’s books as a good example of this. I have been there many times in my life when I actually had to question if what I was seeing was real because I was standing in a thick fog of magic. That was the big draw of the Grateful Dead, where people could just show up at concerts, take acid, and watch the known world melt away. What was left was the magical experience of a lifetime, which is why certain Indian tribes still use peyote as a most valid way to commune with god and why these drugs are outlawed because the government would be in deep shit if millions of people woke up to realize that in fact they were god! Which is something we can never know until we leave behind the expectations and perspective’s that are brainwashing our minds daily! So now we arrive at the point of safety, play it safe and you eliminate most possibility, but to quote Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia in their amazing song “Terrapin Station” “I will not forgive you if you will not take the chance” So I say seize the day and wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world !!

claudsy said, on 6/1/2012 7:09:00 AM

Randy, it must just be me then. I’ve never gone anywhere that I recall where I haven’t had some type of expectation, even as a child. In fact, I’ve always heard people say things like “I never imagined anything like that, or I wouldn’t have guessed that this was here.” Surprise at a finding, yes, but there was an expectation, however nebulous, behind the statement; imagination came into the picture and guessing at a possible finding.

You’re very fortunate if you’ve gone anywhere during your life and experienced the wide-eyed innocence of a child within a different environment that your usual fare. I’d've loved to have done that. Perhaps my perspective comes from always having seen the world through eyes too old for my experience level. Or perhaps, it’s simply an expectation of the impossible made real that I’ve always believed in.

I can’t testify to dropping acid at a “Dead” concert, but tribal use of peyote is another matter. From my experience I know that it’s not usual for the average tribal member to use the drug indiscriminately, but rather for the medicine wielders and shaman to use it for vision clarification. I could be wrong, of course. Each tribal group is different in its practices. Peyote is powerful and does intensify one’s experience. Does it surprise and delight? Good question. For one who’s never heard of its effects, I’m sure that it does. For someone who has been briefed before hand, again expectations have arisen. The same can be said for the “Dead” concert and acid. Unless the person had been raised under a rock in someone’s north forty for all those formative years, he/she will have heard something about the affects of acid on the human brain, which returns us to the question of expectations, regardless of how nebulous they might be.

Or have I missed something here? Good discussion, Randy. Thank you.

cloudfactor5 said, on 6/1/2012 7:47:00 AM

Then you have never really gone on a true adventure. When I went to Europe the first time I didn’t even know if I would be able to find food or a place to sleep in some places, and came very close to failing in that respect, and ended up driving 6000 miles in 30 days !! Some of the greatest experiences of my life were when I just got in a car with a bunch of people with a sleeping bag and no expectations and drove !!

claudsy said, on 6/1/2012 7:54:00 AM

I’ve had my own adventures, Randy, with just picking up and going; more times than I care to think about just this minute. Yet, with all of that, I still had imaginings of what I might find along the way or at the other end. There was always an expectation of surprise or confirmation of something I’d been told before I arrived.

That was doubly true during my sister’s and my adventure of five months on the road from Dec. 2010 and May 2011. We expected certain things because of our objectives and our research. None of them panned out. That’s why I’m in the midst of writing a book about the failures that resulted and the blessings and came from those failures.

You’re fortunate, indeed, to have had such an adventure.

cloudfactor5 said, on 6/1/2012 8:29:00 AM

You know for me, the Zen of when I play music,is to empty my mind of all thoughts and considerations as much as humanly possible and see what happens.I still remember the first time I fell asleep with a guitar in my hand and when I awoke my fingers were playing something very interesting. It was the first time I ever had such a profound experience of being outside of myself looking at myself.That’s why to this day I still say my fingers are smarter than me and I do my best to keep my mind out of their way!

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Mark Philip Bradley is Associate Professor of History at the University of Chicago. His most recent book, Vietnam at War, looks at how the Vietnamese themselves experienced the conflicts, showing how the wars for Vietnam were rooted in fundamentally conflicting visions of what an independent Vietnam should mean that in many ways remain to this day. In the excerpt below, from the introduction, Bradley begins to paint the Vietnamese perspective of the conflict.

In the early 1990 a short story by a young author, Tran Huy Quang, entitled ‘The Prophecy’ (’Ling Nghiem’), appeared to great interest in Hanoi.  It told the tale of a young man named Hinh, the son of a mandarin, who longed to acquire the magical powers that would one day enable him to lead his countrymen to their destiny.  The destiny itself does not particularly concern Hinh, but he is intent upon leading the Vietnamese people to it.  In a dream one evening, Hinh meets a messenger from the gods, who tells him to seek out a small flower garden.  Once he reaches the garden, Hinh is told, he should walk slowly with his eyes fastened on the ground to ‘look for this’.  It will only take a moment, the messenger tells Hinh, and as a result he will ‘possess the world’.

When he awakens, Hinh finds the flower garden and begins to pace, looking downward.  Slowly a crowd gathers, first children, then the disadvantaged of Vietnamese society: unemployed workers, farmers who had left their poor rural villages to find work in the city, cyclo drivers, prostitutes, beggars, and orphans.  Watching Hinh, they ask in turn, ‘What are you looking for?’  He replies, ‘I am looking for this.’  Hopeful of turning up a bit of good luck, they join him, and soon multitudes of people are crawling around in the garden.  Hinh looks around at the crowd searching with him and believes the prophecy has been fulfilled: he possesses the world.  With that realization Hinh goes home.

To Vietnamese readers the story was immediately recognized as a parable, with Hinh representing Ho Chi Minh, the pre-eminent leader of the twentieth-century Vietnam.  The prophecy was seen as coming from a secular god, Karl Marx.  ‘This’ was the promise of a socialist future, which the author of ‘The Prophecy’ and many of his readers in Hanoi increasingly believed to be a hollow one.  For them, socialist ideals did enable Vietnamese revolutionaries to develop a mass following and establish an independent state, throwing off a century of French colonial rule.  But in the aftermath of some thirty years of war against the French and the Americans, their hopes for a more egalitarian and just society appeared to remain unfulfilled.

…In truth, there were many Vietnam wars, among them an anti-colonial war with France, a cold war turned hot with the United States, a civil war between North and South Vietnam and among southern Vietnamese, and a revolutionary war of ideas over the vision that should guide Vietnamese society into the post-colonial future.  The contest of ideas began long before 1945 and persists to the present day in yet another war, this one of memory over the legacies of the Vietnam wars and the stakes of remembering and forgetting them.

For most Vietnamese, the coming of French colonialism in the late nineteenth century raised profound questions about their very survival as a people and pointed to the need to rethink fundamentally the neo-Confucian political and social order upon which Vietnamese society has rested.  As one young Vietnamese asked in a 1907 poem:

Why is the roof over the Western universe the broad land and skies;

While we cower and confine ourselves to a cranny in our house?

Why can they run straight, leap far,

While we shrink back and cling to each other?

Why do they rule the world,

While we bow our heads as slaves?

Throughout the twentieth century, in both war and at peace, and into the twenty-first century, the Vietnamese have searched for answers to the predicaments posed by colonialism and the struggle for independence.  As they have done so, a variety of Vietnamese actors have appropriate and transformed a fluid repertoire of new modes of thinking about the future - social Darwinism, Marxist-Leninism, social progressivism, Buddhist modernism, constitutional monarchy, democratic republics, illiberal democracies, and market capitalism to name just a few - to articulate and enact visions for the post-colonial transformation of urban and rural Vietnamese society.  But the end of the Vietnam wars did not bring a final resolution to these competing visions.  When North Vietnamese tanks entered Saigon on 30 April 1975 to take the surrender of the American-backed South Vietnamese government, Vietnam was reunified as a socialist state.  The long war for independence was over.  Yet even today, as the searchers in ‘The Prophecy’ suggest, the meanings according to ‘running straight and leaping far’ remain deeply contested.  In one of many present-day paradoxes, the Vietnamese state seeks to develop a market economy as it maintains its commitment to socialism, while an increasingly heterodox Vietnamese civil society simultaneously embraces the global economy, years for the unfulfilled promises of socialist egalitarianism, and reinvents many of the spiritual and familial practices the socialist state spent the war years trying to stamp out.  Indeed, a walk today through a typical city block at the centre of Hanoi or Saigon, a block in which a refurbished Buddhist temple might be flanked by a Seven-Eleven store on one side and the local community party headquarters on the other, quickly reveals these everyday contradictions and tensions…

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The 18th century buildings along the Loire river in the Île Feydeau neighborhood of Nantes, France, have tilted rather alarmingly because their foundations were laid on sandy ground.

They dramatically illustrate a point that you can observe more subtly in almost any group of buildings or structures: Things settle a bit and get out of alignment over time. Or they weren’t built perfectly in the first place, especially before the laser-beam era.

When it comes to drawing a row of buildings, it is usually preferable to give them a little wobble. To do that, you can construct a whole set of slightly varying vanishing points.

When it's done very subtly, it gives architectural forms a certain naturalness and believability that beats the kind of cold rendering that comes from aligning an entire parallel facade with a single vanishing point.

(And yes! We saw the machines...more on that in a future post.)

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Here are two photographs from a 1903 text for artists about reflections on water.

Left: “Knotted reflections of masts.” Right: “Broken reflection of sail. The mast, being taller, is reflected as a continuous winding line.”

The book is called Light and Water: A Study of Reflexion and Colour in River, Lake, and Sea, by Sir Montagu Pollock. It gives a thorough analysis of reflections on smooth, rippled, and wavy water, with perspective diagrams and explanations. You can download it for free as a PDF at the Internet Archive.

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My perspective is pretty much the same, houses and buildings, painting and having fun.
My submission for Illustration Friday's "perspective" theme is a drawing I made for my dear friend artist Pam Jones. It is her birthday on Saturday February 27 and she is a fellow pisces. We belong to a music sharing blog called Kings of Maybe and I am playing her a few songs this weekend as well so if you click on you may follow along too. This drawing called "Going Up?" is her birthday card and I thought on Pam's way up she might need to bring along a few things she could use: Fishie Friends, a monster, a valpal hat to receive songs and messages and a birthday cake! of course it is chocolate :P I hope you have a fabulous birthday sweet Pam Jones! Big love from Valgal, babe!

birthday card for Pam Jones 2010

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per·spec·tive (pr-spktv) n.

Subjective evaluation of relative significance; a point of view.

“Are you content now?” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, I should like to be a little larger, sir if you wouldn’t mind,” said Alice: “three inches is such a wretched height to be.”

“It is a very good height indeed!” said the Caterpillar angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high).

“But I’m not used to it!” pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she thought to herself, “I wish the creatures wouldn’t be so easily offended!”

“You’ll get used to it in time,” said the Caterpillar; and it put the hookah into its mouth and began smoking again.

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One of the most magical storytelling tools in the novelist’s arsenal is that of point of view, or POV for short. Your choice of point of view will determine the quality of the connection your reader feels, not only to your character, but to the point you’re discussing within your story. Who do you want the [...] No related posts.

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One of the ways of adding depth to your stories is to make sure your characters have depth. You need to go far beyond having a character with a basic set of emotions coupled with a physical description of the character.

Your character needs history. What has happened in her life to make her who she is? What’s her relationship with her parents, siblings, children, friends, bosses, teachers, and others?

No one is perfect, so your character needs flaws. How do these flaws play into the plot? Do they create additional conflict, internally or externally? Even if your antagonist is the most evil person in the world, your character needs some good qualities to show their humanity. Obviously, your protagonist needs good qualities too. Otherwise we won’t care what happens to her.

Your characters need to have inner conflicts that the people around them can’t see or don’t know about. Everyone puts on a front or a face that they show the world, which is different than how they view themselves. We need to see the discrepancies between the character’s inner self and the self they show the world. When we talk, we don’t always say what we mean—the same thing has to happen with your characters from time to time—where you know they’re thinking one thing, but saying something different. Once again it becomes the clash between the inner self and the outer self.

These are just a few things to watch out for when adding depth to your characters. Below are a few of my favorite books that provide even more valuable insights on creating characters with depth.

Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card - Provides invaluable perspectives on how to develop and use your characters to make your stories come alive.

The Comic Toolbox by John Vorhaus – While this book primarily focuses on how to add humor to your stories, it also covers many aspects of creating multi-dimensional characters in terms of their flaws, humanity, and unique perspective on the world.

Building Believable Characters by Marc McCutcheon - From listings of physical attributes to character actions and the way they dress, this is a good reference or resource book for helping you define the unique characteristics of your individual characters.

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A little about perspective and composition on book covers. There's so much that can be done to draw attention to a book, as long as you're lucky enough to have the bookseller display it with the cover image visible. Just think about where the viewer stands in relation to the images on the covers of these kids' and young adult books.

Firehouse! by Mark Teague (Scholastic, 2010). How low can you go? Awesome.

The Barrel in the Basement by Barbara Brooks Wallace, illustrated by Sharon Wooding (BackinPrint edition, originally published by Atheneum in 1985). We the viewers are looking down from above, which accentuates their diminutive size.

Guardian of the Dead (the U.S. hardcover) by Karen Healey (Little, Brown, 2010) We are practically lying on this creature's chest. Low and inside.

Ed Young's Moon Bear, written by Brenda Guiberson (Holt, 2010). It would be so easy for this bear to appear menacing, the way he looms over us. But he doesn't seem too scary. Right?

0 Comments on You Are Here as of 1/1/1900 Add a Comment More from this Blog | Email This | Add a Tag 24. Great Read, Great Illustrations 1 Comments | Previous | Top | Next By: Stacia, on 3/27/2011 Blog: Creative Cup Illustrators Group (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap) JacketFlap tags:  children's book, perspective, Children's artist, book review, author, essential book list, Children's illustration, Add a tag The Circus Ship By Chris Van Dusen I was at Half Price Books the other day and saw Chris Van Dusen's book on the shelf. I'd read it before from the library, and wanted it for my home collection. The story is inspired by an actual event and written in verse. I read it again last night to my kids, and took particular notice of the wonderful perspective driven illustrations. I've been working very hard at figuring out top-down perspective with the added flavor of foreshortening. Not so easy! I really admire and appreciate Van Dusen's work. Not only is the story awesome and the illustrations inspiring, but through out the story it's fun to find the animals. He's good at hiding them within his pages. Perspective! The Circus Ship By Chris Van Dusen 1 Comments on Great Read, Great Illustrations, last added: 3/28/2011 Display Comments lil kim said, on 3/28/2011 4:10:00 AM Looks great! i don't think I've heard of him before. Will have to check him out.. Add a Comment More from this Blog | Email This | Add a Tag 25. When to switch to two point perspective 23 Comments | Previous | Top | By: James Gurney, on 5/16/2011 Blog: Gurney Journey (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap) JacketFlap tags:  Academic Painters, Perspective, Add a tag Here’s a painting called “Admiration” by Vittorio Reggianini (1858-1938). A mishandling of perspective unintentionally gives it a funhouse quality. If you dropped a marble on the floor, it looks like it would roll off to the right. The problem is that it goes into two point perspective when it should be treated as a one-point perspective picture. A basic rule of thumb is that if the main vanishing point is within the central third of the picture, the other set of lines should stay horizontal. If that distant vanishing point were placed way over near the side of the picture, the lines in the floor and the window mullions could begin to slant a bit. 23 Comments on When to switch to two point perspective, last added: 5/17/2011 Display Comments Marty Murphy said, on 5/16/2011 4:15:00 AM I love to see you do a book on perspective. Marc McCabe said, on 5/16/2011 4:59:00 AM I think that works nicely though, it hides what the girls in the background are looking at. On the other hand the more I look at it the more my eye just keeps falling off to the right. Getting a little dizzy now :D Chantal Fournier said, on 5/16/2011 5:25:00 AM I have read many good books on perspective (such as Perspective made easy) but had never heard of that rule. Thank you James. Tom Hart said, on 5/16/2011 6:20:00 AM I second the motion for a book on perspective - or at least a portion of a book, perhaps combined with composition, and (?)... My question: What drove the artist to use 2-point perspective in the first place? That's escaping me. My natural inclination is always to use 1-point perspective - not that that's always a good thing. Tometheus said, on 5/16/2011 7:59:00 AM It works for me. I like it. Traditionally, the couple in the foreground would be the subject of the painting and the artist has painted it that way, with the attention to detail, etc given to them. The window and floor lines draw you that way like they are 'supposed' to. Then like a pinball, suddenly your eyes are drawn to the background scene by the black-line perspective and the dog's posture and you realize the women in the background are not really looking at the couple as first surmised, but at a painting that is hidden from our view. The fact that the second perspective converges within the painting makes us realize that this second scene is where the real action is taking place. It makes me REALLY want to know what is in that hidden painting. Tometheus said, on 5/16/2011 8:03:00 AM Or, to say it in another way, I don't think it's "unintentional" at all. Casey Klahn said, on 5/16/2011 8:24:00 AM Your description is best, but I had to go further for myself. I find the window/carpet lines from the second VP to be so odd, that I wonder where to put myself in a room to gain this perspective. I find myself thinking that they diverge too quickly, or at too severe an angle. Just thinking out loud. Tom Hart said, on 5/16/2011 8:28:00 AM Echoing Caey's remark, and to expand on my earier one - I can find no logic for the angle of the carpet and the off-horizontal edges of the tile. Aside from the perspective of the farther scene (which appears to be the correct perspective to me), that front-scene perspective just looks blatantly off. James Gurney said, on 5/16/2011 8:44:00 AM Good observations, everyone. Tom, to answer your question, I should explain that, technically speaking, any time the vanishing point inside the picture moves from the dead center of the picture, the other sets of lines will start to converge ever so slightly at first. You can see it happening on a camera's viewfinder in a street scene (or a supermarket is a perfect place to check this out). The "horizontals" start to converge as soon as the camera is no longer pointing straight down the aisle. But the degree of that convergence is very small, and it increases only slightly. The degree also depends on how wide angle the camera is. So the rule of thumb is an approximation, really. This stuff is a bit hard to explain without pictures, so if you're confused, don't worry. Tom Hart said, on 5/16/2011 8:58:00 AM Thanks James. That does help. I'm still perplexed (as I think you are too)as to why using 2-point perspective looked or felt right to this painter. It almost seems (as someone mentioned earlier) that it had to be intentional. Misguided, IMHO, but (probably) intentional. Everett Patterson said, on 5/16/2011 9:01:00 AM I drew inumerable wonky scenes like "Admiration" before discovering this rule on my own. However, I think there's another solution besides switching to 1-point perspective. You could add a THIRD vanishing point to the right of the existing two (probably off-canvas) and use curvilinear perspective. In other words, the straight lines of the tiles and the carpet would appear to subtly curve, swooping down from the left and up again towards the right. Nowadays, this technique is mostly associated with comic books and would have been totally inappropriate for a painting like Reggianini's. When handled badly, curvilinear perspective can have the appearance of photographic distortion, even look as if you are viewing the scene through a fisheye lens. Nevertheless, I think it's a valid technique and have seen it used in paintings from the 15th century! I try to use Gurney-style vision science when thinking about perspective issues. My own eyeballs have an extremely limited area of focus, and I can only obtain "the big picture" by moving them around in my skull to focus on different parts of the scene. But I also swivel my head on my neck, and some scenes (like an enormous landscape panorama) I can only take in by moving my head. It's scenes like these in which "gimmicky" curvilinear perspective is actually best at mimicking the experience of visual perception. Audran said, on 5/16/2011 9:17:00 AM or maybe it has been simply cropped. Richard said, on 5/16/2011 9:53:00 AM or, if it should not have been cropped, it may have been an approach (between 1858 and 1938) to "abstract art" Scorchfield said, on 5/16/2011 10:18:00 AM In today's world is very hard to get to define the geometry, triangle disappears in the roof and the square disappears in the fingering (like imagine)! geometry is confusing because it is lost, most people do not know the Pythagorean demonstration... :) Tometheus said, on 5/16/2011 10:32:00 AM Additionally there appears to be a third set of converging lines deliberately painted on the column in the background (also converging with the draperies) that, after staring at the painting this long, seems to be a huge flashing arrow saying "LOOK HERE". Not perspective lines per se, but it does pull your eyes away from the foreground couple, seeming to imply that that's what the artist was trying to do. The artistic version of a bait-and-switch. "Ha! You thought I was going to illustrate the admiration between a couple in love, but really I was illustrating the admiration of art." Why am I critiquing this painting so much? I'm a physicist, not an artist. ;) Tom Hart said, on 5/16/2011 10:55:00 AM In all seriousness, I think that Audran may be on to something. James: do you know for sure that this reproduction wasn't shot, and then cropped at an off angle? It seems to me that tilted so the carpet edge is horizontal, it reads right...(not having tried that experiment yet myself, I confess...) James Gurney said, on 5/16/2011 11:15:00 AM Tom and Audran, the image used on the blog I shot myself at Sotheby's auction preview in New York. It's not cropped and is pretty close to the actual painting. You can see Sotheby's image of it here: http://www.artvalue.com/auctionresult--reggianini-vittorio-1858-1924-admiration-2886370.htm Tom Hart said, on 5/16/2011 11:24:00 AM Thanks for that info, James. That settles that question! Richard said, on 5/16/2011 12:02:00 PM I stand corrected! Not cropped; at least from a three dimensioned point of view;-) Great blog, after all, in my point of view Wouter Bruneel said, on 5/16/2011 12:45:00 PM That is so interesting. I've noticed the awkwardness when pushing 2 point perspective like this. Rockhopper said, on 5/16/2011 1:58:00 PM Yes its wrong however I kind of like it, makes the piece more dynamic ibisbill said, on 5/17/2011 12:29:00 PM James, While we're on the subject of perspective, would you have time to give us a few comments on Rackstraw Downes? He seems to be re-inventing perspective, in his mural-size, extremely horizontal paintings. James Gurney said, on 5/17/2011 12:37:00 PM Ibisbill, I'm glad you mentioned Rackstraw Downes, because he's doing some interesting things with "fish-eye" or curved perspective. Where the field of view is taking up more than 90 degrees of viewing angle. A painter can go beyond a wide-angle lens in such things, and some of the other comments have alluded to this idea. Good topic for another post, perhaps. Add a Comment More from this Blog | Email This | Add a Tag View Next 3 Posts © 2012 Jacketflap.com                         About Us   FAQ   Advertise on JacketFlap   About our Widgets program for Publishers   Privacy   Terms