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By: AlyssaB,
on 10/5/2016
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Salafism, often referred to as ‘Wahhabism’, is widely regarded as a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that fuels Jihadism and subjugates women. Some even lump ISIS and Salafism together—casting suspicion upon the thousands of Muslims who identify as Salafi in the West. After gaining unprecedented access to Salafi women’s groups in London, I discovered the realities behind the myths.
The post 6 common misconceptions about Salafi Muslims in the West appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Daniel Hall,
on 3/15/2015
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Over the past year the number of questionable police use-of-force incidents has been ever present. The deaths of Eric Garner in New York, Michael Brown in Missouri, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Ohio, are but just a few tragic cases.
The post The visual, experiential, and research dimensions of police coercion appeared first on OUPblog.
Check talented illustrator, designer, hand lettering expert Nate William's blog. He has a new post up about a methodology for creating new ideas. Great stuff.
I found this from Michael Nobbs on twitter.
I'm taking a few posts to discuss novel writing. This is again a nuts and bolts week for my blog. I will focus on personal experience with an eye on the universal. This week I'm discussing my methodology of writing. I came across a Japanese efficiency method called Kaizen that calls for gradual incremental changes. The heart of this philosophy is that every area of life can be improved. This philosophy absolutely mirrors how I write books. The Kaizen philosophy embraces five foundational elements: team work, personal discipline, improved morale, quality circle, suggestions for improvement. I find these elements are essential to writing a book.
First team work, this is the reason why building writing clips is so necessary to your writing life. You need the experience of working on a team, even if it's just you and your editor. Writing a book is not something I want to do in an ivory tower which I descend from every 10 years with one of the great masterpieces of the world. My mojo is born out of teamwork. A vibrant team environment is the star nursery of greatness.
The next element is personal discipline. You must write every day. I have found that I can lean on the experience of discipline in other areas of my life to help me become a more disciplined writer. I especially like to think about the mountains of laundry I have folded, the large concrete floors I have busted out, the many chemical reactions I have balanced, and the thousands of diapers I've dealt with -- obviously the spark for personal discipline can come from many places. Without building on a project in a daily incremental way the piece will lack focus and cohesion.
Another element is improved morale. You've got to have a positive attitude to write books. Listen, I'm cup half empty sort of person, so I find this a personal challenge. Thankfully, over time, I have learned how to keep myself up at least part of the time. I take time to celebrate every success. When I write a query, I give myself props. If I write a page, I then take time to experience the pleasure of having added to my project. If no big stuff is on the horizon, I pick a little thing that I'm sure I can achieve and then go for it. I let myself laugh with glee and cry with joy when I achieve a new milestone: a started story, a completed story, a submitted story -- I take time to improve my morale.
Quality is a piece of the writing equation that I long avoided but now embrace. I've found many writers focus on the big picture but neglect the details. You must become a person with finesse when it comes to grammar and vocabulary. For me this has meant worksheet after worksheet of grammar related exercises. It means taking the time to go through each manuscript with a thesaurus and doing whatever I can to punch up the language. This is technical stuff, folks. Every word shades your meaning. Words must be chosen with great care. Grammar also shades your meaning. My best advice: invest in the quality of your writing.
The last piece of this: seeking suggestions for improvement or critique. I have found that to create top notch work you need to listen to the sensibility of your readers. Open yourself to the opinion of others. Listen to them and revise with their thoughts in mind. Expect to have more critique in the end than the length of the novel. Expect for each novel to go through two or more critiques. Try to keep a balance. Your intent should be twined together with the advice of your peers. There is excellence to be achieved by relating to the critiques of others.
I hope that you have found something useful here. Happy writing.
Constant dripping hallows out a stone. Lucretius
By request of Janet Lee Carey, I'm adding a little feature to my weekly blog.
I'm a lifelong doodler. So...
From the imagination of Molly Blaisdell: Doodle of the Week
©Molly Blaisdell, all rights reserved. If you want to use my cool doodles ask permission first. It is so wrong to take people's doodles without permisison!
Several things define human beings for what they are: self awareness, the ability to visualise the future, selfless sacrifice, and story. There is something fundamentally human about the need to tell, hear, and participate in stories. Even something as simple as gossip has an underlying structure: a beginning, a middle and an end, dialogue, a hero and a villain, participation, and the perceived distinction between right and wrong.
“And can you believe what she did next …”
“No – the cheek of it.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to stand for that so I said …”
I’ve been thinking a lot about the structure of story over the last few days because I’m currently planning the story for my second book. I had so many problems refining the story for the first book that this time I’m planning the story out on an excel spread sheet. I require each of the story elements, main story, sub-plots, and character developments (including the villains), to have a complete story arch.
Ha, you thought a story had only a beginning, middle, and end? Well it does and I guess the basic structure was laid down millions of years ago around the very first camp fires, but a novel is slightly different. Because of its greater length and complexity a novel has to pass through a more complete and complex story pattern. I don’t know if this is something we learn as we grow up or feel instinctively, but no novel is going to succeed if is only a story. I use an eight point story arc:
• Stasis
• Trigger
• Quest
• Surprise
• Critical Choice
• Climax
• Reversal
• Resolution
In addition, I require the main story to hit each of 12 story beats specific to the genre I’m writing in. These are the 12 I use for an adventure story (each genre has its own unique story beats):
• The main character faces a strong moral dilemma in achieving a goal.
• The antagonist poses opposition, both morally and physically to the goal.
• The main character confronts the major complication, but proceeds into the story.
• The story moves into a new world, and the main character makes an achievement.
• The antagonist takes control of the story, sets the counter-plot in motion.
• The main character moves forward, believing himself to be victorious, but finds the antagonist to be equal and opposing.
• The main character restates the goal, with renewed conviction, but experiences his first setback.
• The antagonist spins the counter-plot forward, and achieves momentum against the main character.
• The protagonist experiences defeat at the hand of the antagonist, and loses his moral strength.
• The protagonist loses the will to achieve his goal, but resuscitates his motivation and moral strength.
• The protagonist restates his goal and summons up his moral courage. The antagonist restates his mission to destroy the protagonist, as well as his motivation and courage.
• The protagonist and antagonist prepare for confrontation, but the protagonist experiences an epiphany of moral courage that gives him what it takes to defeat the antagonist. understanding his life with renewed meaning and understanding.
Each of the sub-plots also has to satisfy the story beats of its own genre. I’m not a romance writer and I would have to research the appropriate story beats, but I guess that if I had a romance sub-plot I would have a list that looks something like this:
• Boy meets girl.
• Girl rejects boy, but boy persists.
• Girl grows to like boy.
• Boy does something to distance girl.
• Boy and girl are reconciled.
• Boy and girl are split up despite their love.
• Boy and girl fight against the odds to be reunited but fail.
• Boy and girl finally overcome the odds and are reunited.
John Truby (see writer’s store expert articles) believes a successful film script should be an amalgamation of three genre’s and hit a total of 22 story beats. I’m not so formulaic as Truby, but I do believe that each story line and character development needs to be a complete story in its own right to be satisfying to the reader and that the overall story needs to meet the reader’s genre expectations.
So until I have sorted the story I'm not even going to write the first draft.
I’ve been thinking recently about the correct pace for a story. Stephen Hunt’s Court Of The Air got me thinking along these lines. I didn’t enjoy the story – Mr Hunt has a weird and sick imagination, and the setting kept crossing with an English reality so often that you were never quite sure where you were meant to be, but within three pages the story had sucked me in and I could not put the book down. I kept thinking, ‘I’m not enjoying this story, but I have to know what happens next.’ The story rushed along, twisting and turning, so fast that my mind didn’t have time to get bored.
I’ve just finished re-reading Frank Herbert’s Dune, one of my favourite stories. In terms of pace it is not dissimilar to Court Of the Air, but a much more enjoyable story. The story twists and turns and pulls you along every four or five pages. To do that a story needs a big scope and a lot of characters.
I bought this months Writing Magazine, because I’m still forced to be inactive. An article by Ken Follett discussed the difference between his first ten unpublished novels (that in itself is scary) and the eleventh which was published. He reckons that one of the major differences was pace. ‘There is quite a simple rule,’ he says, ‘which is that the story should turn every four to six pages. Once you have answered one question in the mind of the reader you need to be already asking another.’ That will take a lot of planning and a story with real scope – I’m not there yet, but I will be.
I’ve received a great rejection letter, for Marauders, from a senior editor at a well known publishing house. How can a rejection letter be ‘great’ you ask, surely only an acceptance is great? Actually, this one was pure gold and I went off to celebrate – let me explain:
This was a personalised letter stating she had read and enjoyed the sample chapters – this is absolute proof my submission made it out of the slush pile. And if I can get out of one slush pile I can get out of others. This puts Marauders in the top 10% of submissions – confirmation I’m doing something right and not completely wasting my time.
Amazingly, this editor took time out from her busy schedule to write a short critique of my sample chapters: what she thought was good and what she thought needed improving. The whole letter was only a few short paragraphs, but how often have you longed for feedback from a professional editor, and a senior one at that? She even took time to read this blog.
What the editor suggested for improvement I had already half suspected before I sent out the submissions, which is great, because it confirms my gut instinct was right and gives me a focus for the next edit/re-write. In this lonely writing business it is so easy to get led astray by all the hype and distrust your own instincts. Now I know my story telling instincts were right all along I will listen to them more intently.
Now I’m off to revisit my sample chapters and edit, edit, edit.
The scene brief pre-draft technique is working really well. More accurately, the story for ‘Ark of Knowledge’ is not working, but this is readily apparent through the scene brief. I’ve filled in most of the scenes for the first third and last third of the story. I currently have 40 closely written pages of scene notes. The brief gives me the freedom to introduce great ideas and develop characters, but is spares enough to allow me to easily backfill plot points and clearly see how the story is developing.
The middle scenes, however, are causing a lot of headaches. The route of the problem is that the main villain, the enigmatic Professor Hertzegovny, is neither enigmatic nor villainous. In fact, she is being remarkably co-operative at the moment. What I need is more conflict: the scene brief is far too sparse on conflict. I haven’t yet reached the conflict with Loren, what I need at this stage is more conflict from Aurora and Prof. H. or someone else. Ian McEwan, in his recent novel Beaches, manages to get conflict into every page. I doubt if I can achieve anything like that, but I should at least manage some action and some conflict in each scene.
So, do I introduce a new villain, beef up Prof. H. or beef up some other character, like Rufus Dracon? Can I have both Mervyn and Dracon running about a mystery spaceship at the same time? Somehow I doubt if that would work, unless he is in league with Prof. H. Time to analyse the scene brief again.
In my search for inspiration to generate more conflict, I came across
this article by James Bonnett. I went off to analyse my antagonists. This is the result:
The threat/source of the conflict – The Centaph
The complications and resistance – Lord Dracon, working through Halival Tarak and
Professor Hertzegovny.
Higher self/protector – the Mage, who equips Mervyn for success.
Once I had sorted this out, the larger picture started to make more sense and I could see how this story fits into the setting I created in ‘Marauders’. I decided the Centaph needed a character for us to focus on and for Lord Dracon to interact with. So I created Bal-Zuk-Mangok. I was then able to write the prologue for the story, which is the only place that Lord Dracon and Bal-Zuk-Mangok feature – sitting over everything like Greek gods. Later in the series they will become more personally involved in the stories, as will the Mage, but for now they are just pulling the strings and observing.
I then re-wrote sections of the brief to show how Mervyn is covertly equipped to access the Bourne by the Mage. I also started to increase the conflict with Prof. H., Aurora and Loren, though, I realised Aurora would never willingly work against her uncle with the Centaph threat so close so there are limits to how far she will go in acting against Mervyn.
Still trying to figure out how to seduce Loren into an alience with Prof. H. and turn her against Mervyn. Also trying to work out the true nature of the Bourne itself. This has taken an unexpected turn as I’ve had some great ideas, but they do complicate the story somewhat. Essentially, I’ve realised the Bourne is a puzzle for the Misfits to solve rather than just a monster, though I still plan for it to turn into a monster in the end. For the moment I’m just going to keep ploughing through the scene brief and see what turns up, then I’ll backtrack, analyse, consolidate, and re-write. Back to the scene brief then.
I have just finished the 3rd re-write of the storyline for ‘Ark of Knowledge’ – I think I’ve got it now, an interesting, compelling, and intriguing story with enough twists and turns to be different from the norm. Now I start the Scene Brief – just splurging ideas, key dialogue, and setting down for each and every scene. This is the ideas factory.
I’ve already settled on four sub plots I can develop throughout the book:
1) The operation and implosion of the Folksocracy. This will be contrasted with the absolute theocracy of the Centaph and their unbending, but warped, code of honour. Mervyn’s knowledge of this code – the Centaph’s main strength and their weakness – will become an enduring theme of the whole series.
2) Mervyn being haunted by his first kiss – if he’s 15 he has to have some hormones.
3) Loren’s betrayal the Misfits and her siding with Lord Dracon. Impossible? No, we all have a price and if our personal beliefs are pushed to the limit it is surprising what we will do in defence of them.
4) The way simple organisms can build complicated societies/structures.
Lord Dracon will be scheming through a new character: the Misfit’s archaeology teacher, the enigmatic Professor Hertzegovny – a corrupt version of Lara Croft.
The main academic theme for the story will revolve around two sayings of Confucius which I have combines together into a single thought:
‘Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance; to go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.’
The main thematic theme running through the story: is the conflict between greed and self sacrifice/duty.
Mervyn’s main conflict: is that for the greater good he has to destroy advance science that can end poverty, banish war and suffering, and cure his Mother’s mystery illness.
One of the main characters dies – not a Misfit. Having said that though, I have decided that by the end of the series one of the Misfits will be dead. Gasp, shock, horror!
So, plenty of conflict to keep the story moving along and plenty of scope for imaginative ideas in the scene brief.
I'm just joking. This one is actually pretty good: the Carnegie of Carnegies.
Arifa Akbar reports for the Independent.
Here's the entire list:
- Skeling, by David Almond (1998)
- Junk, by Melvin Burgess (1996)
- Storm, by Kevin Crossley-Holland (1985)
- A Gathering Light, by Jennifer Donnelly (2003)
- The Owl Service, by Alan Garner (1967)
- The Family from One End Street, by Eve Garnett (1937)
- The Borrowers, by Mary Norton (1952)
- Tom's Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce (1958)
- Northern Lights, by Philip Pullman (1995)
- The Machine-Gunners, by Robert Westall (1981)
Here are some more statistics: At last I have finished the final draft and made the final alterations to Mervyn Bright and the Marauders. When I say final I mean the last time I touch it before an agent/editor requests changes.
Now I start the difficult bit – getting an agent and a publishing contract. Miss Snark reckons that of the 1200 queries she receives each quarter she takes on only one new client. Of course, if I haven’t made it by this time next year I’ll have to think again. In the meant time I’m forging ahead with book two in the series, ‘Mervyn Bright and the Ark of Knowledge’ – you can find a scene brief for this book by clicking on the ‘Synopsis’ link in the navigation panel on the left.
Issac Asimov apparently said, “The first million words are just practice.” By that measure I have only 800,000 to go
Nathan Bransford (US literary agent) reckons that most writers don’t get published until their third or fourth book.
The average professional writer makes only £15,000 per year – so no giving up the day job then.
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Thanks for this one Amy. The article is really interesting and empowering.
Hi Amy,
Because you have so much to offer to others,
I have awarded you a trophy, please accept it and go to my blog to retrieve the image.
Here is a link to the post:
http://gingerpixels.blogspot.com/2009/08/i-received-truly-lovely-award-today.html
Just copy the image to your blog, if you aren't able to do that I will email it to you.
Cheers!