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For some time now, I have been among those who have argued that the fandom associated with the Star Wars franchise is akin to a religion. There are those who will quarrel with the word choice, but it is hard to gainsay the dedication of fans to the original films

The post Mythology redux: The Force Awakens once again appeared first on OUPblog.

What is strength? I don’t mean muscular strength, I am wondering about the use of the word to describe a mental and emotional strength. Strength of the heart.

The dictionary defines strength as moral power, firmness, or courage.

I’ve recently seen several quotes about strength. This one stands out:

You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only option.

-Author unknown

We quote scripture to help us with our strength. Beautiful verses come to mind such as:

But those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 43:1

&

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I have been given many more. We read them in times of need and feel their comfort. I don’t mean to minimize the impact of the Word – it is all-sufficient. But it isn’t always a quick band-aid overcoming the darkest struggle. Slap this on and feel strong, as it were. I wish it were that simple. In the best of circumstances, most of us need to be reminded time after time before things sink in.

While the concept of strength might be an easy one for you, it has troubled me of late. You see, I am trying to care for my daughter who is fighting cancer. Actually, to be honest, right now she is fighting the chemo that is fighting the cancer. She is only twelve and should never have to deal with any weight so difficult. This road would buckle the knees of some of the world’s strongest men, yet she trudges on.

She puts on a brave face and true to her nickname, smiles to most. But at night, with her mother, her sisters, and me, she often falls apart. The thing I hear from her most often is that she isn’t strong enough – she can’t do this. I wish there was something I could tell her to change her situation, but I can’t. There is no choice, no option, no plan B. The chemo regimen must go on. I wish I could break her cycle of self-doubt, but it is her cycle. I can’t change it. I can only encourage and hold, assuring her of my presence and love.

That leads me to my present dilemma: What is strength? Does she have it? If not, where can she find enough to continue when there is no other way?

I think back over her history and wonder if she’s had to rely on strength in the past. She has run two 5k races with me and had to reach down deep to finish each one. That took some strength – but not the kind I am looking for. I need her to have strength to say, “This life is worth living and I will fight for it.”

*     *     *     *     *

My wife has been asking me to add a picture CD onto her computer so she can look at them. After putting it off for too long, I finally complied. The pictures I saw reminded me of simpler times and I enjoyed scanning them as they flashed across the screen. They were from our school’s play, Anne of Green Gables, in which Kylie had a part. She barely made it through the performances because of the pain in her leg caused by the cancer soon to be diagnosed.

Wait… what are you showing me, God? Is that strength?

Back up – let me look again.

I see a little girl who was crying herself to sleep every night due to a growing tumor inside her knee. Yet in these pictures she is singing, moving, dancing, and hiding the pain behind a range of her character’s emotions so she wouldn’t disappoint in the show.

I see a little girl who wouldn’t stop dancing until the director forced her to use crutches in the final two performances – and she was mad about that!

I see a girl who collapsed after the finale and couldn’t attend the cast party because the pain was simply too great.

Isn’t that smiling little girl playing a part on stage the same one who lay in a hospital bed in a medication-induced sleep just a week after the curtain fell?

When told she had cancer inside of her, instead of crying out in anger at God, isn’t this the girl who simply said “God must have a great, big plan for me”?

Is that precious, animated child the same one who, when she began to lose her hair to chemotherapy, decided shaved it herself to deny cancer the pleasure?

That is incredible strength! Undeniable strength.

What about now? If we agree that this girl is a strong girl, has four months of treatment changed her? How would a strong person face chemotherapy? Should she charge in, laughing in the face of the toxins that wreck her little body time after time?

Or is it okay to cry, yet move on?

Is strength found, not in the tears leading up to a hospital stay but in the gritting of her teeth when she allows the nurse to access her port one more time, knowing what will soon flow into her veins?

How much resolve allows a transfusion that scares her to death without saying a word?

What measure of courage is there in quiet submission to a treatment that is nearly as bad as the disease?

An immeasurable amount!

The frail body of my daughter holds enormous strength and when this treatment is over, I pity the boy who would try to hurt her or the obstacle that would stand in her way.

I have always been big and thought myself strong. I have pushed large objects and run long distances. Yet I realize I am weak in comparison to my frail, eighty pound daughter, who day after day pushes on through this hell.

She is my hero.

Every morning that she wakes up and greets the day adds to her resolve. There may be tears, angst, cries of terror, and fits of rage – yet every day also contains smiles, kisses, hugs, warmth, joy, praise, and enough laughter and love to beat back at this enemy on her terms.

Oh, she is strong!

My little girl is strength personified, even if she can’t see it.

START YOUR NOVEL

• 29 Plot Templates
• 2 Essential Writing Skills
• 100 Examples of Opening Lines
• 7 Weak Openings to Avoid
• 4 Strong Openings to Use
• 3 Assignments to Get Unstuck
• 7 Problems to Resolve

Question: How do you tell a story and make sure that both sides get heard?

Answer: This is a time when switching point-of-view might be helpful.

The default for telling a story is 3rd-person point-of-view. You tell it like you are recording from a camera that sits right above the point-of-view (POV) character’s head. Usually the POV character is the main character, but it can be a friend or some other character. The key is the pronouns: you use he, she, they, them.

If the camera is above the character’s head, you can’t tell what the character is thinking. That’s 1st person POV, which uses I, me and my pronouns. There is a close 3rd person POV which lets you imply the character’s thoughts.

1st: I sift through photos until–I stop and hold up THE photo. It shows me, sitting on my Dad’s lap. I was just five and it was the day before he disappeared.

3rd: She shifted the photos, one by one. Then she held one up and shifted to let the light fall on it better. Yes, it was Dad and she was sitting on his lap. She remembered that day because it was the day before her Dad disappeared.

Which do you like better? It’s a personal thing in some respects and also a question of which one serves your story better.

But back to the question: How do you make sure both sides get heard? Usually, you’ll create a story with two POV characters, one the hero(ine) and one the villain(ess). POV switches typically happen at chapter breaks, that is you’ll have one chapter from the Hero(ine)’s POV, then a chapter from the Villain(ess)’s POV. You can alternate as needed and you don’t have to make it evenly split between the two POV.

The advantage of this is that you can explain the deep issues that each character has from their POV. The difficulty of this is creating two characters that the audience will truly care about and will root for. You want the audience to like the characters. Is your villain a likeable sort? Or at least a sympathetic sort?

Also, consider what the audience will know if you use this strategy. The reader will be in on every nuance of the villain’s plans. How will you create surprise? You can build suspense, which is slightly different. For suspense, the reader knows something will happen and hopes against hope that the character will avoid the problem. That sort of thing will work with an alternating chapter strategy.

Sometimes, the POV switch will take place within a chapter, but usually, the sections are set off somehow, maybe an extra space or asterisks or other visual cues that something has changed.

What rarely works is changing within a paragraph.

In the end, how do you know if alternating chapters will work? You try it out.

What do anaesthetists do? How does anaesthesia work? What are the risks? Anaesthesia is a mysterious and sometimes threatening process. We spoke to anaesthetist and author Aidan O’Donnell, who addresses some of the common myths and thoughts surrounding anaesthesia.

On the science of anaesthesia:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The pros and cons of pain relief in childbirth:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Are anaesthetists heroes?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Aidan O’Donnell is a consultant anaesthetist and medical writer with a special interest in anaesthesia for childbirth. He graduated from Edinburgh in 1996 and trained in Scotland and New Zealand. He now lives and works in New Zealand. He was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists in 2002 and a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists in 2011. Anaesthesia: A Very Short Introduction is his first book. You can also read his blog post Propofol and the Death of Michael Jackson.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!

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How does your main character arrive? Does she pop into the mind, complete with secrets, aspirations, and whimsy? Or, do you have to sit down and get out your character building blocks to begin construction on the kind of character you want to deal with for however long it takes you to write an entire story?

Each type of character has possibilities for the writer. Think of the yourself as a casting director. A movie is being planned inside your mind and needs a cast to people the sets that are built to show/tell the story.

Cast of Characters: Primary figures

• Heroine—late twenties, had to leave college during junior year due to family crisis, didn’t finished education, works at local veterinarian’s office as a vet tech rather than the physician she wanted to be.
• Male lead—perhaps late twenties/early thirties, civil engineer, rugged and cocky in looks and attitude, considers heroine interesting but not worth the trouble of getting to know better—he has secrets hiding behind his eyes.
• Female support character—high school classmate, Miss Popularity, divorced socialite in town, waging intimacy war with male lead, has always looked down on heroine.
• Villain—possible murderer, keeping police baffled and jumping through hoops as she/he kills off various townspeople for no apparent reason, leaves too many conflicting clues as if playing cat and mouse with cops.
• Police detective—has known heroine all her life, used to date her in high school, pallbearer at her father’s funeral, struggling to stay in control of murder case even when he knows he’s over his head on this one, rethinking his career choice.
• Setting—rural town, population 12,000, Midwest locale, farming and college town.

With this list of pivotal characters, you can begin to build both plot and character studies. You must decide which to pursue first. For our purposes here, concentrate on characters.

Building a character takes planning. How would you tackle the heroine? When you close your eyes and think about this character, what do you see? How tall is she? What kind of clothing does she typically wear? What color is her hair? Keep thinking about her. Write down what you envision about this person. Listen to her voice, her speech patterns, and her quirks of expression. Have you learned her name yet?

Take a moment to meet her. Shake her hand. Is it callused, soft, long and lean, or square and pudgy? Do you join her at a table at the local diner?

What kind of people are in the diner and what is their behavior like? Is there a feeling of camaraderie among the locals, one of friendship or tension? Do you feel comfortable within this group? If so, describe what you feel as you sit at the table with the heroine.

Do this ceremonial meet and greet with each of your new characters. Find your place among them. Develop a rapport with these people that you’ll be working with for a while in the future.

The story’s setting is a character as well. You noticed it on the casting list. Setting is the biggest and can be the most complex of your characters. Take the time to get familiar with it. Learn so mu

The guys over at Heroes Landing in Clermont have been kind enough to invite me to do a book signing on July 31st, from 1 PM to 4 PM. If you are in Central FL then, come by and say hi!

These guys have all the latest comics and collectibles. They have something for the whole family!

Who is your hero?

Perry Moore is the executive producer of the Chronicles of Narnia films, author of a book about making The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, author and director (with his partner, Hunter Hill) of the feature film, Lake City starring Sissy Spacek, and author of Hero, his first novel.  Hero is a book intended for young adults, males or females, males who are gay and/or anyone who just doesn’t feel like they fit in for one reason or another.  It is an action packed story about Thom Creed, an athletic gay high school student who develops super-hero powers.  It begins on the high school basketball court and moves into the community where Thom finds himself fighting one crime after the other.  Hero is also a love story.  As Thom becomes more confident about his sexuality he lusts after various people and then finally falls in love with Goran.

YALSA: Perry, before we get started I just want to say congratulations on winning the Lambda award for Hero. You must be very excited knowing that your work has made such an impression in the LGBT community.

MOORE: Great question to start with.  Just like Thom longs to find his place in the universe, I think we all do.

Winning the Lambda, receiving over four thousand e-mails from fans who’ve been touched by the book, all of that makes me feel like somehow I count in the grand scheme of things.  And, let me tell you, it’s a lesson in humility.  Because unless you write something above the stratosphere of “successful” into the category of mega-successful, you don’t do this type of work for the money.  You do it for the reason you touch on with your question.  In Hero’s case, I wrote it to show that gay, straight, black, white, old, young, big, or small, we can all be heroes.  With the gay media I was seeing especially, I wanted a young male gay superhero who was the star of his own story – I’d craved to read it, but I’d never seen it done before – and I wanted to show that you can be a male gay hero without the story having to end in tragedy.  (Though, come to think of it, there are some deeply felt moments at the end of the book!).

Thanks for the shout-out about the Lambda – you know they have no category in GLAAD which gets all the big press for books, I don’t really know why.  Still, I consider winning the Lambda, and being an ALA Top Ten of the Year, two of the greatest honors I could ever achieve.  Made me realize my true dreams of connecting with an audience came true!  And that’s a bigger reward than any amount of money or fame a work could bring you.  Giving someone hope, inspiring someone to be a real hero.  That’s what it’s all about.

YALSA: Perry,  this interview is being posted to a blog designed for librarians who deliver services to adolescents and teens so I would ike to talk with you about your work, but also a little about your relationship with libraries.  In your book about making The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe you talk about your mother taking you to the library every week.  Can you tell us more about the role of the library in your li

Use Character Traits to Make Your Character Sympathetic

Yesterday, we looked at 9 character traits that can be used to develop sympathy for your character. Today, we’ll look at using those traits in your story. It’s not enough just to tell yourself, or write on a checklist, that your character has these traits and is, therefore, instantly sympathetic. You must USE these traits. How?

Literary agent Donald Maass is a master of telling us how to use traits to create break out novels. He pushes you to go farther and deeper at ever turn.

Using the Character Traits

• Flaws. For character flaws – a necessary part of a sympathetic character, since perfect characters are not sympathetic – try making the character aware of his/her problem. When the character berates him/herself for being so grouchy in the morning, we have sympathy. When I announced to my 5:45 a.m. spinning class that I was a Grouch, that I had gotten up on the wrong side of bed, they all laughed and were extra kind to me that day. (The instructor still made me work hard, but at least I didn’t have to talk to anyone and pretend to be nice.)
• Hero or Heroine. Take any of the character traits we talked about before and push or shove it until it becomes heroic. Be careful not to become comic or melodramatic; but push the limits of what you can do with one trait.
• Multiply. Remember we said that victims get a certain amount of sympathy and pity. What if your character is a victim of multiple things? Pile it on and we’ll sympathize even more. Not only is your character in a wheelchair from a car wreck, but the bank is about to foreclose on her business; and she’s about to discover the cure for the common cold. That piles it on AND gives it a wider, public scope. Be careful here or we’ll get that contempt for this poor victim who can’t rise above her circumstances. But multiplying conflict is one way to increase sympathy for a character.
• Inner conflict. Give your character conflicting Dreeds and Plopes (dreams, needs, hopes, plans) and you increase sympathy. How can your character possibly choose between justice and the ineptness of the justice system?
• Paradox: While characters should be consistent, if you can add a believable paradox, you quicken our interest. The key is making it believable. What is it that your character would never say, do or think? Have them say, do or think it! But make sure you make the motivations and emotions clear.
• -Er or -Est a Trait. Push the trait to an extreme: Bigger, smallest, most vulgar, funnier, more clever, clumsiest. Make sure the reader notices your character!
• Raise the Stakes. Take their Dreeds and Plopes and make them matter more, put more at stake. The outcome of the hero/ine’s sacrifice will affect their family, their profession, the world. Why do you think evil men are always trying to “take over the world”? So they have the widest possible stakes. Take a cue from that cliche, though: make the increased stakes believable.
• Inner Change i
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