Adventures in Pantsing: A Plotter Tries to Cut Loose

The first ghost story I ever wrote sucked royally. It was derivative as hell, like everything I wrote in middle school. I named it after my favorite Julee Cruise song ("The Nightingale"), called my ghost heroine Mina (I'd just read Dracula), and made the hero kill the ghost of the woman he once loved (more shades of Dracula). My eighth-grade teacher made just one comment. He wrote "Good word use" next to "tentatively." I got an A. Then he read it out loud to the class. I was a little traumatized by having my private creation shared with the world.

I haven't written a true ghost story since.

Until now.

For the hell of it, I revisited two ideas I'm still uncomfortable with: pantsing a story and writing a ghost story. Let me preface this by saying I am SO NOT a pantser. I need things to be spelled out, plot-wise and character-wise, before I feel comfortable diving in. I like knowing where I'm going, so I can focus all my effort on the language and descriptions. If I'm too worried about the how, I can't think about the what. And as for ghost stories, mostly I don't write them because it's so hard to come up with something original. Hell, after nine and a half seasons of Supernatural, what's left for the rest of us?

I. The Prep Work
As a writer, it's my duty to try and grow as an artist, right? All right, fine, challenge accepted. As an exercise, I forced myself to pants my way through a ghost story. No pressure, no word count, no real goals other than to write for 30 minutes during my lunch break at work and just see what happened. I chose the first setting that came to mind--the area I live in--and what it's famous for--the gold rush. A long-ass time ago (okay, it was October of 2013), I watched a Discovery channel show on the Gold Rush. A couple of elements really stuck with me, so I tied in two of them: a struggling group of miners called the Boston Company and a cholera epidemic that struck the gold fields. And I started typing.

II. The Opening
Predictably, it was ASSLOADS OF HARD to get going. I began with a lame description of setting. Normally, my inner editor would take over and tell me to delete it all, but what the hell, I was pantsing, which meant I didn't know what I wouldn't need. I typed and typed. Blah blah starlight, blah blah cholera. I knew something creepy would have to happen, so about a page in, I casually mentioned that one of the miners had disappeared. When his horse returned to camp, they found him chopped into bits, stacked in the saddlebags. That took care of the whole "introduce a conflict" thing.

But then I had to figure out who had done this evil deed. (A ghost, of course. This is a GHOST STORY, after all.) That's why it really sucked when I realized a man had done the deed. An old man. A weird man. But a man. Damn it.

In keeping with my being a plotter, I could have overruled my gut. I could have made the man a ghost because it made more sense. But being a pantser isn't always about what makes sense. So I allowed the villain to take shape as a man inside my head. To further the conflict, I had to send my hero out looking for this man. Because I'm kind of a bitch to my characters, I made him half dead from cholera. Real hard to aim a gun straight when you're not even strong enough to hold it up.

Now I started to feel things coming together. I had a man, a conflict, a weakness, and a creepy villain. This was going to be easy, right?

Nope.

Shit.

III. The Complication
Once I put my hero on a horse and sent him in search of the old weird man's cabin, I realized I had no idea what would happen when he got there. Because I had no idea why the old man did it. Insanity only works in the legal system; it's not a good way to motivate a story. Stories need to be tied together more firmly than our minds are in real life. So the old man can't be a lunatic. He must have had a good reason for butchering that poor miner. But what the hell was it?

My hero approached the cabin at night and called out to the old man. When in doubt, generate more conflict, right? This was the most direct way of doing that, so I went with it.

I hesitated here...should the old man actually answer the door, or should my hero have to spy on him to get the information he needed? I decided to go for broke here, and have a direct conversation between them.

The old man opened the door and invited my hero in.

And then I realized why: the inside of the cabin was hung entirely with guns. Muskets. Rifles. Of all ages and types. Mounted on the wall. All pointing toward the old man's chair by the fire. Apparently, my old man was a suicidal paranoid kleptomaniac nut job. But now I'd given myself another problem: who was this guy, and how did he get a collection of weaponry that included guns that were 300 years old? And why was he in the Sierra foothills with this massive collection of Renaissance-era European weaponry? What the hell was happening?

The old man was running away with my story, writing checks my brain couldn't cash. I had no idea how I would explain any of this, but these are the images that popped into my head and that my fingers typed out on the page. In the true spirit of pantsing, I let him do it. It went against the very fiber of my being not to stop, think, and really figure out who this guy was before continuing. But I didn't. I wrote a garbage conversation where the hero asked the old man if he murdered the miner. The old man said he did. No surprise, and no tension. I felt the story floundering. Where could it go from here? And wasn't this supposed to be a ghost story? I had no ghosts, no whodunit, no motive, and a buttload of guns I couldn't explain. Because pantsing is AWESOME that way. You will never do this again, I told myself. As Bartok had warned, this would only end in tears.

IV. The Payoff...Maybe
But the next day, on the way home from work, I had an epiphany. I remembered something from a trip to Santa Fe I'd taken years before. The city was settled ridiculously early in history, in the late 1500s if I remembered right. And then I remembered...weren't all those early Spanish explorers looking for the one thing the miners had just found in California? Holy shit. That was it. The link that made my plotting self giddy: a historical connection. The Spanish explorers who came to New Mexico were looking for El Dorado, golden cities that would be overflowing with riches for everyone. And did they find it? No, but the miners did. Hell, I live in El Dorado County.

But now I had another problem: how does this historical connection translate for these characters? There's no damn way a dude alive in 1849 would have been alive in the 1500s...or is there? This was supposed to be a ghost story, wasn't it? So maybe the old man's a ghost after all. But if he was really a ghost, why all the guns? Are there guns that can kill ghosts? I was getting backed into a corner by my own pantsing. God, this is painful, I thought. Why do people do this? When did thinking really hard become passe?

V. The Reveal
So I had to nix the full-on ghost idea. The man is a man, which explains why he needs guns. He is also 300 years old, which makes him a kind of living ghost. But how? And why? What did I know about Spanish explorers? Only what I remembered from grade school. But that wasn't strictly true. A couple years ago, when I got obsessed with genealogical research, I discovered that my great-grandma's grandma was a Sevier.

A little online digging produced some circumstantial evidence that links the Seviers to the name Xavier, which was originally Javier. It was Spanish, or to be more precise, Basque. One member of this family became incredibly famous. His name is Francis Xavier, the Catholic saint. He traveled to Asia to spread Christianity, and died in the Philippines. So now I had a famous explorer (sort of), a connection to Spain, and the right time period. Now I just had to connect Xavier to my old man.

In typical Jenni fashion (overdoing it and over-thinking it), I created a grandiose link between the two men. No, I won't tell you what it is. That would ruin the story. But I poured out the whole story through the old man's lips, as his cholera-weakened adversary lay on the floor of the cabin in defeat. But there was just one more problem left to solve. The ending.

VI. The Triumph
So, the good guy is lying half dead on the floor of the bad guy's weird cabin after a brief skirmish. It hardly seems fair. I mean, the bad guy wins? Whaaa? Is that how it works when you pants a story? Not if I have anything to say about it. I had to create a way for the good guy to triumph...even if his cholera kills him. 

Going back to the basic mechanics of fiction helped here. I had to think about what it was my villain (the old guy) wanted. And then I took that away from him, with one sentence from the younger man. So, whether the younger guy gets away and dies of cholera, gets away and survives, or is killed by the angry old man, no one wins. I like stories like that. When I'm doing literary-style stories, I always aim for the gray area. Black and white is good for genre fiction, but not a story like this. In that, I might have succeeded.

Which brings us to the end of the story.

Or is it? I still have to figure out how to explain all those guns, after all.

Damn you, pantsing.

How Gossip Girl Helped Me Revise My Plot

I'm a huge Gossip Girl fan. Deride if you must, but know that George Sand being the writer a character most wants to have dinner with was an actual plot point in Season 2 (episode: "New Haven Can Wait"). There was also a Wharton tribute episode ("The Age of Dissonance"), plus GG gave us a memorable nickname to denigrate hack literary writers: F. Scott Fitzjackass ("The Fasting and the Furious"). Suffice to say, there are a lot more literary Easter eggs in the show than appear at first glance.

What does this have to do with writing tips? 

I'm about 70% through the fourth draft of The Red Road. This is the do-or-die batch of revisions, the one where I have to make final decisions about what stays, what goes, and what needs to be added. Drafts 2 and 3 were mostly about cutting my ridiculously verbose paragraphs down to their essence, and losing the overly "literary" tone that appeared every so often. This draft is about plot and subplot arcs, character arcs, and themes. 

The good news: the book has plot and subplot arcs, character arcs, and themes. The bad news: they aren't right yet.

The other night, I was super frustrated by the amount of work left in front of me. So I did what any frustrated writer would do--poured a glass of wine, turned off the computer, and settled down to re-watch a Gossip Girl episode with the hubby. One of the million reasons why I love my husband is that he tolerates...dare I say shares?...my unholy fascination with Gossip Girl.  He routinely uses that "F. Scott Fitzjackass" quote. Anyway, we're currently on season 4, when the Brooklyn team (Jenny, Vanessa, and Juliet) work together to take down Serena.

You don't need to know much about Gossip Girl to understand this particular plot arc. In a nutshell, the "outsider" Brooklyn girls want to ruin Serena, a glamorous rich girl from the Upper East Side. Their plan is simple: one by one, they will strip away everything Serena has that they don't: a devoted best friend, two boys who like her, her academic future at Columbia, and her family's trust.

They develop elaborate ruses to strip away each of Serena's support networks, and then go in for the kill: one super-elaborate ruse that is meant to destroy Serena's credibility for all time. The girls map out each takedown and orchestrate them individually. And guess what? It almost works. Serena gets put in the nuthouse and everyone thinks she's a lying, slutty drug addict.

And then it hit me: The Red Road needs a little Gossip Girl action. One of the main problems I'm having is that I feel the heroine's actions are too abrupt in the third act. I take her from a smart but worried schoolgirl into a revenge-seeking assassin. It doesn't work because she doesn't have enough reason to jeopardize what she has going for her. 

I realized I need to get all Gossip Girl on her ass and strip away the things she has one by one:

• Best friends
• In GG, the villain selected Blair for entry to an exclusive on-campus club at Columbia, leaving Serena out in the cold. Blair, who's always had self-esteem issues where Serena is concerned, now feels like the superior one. 
• In my book, I need to make sure to isolate the main character by giving her friends what they want, so they have more reason to act selfishly and maintain the status quo than they do to support Emma.
• Her academic future
• In GG, the villain sends an email from Serena's phone, asking one of her professors to trade sex for grades. This is, of course, enough to get her in trouble with the dean, who wants to expel her. 
• In my book, I'm adding two new chapters that basically put a black stain on Emma's academic record--enough to make good schools question her suitability as a scholarship recipient. The action she takes is entirely her choice, which means she knows exactly what she's doing, but can't help herself. She'll have a choice, and I need her to make the wrong one.
• Her family's trust
• In GG, the villain drugs Serena, dresses up exactly like her and takes pictures of herself snorting coke, then dumps Serena in a crappy cross-town motel and basically waits for her to overdose. When Serena wakes up and calls for help, her family thinks she's returned to her old, careless ways that apparently involve doing massive amounts of drugs and generally not giving a crap.
• In my book, what would disappoint the family most is Em sabotaging her own future--and acting out. This family values strength and silence in equal measure. So the worst she could do is show weakness, make mistakes, and be vocal about it, forcing the other family members to witness her collapse. This happens after the incident I'm adding that destroys her academic future, in a new chapter or two I'll have to write from scratch.
• The boy who likes her

• In GG, the villain starts an anonymous rumor that Serena has an embarrassing case of VD. This makes both of the guys who like her consider other options. Once this is proven false, however, the villain has a backup plan. She masquerades as Serena (literally...it's a masquerade ball) and while disguised, kisses both guys. Naturally, there's photographic evidence floating around that turns both guys against Serena.
• In my book, this is the one step I'm not sure I want to take. I kind of want to keep her love interest on her side so she always has a way out...and then I want her to refuse to take it. 

Every single one of these Gossip Girl plot points applies to my character...and maybe to yours, too. 

The next time you're looking at your book's lumpy middle and wondering how to stiffen it up, think Gossip Girl. What does your character have that the villain needs to take away? Pick it off in small pieces, and those small pieces will add up to a collective whole that gives your hero plenty of work to do in the story's climax.

If all else fails, just stream old episodes of your favorite TV show. You never know what will spark an idea for your next plot twist.

14 Examples and 2,300 Words on How to Sharpen Your Sentences

I just finished the third draft of a book that’s going to take at least five drafts to finish. The biggest problem until now was sheer word bloat. I knew I couldn’t make the additions the book needs until I made a buttload of subtractions. Imagine trying to evaluate the health of a garden when it’s so full of weeds and overgrown shrubbery you can’t see a single stalk or bloom. All you know is there’s an awful lot of green shit underfoot.

To hack away at that green shit, I focused on sentence-level editing. This meant fixing (or deleting) things like:

• Sentences that use imprecise verbs or descriptions
• Sentences that convey the same information in two different ways
• Bloated sentences with filler words like “just,” “only,” “that,” etc.

This is no small task. And a lot of writers never do it.

These days, a popular piece of advice for self-published writers is to PUBLISH AS MUCH AS YOU CAN, LIKE, A MILLION WORDS A YEAR AND IF YOU DON’T NO ONE WILL EVER DISCOVER YOUR WORK LET ALONE BUY IT AND YOU’LL NEVER MAKE A DIME AND THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO PROVE YOU’RE REALLY COMMITTED.

This strategy might work for some people, but I’m not one of them. For starters, I don’t see how it’s possible to publish that quantity of words that have been edited and polished to perfection. As Miracle Max said in The Princess Bride, “You rush a miracle man, you get a rotten miracle.”

I’ve written before about the difference between storytelling and writing. I suspect that million-word publishers are storytellers more than writers. That’s fantastic for them, but I can’t do it. I can’t send a book out into the world without having analyzed every word of every sentence to make sure it earned its place.

And by “analyzed,” I don’t mean re-reading it, thinking it makes sense, and moving on. Or sending it to an editor for approval and sighing with relief when that sentence doesn’t come back with a red mark.
I mean analyzing the combination of words and punctuation to make sure the sentence is sharp, crisp, and effective. I mean owning every damn word. I mean seeing a passable but weak sentence become strong enough to punch the reader in the face.

Making that happen almost always involves deleting words rather than adding them.

To show you how, I’m sharing 14 examples of my sentence-level editing from this third draft. These sentences might still get cut or revised again. Are they works of art? Nope. But do they illustrate my point? Damn skippy.

Production Note: If the thought of deleting your original sentences makes you nervous, save each draft as a new document. That way, you can always refer back to the previous draft if you start feeling like you’re losing too much of the story’s original flavor.  Alternatively, you can work in your original file and paste all your deleted or altered sentences into a text file. This is what I do. I like having one main file to work in, but if I have a suspicion I’ve over-pruned, I can go back into the text file and browse through the sentences that didn’t make the cut. I’ve never re-inserted a sentence I’ve cut.

1.
Original: Mrs. Evans was supposed to give them their Gatsby papers back today.
Revised: Mrs. Evans was supposed to return their Gatsby papers today.

This is a great example of imprecision. Sure, you could say “give them back.” But why would you do that when the word “return” means the same thing, and gets the job done in fewer words?

2.
Original: The small things she’d worried about—quizzes and tests and papers—seemed like crumbs beneath a table now.
Revised: Quizzes and tests and papers were crumbs beneath a table now.

The shorter, punchier sentence conveys more urgency, which is appropriate for the character at that time. “Were” is also more decisive than “seemed like.”

3.
Original: Two weeks ago, she would have sat here and gotten angry about the dirt and grime on the floor, or the flickering hallway lights, or any of the million things wrong with the school that her parents’ tax dollars should have fixed.
Revised: Two weeks ago, she would have been angry about the grime on the floor, the flickering hallway lights, and the million other things her parents’ tax dollars should have fixed.

For the love of God, trim the fat: (1) Does it matter that Emma would have sat while getting angry? No. The angry is the important part, not the sat. Get rid of it. (2) Also, what’s the difference between dirt and grime? If there’s a difference, is it important? No. Get rid of it. (3) Notice how I used “or” multiple times in the list of things wrong? It’s called “polysyndeton,” and while it creates rhythm and emphasis, the benefits don’t outweigh the bloat in this case.  Get rid of it. (4) Why am I using “or” in the first place? If anger is the point, why not have Emma be mad at all these things instead of just one, which is what’s indicated by “or”? Geez Louise. (5)  Emma could be mad at “any of the million things.” But “million” is used for emphasis, so why dilute it with “any of the”? Just say there are a million things wrong. Seriously. (6) This scene takes place in Emma’s school. So it’s obvious in context that the dirty hallway and flickering lights are at that location. No need to re-reference “school.”

4.
Original: Up close, she could see the green of his eyes was more olive than emerald, close to his skin tone, and fringed with a blanket of lashes thicker than hers.
Revision: Up close, his eyes were more olive than emerald, fringed with a blanket of lashes thicker than hers.

What a terrible fucking sentence.  It’s like I got paid by the word or something. Let’s unpack this: (1) “She could see” is meaningless. In the scene, Emma is looking at Dan, her love interest. Of course she could see him. She’s not blind. (2) Since I’m using “olive” and “emerald,” it’s pretty clear green is the color I mean. No need to use “green” before either of those more specific descriptors. (3) Why mention his olive skin tone in this sentence? Let’s keep the emphasis on the eyes, and move the skin tone thing into an earlier scene.  Plus, it repeats the word “close” already used in the sentence opening.

5.
Original: Mrs. Evans strode to the front of the class with a thick stack of papers in her hand.
Revision: Mrs. Evans strode to the front of the class with a stack of papers in hand.

This one’s relatively minor, but still deserves attention. It’s already been established that the class is getting their Gatsby papers back. Is it likely her stack would be thin? “Thick” is redundant based on the situation.  “Her hand” is also redundant, unless Mrs. Evans is using someone else’s hand to carry the papers.

6.
Original: She did not curve the “j,” but wrote it as a long, solid line with a dot on top.
Revision: She drew the “j” as a long, solid line with a dot on top.

First off, if Emma didn’t do something, why am I wasting the reader’s time with that? Get it the hell out of there. Secondly, while “wrote” is an accurate verb, there’s obviously some artistic effect Emma is paying attention to. “Draw” conveys that better than “wrote.” Now that I look at this again, I’d probably take out “long,” too. If the “j” was drawn short, that might be worthy of note. But a “long”-drawn j?  Seems normal, and thus unworthy of note.

7.
Original: She crossed it out, jiggling her pen in scribbles through the childish, malformed letters.
Revision: She scribbled through the childish, malformed letters.

I have a really bad habit of doing this! See how “she crossed it out” is redundant based on what comes afterward? Is there any way that jiggling your pen in scribbles over something could not be considered crossing it out? Probably not, and definitely not in this context. So why the eff did I write it twice? So lame.  Secondly, why did I say “jiggling” and “scribbles”? One verb can convey all of that—so just stick with “scribbled.”

8.
Original: Elvira was already waiting for her at the entrance of the locker room.
Revision: Elvira was already waiting at the locker room entrance.

This is another minor edit, but one that needs to be made. Since Elvira is Emma’s badminton partner (and it’s already been established that Elvira waits for her before heading into the gym), “for her” is unnecessary. Who else would Elvira wait for? Also, why be all complicated with “entrance of the locker room”? I can save two whole words by saying “locker room entrance” instead. Bam.

9.
Original:  Dan knew everything, and he was the only one whose opinion she wanted.
Revision: Dan knew everything about her situation, and his was the only opinion she wanted.

This is the rare sentence that got longer after a revision, and I’ll explain why. In the first version, you could interpret it to mean that Dan is the smartest guy in the world who literally knows everything and makes Stephen Hawking look like Lenny from Of Mice and Men. That’s not how Emma means it. She means he’s the only one she’s told everything to, which calls for some more specificity—hence “about her situation.” Secondly, the end of the first sentence is a fustercluck. What was I thinking? If opinions are the subject of the clause, keep them that way.

10.
Original: Witch soup started in a big yellow bucket that had originally been loaded with sand tools.
Revision: Witch soup started in a big yellow bucket, originally loaded with sand tools.

This is another common mistake I make. “Had been” is a complicated verb pairing. It drags down the speed of a sentence, although it can be far more accurate than “was” if you really need to specify time in the past.  In this case, though, it’s not necessary to use a verb at all. Adding the comma and shortening the description preserves the meaning of the sentence and makes it easier to read and comprehend.

11.
Original: Emma picked up her backpack and went back into the courtyard.
Revision: Emma picked up her backpack and returned to the courtyard.

Remember the first example, when shortening a sentence and adding clarity was accomplished by swapping out a phrase for a word? Keep an eye out for pointlessly wordy descriptors like this. They happen a lot (to me, at least).

12.
Original: Maybe the act of thinking about something over and over again made it seem possible, even if it wasn’t.
Revision: Maybe the act of thinking something over and over again made it seem possible, even if it wasn’t.

This is probably the nitpickiest sentence of the bunch! Still, if you’re using words and phrases, you have to prove you understand what they mean. You’re a writer. It’s your job. If the word “over” in this context means “once more” and I use it twice, “again” is redundant. There’s no way for something not to happen again if it happens over and over.

13.
Original: If she didn’t go to college, if something happened that made it impossible, what would she be missing?
Revision: If she didn’t go to college, if something happened that made it impossible, what would she miss?

This is a two-pronged attack on passivity: (1) If I use the verb “to make,” it means something happens. That’s implied in the verb itself. You can’t “make” something without causing something to happen. So I don’t need to specify that something “happened” to “make” it impossible. It’s redundant. (2) “Be missing” contains two verbs. Two. Seriously? Isn’t there a way to convey this with one damn verb? Of course there is. I just had to find it. “Miss” instead of “be missing” is sharper and more direct.

14.
Original: When her mom picked her up, she was the first one to speak.
Revision: When her mom picked her up, she was the first to speak.

This is an interesting example, and one that brings a stylistic choice into the matter more than the other examples above. For starters, let’s look at what got axed: the word “one.” It’s totally unnecessary. It modifies Emma and her mother, but it doesn’t matter whether Emma and her mom are humans or aliens—the point is that Emma spoke first. Now, you might be wondering why I didn’t just say that:  “…Emma spoke first.”  It’s shorter and punchier, which I mentioned above as being desirable. What can I say? I like the symmetry of the longer form. Six words before the comma, six words after. I like the emphasis on the word “she.” There’s a rhythm to the sentence that gets lost if I go with “Emma spoke first.” I like the rhythm. It’s gonna get ya. So that’s what I’m choosing here.

See how much fun that was? That’s what being a writer is all about. Making choices.  Give yourself the opportunity to make them.

Handing your first draft off to an editor (or worse, publishing it) robs you of the chance to make these kinds of choices. Get up in there. Make your words tremble at the thought of being chopped into pieces.  Whip them into shape. If, like me, you are the furthest thing from assertive in real life, this is your chance to go full dominatrix. Enjoy it.

Strong Female Characters Are a Cop-Out

Witness the awesomeness
of my photo editing skills.

About two months ago, there was a lot of chatter about this article on NewStatesman.com--an essay on why the author hates the label "strong female character."

Here's the gist: "strong" has become another label that female characters now need to fit into. Princesses who know kung-fu, smart female characters who need to beat up a man for the audience to buy them as a bad-ass...it's become a trend, which devalues the whole idea.

The One with the Chinese Food
I hate the phrase "strong female character." It implies most women aren't strong, that there are so few strong ones we have to designate them with signs, like an endangered species. We call Chinese food Chinese food because it's different, not normal. In China, as the old joke on Friends goes, they just call it food.

It's hard to keep this discussion from devolving into semantics, the way it would in a grad school lit class ("Who defines 'strong'? Isn't 'strong' just another construct created by the existing power structure?"). I hate those kinds of discussions because they ignore what's real and here and now. It doesn't matter who defined it if the thing is what it is, and the "is" is what we all have to deal with.

Is she a strong female?
Or does she need nunchaku?

Dealing with the "Is"
Let's get back to the idea of a "strong female character."  What the hell does that even mean? Who is this bastion of female badassery?  Does she have physical prowess, a la Lara Croft? Is she scheming, like Cersei Lannister? Or does she have a spirit of adventure, like Amelia Earhart? If a character has all of these, she's too good to be true. If a character only has one, does it mean she's 2/3 weak? Which of these traits most conveys strength? Is it even possible to decide?

The recent flurry over "strong" female characters focuses on physical strength and mastery of the male characters. That's fine. I have no problem with that. If that's the tale those writers want to tell, they should arm their characters, male and female, with the resources needed to survive in that world. They'd be dead otherwise, and being dead would suck.

I do have a problem when female characters who don't know kung-fu or how to fire a 12-gauge aren't deemed strong. What if they can't do a single pull-up? What if they've lost every race they've ever run? It doesn't mean they can't fuck your shit up. It doesn't mean they're not strong within the world that author has created.

Examples, You Ask?
Let's look at two Disney villains. Would anyone say Maleficent is NOT a strong female character? I doubt it. She's intuitive. She's manipulative. She's regal. She delegates. She remembers shit. She can get her hands dirty when the situation calls for it. But she performs no special feats of strength. She has magic and minions to do her dirty work. Does that mean she isn't strong? Of course not. She's fearsome.

Ursula is a similar character of undeniable strength. She rules her under-the-sea kingdom with an iron fist. She's also intuitive and manipulative. She delegates . She remembers shit, too. But she's not going to do any pull-ups. She's not going to fire a gun. She does not know kung-fu. She's powered by rage, if anything. Does it mean she's not strong? I don't think so. She's a pretty powerful enemy.

So are these "strong female characters"? Or are they just characters?

What about Examples from Actual Books?

A Chuck Norris meme.
You had to know this was coming.

When I think of strong female characters I've admired, they were all off-kilter in a way:

• Turtle, from The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. A 12-year old who packed her cavities with bourbon-soaked cotton balls. Who learned to play the stock market to try and win old man Westing's fortune. Who kicked the shin of anyone who messed with her. But was she physically strong? No. She was a girl.
• Princess Eilonwy, from Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles. She was kind of a tomboy, preferring pants to petticoats. She wanted to go on adventures with the boys. She wanted to rough people up when they pissed her off, but wanting didn't always match her abilities. She talked a tough game, but it was just a game. She wasn't actually going to take on the Cauldron-Born herself. She couldn't.
• Amelia Peabody, from Elizabeth Peters's series of mysteries. Ah, Amelia. She also wasn't physically strong, no more than an average woman who gets out of the house and is active, hence her need for an iron-shafted parasol to bonk people on the head. But she was smart, funny, crafty, daring, and ferociously protective of the people she loved. She explored pyramids in an age when most women got winded dusting an endtable.
• Honor Harris, from The King's General by Daphne du Maurier. Holy crap. This woman survived a revolution using her wits alone. She was paralyzed from the waist down, which means she couldn't even move under her own power. There is nothing physical she could do to defeat an enemy. Yet she survived when lots of the other characters didn't. 
• Arya Stark, from Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin and whoever writes all the TV show episodes. True, her character wants to learn to fight and wield a sword. But she kind of sucks at it. She's disarmed pretty much every time she tries to take someone on with her sword. But she's still alive when a hell of a lot of her family isn't. She's crafty. She's smart. She listens. She sticks up for her friends, at great peril to herself. She isn't afraid to say what she thinks, especially when she insists The Hound should die for killing her friend, a low-born butcher's boy. Any of the sword-wielding male characters could off her with a single stroke just to shut her up. But they don't. Does that mean she isn't strong? (Full disclosure: I've watched the show. I have not read the books yet.)

I want to see more characters like these. They're not perfect. They're not brilliant Harvard-educated astrophysicists who also look like Eastern European supermodels and who also have black belt kung-fu skills and who also like to wear black leather and get freaky in the bedroom. Too often, writers mistake "perfect" for "strong." At least until these "perfect" "strong" women have to be rescued by the hero. Then all that perfection just goes to waste.

That's right.
The queen's a badass.

Hell, Turtle Wexler doesn't even have basic oral hygiene down. But she won a fortune and beat out an apartment building full of adults, all theoretically older, wiser, and more experienced in the ways of the world. NO guns. NO kung-fu. NO physical skill of any kind. Honor Harris doesn't even have the use of her legs, and she cares for her lover when he's wounded in the English Civil War.

Strong is not muscle. Strong is not weapons. I am so tired of these two things being conflated with "strong" when it comes to discussing female characters. Can Joss Whedon write a strong female character without giving her strength or weapons?

"Strong" can't be taken out of the context of the work in which those female characters appear. It ruins everything to take a fictional character and hold her up to the same sunlight that illuminates my crows-feet. She's not next to me. She doesn't even exist. It can't and shouldn't be done.

She can only be judged on her strength in the world she lives in. How does she fare, mentally and physically, against other women and men? If she's only stronger than other women, how strong is that, really? If she's strong than some men and some women, she's doing slightly better than average. If she has the guts and smarts to beat out men and women and be the top dog in her book's world, she's a strong female character. Even if she can only do two push-ups, has never fired a gun, and flames don't shoot out of her eyes.

5 Lessons Writers Can Learn from Pancho and Lefty

I grew up on country music. This was the late '70s and early '80s, so we're talking real country. Outlaw country.

Country that would duct-tape Taylor Swift's mouth shut, take away all Brantley Gilbert's jewelry, and tell Keith Urban that rehab is for quitters.

One of my all-time favorite songs is "Pancho and Lefty," made famous by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. It's a story song, written by Townes Van Zandt. I still hang on every word like there's a secret nugget of truth waiting to be discovered.

How is there so much embedded in one sub-five-minute song? Have a listen and we'll find out.




Now, how can writers learn to tell a story so simply, with so much depth? Let's take a look.

1. A first-person narrator telling a story about someone else can be really effective.

No less a writer than Jonathan Franzen tells us that we should write in third person. This is one of those "establishment" rules for serious literary works. The reasoning? Third person is more remote (read: mysterious), which makes the reader work harder. It's also less limiting if you want to explore multiple characters. Plus, you get to create both the narrator's persona and your main character's (note: these are NOT the same thing).

"Pancho and Lefty" doesn't follow the third-person rule. It has a first-person narrator; however, the narrator isn't the subject of the song. This accomplishes two things:

True story.

(1) it creates immediacy with the use of the "I" voice, which is why many writers use first-person voice
(2) it generates mystery since the "I" voice isn't the subject of the song.

Our narrator probably knows Pancho and Lefty, and might have witnessed the events in the song. But we don't know. (Mystery? Check.) Our narrator says, "Livin' on the road, my friend, is gonna keep you free and clean." Who is the "friend"? Is it the generic use of "friend" that he's using to tell a campfire story? Or is he singing to an actual friend, maybe Lefty himself, after the events of the song? The narrator holds himself back from us, not making this clear. (Remote? Check.)

2. The right similes can set a tone without a single adjective.

In the first verse, we get two similes in a one-two punch: "Now you wear your skin like iron / Your breath as hard as kerosene."

Think about that. What does it mean to wear skin like iron? It means you think you're invincible. You think you can take a licking and keep on ticking. Or it means you've hardened yourself to the outside world so it can't reach you, no matter how hard it tries. (Unless you rust...that would suck.)  Each of these meanings make the simile richer. And here's the kicker: who is the singer talking to? Who wears his skin like iron? A man listening to the story? Lefty? Is he talking about himself in some weird reflective way? We don't know. But we do know this song is going to be about a mysterious bad-ass. This simile sets a mood, which is what all good storytellers must do.

And what the hell does it mean to have breath as hard as kerosene? Kerosene's a liquid. Liquid, by definition, isn't hard. Or is he referring to its scent, its noxious fumes? Those things are gases, which also by definition, are not hard. We're taking a trip through the three stages of matter here, just working on an interpretation of a single simile. Using "hard" to describe something that isn't hard works well here, especially following on the heels of the "skin like iron" simile. Skin is not like iron, and breath is not hard. But isn't that so much more effective than saying, "This is a song about some hardened criminals?"

3. Using action as a form of characterization works really well.

Also a true story.

It's pretty boring when someone says, "John was a good man" or "John was a bad man." What does "good" or "bad" mean? These aren't absolutes, especially in fiction. It's far more effective to say, "John rescued the cat in the tree because it belonged to the little girl down the block" or "John skinned the neighbor's cat in retribution for the loud party three nights back." This lets the reader place John appropriately on the scale of goodness and badness.

That's what our narrator is doing in this song. Pancho "wore his gun outside his pants / For all the honest world to feel."  I think "feel" should be "fear" here, but that's just me. In any case, the narrator isn't saying, "Pancho was really good at shooting people" or "Pancho had a death wish." No. He's telling us something about Pancho that's revealed through his action. What does it mean to wear a gun outside one's pants? Several things: Pancho means business. Pancho isn't afraid of conflict. Pancho is confident in his abilities. Pancho wants you to stay the fuck out of his way. So simple, yet so effective.

Lefty gets the same kind of characterization in the beginning of the next verse. "Lefty he can't sing the blues / all night long like he used to / The dust that Pancho bit down south / ended up in Lefty's mouth."

That's a powerful way of saying, "Lefty feels like shit for the role he played in Pancho's death." Instead of using the most obvious word on the planet ("guilt"), the narrator ties Lefty to Pancho's death using setting and figurative language. Lefty doesn't have a literal mouthful of dirt. But he's carrying a crap-ton of baggage that has to do with Pancho's death, so much baggage that he can't even sing anymore. We're left to wonder...is that how Lefty earns a living? Is he so broken up over his buddy's death that can't earn a living? This image conveys emotion and suggests conflict in a few simple words. Damn.

4. Be specific with names and places.

There's a beautiful juxtaposition in this song between the vagueness of the story itself and the concrete setting. We don't know who the narrator is. We don't know if he's talking to Lefty or about him. We don't know for sure what went down between Pancho and Lefty (although we can guess). But we do know Pancho died in Mexico. And we know Lefty "split for Ohio." Later, we get more detail: Cleveland's cold. Even here, we have layers. No shit, Cleveland is cold. The average temperature in January is about 28 degrees Fahrenheit. But is it also cold because Lefty lacks Pancho's companionship?

What I love here is the specificity of "Cleveland." Lefty didn't go "out west" or "down south." There's something so much more pathetic about him shacking up in Cleveland, a non-glamorous city that's stuck between the midwest and the east. With all apologies to Cleveland, perhaps the idea here is Lefty's in nowheresville. But rather than say it, the narrator uses a specific place that plants that idea in our heads.

5. Leave a little (or a lot) to the reader's imagination.

Probably not a true story.

One of the best parts of this song is its mystery. The narrator doesn't tell us exactly what happened. How did the Federales finally get Pancho? Why did Lefty split on the day he died, with a mysterious sum of money? Did Lefty sell Pancho out? Probably. Why did Lefty do it? We have no idea. A secret dream of making it big as a singer someday? The need to get out of a life of crime? Why didn't he have the balls to say, "Hey, Pancho, I'm gonna hang up the old gun belt now and start singing showtunes for tips. You're cool with that, right?" Is it really a commentary on friendship, on weakness of character, or misguided loyalty? Or all these things? Or none of them?

We don't know, and that's the way it should be. That's why this song needs a narrator who isn't Pancho or Lefty. That's why it's so much more powerful when we hear about Lefty's inability to sing anymore. That's why it's still moving at the end of the song, when not only Lefty but the Federales are old and gray. Everyone involved still remembers, still feels bad, still has some regrets. It's that important to them. And now it's that important to me, because I've just written 1,500 damn words about an old-ass country song.  

10 Round Gothic Novel Smackdown: Susanna Kearsley vs. Barbara Michaels

I love Gothics. I can't help it.

Literary types will wrinkle their noses, but they fulfill a vital purpose in a young girl's reading life: wish fulfillment and escapism. I might not be young anymore, but my head can still be turned by a book description with words like "windswept shores," "unsolved mystery," and "buried secrets."

That's why I snapped up Susanna Kearsley's The Shadowy Horses when Amazon offered the Kindle version for $1.99. But instead of describing all the ways Kearsley's book missed its mark, I decided to compare it to a book called The Sea King's Daughter by an author who has the Gothic style mastered: Barbara Michaels.

Let's take a look at the ways each book delivered or failed to deliver on the promises that are implicit in a good Gothic novel. We have Kearsley in blue trunks and the Michaels in red trunks.

Round 1: Young, pretty, usually naive heroine.

Kearsley: Check (mostly). Verity Grey is an archaeologist who works for the British Museum. She has academic and professional chops, yet still comes across as younger and less experienced than the other archaeologists in the novel. Most, if not all, of the male characters reference how pretty she is, including a ghost and a small boy. This actually gets kind of irritating after awhile.

Bonus: Does the heroine's name have special significance? Yes. "Verity" means "truth." Verity's employer refers to this when asking Verity for her opinion, saying he'd believe her over other less-than-truthful characters.

Michaels: Check. Sandy Bishop is a college student who, although she's a great swimmer and diver, isn't a professional treasure hunter. She and her stepfather discovered a Spanish galleon sunk off the Florida coast, but the conditions were such that amateur divers could make the discovery without specialized equipment. Now, her estranged archaeologist father has asked her to come help search for Minoan treasure in Greece. Her naivety comes without question; Sandy is going to college to become a PE teacher, for heaven's sake.

Bonus: Does the heroine's name have special significance? Yes. The very first line of the book is, "Don't call me Ariadne. That's not my name anymore." Sandy's real name is that of a Minoan princess who betrayed her father, Minos, to escape with Theseus after he kills the Minotaur. Unfortunately for Ariadne, Theseus ditches her not long after this. During the course of the book, Sandy finds disturbing similarities between herself and the mythological Ariadne.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? Part of the fun of reading a Gothic is seeing how the character fails to see the warning signs of a dangerous situation unfolding around her. She needs to be trusting so she can fall for a dashing but dangerous love interest (see point 3 below). Also, she needs to have somewhere to go in terms of character development. We have to see her getting smarter and being changed by her experiences as the book develops.

Who wins the round?  It's a tie. Verity has special knowledge, while Sandy has a special skill. Verity has made bad relationship choices, Sandy makes some bad choices period. Both heroines are likable, but Sandy stands up for herself a bit more convincingly. Overall, though, there's not a clear edge for either author.

Round 2:  Interesting location in which the heroine feels out of place.

Kearsley: Check. Verity travels to Eyemouth, Scotland, a cold and dreary place that's a far cry from the London hustle and bustle she's used to. She can barely understand the thick Scottish accent, and is constantly having to look words up in a Scots dictionary. It's easy for the reader to picture the generic kind of windswept moors described in so many Gothic novels, but Kearsley adds a great deal of description to help you get a more accurate mental picture of local geography, festivals, and traditions. There are points, however, where the book feels like a travelogue as much as a narrative.

Eyemouth, Scotland.
Image by Flickr user David Farrer.
Used with Creative Commons license.

Bonus: Do you experience a local festival? Yes. Verity and her love interest, Davy Fortune, attend the crowning of the Herring Queen. The problem with this is that nothing really happens except the festival. I kept waiting for some dangerous incident to occur, but all they did was wander around and remark on how they couldn't wait to make out later. The festival itself wasn't integral to anything that was said or done during that scene. This is bad. Writers: if you're going to indulge in local color, it MUST tie into the plot.

Michaels: Check. Sandy travels to Thera, a Greek volcanic island that was once a stronghold of the Minoans. There's a far more serious language barrier here since Sandy doesn't speak, write, or read Greek. You get a lot of description in this novel, too, but it doesn't weigh down the story like Kearsley's does. The landscape also clearly pertains to the plot since Sandy is helping her archaeologist father look for the remains of Minoan treasure in the island's volcanic caldera.

Thera, Greece.
Image by Flickr user The Philly Lambs.
Used with Creative Commons license. 

Bonus: Do you experience a local festival? Yes. Sandy witnesses a ritual in which the women of the village carry a saint's image around the town to bless the houses and fields. Michaels does it right by showing the village women making way for one other mysterious woman who comes down from her cliffside villa to attend the festival. Obviously important and held apart from the local peasant women, we take note because the other characters do, too. As Sandy's father joins her, he catches sight of the mysterious woman...and promptly freaks out, fleeing the scene. This WTF moment helps break open the subplot that has to do with the goings-on of the previous generation.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel?  Part of the fun of a Gothic is escapism combined with wish fulfillment. If you're a bored housewife in Lincoln, Nebraska or a lonely single girl in Bakersfield, California, you'd probably rather read about moors or desert sands or even Asiatic steppes than, say, Chicago. Both Greece and Scotland qualify as exotic locales that pique my interest. Also, Gothics need to take place in an isolated location so the characters have a hard time leaving or running away when the scary shit starts to go down.

Who wins the round? It's another tie. Both books feature an archaeological mystery that's intricately tied to their settings. Both are described so that you feel you're there. Kearsley's descriptions pall after awhile, but they're more lush in general than Michaels, so there's no clear winner.

Round 3: Dashing but dangerous love interest.

Kearsley: In this corner, we have David (Davy) Fortune. That name is so awesome I'm jealous I didn't think of it first. In terms of description, David is tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, dark-haired...a veritable Scottish Heathcliff who actually wears a kilt in one scene. Visually, Kearsley is on track for the win.

However, poor Davy comes up short in the "dangerous" category.  Every good Gothic heroine needs to think that her handsome, stalwart man might also be the bad guy who's trying to scare her away from her goal. Otherwise, where's the fun in that? The relationship needs challenges. In a romance novel, those challenges are usually communication issues or personality flaws in the hero and heroine.  In a Gothic, those challenges need to be based on danger and uncertainty.  The hero needs to walk that fine line between smokin' hot and holy-crap-this-guy-might-be-trying-to-kill-me. Unfortunately, the relationship between Verity and Davy had no challenges whatsoever. It also had very little heat.  A fifth-grader could read this book without getting any untoward ideas.

Michaels: In this corner, we have Jim Sanchez. He's also tall and broad and handsome, with a healthy tan from working outdoors. He doesn't always button his shirt all the way, which is good for Sandy, but also fits with his character. It's hot as hell in Greece in the summer and he's an archaeologist. Plus, this book was written in 1975, when Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck did this sort of shit all the time.

The "danger" category is also a little light for Jim. However, on a strict one-to-one comparison with David Fortune, Jim takes the cake. At one point, he tells Sandy he'll do anything he can to stop her from diving and looking for Minoan treasure. Of course, he camouflages any nefarious intent by claiming it's for her own safety, but the reader understands there's potential menace there. Also, Jim offers to go swimming with Sandy every day, ditching work to do so. This comes off not as chivalrous, but as creepy. He just wants to be there if and when she discovers something.  This adds to Jim's vague sense of menace. Again, it's not much, but it's more than Davy Fortune gets.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? It all goes back to escapism. Women readers want to meet a man they'd fall in love with on the page. That love needs to be tested.  So if they think that handsome devil might actually be a devil, it makes it all the more delicious when the heroine (and the reader) still can't resist his charm and good looks.

Who wins the round?  Michaels.  If it were based on name choice alone, it'd be Kearsley by a landslide. But David Fortune is never menacing in the way a good Gothic hero needs to be.

Round 4: A nurturing father figure.

Kearsley:  Check. It's eccentric millionaire and maligned archaeologist Peter Quinnell, who has spent most of his life looking for the lost Ninth Roman Legion, which disappeared somewhere near Eyemouth. Quinnell is handsome and charming, but most of his colleagues think he's also batshit crazy. Verity starts out thinking he might be nuts, but realizes he misses very little and actually is one of the sharpest guys around.  He's kind to Verity, puts her up in his mansion, really likes cats, and is free with his liquor. I like the guy already.

Michaels:  We have several candidates here.  You could argue that this figure is:

• Frederick, Sandy's abrasive professor father. He's rude and self-centered, he is teaching her about archaeology and gets really surly when she and Jim are together.  
• Sir Christopher, an archaeologist digging on the other side of the island. He's antagonistic toward Frederick and takes an interest in Sandy, offering her money so she can get the hell out of Dodge, as well as a job next summer.  
• Jurgen, a mysterious German colonel who figures heavily in the second half of the novel. At several key points, he seems to be warning Sandy and protecting her against the machinations of his own lover, Kore.  

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel?  For some reason, Gothics usually have nurturing father figures and menacing mother figures. It's all a part of isolating the heroine. You can't give the heroine a dependable best friend or an older female mentor, because then they could help her see past her own naivete. Uh-uh. Not in a Gothic. She can have a kindly older male caretaker or mentor, but when it comes to matters of the heart, this person has to remain clueless.  This is why an older, grandfather-type plays well in these kinds of stories.

Who wins the round?  It's a tie. None of Michaels's characters fit the bill as well as Peter Quinnell does for the Kearsley book, but at the same time, the Michaels story is richer because each of these characters brings a piece of the "father figure" mythology.  

Round 5: A mysterious and menacing older female figure.

Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca is the OG
when it comes to the menacing older
female character in Gothic novels.

Kearsley: There's a menacing and vaguely mysterious female figure, all right, but she's younger instead of older. Her name is Fabia, and she's Peter's granddaughter. She's not a professional archaeologist like Verity--she's just lending a hand for her grandfather. She stays out late, dislikes Verity, and has it out for Peter because she feels Peter loved archaeology more than Fabia's father (Peter's son). Verity never quite trusts her, which is smart. However, Fabia doesn't do any of the traditional menacing things, like tell the heroine, "You need to leave for your own good or bad things will happen to you."  Although Fabia does pose a danger late in the novel, by then, it's really hard to give a crap.

Michaels: We've already mentioned Kore, the strangely alluring older woman who comes to the village festival and freaks everyone out. She's actually the mistress of a mysterious German colonel who lives in a fancy villa up on a cliff above the village. She is not German, however; she is Greek. This brings up a lot of loyalty issues for the older village folk, for whom World War II wasn't that long ago. As the book goes on, Kore gets more and more mysterious. At one point, she walks straight up to Sandy and warns her to get lost. What does she know that Sandy doesn't? Later in the book, Kore takes care of Sandy after an accident. She chants, goes into trances, watches Sandy while she's sleeping, and lets weird guests into the villa during the middle of the night. Yes, this qualifies as menacing and mysterious.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel?  The menacing female is very important. You have to fight fair, and as a writer, it's a little unfair to pit a big, strong man against a tiny, seemingly defenseless female. It's fine to hint that the big, strong man is out to get her, but usually, the villain or villain's assistant is a woman. This way, it's a fair fight when the heroine gets to take her down. Plus, it's very traumatizing for a woman to read about a woman being victimized by another woman. We're used to reading about glass ceilings or horrible male bosses or terrorists/kidnappers who are male. But when our heroine is put down or led astray by a fellow woman? That's disturbing on so many levels.  After all, as Madeline Albright said,

"There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

Who wins the round? Michaels. Fabia, Kearsley's antagonistic character, never really gets up to much menace until it's too late to care. Kore gets kind of annoying toward the end of the Michaels book, but I'd take annoying and mysterious over Fabia's annoying and...just annoying.

Round 6: Incidents of danger that warn the heroine away from her current course of action.

Kearsley: Nope. Not even close. There's no actual villain, violence, or conflict for most of the novel. (Note to Kearsley: Are you kidding me?) This is what irritated me most about the book.  A couple times, objects sort of move around, presumably at the hand of a ghost.  But although the Sentinel is creepy, this ghostly Roman soldier never harms anyone. Most of the characters never even interact with him.

In addition, there are no accidents sabotaging the dig, no one warning the archaeologists to stop looking for the Ninth Legion or else, nothing remotely sinister. No one wants to steal the treasure, stop the excavation, or harm any of the participants. Mostly it just rains and people stop work to go inside, pet cats, and get drunk. Not a single character's physical safety is endangered until the final chapter, when the ridiculous climax and denouement occur. This makes for a pretty boring read, especially in a book that seems to hew so closely to many other Gothic tropes. One character, whose fey son can see and talk to the ghost, tells Verity to stop using the boy to communicate with the ghost, but there's no hint of the "or else" that every good Gothic needs. Writers, you can't build a strong plot without conflict and an antagonist. I can't believe the Kearsley book was such an epic fail on this account.

Michaels: Check. We've got spies, rockslides, booby traps, errant gunshots, a kidnapping disguised as a rescue, drugging, and more. There are a buttload of reasons why Sandy needs to say sayonara to her father's dig, but in traditional Gothic fashion, she stays.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? The stakes have got to increase as the book goes on. Verbal warnings can only go so far. The villain needs to do things that make the heroine fear for her life. This not only makes it more interesting for the reader, but it also gives the heroine a chance to show her mettle.  Unless she's tested, how will she develop as a character?

Who wins the round? Michaels. No contest.

Round 7: Events that seem to be supernatural.

Kearsley: This started out well. There's a ghostly Roman soldier haunting the dig site. He's called the Sentinel, and seems vaguely menacing. The only person who can see him or hear him is a little boy, Robbie, the son of Peter Quinnell's housekeeper.  Robbie is a little disturbed by some of the encounters with the ghost, and there's one creepy scene where Verity feels the ghost near her in her office. But for the most part, the ghost is benign. In fact, the ghost's true intentions are revealed a little too early, if you ask me. Overall, the supernatural peters out without providing much more than a bit of atmosphere and a hint of conflict for the ghost whispering boy's father, who thinks he and his son are being used by the uppity archaeologists.

Michaels: This started out well, too. Sandy, who has never been to Greece, starts having weird living daydreams where she knows she's been to some of these places before. She sees an artifact in a Greek museum and knows its purpose, sees herself using it in the past. There's some mysterious connection between Sandy, her father, the legends of Atlantis, and the destruction of Crete. There's also a local female-based cult that mixes elements of Christianity with earlier pagan beliefs, including the idea of ritual sacrifice. Although all of these elements seem like they should be tied together, they don't really coalesce in the end. In the first part of the novel, Sandy's seeming past-life experiences play a large role. They don't in the second, and the novel ends with a weak return to them that doesn't really explain anything. Writers, if you can't explain something that seems supernatural, don't include it. Tie it to your plot, provide hard details of how it's happening, or forget about it.

Why does this matter in a Gothic novel? It makes shit interesting. Again, it's all about upping the ante and giving the heroine more than she can handle. Not only does she need to sort out her feelings for the hero and deal with the antagonistic female in her life, but now she's supposed to deal with ghosts? Jesus, our heroine says. Give a girl a break.  But we can't, because that's how books work.

Who wins the round? It's kind of a fail-tie. Both authors introduce supernatural elements that aren't really explained and tied to the on-the-ground events well enough.

Now, there are a few characteristics of both books that aren't necessarily de rigeur for Gothics, but that merit additional comparison:

Round 8: An archaeological mystery.

Plaque on the spot where the Ninth
fled Boudicca's army in 61 AD.
Image by Flickr user Dave Crosby.
Used with Creative Commons license.

Kearsley: Check. The Ninth Roman Legion marched deep into the north of England to subdue the warlike border tribes. They vanished sometime between 108 AD, when they rebuilt the fortress at York, and about 150 AD. They were never heard from again. It's a damn good premise, and made me seek out more information about the historical mystery. The book doesn't really solve the mystery one way or another, which is to be expected based on the set-up. Because the mystery still exists, Peter Quinnell can hardly claim to have found conclusive proof that the Ninth was massacred on the Scottish border (although that's what the book hints at).

Ruins of the Minoan
palace at Knossos, Crete.
Image by Flickr
user inis22mara.
Used with Creative
Commons license.

Michaels: Legend says that the lost city of Atlantis fell into the sea, somewhere in the Atlantic. But what if Atlantis were really in the Mediterranean? What if the mystical city were really a garbled representation of the fate of the Minoan civilization? A cataclysmic volcanic eruption in about 1500 BC destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete and Thera, a thousand years before Plato described Atlantis in his writings. Frederick and Sandy are looking for artifacts that might be buried under the water, proving that a magnificent city did fall into the ocean, and that Atlantis can and should be identified with the Minoans.

Who wins the round? Tie. These are both awesome archaeological mysteries to explore. Both authors provide information about the mystery's set-up as well as tidbits that have been uncovered to support or detract from the characters' theories.

Round 9: Nightmares of the heroine.

Kearsley: Verity dreams that she hears horses' hooves pounding the ground outside her window. But no one else hears the horses, and when she finally mentions it, everyone confirms that there are no horses on the grounds that could possibly have made the noises she heard. Ghost horses! Cool, right? Unfortunately, the nightmares don't lead her to any conclusions, and don't really represent anything. Are they supposed to be the ghosts of Roman horses? Do they mean the Ninth is really there, at Eyemouth? Verity doesn't come to either of these conclusions. It's a huge missed opportunity for Kearsley. Plus, it's also the title of the damn book, so you'd think it would mean a little more.

Michaels: Sandy dreams that she's in the Labyrinth with the Minotaur. She watches Theseus follow Ariadne's ball of string to the center of the maze, where he'll face off against the nightmarish creature (half-bull half-man). The dreams are extremely vivid, pretty well done, and creep Sandy out. They cause her to identify with her real name, Ariadne, and make her see the connection between Ariadne and herself: will she betray her father for Jim the way Ariadne betrayed her father, Minos, to run away with Theseus?

Who wins the round? Michaels. The dreams actually tie into the symbolism of her name and the mythology behind it.

Round 10: The sins of the fathers. 

Kearsley: Yes, the doings of the previous generation come back to bite the heroine's generation in the butt. I won't say how, in case you want to read the Kearsley. But there is a secret that leaks, and it leads to the only real incident of physical danger for anyone in the whole book. Still, that being said, the secret isn't really that big deal, and the reveal feels minimal and lame and rushed. Plus, neither the secret nor the reveal has a damn thing to do with the archaeological mystery or the ghost. It's just crap the characters have to sort through.

Michaels: Yes, the doings of the previous generation come back to bite the heroine's generation in the butt. In fact, there's an entire subplot involving Frederick, Sir Christopher, Jim's uncle (a cohort of Frederick and Sir Christopher's), Kore, and Jurgen. Because this book takes place in 1975, the previous generation's escapades took place during World War II and involve the resistance movement against the Nazis on Crete. There's something hinky between Frederick and Kore, and we find out that someone betrayed someone else  to the Nazis all those years ago. Yeah, that's pretty kick-ass.

Who wins the round? Michaels. Come on. Weak drawing room intrigue or a World War II resistance movement?

Okay, after 10 rounds, it's time to crown a winner!

Rounds tied: 5
Rounds to Kearsley: 0
Rounds to Michaels: 5

Now, this isn't to say the Michaels book is perfect. It's not. It has some pretty big flaws in the second half of the book. However, it kicks the crap out of Kearsley's limp, dreary, soggy tale. The winner is Barbara Michaels.