Molly Ringle

My lovely and delightful author friend Melissa McTernan was one of my early readers for Ballad for Jasmine Town, and said recently that she found herself still occasionally thinking about the book, months later. Which to me is such a high compliment! And it has led me to ponder: what is it that makes a story, be it book or show or film, stick in our heads longer than usual?

Plenty of shows or books are perfectly engaging while we’re watching/reading them, but after we’re done, they drop straight out of our consciousness. We barely give them another thought.

Then there are those we can’t stop thinking about. What is it about those? What qualities make them that way?

I have more pondering to do on this, but I have a preliminary theory. These “sticky” stories are ones in which things don’t turn out entirely perfectly.

The ending might be satisfying on the whole, but there are elements that hang around to haunt us, because what happened to some characters was incredibly unfair, even tragic, and there’s no fixing it. (Except of course with fix-it fic!) Problems we want to fix, but cannot, are much likelier to linger in our heads than problems that got neatly tied off and resolved.

Ballad for Jasmine Town has more of those tragic elements than many of my books do. Without giving spoilers, there are some huge unhappy things that befall a whole lot of characters, and even with (okay, minor spoiler) restored peace as the ending mood, those events cannot be undone.

And now that I think about it, the various series for which I have become an obsessive fan have all had that quality. Lord of the Rings has the Grey Havens. BBC Merlin has le morte d’Arthur (a.k.a. That Damned Ending). The Untamed has a brutal body count that includes beloved and/or innocent characters. And so on. Much as I insist that I need sufficient lightness and fun and hope in my stories—which I do, truly!—it would seem I also need a certain amount of sadness that grips me and won’t let go, if I’m going to become a hardcore fan about it.

HMC is of course in the fantasy genre and is more whimsical, not gothic and set in the real world like Jane Eyre or other novels that also retell it (e.g., Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, or Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden—both of which I also love). Nonetheless, consider the similarities:

·      Young woman, largely unappreciated and downtrodden throughout her childhood, sets out on her own and acquires employment and lodging in a large, gloomy, isolated castle/manor owned by a mysterious but alluring man

·      She soon makes friends with the man as well as a youngster who lives there (Howl’s apprentice, Markl; Rochester’s ward, Adèle)

·      The guy definitely has some complicated secrets

·      One of the house’s other denizens, who is fire-themed, is central to the man’s complicated secret (Calcifer the fire demon/shooting star; Bertha with her tendencies toward arson)

·      There are themes of disguise and transformation (various HMC characters are under appearance-altering spells; Rochester pulls off an “old gypsy fortune teller” disguise, among his other deceptions)

·      Both stories employ many juxtapositions of the eerie, dark, architectural/technological interior of the manor/castle against the peaceful, lovely natural landscape it sits in

·      The young woman’s forthrightness and courage eventually lead the man, herself, and the household into a healthier state of trust, love, and honesty

I grant you, this connection might be a stretch. Both stories could also be more broadly classified as Cinderella stories with a dark dash of Beauty and the Beast and/or Bluebeard. And in general it’s extremely common for any happy-arc story to be about damaged people finding each other and thereby becoming more whole. Still, it has pleased me today to find and highlight these similarities between two stories I love.

Ordinarily I’m not one of those people who leaves really long Amazon reviews. But for The Untamed there’s not really anywhere else notable to leave one, and it deserves one! So here is what I posted. Let’s hope Amazon approves it. If not, it's here, anyway.

Short review:

Magic systems in fantasy! They are not all alike, as you know, but here's one of the ways to categorize them: a spectrum between "soft" and "hard" magic. Hard magic systems have defined rules on how they work, and the reader is told what they are—e.g., the four element types of bending in Avatar: the Last Airbender have certain basic limits, which is why the characters are astounded when, say, Toph invents metalbending. Soft magic is more mystical and indefinable—e.g., we don't really know HOW Gandalf does all the magic he does, or even what his limits might be; we just accept that he's a wizard and such things are unknowable to the likes of us.

I tend toward soft magic, though moderately so, in my fantasy books, because I feel like the more you give precise, quasi-scientific explanations for magic, the more it's likely to bug people who actually know science. (Also the closer it comes to being science fiction instead of fantasy.) That said, I do put limits and costs in my magic systems: the fae in The Goblins of Bellwater (and Lava Red Feather Blue), though very soft-magic in terms of having large and undefined amounts of power, must nevertheless adhere to deals they make, because that's just the rule.

I also tend toward preferring soft magic in reading, because I don't REALLY feel I need pages of detailed explanation about which material and which rule loophole and which move is the way to solve things; I'm good with a briefer and more mystical explanation. However, many readers do love the details. Neither side is wrong! It's a matter of preference—and it's also on the shoulders of us writers to be consistent within a given story, whatever slot on the spectrum we're picking.

My longtime online friend Aaron Schwabach, who is not only an exuberant fanboy of many of the same things I love, but also a law professor, gave such a wonderfully detailed and entertaining answer that I asked him if I could run it as a guest post. He agreed, so here it is, for the edification of all us writers, or just for anyone who's curious. Thank you, Aaron!
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Law in fiction: I tend to overlook most of it for the sake of storytelling, especially in a movie where time is limited.  The same is true for police work, medicine, espionage, or most other “exciting” professions.  Most cops never shoot anyone or get shot by anyone; doctors don’t discover cures for previously unknown diseases and halt epidemics within 48 hours; real life work at the CIA involves hours, days, and months of sitting in a cubicle looking at documents and photographs.  All of those make for a boring story, as would watching a real life lawyer practice law most of the time.  

The more I read of currently popular fantasy, the more dismayed I am that there tends to be such a huge focus on weaponry and fighting and the protagonists being (or becoming) martial arts geniuses. I stick with some of these books anyway if, such as in The Hunger Games, they're written really well and the plot and characters are compelling. But I've got to admit that violence and weaponry and action scenes are really not my favorite things. They're never the parts I re-read for pleasure (that would be the love declarations, or some particularly amusing exchanges or incidents, or passages of beautiful writing describing something magical). I don't particularly like writing fighting-and-weapons scenes either, though sometimes I find I have to, given the way I've set things up. So now I'm pondering how to set up a fantasy book so I can spend as little time as possible in violent weapon-related scenes and still create a really good read.

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, condensed

From the article: "...fans are writing and ask all these questions, 'I'm bullied in school... I'm afraid to come out'. They say to me, 'Could Luke be gay?' I'd say it is meant to be interpreted by the viewer... If you think Luke is gay, of course he is."

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Bless you, Mark Hamill. Not only are you a compassionate human being, but one who understands that what the story means to the reader/viewer is as genuine as what it means to the story's creator(s).

Edited to expand:

I shared this on my Facebook author page as well, and someone commented, "Umm, except that is not what Mark Hamill said in the article. Thinking something is true doesn't make it true."

My answer, and further thoughts:

The headline does make it sound more definitive than it's meant to be, but I directly quoted almost everything he actually said in the article. They also include a tweet from him, in which he says, "Luke is whatever the audience wants him to be, so you can decide for yourself."

Since Luke's a fictional character whose sexuality isn't directly addressed in canon, there isn't really a "true" or "false" on the question. And mainly what I'm commending is Hamill giving hope and validation to kids whose families are failing on that job.

I think it's fine and good for the writer to say publicly, "To me, the character is this, that, and the other," in addition to whatever is already established in canon. But I think it's better still for them to add, "But if you have head-canon in which he or she is something else, and you love this idea, then that's fine too, because that makes the story meaningful in a new way."

Obviously no one wants their story to be the inspiration for a murder or anything--e.g., John Lennon's murderer being obsessed with Catcher in the Rye. I wouldn't go so far as to say, "If you think this book is saying, 'Go out and kill people,' then that's valid!" I'm talking, obviously, about head-canon that doesn't hurt anyone else even if it's fancifully different from established canon. (And in any case, I rather suspect that even if Catcher in the Rye hadn't existed, Chapman would have still had serious issues and simply named some other justification for them.)

I'm pretty sure beings in other parts of the galaxy are listening to him right now. Earthlings will love and remember you always, Bowie!

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