Building a Face Out of Words

All storytellers have a challenge to meet in telling their story: making you see the characters as full, living people.

In comics, this is relatively easy. A comics artist draws and draws and draws different faces based on how they see the character in their mind's eye. Then, as long as they're an artist who's been trained or has an incredible talent, the character will look the same from panel to panel in different angles and different times of the day. In film, the process of casting is an entirely different but equally arduous task.

But in literature, the author has the challenge to create visible characters in the mind's eye of the reader hanging squarely on the shoulders of his prose. The author must build a face, a body--an entire human being with words.

Notice the way we are introduced to the main character's parents in the opening pages of the novel:

The attractive, young couple stood facing each other on the courthouse steps...

James was holding both of his fiancé’s porcelain hands in his, entwining her long, graceful fingers with his fatter, clumsier ones and pulling her close...

His earnest brown eyes were intently searching her smiling green ones...

In her heels, they were almost the same height. Not because James was terribly short—he was a respectable five foot ten—but Jane was almost that tall herself. She cut, everyone said, a striking figure.

~ "The Chip" by George Jack; pp. 1-2

With just a few details and a set of spread-out sentences we can see James and Jane Ross. Over the hundred or so pages that follow the details of their mannerisms, speech patterns, and idiosyncrasies will bring us to understand James and Jane as well.

The most important utilization of these physical descriptions comes in describing characters in parallel.

Here is the introduction to the adult Claudia Torres:

...she had grown tall and lean. She had the same heart-shaped face with high cheekbones and soft, almond-shaped eyes, but her features had matured. ... her full lips. Her complexion was flawless. Her thick, chestnut hair cascaded down her long neck, around which there was a delicate, gold locket that contained a picture of her mother. Everything about her was feminine.

~ "The Chip" by George Jack; p. 204

And here is the introduction to the villain Virus:

The mysterious woman was dressed in a skintight purple jumpsuit made of rubber. It's pattern revealed the creamy, sinewy flesh of her back and the lithe muscles of her biceps, and hugged her ample chest provocatively. Her thin body was incredibly lean, with legs that seemed at least a mile long. ...her dangerously sharp fingers, and also the belt that accentuated the smallness of her waist. ... The woman's hair, or her wig—The Chip couldn't tell what it was—was a bright, silky violet, cut short and chic, as if it had been styled with a razor. A large chunk of it fell into her beautiful face.

It was heart-shaped and heavily made up—the lipstick that painted her full, pouty mouth was almost black. Her brown, almond-shaped eyes were set far apart. One moment they were playfully mischievous and the next, icy cold.

~ "The Chip" by George Jack; p. 249-250

Some strange coincidences here, aren't there? These specific pieces of information allow the reader to answer these questions: Who are the characters of "The Chip"? What do they look like, how do they move?

All of these elements of the narrative must be determined and communicated to the reader in simple written language.

Next week we will talk about the cast of "The Chip" again and answer the question: "How do they think?"

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A reduced pricing option is in effect until the end of the Summer! It's our Summer Special!
You can get $7 off the cover price of "The Chip" if you order it through MyBookOrders.com until August 31st!
Just use the PROMO CODE: 1099

Check it out!

Superheroic Prose

A search on Amazon.com presents only an immediate handful of superhero novels available for purchase. A few anthologies of superhero short stories, a whole lot of comics collections and graphic novels of course, but probably somewhere around just one hundred superhero novels are available on Amazon. In a global marketplace, and on a site like Amazon.com, that's tiny! And out of that rough one hundred there's only about fifty or sixty for sale that are aimed at young adults.

"The Chip" is one of them, of course!
(It's also available through MyBookOrders.com with which there's a special reduced price promotion right now! Scroll to the bottom of this post for details.)

So "The Chip" is on a very short list of examples of superhero literature. Even more true of superhero prose for young adults. There were probably way less just five or ten years ago. There's two important ones aimed at adults: "Superfolks" by Robert Mayer was the first all the way back in 1977. Much more recently Austin Grossman wrote "Soon I Will Be Invincible" and made people see superhero prose in a new light. But it seems the old-fashioned written word is still resistant to the superhero genre because it was birthed out of the comics medium and comics have been so strongly seen as low-art for so long. It is always a shame when art of any kind is ignored or debased in an effort to save culture. Culture is a growing changing element of life by its nature. To try to save culture is to kill it.



Certainly, adapting the typical set-pieces of the superhero genre from the four-color graphic medium of comics to the descriptive written-word medium of prose is tricky business. George Jack chose to take this unique direction and make it work by combining the dramatic with the commonplace.

Stanley wears jeans with a black t-shirt. When he's not wearing a metal flying suit.

Uncle Jeffrey is a wheelchair-bound paraplegic but he also happens to be the most advanced mind for cybernetics on the planet.

Dr. Ian Powell is a middle-aged man with male-pattern baldness, with cybernetic and surgical expertise. As we've written before, he merely happens to be tremendously insane!

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This touching reunion scene illustrates the balance between the sci-fi/superhero and the everyday aspects of the novel:
[This is one of my personal favorite parts of the novel. ~ your social-media man-at-the-wheel, Jon Gorga]

"... I've been remembering you how you were at thirteen, and here you are, a grown man."

Jeff was crying again. Stanley leaned down and hugged him in his chair, careful not to hold him too tightly. Not just because of his strength, but because his uncle felt so fragile and bony in his arms. Stanley stepped back, his hands on Jeff's shoulders, and took a good look at him. Stanley had grown up, and his uncle had gotten old.

"Where have you been, Stanley? You seem... better, somehow."

Stanley reacted as if he had been doused in the face with ice water. He needed that reality check.

"I have so much to tell you, Uncle Jeff, but first... there's a tracking device in my head. We need to get it out, but it's part of an implant that I can't live without anymore. My condition got worse as I got older, actually, but there's a chip..."

Stanley saw the recognition in his uncle's eyes. "So it's true," he said quietly. "Did you invent this chip that's inside of me, Uncle Jeff? ..."

~ "The Chip" by George Jack; p. 153

___________________________________________________________
A reduced pricing option is in effect until the end of the Summer! It's our Summer Special!
You can get $7 off the cover price of "The Chip" if you order it through MyBookOrders.com until August 31st!
Just use the PROMO CODE: 1099

Take a look!

Chaos

Madness has been a common element in popular fiction for just about as long as it has existed. King Lear from Shakespeare's famous play, The Joker from the Batman stories, Rotwang from "Metropolis", or Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver". All went as crazy as a bedbug! Writers tend to use a character who is insane to make an exploration of chaos in the world around them.

Chaos and insanity are intertwined in literature (both in literature for young adults or other kinds). A chaos outside reflects the chaos inside. Inside the mind, that is. Characters who are locked-away have been placed in stories, but popular fiction has always had more fun by letting those crazies 'at large' in society. Thereby creating conflict and drama! Some stories thrive with chaotic elements just like some people do.

Dr. Ian Powell from "The Chip" fits all these criteria. He creates several of the 'super-villains' The Chip must face, out of humanoid raw material like a modern-day Frankenstein. Powell is the mad scientist character of the novel. Unpredictable and, quite often, downright scary. He makes secretive deals. He works in seclusion. He makes "The Chip" itself a more unpredictable and fast-paced read.

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"I love your passion, sir!" Dr. Powell said. "Your energy, your anger!" The subhuman was still thrashing around the room, apparently not hearing or not understanding that he was being spoken to.

"I can make you stronger! I can make you undefeatable, so you can go out and do some real damage! Isn't that what you want--to kill? Well, this is your lucky day, sir, because that's what I want too."

The subhuman stood still for the first time since he'd been released from the crate. His eye was fixed on Dr. Powell. "Come, let me help you. We have the same mission, you and me. Let me fix you up so we can get to it."

Dr. Powell was motioning for the subhuman to lie down on the operating table that was somehow still standing next to him. "Come over here, my friend. Easy does it. That's right..." The subhuman was taking uneasy steps towards him, hindered by his weak vision. "Don't worry about that eye of yours. When I'm through you'll see clear to the stars and be able to shoot things down from high in the sky--big, shiny objects like airplanes... and The Chip."

~ "The Chip" by George Jack; p. 243

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Art by Shamus Beyale.

YA is in the Style as well as the Substance

"The Chip" is intended for a 'young adult' audience, that not-perfectly-clear group between childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The novel was, in fact, chosen recently for a list of "Must Read Books for Young Readers". [You can read more about that here.]

The differences between an adult novel and a YA novel are hard to pin down, but they lie mainly in subject, theme, and, most prominently, style.

We've written elsewhere on this blog about the way "The Chip" presents simple but exciting questions and challenges all young people have to deal with!

"Luis had a key to the house and let himself in when he and Claudia arrived, announcing their presence loudly. 'We come bearing flan!' he called out.

'In the kitchen!' Jeff shouted back. He and Stanley were playing cards at the table. Stanley had wanted to appear as normal as possible. He looked up from his crummy poker hand and saw a girl more beautiful than he'd remembered.

Claudia was twenty now, like him. ... Stanley wondered what she would possibly make of him."

~ "The Chip" pp. 203-204

Lots of people have had a crush on someone they've known since they were young children. We all seek acceptance and a sense that we belong with the people around us. The reader can identify!

Sentence structure is required to be balanced in complexity. Commas, creating a break or series of breaks, are used sparingly. When they are used it is when they can follow the natural cadence of the language and the natural flow of thoughts.

"Stanley waited for the softest patch of land and then hurtled his body as far as he could away from the train, so as not to end up under the tracks. He stood up and brushed himself off, completely unharmed. And then he headed home, hoping to any and every higher power he'd ever heard of that he still had one."

~ "The Chip" p. 151

The way these sentences are written makes them clear and fun to read. The reader can follow the thought-process of the main character and the direction of the story.

Vocabulary is balanced in its range. Complicated words are used sparingly. When they are used it is in a context allowing the reader to use their own understanding to define them.

"Are you talking about turning my son into a robot?

No, it's just a neuroprosthesis. If Stanley lost an arm you'd get him a prosthetic limb. The chip is a prosthetic for his brain, that's all."

~ "The Chip" pp. 83-84

The words "prosthetic" and "neuroprosthesis" are used in these sentences in a way that anybody can make a good informed guess as to their related meaning.

Another element of good YA writing is clear dramatic conflict. I think "The Chip" has that covered!

So what age-group is YA writing for? How is it different from other kinds of writing? Perhaps, in the end, those questions aren't very important ones. YA writing should be writing that young people understand and care about. That is what "The Chip" strives to achieve!

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You can see an example of YA writing for yourself and read George Jack's "The Chip" by purchasing it HERE.

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And you can read more about YA in general on Wikipedia or at any of these other fine websites and blogs:
Wikipedia.org/Young-adult-literature
YAreads
iceyBooks
and
I Like These Books (written by a teen!)

Family

When Stan Lee created The Fantastic Four in 1961, he created a superhero team that was also a family. Everyday chores and squabbles amid superhero battles and vacations to far off universes and dimensions. His foursome are still published by Marvel Comics today. But all characters, all people, have a family:

We are the combined result of our biology and upbringing. Jane and James Ross discover this when they are told their young son has special needs: particularly his brain does not have the ability to properly process information. He sees things and hears things differently than you and I do. He hears more and sees more, but he cannot differentiate between the sources of these stimuli. He hears across miles and sees through walls.

Our parents can frustrate us. Our parents can make us feel limited and powerless in our youth. But our family builds the foundation for the rest of our lives. Our family is the foundation for the rest of our lives. And when that foundation is strong enough, we can get a running start and, maybe someday, we can even fly:

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They were a very close family, despite their strange circumstances. Almost every day at 3:00 a.m., when most of the country was asleep, Jane, James, and Stanley would gather around the kitchen table and talk. It was only when the world around him was quiet that Stanley was able to function somewhat normally. He loved that special time with his parents. They would play games together, do puzzles, and drink hot chocolate or lemonade, depending on the season. Those tranquil times were a double-edged sword, though; on one hand, they provided Stanley with much needed peace and quiet, not to mention the irreplaceable time with his parents, but... being awake at 3:00 a.m. caused Stanley to fall asleep during classes. The Rosses were divided between their son's sanity and and his education; it was an ongoing give and take. Consequently, they came up with the plan of incorporating school work during these tranquil hours. Because of this change in routine, Stanley was able to make some progress with school work.

~ "The Chip" by George Jack; pp. 79-80

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Art by Shamus Beyale.