When writing a story, you must consider why your characters are doing what they are doing. You cannot have them make a decision because you want them to. There has to be a valid reason behind every decision. And the reader has to know it. There must be some awe-inspiring, life-validating, sense-making reason for every action. There must be at least one decision that is an earthquake of the soul. Every story has a choice, as every character has a decision to make. Harry has the choice to find and destroy Voldemort, or let it be and perhaps relocate to Russia. Stanley Yelnats has the choice to carry Zero up the mountain, or let him die at the base of God's thumb with onion breath. Bod has the choice to take control of his own path in life and rid the world of Jacks, or to simply live as one of the dead forever. Emmilina has the choice to run away with Charlotte, or sit in her bedroom and waste away as her parents look on. These are all earthquakes of the soul. They are life changing decisions.
Now, on to other things. I have recently read The Cardturner, by Louis Sachar. Now, if any of you know me (and if you are reading this, then chances are good), then you know that I absolutely adore Louis Sachar. Holes and Wayside School is Falling Down, along with Someday Angeline and Dogs Don't Tell Jokes are some of my all time favorite books, predating even Harry Potter. But, I'm not going to lie to you, The Cardturner was not Sachar's best work.
Yes, he does a great job creating believable characters--Alton seemed like a very true to life high schooler. It was also just a great little story about a relationship between a teenager and his aging uncle. There was also a bit of a mysterious old family scandal that was fun to read about. And I got to learn a lot about the game of bridge; something Sachar clearly knows a lot about. To be fair (it is now about two weeks since I started writing this post, btw), he had an awesome blurb in the beginning, in which he basically tells us all what I had been suspecting all along--that he wrote about a game that he just knew a lot about. This is what he says, in "A Note from the Author:"
"Imagine you were abducted by aliens and taken away to their home planet. After living there awhile, you learn to speak their language, and then actually become a pretty well-known author. You were a huge baseball fan back on Earth, so you decide to write a book about baseball. You know that none of your alien readers have ever heard of baseball, but you think it will make a great story, and besides, you really love the game...
As you attempt to write it, you quickly find yourself entangled in words with multiple meanings, like ball and run. When you try to describe a triple play, you get so bogged down explaining the rules about force-outs that the excitement of the play itself is lost.
That was the predicament I put myself into when I wrote The Cardturner. It's not about baseball but about bridge, a card game that was once extremely popular but that, unfortunately, not too many people play anymore, especially not young people. In fact, the people who do play bridge seem to live in their own alien world.
My publisher, my editor, my wife, and my agent all said I was crazy. 'No one's going to want to read a book about bridge!' they told me on more than one occasion.
Still, I really love the game..."
Which just goes to show: write about what you know and love. What do I know and love? Road trips down I-94 in a crowded car. But anyways, I'm not saying it was a bad book because it was about bridge (which, as it turns out, is a very confusing game). I thought that was very interesting. And I'm not even saying it was a "bad book" per say. It just left me with a weird taste in my mouth. But before I get to that, here's what it did well.
Even though a significant portion of the book was dedicated to explaining the finer rules of the game of bridge, it worked. This is for two reasons: first, it was being described in the voice of Alton, the sixteen year old main character. Second, he added a picture of a whale.
Right, let me explain further. Or rather, type you a small portion. Imagine there is a picture of a whale.
"Do you see that picture of a whale?" (Pretend you do. It's there. It's a whale. I'm not scanning it.) "It's going to be our secret code. (Okay, maybe it's not so secret.)
This past year I had to read Moby-Dick in my Language Arts / English class. It seemed like a pretty good adventure story about a monster killer whale, but just when I started to get into it, the author, Herman Melville, stopped the story and went on page after page describing every time detail of a whaling ship. I zoned out. I never finished the book and had to bluff my way through the test.
The reason I'm telling you this is because I'm about to attempt to explain the basics of bridge. My guess is that there's going to have to be more bridge in the book as well.
I'm not trying to teach you how to play bridge. There's not way I could do that. I'll just try to explain enough of the basics that if you want, you might be able to understand some of the bridge stuff that happens. ...
So here's the deal. Whenever you see the picture of the whale, it means I'm about to go into some detail about bridge. If that makes you zone out, then just skip ahead to the summary box and I'll give you the short version" (43).
So you see? He found a way to write about a very complicated game (in which we might as well be aliens--at least I might as well have been an alien), and still manage to have a compelling and easy to read story. It was a pageturner. (Oh, yes, I am witty.) I love books that teach things while still telling a story--Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief is another example of this, though admittedly Rick Riordan weaved Greek gods into his story much better.
Anyways, the bridge is not why it left a weird taste in my mouth. Here is why:
The whole book, we follow Alton, a very realistic, down to earth, normal teenager through his experience in being his blind uncle's cardturner. His uncle gives him money, he gets a car, there is a bit of a love triangle in which his best friend is dating his ex-girlfriend and is trying to cheat on said ex-girlfriend with Toni--the girl Alton likes and the other main character. It's all a very normal game until his uncle dies, at which point he starts having paranormal otherworldly conversations with the dead.
Now... the problem I have with this is that we were not given any warning for the supernatural. We were not even given any warning for the unnatural. We were reading about bridge, and all of a sudden, his uncle is talking to him from beyond the grave.
Okay, you say, what about Holes? There was magic in that! What about the curse on the Yelnats family all because of Stanley's "no-good, dirty-rotten, pig-stealing, great, great grandfather?" Well, in that situation, we are hearing the story of Madame Zeroni alongside the more realistic story of Stanley Yelnats. We are allowed to suspect that some magic is at play here, that maybe the curse is real. In this book we get none of that. We hear that Toni has headaches, but that's hardly supernatural.
So, moral of the story: it was a fascinating book, but not one of my favorites. It changed genres in the middle. But, props to Louis Sachar for writing a book about a confusing game of cards that was incredibly interesting.
What was the earthquake of your soul? Or in my case... where will this earthquake known as graduation leave me? Make a life changing, world altering, lip smacking, eye opening, smile inducing decision today. Every choice matters.
I'm suspicious that my little will be the next J.K. Rowling. Oh, and I'm talking about Chloe, the one who's in fifth grade. She is brilliant, and I love her.
Oh, and speaking of J.K. Rowling, she's writing a new book for adults!
Jumping up and down with excitement,
L.R. Ogden
