A Day in the Unlife

            There are some things you get used to when you live with a necromancer. The strange looks the neighbours give you—although if you’re the kind of person who lives with a necromancer, you probably got a lot of stares anyway—the way mundane animals won’t go near your roommate, the odd hours, the spare bedroom converted into a freezer. Going out to cemeteries in the middle of the night, of course, although that could be fun if you didn’t mind a lot of digging[1]. And the dead could be pretty interesting to talk to. Of course, if you were one of them, you could be a little biased on that point, but at least some of them understood what you were talking about.

            What you never got used to was finding your roommate in a cemetery covered in his own blood in the middle of the night. Especially when it was your fault, because you let him go out doing magic alone even though you know he gets carried away sometimes, and now you have to explain to the paramedics even though you have no idea what the hell is going on.

            For Saturday, it was not a good night. Granted, it was probably a worse night for Rosseau, but unconscious people don’t generally give their opinions, so it was hard to be sure.

            Saturday was sitting in a plastic chair that had been designed for people of average height and that forced his knees up somewhere around his shoulders, staring blankly at the waiting room wall. They had been through things like this before, of course, because necromancy had a lot of relics from the days when everything was ritual-based and there are some things you can’t modernize, but it was still difficult. Because you didn’t know. That was the thing. One day the text wouldn’t come (and god, there was nothing worse than getting the text “possibly bleeding to death pls help” when up until now you’ve been having a very nice relaxing evening and were thinking of maybe going to bed around now) or he’d get there too late or Rosseau would forget to mention where he was going (no he wouldn’t, he was too smart for that, wasn’t he?) and then…

            He pulled out the flask without even thinking about it, drinking from it in a reflex born of three years’ avoiding decomposition. It was disgusting, but it helped, sort of.

            A pen fell off the table next to him. The room was so quiet it actually echoed, because nobody talks in a hospital waiting room. He reached down automatically to pick it up—oh, yes, and there was the other problem.

            Because Rosseau hadn’t said what he was going to do, just that he had work and where he was going, the kind of blank statement that Saturday was used to when he wasn’t needed for heavy lifting or companionship. So, of course, Saturday had arrived and discovered a lot of blood and a seven-year-old girl who had died over a century ago and whose ghost Rosseau had tethered to the piece of dull rose-colored ribbon now tied around Saturday’s wrist. The name on the headstone was Angelina, but he didn’t know anything else about the ghost because he wasn’t a necromancer and she wouldn’t give him her voice[2], which he supposed was reasonable since she probably didn’t have the energy for a lot of people, but it was overall kind of frustrating.

            At least she wasn’t one of the dangerous ghosts, the ones that got really angry when you tried to talk to them. Ghosts can only move things with the mass of a pen or less, but there are plenty of dangerous things in that category.

            It was almost one in the morning. If he had gone to bed, he’d probably have scared himself awake by now anyway. This was not much of a comfort.

            “What happened to yours?”

            Saturday turned, startled. There was a woman in the seat next to him, short faded blonde hair, an unaccountably fancy black dress with some jagged rips in the hem, and with the ghastly grey pallor that generally marked the undead. Impossible to tell her age, but she looked younger than him. There was a long-dead lily tucked behind her ear, which made her look fresh from the grave. Maybe she was.

            “I’m sorry, what?” That was rude; he’d have to apologize at some point, when he was feeling better, if he happened to still be here by then.

            She nodded toward the closed door which prevented him from running off to harass the doctors for information, and which he regarded with a kind of anticipatory dread. “You have someone in there, right? You don’t hang around hospitals for fun? In which case I would assume it’s your necromancer. I’m here for mine.”

            Not exactly, since his necromancer would be the actual person who raised him from the dead, but he didn’t feel like explaining. “Yeah.”

            “Who’s that ghost? Somebody important?”

            “I don’t know, Miss…?”

            “Oh, I’m Maddie.” She was chewing gum, he realized; the snapping noise made him flinch. She leaned toward him, and he could smell the nasty pseudo-watermelon flavour as she spoke. “So. The ghost? How come you’re carrying her around if you don’t even know who she is?”

            “Well, my friend—that is, necromancer—I don’t know what he was doing, but I found this ghost with him. I guess he must have needed her for something, and I couldn’t really just leave her there.” He wasn’t really listening to what he was saying. To be honest, he wasn’t really listening to what she was saying either. Hard to focus on anything right now. He’d been waiting an awfully long time, hadn’t he? No way of telling. That clock was broken and he didn’t have a watch anymore (remember to get a waterproof one next time, you’ll probably have to jump in the bay at least once more), but really, why was he so worried? It couldn’t have been that long. He had no sense of time. Everything would be fine, of course.

            Everything would be fine. It couldn’t not be.

            Maddie was talking again, something about her necromancer and how he’d been “kinda chewed up” by someone’s dog for some reason, and how she wasn’t too worried because “stuff like this happens every other week, doesn’t it?” She didn’t need Saturday to actually respond as long as he looked attentive, probably. But then she poked him in the shoulder, surprisingly hard, and said, “Hey, how old are you, anyway?”

            Unaccountably rude, but he was so startled he answered. “Uh, twenty-five. Three years dead.” That was something you had to include, to avoid confusion. Of course, sometimes it made things more confusing, because sometimes people didn’t realize that you were dead until then.

            She stared at him admiringly. “Whoa! Three years? I’ve been dead six months. Do you have any, you know, advice or something?”

            “No.”

            His tone made her stop talking to him, finally. Rude. Very rude. Now he’d definitely have to apologize. Later, though, because even though he felt bad now, he wasn’t sure he could handle a long conversation, which it would surely be. Maybe he could find her somehow. Look up deaths six months ago of women named Madison or Madeline or whatever else might be abbreviated the same way, and find her in the phone book…

            Angelina was poking him with the pen she’d knocked down before. He looked over at her and was confronted with a lot of wild and unintelligible gesticulation, made harder to interpret because she was mostly transparent under the bright waiting-room lights. She lost concentration, busy trying to make herself understood, and the pen fell through her hand.

            Time dragged. He almost missed the nightmares. At least you could wake up from those. Maddie left at some point; he barely noticed.

            And then suddenly there were doctors, and lots of whispering, and someone talked to him and he got the meaning but not the words, and they gave him a phone number and told him he should probably go home. And he did, stumbling around in the dark apartment because he didn’t care to turn on the lights, checking Rosseau’s glowing clock (was it really only two?), finally just stretching out on the couch and not worrying anymore, except for the normal background worry that was pretty much standard by now. Forget the nightmares, because this one was over now.

            Everything was fine.

---

[1] Because necromancy is one of the more unsettling types of magic, most magicians with an aptitude for it get a necromancy license when they leave school; this allows them to legally dig up bodies, summon ghosts, etc, although it’s considered very rude to do so without consulting the family if you’re messing with the recently dead. A necromancer without a license will be arrested if caught digging up graves, even if they are able to prove they are a necromancer.

[2] Ghosts cannot be heard by non-necromancers unless they establish a link to the person, known as “giving one’s voice”. Most ghosts can only do this with about three people because they don’t have enough spare energy for any more; in the case of child ghosts, there may only be enough spare energy for one.

Toast

            Today, I'm going to evict my roommate.

            I mean, it's not that he's a terrible guy, exactly. He makes me toast every morning, which is nice, and he's never objected to any of the people I've dragged to our apartment. He's usually a rather quiet fellow, and when he's got something interesting to say he waits until the right moment. But, well...we've had an argument.

            It was sort of about the toast, actually. It didn't come out right the other morning, too lightly done, and I explained this to my roommate as nicely as I could. He seemed apologetic, and gave it another try, but this time the bread came out burnt to a crisp.

            Well, I told him he'd just have to do it again, with fresh bread. He did it, of course, but this time it was accompanied by interminable groaning. As if making toast were so much work! He doesn't even have a job! And to further annoy me, the toast came out burnt again! Ridiculous!

            I informed him that he obviously had no idea what he was doing as I shoved another piece of bread at him. He became...very irritated. Irate, you might say. Not only did he burn my toast for the third time that morning, but when I went to take it from him, he burned my hand! Said it was an accident, or suggested it, anyway, but I didn't trust him. I told him I could make my own toast, thank you, and was about to do just that—when he shocked me! An electrical shock, I mean, not like he started stripping in the middle of the kitchen with the window open.

            Well, I said, if he was so offended by my making my own toast, then he had better do it right this time. But to no avail; he burned it again. Throwing the bread in the trash, I noticed that it needed emptying, so I took it out back. When I returned, what should I find but my roommate smoking in the kitchen! That was the last straw, I felt, and I got a bit carried away in my anger—I admit I punched him.

            Since then he has been sullen, sulky, refusing to toast anything at all and producing terrible groans when I ask anything of him. This morning I took him to a specialist, who told me there was nothing to be done.

            It seems I'm going to have to buy a new toaster.

Mistakes

A year ago I started writing a novel called Malt. It centered around a superhero, Maxwell Malt, who worked solely in a small town a couple of hours' drive from New York City (called Eastport, and apparently actually exists) without the use of actual superpowers, and living in terror of having his secret identity discovered. Other main characters were Wilfred Jenkins, a reporter seeking just that information about Max, and October and Ferret, two very weird surname-less sisters, one of whom Max was supposed to fall in love with. (How I intended to write this last after years of shunning romance, I have no idea.)

Malt eventually failed, for various reasons. First of all, it had no real plot. Wilfred was supposed to hunt down Max and his secret identity and whatnot, eventually finding out who he was, with the occasional bizarre event tossed in. At one point they were supposed to end up on a boat, at another in a taxi in New York City. Max was going to get drunk at an unspecified time. As previously mentioned, he was also supposed to fall in love with October. This is the entire outline of my planning.

The second issue was that I tried to write the universe without magic. The problem with this was that, if you have superheroes, even powerless ones, you have to have supervillains. Those usually require some form of magic. When I do rewrite Malt, although Max will still get by with purely human ability, the universe will have magic in such strength that it is incorporated into the government; in the same continuity will be another novel involving a government official and a professional magician/bodyguard, yet to be titled.

Finally, I was not very good at characterization. Max is painfully insecure. It's why he became a superhero, why he hides his identity, why he's terrified of being exposed (as he thinks of it). It dictates most of the decisions he makes--or at least, it should. Unfortunately, my characterization at the time was either terribly ham-handed or completely absent, and I'm not sure which instances read better. Wilfred's motivations, too, were unclear, and October was pretty much a weirdo to save me from assigning her any real character traits.

I do intend to rewrite Malt, once I've worked out what the plot actually is. Wilfred, October and Ferret may be entirely absent. I have no idea. But hopefully it'll be better than the first attempt.

Ralph

Anyone remember William? He has a friend. He's good at that.

---

    William was eight years old when he met Ralph. The other boy was two years older, although slightly shorter, and spent a lot of time around the rivers, which was probably why William hadn’t met him sooner. On this particular day, the older boy was crouched barefoot in the mud on the riverbank nearest William’s family farm, untamed blond hair falling into his face as he stared into the swirling water. He was trying to contact an aquean, one of the semi-human creatures that lived in the stream; one of them had spoken to him a week or so ago, and he wanted to see if he could initiate contact.

    “Aren’t you worried about getting that nice cloak of yours dirty?”

    Ralph spun around, as if about to deliver a witty comeback, although in fact he had yet to think of one. There was a kid sitting there, grinning in a way that wasn’t insolent but seemed like it should have been. He was barefoot too, and appeared to have been wading in mud, since the hems of his breeches were filthy, although the rest of his clothing was clean; brown vest, white shirt unsullied by a single scrap of dirt. His black hair was offensively neat when compared to Ralph’s own mess, and there was a laugh in his blue eyes.

    When Ralph failed to respond, the kid persisted. “Well, aren’t you?”

    “Are you suggesting I’m a sissy?” Ralph looked him over suspiciously. Many of the other boys in the surrounding farms had accused him of this very thing because of all the time he spent staring into reflective waters. This kid, though, just looked affronted.

    “Of course not. Why would I say something like that? But it’s an awfully nice cloak, and it seemed a shame to get it all muddy.” He sounded sincere, but there was still something in his expression, something that seemed like he was laughing at Ralph.

    “Well…yeah.” The kid was right, in a way: it was a nice cloak, the way it cascaded long and red over his shoulders. He suspected that his parents had gotten it for him to make him look more heroic, but it was hard to do that when you were ankle-deep in mud, and he didn’t care all that much about keeping the cloak itself clean. He grabbed the edge and brought it up to his face. Yep, covered in what his mother often referred to as “unspeakable filth” (particularly when he forgot to wipe his feet). After a few moments’ contemplation, he let the offending hem drop into the river.

    “So…what are you doing?” Ralph flinched; the mysterious kid was suddenly kneeling right next to him, staring eagerly into the water as if expecting to find some hidden truth there. It threw him off, the way the kid just seemed to assume that Ralph would talk to him. Sure, he hadn’t made any mocking comments about vanity or whatever yet, and he seemed genuinely interested in what Ralph was doing, but…

    “Look, kid. I don’t even know you—”

    “I’m William Chauncey. And you?”

    “Uh, Ralph. Ralph Gibbs. But—”

    “Oh, I’ve heard about you!” William tilted his head, apparently surprised. “I get the idea that people don’t like you much. I’m not really sure why.”

    “Yeah, I know.” So nice to be reminded of that. Again. He was getting tired of having reasons to dwell on it. “Listen, Will—”

    “William. I’m not a Will.” He sounded slightly offended, as if being “a Will” were something negative.

    “Okay, William. If you’re here to make fun of me or something, you needn’t bother. I know what you’re going to say. Although…” Ralph paused. “What did you mean, you’ve heard about me? I would think everyone around here knows me by sight, by now. Not for any good reason, but even so…are you new around here or something?”

    “No. I’ve lived here all my life, but I’ve never seen you before. I don’t spend a lot of time by the river.”

    “But…you’re all muddy.”

    “I was helping a dream toad.” William grinned. “She got stuck up a tree after she gave some ravens nightmares, and although I have nothing against the ravens most of the time, they can be awfully vindictive.”

    “Dream toads talk to you?”

    “Well, yes. They’re very social creatures.” He said this as if it was common knowledge. “Is that what you’re looking for, then? I know where a colony of them lives.”

    “You do?” Ralph blinked, shook his head. “This is some kind of trick, isn’t it?”

    “Er…no. Why should it be? You haven’t given me any reason to dislike you. Is there something I don’t know about?” William seemed honestly at a loss. But he’d heard about Ralph from the other kids around here, hadn’t he? He couldn’t have heard anything good.

    “In case you’d missed it, I’m not very popular around here.”

    “Oh, I know. But I don’t actually know you, so I don’t have any excuse not to like you. Except, of course, that you still haven’t told me why you’ve been staring into the river like that.” Pause. “That’s a joke,” he added hastily. “But I do want to know.”

    “Er…” Ralph was running out of reasons not to trust the kid. Hang on, was that what he’d been doing? That seemed kind of self-destructive, now that he thought about it. William had appeared out of nowhere and started talking to him as if they’d known each other for years, and was worryingly persistent, but there was something about him Ralph liked. “I’ve been looking for aqueans. I met one recently and she said she’d talk to me again, but she hasn’t so far.”

    “What’s an aquean?” If William leaned any closer to the water, he’d fall in.

    Ralph laughed. “You’ve heard of dream toads but not aqueans?”

    “I’m a land-based wizard,” William said defensively. “You can’t expect everyone to understand what you do just because you’re a waterworker.”

    “A what? Wait, you’re a wizard?”

    “Oh, yes.”

    “Aren’t you supposed to be…older? Or more imposing? Or something? And I don’t see a wand.”

    Now it was William’s turn to laugh, although it sounded not at all mocking. “I hear that a lot. But no, it seems I can be a wizard and a kid. And I’ve learned enough control by now that I don’t need a channelling object.”

    “I’ve never met a wizard before.”

    “I can tell.”

    “But what was that about me being a waterworker? What does that even mean?”

    “You’ve heard of wizards but not waterworkers?” Apparently William could get away with laughing at his own jokes. “A waterworker is someone with a natural talent for water-based magic. Usually it manifests as being able to communicate with water creatures, like your aqueans.” He turned to peer into Ralph’s eyes, a somewhat disconcerting gesture. “You didn’t know that?”

    “No.” Ralph absently trailed one hand in the river. “I never thought of it as magic, anyway. It’s just…a thing I do.”

    “Well, at least you know what your ‘thing’ is. ‘Wizard’ is a very broad term. I may never know the full extent of my abilities.” He frowned briefly, but his grin quickly returned. “So are you going to tell me what an aquean is or not?”

    “Oh. Right.” Ralph tried to make his explanation as brief as possible: an aquean was a humanoid water-dweller, with a certain range of colour-changing ability and webbed hands and feet. They tended to be rather small, large-rat-sized, and rather aloof. No, they couldn’t change their size. Yes, their colours were limited to those naturally occurring in water. No, they didn’t change colour based on emotions, like chameleons. He wasn’t even sure they had emotions. The one he’d met had been very distant. He’d intended to keep his description of them short, but William appeared genuinely interested, and every time Ralph stopped William would prompt him to continue. He wasn’t really very knowledgeable about aqueans, though, and eventually he ran out of information. When he finished, William nodded and got to his feet. “Where are you going?”

    “These aqueans of yours sound very interesting, of course, and I hold nothing against them,” he replied. “But I don’t see much of a point in pining after them. It’s all very well to talk with magical creatures—quite exciting, at times—but if you can’t convince them to do so, there’s nothing to be done. Have you been trying to find them since you talked to the first one?” He looked unsurprised when Ralph nodded. “Then there isn’t much point in spending any longer crouched here, I think. Still want to see some dream toads?”

    “Of course!”

    “Let’s do that, then. It’ll be much more interesting.” William reached out, and Ralph allowed the other boy to pull him to his feet. The wizard suddenly took off at a run, calling over his shoulder for Ralph to follow, which he did with great enthusiasm, his cloak streaming out behind him.

    Something occurred to him. “Hey,” he yelled. “Would you be interested in a secondhand cloak?”

    William let out another laugh. “Of course!”

    And that, as far as they were concerned, settled it.

Defining Philosophies

(To anyone who is confused: No, this is not my final.)

It is a given that most people, at some point in their lives, develop some kind of philosophy which guides their actions to some degree. Some people do this by borrowing their philosophy from others and never really changing it; this is often considered to display a lack of imagination, particularly if they parrot the ideas without understanding them. Some people start by borrowing a philosophy, but they then move bits around and add and delete things until they have their own set of values; this is pretty much what I've done, as do many adolescents, using their parents as a starting point. It is my opinion that the best kind of philosophy is one which has a basis in an existing idea, which you understand thoroughly, and which has been altered by your own changing perceptions.

Everyone starts out following their parents' line of thinking, like it or not. If your parents believe something, positive or negative, they are going to raise you on that belief because they are convinced that it is the right one. And, at least to begin with, you are going to share their conviction. This is something we know. Young children are impressionable, and the very foundation of their lives is the certainty that their parents know all. No matter how hard we try to teach free thought--whatever it may be--we have to accept that a five-year-old is not going to start formulating her own opinions about nuclear weapons or what have you. She is going to believe what her parents tell her. It's a survival-instinct-type thing which remains solid as long as the child is mainly in contact with her parents.

When school starts, things begin to change. The hypothetical child is exposed to the influence of many others and may be forced to question what her parents have said. During elementary school this is a gradual buildup of sorts. She starts out defending her parents' ideas at all costs, at least as soon as these things begin to matter; third grade is usually the dividing line in more than one sense. As time passes, two things can happen: the child can become ever more certain of what she has been taught, refusing to accept other viewpoints (I regret to say that this happened to me for a while); or her ideas will begin to change under the influence of her peers. Yes, peer pressure is often a cause of changing philosophies. A child's ideas do not change because she is a fierce individualist and refuses to conform, at least to begin with; they change because her peers show her that there are some merits to other points of view.

Next we have middle school, which is either hellish or fantastic by turns, and sometimes both. Obviously there are multiple ways the philosophy can go, because of the two directions the child's ideas may take in earlier years. Let's take as an example the one who has an iron certainty that her parents are right, since I have more experience in this. Our hypothetical preteen will now take her initial philosophy to extremes: I know what's right. Nobody understands. Now, I don't mean to discourage free thought--I approve of it in most forms--but being overzealously individual is just as bad as unquestioning conformity. A person cannot be successful if she automatically rejects anything she thinks is "too mainstream" or "a symbol of conformity". Oh, did she like these clothes or that band? Too bad; she can't accept them because--gasp--"normals" also like them. No, she must be unique in every possible way! Obviously, this does not work. At all. Ever. Not to over-emphasize the point or anything. The massively individualist philosophy rarely gets anyone anywhere.

The other option for middle school works best if you have already been opened up to others' ideas. Your philosophy will continue to grow and change, in some ways very much like a living creature. The acceptance of additions to your beliefs, however, is not necessarily entirely positive. It will allow you to develop yourself, true. The thing is, everyone has specific people whose ideas they listen to. If all your influences are racist, well. Pretty obvious where that'll go. If all your influences want to live in peace and harmony with nature (which is really, really difficult, by the way), then you're going to latch on to those same ideas. This continues the development of your personal philosophy, based on what your parents initially taught you and altered by your friends and your own changing views of the world. You're well on your way to having a fixed philosophy, one that works for you.

The final stage of the developing philosophy is when it solidifies into something definite. This can happen at any time, assuming the necessary preliminaries (detailed above) have been met. You may not know when it happens; all that is certain is that your values are no longer in flux. You know what philosophy you will live your life by. Some adolescents have already reached this point; some adults still haven't. There is no judgment to be passed on someone who takes a while to put their philosophy together; they might just be putting more thought into it than you did. Or they're indecisive. It doesn't matter. They will come to a decision eventually.

I don't know that my personal philosophy is settled, but this is what I've figured out so far: Everyone is free to their own opinions, as long as their opinions do not stifle those of others. Have your defining philosophy. It's okay if it's different from mine. Discuss it with me, whatever. But don't try to force me to agree with you; don't shout that everyone who disagrees is wrong. Reasoned debate is fine. I will not tolerate a war of opinions where one tries to subdue the other. That is not respect for society, and it does not help anyone.

So how's your philosophy coming along? And will it be helpful in the long run?

How Not to Write Vignettes

    Over the time that I’ve been posting on this blog, I’ve mostly put up writing which was, if not stupendous, then at least not horrendous. Recently my posts have been mostly those which are given as assignments. Several of the assigned posts could be improved somewhat, but the most poorly-written (in my opinion) is the vignette post.
    The instructions for this post were to write four to six vignettes, not necessarily about real events, as part of our in-class reading of The House On Mango Street. I am stunningly pathetic when it comes to writing about real life, or so I have often thought, so I proceeded to conjure up a character by the name of Madison and write about her instead. I enjoy medieval-ish settings because I read many, many fantasy novels, so that was the environment I devised. The imagined country was called Alnia, and was provided with a cast of a few characters who were not interesting enough to allow their absence of actual character. Don’t believe me? Read this: “[...] Addie said politely, because she's more worried about offending people than anyone should be.” This is all the characterization this character gets, and she’s the protagonist’s sister. Madison herself doesn’t get much to individualize her either, and she’s the first-person narrator. If you’ve read my blog recently, you know that I consider the mark of a good first-person writer to be characterizing narration; reading the vignette post will tell you that I am most definitely not a good first-person writer. I mean, look at this:

The thing about castles is that they do have secret passages, even if there aren't enough of them. Ours has three, and I know exactly where each of them is and where it goes and how to get the bricks out so you can see what's going on. I like all of them, of course, and I use them frequently, but my favourite is the twisty one that goes under the northeast tower and coils like a snake once or twice before slithering off to the stables.

Apart from the use of simile, which is contrived at best, what does this tell you about Madison? She likes secret passages, okay, but you know that because she just told you. What does the style of narration tell you about her? Absolutely nothing. Well, maybe it tells you she’s very precise, but that’s a trait which isn’t at all consistent in the narration. She uses simile, which could be an indication of character, if you were to look at it in the right light. Apart from that, not much. The same notable absence of character is everywhere in the vignettes, and I think I’ve figured out why: all of the vignettes, except the first one, are about other characters.
    The three vignettes following Madison’s complaint about castles have been given the eponymous titles of “Backwards Quellen”, “The Vest of Feliciano Montgard”, and “Jester’s Mule”. Each of these, as you may have guessed, centers around the titular character (the jester, in the case of the last, since the mule is just a mule) and Madison’s experience of them. This might not seem like a bad thing; it’s characterizing to see how a character reacts to others, isn’t it? Well, yes--but only if you know what you’re doing. I clearly do not, because Madison is as flat in these encounters as she is everywhere else. I focused much too much on developing the other characters (and how well I did there is up for debate), which meant that I wasn’t paying too much attention to making the narration interesting or at least connected to the character’s personality. Obviously this is a problem that needs solving if I ever hope to be a successful first-person writer--which I don’t, but for the sake of explanation we’ll pretend I do--so what’s the source of the problem? Once again, it can be traced to Madison’s character: she’s so flat and boring that even I’m not interested in writing her.
    In order to be able to write from a character’s point of view, whether in first or third person, the writer must find the character interesting. For me, this is usually not a problem, because it’s hard for me to even come up with a character who bores me to death. In the vignettes, though, I seem to have managed it. “Castles”, which consists of Madison whining about how much she hates the titular buildings, was the first thing I wrote from her point of view. I disliked the piece from the beginning, both because it could probably be written better and because the character came off as an ungrateful teenager with no other defining character traits:

The one we're in is a horrible thing, musty and full of old tapestry and without enough secret passages, which are the only good reason for living in a castle anyway. But we have to stay because it's ancestral, just like all that furniture in the southwest tower that we're not allowed to sit on, and if we moved out it would go to some cousin in the north. I tell my parents he can have it if he wants it, I don't care, but they never listen.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why write four vignettes about a character you can’t stand? The short answer: Because I lack foresight. But I suppose you’ll want a longer explanation than that.
    The thing is, I was still hesitant to write about my actual experiences, because I’ve had such failures with that in the past and because I can’t think of interesting memories on demand--I envy those of you who can. I didn’t want to have to come up with another character, because I was afraid that the new character would be just as thoroughly uninteresting as Madison. I suppose I could have used an existing character, but the one I was focused on at the time would have been difficult: I had only written about him third-person from the point of view of others, so I wasn’t far enough inside his head to write in the first person. I have a plethora of other characters at my command, but by the time I realized how hideously dull Madison was, it was too late to try to come up with life histories for them. That takes time, you know, and most of them were already involved in a plot, so I couldn’t just drop them in new settings at their current stage of development and watch what happened. In the end, I ended up writing about Madison because I couldn’t think of anything else to do; in other words, because I lack foresight.
    Fortunately, it’s easy to learn from a mistake as monstrous as this one. Never again will I write first-person from the point of view of a character I don’t like. If I do ever choose to write first-person, I’ll pay a lot more attention to what I’m doing. In the meantime, “Daughter of Alnia” will stand as a testament to the need for proper characterization.

A Study in Mediocrity

     My most recent literary conquest--well, as it relates to school--is the novel I Am The Messenger, by Markus Zusak. Messenger begins with Ed Kennedy, underage cab driver and a study in mediocrity, and his explanation of his life so far. Well, actually it begins with a bank robbery, which he thwarts completely by accident, but after that it goes straight to his normal life. It's written in the first person, and from the start Ed makes it clear that he is not someone interesting things happen to, apart from this bank robbery business. That is, nothing interesting happens to him until soon afterward, when he receives the first ace in the mail. On it there are three addresses. At each of them, he has a task to perform.
    Now, I've previously mentioned one of the things I love about this book: the characterization present in the narration. Obviously some character is going to seep through, because it's a first-person novel, but there are plenty of authors who barely make it that far. Many either write in their own voice, or choose similar narrators in all of their books so they don't have to adapt too much. Zusak is different; the way the book is narrated is directly tied to Ed's perception of the world. Short paragraphs. Generally limited physical descriptions. Occasional dips into more descriptive language, but only if it's something Ed really cares about, like his dog, or Audrey (who is not his girlfriend, although this is not a fact he enjoys). I might not have noticed this if it had been the first book of Zusak's I had read, but this is not the case; I have also read and enjoyed The Book Thief, which takes place in Nazi Germany and tells of Liesel Meminger's life on Himmel Street (and, as you may have guessed, literary thievery). This book is also written in the first person, but not from the point of view of the protagonist, at least partly because she is a child at the time and can't make certain judgements which are necessary. The narrator is, instead, Death, who is weary of his job and tells the story of the book thief mostly because she interests him.
    Death's narration is very different from Ed's. He provides much longer paragraphs, more description. He is very reflective, understandably a bit morbid, and he tends to read more into things than Ed does. As an example, let's take Messenger's description of its protagonist--that is, Ed's physical description of himself:

"I have dark hair, half-tanned skin, coffee brown eyes. My muscles are hugely normal. I should stand straighter, but I don't. I stand with my hands in my pockets. My boots are falling apart, but I still wear them because I love and cherish them." (20)

And The Book Thief's protagonist:

"Upon her arrival, you could still see the bite marks of snow on her hands and the frosty blood on her fingers. Everything about her was undernourished. Wirelike shins. Coat hanger arms. She did not produce it easily, but when it came, she had a starving smile.
Her hair was a close enough brand of German blond, but she had dangerous eyes. Dark brown. You didn't really want brown eyes in Germany around that time. Perhaps she received them from her father, but she had no way of knowing, as she couldn't remember him." (31)

Quite a contrast, is it not? Another interesting observation: The Book Thief's narration continues in the same style, because Death, having existed for millenia, is a static character. Messenger's narration develops somewhat over the course of the novel. It's all still in Ed's voice, of course, but his perception of the world is changing, and it shows. He goes into a bit more detail about some tings; not a lot, but enough. He also begins to make observations about his and his friends' attitude toward life. At one point, he says, "[...] we don't give it a lot more thought. I guess we don't give many things a lot of thought." (217) Ed realizes that he's become complacent; he doesn't really want to be a mediocre underage cab driver for the rest of his life, but he's not ambitious enough to change it, and he sees that his friends are much the same way. This last observation becomes even more important when the last ace arrives...but that would be telling.
    There's another detail that I suppose counts as a difference, which is really quite fantastic if you like that sort of thing. Throughout the story Ed's work to fulfill the aces is generally aided by others, some of whom are a bit surly about it, who tell him somebody else gave them instructions to do what they're doing--and they don't know who's giving them the instructions. Of course, Ed doesn't know where his instructions are coming from either, and he notices the parallel. But where this really gets interesting is toward the end. Ed comes home to find a stranger sitting on his couch. The stranger is described briefly: "He has fairly short brown hair, stands a bit smaller than medium height, and wears a shirt, black jeans, and blue athletic shoes." (352)
    In case you can't already see where this is going, I present you with a picture of Markus Zusak (click for a link to its source):

     The stranger then gives Ed the following speech:

"I killed your father, Ed. I organized the bungled bank robbery for a time when you were there. I instructed that man to brutalize his wife [...] I did it all to you. I made you a less-than-competent taxi driver and got you to do all those things you thought you couldn't." (353)

Fine and dandy, you say. This guy's put Ed through a lot of crap, but so what? Well, first of all, there's the thing about making Ed what he is. It's implied that the guy is pretty young, but in order to have influenced Ed's life that much, he would have had to be an adult when Ed was a kid, or possibly even when he was born. Most striking, however, is the statement that he killed Ed's father. Pretty early in the book (page 19), Ed states that his father essentially drank himself to death; he died when his liver gave out. So the statement that this man killed Ed's father makes no sense.
     Unless...
     One more thing. After telling Ed why all this stuff has happened, the stranger gives Ed a folder. In it, written down, is everything that's happened so far in the book. Including the exact conversation that they're currently having.
    There are a couple of other indicators, after what I've told you, but I think I've already given away enough. Read I Am the Messenger yourself--it's definitely worth reading--if you want to know exactly how this all plays out.
     It's marvelous.