Point of View – Becky Levine

Looking for an Unlikeable Hero You Love? Read CRACKED UP TO BE

Posted on 10 Oct 201010 Oct 2010 by beckylevine

I hear about this all the time–either in question or statement: Can you create a non-nice hero that your readers like? You can create a non-nice hero that your readers like. And I always find myself searching through my memory for an example.

No more. I just finished Courtney Summers’ Cracked Up to Be, and she’s done it. Brilliantly.

Parker Fadley was perfect–all through high school and, I suspect, for years before. So perfect that she pushed herself to the point of cracking…and past. As the book opens, she is “recovering” from months of switching gears big time–doing everything wrong, everything she could possibly think of to mess up her world. She is on probation at school, with piles of conditions to meet if she wants to graduate from high school. And she is still on a rocket path of self-destruction, although that manifests itself as apparent attempts to destroy everything around her–her friendships, her relationship with her parents, and those chances at graduating. She is angry, cold, sarcastic, rude–you name it. And, on the surface, all for the pleasure of it.

So how does Summers make me like–love–Parker? I think she does it in two ways:

Point of View
Need

Point of View
Parker is fast. Her brain zips to the smart-mouth response, to the perfectly cruel thing to say (and, yes, the real delight she does get in saying it). At the same time, she’s clamping down on the panic that continually threatens her and scanning for escape routes. And snapping her fingers to get herself out of obsessive-mode or keep the nausea from turning into actual vomit. The book races, and Summers achieves this speed by getting us deeply into Parker’s point of view. Not the technical 1st person, present that is Summer’s tool, but the complete and total connection to the way Parker sees the world. As a threat to her goal, a trigger to her loss of control, a series of potentially devastating attacks. All from people who say they wish her well and have no clue, in her mind, what she truly needs. This is the point of view that Alicia Rasley talks about in her book The Power of Point of View.

Need
What Parker needs is to be left alone. Her quest for perfection and her (self-assessed) inability to achieve it pushed her, somewhere in the past, into an action that had horrible consequences. (No spoilers, and–on a side note–Summers did a wonderful job of trickling in the clues without once frustrating me.) Since then, Parker has decided that the thing she needs to do to save herself is to be alone–to be so horrible and damaging that everyone she has ever cared about, and who cared about her, will just give up on her and leave her to herself. She believes she is that bad-that this is the best thing they can do for themselves and that this is the only thing she can do to keep from destroying anything else. She’s, honestly, willing to totally destroy herself to reach this goal.

And you believe it. You believe in her self-hatred–totally woven into the hatred of everyone else that she projects. You believe in the absolute desperate power of this goal, that she cannot see past it to the help that she actually needs. You believe in the logic that makes her behave as she does, speak as she does, push…push…push as she does. There are so many kind people in this story, and Summers gets you to believe in the shallowness, stupidity, and danger that Parker sees in all of them. At the same time as you know she’s wrong.

There were so many times that I winced as I read this book, that I cringed at the nastiness coming out of Parker’s mouth, that I empathized with the friends who are ready to leave her to her own path, with the not-friends who are ready to help her along it. And so many times that I laughed at the wit with which she delivers her poison and ached at the moments when she almost reaches out.

If you want to see how to do this–how to create the mean, nasty, painful hero your readers can’t resist, pick up a copy of Cracked Up to Be. And enjoy. 🙂

Point of View, Voice

The Brilliance of Point of View in Jennifer R. Hubbard’s The Secret Year

Posted on 21 Jan 2010 by beckylevine

When I was working on the critique book, I did a lot of research. (You didn’t think it all just poured freely out of my head, did you?) One of the many writing books I read was The Power of Point of View by Alicia Rasley. I’ve always loved books with a strong voice, and I already understood the basic technical pieces of the different points of view a writer can use. As I was reading Rasley’s book, though, I think I really saw, for the first time, how much point of view and voice interact–how much point of view can, in fact, direct and drive the voice.

In Jennifer R. Hubbard’s first novel, The Secret Year, the author puts on the page just what Rasley talks about. She’s created a character in Colt Morrissey who has, before the book even opens, proved himself more than capable of keeping secrets. In fact, Colt is a person, I think, who prefers–if not secrecy, definitely privacy, solitude, and other people with whom he can share silence.

And this comes through in his point of view and voice.

Colt’s voice is not one that grabs you on page one and yanks you in. Instead, it’s reserved and quiet. I don’t want to parade any spoilers, but you can read on the jacket cover that, for the past year, Colt has had a secret relationship with Julia Vernon, who dies suddenly early on in the story. As I started reading, I was thinking that Colt wasn’t having the reactions to Julia’s death that I would expect. It didn’t take many more pages before I realized that, no, Colt–the narrator–wasn’t sharing those reactions.

Some authors, some stories, would have Colt erupt somewhere in the book, would show the surface he presents to the world as a tight self-control that had to give. Colt does have his moments of extra pain, and they are intense and tense. He makes mistakes–choices that aren’t so great—based on his continued connection to and confusion about Julia. Hubbard doesn’t take the easy way out, though. She doesn’t take Colt down the expected path and give him release. Because, really, release is not Colt’s way. And it is very probably not what he needs.

The voice of this narrator is a controlled one, but it’s a control that’s natural, not false. Colt’s point of view of the world is one that stands a bit outside, looking in quietly at all the action and talking, happy to be near it, but not needing to be of it. He acts from this point of view, doing a lot of quiet thinking and choosing people who understand his need for solitude. Yes, Colt can be pushed out of this point of view by seeing a friend hurt, or by needing a bit of extra problem-solving help, but never far out of it.

And, as I’ve said, Colt’s point of view directs his narrative voice. Honestly, there were times when I was frustrated with Cole, when I wanted him to tell me more, to let me–or one of the other characters–in to help. I am someone who talks out her problems, probably more than much of my family & many of my friends would prefer! Before I opened the book, I knew I was feeling a bit skeptical about the idea of this relationship that went on for a year without either partner talking about it. The skepticism didn’t list.

Hubbard has given Julia a journal, letters “to” Colt in a private notebook, that beautifully shows another side of Julia than even Colt saw. And this journal is totally believable, because Julia is not Colt; she needs some outlet, and the journal lets her keep her part of the secret. Colt, though, needs no journal. I love his surprise when he finds out that it exists–it’s not just surprise at the things Julia wrote, but that she wrote them–that she expressed them. Colt can keep the secret easily, it’s simply an extension of who he is.

If you haven’t found Hubbard’s blog, WriterJenn, take a look. She posts some of the most intelligent thoughts about the writing craft that you’ll find on the web. And if you want to see how that thoughtfulness plays out on the page—in story, characterization, and point of view, pick up The Secret Year.