Karen Sandler

Author: Karen Sandler

  • Foreshadowing vs. Telegraphing

    Earlier today, while working on my WIP (work in progress for you non-writers out there), I got to thinking about the difference between foreshadowing and telegraphing. Although they’re both writing devices in which an author sets up something that will be fulfilled later, foreshadowing is a much more subtle use of this device. Telegraphing, to me, is more like the writer jumping up and down and pointing to the Important Thing to be sure the reader sees it.

    What started me thinking about foreshadowing was when I wrote the following paragraph:

    Adja sat placidly enough wedged between Austin and Noah. If she got it into her head to take off while we were joined, I wasn’t sure if we’d notice. The doors were locked again. Hopefully that would be enough to stop her.

    Without going into the plot of my WIP, suffice it to say it would be very bad if the character, Adja, left while the other characters were otherwise occupied. The reader already knows that at this point in the book. But these two sentences:

    If she got it into her head to take off while we were joined, I wasn’t sure if we’d notice. The doors were locked again. Hopefully that would be enough to stop her

    are me announcing to the reader that Adja is going to leave and dire things will ensue. Totally on the nose, subtext free. No subtlety at all. This, to me, is telegraphing, not foreshadowing. Which left me with two choices.

    1) Leave it as is, but Adja stays. The reader will be relieved (although faintly disappointed). Then wham, I hit the reader with something far more terrible that’s a consequence of Adja staying.

    2) Adja does leave, but delete the second and third sentence.

    When I wrote that paragraph, I hadn’t planned whether Adja would leave or stay, so I left it there and continued on. But as I continued to write the scene, I realized that Adja should leave. So I went with option (2). I rewrote it this way:

    We all piled into the Caddy, me behind the wheel, Tariq next to me, Lisette by the window. Emily, Austin and Noah sat in the back seat, the boys flanking Adja. She sat placidly enough wedged between them.

    It’s kind of “housekeeping” paragraph that describes where the characters are all arranged in the car. A little mundane, but it reminds the reader that Adja is in the car with the other characters.

    But this mention of Adja also foreshadows. By now the reader knows the other characters won’t be able to keep track of Adja while they’re “joining.” When reminded of Adja, the reader will start worrying that she might leave and the other characters won’t notice until it’s too late. Foreshadowing gets me to the same goal–setting up Adja’s departure–as telegraphing would. But the more subtle foreshadowing accomplishes a more important goal–it raises the reader’s anxiety level, which will hopefully keep her turning pages.

    Of course, this is a first draft, so it’s hard to say if the paragraph will survive unedited. But even if it doesn’t, it was a very nice aha moment for me. Often, the lighter (and more subtle) the hand, the more compelling the result.

  • Gender Bias in Children’s Books?

    There’s been some discussion on Twitter (and I imagine elsewhere) about a recently released study revealing gender inequality in children’s literature. The study looked at nearly 6000 children’s books published from 1900 to 2000. They discovered that even in children’s books featuring animals, a significant majority of the central characters are male. At most a third of the books contain female characters at all while 100% include male characters. Take a look at the article for more statistics.

    Assuming there’s no funny business in the counting of characters’ genders, it seems indisputable that there are more male characters than female in children’s literature. Where I think the study gets mushy is in the conclusions the authors say that the data led them to. For instance, they point out that mothers and children read gender into even gender neutral animal characters. The article mentions “research on reader interpretations” to support readers’ gender assignment of gender-neutral characters, but nothing is cited. So I do wonder about that.

    The other issue that raised a red flag for me was the conclusion drawn by the authors as to the impact of this gender inequality in children’s books. They state that this will lead to a presumption that “women and girls occupy a less important role in society than men or boys” and that it amounts to the “symbolic annihilation of women disguised through animal imagery.” That second statement in particular sounds like an overly dramatic leap too far to me. In any case, I’d like to see other studies that support their contention.

    I’m no scientist (although I like to write about them). I didn’t do the study, haven’t read it in its entirety. I know often what appears in a short article such as the one I’ve linked to includes material taken out of context and the issues I have with the conclusions may be explored in greater depth in the original study.

    And although I can’t speak for every little girl out there, I can speak for myself. As a kid in the ’60s and ’70s, I probably read some very gender biased books. Did I feel that women had a less important role in society as a consequence? Did I feel symbolically annihilated? Hell, no.

    If I read a book that featured a boy as the main character, that omitted female characters entirely even, I don’t know that I ever even noticed. I became that main character anyway, lived his adventure, imagined myself as him. I was Tom Sawyer, not Becky Thatcher. I was Black Beauty, not poor doomed Ginger.

    Later, in my late teens when I started noticing women’s minuscule roles in books (mainly science fiction by that point), I was irritated and ticked off that the author either omitted or limited their female characters. I certainly wasn’t traumatized by it. It’s one reason I have almost entirely stopped reading adult SF written by men. Because the women authors know how to create worlds with as many interesting powerful women as men.

    I know there are certainly girls/women out there who felt different than I did growing up. Who read those male-dominated books and felt smaller. But I bet there are others like me who don’t give a damn if the author wrote the character as male. They see themselves in that story, doing all those fun and exciting things that boy/male character is doing. They’re strong girls, they’re smart girls, they’re adventurous girls. And if the character doesn’t look like them, they will damn well just re-write the story so they do.

  • Can You Be TOO Honest?

    To say I am a lousy liar is an understatement. I find it nearly impossible to even fudge the truth. In fact, sometimes I bore people to tears (or thoroughly confuse them) with my compulsion to include every detail when I’m telling a story. I’ve had to work hard to “edit” myself in conversations so that I cut to the chase, particularly when I’m chatting up complete strangers at a party or while on line at the store.

    I used to be alarmingly frank as a youngster. I’d open a birthday or Christmas present and if it was something I truly didn’t like, my face would tell all. I’d try to smile and say thank you, but my expression would have already spilled the beans with the gift giver. I’m more tactful now (thank God) and can screen my gut reaction. In fact, many times the gift that didn’t appeal when I first opened it becomes a favorite, so it’s just as well I hide my disappointment.

    I can also be rather annoying if I realize I haven’t paid for an item properly at the store. I’ve brought cashiers to towering rages because they gave me a penny too much in change and I insisted on giving it back. Sorry, ma’am, just trying to be honest.

    I didn’t make anybody mad, but I did complicate things today at WalMart. I had loaded my cart with cat food for my ravenous feline horde. You know how fussy cats are. I had to carefully hand-select the 24 individual cans of Fancy Feast to make sure they were all varieties Casper and Zak would eat. (Go ahead, dog lovers, laugh. The cat lovers understand.) When I got to the register, the clerk didn’t want to ring up the 54 cents times 24. He had to account for each of the 6 varieties I’d chosen.

    He finished ringing everything up and I paid, but the total didn’t seem like quite enough. I stepped just outside and counted the cans of Fancy Feast on the receipt. I re-counted a couple times. Sigh. I’d only paid for 21 cans.

    A lot of people (maybe most) would have just walked on, headed to their cars and forgotten about it. Actually, it’s likely none of those people would have bothered to count how many cans they’d paid for in the first place. But I did count and once I knew I’d underpaid, I had to go back and tell someone.

    First the clerk said, “Boy, you must really want to go to heaven,” then she suggested they just give me the cans. I would have been okay with that, but I was also perfectly fine with paying for them. In the end, someone rang up the three cans and I forked over the additional money.

    So, am I too honest? Is this more a compulsion to get everything to total up correctly or is it that I don’t want to cheat someone out of what’s their due (yes, even WalMart)? I doubt that I’m going to change anytime soon. It’s just something I’ve accepted about myself. But I do wonder sometimes if there’s something a little hinky about my impulse for extreme honesty.

    So, what do you think? Is it time I learned the art of the little white lie?

  • The Popular Girls (a confession)

    I was most decidedly not one of the popular girls in high school. I was nerdy before anyone knew what a nerd was, and before being a nerd became a kind of popular of its own. I was smart but socially so inept, I never gave even the nice popular kids a chance to be my friend.

    My yearbook photo from Hawthorne High School

    Cosmetics completely baffled me so I went without. It took my mom whispering in my ear, “Go put on some deodorant,” to save me from stinking (I showered, and washed my hair, once a week).  I even went to school one day with only one leg shaved. It was my first try at shaving, but I ran out of time and had to run for the bus before I could shave the other.

    No surprise my favorite people at school were teachers. There was my English teacher, Mrs. Luckensmeyer, who loved my writing and Mrs. Mark who called me a genius. The geometry teacher who was thrilled by my A’s and the very patient algebra teacher who nudged me along when quadratic equations seemed impossible to understand.

    Most of the popular girls just ignored me (although as I mentioned above, I didn’t give them much opportunity to get to know me). Some of them were plain mean, relishing in their hurtful words, spoken loud enough for everyone to hear. I sometimes wonder what happened to those girls. I hope they found a little compassion in their lives.

    Me (on the left) and my sister, Linda, all decked out for a Creedence Clearwater Revival concert at the fabulous Forum in Inglewood, CA

    Here’s where the confession comes in–because of a few mean girls, I have this judgement still lodged in my heart that casts a negative light on all popular girls. I don’t trust them. I’m suspicious of their success. It can carry over into my writing career when I resent authors who are bigger names than me.

    Very unfair of me, I know. I try to tell that to the teenager still inside me, but her feelings are still hurt. Which is crazy, considering how many years ago all those slights happened. And there were plenty of wonderful times in high school, too. Why focus on the negative?

    So mea culpa to all the popular girls (and boys) I might have judged. If you happen to stumble across this blog and remember me (I was Karen Stier then), let me know how you’re doing now, whether you were one of the popular kids or amongst the not-so-popular. In fact, I’d love to hear from anyone, both those in high school now and those for whom high school is a distant memory. Were you the popular kid? One of the not-so-popular? How was it then? How is it now? Let me know.

  • Mystery of Spring

    When I lived in Los Angeles, I never really experienced spring. It was generally cool in winter and warm in summer, but there wasn’t that explosion of newness in April like there is here in Northern California. In L.A., there were peculiarities like 100 degrees in January that confused the heck out of my peach tree and the annual June gloom (day after day of overcast) before summer really kicked into gear. But no definitive seasons.

    But other than the false spring in February that tends to fool us every year, we do have real seasons here in the foothills. Plenty of rain, hail, frost and the occasional snowfall in winter, blistering hot dry days in summer and wonderful green springs and red-gold autumns.

    The coolest part of spring is seeing my garden come to life.In particular, I am utterly enamored of tulips. I’ve never had tulips growing in my very own garden. When we pulled out our lawn and replaced it with gravel pathways that meander through flowerbeds filled with hardy water-stingy plants, tulips were included in the design. The colors are just so amazing and the flowers are so long-lasting, seeing them outside my window lifts my spirits. They are such a wonderful messenger of spring.

    Another delight this spring was the appearance of a mystery flower in my front yard. I’m used to volunteers popping up. Red pyracantha berries are a favorite of birds and their droppings sprout those prickly shrubs all over the yard. I even have a 25+ foot tall valley oak tree in the back yard that wasn’t here when we moved in. According to the local Master Gardeners mystery plant is a Harlequin flower from a sparaxis bulb.

    In addition to tulips, it’s always exciting to see the redbud bloom. A native shrub around here, it’s often the first color I see, its magenta flower a beautiful contrast to the dull green surrounding it. Then there’s the massive wall of wisteria that covers my backyard pergola. Our wisteria is monstrously large, its whip-like runners sometimes reaching twenty feet or more up into our redwoods. I sometimes wonder if that wisteria will be knocking on the door someday, demanding entrance.

    A few more pretty photos: