Lessons From Austin Powers

This week I finished reading a book I couldn't wait to get my hands on, because I loved the last book I'd read by the same author. It took me a couple months to read, though--sure, I've had other stuff going on to distract me, but I didn't have that can't-put-it-down feeling I get when I really, really love a book. You know the ones, where you look up at the end and notice your house is a mess and your family is hungry? Wasn't happening here. 


Although my writing so far has been only realistic fiction, I read all different genres, so I'm willing to do my share of suspending disbelief. Traveling in a spaceship to live on a new planet? Yeah, let's see what that's like. Vampires sitting at the next table in the cafeteria? Sure. I may even spend time debating whether I'd prefer a werewolf boyfriend or a vampire boyfriend. (Not saying I've done that. But if I did, I'd pick werewolf.) 


But in any book, the real-life stuff has to be believable. If it isn't, that's when I start thinking about Austin Powers. 


We can actually learn a lot about writing by watching that groovy international man of mystery and his nemesis, Dr. Evil:


"Start the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism!" Here's a great bit of dialog from the first movie, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, between Dr. Evil and son Scott:  


Dr. Evil: Scott, I want you to meet daddy's nemesis, Austin Powers.
Scott Evil: What? Are you feeding him? Why don't you just kill him?
Dr. Evil: I have an even better idea. I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death. 


And later, when Austin and Vanessa are suspended above the tank they'll be lowered into:


Dr. Evil: All right guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism.
Close the tank!
Scott: Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away!
Dr. Evil: No no no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?
Scott: I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I'll get it, I'll come back down here, BOOM, I'll blow their brains out!
Dr. Evil: Scott, you just don't get it, do ya? You don't.


Is your antagonist acting like a parody of a villain? Are your readers going to feel annoyed and frustrated like Scott and yell at the book, "Why don't you just shoot him?" Of course, you don't want your protagonist to die or your story would be over. But if someone's out to get her, why don't they catch her right away? There has to be a reason they miss, a reason for the chase. Does the heroine somehow evade her pursuer, just when he's gotten close? That's suspenseful. Or does the villain have a chance to stop her, but let her go because he's holding out for something more dramatic? That's Dr. Evil. If the bad guys are out to get us, they're not going to wait around for sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads.

"A lot's changed since 1967." Technology and language changes from one year to the next, even. Unless it's meant to add authenticity to a historical setting, avoid using slang that can make your book seem dated within a couple years. If your character's dialog doesn't ring true--he no longer sounds like himself, he's talking like his mom or like someone who grew up in the 80s instead of now--you pull your readers right out of the story. Keep up with what's going on in the world and with your audience so you won't sound like someone who's been cryogenically frozen for thirty years.

"You're semi-evil. You're quasi-evil. You're the margarine of evil. You're the diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough." The Austin Powers movies have no shortage of one-dimensional bad guys. Dr. Evil and is henchmen are funny in the movie, but we don't want our own characters do be accidentally funny caricatures with all the emotional depth of Fembots. If characters have no flaws or weak moments, readers don't feel like they know them, because they don't know anyone who's all good or all bad. Don't you feel more connected to a story when you see what a character seems familiar to you? 


Think about the villains people love, or love to hate. Why is Hannibal Lecter such a memorable and convincing bad guy? None of us would want him living next door, but he's intriguing. If he were repulsive at every moment we'd turn away, but we see his human side too. He loves classical music. He's respectful to Clarice Starling, even cares about her, although they're on opposite sides of the law. (For more on how Hannibal Lecter can help with character development, here's a great post I came across on Suite 101.) 


If we saw Hannibal's evil plotting only, he'd be forgettable or laughable. We remember Hannibal; we laugh at Snidely Whiplash and Dr. Evil. 

Hey, where did that come from? That's something your readers should never have to ask. A character can defend herself with a nearby object if it fits the setting and we're not seeing it for the first time. We have to see the object in an earlier scene so we're not taken aback when it conveniently shows up right when she needs it. We're okay with the henchman Random Task throwing a shoe at Austin Powers in Goldmember, because it was introduced earlier as his weapon of choice, however ridiculous. But if your heroine grabs a pool cue from her car trunk during a fight and informs us just then that she was planning on taking pool lessons, we're going to be confused and annoyed by the deus ex machina-ness of the scene.


In this comical fight scene from Goldmember, some of the objects used as weapons make sense, like the mini bottle that Mini-Me grabs from the hotel minibar, but things like the inexplicable frying pan add to the absurdity of the scene.

Avoid the frying pan.


There are probably many more lessons we can learn from the smashing Austin Powers, but these are just a few to keep in mind while writing and revising. We give our story the attention it deserves when we work to create well-rounded, three-dimensional characters who act and speak in ways that make sense, within a setting that makes sense.


Putting in all that effort isn't the easy way out, but it's worth all the work you put into it. 'Cause when you get it right, it's a beautiful as sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their frickin' heads.

Now stay shagadelic, babies!

On Santa frogs, creepy dolls, and questionable turkey recipes

I've come across some interesting things while packing up my house to get ready to move. In looking through conference notes, I saw this quote from Isaac Asimov:

"The reader will remember not the phrase, but the effect it has. If the phrase does not have an effect on the reader, change it or cut it."

I don't know what conference presenter relayed the quote to us, and I couldn't confirm that was the exact quote or find where Asimov said that, but that's what I scribbled down at the workshop, so let's just assume he did say something like that at some time.

'Cause I think it works really well with sorting through ten years' worth of stuff. Plus, deciding what to keep and what to throw out reminded me of editing.

By some miracle of physics, the entire contents of one closet filled up the living room. Not all of those things can be worth keeping.

This, for example:

What is this thing and why do I own it? It's-- a frog, I guess? Wearing a Santa hat for some reason. Maybe it's cute, but it doesn't elicit any warm feelings from me. There's nothing wrong with him, really. I love frogs. I love Santa. But the amphibious hat-wearer needs to go.

Maybe when you're revising a manuscript you'll find some phrases or scenes that are like the Santa frog: nice, but they don't serve any purpose. It might even be a favorite scene you've written. But does it advance the plot? Will it have an effect on the reader? If not, there's no reason for it to take up space. So, toss it out like 1997's tax receipts.

Some things worth saving have an effect on us, but not a pleasant one. Like these gals:

Yeah, I know. Lovely, right? Just the kind of thing a little girl would love to cuddle with before falling asleep at night. They live in a box in my closet. Yes, I do worry they will leap out and murder me in my sleep. But they're antique, and they were my grandmother's. So they will stay.

Some scenes are hard to write. I don't mean the writing part, although that's hard too, but I mean because they're unpleasant. Something bad happens to the characters we love. Maybe someone's broken his heart, or punched her in the face. Or your character has lost her home, or her family, his innocence, or everything he's ever loved. You've read books like that, too; anyone who's read Laurie Halse Anderson or Ellen Hopkins knows about scenes that are hard to get through. We identify with the characters and hate to see bad things happen to them, but that's part of their story. And we remember them. They have an effect on us.

On to my favorite kinds of things to find:

That first paper is one I post on the refrigerator every November. It was a "How To Cook a Turkey" assignment my daughter had in 2nd grade. Is it well-written? Sure, for an 8-year-old, I think it is. Is the recipe accurate? I wouldn't recommend using it unless you want to spend Thanksgiving in the emergency room with all your family members. And the turkey's missing a foot. But after ten years, I still laugh when I read the instruction, "Bake for 30 minutes at 104 degrees." We're keeping the turkey.

The yellow paper looks like something the daughter drew at age 2. I think it's a family portrait. Sure, our legs are attached to our heads, but she could write "Dad." No one has arms, but we have ears and knee caps.

When we look over a drafts of our manuscripts, we always find things that need to be rewritten. Maybe the words aren't exactly right, or the sentences are too wordy. There isn't enough detail, or there's too much. Or you're revising something you wrote last year, and you've grown as a writer since then, so you'd write it differently today. But the feeling is there. The scene has an effect on the reader. It isn't perfect, but it's worth keeping.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm getting a padlock for that box of dolls.

Setting the Stage for Story...

Setting. It’s important. When done well, it can become a living, breathing character and give vital depth to any story.

Who has read To Kill a Mockingbird and not been transported to Maycomb, Alabama, where the air is scented with Miss Maudie’s flowers and you can almost feel the tension bubbling beneath the sidewalks?

Or what about the arena in The Hunger Games, which becomes as menacing as any of the human characters? Or Grandma Dowdel’s farm in Richard Peck’s A Year Down Yonder?

Setting is crucial, and if you can speak about the place where your book is set with some authority, you’ll have an easier time convincing readers that the world you’ve created is real and that they need to step inside.


That’s not to say setting should be a carbon copy of places that you have lived or visited. We writers need to take bits and pieces of our memories of place and translate them - make our readers understand them on an emotional level. Why did these places resonate with us? Why are they important to our characters? This doesn’t come from telling us (for example) that there’s a coffee shop on the corner, it comes from describing the smells, the sounds, the ornate tin ceiling and the "ca-ching" of the old fashioned cash register.

For my book, THE ICING ON THE CAKE, about a teenaged cake decorator, the setting came by coincidence, while I was actually quite stuck, not sure where the story was going.

In 2006, my husband and I went to a wedding in Grand Rapids, MI. We flew into Chicago and drove around the bottom half of Lake Michigan. On our way, we stopped in several of the quaint towns that dot the Michigan shore. They are quiet, cozy, welcoming and completely charming.

It didn't take me long to realize I had found my setting, and the rest of the story fell into place. My main character, Sheridan, loves her hometown. When her father is offered a reality TV show, she is faced with the possibility of leaving. But how to convince my readers that a 15 year old girl would not want to leave a small town like St. Mary (the fictional town I came up with) for super cool New York City?

The key for me was to have St. Mary become almost like a mother figure to Sheridan, representing security, safety and comfort. This was important because one of the key plot points is that Sheridan's mother is missing. Quite literally, St. Mary is Sheridan’s safe harbor. Not just a place, but something more. I guarantee I could not have successfully gotten that across if I hadn't had the experience of our time in Michigan.

Amazing how important story elements can come together when you're doing something as seemingly non-writing related as going to a friend's wedding.


Yeah. They're adorable. And don't think they're not getting mentioned in my acknowledgements.

So. Setting. Where have you found inspiration for the places your stories are set? Where do your favorite books take place? Can you imagine them set anywhere else?

Happy Monday!
Christina