Original Content

Seeking My Inner Warrior

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:29:00 +0000

I will be leaving sometime this afternoon for the Great North where tomorrow I will be spending the day speaking to 7th and 8th graders. This is the first time I've been invited to a middle school, though I have led some workshops at a writers' conference for students in 6th through 12th grades. I've been assured that the secret to dealing with young people of this age is to never show fear.

I'm afraid I won't be able to do that.

I will try to apply what I've learned in my martial arts classes to this situation. I will keep my chin down so that I won't appear to challenge anyone and so that I won't be exposing my neck. I will guard my core. I will remember to breath.

Oh, yeah. That's going to work.

It's Nice To Be Included

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Wed, 14 May 2008 22:15:00 +0000

Like everyone else, I enjoy receiving invitations. Kelly at Big A little a invited (tagged) me to take part in a meme. I'll do memes, but only if I can connect them to writing and/or reading. As it turns out, I can (with some stretching) with this one.

What were you doing five years ago?

Making feeble attempts to promote Saving the Planet & Stuff, which was published sometime in the first half of 2003 and working on the first draft of Happy Kid!. I also had a few speaking engagements that spring.

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order)?

The day is over, but I can tell you that I: 1. Updated my profile at the Connecticut Library Consortium's on-line catalog; 2. Wrote to my CLC contact to thank her for inviting me to speak at yesterday's event; 3. Prepared the copy for a bookmark that my computer guy is going to lay out for me so I can take the master to Kinko's next week (to give out at an elementary school appearance at the end of the month); 4. Prepared the copy for some of the slides for the same elementary school appearance; 5. Practiced the presentation I'm giving on Friday.

What are five snacks you enjoy?

Okay, these are metaphorical snacks. Mind snacks. 1. The CNN website; 2. The Fox News website; 3. Salon; 4.Slate; 5. The NYTimes Book Review website.

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire? 1.Hire someone to take care of big, time consuming maintenance chores like washing windows and painting. Oh, who am I trying to kid? I'd hire some kind of home adminstrative person to do everything. Someone like Mrs. Danvers, but not creepy; 2. Hire someone to do all my promotional work--someone who truly knows what she's doing (because I often read of authors who hire promo people and aren't happy with them)and will do a far, far better job than I can; 3. Hire some type of educational consultant to help me design my presentations for different age groups; 4. I would subscribe to a bunch of literary journals even though I don't have time to read them just to provide support; 5. I would create some kind of foundation that would support school libraries in poor, rural areas, support agencies that provide books to children and adults in shelters, and provide scholarships to rural students with B-/C averages for all kinds of post-secondary education and training.

What are five of your bad habits?

I love this question, because it suggests that we have more than five. 1. Inability to stay on task; 2. Wandering mind; 3. Poor work habits; 4. Lack of organization; 5. Easily distracted.

What are five places where you have lived?

1. Middlelbury, Vermont; 2. Cornwall, Vermont; 3. Sudbury, Vermont; 4. Burlington, Vermont (college); 5. Ripton, Vermont (summer jobs); It's been a long time since I've lived in Vermont.

What are five jobs you�ve had?

I am including volunteer positions because for many years I was a school and community volunteer, and I believe volunteer work is work. 1. Pastry assistant, Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, where I scavenged through the publications for the writers in the lounge and discovered how to lay out a manuscript and essayist Nora Ephron; 2. Administrative Assistant, The University of Connecticut, where I wrote and edited reports and advertising copy and did lots and lots of unpleasant grunt work; 3. Volunteer (3 years) in elementary school classrooms working specifically with the writing programs; 4. Volunteer coordinator for an elementary school literary board; 5 Assistant taekwondo instructor (2 years), research for Happy Kid! and provided material for one published personal essay.

What five people do you want to tag?

I'm going to pass on the tagging thing. It's way too stressful for me. Taking part in memes is a great deal like socializing, and answering the questions is about all I can manage.

Last Speaker Standing

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:16:00 +0000

I've been spending a lot of time this past month preparing for a couple of speaking engagements that involve new material. Today I had a speaking engagement at which I discussed...my speaking engagements.

I was a guest of the Connecticut Library Consortium at its Children's Librarians' Roundtable (Southeast)'s Authors@The Library Programming Showcase. Whew. Six children's authors did presentations about their work and their programs for children.

You know how you go to a social event and you feel that you were either over or underdressed? Well, for once I was dressed just fine. However, all the others kids had great (sometimes really great) PowerPoint-type presentations describing their presentations or they had lovely visuals of other kinds. Like a giant whale, in one case.

I had to try to hold these people with the power of my personality. I began with my Suze Orman impression and later went into my little riff about how I can't understand why other people don't find the Puritans fascinating or enjoy original sin humor.

Yeah, I had them eating out of my hand.

Katie Davis, who I sort of know through the ABC listerv, was there, though I arrived too late to see her presentation. We did get to speak and shake hands, so that we sort of know each other beyond the listserv now.

I did hear Dana Meachen Rau's presentation, though. (We're both on the New England SCBWI listserv.) She gave a very good talk on her school and library visits. What I found particularly notable is that she has a number of presentations for kids in pre-k through grade 2, a group I'm preparing to speak to at the end of this month. (Dana speaks to older kids, too.)

There were three other speakers today, but they were all nonfiction writers. I'm going to save talking about them until next Monday and do a Nonfiction Monday post.

What's A Cord Doing On That Phone?

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:07:00 +0000

I think Slate does wonderful slide shows. They are a marvelous innovation, a great use of technology. IMHO.

Right now Slate has a great slide show called I'm Talking to You, Corded! by Erica S. Perl about the "mismatch of technology and picture books."

To Count Words Or Not To Count Words

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Sun, 11 May 2008 22:47:00 +0000

Or, rather, to report when you're counting words or not to report when you're counting words. Justine has a post on the subject.

Last year when I was deep into the slogfest that was writing The Durand Cousins, I started posting my daily word count here. I stopped because my computer guy told me reading that stuff was making his eyes glaze over and that that couldn't be good for him.

I liked the idea of posting word count because keeping track of your word count is sort of like taking part in a race or, perhaps, hiking The Appalachian Trail. We're talking a race to the finish line here. People like watching races, don't they? Why wouldn't they like to watch as an author approaches the end of the trail?

Oh. Because it's boring.

Notice that I'm now calling Justine "Justine" even though I've never met her, and she has no idea who I am? It's offical. I am now cyberstalking her blog as I used to cyberstalk Jane Yolen's.

An Author For Those Younger Readers

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:54:00 +0000

I knocked off two Moose and Hildy books by Stephanie Greene a couple of weeks ago. I don't think I would describe them as "hilarious" the way the publisher does in one case or "lots of laughs" as as a reviewer for School Library Journal says of the other. But these were decent little books (with modest lessons) that I think could become "comfort reads" for first through third graders who get into the two characters--a moose and a pig--who are friends in the manner of the immortal Frog and Toad.

When I went to Greene's website, I discovered she describes the Moose and Hildy books as "Early Readers." She also has written books she calls chapter books, including a series about a young man named Owen Foote.

Oh, My Gosh! Shirley Has An Award!

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:22:00 +0000

I was just thinking today about how much Shirley Jackson meant to me when I was in high school. Yes, back in the dark ages we didn't have a lot of YA gothie, dark, creepy stuff, so I had to read Shirley Jackson.

Well, Leila reports that there is now a Shirley Jackson Award. And there is a Shirley Jackson Awards Blog! (I suspect it won't be very active.)

Here are the finalists. Notice they don't have a YA category. I so think they should. Seriously, was I the only teenager who read her work?

The award will be given for "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic." I want to write some of that, so I can be considered for the Shirl.

Looking For A Blogging Classroom Teacher

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:07:00 +0000

This post is going to be pretty much a repeat of the last one, but if you're a classroom teacher for grades one through three, or have been a classroom teacher for grades one through three, you may not have read the last post because it was for booksellers. This one is for you.

I'm going to be doing a blog tour the week A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers officially hits its on-sale date. The hosting bloggers will be interviewing me about Three Robbers in relation to early chapter books in general. So we'll be promoting both my book and the...market? age group? field?

I have librarians, a professor of teacher education, and a literacy advocate lined up for July 1 through 5. (The book will be published July 3.) I'd like to find a classroom teacher familiar with kids in the early grades, their reading preferences, etc. to interview/host me on June 29th or 30th. My idea (and hope) is that all these different people will come at the subject from a different angle and ask different kinds of questions. It's an experiment. We'll see what happens.

I've found a number of blogging classroom teachers who teach 5th and 6th grade, but I haven't stumbled upon any who work with the younger kids. I can't believe you're not out there.

So if you are a blogging classroom and are interested in being part of this tour on either June 29th or 30th, e-mail me at gail@gailgauthier.com.

If you're interested but those dates aren't good for you, e-mail me, anyway. We'll double up on one of the other dates.

Looking For A Blogging Bookseller

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:54:00 +0000

Well, folks, thanks to a suggestion made by Kelly from Big A, little a, I'm going to be doing a blog tour the week A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers officially hits its on-sale date. In order to give the blog a bit of a twist and feed one of my interests, the hosting bloggers will be interviewing me about Three Robbers in relation to early chapter books in general. So we'll be promoting both my book and the...market? age group? field?

I have librarians, a professor of teacher education, and a literacy advocate lined up for July 1 through 5. (The book will be published July 3.) I'd like to find a bookseller with an interest in books for early readers, say, kids in first through third grades. Or, you know, those children who are between picture books and middle grade novels.

My idea (and hope) is that all these different people will come at the subject from a different angle and ask different kinds of questions. It's an experiment. We'll see what happens.

So if you are a blogging bookseller and are interested in being part of this tour on either June 29th or 30th, e-mail me at gail@gailgauthier.com.

If you're interested but those dates aren't good for you, e-mail me, anyway. We'll double up on one of the other dates.

Best Reason Ever For Writing Only Positive Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:15:00 +0000

I've written a number of times about the need to do real criticism when writing about books and not limit one's self just to positive responses. However, Justine Larbalestier gives the best reason I've ever seen for tossing all my arguments aside.

She says, "As usual I�m not going to mention the books that I didn�t like because I don�t want the authors to hunt me down and kill me."

Some Positive Thoughts About On-line Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:55:00 +0000

Just last year, we were hearing nothing but nastiness regarding blog reviewers. According to the Denver Post, the times they are a-changing.

Link by way of artsJournal.

Writing For Adult Readers?

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:48:00 +0000

Recently I've been wondering if the adult readership that children's literature now has is shaping its content a bit. I've been reading children's books that I, myself, enjoy, but which I can't help thinking are directed just a little too much toward me.

You may recall that I liked Clemency Pogue: Fairy Killer by J.T. Petty, but wondered if the "word play and humor" wasn't a bit too sophisticated. Right now I'm reading Clemency Pogue: The Hobgoblin Proxy. I'm finding the plot a little challenging, anyway, and if the goblin Chaphesmeeso's wit is directed to 8- to 12-year-old readers, they must be very highly educated 8- to 12-year-olds.

In one place Clemency asks Chaph if he is still fast, meaning can he dig through the earth quickly. His response is, "As a hunger artist."

Now, maybe if kids know what "fasting" is, they will get the connection between fasting and hunger. But "hunger artist" refers to performers who starved themselves and charged people to look at them. I only know the expression because a couple of years ago I was part of an on-line reading group, and we read the short story A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka.

Aren't references like this meant for adult readers rather than the children for whom the books are supposedly published?

Older Young Adults

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Sun, 04 May 2008 23:44:00 +0000

A few years ago, there was talk of extending the YA designation into the early twenties. I haven't heard much about that recently but Justine Larbalestier is leading a little commentary on the subject.

I Am Stunned, Stunned, I Tell You

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Fri, 02 May 2008 23:33:00 +0000

David Sedaris has finished with smoking! I am shaken to my core. What will he write about? His career is over!

I know that isn't very kidlittie, but, remember, I have my essayist fantasy to take care of.

Link by way of Justine Larbalestier because, come on, you didn't actually think I read The New Yorker, did you? Big magazine. Comes out every week.

How's That Study Month Going, Gail?

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:22:00 +0000

Yeah, the study month.

That's been a bit of a disappointment, mainly because I ended up getting two jobs for author appearances. One of them required revising my regular presentation for an older age group, and for the the other one I needed to create an all new presentation for littlies built around A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat. The day I finished the first program, right down to making rough drafts of slides to give to Computer Guy, plans were finalized for the second job, so I had to go right back to work.

You are all aware of how slowly I work, right? I think I just about finished the second program this afternoon.

Then I kind of forgot that now's the time to be promoting A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers. That was kind of embarrassing.

Plus a manuscript was rejected far, far faster than I expected it to be. I thought I had a couple more months, easy, before I heard from that editor. She very generously gave me some feedback that makes me want to do some revision, though wouldn't you think doing a study month first would help with that?

I have managed to get through some of my reading this spring. Over the years, I've found writing books deadly and often useless, covering the same old generalities. But I inherited a just-like-new copy of Writing Fiction A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway and Elizabeth Stuckey-French, and after having read a number of sections, I have to say that it is the most marvelous book on writing that I have ever read. I am learning masses of stuff. Masses.

What I like about this book is that the authors really get into nitty-gritty craft. There's none of this "Go forth and write your dream" malarkey that I found in a lot of books I've run across in the past. Burroway and Stuckey-French truly deal with problems I've had as a writer. I recognize a lot of what they talk about because it's stuff I've had to do or tried to do in my own work.

That does make me wonder if I would get as much out of the book if I wasn't a somewhat experienced writer. But I am a somewhat experienced writer, so I'm loving the book. In fact, it makes me feel embarrassed about a lot of manuscripts I've mailed out to editors over the years.

But, hey, Zen tells me that those are past moments and I should live in the present ones--the present moments being ones when I should be doing much better work because I've read Writing Fiction.

Did They Come To A Decision?

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:54:00 +0000

The Publishers Weekly article �Think Future� Panel Debates What Makes a YA a YA has been getting some attention at listservs and elsewhere. My own first (bitchy) thought when I began reading it was, Sherman Alexie has written one YA book and that qualifies him to sit on a panel discussing YA?

My second thought as I moved toward the end of the article was that he had some interesting things to say. I was particularly taken with what he said about being "reservationized."

"An audience member, agent Rosemary Stimola, observed that a key issue in the debate is, Are these books for young people or are they books about young people? Alexie addressed her question, commenting, �If the former, a more conservative point of view comes in. If they are about young people, it�s more about respecting and not protecting. As an Indian I�m used to being what I call �reservationized.� There can be a sense of the category, instead of elevating us, doing the reverse.�"

I think the analogy he was making was that YA books end up being placed in their little category or "reservation" by the nonYA (meaning adult) gatekeepers who control what is published, reviewed, purchased and on and on as I am always droning on about here. And then the YA books become about what those nonYA gatekeepers think they should be because it was the nonYA gatekeepers who created the category or reservation.

The same could be said of all children's books.

Cliched Middle School Situations Are So Much More Entertaining When They Involve Vampires

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:59:00 +0000

I was recently looking for a vampire book for early readers. My Sister the Vampire No. 1, Switched by Sienna Mercer (a total mystery woman as far as the Internet is concerned) was not what I needed. (Yes, I should have checked the reading age on the back of the book.) But it was a light, entertaining read that would make a great car/vacation book for those 8- to 12-year-old kids whose moms expect them to read in the car and on vacation.

Switched deals with that most cliched of middle school situations, the new girl at school. But super pink cheerleader Olivia Abbott soon discovers that there's a very pale Goth girl at Franklin Grove Middle School who looks exactly like her, has the same birthday as she does, and was adopted as she was. Holy Hayley and Lindsey! They're twinners!

What Olivia doesn't realize, though, is that they aren't quite identical. Ivy plays for another team. When the head of the local teen bitch posse refers to Ivy and her Goth friends as "the walking dead," she only thinks she's speaking metaphorically.

Switched will be fun for readers who already know something about vampire lore and can enjoy the vampiric word play used to describe stereotypical school and teen situations. They'll also enjoy knowing something that one of the main characters doesn't know and the other doesn't reveal until late in the story. This is the first book in a series, so I don't know how well later books will go over once the secret is out.

This one, though, could make good recreational reading for a young one seeking relief from improving books assigned at school.

You Need A Secret Password To Speak To Me Now

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:44:00 +0000

On Monday I received real, random spam in the comments for one of my posts, and this morning I had to spend some of my valuable 'net surfing time clearing out the same spam message from a half dozen posts. So we've set up one of those word verification deals in Comments so that evil spammers can't try to do whatever it is they hope they'll do posting gibberish at a children's author's blog.

A Week-Long Book Launch? What A Concept!

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:33:00 +0000

First a group of new children's and YA authors with debut books coming out in 2007 formed The Class of 2k7 so they could help each other promote their books. This year a group of new new children's and YA authors have formed the The Class of 2k8 to do the same thing.

They have a blog called, of course, The Class of 2k8. Whenever one of the class members has a book reach its publication date, the blog gives him or her a week-long launch, meaning they blog about the book and author for a whole week. Today is Day 2 for Marissa Doyle.

I think this week-long thing is a neat idea. I know, for myself, publication days are cruelly uneventful. As I may have mentioned before, I think I was cleaning toilets once on the day one of my books was officially published. Even here at the blog nothing much happens. I mention that it's publication day. If I've done a book giveaway I notify the winner. And then that's it.

Of course, this blog is all about me most of the time, anyway, but still I'm liking this week-long launch idea. I will have to think about how I can talk about A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers for a whole week and make everyone think I'm saying something new and different and entertaining and not just repeating myself.

Twilight Time

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:10:00 +0000

A friend (who is not at all a Twilight fan) called me this afternoon to be sure I saw Time Magazine's article Stephanie Meyer: A New J.K. Rowling? Lots of interesting stuff in it.

The author does make some legitimate comparisons between Meyer and Rowling. In addition to that, I think that when most people talk about looking for the next J.K.Rowling, what they mean is the next author who will make big sales. Meyer certainly has done that.

Oh, Come On!

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:12:00 +0000

Back twenty years ago, more or less, I used to read that around 40,000 books were published each year in the United States. So many books! According to You're an Author? Me, Too! in The New York Times Book Review the figure for 2007 was 400,000 books.

Does that number boggle anyone else's mind? Remember, according to an NEA study, 53 percent of Americans didn't read a book last year. What are we going to use all these books for? Building materials for forts?

Link by way of artsJournal.

A Funny Book About Being Afraid

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:54:00 +0000

I've had mixed feelings about the Tim Wynne-Jones books I've read to date. Loved one. Didn't love one. And one seems to have been just okay for me, dude.

But I feel as if he wrote Rex Zero and the End of the World just for me.

Ottawa, the city that young Rex Norton-Norton moves to with his British-eccentric family, is the only Canadian city I really know much about. When Rex rides his bike, Diablo, around the city, I can recognize the references to the Rideau Canal (I biked along it in Ottawa just last fall), and I even know who Diefenbaker was. The French used by the damaged World War I vet in the book is just about at my reading level. I only had to use my French-English dictionary once.

But Rex Zero and the End of the World has a sense of place in time as well as geography. It's set in the early 1960s during the cold war, and the kids in this story are just plain scared. And what they're scared of is the bomb. Some of their parents are building personal air raid shelters, or, as members of government (Ottawa is the capitol of Canada, remember) eligible to head out to the not-so-secret Diefenbunker to sit out the radiation expected after a nuclear attack that the kids expect will turn anyone not protected into mutants.

Rex's parents are pillars of common sense, but his older sisters are just plain brilliant at collecting misinformation. When one of them comes home with a story she's heard about the cosmonauts who are then circling the globe being able to spy on them, to actually look into their bedrooms, Rex's father says, "Nonsense." His mother, perhaps even more practically, advises them to keep their curtains closed.

Rex, new to the city, finally falls in with a group of friends who have something more to fear. They are certain that a panther that had escaped from the Granby Zoo has made its way into Ottawa.

If you could choose between being afraid of a panther that might tear you apart and being afraid of a bomb that might turn you into a mutant, should you survive it, which way would you go?

Believe it or not, though, this is a funny book. At the same time that you're feeling for these kids because they are living in fear, you're laughing at the things they do and say.

My only quibble is that I think Rex made a little too much of an intuitive leap in solving the panther problem. And, okay, maybe the beatnik was too obviously a device to get information out about the WWI veteran. But when a book is enjoyable and interesting, we can shrug off a couple of quibbles, can't we?

I've read a couple of reviews that suggested there was too much period detail in this book. No more than The Wednesday Wars, I'd say, which was also a 60s book published last year. Rex Zero, though, has a much more coherent storyline and doesn't try to improve us with anything remotely like Shakespeare.

Rex Zero has just come back this month with Rex Zero, King of Nothing

Cult Books

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:22:00 +0000

One of my few ambitions is to develop a cult following. By which I do not mean I want to start my own religion. That is way too ambitious for me. No, I want to be one of those writers whose books are given a choice spot on the shelves in used bookstores because readers obsess over them the way I obsess over Rebecca. I want to be one of those writers who people have to read about even if they don't like my books the way I have to read about the Little Prince guy.

So you can see why I was interested in The Telegraph's list of 50 Best Cult Books. I wasn't there, but one day I hope to be.

Among the books included that might be of interest to kidlit folk:

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

And then The Hitchhiker�s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams was an adolescent cult favorite at Chez Gauthier. But that may just be the Gauthiers.

A Little Something For My Rebecca Obsession

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:14:00 +0000

The Telegraph has an article up called How Daphne du Maurier Wrote Rebecca for those of us who love all things Rebecca. They also have an article on Daphne du Maurier's own personal Manderley. Except it wasn't her own personal Manderley because it had been "entailed" (one of those things you read about in English books) to another family for 800 years, which evidently hadn't come to an end during her lifetime.

There's A Reason We're Told To Show, Not Tell

noreply@blogger.com (gail) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:26:00 +0000

I suspect that Buddha Boy by Kathe Koja is supposed to be the story of its narrator, Justin's, response to the bullying a Buddhist outsider at his school endures and Justin's desire to do the right thing by the victim even though it's difficult. It reminded me of a more recent book, Firegirl by Tony Abbott, which is the story of its narrator, Tom's, response to a disfigured new classmate. But in Buddha Boy, Jinsen, the Buddha Boy, doesn't remain a mysterious figure the way the firegirl does, allowing Justin to become the center of struggle and suffering. He competes with Justin for the lead in this book.

Part of the reason for this, I think, is that Buddha Boy suffers from a lot of telling. Jinsen gets the living daylights beat out of him, and we find out about it later. We learn about Jinsen's very interesting backstory (which came as a welcome surprise) as Justin's recollection after Jinsen tells it to him, making it, I think, almost third hand. Certainly far removed from the actual event. We're told what the school administrators do about the bullies, but we don't see them dealing with kids.

Earlier this spring someone at one of my listservs said she thought people make too much of the instructions to writers that they should show, not tell. But telling really does undermine dramatic moments. It really does distance readers from what's going on. In the case of Buddha Boy, we lose what should have been a lot of tension and maybe even suspense. Because we never see Justin at the scene of action, he doesn't become a mover and shaker in the story. At the same time, we hear about all these things happening to Jinsen, but we never see that, either.

So we end up with a story without a dominant character.

Check out other responses to Buddha Boy.