Points of Interest

The trailer for Nick and Norah’s infinite playlist is out:

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist

I’m so excited about this. I adore Michael Cera, and I’ve always been impressed by Kat Dennings, who I believe is woefully underappreciated in the teen market (The Forty Year Old Virgin, Charlie Bartlett, that HIllary Duff movie where Duff was a gospel singer whose her brother died that has the guy who looks like Brandon in it). I hope she gets to sing in this one.

Who here has read the book? It’s been on my TBR pile for a while.

In other news, Diana Gabaldon (pronounced Gah-BAWL-dun, according to the audiobooks), has posted an interesting examination of her scene-building. Now, while I’d never send Amy out into the creek for watercress (Amy might not be entirely sure what watercress is, except that it was once served to her in a soup at some highly fancy Master’s Tea she attended),
and the SSG books are not written in a style given to long kitchen-cabinet lists (Claire is given to talking about the contents of her larder in a spring asparagus, herbs, potatoes, succotash, hanging ropes of blah de blah and piles of withered potatoes in the corner-kind of way), there was a lot that resonated with me in the post. Namely, this:

At this point, my innate sense of rhythm and pacing is getting restless and thinking, “Enough with the backstory, description, and thoughts—something should happen!” So it does:

A hideous shriek split the air, and I jerked, dropping the basket.

So Diana G goes for the random scream. I’m a fan of the explosion or phone call, but we both have that, “Crap, nothing’s happening, better throw a monkey wrench into the midst” writing tic. Serves as a good reminder that no matter how disparate your styles, the basic building blocks of story are fundamentally the same.

In other words, get to the point.

Of course, what we view as “the point” could also be fundamentally different. The point in a romance might be a physically static, but highly emotional scene, while in an adventure, you might need an action sequence. With SSG books, it really depends. Sometimes there’s action. Sometimes there’s tense dialogue. (oftentimes. Amy does love to chatter.) Upon occasion, there’s a love scene.

(Thanks to Bookdaze for the head’s up.)