Author Topic: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*  (Read 5358 times)

Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #30 on: June 03, 2005, 11:01:45 AM »
I didn't take it personally. I also already said in my post that your reaction was not wrong either. ("It's also not wrong to not be someone who wants to be in that audience.")

The market doesn't need to sustain a large body of work. But I am confident it can sustain at least two works instead of just one. Not that I'm saying that there aren't any other author interjection titles out there, but according to Karen they're hard to find. After she read Snicket, she said "I want to read more books like this," and went out and looked, but none of the books that had similar cover illustrations and packaging and marketing had what she was looking for.

The reason for the name thing is on page 155:

Quote
Bastille nodded.  "They named mountains after themselves.  Just like they named prisons after us."
« Last Edit: June 03, 2005, 11:02:25 AM by OoklaTheMok »
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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #31 on: June 03, 2005, 11:06:04 AM »
yes, that's what I call much less a "reason" than a usage of it

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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #32 on: June 03, 2005, 05:33:15 PM »
E,

I do think you over-reacted just a bit to Ookla's post.  He didn't seem offensive to me.  It just seemed like he was asking some clarifying questions.

However, I do value your comments.  In fact, I've been very thankful for this entire thread.  It's given me a lot to think about.  The best suggestion you made, I think, is the shortening of the title.  (Or, changing it to something else.)

The "And the..." titles do seem a little worn out to me.  And, if I got rid of some of the silly names on the title page (or minimized them) then perhaps I'd lose some Lemony Snicket problems as well.  

This thread has, unfortunately, left me very torn about what to do.  I don't think I've ever had such varied responses to one of my works.
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Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #33 on: June 03, 2005, 05:51:41 PM »
I think you should go with your initial vision for the book, for the people who like it.

And then also write a totally different YA book that will satisfy the people who don't!!

Of course editors and publishers trump us.
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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #34 on: June 03, 2005, 05:52:33 PM »
Well, I have to say, as a less-experienced writer, that I am relieved that even you can't produce a perfect YA/MG manuscript on the first try in a couple of weeks. Now you shall have to rewrite--and I know you hate rewriting! BWA HA HA!!!  ;)

I hope you don't give up on it, though, because I still like it and think it has potential. However, with so many conflicting opinons, you may end up having to follow your gut on this one.
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Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #35 on: June 03, 2005, 06:19:29 PM »
What some people like best is often disliked most by others. And if you try to please everyone, mediocrity is often the result.
All Saiyuki fans should check out Dazzle! Emotionally wrenching action-adventure and quirky humor! (At least read chapter 6 and tell me if you're not hooked.) Volume 10 out now!

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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #36 on: June 03, 2005, 10:51:07 PM »
yeah, I just want you to consider my opinion. If you did everything I wanted, you'd be me. ANd I don't have a published novel or my own section of the message board. Wow. My life sucks.

Oh wait. Back on track: consider my opinion, but do what you feel is best for the novel. i delight more in wit, you know that. Intellectual material is more entertaining to me than most comedy. I am probably not in the largest part of the target audience.

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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #37 on: June 04, 2005, 03:21:23 AM »
I sent most of the following to Brandon already, but I thought it would be interesting to hear other people's reactions to my comments on the book.
___________________________________________

I think that there's far more good than bad in the book, and so I'm going to talk mostly about what I think needs to be polished.

Overall, I liked it -- about as well as anything I've read lately that isn't Lemony Snicket -- certainly better than several books whose cover art was designed to make me think of LS. There is obviously a market for this sort of book, if all the marketing people are trying to make their books look like they're similar to LS, even if they have nothing much really in common.

The author interjections are certainly a major part of my reaction.  I laughed more at them than at the storyline which, while silly, is not often funny if you take my meaning.  On the other hand, I think that the author interjections need the most work before it can be published.  Several of them say the same thing, mostly about hooks, and though it makes the one that's mostly blah blah blah a bit funnier, I think that there's enough you can say about the writer's craft that you don't have to repeat yourself.  

I dislike the first paragraph immensely, mostly because I couldn't tell what person you were going to be writing in, since it seems to shift through all three in the first two sentences.  You just can't say, "makes A person stop and think about THEIR liveS"  especially after saying, "YOU're about to get sacrificed" and just before saying, "YOU'LL have to take MY word on matters."  I personally think that's what put the idea of a first person rewrite into your editor's head.  Having said all that, I think that the ideas in the first paragraph are a great way to start off the book, just not quite that syntax.

I was also confused about the author's feelings toward books and libraries altogether.  Does he like them?  He certainly seems to when he talks about his most treasured possession.  At the same time he seems to be anti books and Libraries since they're often the tools of the antagonists.  I think that this can be reconciled, for instance by saying that uncorrupted books and libraries are the most wonderful things in the world, and that therefore the tainted ones are the absolute worst.  For this age audience, though, I think you need to spell it out a bit more clearly.

I have lots of proofreading comments, which I won't supply unless specifically requested.  I'm sure you've got people who can assist with that.  I would like to mention that you use the word "Whom" too often.  Sometimes, it's just plain wrong grammatically (only use it when you'd replace it with him rather than he), but even when it's grammatically correct, a person like Alcatraz probably wouldn't use it in everyday speech.

As for the names -- Why is Bastille named that?  She's not a Smedry, or an Oculator.  Is everybody in the Outer World named after prisons? If not, then you might want to reconsider.  It's a really good name, I like it, but it didn't seem consistant with what you laid down as the reason for it.  You could continue to use it if you gave her some reason to be using somebody else's family names -- for instance, you could say that members of the resistance tend to use those names, rather than just Smedries (chapter 10 by the way).  Also, aren't Sing and Quentin Smedries as well?  If they are, then I don't think that Bastille would be likely to refer to Levenworth by his last name alone (at the end of chapter 4)-- it would just cause confusion.

I think you should make a joke about looking at the world through rose colored glasses.  I was waiting for it for a while.

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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #38 on: June 04, 2005, 03:21:53 AM »
My post was too long... here's some more


Author interjections that I particularly liked, and would be sad to lose:
Chapter three: ....Do not take his candy either...And possibly some sharks..."I am only doing this because I am a reckless boy, and am not prone to carefully considering the consequences of my actions"

Chapter four: Mothers, and dogs, and the rural south...that's because the autor made all these things up. But, you didn't know that, did you

Chapter five: ...are in no way silly, and always make sense.  Rutabaga...

Chapter six: This brings us back to your mousetrap factory.  How is that doing, by the way? Are revenues up? Ah, that's very pleasant.

Chapter seven: Seriously.  Stay away from kittens...deep and poignant works about dead puppies..fourth generation decendants of a copy of Summa Theologica and some volume of Sweet Valley High.

Chapter eight:...a book about a boy whose dog gets killed by his mother.  Twice...a perfect slice of cheesecake ...

Chapter nine: you were warned

Chapter ten:  This one could go.  It's the same as some earlier ones about hooks, and really does feel like slef indulgance

Chapter eleven: the line about bunnies and birthday parties is way too derivative.  It just seems like copycatting.  You could keep it if you made a direct nod to Mr Snicket, such as "as another author has pointed out..."

Chapter seventeen: blah blah sacrifice altars daggers sharks etc

Chapter twenty: That's all in the sequel

Last page: all of it

Bio page: in fact he's illiterate. He dedicated this novel to his potted plant, Count Duku.


You'll notice a trend in the above -- I only laughed at one of the interjcetions in chapters 9-20, and that was the one making fun of how boring they had become.  I think there's certainly space there for the little side comments that make the first several stand out so well.  I think that this is where you should spend the most time polishing.  It seems to me that you just got bored with them and wanted to finish your story.  Now you can go back and give them the touch they're lacking.

Also, I really liked the running gag about the dead dog books.  Running gags are good in this genre (by the way do you notice that dogs die all the time in books, but cannot be killed in natural diaster movies?)

As for gimicks and being derivative in style -- in all of art FOREVER, people have been infuenced by what's in fashion and what seemed to work well for another artist.  That's the way art works. When I read Lemony Snicket, I said to myslef, "I want more of this" and went looking for it.  I read several books that certainly LOOKED on the cover like they were in a similar style, and was disappointed in several.  I think that there's a market for that style right now, and I don't think that there's anything wrong with trying to fill part of it.

If you're worried about the book not standing out, imagine it without the author interjections -- it would fade into the background of all those other adolescent fantasies around.  Even if this does hark back to another book, it is still a much smaller field. Also, how many "young student wizard" books were there before and after Harry Potter?  There's room in the market for even copycats let alone something that's just borrowing one stylistic element, and has a highly original plot, setting, and characters.
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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #39 on: June 05, 2005, 10:46:57 AM »
yes, dead dogs and mothers was the one that made me laugh

Sing and Quentin are Smedrys. And Sing-Sing and San Quentin are prisons. It's a good question about Bastille though, I'm interested in the answer.

Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #40 on: June 05, 2005, 05:20:17 PM »
Well, Bastille is that one that said "they name prisons after us." Since she wasn't a Smedry or an Oculator, "us" must mean outer-worlders.
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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #41 on: October 19, 2009, 06:34:17 PM »
Okay, funny thing. I never actually read this series because I rarely read YA anymore, and the premise sounded a little silly to me. But when I was at my local library and found it in the "for sale" bin for 10 cents, I couldn't pass it up. Turns out they were getting rid of it because there are crayon scribbles on a number of the pages—didn't hurt readability at all, but still. Anyway, I liked to think of those scribbles as Alcatraz's notes in the margins. Or maybe his father's. :)

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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #42 on: October 19, 2009, 07:06:31 PM »
I just finished book 3, and I think Bastille is wonderful.
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Re: Alcatraz *SPOLIERS*
« Reply #43 on: October 20, 2009, 04:41:34 AM »
Hoorah for necrothreading.  :D

I loved the books. I bet if we tried, we could probably come up with a few more Smedry's names/talents.
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