Alethiometer Studies 101

by Eva, in category Books, Printables

To celebrate the launch of The Secret Commonwealth, I thought I would share this deck of alethiometer cards I created. As alethiometers are even rarer in our world than in Lyra’s, I hope these cards can help you hone your skills in their stead.

Click here to download the cards (ZIP)

Printing Your Cards

I recommend taking the PDF file down to your local copy shop and asking them to print the pages double-sided on thick card. They may even be able to cut them apart roughly for you, but you’ll probably need to finish them off at home.

Once you’ve cut your cards to size, you might like to use a dye-based inkpad to colour the edges of your cards. Try the colour out on a scrap of paper first. Gold acrylic paint would also look lovely, but make sure you clamp the cards tightly together, and cover the front and back of the deck so you don’t get paint on the face of the cards.

To assemble the box, I recommend using a glue stick. Double-sided tape is very strong, and convenient, but if your folds are slightly off, and the tape remains exposed, it will stick to everything. Forever. Wet glue is also not ideal, as it might cause the card to buckle.

The Alethiometer

The alethiometer was invented in Lyra Silvertongue’s world by a scholar named Pavel Khunrath. Our world’s Heinrich Khunrath was an alchemist; unlike his parallel-world counterpart, he neither invented a truth-telling instrument, nor was he burned at the stake, but he did publish a text titled, The Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom, of which Frances Yates writes:

“Except in the title, the word ‘Amphitheatre’ does not occur in the work, and one can only suppose that Khunrath may have had in mind in this title some thought of an occult memory system through which he was visually presenting his ideas.”

However, our world’s Giordano Bruno more closely matches Pavel Khunrath’s career. Bruno was a 16th-century occultist who was eventually tortured and burned at the stake by the Inquisition, and although he doesn’t seem to have developed a memory theatre, as other mnemonists had done, he did create an interesting memory wheel that worked by combination and in this sense bears some resemblance to the alethiometer.

Writing Quotes to Make You Feel Like a Writer

by Eva, in category The Writer's Life

Here’s a list of writing quotes that I’ve found inspiring, motivating and thought-provoking over the years. These little snippets of wisdom can help remind you of the long and beautiful tradition of which you’re now a part!

Writing Quotes

‘Songbirds do not study in a conservatory.’ – Saul Bellow

‘The only time a human being is free is when he or she makes a work of art.’ – Friedrich von Schiller

‘There’s nothing more wearing than having to go around pretending to be the author of one’s own books – except perhaps pretending not to be.’ – Philip Roth

‘Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.’ – Ezra Pound

‘My last page is always latent in my first; but the intervening windings of the way become clear only as I write.’ – Edith Wharton

‘When you publish a book it’s the world’s book. The world edits it.’ – Philip Roth

‘Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.’ – Thomas Hardy

‘Reading means approaching something that is just coming into being.’ – Italo Calvino

‘Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine — they are the life, the soul of reading.’ – Laurence Sterne

‘Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.’ – Daphne du Maurier

‘Reading makes immigrants of us all — it takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.’ – Hazel Rochman

‘An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last instalment missing.’ – Quentin Crisp

‘Artists are the antennae of the race.’ – Ezra Pound Read More

Show, Don’t Tell with Famous Authors

by Eva, in category Technique

“Show, don’t tell,” was what I was taught at school.

You, too?

Showing is usually defined as relating the story through descriptions of the character’s feelings, sensations, perceptions, and thoughts.
Telling, on the other hand, is a straight-forward (and usually far more succinct) expression of actions, characteristics, and backstory.

Here’s a simple example of “show, don’t tell”:

Show: The skin resists the blunt knife, dimpling slightly before bursting open in a splatter of red liquid. All over my hands. All over the kitchen counter. What’s inside is worse: a viscous mess of seeds and soggy flesh that oozes across my plate, and turns to a fragrant mush in my mouth. It isn’t the taste, but the texture that makes me long to spit it out.
Tell: I hate raw tomatoes.

In my example above, the difference between the two approaches is marked. However, in practice, it isn’t always so easy to distinguish between showing and telling.

In this article, I’d like to explore the techniques used by 3 famous authors to blend showing and telling in order to unfold the plot, the characters, and the world. Read More

The Story So Far…

by Eva, in category One Page Story

~~Mr.~~ Walker’s job was to rewrite people’s backstories. He had started out forging documents, then moved on to inventing anecdotes for politicians, scripting dates and interviews, that sort of thing. Now every character was clamouring for his services.

‘The whole thing’s a fiction, anyway,’ he said.

We were in his office. It was a dark afternoon, and I was watching the raindrop shadows travelling down his face. I wondered whether he was happy.

How did I know he hadn’t made up his story? That he really was who he said he was?

‘Of course I made it up, kid. You think I waste all the good storylines on strangers? But I like you, so here’s the deal. I’ll give you the gist of it, the bare bones. You find it works, we’ll flesh it out together, and you can pay me what you like. How’s that sound?’

I couldn’t deny that it sounded fair.

‘So, what’s the problem? Nothing criminal, I hope?’

I shook my head. No, no, it wasn’t anything like that. I had always been too good for my own good.

‘Ah, a bit of excitement then? You wanna be someone who’s up for anything, someone who knows how to have a grand old time, an inspiration to others!’

Yes, that was it. A life worth writing about.

~~Mr.~~ Walker laughed. ‘Anything worth writing about is worth rewriting,’ he said, descending upon his typewriter.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Inspiration & Writing

Yes, I’m still fascinated by the idea of rewriting memories. I thought it would be fun to hint at a film noir detective atmosphere in this one page story, although if I’m honest, I think I stole the idea from The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Neil Gaiman which I listened to recently.

Naming
I initially called the backstory-writer, ‘Mr. Walker’, but I changed it to ‘Walker’ during edits. Omitting the title does a few things, in my opinion:

It brings the characters closer together. The form of address sounds more familiar, which opens up the possibility of a friendship between them.
It evens up the social status of the two characters, although Walker still calls the POV character, ‘kid’, indicating that he’s older.
It makes the “applicant” sound less respectful, and therefore less needful of Mr. Walker’s services.
It may also make it less likely that the POV character will be construed as a female, although the film noir setting probably undermines this. What do you think?

Formatting
While formatting the page, I thought it would be fun to indicate the aforementioned edits, to tie them in to the story’s subject. Has ~~Mr.~~ Walker been marking this (typewritten) page with red ink?

Dialogue
Dialogue takes up a lot of room, so it’s even more difficult to squeeze a dialogue-heavy story onto one page!

For this story, I liked the way that reporting the POV character’s speech indirectly not only helps to distinguish the voices, but also feeds in to the question of whether or not this story was written by Mr. Walker. Is he purposely denying the character their own voice? Is this the ‘gist’ of the story, without settled dialogue? If you’re enrolled in How to Be the Heroine of Your Own Story, be sure to check out the Voice Matrix in your textbook for a visual representation of how these choices between direct and indirect speech affect the narrative.

I hope you enjoyed reading this story, and that you consider trying your hand at writing a one page story too!

Character Flaws & Blank White Cards

by Eva, in category Characters, Lady Writer, Writing Worksheets

Character flaws are an interesting topic; far more involved than I had at first realised!

The other day, I was sitting in the Lady Writers League study, drafting a Heroine Frame for myself — a Heroine Frame, in case you don’t know, is our one-page framework for character development — when Sir George appeared at my elbow.

‘What’s that for?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been feeling like a very flaky person lately,’ I said. ‘I wanted to find a story to improve myself.’

‘Why do you feel flaky?’

‘You know very well why.’

‘Yes, but do you?’

I sighed. Sir George’s questions seemed inane sometimes, but they always tended to some higher purpose. ‘I’m feeling like a flake because I’ve been neglecting my correspondence; also, I’ve promised several students worksheets which I haven’t completed yet; and most importantly, I haven’t been working on the draft for the next book.’

‘Ah.’

‘No thanks to you,’ I added. As my muse, Sir George had to accept part of the blame when I was uninspired.

‘Now, that’s not fair!’ he said, crossing his arms and leaning against the desk. ‘I’ve given you plenty of inspiration. I inspired you to finally try that chai recipe; I inspired you to order a new fountain pen; I inspired you to re-organise your index cards.’

‘That’s not inspiration, that’s procrastination!’

‘All in good time,’ he said, with the smugness of the immortal.

‘Well, I don’t like it. I want to be responsible, and timely. And I thought that while I was studying my own character flaws, I might write up a worksheet on the subject. I’m sure someone asked me for one… a while back.’

‘A character flaw? What’s that?’

‘Good question,’ I said, taking up my (new) pen, drawing a fresh sheet before me, and scribbling a title.

What is a Character Flaw?

After some consideration, I wrote down the following definition:

A character flaw is a habitual way of thinking or behaving that causes problems for the character.

‘That just sounds like life,’ said Sir George, peering at my page.

I chuckled. ‘Yes, it does rather. I suppose a character flaw is more like a pattern, or a refrain that keeps repeating.’

‘More like a Greek chorus, in fact.’

‘Oh, and the idea of the character flaw comes from Greek tragedy, doesn’t it? It was Aristotle who wrote about the hamartia in Poetics.’

‘Yes. That was a different milieu, of course. People were very interested in morality, and a divine idea of right and wrong.’

‘Did you know Aristotle?’ I asked. Sir George loved to boast of the famous writers he had inspired over the ages.

‘Of course I knew him!’ he said at once, a little offended at being asked.

‘What was he like?’

‘A bit vain, perhaps, but brilliant, and fair.’

‘That’s an interesting description,’ I remarked, taking up a fresh sheet to list some example character flaws that occurred to me.

List of Character Flaws

Vanity
Tardiness
Greed
Indecisiveness
Pride
Miserliness
Haste
Dishonesty
Laziness
Reticence
Jealousy
Irascibility
Narcissism
Clinginess
Stubbornness
Obsessiveness

‘You forgot “flakiness”.’

Flakiness

‘And what does one do with a character flaw?’ asked Sir George.