How To Use Props

Posted: May 16, 2012

I am beyond useless right now, you guys, so rather than drop off the face of the earth entirely, I’m going to put up an old post or two that you’ll (hopefully!) have forgotten I ever wrote and therefore will feel brand new!

A “prop” is small piece of scenery that an actor, or in this case a character, interacts with, like a glass or a suitcase. Like all writing tools, there are more and less effective ways of using them.

I’m going to set aside the idea of props that have a plot function – like magical amulets, an amnesiac’s only picture of her parents, etc – and focus instead on the smaller things, the little bits of setting that we tend to forget or under-utilize.  The heavy drinking glass our character has their orange juice in and doesn’t realize is meant for scotch, the bedroom window that’s cracked at the corner from when the lawn mower chucked a pebble at it.  Props help give a sense of place and of reality to a story, because our real world is littered with stuff that we’re constantly interacting with.

One common way that writers often use props is for “business.”  In acting, business is something that you do during a scene, usually a dialogue-heavy one, just to add a little movement and interest to the scene but which is usually a pretty dramatically meaningless task.  For instance, a woman folding laundry while arguing with her husband.  It gives us some sense of who she is in the most basic sense – she’s a caretaker, she has responsibilities – but really it’s just to give the actress something to do.

Sound familiar?  Do you have dialogue-heavy scenes where the conversation is interspersed with some banal activity like washing the dishes? God knows I’ve written a million of them.

So here’s my first use for props:

Use props to create meaningful business.

Yes, this comes back to show don’t tell.  Why have your character washing dishes or making a sandwich?  What does that really say about them or their mental state? Replace it with something illuminating.

For instance, the heroine of my first novel is a member of a fundamentalist religious cult with strict gender roles, so her milieu is very domestic. Rebekah is always cooking, cleaning, sewing, etc.  This gave me a lot of opportunities to play with props in a way to show how she was feeling.  When she’s prepping dinner and her father scolds her, she can chop the vegetables more forcefully.  It’s not her father she’s angry at, no, no, it’s these stupid vegetables and this dull knife and soon the sound of the blade against the chopping board is so loud it drowns her father out completely.

This isn’t business. It’s character, and it doesn’t require a single bit of telling on my part. I don’t need internal monologue, physical reactions, or even for her to say anything to give the reader all the information they need to know how she’s feeling. All I had to do was a pick a prop and use it in a mindful way instead of just to keep the character busy.

It seems so obvious to me now, but it wasn’t always, and I think those are the most important pieces of advice. The ones we can’t believe we didn’t figure out for ourselves ages ago.

My second tip for utilizing props to enhance your story:

Use props to slow the pace and prompt internal monologue.

So, you know those scenes where everything simultaneously slows down and cranks up. These are the scenes that would be in slow-mo if they were in a movie. When tension is high — are they going to get caught? is he going to kiss her? — sometimes you want to slow the pace down so that you can draw that tension out and really make the reader squirm. Props are a great way to do that.

Let’s say Jane has broken into the top secret government lab and is currently hiding in a supply closet as security guards come after her.  To keep up the will-she-make-it suspense, you can have Jane notice the shelf of beakers in the closet. Suddenly they’re all she can see, the way the light from the door crack shows the film of dust across the glass, the one in the corner that has a chip missing from its rim, etc.

Pace is effectively slowed tension drawn out by spending some time on the prop. Now, use the beaker she can’t stop staring at as a key to unlocking Jane’s internal monologue about how she’s feeling. The beaker reminds her of AP chemistry. She took it because she always loved mixing potions of chemicals and making something new ever since she was young and her father bought her that chemistry set with the food coloring and plastic test tubes. But AP chemistry was where everything had started to go wrong. If she had never taken it, her best friend wouldn’t be locked up in a government lab somewhere.  Such a fragile little container, so easy to break, but it ruined had her whole life.

Okay, lame example, but you see (I hope) what I mean.  Using a prop to open up a character’s thoughts give them an extra layer of motivation and authenticity, and it ties their emotional state to their world in a way that makes the world more real to the reader.  Would Jane meditating on the suckiness of her current situation have had the same impact without relating it to the beaker? Would it have felt as grounded and natural?

And that’s all I know!  How do you use props in your writing?

Categories: Writing | Tags: , , , | 5 comments

The Reality of the Six-Figure Deal

Posted: April 30, 2012

The six-figure deal is like the Holy Grail of publishing. It’s what we all aspire to, imagine when we’re lying in bed at night, that Publisher’s Marketplace listing that says you got a “good” deal.

But getting a $100,000 book contract is not like being handed a check for $100,000. I’m going to break down what a six-figure deal actually means in real life, because when it comes to writing, having as much information as possible and knowing how to manage your expectations is always good. You don’t want to get that awesome, coveted six-figure deal and then be disappointed when it turns out you can’t quit your day job and buy a yacht.

Disclaimer: I in NO WAY want this to be construed as me somehow complaining about my deal, because that would be RIDICULOUS. I’m still overwhelmed by my incredible good fortune, which is more than I ever even dreamed about by, like, A LOT.

So, to start out:

Multiple Payments

Most large deals at major publishers are for more than one book. So your hypothetical $100,000 deal is probably for two or maybe three books. Let’s say two for easy math, so each book is worth $50,000. That price is then further divided into (usually) twos or threes, per book, to be paid out at certain milestones. Your agent will negotiate the specifics, but a common schedule of payments for a two-book deal would be something like this:

Payment #1 and #2, on signing (~4-12 months after acceptance of offer):$33,334

Payment #3, on handing in first completed manuscript: $16,667

Payment #4, on publication of first book: $16,667

Payment #5, on handing in second completed manuscript: $16,667

Payment #6, on publication of second book: $16,667

Total: $100,000

Let’s say you sell this summer, for publication in 2014. The schedule of your payouts would probably look something like this:

2013 – Payments for signing and handing in 1st manuscript: $50,001

2014 – Payments for 1st publication and 2nd manuscript: $33,334

2015 – Payments for 2nd publication: $16,667

So already, your lofty six-figure deal amounts to, on average, less than most highway maintenance workers make in a year. If you’re used to being a starving artist like I am (and don’t have anyone else to support other than a couple of cats), you can still get by on this. Buuuut, we’re not done.

Commission and Taxes

If you’ve gotten a six-figure deal from a major publisher, you almost certainly have an agent. Your kick-ass agent has no doubt earned their percentage and them some, so remember to subtract their ~15%.

$50,001 – 15% = $42,501

$33,334 – 15% = $28,333

$16,667 – 15% = $14,167

One of the great things about your agent’s commission is that it is tax deductible, so your totals at this point are your taxable income. For 2012, if you were filing singly, this would put you in the 25% tax bracket for the first year and 15% after that. Depending on where you live, you may also have to pay a state income tax, which is usually somewhere around 5%, so now you’re at 30% and 20%.

Think you’re done? Sorry. There’s this bitch called the self-employment tax. It basically exists to require you to pay into Social Security and Medicare from your wages since you don’t have an employer to do it for you. Currently the self-employment tax is 13.3%.

$42,501 – 30% – 13.3% = $24,226

$28,333 – 20% – 13.3% = $18,899

$14,167 – 20% – 13.3% = $9,485

And that’s your yearly take-home after commission and taxes on a six-figure deal. On average, this is a little more than the average McDonald’s cashier makes in a year, with you making more your first year and less your third. (Of course, I haven’t included in these calculations any of the many deductions — other than agent commission — that you will want to be making as a self-employed author to lessen your tax burden, so your actual take home should be more). Not bad, but not exactly OMGRICH!! either.

And of course, an advance is not the only way to get paid as a writer. God willing you’ll have royalties, foreign sales, the sales of other rights like audio and film, etc, not to mention the myriad of revenue streams you can cultivate for yourself as a published author by teaching, doing speaking engagements, and so on.

Like I said at the beginning, I don’t post this to bum you out or complain about how little writers get paid or for any other negative reason. I just think everyone should have their eyes open about what huge sounding numbers really mean in the publishing world. It’ll make you that much more prepared, and I think preparation is SO IMPORTANT to finding happiness as a writer.

 

Categories: Publishing | Tags: , , | 32 comments

Casting Catching Fire: Johanna Mason

Posted: April 26, 2012

Okay guys, here it is, the final piece of the hypothetical Catching Fire cast. This character has been by far the toughest one for me to cast.

JOHANNA MASON

Johanna is described as having short dark hair and is a few years older than Katniss, but that’s all we hear about her looks. She successfully pretended to be a weakling during her Hunger Games, so it’s unlikely that she’s obviously physically powerful, but she is physically strong and capable. She spends most of Catching Fire being angry and clashing with Katniss, who doesn’t trust her, but she shows great vulnerability and even humor in Mockingjay when the two become unlikely friends.

First let me address what I will refer to as the “front-runners” with massive air-quotes, aka the two actresses who are aggressively lobbying for the part in the press: Kristen Bell and Naya Rivera. Putting aside the fact that I think crusading for a part using the media is pretty tacky and smacks of desperation, I don’t think either of these ladies is right for the part. I am one of the biggest Veronica Mars fans on the planet, and I agree that Kristen Bell can certain bring the edge and nastiness to Johanna that she needs, but beyond that, I think she’s physically too tiny to be able to believably overpower Jennifer Lawrence or throw around an axe, she’s too old at almost thirty-three, and I question her ability to bring the sexuality and later vulnerability that the part requires.

Naya Rivera is, I think, a little closer to the mark actually. I love the idea of a woman of color playing Johanna, and we know from Santana that Naya can play that kind of hard-as-nails, not-particularly-likable character. She’s about the right age and has a believable physicality. But she’s a little glamorous looking for the arena, and more importantly, I’m not sure she has the acting chops, especially for the big scren. Plus, just saying you want the role in public doesn’t actually, like, entitle you to having a shot at it, you know?

 

 

So my picks? Are a bit all over the map. Johanna is a very clear character in my mind, but I’ve had trouble nailing her down in the real world. I’m very curious to see who they finally cast. Here are some of my ideas:

Ruth Negga

Ruth Negga is a British actress who’s probably best known in the US as Nikki from Misfits (which you MUST watch if you haven’t yet.) I also saw her play Ophelia and Aricia at the National Theatre when I was living in London. Nikki is very Johanna in Catching Fire — tough, angry, hostile — while Ophelia and Aricia are all vulnerability, so I know she’s got the range. Plus, I think she’s beautiful but with a very interesting, unusual look that isn’t too “Hollywood” for the arena. She looks like she’s lived and like she could be hiding a painful past. I think she could really give Jennifer Lawrence a run for her money.

Theresa Palmer

For something completely different. Theresa makes the list because of I Am Number Four. Remember that scandal and the awful, deadly-boring movie that followed? When Theresa’s character — a bad-ass warrior who was not un-Johanna-like — appeared on screen in the last twenty minutes, she electrified the place. Suddenly the movie was exciting. I turned to Sara and said I’d even go see a sequel if she was in it. HIGH PRAISE INDEED.

Zoe Kravitz

I like Zoe for this part for several reasons. She fairly exudes toughness and unapproachability. If I ran into her wielding an axe, I’d probably drop dead of fright. At the same time, she and Jennifer Lawrence are besties, which might make Johanna’s transformation into Katniss’s unlikely ally and friend in Mockingjay really interesting and believable. My only problem? I’m not at all sure that she’s a good actress.

Abbie Cornish

Abbie’s on the old side for Joanna (although not as old as Kristen Bell), but the girl has major acting chops and there’s something hard and cold about her vibe onscreen that I think would work great for Johanna. Abbie’s also a real chameleon who disappears into her roles and doesn’t bring any past-role baggage along with her because she’s so transformed each time. I’d totally believe her as the sniveling weakling who then turned around and wickedly murdered someone with an axe.

So what do you guys think about my all-over-the-place Johanna picks? Anyone I should have included in the list?

And that’s the end of my hypothetical Catching Fire casting! I can’t wait until the real auditionees start leaking and we can obsess over those instead!

 

Categories: Books | Tags: , , , | 10 comments

Lies the Internet Told Me

Posted: April 23, 2012

I sort of stumbled into writing books by accident, so one day I woke up with a novel and absolutely no idea what to do with it. That led me to weeks of intense googling, trying to find the article (that a part of me is still convinced exists somewhere) called “Ten Easy, Sure-Fire Steps to Getting Published.” I never did locate it.

Before I discovered the real wealth of information that is Twitter and industry blogs, all my information was coming from random websites of varying degrees of reliability. But there were some pieces of information they all had in common, which I later discovered were totally untrue.

If you’ve found your way to my obscure blog, odds are you know this stuff already, but just in case, here are some of the biggest lies the internet told me:

You Don’t Need an Agent

I saw this everywhere. The question of whether a writer needs an agent or not was presented as more or less a coin-flip, that there are good reasons to go either way and it’s a totally personal decision. While I guess this is technically true, unless you are in a very special set of circumstances, OMG YOU NEED AN AGENT. Or at least, you REALLY REALLY want one.

First of all, most major publishers won’t even look at your manuscript unless it’s been submitted by an agent. And even if they do accept unsolicited manuscripts, those don’t get a serious look-in until all the agent-submitted stuff has been considered. So, yeah.

Secondly, the only real downside to having an agent is, I guess, giving up a part of your earnings to their commission? But any agent worth their salt is going to more than earn that commission back by negotiating you a better deal than you ever would have been able to get yourself. Hell, if it weren’t for my agent, my publisher could have offered me a sandwich and whatever loose change was in their pockets for my book and I wouldn’t have been able to say “DEAL!” fast enough. From a strictly financial standpoint, I’m faaaar better off with my agent than going it alone and “saving” on commission.

And, more importantly, I am better off in EVERY POSSIBLE OTHER WAY with my agent that without. Her revision help not only insured that I was sending the best-prepared manuscript possible into the wild but also made me a better writer. When I have questions, she’s there to answer them. When I have a freak-out, she’s there to buck me up. She’s constantly doing things in the background to help me that I wouldn’t even know needed doing. I cannot and will not imagine having attempted to do all of this on my own, because it’s too horrible!

So yeah, no matter what anyone says, you need an agent.

You Need Previous Publication Credits

This is a way persistent falsehood. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen it said that your query won’t get serious consideration from an agent unless you’ve already been published somewhere. I saw it so often that I considered putting my novel writing on hold to write some short stories to submit to magazines etc — even though I had no interest in writing short stories at that time — just so I’d have those credits to put on my query.

Sure, if you’ve been published in The Paris Review or The New Yorker or whatever, I’m SURE that will help your query get more attention. But if your query and your novel are strong enough? Nobody cares if you’ve never even read a short story, much less published one. So don’t feel like you have to write and pursue publication for short stories before you’ll have a chance at publishing a novel.

The Odds Against Your Success Are Astronomical

This one is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s good to understand that publishing is extremely competitive and that sometimes even really good writers with really good books will struggle or even fail to find publication.

But the difficulty is sometimes overstated to such a degree that I’m afraid it can discourage people from even trying, because it seems so hopeless. It nearly did this to me.

You hear terrifying numbers all the time. An agent gets 15,000 queries a year and takes on two clients. An editor only buys one or two submissions out of every hundred that come from those agents. Your odds at ever selling a book start to look like the odds of winning the Powerball.

But the numbers are misleading. Because of those 15,000 queries that agent got? You’ve got to figure that at least half were completely unreadable, another 20% were insane, 20% were aimed at completely the wrong agent, etc.

If you’re a serious writer, and you must be to have found your way to my random blog, you’re actually competing with a MUCH SMALLER pool of people. If you’ve ever worked in customer service like I have, then you will know to never underestimate how large a percentage of the general public is just kind of nuts. If you’re more or less sane, are serious about practicing and improving, are reading blogs like this one, etc. you already have a HUGE leg up on most people, and the odds are that if you keep at it and have a little luck, things are going to work out for you.

So be aware of how competitive things are, but don’t let the misleading numbers make you feel like its pointless, because it’s definitely not.

What else? What misconceptions or bad advice about the industry were you given when you first started out?

 

Categories: Publishing | Tags: , , , , | 5 comments

On Giving Up

Posted: April 17, 2012

Ever since high school, my dream was to be a professional stage manager. I wanted to work on Broadway or the West End. I never deviated from that dream. I spent my college years rehearsing two or and three plays at a time, in rehearsals until 1:00am every morning. I moved to London after graduation to work at the Globe and Tricycle Theatres, and I did eventually stage manage in the West End.

And a year and a half ago, I quit.

Here’s the thing about me and stage managing: when it was good, it was really good — probably the most exciting and fulfilling thing I’ve ever done, even more than writing a novel — but when it wasn’t, it was terrible. Gut-wrenching, soul-crushing awful. And after awhile, the bad experiences started to outweigh the good ones, and I began to wonder just why I kept doing this to myself.

I have the kind of personality that is both perfectly suited for stage management and really bad for it. All my failings as a person — neuroticism, perfectionism, being an observer instead of a participant, basing my self-worth on how happy I’m able to make other people — made me a great stage manager. I walked into rehearsal with fourteen spreadsheets covering every contingent, having stayed up extra-late to make cupcakes for everyone to keep morale up, and sat silently and unnoticed as everyone worked, anticipating their every need without ever drawing attention to myself. I was good, but damn could that be a miserable way to live (if you weren’t surrounded by one of those rare and wonderful casts/crews that appreciated you anyway, which I was lucky enough to have many times).

And the kicker? When I started trying to become a more well-rounded and mentally-healthy person, my stage managing — the thing I was always good at, that I loved and based so much of my identity on — suffered. I wasn’t a good stage manager anymore. So I bounced back and forth between the two, trying to reconcile the person I wanted to be with the person I needed to be to be good at my job. More and more, though, I didn’t want to be a part of that struggle anymore. And more and more, I was finding myself in working environments where I wasn’t valued, where my input and collaboration wasn’t wanted, where I was expected to be silent and perfect and always prepared and was bitterly criticized when I wasn’t.

So after one of my most prestigious and simultaneously miserable stage managing jobs ever, I walked out of the theatre on closing night, went home, and just… didn’t look for a new theatre job. I didn’t make the conscious decision to quit, because I don’t know if I would have even been capable of that, but somewhere deep down I knew I couldn’t face heartbreak like that again.

It’s hard for me. Even now, as I’m writing like, a voice in my head keeps saying “but you haven’t quit for good!” Even though I know that most likely I have. It’s hard to let go of something that you’ve loved so much for so long that it’s a part of your identity. I still have a hard time not telling people I’m a stage manager when they ask, even after not having worked as one for almost a year and a half, because it’s so ingrained in me that that is what I am.

I work in the theatre. Those words have been written on my bones.

Except I don’t, and I’m slowly starting to come around to that. I still love the theatre, but I’m not a part of it anymore. Maybe someday, in some different capacity than I was before, because I can’t imagine never making theatre again. But I’ll never work on Broadway. That dream is done, and it’ll probably always hurt a little to think of that, but goddamnit I guess that’s just growing up.

And luckily, there’s this other thing that I love to do.

 

Categories: Personal, Theatre | 8 comments

Casting Catching Fire: Mags and Plutarch Heavensbee

Posted: April 16, 2012

We’re getting down to the nitty-gritty of the Catching Fire cast here.

After today, the only major character left to cast is Johanna, and I’m saving her for last because… I’m really having trouble coming up with actresses for the part, so let me know if you have any ideas! And given the departure of Gary Ross, I’m also going to be putting together a list of dream directors.

But first!

MAGS

Mags is only briefly described in Catching Fire. She’s elderly, her speech is difficult to understand, probably due to a stroke, and she should be small enough for Jennifer Lawrence to carry. She’s partially used for comic relief in the book — like when she tarts snacking on potentially deadly nuts and waves away Katniss’s concerns — but is also one of the more tragic and heroic figures.

So… the difficulty with casting Mags is that there just aren’t a ton of 70+ actresses working in film these days. But here are my picks:

Ellen Albertini Dow

Pretty much Hollywood’s quintessential little old lady, Ellen Albertini Dow’s sweet looks mean she usually ends up playing the cursing and/or rapping grandma in various comedies. She could definitely provide the humorous side of Mags, and the fact that she’s such a sweet-faced, tiny little lady would make her sacrifice that much more moving.

Lois Smith

 Lois Smith is best known as Sookie’s grandma and Helen Hunt’s hippie aunt in Twister. She’s a great actress who is naturally endearing, although I think she might have too happy an air for Mags and she reads as much younger than her 82 years.

Kathryn Joosten

Anyone who’s seen The West Wing will know that Kathryn Joosten has both humor and gravitas. This is a lady Finnick would love, which would make his decision to save Peeta that much more wrenching.

PLUTARCH HEAVENSBEE

Heavensbee has only a small role in Catching Fire, but he becomes much more of a presence in Mockingjay. There’s very little in the way of physical description of him in the book. He’s an older man, well-fed and well-dressed, with a flair for the dramatic. Truth be told, although there are many fine actors who could kick ass with this part, I only have one in mind, because Plutarch Heavensbee just screams…

Tom Wilkinson

I mean, come on. THAT is Plutarch Heavensbee! Tom Wilkinson can do it all. He can be commanding, self-important, sneaky, resolute, dramatic and a little prissy. He can start a war and fuss over the stain on his shirt at the same time. He can be convincing as both as the uber-privileged Head Gamemaker and a rebel leader.

So what do you think? Do you see any of my picks as the female tribute from District 4? Approve of Tom Wilkinson as Plutarch?

And, hey, tell me your picks for Johanna, ’cause she’s seriously stumping me here!

 

Categories: Books | Tags: , , , , , | 5 comments

Understanding Triberr, Mostly

Posted: April 11, 2012

Triberr is one of the new social media tools on the block. I’m usually pretty wary of that — as you can tell by my erratic posting schedule, I’ve reached my fill of social media — but Triberr is designed to actually make your social media life a little easier. I’m going to (try!) to explain how.

To use Triberr, you need a blog, a Twitter account, and some friends you want to help promote and who want to help promote you. Triberr is basically a signal booster that helps your friends drive traffic to your blog via Twitter and vice versa. Here’s how it works.

What’s a Tribe?

The usual method of starting with Triberr is by being invited to be on someone’s Tribe. You can be a member of up to four tribes and a Chief of one, meaning that you choose your own members. A tribe is a collection of people who blog on roughly the same topics and wish to promote each other. When you join a tribe, your posts enter their Tribal Stream and their posts enter yours. Here’s what my Tribal Stream looks like:

 

How Does Triberr Work?

Anytime someone I’m in a tribe with posts to their blog, a link to it comes up in my stream and I can check out the post from inside Triberr. If I like it and want to tweet a link to that post to my Twitter followers, all I have to do is click “Approve.” (Or if I want to get fancy, I can automatically send the link to Facebook, Google+, etc or add a custom comment to be tweeted along with the link.)

I can check my Triberr stream once a day and approve twenty posts I like all at once to go out to my Twitter followers and help promote my friends. The beauty of Triberr is that it sends your tweets out on a schedule. For instance, I’ve set mine to tweet a link no more than once every hour. So while I might approve a dozen posts at once, my Twitter followers don’t get spammed. Instead, the links are stretched out all throughout the day, which is better for my followers, better for the people I’m tweeting links to, and better for me, because I can schedule a whole day’s worth of promoting good content in just a few minutes and one visit to Triberr.

Plus, I can see how often people are visiting and tweeting links to my own blog, which helps me gauge how interesting my content is to others. I can start to see patterns in what posts are frequently tweeted about and which ones get neglected, which almost always surprises me.

How Do I Join?

The usual method is to be invited to someone else’s tribe, but you can also just sign-up and find tribes of like-minded people to join or start a tribe of your own. To make Triberr work, you need to install a widget on your blog that will export your blog posts to Triberr. If you use WordPress, you can just search for the plug-in from your dashboard. Once you’ve done that, you’re good to go!

So, those are the Triberr basics. Triberr is still pretty much in its infancy, so it’s not a big, polished product yet. It has the occasional bug and it can be hard to figure out at first, but once you conquer the initial learning curve, it’s a really useful tool and one that’s adding new and helpful functions all the time.

 

Categories: Blogging | Tags: , , , | 2 comments

Casting Catching Fire: Wiress and Beetee

Posted: April 09, 2012

And we’re back! If this Gary Ross thing doesn’t get straightened out pronto, I may need to draw up a list of Catching Fire dream directors, but for now let’s just stick with casting the tributes for District 3: Wiress and Beetee, aka Nuts and Volts. They’re not the biggest physical threats in the arena, both they’re both very smart, which is why Katniss chooses them for allies during the first day of training.

WIRESS

Wiress’s appearance is not discussed in any real detail in Catching Fire (she’s middle-aged and has brown hair, as I recall), but we know she’s clever but mentally and emotionally fragile. Despite having a complete breakdown in the arena that reduces her to near-speechlessness, she’s the first one to figure out the trick to the Quarter Quell arena, so whoever plays Wiress must be able to projection both intelligence and a certain level of vulnerable kookiness at the same time.

Here are my picks:

Amanda Plummer

Amanda has got kookiness in spades. Can’t you just see her walking around in circles going “tick tock! tick tock!” She’s all fragility on the surface but with a good amount of fierceness underneath, like she really could have killed an arena full of tributes to have won her Hunger Games back in the day. (I also think Amanda would be great as the female morphling).

Sophie Thompson

She may not be as famous as her sister Emma, but Sophie Thompson is one of the best character actresses out there. (I actually worked with her on a play in London, and OMG she’s FAB). She’s often cast as the socially-oblivious, embarrassing old maid in period pieces like Emma and Nicholas Nickleby, because she’s got shy and awkward down to a science, but she also has a real air of intelligence to her, which Wiress needs.

Jane Adams

Another fantastic and criminally-overlooked character actress who I think would be perfect for Wiress, Jane Adams is equal parts smarts and just-barely-holding-it-together crazy. I basically think this part was made for her.

BEETEE

The more substantial role since he’s also a part of Mockingjay, Beetee is the likable electronics nerd who seems harmless at first but later reveals himself to be a morally ambiguous, ends-justify-the-means, deadly-weapon-making badass. The part requires an actor with great subtly and nuance who can play all of those angles.

Michael Emerson

So, nerdy and potentially a little sinister? This role basically has Michael Emerson written all over it. My only concern is that he may be a little too on the nose as Beetee. You want to give an actor a little room to work outside of the audience’s expectations or you’re just asking for problems.

Jeff Perry

Jeff Perry is another one of those fantastic character actors who is unlikely to ever get the recognition he deserves. He’s a touch older than the Beetee in my mind, but he’s got the nervous, intelligent energy and ability to play several layers of motivation, some of them not so nice, that Beetee needs.

Paul Giamatti

He’s by far the most famous and recognizable actor I’m suggesting to play one of the tributes, but Paul Giamatti is such a chameleon that I’m not worried about him bringing past role baggage along with him to the part. Giamatti would, I think, bring more of an edge to Beetee and be able to play more on that dangerous, almost amoral side to the character, which I think would be really interesting. He’s less of a bumbler than Perry, for instance, and more of a schemer.

Okay! Those are my District 3 picks for Catching Fire. What do you think? Got any favorites or other suggestions?

 

Categories: Books | Tags: , , , , | 4 comments

Casting Catching Fire: Finnick

Posted: April 02, 2012

So now that we’ve all seen The Hunger Games, it’s time to start talking about Catching Fire, right?? I don’t feel like I’m jumping the gun here.

By far my most viewed post ever is my Hunger Games Dream Cast, and a total of… zero of my picks actually made it into the film (although my Peeta made it to the final round!), but let’s see if I can do any better with the new characters joining the Hunger Games universe in film 2.

Because I’m not completely decided on who my Catching Fire dream cast is, each week I’m going to go through some options for the major new characters. You can weigh in and help me decide, and soon we’ll have the definitive Catching Fire Dream Cast.

First up is a big one, probably the most hotly-anticipated role.

FINNICK ODAIR

In the book, Finnick is about 24 and is described as having bronze hair, green eyes, and a powerfully built body. He’s a Hunger Games heartthrob who initially comes off as arrogant but is actually quite vulnerable and sweet with a self-deprecating sense of humor. It’s important that the actor who plays him is charming, has a wide acting range, and is hot.

Finnick #1 – Garrett Hedlund

Garrett Hedlund as Finnick

This one is a bit of a shot-in-the-dark for me, because I’ve never actually seen Garrett Hedlund in anything. But word on the street is that he’s a good actor, and he certainly looks the part.

Finnick #2 – Taylor Kitsch

I love Taylor Kitsch. I never would have thought that someone so good-looking could also be so incredibly talented, because I refuse to accept that the world is just that unfair, but don’t be fooled by what you saw in the John Carter trailers: the boy can ACT. His performance of Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights was so nuanced and masterful that I can easily see him playing Finnick’s careless-playboy-to-tragic-hero range. That being said… I don’t know. Something about Taylor as Finnick just doesn’t feel quite right to me.

Finnick #3 – Ryan Kwanten

Ryan was a late-entry into my mental Finnick race but quickly moved up in my estimation. He’s about a decade older than Finnick should be, which concerns me a, but he has other things going for him: he’s a great actor, he oozes charm and likeability, and he’s gorgeous. He’s also got a certain mischievousness to him that I think really works for Finnick.

Finnick #4 – Armie Hammer

I think this is my personal frontrunner. When my friend Candy mentioned his name to me as a possible Finnick, my brain just went click! Armie is a relative newcomer who doesn’t bring a lot of past-role baggage with him, which I think is important for The Hunger Games, but we know he can handle the big-screen, which a lot of great actors (maybe even Taylor, this might be part of my misgivings) can’t really do. He’s got the classical good-looks and natural charm that are so important to Finnick. The only real question is if he has the range, although I can imagine him offering Katniss sugar and crying and taunting Boggs with his pantlessness.

So what do you guys think? Do you approve of my options or have any other choices for Finnick I’ve over looked? Who’s your Finnick frontrunner?

 

Categories: Books | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 11 comments

Magical Thinking and My Gross Apartment

Posted: March 27, 2012

I share an apartment with two strangers I found on Craigslist. In the eighteen months I’ve been here, it’s been a revolving door of five Craigslist strangers total. It’s basically a miracle that I’m still alive.

My living situation is actually pretty decent, but I’ve been living on my own since college, so although my bedroom here is at least three times the size of my old flat in London — I’m being very generous when I call it a flat, as it was basically a modest sized walk-in closet, but oh how I loved it — I’m feeling a little constrained by having all these PEOPLE IN MY SPACE. I can’t think in here. Things start to get on top of me, and sometimes I just give up trying to fight it.

I’ve decided to move out when my lease comes up this summer and live alone again. I am CONVINCED this will change everything. In my new, singularly-occupied apartment I will:

Cook beautiful, healthy meals all the time!

–

Be wonderfully clean and organized! My closets will look like a Container Store!

–

Be productive! I will wake up early and do useful things instead of watching old Firefly reruns on the sofa!

–

Will write at least six hours a day!

I know, of course, that this is nonsense, although I can’t quite shake the fantasy. Because at the end of the day, new apartment or old, I am still me and me doesn’t always (or ever) do all those things. The same way I did not magically become a different person, one who’s more confident or interesting or capable, the day I got my book deal. (I hear that doesn’t happen until you actually sign the contract. Just kidding. Maybe.)

My life is pretty awesome right now, but damn is it a mess. I think the transition from aspiring to actual has thrown me more than I was expecting it to. I am hoarding my energy like a miser, not doing anything more than is strictly necessary to survive, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m recovering from all the excitement of the last few weeks or bracing for what’s next. I’m woefully behind on emails, neglecting my blog and Twitter and YA Confidential and feeling horribly guilty about it, I’ve been subsisting on delivered food for so long that the delivery guys are starting to learn my name, and with a gun to my head I couldn’t tell you the last time I vacuumed. In short, I’m much more easily overwhelmed by things than I was a month or two ago.

And somehow, in the midst of all of this, my brain has decided that IT WILL ALL BE OKAY ONCE I MOVE. As if my position in life, either literal or metaphorical, has anything to do with anything. Like it’s not up to me how I choose to deal with my life.

…except I totally am going to cook more once I move.

 

 

Categories: Miscellany, Publishing | 6 comments

← Older posts