#1 Create a History

Every person has a past, so it is important to create a past for your character – even if you do not share the entire contents of that past. People evolve over the years because of their experiences and surroundings throughout their lives, and your fictional character is no different, so you need to develop a fictional past for him or her. When you are initially developing a new character, you are getting to know that character, just as your readers will get to know that character when they read your story. It is important to understand why your character will react or make decisions the way that he or she does, so it is important to have a back story that goes along with the personality that has been created for that character over the years.

#2 Show (don’t tell) His or Her Emotions

If you have not heard the phrase now, you will a lot throughout most of your English related courses: show, don’t tell. Simply saying that your character is feeling sad is not a proper description of a realistic character. People don’t feel the same emotions in the same way. Some people cry when they are sad, while others scream or go completely silent. You need to show how your characters are feeling, rather than just say how they are feeling.

Bad Example: Nora became angry after reading the letter. She just couldn’t stand it anymore.

Good Example: Nora’s face became hot after reading the letter. She viciously began to tear                       apart the envelope when she couldn’t look at its content any more.

Showing a character’s emotions through actions lets your readers get a better idea of what kind of personality someone like Nora has.

#3 Give Your Character Habits or Quirks

People are remembered for the little things they do that are different from anyone else, and everyone has something peculiar them that seems unique. Giving an interesting habit or strange quirk lends personality to your character. It can be as small as eating M&Ms all the time, but refusing to eat any other kind of chocolate. Or as big as having your character insist on eating at the exact same restaurant every day, and is thrown off if something disturbs this regimen. Whatever habit or quirk you give your character will allow your readers to get to know him or her better. Sometimes you can give an explanation for the behavior, but you don’t always have to. Either way, your readers will have another reason to think, “Hey, this character is interesting.”

#4 Show Relationships

We can learn a lot about individuals by the way they interact with others. If your character is very sociable, then you should show the character interacting with a lot of random people at work, talking on the phone, and even chatting with strangers on the street. But, if the character is more of a recluse and only has one or two friends, show the bond between those few characters, and maybe even show the uncomfortable feeling that character gets when dealing with new individuals.

#5 Reveal Character’s Hopes, Dreams, Aspirations

People live their lives with a particular purpose. They don’t just go through the motions of school or work without having some reason to do so. If you are going to show that your character is unhappy with his or her job, then be sure to explain why that character continues to keep that job – what is his or her motivation? Is she saving up for a car? Is he trying to pay off a loan? These are the kinds of questions that readers ask about characters who are interesting. And, if you are answering those questions, then your readers are going to enjoy your character and your style of writing that much more.

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher

Do not let the name fool, there isn’t anything about marine life in the book. The main character, T.J. Jones, is an adopted teenager who is smart, funny, and an all-around cool guy, who is incredibly humorous to read about. The story deals with a team of underdog swimmers, and T.J. just happens to be the only popular guy on the team. Acting as the wise-butt hero at times, this book had me stifling my own laughter because I was afraid someone would hear me guffaw too loudly.

Darwin Awards Books

For those who are not familiar with the Darwin Awards, they are a comical competition that relay the odd, stupid, and funny things people do in life, as well as the interesting outcomes of these actions. There are at least seven of these books by now, so the options are wide and the hilarity of man’s stupidity just continues to entertain readers. If for some reason you cannot finish one of the books, there is no harm in putting it aside to come back to it on another rainy day. The chapters do not have a sequence of events, so there is no plot to keep up with. You can read one funny story after another. Or, if you somehow finish one book in a day, there are more to read out of the series.

A Bad Beginning, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snickett

Yes, it is part of a series, but what better day is there to try out a new series of books than on a rainy day? And, there is never a dull moment in A Bad Beginning, not to mention it is a relatively shorter book, which also makes it a quick read. Funny, exciting, and sometimes creepy, the Series of Unfortunate Events relays the story of the cruel Count Olaf, who is trying to take the inheritance of three incredibly talented orphaned children. Don’t knock it just because it’s in the young adult section; this book even has adults enthralled to read the whole series.

Short Stories by Nikolay Gogol

For those who want a fun, yet slightly more sophisticated read, the short stories by Nikolay Gogol never seem to disappoint. Although most short stories are a good pick for rainy days, Gogol’s are both deep and amusing at the same time. Stories like “The Nose” is so incredulous to have a nose as the supporting role, while “The Diary of a Madman” is so funny, I almost felt guilty as I laughed at the poor narrator. Gogol’s short stories are a bit longer than others, but you can still several with a day’s time. And, with a collection of shorts, it is easy to just put the rest of the book aside once you have finished a particular story. There is no commitment to reading all of the short stories if you do not have time.

Psych – A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read by William Rabkin

If you are a fan of the show, you are going to love the books, particularly this one. Although many popular shows are providing a series of books alongside their show, Psych is one of those shows that is both smart and funny at the same time, which is exactly what the books are like, too. A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read happens to be only 273 pages, which makes for a quick read with all of the dialogue and humorous activities.

Step #1 Prewrite

Yes, you hear your instructors tell you all the time to prewrite, but do you ever listen to them? Prewriting (which is listed in another blog) is not just a way to organize your thoughts and get down ideas, it is another way to look at your writing project and force yourself to write. Getting past your writer’s block is often just a matter of looking at your task from a different perspective (or looking around your writer’s block, if you will). If you can brainstorm or outline some ideas for your writing, then you have a better chance at feeling confident and putting your pen to the paper to start writing. With all of the different methods of prewriting, there really isn’t any reason not to use at least one of them when you’re stumped.

Step #2 Write Backwards

Even after the prewriting is finished, you may still feel uncertain how you want to word your thoughts exactly. If that’s the case, jot down your ideas out of order – write the end first and the beginning last if you must. Sometimes your ideas may be scattered, which is why you are having trouble focusing on just one idea. Maybe your mind is blank with your introduction, but you know what you want to write for your body paragraphs. If that is the case, then just skip ahead. Write down whatever good ideas you think you have and reorganize them later.

Step #3 Take Your Opposing Side

If you are really uncomfortable with your topic and feel you have absolutely nothing to write about, then you may want to take yourself out of your own head and put it into someone else’s. This has nothing to do with cheating. You are supposed to write the opposite of what you really feel. Or, think of what other people would say about your subject. It may be easier putting down what you think other people feel or believe than what you actually believe. Your confidence in your own ideas may be what stops your writing. Do not use this technique all of the time though. There are some assignments where you need to give your honest opinion, and this method of breaking writer’s block may not always be suitable.

Step #4 Just Write!

It may sound harsh, but sometimes you just have to force your pen to move on the paper or to have your fingers move across the keyboard. Often people refuse to write anything because they don’t think their ideas or words are good enough. Well, when you’re struggling, writing something is better than writing nothing. Put down whatever comes to mind whether or not you think it sounds good. You can always fix it later, which is how we come to Step 5 in breaking the writer’s block.

Step #5 Walk Away… and Come Back

Sometimes students are just not in the right state-of-mind to write. If there are a bunch of things running through your head, you may need to just set up your writing assignment as best as you can and walk away from it for a while. When you come back to whatever writing you have put down, you may feel more inclined to fix your ideas and even add more ideas down on paper. Depending on how much time you have for your writing, walking away from your assignment for an hour or a full day may be just what you need to come back to your writing and look at your project with a clear head. When you come back to your writing, look it over with a critical eye, as if it were someone else’s paper, and see what you do and do not like about it. And then, take your writing from there. Unless you are taking an in-class essay, this method can be a great way to clear your mind. Otherwise, you’ll have to rely on a different method of break down that writer’s wall.

New backpacks, clothes, folders, pencils, classes, and of course new books are typically bought at the beginning of classes. Although the expenses can add up, some of the most trying things to buy have got to be the books. Maybe you can reuse an old backpack, maybe you don’t necessarily need a new wardrobe for school, and you may very likely have spare pens, pencils, and binders for the new school year. But, new books are something that has to be bought. Depending on the types of classes you are taking, books can be very expensive for students and can easily put a hole in a person’s budget. However, there are ways to make buying new books for the semester a lot more economical.

Order Textbooks Online

It is usually more convenient to buy textbooks through the school you are attending, however that is typically the most expensive way to buy books for school. There are many websites online that sell textbooks for a much cheaper price. Just make sure that you buy your books a week or two in advance, so you have your books in time for school. Popular websites like cheapesttextbooks.com, half.ebay.com/ , textbooks.com/, and even http://www.barnesandnoble.com/textbooks/index.asp are great resources for inexpensive text books. If you can’t find what you want at these sites, research more to find others and compare prices – there are plenty to choose from.

Read Online

There are many novels that are available to read online, without having to spend a dime. Textbooks are probably not accessible, but classic novels are often found. As long as you do not have sensitive eyes to reading for an extensive period on a computer screen, then reading online is a great way to save a little money. I read the entire text of Uncle Tom’s Cabin online, which was required for one of my literature classes. Since the book didn’t need to be brought into class, there was no problem just reading the book online.

Buy Used Books

Both textbooks and novels can be a lot cheaper when they are bought used. And, since most students do not keep their school books after they have finished their class, there is no point in buying a book in pristine condition that you have no intention of holding onto anyway. Novels can be found for half price at used book stores, and used textbooks that are available at the local bookstores can be ¼ the price of a brand new textbook.

Rent Textbooks

It may be the newest form of getting textbooks for school – Renting! Yes, there is actually a website that offers students to rent texts. You can rent and even sell textbooks to make money at http://www.chegg.com/. Renting books is even cheaper than buying used books, and with the speed this new option is taking in popularity, I am certain that there will be more online sites available for renting books in the near future.

Borrow Textbooks from the Library

It is one of the oldest tricks, but it really does work. Borrow books from the library. School libraries are supposed to carry the textbooks that are required for your school’s classes, so just borrowing those books instead buying them is way cheaper. I recommend double checking to be certain that the library does carry the textbook you need and to check the policies for borrowing a textbook (some libraries are stricter with the length of time you can keep a textbook out of the library). If everything seems to work in your favor, borrowing textbooks from the library is a free option instead of having to buy a book that may cost anywhere from $50 to $100.

Writers have every right to end this decade in a state of as much uncertainty and confusion as everybody else. Will there be paper books in ten years, or will everyone be curling up with the Kindle? Will there still be investigative newspaper journalism, or will all public information be provided by bloggers like yours truly? And what should we even call this ten-year period at the beginning of the twenty-first century that we have just lived through? “The oughts” sounds regretful, “the ‘00s” sounds sinister and “the turn of the century” still sounds like we should all be wearing petticoats.

However, while most of us are anxiously watching the skies, the hurricane coasts and our stock portfolios to see where the next disaster will come from, a few novelists have kept their eyes focused where they should be: on, as William Faulkner memorably put it, “the old verities and truths of the heart… love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” and on epic stories of conflict, culture clash and family that bring these qualities to the fore. Each of these five books is sprawling and ambitious, able to leap generations in a single bound and observe, as if with X-ray vision, the intensity of a single moment. They should be required reading for anyone who wants to write in these times: anyone who thinks they can step up and give our recent history a name.

5) White Teeth 

British-Jamaican author Zadie Smith finished this stunning first novel when she was a 22-year-old undergraduate at Cambridge. It concerns the lifelong friendship between two war veterans in London, Archibald Jones and Samad Iqbal, and the intertwined destinies of their offspring. Archie gets regular letters from the Swedish cyclist with whom, in the greatest triumph of his life, he tied for thirteenth place in the Olympics (“your earnest competitor, Horst Ibelgaufts”) and Samad’s wife, in punishment for his decision to send their son away to Bangladesh to study Islam, resolves never again to give him a yes or no answer on anything (“Where have you put the remote control?” “It is as likely to be in the drawer, Samad Miah, as it is behind the sofa.”) It is as funny and penetrating a look at our multicultural society as has been written yet this century.

4) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Though no graphic novels have been included on this list, the next three novels draw on comic books for their inspiration. This decade has brought about the belated acknowledgment that comics can be as affecting, and take as many risks, as the best literature. Two other related developments: movies based on comic books are now cemented in the mind of Hollywood as the most reliable way to get audiences to the theatre (which may not be such a good thing) and writers of more traditional literary forms are more and more often invoking superheroes as a powerful metaphor, a part of our collective unconscious in the way that the myths of Odin and Hades informed the imaginations of earlier cultures.

Oscar Wao is a Dominican-American nerd, who as we follow him through high school and college, desperately wants a woman but is much more comfortable talking to his Doctor Who figurines. His story is narrated by Yunior, the on-again-off-again boyfriend of Oscar’s sister, who also narrated the author’s earlier story collection Drown. Yunior has been given the task of watching over Oscar, but cannot protect the brilliant misfit from his tendency to fall madly in love with any woman who talks to him, even when he goes to visit his relatives in the Dominican Republic and the curse of a hated dictator finds him from beyond the grave. Author Junot Diaz’s chief accomplishment is in the language, the way it blends epic storytelling and street slang, Spanish and English, the confident narration of a folk tale with the awkward scrawled-diary intimacy of an adolescent who thinks nobody else has ever been in love before.

3) The Fortress of Solitude

One of the great things a novel can do is show the way the passage of time changes people: how many different times in a day or a lifetime our identity shifts to meet what the world asks of us. Jumping swiftly from one point of view to the next (“You’re white! Winegar wanted to scream. Man can fly! Dylan wanted to scream”) Jonathan Lethem tells the story of Dylan Ebdus, a “whiteboy” whose well-meaning bohemian parents move to a black neighborhood of Brooklyn in order to raise him. After leaving for college but failing to escape his past, Dylan returns as an adult to take care of unfinished business. The bulk of the story takes place in the late seventies, as phenomena that would define American culture for the rest of the century – rap, crack, graffiti and punk rock – were being forged in the crucible of New York. Its supporting characters change with their times – one goes from chess nerd to wannabe gangster to landlord in a new, gentrified Brooklyn – and we believe the authenticity of each, not because the character has finally found their true self but because the world Lethem creates is so constantly in motion. Oh yeah, and there’s a magical ring that sometimes gives flight, sometimes invisibility: two superpowers that the amateur should never confuse with one another.

2) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Master magician Michael Chabon transforms meticulous research into a world that never was: a New York circa 1940 seen through the eyes of two young comic book creators, all sharp angles and jutting jaws that mask the human frailty behind the heroics. In America it is the Golden Age of comics and in Europe it is an age of unprecedented darkness, of World War II and the Holocaust, from which Joe Kavalier, a budding artist in Prague, escapes by smuggling himself inside of a giant golem. He winds up in his American aunt’s small apartment with his cousin Sammy Clay, and the two of them create the Escapist, a Houdini-like superhero who makes them famous. The immersive, addictive novel (which my college roommate claimed to read in a single day, by doing nothing else for eleven hours but flip through its 656 pages) articulates, more brilliantly than any of Chabon’s work before or since, the author’s vision that it is the dreams we dream that make our lives all the more real.

1) The Corrections

This dark, hilarious novel came out in September 2001, just after a decade that many pundits called “a holiday from history,” to announce that however happy we thought we might be while on Prozac, the holiday was over. At its center are three siblings, products of a prosperous Midwestern childhood: Chip, a lecherous academic who ends up working for an Eastern European Internet scam that allows investors to buy pieces of Lithuania; Gary, a successful but miserable investor who has to hide his drinking from the surveillance system rigged up by his ten-year-old son; and Denise, a trendy chef who breaks up her boss’s marriage by sleeping with both him and his earnest hippie wife. Their father is losing his mind to Parkinson’s disease and their mother wants them to come home for one last Christmas together. The writing is so sharp, the failures of the characters rendered in such excruciating and recognizable detail, that you can open the book to any page and find a sentence that draws the eye, compelling you to read to the end of the scene. Jonathan Franzen, who has not published a novel since, managed to write what is, so far, the century’s most important American novel by focusing on an image we have seen a thousand times – witness the happy family on its cover – and zooming in to pick at all the warts, veins and scars.

Given the number of books published in the United States every year, it can be hard to keep up. This week, we bring you 2009: Book by Book, a literary review with one book for each month. Whether you’re in the mood for memoir, fiction, or graphic novels, we’ve got a little something for everyone.

January: Things I’ve Been Silent About – Memories, by Azar Nafisi

This memoir comes fresh from Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. Nafisi reveals her journey from Iran to the United States, from writing to educating, from childhood to adulthood. An expert on Western literature, Nafisi recognized that the very act of open expression was dangerous in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. She breaks the literary silence by answering lingering questions from her first book, probing into the nature of her father’s extramarital affairs, and exploring her life as a mother, wife, and teacher.

February: The Women by T.C. Boyle

The life of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright has been depicted in various ways, but none so creatively as this most recent fictionalized novel by Irish writer T.C. Boyle. The Women reveals another side to Wright’s darker nature by focusing on the important female characters in his life. The featured romances include Wright’s three wives, Olgivanna, Maude Miriam Noel, and Kitty, and his lover Mamah, who was murdered by one of Wright’s servants. Boyle’s creation is the narrator Tadashi Sato, an imagined apprentice to Wright, who undertakes the task of writing his mentor’s biography. Boyle’s mixture of fiction, gossip, and legend provides an original perspective on a talented, if not highly controversial, man.

March: How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer

Twenty-seven-year-old author Jonah Lehrer examines the human capacity for decision-making in this, his second science book for left-brainers. Lehrer, who is a contributing editor at Wired magazine and a frequent resource on the WYNC program Radio Lab, breaks down neuroscience by punctuating it with manageable, understandable anecdotes. He links the way our brains function to the decisions we make, and the effects that has on, say, the current economic crisis. An excellent introduction to the world of science writing for the left- and right-brained.

April: The Beats: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar, edited by Paul Buhle, art by Ed Piskor and others

Perhaps Jack Kerouac’s most famous quote is his affinity for “the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.” American Splendor writer Harvey Pekar and editor Paul Buhle approach the world of Beat writers and artists by delving into the realm of underground comics. The history includes stories of Keroauc, William S. Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore, as well as unsung heroes such as “hobohemian” Slim Brundage of Chicago’s College of Complexes café.  Although some of the stories’ facts are contested, the book itself is a testament to the unruly and revolutionary nature of an artistic generation.

May: Sag Harbor, by Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead’s fifth novel follows Benji, an African-American teenager who represents the “black boys with beach houses” by spending his summers at Sag Harbor. The characters challenge what it means to be “post-black” by resisting the urge to give into racial stereotype. Benji and his friends have BB gun wars, lust after hip-hop star Lisa Lisa, and confront the message behind “turning the other cheek.” Whitehead’s story is fiction, but follows the nuance of memoir, and offers a fresh voice not only for African-Americans, but for citizens of the Obama generation.

June: The Heyday of Insensitive Bastards: Stories, by Robert Boswell

Every word in this book packs a punch, as evidenced by the original title. Boswell’s thirteen stories feature the lost, wayward souls whose desires compete with their limited environs: addicts, cleaning ladies, fortune tellers, priests, all teetering on the edge of their own specific “heyday.” Boswell’s work goes beyond the short form; previous books include Century’s Son and What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak. This latest short story collection is a great glimpse into his Southwestern world.

July: In the Heart of the Canyon, by Elisabeth Hyde

If you’re looking for an adventure, look no further than Hyde’s latest novel, whose diverse cast of characters are forced to examine their neuroses whilst navigating the rapids of the Grand Canyon. Hyde takes on it all: a quarrelsome husband and wife with their two teenage sons, a divorcee and her obese daughter, an elderly couple on their last trip, an arrogant college grad, a middle-aged Harvard professor and, of course, a dog named Blender. The river guides wade through both water and conflict as they attempt their 125^th trip down the canyon. This is a warm, well-written summer read that will inspire the adventurer in everyone.

August: Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers has done it again: he has combined sleek prose with real characters to prove a point without sounding preachy. Zeitoun follows the odyssey of a Muslim man and his family before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Our hero chooses to stay behind while his wife and children flee to safety, preferring to navigate the murky waters of the city streets to rescue his fellow citizens. Complications arise when his good intentions are mistaken as something more sinister, a plot choice that mirrors the confusion and chaos of FEMA politics and America post-9/11. Eggers skirts political criticism by couching it in a carefully written, beautifully handled novel.

September:  Juliet, Naked ,by Nick Hornby

Hornby welcomes us to the world of fandom with his latest novel, which revolves around a bizarre social triangle: Annie, her distant partner Duncan, and musician Tucker Crowe, Duncan’s hero. The plot thickens when Annie posts a review of Crowe’s latest album, “Juliet, Naked,” before Duncan does, sparking an unexpected correspondence between her and her husband’s idol. Hornby confronts the hidden side to popular icons, exploring the sincerity of fans and their adoration; a concept he himself might have some experience with, after publishing wildly successful High Fidelity and About a Boy.

October: Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon’s memoir gives a modern portrait of manhood from the perspective of a successful author (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union), husband, and, above all, father. His story is told in a series of linked essays that follows his childhood, his parents’ marriage and divorce, and the comedy of errors that is the transition to adulthood.

November: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Kingsolver’s ambitious new novel follows the lives of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera through the eyes of Harrison Shepherd, who has a Forrest-Gump-like ability to participate in a series of notable historic events. Shepherd works for Lev Trotsky, a  lost political revolutionary, and returns to the United States in time for the chaos of World War II. Kingsolver, who brought us Prodigal Summer and The Poisonwood Bible, merges history with fiction to shed light on an exciting era of the twentieth century.

December: Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession by Julie Powell

A surprising, humbling diary brought to you by the Julie of Julie & Julia fame, Powell’s latest book follows the grisly details of an extramarital affair that forces to examine her intentions. Her intimacy is not limited only to her lover; Powell is suddenly struck with a desire to learn how to butcher meat, a process that feels familiar as she painstakingly dissects her own love life. A private, yet modestly open meditation on what it means to redefine love, if not for her husband, than for the pursuit of challenge.

Are we missing something? What was your favorite book of 2009? Let us know!

Now that we’re in the thick of the holiday season, many of us are going the distance to see family, whether on a plane, Amtrak or Greyhound. Long, boring trips are the ideal time to make a dent in your reading list. Here are ten books, each under 250 pages, perfect for one day of travel in each direction. Just don’t read them while driving on the interstate.

1) Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Orwell is best known for his allegories of political paranoia, 1984 and Animal Farm. This is his first published book. Though he called it fiction, it is an account of his experiences working as a low-wage dishwasher in Paris and being homeless in England. It is written with wit and keenly observational prose that keeps it fresh today, and provides such advice as how to keep customers from detecting rats in a poorly run restaurant and how to use a taut rope as a pillow while sleeping on the street.

2) St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

This short story collection, published when its author was only 25, is absolutely crazy. Russell’s subjects range from the title story, about a school run by kindly nuns whose mission is converting the children of werewolves into real human girls, to a story about a family of minotaurs heading west on a covered wagon. No matter how bizarre the situations, Russell never loses sight of her characters’ human side.

3) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

This first novel by Indian journalist Aravind Adiga is narrated by a chauffeur in New Delhi who murders his rich employer. The chauffeur, who comes from a remote village that he refers to only as “the Darkness,” ruled by greedy landlords that resemble storks and wild boars, makes clear that India’s recent economic rise is only for a few, and that most Indians still have to seize whatever they can get. The novel has been criticized by Indian intellectuals who doubt Adiga’s authority to write in the voice of India’s poorest citizens, but the wicked intelligence of the narrator as he maneuvers through one tricky situation after another makes the novel a fast, gripping read, whatever you think of its message.

4) Sula by Toni Morrison

Though the epic Beloved is better-known, many critics consider this slim novel Morrison’s best book. It chronicles the lives of two girls who grew up in the Bottoms, a rural black community: one who stayed behind to raise a family and the other, Sula, who left for the cities and returns to wreak havoc among the menfolk. The novel reminded me of a compressed One Hundred Years of Solitude; Morrison’s story moves so swiftly across three generations that it seems almost magical.

5) Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

Funnier than Pale Fire and less scandalous than Lolita, Nabokov again satirizes America and academia in this comic novel about a bumbling Russian professor in New England. Pnin’s adventures are small-scale (getting on the wrong train while trying to be clever with the timetables, and thinking a prized punch bowl has been smashed during a faculty dinner party) but his awkward charm eventually wins over even the narrator, who has spent most of the novel mocking him. He may even make you reconsider that nerdy professor who you gave a 0 to on RateMyProfessors.com.

6) An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

Elizabeth McCracken’s memoir of having gone to France to have her child, then losing the pregnancy, deals with harrowing and personal subject matter in a way that is never sentimental or simplified. There is room for witty observations about the French (who, at the public pool, “could gossip while doing the backstroke”) and yet the reader can’t help but feel the magnitude of the author’s grief through McCracken’s clear-eyed essayistic detail.

7) The Quiet American by Graham Greene

This is the story of the friendship between a jaded British war correspondent and a young, idealistic American who thinks his country should come to the aid of the French in Vietnam. The Brit, however, thinks that the American’s high hopes will only lead to bloodshed, and his private prayer is, “God save us always from the innocent and the good.” The book was written in 1955 but perfectly predicted the Vietnam War, and may come back into relevance with President Obama’s recent troop increase in Afghanistan.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

If you have seen the movie starring Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett, don’t think you know the story of The Virgin Suicides. The novel is notable for having been written in the first person plural, in which a Greek chorus of suburban boys tells the story of their longstanding obsession with the five enigmatic sisters who killed themselves. The boys hardly appear in the movie, but the beauty and originality with which Eugenides depicts their intense speculation about the doomed Lisbon family makes the novel a completely different experience.

9) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Japanese-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro has movingly captured the voice of an aging English butler who has given every part of his soul to a level of service that has come, in the modern world, to seem increasingly meaningless. The best demonstration of this comes during a scene in which the butler does his best to cater to a chaotic dinner party while his father dies in the upstairs bedroom; Ishiguro makes this unbelievable character choice seem absolutely plausible and sad. If you think you would never be interested in reading about a repressed butler, this novel might prove you wrong.

10) Embers by Sandor Marai

Finally, this novel by Hungarian anti-fascist, anti-communist (so not very popular in Hungary until recently) author Sandor Marai is a brilliant, sustained duel between a retired general and the childhood friend who betrayed him on a hunting expedition long ago. The dramatic confrontation takes place at the general’s castle, in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, just before, for many Hungarians, the era when their whole world turned upside down.

Step 1: Read the Directions Slowly

Do not read the instructions fast. This is not a race, and getting through the instructions quickly will not do any good if you do not understand the instructions fully. It may sound silly or overly simplistic, but all too often students hastily read over the instructions and start writing their essays without realizing that they have missed a particular point in the prompt.

Step 2: Read the Directions More than Once

Some things are missed on the first read-through. Go over the instructions at least twice before you start writing your essay; read them again while you are in the middle of writing; and, read them at the end of writing your essay. It may sound like a lot of reading, but it is very easy to forget certain bits of information required in your compositions. You could start writing your essay, get some really good ideas, and have a great flow of words pour forth. But, your writing could also have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Instead of writing a biography of yourself, you began to focus on your mother’s history instead of sticking to how she raised you. This is why it is important to refer back to your instructions in the middle and at the end of writing, so you know that your ideas are staying on track.

Step 3: Highlight or Underline Specific Points

If the directions are a bit long, then it is a good idea to highlight or underline steps in the prompt you may forget. It is far from juvenile to write on your directions to clarify things. If anything, there are many teachers who are pleased to see that students underline important points. Teachers feel that if you are underlining parts of the instructions, you are doing your best to follow them correctly.

Step 4: Look Up Confusing Words or Phrases

Understanding directions is your top priority. If there are parts in the directions that are confusing, either ask your teacher to explain them, or look up the words in the dictionary. Do not be embarrassed to ask your teacher questions. It is better to ask for help before following the directions than to get back a bad grade that confirms you misunderstood the prompt.

“I believe in putting the horror in the mind of the audience and not necessarily on the screen.” – Alfred Hitchcock, in an interview with BBC reporter Huw Wheldon, May 5, 1965.

In 1954, notable director Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter John Michael Hayes sat down to adapt the Cornell Woolrich short story “It Had to Be Murder” into Rear Window, what later became one of the most renowned films in American history. The original story featured only three characters: injured journalist L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries, his girlfriend Stella, and Lars Thorwald, Jeff’s neighbor, who he suspects has murdered his wife. Hitchcock and Hayes expanded Woolrich’s world to include a star-studded cast (featuring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly), a complete Greenwich-style apartment complex, and a minimal score by Franz Waxman. Somehow, Hitchcock and his team created a  suspense-driven universe that played on themes of isolation, voyeurism, and romance. Just how did they do it? In today’s Write Like You Mean It, we’ll share some of Hitchcock’s own personal philosophies for creating a Window of your own.

First, one of the first trailers for Hitchcock’s “masterpiece thriller:”

Hitchcock was known for his signature cinematography—the montages, wide panning shots, close-ups on characters, and dramatic angles for effect. Rear Window works as the perfect example for Hitchcock’s use of character, perspective, and setting to create suspense.

CHARACTER

Jeff, the film’s main character, is defined by his inability to move. The audience learns a lot about Jeff in the first introductory shots of his apartment; he camera slinks along Jeff’s bookshelf, where there are photos of an auto accident, and then focuses on his broken leg. He zooms in on a broken camera, copies of Jeff’s magazine, and draws in very close to a picture of Stella. Already, viewers can sense an innate conflict, and the possibility of romance.

Because Jeff can’t walk, he avoids his feelings of inadequacy by instead focusing on other people’s lives. The entirety of Rear Window is shot from a spectator’s perspective, which gives the film its nosey, dangerous feel, as if Hitchcock is letting the audience in on a secret. Perhaps he is suggesting a reality that most people wouldn’t care to admit: that in times of trouble, it is always easier to focus on other people’s problems.

PERSPECTIVE

Hitchcock got his start in silent films, a medium that required a strong visual sensibility to create narrative. He understood that the people can demonstrate a lot about themselves in the way they observe and react to their surroundings. Rear Window epitomizes this first-person perspective because the viewers are simultaneously observing Jeff’s neighbors while they see Jeff’s reaction to his outside world. When his neighbors discover that their dog has been killed, the camera jumps from an image of the dog being raised to the couple’s balcony in a basket to a shot of Jeff’s face. Jeff doesn’t say anything; instead, Hitchcock focused on the juxtaposition of Jeff’s physical reaction to the dog’s death.

One of Hitchcock’s methods for establishing drama is when he breaks from Jeff’s perspective. Because the majority of the film is seen through his eyes, the few moments when the camera turns and focuses its lens on Jeff itself are often the most thrilling.  One could interpret this as sudden personal scrutiny: in watching a film, we too have become voyeurs, and when the camera turns,  we are forced to recognize ourselves. In one scene, Jeff has fallen asleep in front of his open window. The camera turns outside, where viewers can witness the drama going on across the courtyard. Hitchcock is revealing a part of the story to the viewers that his own protagonist can’t see. He referred to this as revealing “information.” In his 1964 interview with BBC reporter Huw Wheldon, he says:

“One’s challenged by the audience. They’re saying to me ‘show us’ and ‘I know what’s coming next’… and I say, ‘do you?’ And therefore, that’s the avoidance of the cliché automatically.”

SETTING

Rear Window is set in an apartment complex in Greenwich Village with buildings that face each other across a courtyard. The entire set was constructed in Paramount Studios, where the apartments were carefully designed so the lights and sound would reflect back to Jeff’s view. Hitchcock had decided against a huge Hollywood music score, and although Waxman’s score was important, he supplemented it with background sounds that were heard across the courtyard. Miss Torso’s dance routines and the pianist’s daily practicing become important dramatic elements.

The script had originally included a scene with Jeff and his boss in his office, but Hitchcock later scrapped it because the drama was so defined by the apartment complex setting. The story is cemented in place, much like Jeff, which furthers the film’s sense of isolation.

TIPS, A LA HITCHCOCK

Few writers or directors have influenced visual storytelling as much as Alfred Hitchcock. Are you a budding cinematographer? Aspiring screenwriter? Here are some tips to get you started:

1)    Onscreen, storytelling is visual. It is important to have strong dialogue, but remember to let your characters speak without words. Take a note from Jimmy Stewart and let the characters pause, react, and think before acting.

2)    Trust your audience. Invite them in to the life of the story, even (or especially) if the protagonist doesn’t know.

3)    Humor is key. Many writers maintain that there is an important relationship between humor and suspense—both trigger physical, emotional responses.

What is your favorite Hitchcock Film?

One of the great things about the English language is the way it is constantly evolving (for instance, the phrase “Schwing!” was all the rage in the early ‘90s, and hardly anyone says that anymore. Ask an older sibling – or Wikipedia – if you’re unsure of the definition.) Sometimes, however, terrific words get swept aside in favor of shiny new ones. In this series, we will look at words that have fallen into disrepair, and try to patch them up by showing their modern equivalent. Sometimes a word has been replaced by a compound word that is more specific to today’s world, and sometimes the exact same word has a completely different meaning than it carried in another era. Most often, though, there is no longer an exact term that brings the same succinctness and zing to what it is describing as these antiquated words do. In our effort to bring back words from the past, here’s Eduify’s first installment of 5 old words.

1) Goliard

This originally referred to a group of hard-drinking university students in the Middle Ages who would wander from town

to town, singing ribald songs and satirizing the Church for engaging in ridiculous practices, such as the Crusades. They would, for instance, each drag a herring behind them as they walked to Mass, and attempt to squash each other’s herrings without letting their own be stepped on, in order to mock what they saw as the absurd religious rituals of their era.

Even after the Goliards faded out as a protest movement, the term remained in general use, finding its way into the works of medieval authors such as Chaucer, where it refers to a wandering minstrel. The closest modern equivalent would probably be the mysterious monastic order known as the fraternity, whose adherents wander from college town to college town in search of tailgating during a football game, take part in arcane initiation rituals like making new members eat live goldfish, and would love it if you handed them your guitar.

2) Daedal

If you are familiar with Greek mythology, you may have heard of Daedulus, who built a labyrinth so complex even he could hardly find his way out of it, to house the man/bull creature called the Minotaur. Since he was the only one who knew the labyrinth’s secrets, King Minos locked him in a tower to keep him quiet. He escaped by crafting wings out of wax for himself and his son Icarus, who ended up flying too close to the sun so that the wings melted, and plummeted into the sea. Daedulus ended up cursing his own skill as an artist.

The word “daedal,” an adjective, came to mean something that is particularly artistic. It also carries the implication that the thing it refers to is overly designed and complex, such as a Web site adorned with eight flashing banners that triggers sixteen pop-up quizzes. Perhaps that girl who sits next to you in math class and spends the whole hour adding individual hairs to the mane of the horse she is drawing is being a bit daedal. (Or perhaps, like young horse doodler Leonardo da Vinci, she is secretly a genius.)

3) Caravansary (or Caravanserai)

In the days when many goods were transported in long trading caravans across the desert, especially the silk routes through Persia, enterprising townspeople would set up “caravan palaces” for the drivers to stop at. These typically included stalls and fodder for the pack animals, baths, bed and dinner for the humans. There might also be shops selling travelers’ supplies, and excess goods unloaded by the merchants passing through.

Now that merchandise is more likely to be transported in trucks than on the backs of camels, the caravansary’s modern equivalent is a truck stop, where people who have been driving across the vast countryside for days can enjoy a shower, a nap in their rig, and a fast-food taco (personally, I would prefer to eat a camel.)

4) Bedizen

Bedizen: This is a modification of the even older term “dizen,” which means to dress a distaff in flax. (The distaff is the part of the spinning wheel that holds the unspun flax; flax is a plant once used to produce fibers for clothing. Contrary to what you may have learned from the Rumpelstiltskin story, do not count on using a spinning wheel to turn straw into gold as a reliable source of income.)

With the “be” attached to it, this word means to ornament something or someone in gaudy finery. You might, for instance, say that the family on your block who puts up their Christmas tree lights on the day after Halloween (and keeps them up until the Fourth of July) has bedizened their house in candy canes, glowing Santas and weird animatronic reindeer.

5) Dumbledore

Long before J.K. Rowling appropriated this word to christen Professor Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, it was a slang term in southern England for the fat, fuzzy, drowsy insects now known throughout the English-speaking world as bumblebees. “Dore” is from the Old English for insect, and “dumble”, like the now-popular “bumble,” is an onomatopoeic adjective for the droning hum the bee makes with its wings. If you saw this particular wizard buzzing around your garden, would you swat him?

Today the word Dumbeldore has the greatest resonance with reference to Harry Potter. A loud and quite amuzing instance of this resonance is the viral YouTube video below.

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What old word do you think is ready for a comeback, and why?