Writing Lessons Learned from WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

I recently finished reading WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen, and loved it. As with any book, I learned a great deal from this one. Here goes:

• Character development through interaction with animals. We instantly love two of the main characters because of their affection for animals. They sneak food to them. They risk danger in order to protect animals from the bad guys. On the flip side, the bad guys jump off the page with their viciousness. At one point a lit cigarette is flicked into the elephant's open mouth. In another scene, we suffer through the elephant's cries as she's beaten mercilessly.
• First person present tense is not just for YA literature. Obvious, I know. But before reading The Hunger Games, I don't remember having read a book with this POV. YA literature is riddled with first person/present tense, and now I'm used to it. I thought it worked in this book, even though it's not YA.
• Alternating points of view with the same character adds depth. In ELEPHANTS, the author deftly switches between two eras of the main character's life. One is in the 1930's, when the MC was a young man traveling with the circus. The other is when he's an old man, wasting away in a nursing home. It made me think of each person sitting in a nursing home now, and all the stories they must have bottled up inside them.
• Brilliant words that add sound. Clatter, howl, nicker, screech, clackety-clack, clip-clop, snort. These sound words, and many more, added dimension to the story. I felt like I was there, listening to the raucous life of a circus.
• Circus life sounds exciting, but it was a gritty business. I read the author's note at the end of the book, where she explained the depth of her research. Many of the circus scenes and ideas in the book sound outrageous, but they're based on fact. Wow.

Now that I've read the book, I want to see the movie. Have you read this book or seen the movie? What was your opinion?

photo credit

Tips for Word Thieves

I have a new habit I'd like to share with you. Maybe it's lame, and maybe it's short-lived, but I'm loving it. It started with the nonfiction book FIRE LOVER, and now I'm doing it with WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. I've become a bona fide word thief. Here's my looting strategy:

1. When reading a book, I keep a slip of blank paper tucked between the pages, and a pencil close by.
2. When I come across an amazing word, one I would've ignored in a thesaurus, I jot it down on the slip of paper.
3. I struggle with adding sound, so when I come across a great "sound" word, I add it to the list.
4. If the word is used in an unusual context, I write down the entire phrase.
5. When my slip of paper is full, or when I've finished my reading session, I transfer the words to a computer document. I've given them easy peasy file names, such as NOTES FOR FIRE LOVER.
6. I type the words in alphabetical order, avoiding duplicates.

The pro of doing this is that I've unearthed amazing words that I'd normally ignore, and I've sprinkled them in my manuscript. As we all know, certain words evoke a specific mood, and if you're writing a scene with the same mood, you've got a supply of relevant words to work with. The con of doing this is slower reading time.

So tell me, are you a partner in crime? Do you steal words from amazing books, and if you do, what's your system?

(Funny side note...when I was searching for a photo for this post, I discovered there was a game called Word Thief. I had no idea! It sounds like fun, though.)