Mourning the Lake County Fair--Again

 

With one exception, I have competed in the Lake County Fair photography exhibit every year since 2015. That exception was 2020, when the entire Fair was shut down for COVID. Unfortunately, this year will be another exception. I had selected the photos (but fortunately not printed them yet) and sent in the entry form only to receive a letter saying that the photography exhibit is cancelled for this year because the building where it is held is structurally unsound. That wasn’t determined until inspected after a recent storm, so the fair committee didn’t have time to find a replacement location.

Although I compete in club competitions nine months of the year, I generally do better at the Lake County Fair. It’s also more fun because it requires a different kind of image selection process, with discrete categories and size restrictions. In fact, all photos must be 8X10 or 10X8, so sometimes it’s a challenge to decide what to leave in and what to crop out. Because of these differences between the club competitions and the one at the Lake County Fair, I was sorry I couldn’t participate in 2020, and I will also miss participating this year.

Since I don’t have the Lake County Fair as an outlet, I figured I would use this one to display a few of the many images I had planned to enter. They wouldn’t necessarily be the judge’s favorites, but they are mine.

The osprey at the top of this post was shot last month while it was flying over the Snake River in Washington. I would have entered it in the B&W Wildlife category.

Also from that trip is this photo of Multnomah Falls along the Columbia River in Oregon, which I would have entered in the B&W Scenic category.

One of the fun categories is called “Artistic Effect.” Most of the entries in it are photos that have been creatively doctored using postprocessing software, as I did with this one taken from a section of a pulpit in Mattias Church at Budapest, Hungary during a 2024 cruise.

This string of orchids was taken in Bangkok, Thailand in January.

The next photo shows a Portrait of a Vietnamese girl and was also taken in January. It demonstrates the dilemma created by having the 8X10 size restriction. Do I include her feet in the colorful sandals, which means I also have to include the uninteresting stuff on the left, or do I zoom in closer to her face to cut off the boring parts and lose the shoes as well? I would have tried it both ways before deciding.

This final photo would have been entered in the Human Interest category. The couple are my niece and her new husband at their farm wedding last August. (That’s my sister-in-law as the “limousine” driver.)

Entries must have been taken no more than three years before the fair, so all of these photos still qualify for next year. I would rather have entered them in 2025, though, to leave room for others I take before then.

But sometimes you just have to grin and bear it.

Sacrificing Grammar for Realism

 

One of the advantages of writing in the third person is that you can zoom in to the POV character’s thoughts or zoom out to an objective account. To use a not very good example, here is the same incident from the two ends of the spectrum.

Blasted sand. Hot and gritty. Annoying when wearing shoes, but unbearably painful in bare feet.

On the hottest day of the summer, an elderly man walked along the beach carrying his shoes and scowling.

I tend to write nearer to but not at the closest zoom-in point, reflecting the character’s thoughts without getting right into his head. To use the same incident:

Dave hated the beach, especially on such a hot day where the sand burned his feet. If his shoes didn’t pinch so badly, he'd put them back on.

Here we get insight into Dave’s emotions (he hated the beach), his physical discomfort (the sand burned his feet), and his motivation in going barefoot (his shoes pinched). Yet we aren’t quite in his head since he wouldn’t think of himself as “Dave” or “he.”

In using this point on the zoom spectrum, I try to include the POV character’s prejudices and wrong conclusions. For example, if Dave thinks his wife doesn’t love him, the narrative would say, “Millie didn’t love him,” even though she does. I don’t say, “he thought Millie didn’t love him” or put those thoughts in italics, because that would zoom me out further than I want to go.

On the other hand, I may not follow his thinking completely if the grammar would make me wince. I’m not talking about dialogue here, where the reader expects to hear it the way the character would say it. But what about in narrative that is supposed to match his thoughts?

That’s the dilemma I am facing in my current writing project. My POV character, Matthew, is self-centered. Instead of “Pa, Jackson, and me,” he would think of “me, Pa, and Jackson.” I’ve been doing it the way he would think it, but it makes me wince. Worse, it makes me wonder if the reader will put the story down because he or she thinks I don’t know my grammar. So what am I to do?

Fortunately, I still have time to figure it out.

Ambiguous Characters

 

Ambiguity can be good or bad, depending on the writer’s purpose. If a writer is looking for clarity, then ambiguity is his or her enemy. If the writer wants to keep the reader guessing, however, then ambiguity is his or her friend. This is true of characters as well as events and circumstances.

Professor Snape from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is a good example. Is he friend or foe? Most of the time he looks like a villain, and then something happens and you wonder. Even if you think you’ve figured it out by the end of a book, the next one makes you question your earlier conclusion. It isn’t until the end of the series that we discover the answer. And no, I’m not going to spoil it for you.

The photo at the top of this post shows a Jack of Clubs that I intentionally distorted to make it ambiguous. If you look closely you can tell it’s a Jack, although the clubs are harder to see. That’s what happens with an ambiguous character. The reader gets enough detail to make out the character’s more superficial traits, but the deeper ones are unclear.

I used the Jack of Clubs to represent an ambiguous character in one of my current works-in-progress, which takes place in 1850 when gambling had fewer restrictions than it does now. My protagonist, Matthew, is befriended by Addison, who is a professional gambler. At first, Addison won’t let fourteen-year-old Matthew join in his poker games, declaring that Matthew is too young and too naïve. Eventually, however, he allows Matthew to play with ever-increasing amounts of money until Matthew steals money from his father and loses it all to his supposed friend.

When Matthew confronts the gambler about his betrayal, Addison says he was concerned about Matthew getting addicted and wanted to shock him into understanding that gambling doesn’t pay. Then the conversation continues as follows. (Keep in mind that this is the first draft and will probably change.)

“If you’re trying to teach me a lesson, I’ve learned it.” Matthew swallowed. “So you can give the money back now.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think you have learned it, and if I return the money, you never will.”

So is Addison a good guy or a bad guy? I don’t even know myself.

But sometimes a little ambiguity is a good thing.

Dueling Points of View

 

I’m trying something new with my current work. I had already completed the story of a twelve-year-old girl crossing the Isthmus of Panama with her family while heading to the California gold fields in 1850. However, Across the Isthmus is aimed at middle-grade girls, and I wanted to do something similar for boys.

The female protagonist in Across the Isthmus has a fourteen-year-old brother, so I am challenging myself by trying to write the same basic story from his point-of-view. Nobody sees the same events in the exact same way, and one POV character may concentrate on entirely different matters than another does. Still, if both narrators are reliable, shared scenes should contain a lot of similarities. Finding the right balance between “facts” and “perceptions” is a challenge, especially when it comes to dialogue.

Most stories (including mine) need dialogue to keep them interesting, and, of necessity, both books share some dialogue. As in real life, the two characters are unlikely to both remember the conversation word-for-word, but the contents at least should be close (again, given that they are reliable narrators). But when the characters don’t remember it the same, how much variation can I get away with?

That wouldn’t be a problem if I could be sure that the two books would have no common readers. They are being written for different audiences—one for girls and one for boys—but that is no guarantee that the same person won’t read both. I don’t want a reader to say, “That wasn’t what it said in the other book,” but I also don’t want the reader to toss the second book aside as unrealistic because the two characters have such great memories that they remember the conversation (and the facts) exactly the same way. This is a real dilemma that I am struggling with as I write.

The challenge is to find the line between making the stories different enough to account for the two points of view but similar enough to show them experiencing the same circumstances.

These types of challenges make writing hard work.

But they are also what makes it fun.

__________

The photo at the head of this post shows an 1850 painting by Charles Christian Nahl titled “Der Isthmus von Panama auf der Höhe des Chargres River” (“The Isthmus of Panama at the Height of the Chargres River”).