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The readers are clearly the real winners here

So - here´s a spoiler-free review of Vinnarna. The spolerish one is far longer, and I´m still so in awe of the whole book that I have to think it through. This book is probably one of the most important books I´ve ever read!

"SHE is the bear", might be all about Alicia. Then again, Backman crafted the book to feel like it´s also directed at Mira, Maya, Ramona, Adri, Fatimah, Hannah, Tess and all the other women. The mothers, sisters or daughters flocking about her, taking up their daily struggles to help her, or to help "the next Maya", for that matter.

And about the men who care for them and support them, who have also factored into making Alicia everything she is to become.

I´m just so grateful this book was written by a man. A man who seemes to have understood more about being a woman than most men. Maybe even more than a few women I know.

I love how he respects and really has an eye for people who stand out, who are different in one way or another - be it country of origin, skin-colour, faith, orientation, health or any number of things great or small.

This tale is about amazing feelings of unity a family, a group of friends or being part of a team can bring us, but it´s also about the vulnerability of beeing left out and the destruction that may cause. It´s so spot on concerning what it´s like to be a single individual in a complex society. How each person has their own struggle and their own reasons for making their choices.

The complete stories of Björnstad are both marvellous fairy-tales and hard-hitting tragedies all at once. Every single person is taken seriously. They get to be heroes or villians in the eyes of their people and of society - depending on their life-choices.

I´ve been awaiting this book for a long time, but I didn´t expect it do go even deeper than it´s predecessors. It did, though. Made me laugh so hard I cried and cry helplessly. It stared right back at me from the abyss it created, made me furious and grief-stricken but really hit my heart. Violence begets violence, bullying seems to be hereditary, and even worse - it seems to spread. Men will be brought up in the image of their fathers and society moves forward at a painstakingly low pace - evil seeping in through every crack.

Love is our only weapon, our only consolation - and it´s fearfully fragile and easily shot down. These are uncomfortable truths. Especially if we try to silence them and push away those who speak them. To not be part of it, you need to stand up against misogyny, bullying and hate-speech whereever you see it.

If you don´t get in the way - who will?

This saga started with a poem on Amat´s wall. The one about doing good anyway. After reading Vinnarna, those words feel like the sum of everything Backman is trying to tell us.

There will always be good people - who build (cathedrals) anyway. They won´t always win, but when they do, it will be glorious and it will shine in the most unexpected of places.

The books about Björnstad are a very real example of that. They are all masterpieces, and though we readers suffered some heavy losses along the way, I do consider us the real winners.

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How To Foreshadow

Foreshadowing is a necessary part of any well-executed story. And yet, despite all its prevalence and importance, it’s actually a concept that many authors have a hard time getting their minds around. If we sift foreshadowing down to its simplest form, we could say that it prepares readers for what will happen later in the story.

At first glance, this may seem counter-intuitive. Why would we want readers to know what’s going to happen later in the story? If they know how the book turns out, they’ll have no reason to read on.

True enough. So let me reiterate. The point of foreshadowing is to prepare readers for what happens later in the story. Not tell them,just prepare them.

Foreshadowing’s great strength lies in its ability to create a cohesive and plausible story. If readers understand that it’s possible that someone in your story may be murdered, they won’t be completely shocked when the sidekick gets axed down the road. If, however, you failed to properly foreshadow this unhappy event,readers would be jarred. They would feel you had cheated them out of the story they thought they were reading. They would think you had, in essence, lied to them so you could trick them with this big shocker.

Readers don’t like to be cheated, lied to, or tricked. And that’s where foreshadowing comes into play.

Foreshadowing, Part 1: The Plant

We can break foreshadowing down into two parts. The first is the plant. This is the part where you hint to readers that something surprising and/or important is going to happen later in the book. If the bad guy is going to kidnap the good guy’s son, your plant might be the moment when your hero notices a creepy dude hanging around the playground. If your heroine is going to be left standing at the altar, your plant might be her fiancé’s ambivalence toward the wedding preparations.

Depending on what you’re foreshadowing, the plant can be blatant or subtle. Subtle is almost always better, since you don’t want to giveaway your plot twists. But, at the same time, your hints have to be obvious enough that readers will remember them later on.

Usually, the earlier you can foreshadow an event, the stronger and more cohesive an effect you will create. The bigger the event, the more important it is to foreshadow it early. As editor Jeff Gerke puts it in The First 50 Pages:

Basically, you need to let us in on the rules. If the climax of your book is going to consist of getting into a time machine and jumping away to safety, we had better have known in the first fifty pages that time travel is possible in the world of your story.

Foreshadowing, Part 2: The Payoff

Once you’ve got your plant in place, all that’s left is to bringthe payoff on stage. If you planted hints about kidnapping, jilting, or time travelling, this is the part where you now get to let these important scenes play out.

As long as you’ve done your job right with the plant, you probably won’t even need to reference your hints from earlier. In fact, you’re likely to create a more solid effect by letting readers put the pieces together themselves.

But you’ll also find moments, usually of smaller events that were given less obvious plants, that will benefit from a quick reference to the original hint (e.g., “George,you big meanie! Now I understand why you wouldn’t choose between the scarlet and the crimson for the bridesmaids’ dresses!”)The most important thing to remember about the payoff is that it always needs to happen. If you plant hints, pay them off. Just as readers will be confused by an unforeshadowed plot twist, they’ll also be frustrated by foreshadowing that excites them and then leads nowhere.

Foreshadowing vs. Telegraphing

The trick to good foreshadowing is preparing your readers on a subconscious level for what’s coming without allowing them to guess the ins and outs of the plot twist. You don’t want your hints to be so obvious that they remove all suspense. In her October 2012 Writer’s Digest article “Making the Ordinary Menacing: 5 Ways,” Hallie Ephron calls this “telegraphing”:

When you insert a hint of what’s to come, look at it critically and decide whether it’s something the reader will glide right by but remember later with an Aha!That’s foreshadowing. If instead the reader groans and guesses what’s coming, you’v etelegraphed.

Some clever readers will undoubtedly be able to interpret your hints, no matter how cagey you are. But if you can fool most of the readers most of the time, you can’t ask for more than that.

Foreshadowing vs. Foreboding

Foreboding—that skin-prickling feeling that somethinghorrible is going to happen—can be a useful facet of foreshadowing. By itself, foreboding isn’t specific enough tobe foreshadowing. Unlike the plants used for foreshadowing, foreboding is just an ambiguous aura of suspense. Jordan E. Rosenfeld describes it in Make a Scene:

[F]oreshadowing … hints at actual plot events to come, [but]foreboding is purely about mood-setting. It heightens the feeling of tension in a scene but doesn’t necessarily indicate that something bad really will happen.

Foreboding is useful in setting readers’ emotions on edge without giving them any blatant hints. But when it comes time to foreshadow important events, always back up your foreboding by planting some specific clues.Most authors have so intrinsic an understanding of foreshadowing that they plant it and pay it off without even fully realizing that’s what they’re doing. But the better you understand the technique, the better you can wield it. Using this basic approach to foreshadowing, you can strengthen your story and your readers’ experience of it.

Source x

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How to Kick a Reader in the Gut

Disrupt the reader’s sense of justice. 

This generally means setting a character up to deserve one thing and then giving them the exact opposite. 

Kill a character off before they can achieve their goal. 

Let the bad guy get an extremely important win. 

Set up a coup against a tyrannical king. The coup fails miserably.

Don’t always give characters closure. 

(Excluding the end of the book, obviously)

A beloved friend dies in battle and there’s no time to mourn him.

A random tryst between two main characters is not (or cannot be) brought up again.

A character suddenly loses their job or can otherwise no longer keep up their old routine

Make it the main character’s fault sometimes. 

And not in an “imposter syndrome” way. Make your MC do something bad, and make the blame they shoulder for it heavy and tangible.

MC must choose the lesser of two evils.

MC kills someone they believe to be a bad guy, only to later discover the bad guy was a different person altogether.

Rejection is a powerful tool. 

People generally want to be understood, and if you can make a character think they are Known, and then rip that away from them with a rejection (romantic or platonic) people will empathize with it.

MC is finally accepting the Thing They Must Do/Become, and their love interest decides that that’s not a path they want to be on and breaks up with them

MC makes a decision they believe is right, everyone around them thinks they chose wrong.

MC finds kinship with someone Like Them, at long last, but that person later discovers that there is some inherent aspect of MC that they wholly reject. (Perhaps it was MC’s fault that their family member died, they have important religious differences, or WERE THE BAD GUY ALL ALONG!)

On the flipside, make your main character keep going. 

Push them beyond what they are capable of, and then push them farther. Make them want something so deeply that they are willing to do literally anything to get it. Give them passion and drive and grit and more of that than they have fear.

“But what if my MC is quiet and meek?” Even better. They want something so deeply that every single moment they push themselves toward it is a moment spent outside their comfort zone. What must that do to a person?

Obviously, don’t do all of these things, or the story can begin to feel tedious or overly dramatic, and make sure that every decision you make is informed by your plot first and foremost. 

Also remember that the things that make us sad, angry, or otherwise emotional as readers are the same things that make us feel that way in our day-to-day lives. Creating an empathetic main character is the foundation for all of the above tips.

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Oh - finally!

I know - I can hardly say «finally» when it’s only been three years since «Vi mot er» and it hasn’t even been a year since I read the first two books. Actually, I’m not really sure I’ve quite finished with any of the two yet, either.

(But my favourite books in the world are A Song of Ice and Fire. And for the last ten years I’ve been fearing never getting to read the end of that series. So I’m usually quite pessimistic concerning authors finishing their works… I might actually have waited to pick up Björnstad had I been aware of it being the first book in a trilogy.)

But back to Vinnarna or Björnstad if you will. About that blurb… Its omminent and I love that. People will dream, love, hate, fight, return, grieve, die… And there probably won’t be a happy ending? I can get behind that - I can look forward to that.

The publisher has announced it on October 6th. I’ve marked the date…

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On Writing for Yourself and Not for Notes

AKA How to Enjoy Writing for the Sake of it

Get off social media! I know it’s tempting to blabber on about a WIP to get those hella cool notes, but doing so only reinforces that writing’s only fun if it gets you attention. We all need that boost now and again, but too much of it will whittle away your self-reliance. Close your laptop, leave your phone in a different room, and sit down with a notebook if possible and if you need to. You’ll get to know what enthralls you personally about your story.

Don’t write for an audience for now. Tumblr likes to do this thing where it says “blah blah blah X is problematic in media” and while it’s well-intentioned, internalizing too much of this can make you feel like you’re trying to write through a maze and constantly failing at it. Forget about your audience–you can flag and catch problematic stuff in edits after tossing it to the betas.

Remember what made thirteen-year-old you lose their mind? Yeah, write that. Once you’ve let go of writing for an audience, you won’t worry about being “cringey” anymore, and that’s when things start to get real good and real fun. You don’t have to show your writing to anyone, or even tell them you wrote it, so just go buckwild! Trust me, it’s so liberating.

Your inner critic is useful–but not now. Shut that bitch up! Your job when drafting is to make something. If you did that, you win, so your critic’s opinion is worth squat here. However, if you try to fight her {I always envision mine as some bitchy middle-aged woman lol} she’s just gonna get louder. So tell yourself you can be as critical of your writing as you want during edits. You’re not working for perfect, or even good right now. You’re working for existing.

Remember that this is a process. Companies like tumblr are investing a BUNCH of cash into getting you to stay glued to their platforms, and if you’re a creator this might manifest in your feeling like you need to live your creative life online. You don’t. But retraining your brain isn’t easy. Remember that divorcing yourself from the validation of online noise takes work and time and a lot of discomfort and redirecting, especially for folks like me who thrive on routine. And don’t discipline. Redirect. Negativity has no right to be in your creative space ♥️

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“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman.” - Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

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Zero Drafts and Fast Drafting

A zero draft is similar to a first draft but represents something psychologically different.  Zero drafts relieve the pressure to uphold a certain level of quality a writer might expect in a first draft. Often, zero drafts are written quickly and without completion. In this way, they bridge between an outline and a more refined draft.

For me, zero drafts allow exploration without commitment. I can extend my outline into something more tangible. Through this, I expose walls, plot holes, missing scenes, and extraneous characters. Because I use zero drafts more to test plot and characters, it is conducive to fast drafting. I know any issues I find can be fixed later and the quicker I complete this version, the quicker I can build something from the base I’ve laid.

5 Tips to Draft Quickly

Plan writing time

Writing a lot of words in a short amount of time requires dedication. If you write whenever the mood strikes you, it is unlikely you will achieve your goals. You are allowed to schedule breaks, but avoid taking more than two days off in a row.

Set deadlines

Knowing when the draft needs to be complete is more of a push than just completing is “quickly”. You can set 4 months, 4 weeks, or lengths in between depending on how seasoned you are at fast drafting.

Beyond a project deadline, daily or weekly goals will help you to monitor progress so you can adjust your process as you go.

Plan your story (at least a little)

You do not have to have a Roman numeral outline with 5 levels of depth. However, if you plan nothing, you will likely hit a wall that will break your flow. I recommend planning the following at minimum:

Main character(s)

Beginning

Overarching conflict and/or main antagonist

2-3 intermediate conflicts

Ending (optional)

Write with flow

Write however the words come. You don’t have to describe characters or setting if it doesn’t come in the moment. Likewise, you can describe in excruciating detail and cut it later. You can use placeholders, skip scenes, and write out of order. Anything that keeps you adding to the word count, do it. It can and will be fixed later. The faster you write, the faster you can edit.

Add accountability

Accountability can come internally or externally.

Internally:

Track daily word counts

Reward when you hit a milestone (chapter, word count, page count)

Externally:

Post on social media whether you hit a goal

Tell a friend

Zero drafts are good ways to get ideas out and onto the page as quickly as possible without worrying about smaller details that will be tackled in edits and later drafts.

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not sure what should happen next in your story?

Embarrass your protagonist. Make them seem weak and vulnerable in some way.

Shoot someone. That always takes the reader by surprise. 

In relation, kidnap someone. Or, rather, make it seem to your protagonist like someone has been kidnapped. 

Have one of your side characters disappear or become unavailable for some reason. This will frustrate your protagonist.

Have someone kiss the wrong girl, boy, or person, especially if you’ve been setting up a romance angle. It’s annoying.

If this story involves parents, have them argue. Push the threat of divorce, even if you know it won’t ever happen. It’ll make your readers nervous.

Have someone frame your protagonist for a crime they didn’t commit. This could range from a dispute to a minor crime to a full-blown felony.

If this is a fantasy story involving magic or witchcraft, create a terrible accident that’s a direct result of their spell-casting. 

Injure your protagonist in some way, or push them into a treacherous scenario where they might not make it out alive. 

Have two side characters who are both close to the protagonist get into a literal fist-fight. This creates tension for the reader, especially if these characters are well-developed, because they won’t know who to root for.

Make your protagonist get lost somewhere (at night in the middle of town, in the woods, in someone else’s house, etc.) 

Involve a murder. It can be as in-depth and as important as you want it to be. 

Introduce a new character that seems to prey on your protagonist’s flaws and bring them out to light.

If it’s in-character, have one of your characters get drunk or take drugs. Show the fallout of that decision through your protagonist. 

Spread a rumor about your protagonist. 

If your protagonist is in high-school, create drama in the school atmosphere. A death of a student, even if your protagonist didn’t know them personally, changes the vibe. 

If your story involves children, have one of them do something dangerous (touch a hot stove, run out into the road, etc.) and show how the protagonist responds to this, even if the child isn’t related to them. 

In a fantasy story, toss out the idea of a rebellion or war between clans or villages (or whatever units you are working with). 

Add a scenario where your protagonist has to make a choice. We all have watched movies where we have screamed don’t go in there! at the top of our lungs at the main character. Make them go in there. 

Have your protagonist find something, even if they don’t understand the importance of it yet. A key, a document, an old stuffed animal, etc. 

Foreshadow later events in some way. (Need help? Ask me!)

Have your protagonist get involved in some sort of verbal altercation with someone else, even if they weren’t the one who started it. 

Let your protagonist get sick. No, but really, this happens in real life all the time and it’s rarely ever talked about in literature, unless it’s at its extremes. It could range from a common cold to pneumonia. Maybe they end up in the hospital because of it. Maybe they are unable to do that one thing (whatever that may be) because of it.

Have someone unexpected knock on your protagonist’s door. 

Introduce a character that takes immediate interest in your protagonist’s past, which might trigger a flashback.

Have your protagonist try to hide something from someone else and fail.

Formulate some sort of argument or dispute between your protagonist and their love interest to push them apart. 

Have your protagonist lose something of great value in their house and show their struggle to find it. This will frustrate the reader just as much as the protagonist.

Create a situation where your protagonist needs to sneak out in the middle of the night for some reason.

Prevent your character from getting home or to an important destination in some way (a car accident, a bad storm, flat tire, running out of gas, etc.)

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questions to establish a relationship between characters

what did they like about each other when they met?

what do they like about each other now?

what didn’t they like about each other when they met?

what don’t they like about each other now?

what does each wish the other knew?

if someone asked one who the other was, what label would they use? (ex. my friend? my ex? the girl my friends are friends with?)

how would each person describe the other?

if one were to die tomorrow, what regrets would the other have?

is each of them satisfied with their relationship? why or why not?

what is keeping them in this relationship?

if they weren’t already in this relationship, would they choose to be in it now?

[artemisofthebow]

The Red Herring

The Red Herring is a writing tool in which the writer purposely dangles a clue or a suspect before the reader in an attempt at misleading them from the answer to a mystery. This clue is meant to sidetrack the reader from what is really going on in the narrative.

What exactly is a Red Herring?

As we said above, it is a trick to mislead the reader. Say there is a murder of a wealthy woman and there are three suspects: her husband, her lover & her servant. The husband acts edgy throughout the narrative, is shown to be jealous and quick to anger. The reader begins to suspect it was the husband who murdered his wife. While the reader is sizing up the hubby, nobody is watching the servant and the lover.

How to Write a Red Herring

The concept of a perfect Red Herring is playing on the preconceptions and prejudices of the audience. The audience excepts a certain suspect to every crime and a clue to turn out to be the key of the mystery. You have to think of the reader as a cat playing with a lazer. They will follow the path you place before them because they trust you (horrible mistake I know). Some helpful things to keep in mind:

The red herring is innocent. You must remember that. Don't trap yourself into writing the RH into the corner. The reveal will not work.

On the other hand, the guilty party should not be completely clean and innocent until they are reveal to be the villain/impor. The true reveal should never come out of nowhere.

Remember the prejudices of your audience. For example every crime show on TV has the husband the first suspect whenever a woman is killed.

Your clues do not have to be bloody knives and ill intentions. Clever clues such as scents left behind after a crime or the way a character speaks about the incident should also be used.

Other characters are a good device. If Character B thinks Character A is acting shady, the audience maybe swayed by the notion. After all we trust in our narrators, biased or not.

You must ask yourself: what does the reader expect?

Examples of Excellent Red Herrings

In Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan, Carter overhears the villain, Set, speaking French to a minion which leads both Carter and the reader to suspect Desjardins- the only French speaker in the narrative.

In Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, we suspect like every one in the narrative that Sirius Black is the antagonist. He is an escapee from a notorious wizard prison, convicted of multiple murders and his first appearances are rather dramatic. With everyone watching the convicted murderer, nobody is watching the rat.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, we are lead to believe that Cersei Lannister murdered Jon Arryn. She is certainly capable of it as well as having a strong motive. While looking at the very likely suspect of Cersei and the obvious motives, we are not seeing another murderer and another murderer. It was Littlefinger & Lysa, to "save" Sweet Robin/ begin the War of the Five Kings.

The film series Final Destination is a great example of this. In one scene, one of the victims is plugging in a dodgy radio whilst Death spills water across the floor only for him to slip on the water and fall into the bath instead of getting electrocuted. Another scene sees a gymnast on a bar with a nail sticking out of the bar. We expect her to step on the nail and fall to her death but instead another gymnast steps on it inciting a chain reaction.

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Not really Peter

Okay, so I get that no tv-series can be exactly like the book. But with the major change of character they put Peter through during the last episode, they might has well have given him a blond whig and told him to go scream for his dragons. Sorry, know it's a phony image, but I can only compare this to my disappointment about A Song of Ice and Fire. (Especially since I'm still not done being angry about that.) I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt concerning Peter. Actually, book-Peter can be a real tiresome goody-twoshoes sometimes. Even though I do love him for that, I see no problem with them letting him be the coach and not the manager. I even like how it gives the story something more visible by letting Peter and Kevin have a more significant relationship from the start.  Then came the last episode... Peter grew up in a home full of "alcohol and bruises". Sune used to care for him as a child. As a hockey-player he was never violent (He and Kevin have that in common).Neither does he drink. Actually, there are plenty of examples of him asking for something else while people around him are drinking. He's a family-man, even though og maybe because he didn’t have a family himself growing up. He's never loved anyone but Mira, he learnt to play the drums for Maya and he constantly tries to reach out to Leo. He is stickly and uptight and clumsy at best. Especially with espresso-machines.   The Peter Andersson of the last episode of the series wasn't at all recognisable to me, though. Having him drink, go to the pub to start a fight and doubting Maya, just felt wrong. I always loved him for never douting her for a second! For giving me as a reader the feeling that in the moment Kevin was arrested, he put his daughter before his hockey-team. We know he's universally hated for that in Björnstad, but I love him for it. 

So series-Peter was just not mye Peter. I don’t know why they changed everything like that. It was awful.  Hence my last rant about the series before I put it to rest.

That being said, it was a good show. It had plenty of the same heart as the original story, but there were a couple of things missing. I wish they would have made it longer and included all the good stuff they left out. Oh well - guess I'll have to find another story to analyze until the last book comes out.

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The problem with Benji

I started looking at the characters that I didn't feel got their due in the HBO-series Björnstad. Benji Ovich was perhaps the clearest example. He should have been more fleshed out for several reasons. Tv-Benji is treated a bit like Ana. He's there, but not anything like the character from the books. The actor does a good job with the material he has, he even looks about right. Even so, there's next to nothing left of book-Benji on screen. Benji has a whole lot of backstory with Kevin. Their friendship goes back as far as to when they both started playing hockey. Kevin tells us he was very lonely until he met Benji, and he also tells us his biggest fear is to wake up one day and find that Benji is lost to him. Kevin always was the player with a lot of precision and an eye for opportuities, while Benji was the one creating them through violent distractions. In many ways, Benji is just as important to the team as Kevin is. David even states how he doesn't think the team can win without Benji. The whole dynamic between David, Benji and Kevin is missing from the screen. Benji in the books has a dead father, three amazing sisters and his mum. He's also got so much backbone you feel your own crumbling while reading about him. The scene where he confronts Kevin head on, is one of the most powerful scenes in the book to me, and I’ll forever miss it from the screen. It cost Benji everything to let go of Kevin, but he does so anyway. He knows what Kevin has done, and he can't live with that. In the book, the story of how Benji relates to the basist is a story that stands in correlation with his feelings for Kevin. I really liked how subtly it is all played out and how it symbolizes his gradual movement away from Kevin. The entire plot is taken out of the series and has been replaced by an ok, but much more generic plot, one that doesn't really reflect Benji's personality to the same degree at all. They do try to portray some kind of connection between Benji and Kevin, but the scenes are too few and far in-between, and there is too much "tell" to have me feel any of it. Their friendship isn’t particulary interesting in the tv-series, and Benji taking the lead of his team after Kevin is arrested, doesn't have nearly the same impact. 

Tv-Benji doesn't stand up for Maya in the same way, he doesn't have his encounters with Jeanette in school or his sisters at home, he isn't quite as violent or devoted to Kevin. He is still an okay character, but not half as interesting as his book-self.

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My favourite reads of 2020:

According to my goodreads account, 2020 has been an excellent year for reading. (A bit self-explenatory - considering the circumstances.) Thought I’d have a look at which of the books I read I would like to recommend. I felt some books more keenly than the other ones, of course. Many of them have a message I especially like:

1. Björnstad / Us against you: Two parts of a series of which I’m eagerly awaiting the third book. They consist of several interesting stories and characters. At the heart of it all is a hockey-team, their victories and their losses. It is a story of a town so far north that the forrest keeps eating at it, one house at the time. It is about how most of the people living there need to reajust their attitudes and how hard it can be to change. 

2. Hør her’a: Best feel-good book of the year, even if it touched upon som impactful themes and questions. The main character, Mahmoud of 15, gets a visit from his pakistani uncle and has to guide him through Oslo. This allows the reader a look into his perception of the city, of “Norwegian Norwegians” and also into his neighbourhood. Mahmouds ponders some important questions on culture and identity. There are very clear obstacles in his way, but I like how it ends well. I don’t know if it’s a realistic ending, but I loved it even so. 

3. Not forgetting the whale:  Maybe I liked this one so much because it deals with a pandemic and felt so recognisable to our own situation this year. I love dystopic books, but this one managed to make me feel good as well as describing a form of apocalypse. The key to that was the unexpected factor that solved everything in the end. A perfect read for 2020. 

4. Min mormor hälsar och säger forlåt:  A real fairy-tale for grown ups, this one. I am amazed at how a grown man was able to write this wisely about mother-daughter-relations, about grandmothers and their grandchildren. The events of the book are both tragic and difficult for a seven year-old to deal with, but Elsa gradually discovers how her grandmothers fairy-tales all had some truth to them. And she learns that she actually has some of the bravest, most interesting characters from those stories present in her life.

5. Glasshjerte: The last 5-star rating om my list this year is definitely more than crime-fiction. It has beautiful descriptions, especially those seen through the eyes of mentally disabled Robin. The relation between him and his brother, Mikkel gives heart to the book. I also liked the investigatiors dealing with their own problems, one hypocondriac and one convicted fellon. A surprising, yet melancolly conclusion to it all made an extra impression on me. 

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I did mention I’d write a comment on the characterisations I felt were off in HBO’s Björnstad-series, who weren’t at all similar to what I expected after reading the books. 

There are several smaller characters I would have liked to see more of. Jeanette, Benji’s sisters, Kevin’s mum, Zacharias, Ramona and plenty more. But the fact that they have been left out doesn’t change the story like altering some of the main-characters does.

I most keenly felt the lack of background-stories on Ana, Bobo, Benji and the changes to Peter’s story. I’ll start by commenting on Ana and Bobo in this post.

Ana: The series version of Ana didn’t seem like the Ana we meet in the books. Especially since they’ve failed to mention how she grew up with an alcoholic and how she still chose to live with him when her mum left. She feels responsible for him and in a way, he shows some responsibility for her as well. 

All of Anas insecurities, skills, anger, strengths have been viped away by the tv-series. We don’t get to see how tough she is, how she saved Maya’s life as a kid, her constant battle with social norms and her counting all her scars and errors time and time again.

This even gets in the way of the viewers perception of her tragic flaw. She says herself that she isn’t cut out for a happy ending, and with her tendency to make rash decisions in anger, she might yet be right about that, 

I missed plenty of the moments between Ana and Maya, between Ana and her dad, and most of all how she had trouble relating to Maya being both verbally and physically attacked in school. The friendship between Ana and Maya is a dynamic one in the books. They don’t always see eye to eye, and I like that, but the two girls don’t have any history at all on scree. 

The actress does a good job, but with the lack of material, it’s as if Ana’s been replaced by some random girl, and the only thing remaining is her name. Not developing Ana properly will cause problems if they ever were to continue the series. I doubt they will, though, an that’s also a pity, because there are still lots of good, important stories to tell. 

Bobo: There isn’t a lot to say about Bobo in the series. I might mention that he’s so similar to Lyt it’s difficult to tell them apart. (Them being similar is actually mentioned by Fatima in the book, but I doubt it’s intentional) The viewers have only just learnt the difference between the two when Bobo has his big change of heart. 

In the book, this happens gradually and is really well described. We meet him in school for the first time, where he is essential to the hockey-team-mob. He rags on Amat and Zacharias and takes a leading roll inn harassing Jeanette during lessons. He continues being the bringer of misogynistic, homophobic jokes. We notice how he’s been picking on Amat and Zach and bragging too much for a while, but we also feel his pain of knowing he can’t skate well enough to ever be a good hockey-player and how that hurts him. 

Getting to know Amat chages him gradually in the books, but we also realise little by little how his parents have installed him with plenty of good values before that.

Neither Bobo nor his parents are all that present in the series. The long-standing friendship between Peter and Galten isn’t really presented to the viewer. It might still be there, but we don’t see any confidential conversations between them like we do in the books. 

Ann-Kathrin is in fact the on to examine Maya after she reports the rape. This occurs in the series too. But even so, she is clumsy at best when telling Maya she’s Bobo’s mum during the examination. As far as the viewer knows, that can only be a disadvantage in that particular situation. Maya has been raped, she’s reporting it an the one examining her is the mother of a guy from Kevin’s crowd. I wouldn’t like that if I were Maya. 

The scene where Ann-Kathrin stands up to Lyt to protect Amat isn’t there at all. Both Galten and Ann-Kathrin are present at the meeting without saying much at all, which is something of a pity.

The character of Bobo wasn’t one I liked immediately. I didn’t notice him all that much when reading the first book. He grew on me during Us against you, where his skating is still clumsy at best, he still makes too many homophobic jokes and wonders wether it’s important to have a good-looking cock, but he’s Amat’s friend. A good friend and a good brother to his siblings.

I wish he would have had more time on screen during the series. After all, his development was tremendous and he still has a role to play in this story. The impact of his mother’s death and him taking on responsibilities won’t weigh as heavy when the background is not as clear. 

I can see why they concentrated on the main story and that not every character can have their due attention in a series like this. But why not extend it with a couple of episode and have characters like these two be just as essential to the story as they are? 

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“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ― Carl Jung

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how to read like a writer

I see a lot of posts about how people will read an amazing book and feel like they’ll never be able to do anything like it, and it completely discourages them. I’ll admit, it’s really difficult as an unestablished writer to picture yourself writing something as amazing as what you’ve just read, but the important thing to remember is that these amazing pieces can build the foundation of your own work, and that reading these things is to your own advantage. Some important questions to keep in mind while reading are:

What is the author including that I’m not? Is there anything in their prose that startles you? a phrase you wouldn’t use, an unexpected flow of a scene, an atmosphere to their story that you haven’t seen used in a particular genre, etc. These things are all yours to weigh for their usefulness in your own work. 

What do they describe first? This can set the tone of the entire piece, and is great in establishing atmosphere, and even bigger themes of the book. More than that, first descriptions can be strong lasting images for the reader when used effectively. Lasting images of the piece help create a stronger emotional resonance. 

How does the author introduce characterization? Some authors use small moments of actions, the character’s own narrative voice, other characters’s interactions with them or opinions of them, contrast between characters, and even outright stating characterization (which can be insanely effective and elegant in certain styles). It’s important to recognize how the author in question does this, especially when it’s distinctly resonant with you. This is an open foundation for you to build your own characterization on. 

Are they more sentimental or cynical? This is mostly the scale of measure I use when analysing an author’s voice. Overall, they’ll usually swing to one side of things. But more importantly, try to look at the overall blend of the two, and how the voice tends to shift to either one while writing certain scenes, or characters. Often, either one could be used to contrast, add to characterization (such as with a pov), denote a change in setting (effectively shifting atmospheres), etc. 

Hope this helps someone out there!