The Complexity of Helping Others (Lizzie)

I write to entertain. I don't write to promote a message. At least, that's what I used to think, and still think when I'm not really thinking. We all write out of our worldview. I've come to realize that no matter my intentions my characters' flaws and experiences invariably lead to some issue that I care about, that I either have something to say on or that I want to think through by writing about. It might be characters struggling with insecurity or characters struggling to do the right thing no matter the cost. Yet sometimes, I touch on something I haven't thought much about, don't realize I'm speaking to, and then later wonder What on earth did I say about that? Did I handle that situation or issue appropriately?

Recently, I've been asking myself those questions. In one of my books, the main character is independently wealthy and generous to the poor, but very ungracious in her interactions with them. She gives money but no kindness. Then, as the result of a curse, she becomes destitute and ugly. She is treated badly, and, though starving, is more desperate for a kind word and loving touch than she is for food. After a while, someone helps her get a job as a humble shopkeeper's assistant. While writing the book, I didn't think too much of this in the light of how we help alleviate poverty and interact with the materially poor. Then enter my recent non-fiction reads: When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor ... and  Yourself by Steven Corbett and Brian Fikkert and Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis.

Both books talk about helping the poor, the former through stories and research and the latter through the experience of one young woman living and ministering in Uganda. Kisses from Katie, on first impulse, makes me want to throw money at orphanages and any charity work in Africa, not to mention go volunteer at an orphanage. But is that what Katie Davis is suggesting? Is this the correct response? When Helping Hurts was actually a great intellectual balance to the emotions stirred up by Kisses from Katie, allowing me to see more clearly Katie's experience and perspectives on the best kind of help needed in her area of Uganda.

Giving and serving make us feel good but may not help, and may actually hurt those we want to help. Recently, I came across an article on on "voluntourism," and how some tour groups were offering stops at orphanages so people could play with orphans--you know, love on sweet, poor orphans and go home feeling good about yourself, and all that. In reality, many of the children weren't orphans--it was a racket. In cases where the children were orphans, they were as likely hurt by the loving people who came in and then left as encouraged. Haven't they experienced enough abandonment? Then what about the poor, hard-working American parents demoralized, stripped of their dignity, because some well-meaning group gives their kids toys the parents could never afford to buy them? Then there are the mission teams that go overseas to build schools while locals, who have skills and could use the money from the job, stand by watching the inexperienced Americans do the work.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't care, that we shouldn't help, that we shouldn't give, that the above-mentioned approaches are always wrong, but poverty is a complex issue. So is helping to alleviate poverty. We have good intentions, but so often we lack the long-term, holistic vision and practical skills needed to truly, lastingly help. It's not straightforward, quick, or easy, but then nothing good is, so that shouldn't be surprising. Alleviating poverty involves dealing with broken relationships (the relationship with God, self, others, and the rest of creation), changing mindsets, getting rid of our own god-complex, recognizing that we may need to step back and let trained locals do the work or give up time to build long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with people we'd rather hand money to and leave. And so much more. If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor ... and  Yourself.

This is me wearing the Elizabeth necklace made
by a Ugandan woman named Elizabeth, whom
Katie Davis's ministry Amazima has helped train
to earn her own living. This is great because I think
this will be a long-lasting ministry, that
Elizabeth won't be out of a job and her American
market (which may not be her sole market, I don't
know) any time soon. But are there ways to make 
people independent of a particular person 
or missionary? Read When Helping Hurts to find out!

But back to book- and writing-related themes. When Helping Hurts made me question not only my own attitudes and approaches to "helping" others, but made me question how I had handled the issue in my novel and how I'll address it in future ones. The lessons here are this: writing will force you to address, directly or indirectly, a host of issues; prepare yourself for this by reading a variety of books and thinking through important issues; don't let emotions be your sole guide.

Have you ever spoken to an issue in your writing without meaning to and later realized that you'd done a poor, or a surprisingly good, job of it?

Have you ever been particularly impressed by, or horrified by, the way an author treated a subject that may have been an incidental theme in the book, as poverty was in mine?

Concealment and Revelation through POV and Viewpoint

How do you choose which POV to write your story in? First, third, omniscient? Which character's viewpoint should a scene be in? These topics have doubtless been covered in depth here already, so I want to focus on one consideration and that's concealment and revelation. In other words, choosing a certain POV or viewpoint to hide information, delay a realization, or to uncover something hidden. To a character, the reader, or both.

This concealment and revelation, however, needn't be to the level of creating an unreliable narrator story, as with the recent stories Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. The technique employed, though, can benefit any story. It can create humor, build suspense, reinforce contrast, and aid in character development. Not to mention allow for surprises.

(SPOILER ALERT: I don't mind spoilers, and since they are necessary to make my points here, I will give them. I'm sorry if this bothers you!)

Examples are often more helpful than explanations, so I'll give three.

Character Development and Reader Surprise

Patrick Carr's The Shock of Night is part a murder mystery and part fantasy save-the-kingdom-from-terrible-mysterious-danger. The prologue is from the POV of the murder victim (but the scene doesn't cover the attack, for which I'm grateful). Chapter One introduces, in first person, the main character, Willet Dura. Willet is the king's reeve and is a former soldier left scarred by his experiences. But Willet suffers from more than PTSD. He's insane. Because of something that happened to him in the mysterious Darkwater Forest at the end of the war. Yet the reader doesn't realize he's insane for some time. Oh we get that Willet has a few eccentricities, but, overall, he's a likable, smart, kind-hearted to the poor, sarcastic towards the elite kind of guy. We like and trust him as a narrator.

Through his eyes, we go with him to visit a priest to talk about his new, powerful gift and the murder case. Then, some chapters later, through the third person POV of Pellin, leader of the Vigil--a group that protects the kingdoms against the evils of the Darkwater Forest--we learn that there was no priest. Willet imagined the whole thing, something he'd done many times during previous visits to an abandoned church.

Did this ruin Willet's credibility on the whole? No. Pellin's other observations affirm that Willet is only insane in this one area. This revelation was a shock to me as a reader, but I didn't feel as if I had been tricked. Patrick Carr's goal was to reveal something important about Willet, something important to the overall conflict, which increased my interest. What was Willet hiding? Why couldn't he, or wouldn't he, remember?

By using the two POV characters, and by using first person POV for Willet, Carr was able to let us see something about Willet that Willet didn't know himself and that wouldn't have made sense if told in third person by him. A limited third person, because it's deeper into the character than regular third, might work, but first is better for this. Not only was Willet's visit to the priest informative and interesting when I read it unsuspecting of the truth, but also provided a pleasant shock when Pellin's viewpoint revealed it to be misleading.

Humor, Suspense, and Contrast
In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, there is a scene in which Mrs. Jennings observes a private

conversation between Elinor Dashwood and Colonel Brandon and assumes it is a proposal. The reader knows this to be impossible and is busy both laughing at Mrs. Jennings's conjectures and forming conjectures of her own. The conversation Mrs. Jennings supposed to a proposal of marriage that would bring pleasure to Elinor was an announcement of a plan that would enable the man Elinor loves to marry a young woman he'd foolishly engaged himself to in his youth and felt honor-bound to marry.

Austen first conveys this scene through the distant Mrs. Jennings for the reader's amusement as well as for building curiosity, which Austen soon satisfies in a brilliant contrast between the assumed and the real.

Delayed Revelation for Heightened Reaction
In my novel The Beast's Enchantress, told in first person, the main character is a stunningly beautiful young woman, until her pride gets her in trouble with a magic mirror. Alexandria is sucked into the mirror and ends up in an unknown land. She initially thinks that's all that happened to her, that her punishment is a long walk home. Then she sees her reflection--she's an old hag. Her horror, and hopefully the reader's, is greater because of the delay, because she thought she'd gotten off the hook. This scene wouldn't have worked with a distant POV, one describing what happened to her from an outside viewpoint rather than through her senses. She's too focused on the unfamiliar forest around her, and on finding her way out of it, to notice her wrinkled, wart-spotted skin.


POV and viewpoint can be used for a number of effects (and, hopefully, not for the author to say, at the end of the book "Ha! I tricked you!"). Are there any stories that stand out to you for their use of POV and viewpoint? Any that would have worked better in a different POV or viewpoint?

Interview with Elizabeth Jane Kitchens

I'm thrilled to welcome Elizabeth Jane Kitchens to Lands Uncharted today! She is the author of The Beast's Enchantress, which tells the story of the enchantress from Beauty and the Beast. I've had the pleasure of getting to know Elizabeth through my critique group, and she took the time to answer some questions for us about herself and her writing:


Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I grow bacteria for a living. No, this was not my childhood ambition, just the job I fell into after I finished my Master’s of Biology. I help prepare for and instruct college microbiology laboratories. You might not think it, but science and writing have a lot in common; every disease, every microbe, every discovery has a story, a mystery with questions to ask and answers to be found (How does the microbe sneak past our defenses? How does our immune system fight back? How did scientists figure out everything we know?). When you can talk about and write about science as a story, you realize it’s tremendously interesting, even the seemingly pointless, boring bits.

When I’m not being a nerd or a writer, I enjoy ballroom dancing (Thanks to Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast for inspiring that hobby. I have no prince or even a regular dance partner, but it is still fun), walking my fluffy, white, 85-pound Great Pyrenees (she’s affectionately called a bear, pony, wolf, or yeti by those who see us), and photography (I always said I’d only take nature photos, so naturally I have now taken two engagement photos shoots, a maternity photo shoot, and several graduation and professional head shot photo shoots).


What prompted you to start writing? Are you one of those writers who knew you were meant to write since childhood, or did it come as a discovery later in life?

I hated writing growing up. It was also considered the family curse because so many in my family had “wasted” time, energy, and money writing and trying to get published. I thought I had escaped the curse, so it came as a bit of a shock to me when, at twenty-six, I fell in love with writing after playing around at creating a children’s story with a friend who wanted to be an author.


Which authors have had the most significant impact on your writing?

Jane Austen and Charles Dickens without a doubt. I love the classic British novels for their beautiful language, the elegant manners and high morals of the characters, and for the entertaining characters themselves. Charles Dickens has some particularly interesting characters, and I’ll never forget the opening scene to Our Mutual Friends (the BBC movie)—a beautiful, poor redhead is rowing on the Thames at night with her father, and she is uncomfortable. We soon find out that’s because they’re towing a body. Macabre, yes, but it hooks the reader right off. We sympathize with girl, are intrigued by these strange river-dwelling people, and want to know who the dead man is.

Oh yes, Charlotte Bronte for Jane Eyre. I can’t forget Jane and Mr. Rochester. Or J. R. R. Tolkien or C. S. Lewis. I sometimes read a bit from The Hobbit or Pride and Prejudice before I start writing to help me get in that old fashioned voice I love to read and to write in.

I know this is a blog about books, but I can’t neglect to mention a few movies (and the corresponding books for the first three), particularly Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda, Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, and the Errol Flynn movies The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, and The Sea Hawk. These played a major role in forming my idea of the witty, impudent, swashbuckling hero, and no novel of mine is complete without a hero. :)

Despite what you may think from this list, I do read some modern authors. Patrick Carr, Karen Witemeyer, Melanie Dickerson, and Anne Elisabeth Stengl are my favorite modern authors, and since what I read influences what I write, they’ve have some impact, even if it’s only me naming a character or place after something in one of their novels.


Since we're all about exploring new worlds here at Lands Uncharted, if you could choose one place to visit, real or fictional, where would you go?

Such a tough question! I’ve had the wonderful experience of seeing a bit of Scotland and northern England, so I’ll have to say the French countryside. While wandering around in a thrift store a while back, I found a book on France with stunning photographs of villages, castles, and mountains. I had no idea it was so magnificent. I would love to see those places—not only for their beauty but also because Beauty and the Beauty is a classic French tale (La Belle et la Bête) and The Beast’s Enchantress is set in a land similar to what I would see there.


Do you have any go-to foods or beverages while writing?

Hot tea, cheese, and Cheerios.


Please share one of your favorite writing tips with us.

Another tough one. I’d have to go with the reminder “There’s more where that came from.” It’s a different way of giving William Faulkner’s advice of “In writing, you must kill your darlings.” It helps me remember that I have the necessary creativity and skill to cut, to rewrite, and to make scenes more spectacular. I don’t have to cling to pet words or stale scenes, or even weak plots; I can rewrite better.


What inspired the idea for your novel, The Beast’s Enchantress?

The prologue to Disney’s animated classic Beauty and the Beast (who else is excited about the upcoming live action version?). I wanted to know more about this woman who shows up in disguise and then disappears, never to be reappear in the story. Why did she show up there? Was she some do-gooder looking for someone to enchant? What if she was under a curse herself?


What factors played into your decision to publish through Createspace? Which aspects of indie publishing were the most challenging and most rewarding?

To be honest, it was because I couldn’t find an agent and thus go the traditional route. I’d also read a lot about indie publishing and wanted to give it a try, so I decided to self-pub instead of waiting and trying again for an agent.

The most challenging part? Doing everything myself—formatting the manuscript, designing the cover, hiring an editor, proof reading, uploading to distributors, marketing—was a challenge for sure, but not having the sense of validity that a traditional publisher gives was the hardest part. I was timid about putting my book out there. I’ve actually made a few changes to the manuscript since I originally put it up, and now I feel confident in it. Even though it’s indie pubbed on a low budget, it is a quality book.

The overall experience was a great learning opportunity, and that, as well as having my book out where people can enjoy it, are the rewards of self-publishing.


The cover for The Beast’s Enchantress is lovely, and you designed it yourself! What went into that process?

Thank you! I was fortunate enough to find a good quality stock photo for the cover on istockphoto.com. The process was long. I spent a lot of time searching various stock photo websites for images related to my book. Once I found the right one, I bought a standard license for it (about $40). Later, I stumbled on some sites through Pinterest with amazing photos of women in beautiful period gowns, but those photos were $1000 and up for a limited, short-term license!

CreateSpace gives a formula for cover size based on the final trim size, margins, and number of pages for the print book. You create the cover flat—the back, spine, and front as one image with three sections. I tried to do my own in GIMP (a free image editing software), but couldn’t manage separating the image into the three areas. So I did the front and back images separately and used a template on CreateSpace to add in the spine.

When I created the front and back cover pages, I told GIMP the image size I needed, added the stock photo, cropped it, and then added text. I fiddled with the text until I found the right combination of fonts, size, and position. Needless to say, I also spent a good bit of time studying covers that I liked for inspiration.


Can you give us any insights into your current work-in-progress and whether you have any other books planned for this series?

Happily! My work-in-progress is called To Catch a Magic Thief. Alexandria, the main character in The Beast’s Enchantress, has two sisters. This is the story of her sister Gabriella and the man Gabriella falls in love with, Marcel Ellsworth. It’s a challenging story because I have to make a man Alexandria portrays as a stuttering, clumsy, plain, and wholly unsuitable as a hero, but it’s also fun because I get to create a secret adventure going on right under Alexandria’s nose. Alexandria only sees Marcel at bad moments, and through her own snobbish ideals, but Gabriella gets to see Marcel in his good and bad moments, and learns to value him for his integrity and his resilience in the face of hardship. As well as for his excellent taste in books and dogs and his surprising knowledge about magic. :)

Originally, The Beast’s Enchantress was to be a single book; then I developed a crush on a minor bad guy in the book and had to write a story to redeem him. Then, I met more characters in his story that wanted a story of their own, and then I figured, why not write one for each of Alexandria’s sisters while I’m at it? So, yes. There are many more coming.


Are there other fairy tales you’d like to write about in the future?

I write in a fairy tale world—where fairy tales have happened or are happening—so I’d like to write around several more fairy tales (Cinderella and The Frog Prince, in particular). The stories wouldn’t focus on the fairy tale characters but would include them, or maybe just the prince or the enchantress to give a different view of the story. However, I would like to write a Beauty and the Beast story based on Beast and Belle, and certain inhabitants of Beast’s castle, from The Beast’s Enchantress.


And finally, no visit to Lands Uncharted is complete without Top 3s! Give us a Top 3 list in the category of your choice.

Top 3 Songs from a Fairytale:

“Tale as Old as Time” from Disney’s animated classic Beauty and the Beast

“Once Upon a Dream” from Disney’s animated classic Sleeping Beauty and the version from Maleficent

“He Danced with Me” from The Slipper and the Rose, a British musical retelling of Cinderella (1976)


Thank you so much for visiting, Elizabeth! The Beast's Enchantress is on my to-read list, I'm looking forward to it! And I can tell you from critiquing one of Elizabeth's works-in-progress that she is a fantastic writer and great storyteller. You can learn more about her at her website www.elizabethjanekitchens.com.

You can also connect with Elizabeth on Facebook, Pinterest, and Amazon.