{"id":100,"date":"2011-07-27T13:11:33","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T17:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/?p=100"},"modified":"2011-09-22T11:33:44","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T15:33:44","slug":"what-i-learned-from-the-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"What I Learned from The Help"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kathrynstockett.com\/stockett-synopsis.htm\"><em>The Help<\/em><\/a>. It was more or less the last book on Earth I would read normally, but I did.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, come on:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It\u2019s a NYT Bestseller.<\/li>\n<li>There are <strong>neither<\/strong> spaceships <strong>nor<\/strong> sailing vessels.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s about race relations.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s set in the sixties (1960\u2019s, not 1860\u2019s or AD 60\u2019s)<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s about women.<\/li>\n<li>The cover is yellow and purple, and has birds on it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sweet Jesu. Books with any of these traits don\u2019t find their way on to my radar very often. \u00a0But when I saw <a href=\"http:\/\/storyfix.com\/category\/the-help-deconstruction-series\">this series of posts on novel structure using <em>The Help<\/em> as an example<\/a>, I decided to go for it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So what did I take away from this adventure?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The antagonist does not ever have to be the narrator\/POV. Miss Hilly came across just fine without taking the reins at any point.<\/li>\n<li>Set up a character with a flaw\/obstacle about which she is unaware, then have another character bring it up.<\/li>\n<li>The incident that kicks off the plot can be subtle, but it has to be about the main character\u2019s life changing.<\/li>\n<li>The most interesting scene in the book from a writerly standpoint is a party in which the POV is third person, as opposed to the first person used in the rest. This is the only time in book this happens, <strong>and it works<\/strong>. All three narrators are present at this big do, and the one-scene switch gets the plot point across without having to chop it up or repeat it three times.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, I have a number of criticisms for <em>The Help<\/em>, but that\u2019s not what I\u2019m here to accomplish today. From a structure standpoint, the book is solid.<\/p>\n<p>Ok, just one thing. I don\u2019t know what book the movie was based on, but it sure doesn\u2019t look like <em>The Help<\/em>. There is a very real threat of <strong>physical harm and socially-sanctioned murder<\/strong> underlying everything in the text \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WbuKgzgeUIU\">the trailer<\/a> looks like a bunch of ladies having a grand old time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I read The Help. It was more or less the last book on Earth I would read normally, but I did. I mean, come on: It\u2019s a NYT Bestseller. There are neither spaceships nor sailing vessels. It\u2019s about race relations. It\u2019s set in the sixties (1960\u2019s, not 1860\u2019s or AD 60\u2019s) It\u2019s about women. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}