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Google Reader has changed the way it displays folders and All Items.  If you’ve read everything in a folder, it still shows you items you’ve already read; the read counts decrease, but the folders never empty.  When you add a new feed to a folder, Reader shows X unread items, but lets you keep reading older and older items as long as you keep scrolling down. Older items automagically add themselves to the bottom of the article pane as you scroll down.

Dave Winer calls approaches like this a “River of News.”  One of the thinks I’ve liked about Reader is that it doesn’t feel as naggy as Bloglines.  The difference between the two is subtle, but important:

• In Bloglines, you have the folder display at the left, with unread counts on all your folders with unread items.  You click on a folder with unread items, all of the unread items appear in the frame at the right, and the unread count goes to zero.  If you close the browser at this point, you never see the items that Bloglines thinks you just “read”.  If you want to read something from a folder, you have to read all of the items, or you lose them.
• In Google Reader, you click on the folder at the left and the items appear on the right, but the unread count (and the unread statuses on the individual posts) remain unchanged.  You can read just one item and come back later to read more.  No pressure to read the whole folder at a gulp!  This is actually a pretty big difference under the hood – Google Reader tracks whether you read each post, and Bloglines tracks whether you read each folder. 

Pistol Grip Pump, Rage Against the Machine

Kind Hearted Woman Blues, Robert Johnson

Angel, Won’t You Call Me?,  The Decemberists

Physical World, Kudu

It’s Alright to Die, Ike Reilly Assassination

Mike, Aaron, and Eddie, Haiku D’Etat

It’s Just That Simple, Wilco

Zoloft, Ween

Double Double Dutch, Dope Smugglaz

Bratislava, Beirut

Candy For Everyone, The Late B. P. Helium

Curuncula, Psapp

I realize the wisdom of my friend Chris’s words:

I’d rather be stalked by Jar-Jar Binks than have to spend five minutes with Anakin Skywalker.

Zadie Smith writes beautifully and brilliantly on the nature of literary failure.

I’m focusing on a new writing project, WIP name Folds.  It’s contemporary YA fantasy about three friends (yes, that again) who grow up together in an imaginary small suburb of Boston, living mostly normal lives in between teleporting from coast to coast, filling a nearby forest with life forms of their own creation, and working with the government to fight off an implacable alien horde. 

You mean sort of like Harry Potter meets Puppet Masters?

Typical slice-of-life, coming of age story, in short.  One of them travels through time. Another one lives in a cathedral. The third one moved away and none of them wanted her to go.

I didn’t write much say much about Knave while I was writing it, out of superstition or whatever, but I’m going to post a bit about Folds while it’s coming-to-be.

In planning Folds I’m trying several things that I didn’t in Knave:

1. Third person limited voice.  I loved doing the shifting first-person POV in Knave, especially when my narrators were all in the same room at the same time trying to figure out what the others are doing.  First person is tough, though.  I had originally intended to alternate between two narrators, but then I needed to show what the King was up to. One of my narrators couldn’t get into the castle, and the other one lived there but was deaf and couldn’t hear what was going on, so I wound up adding a third narrator.  That was really good, in the end, as the third POV character eventually became my favorite, and even wound up taking over the ending of the book, but… I’d like to play with a different set of challenges this time.
2. Lots of really short chapters.  Knave is eleven chapters and 72K words, so an average chapter is more than six thousand words.  Chapters in Folds are shorter units, averaging a little more than a thousand words. 
3. Contemporary setting and the challenges of normal life (school life, parents, boyfriends and girlfriends, college,careers) as well those of as fantasy life (getting to San Francisco when you’re twelve and only have a couple of hours to spare, fighting implacable alien hordes, etc.). 

Maybe it’s a cheer:

Deep trance, ballroom dance, bit err-or!
Bit file, bit bus, Commodore 64!

fool me thirty-seven times, I got to get some of that action!

37 Signals pointed me to the fabulous blog of storyboard artist Mark Kennedy, Temple of the Seven Golden Camels.  Scads of huge long posts of beautiful animation storyboards in which he breaks down particular techniques of visual storytelling.  Here he talks about character introductions using the opening scene of Lifeboat (Hitchcock) as a case study: Hitchcock introduces each of his characters in seconds apiece, with subtle cues highlighting significant character traits. 

One of my favorite movies, Snatch (Guy Ritchie),  uses a flashy credits sequence to introduce the ensemble cast – each of a dozen or more characters is given no more than a second of action following a half-second freeze-frame.  Freeze on Brick-top’s face, snarling smile, bad teeth and coke-bottle glasses, then release and he’s turning away and beating a man with a mallet.  Zip off to the next character.

In both of these cases the directors intro their characters by showing-not-telling.  That’s not simply an artifact of the visual medium; some directors would use voice-over to introduce the ensemble.  That can also work – the voice-over does give you the opportunity to characterize the narrator – but it narrows the focus, and slows and dries out the flow.  Narration would be a distinctly inferior approach in Lifeboat, which strives to place us into the constricted world of the lifeboat shared by these characters; narration would turn the film into a tale we hear, rather than a sequence we witness.  In Snatch, the narrator is the thread that binds the disparate narratives together, helping us trust that the frenetic action sequences will eventually intersect.

This works in text, as well.  I’ll try to think of some novels with good active character intros.  Thinking about Knave, I realize that I intro two of my three narrators in narration, and one through the actions she’s engaged in.  Guess which of the three intros I’m happiest with…

I’m so touched, I mean tetched – I have finally been memed!  Oh, I know that it’s de rigeur these days to deplore the institution of meming on ontological grounds, or just ’cause you’re bored with it, but I couldn’t be more tickled. Thanks, Nick!

Five things about me that most people don’t know:

1.  I lived in northern Virginia until I was 14;  in Annapolis, MD, for ages 14 through 20;  and in the Boston area from 20 through 39, and probably will remain somewheres here abouts for the rest of my life.  For some reason, though, I still think of myself as “coming from” Maryland.

2.  We moved to Annapolis so I could go to St. John’s College after 10th grade.  It worked out, I guess.

3.  The first e-commerce gig I had as a software architect did a grand total of $.50 in sales in its first week of business.  I still have half a dollar bill taped to my office door in memory of that momentous occasion. 

4.  I can whistle a tune while smiling.

5.  It’s pronounced KLEE-bee.  Not KLEEB, not KREE-ger, KLEE-vee, or any other mad contortion.

I tag Chris, Jeff, Constantine, Jeff, and Craig!