Books on Film: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Teachers all across the United States whip out The Legend of Sleepy Hollow towards the end of the every October and read the rich, poetic language aloud to the class. It's hard to understand; that why my teachers also showed an animated version of the story. I'm pretty sure the Disney version starred Goofy. The more famous film version of the story, Sleepy Hollow, is even more farfetched than the cartoon. 

The Story

To be technical, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow isn't a book. It's a short story, and it's so old that you can read the whole thing for free any time (public domain). It was written by Washing Irving, and first published in 1820. Irving is well-known for another short story, Rip Van Winkle. Though Irving wrote them both in England, Sleepy Hollow is considered to be American fiction because it's set in what would become New York state.

It takes place in a Dutch settlement named Tarry Town, in an area called Sleepy Hollow. The hero of our tale is Ichabod Crane, a skinny and lanky Connecticut teacher. He would like to court Katrina Van Tassel, daughter of wealthy farmer Baltus Van Tassel. Abraham Van Brunt, known as "Brom Bones," would also like to court her. They each attempt to woo her at a party inside the Van Tassel home. 

Ichabod leaves the party alone and finds himself being chased by the Headless Horseman, an enigmatic figure who is supposed to be the ghost of Hessian (German) trooper whose head was shot off during the Revolutionary War. Every night, the Headless Horseman rides through Sleepy Hollow in search of his missing head.

The reader learns that Ichabod disappears after the night of the party, and from then on out Brom Bones has a "knowing" expression on his face whenever the man's name is mentioned. Brom Bones goes on to marry Katrina, as he wished. 

The story never tells us who the Headless Horseman is, exactly, but seems to imply that it was Brom chasing after Ichabod that night.

The Film(s)

It's a very old story, and naturally The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has been adapted many, many times. There are several animated versions, but even before these were viewed it became a silent film in 1922. Re-titled The Headless Horseman (because he's the best part of the story), it had Will Rogers in the role of Crane. I haven't seen it, but a few summaries point toward a fairly faithful adaptation. Crane is indeed a teacher and he does fall in love with the girl, but in this version Bones isn't his only enemy. In 1922, the whole town despises Crane, so no one knows who was really the Horseman.

By far the most well-known adaptation of the story is Tim Burton's 1999 joint Sleepy Hollow, which is probably the most unfaithful version you can find (but what else do we expect from Tim Burton?). Ichabod Crane becomes gorgeous Johnny Depp instead of a lanky teacher; he's also turned into a police investigator. 

This time around, there's a definite supernatural quality to the Horseman (played by the scariest actor ever, Christopher Walken). Christina Ricci is Katrina, and Capser Van Dien is Brom Bones. Crane is in town to investigate a series of strange murders, perpetrated by the ghostly Horseman.

Ichabod is highly skeptical of the villagers' explanation. He becomes a guest of the Van Tassels and becomes attracted to Katrina, like he's supposed to. He travels into the woods and finds the Horseman's grave and the Tree of the Dead. Eventually, he discovers that Lady Van Tassel, Katrina's stepmother, is controlling the Horseman for a revenge plot involving land. Crane has to find the Horseman's skull to end his reign of terror, which he does. Crane lives in this version, and takes Katrina with him back to New York.

What Got Adapted?

It might be easier to tell you what didn't get adapted in the transition between book and film for Sleepy Hollow. The most accurate part of the book is the setting, and even that's questionable. Obviously, some of the additions are necessary. Irving's story is pretty short, so it's understandable that characters had to be invented and new back stories revealed...but there were huge changes from the story in the Burton version, and I don't really think they were necessary.

Burton does include the party that's at the heart of the original story, and the tension between Crane and Brom is briefly touched upon. But stunningly, Brom dies in this version. He does dress up as the Horseman to frighten Crane, and ends up being killed by the real Horseman. This gigantic diversion from the original is only the tip of the interpretation iceberg.

Crane blacks out several times in the flick, and in this version the Horseman is well and truly the ghost of a soldier who has indeed lost his head. Walken is fantastic on film as the Horseman, because he's frightening no matter what he's doing, but it's a big deviation from the original tale.

Irving's story is filled with color. He describes food and clothing, and paints his world in bright hues. Tim Burton does exactly the opposite. Even the trees in Sleepy Hollow look gray, and honestly no one would live in this horrible place. Everything is dull and dirty and terrible-looking, and yet we're supposed to believe it's farming country. The ending is quite different, and there's nothing mysterious about it at all. In the story, Crane dies and we're never really sure who killed him (but we think it's Brom). In the film, Brom is dead and Crane actually gets the girl -- but with Depp playing the leading man, moviegoers surely wouldn't accept anything else. 

And besides, it wasn't even an original story when Irving wrote it. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is based on an even older German folktale that was set in New York state, and recorded first by Karl Musäus.

Seeking Secrets in The Tower

"The story seems straightforward, but then it curves and twists so [it] continually surprises."

"I really enjoyed going down the rabbit hole with Rain as she discovers secret after secret."

The Tower has been reviewed at Quirky Girls Read! Go and read the whole thing before you buy your copy of the book, and see if you can find the truth in the Deck of Lies.

Who Even Needs to Know Grammar, Anyway?

Clearly, I have strong feelings about the importance of good grammar, proper punctuation and well-crafted writing. But am I wasting my time, and yours, by blogging about it? In a world where word processing software highlights misspellings, underlines bad grammar and comes with a built-in thesaurus, besides, just where exactly do people like me fit in? Why do you need me, if you've got software that does it all for you?

 Oh, You Need Me

You can't even compose a tweet without getting spelling help nowadays, and every time I screw up during a blog post a helpful red line pops up to guide me. I don't even have to hit backspace and re-type the word; I can just right-click my mouse and magically fix the problem. That's the wonder of technology, and it's easy to grow incredibly complacent (lazy) when it comes to good writing. What's the point of knowing all this grammar garbage when any half-decent software program will do the job on its own? 

Because it can't read, that's why. I know that computers are cool, and iPhones can do darned near anything. I'm a big fan of streaming video and satellite radio and all the awesome extra stuff you can find in MS Word if you start looking (and I do go looking). But no matter how great your system happens to be or how wonderful your software is, it cannot read. It will never read your story and cry, or laugh out loud, or feel shock or surprise. It has no idea what you're writing about, and it never, ever will. Your word processor doesn't even comprehend that you're creating a book, and doesn't care. No computer can ever have the understanding and recognition that a human being has...that you have. 

And that's just the first problem, though honestly that's all you need to know to know that you've got to make good grammar decisions. The second problem is that word processing software is often wrong. It probably won't recognize most of the first and last names you give your characters, it'll flag place names all day long, and there are all kinds of foreign phrases it's going to pretend not to recognize (and we all know it's fluent in at least a gagillion languages). 

Forget about using it to double-check dialogue. If you're breaking your sentences up to make them interesting and actually writing the way people talk, chances are pretty good that you're getting an error line on every other line of your book. I've personally been waylaid by the built-in grammar checker on numerous occasions; once, my laptop even had me questioning my own sanity. It's a computer program that's trying to make sense out of something it cannot possibly understand, and if you rely upon it to write your book you are going to be led astray.

Only you can read your book the way actual reader are going to be reading, and only you know the story you want to tell. It's your job to tell that story in the best way possible, and that means knowing how to correct your own grammar. You wouldn't let someone else choose your book cover or name your protagonist, would you? Would you let someone else choose the price or pick the title for your book? 

Then why would you leave the writing of it in the hands of a machine that has no idea what it's doing?

Writing 101: The Joy of Templates

I've made it clear that I'm a big fan of staying organized during the writing process. I create outlines, character sheets, the whole ball of wax. But sometimes, you need something more than the standard blank document to keep your plot organized and all your thoughts straight. I'm talking about the joy of templates. 

Let's Hear it for Templates!

I've advocated using templates to keep your manuscript properly formatted; this will save you a ton of frustration and time when you convert your work into an ebook-ready format. But templates serve another important function: they can help you keep all your book notes organized. 

Plots can get pretty complex, particularly if you've got a lot of characters interacting or a big event happening. I'm usually pretty straightforward when it comes to writing outlines for my stories; in the past, a blank Word document has always been good enough for me. But lately I've been working on a novel that's extremely involved. There's a special event going on over multiple weeks that involves all sorts of information and characters, and frankly it's incredibly confusing. 

To keep the days of the event straight, I pulled up a calendar template that fits right onto my computer screen. It's possible to set the calendar to any year and month, so for me it worked out perfectly. I used another template to keep some very extensive notes organized and categorized (it's basically a list of objects with brief descriptions, and information about who's bringing each object -- sort of). 

The point is, I'm pretty sure my book would be an utter mess without these templates. When I need to know something specific, I can just glance at a single document to find what I need. Otherwise, I'd have to crawl back through the book to find out what I want to know (and I don't need that kind of hassle). 

There are dozens and dozens of templates available for a variety of word processing software. Microsoft Word, by far one of the most commonly-used processors, makes it incredibly easy to find templates. There's a built-in list of what's available, and if that isn't good enough you can always type something in the search bar to seek out the proper template online. MS Word will find the template and allow you to download it without ever leaving the program. Other word processing programs offer similar features, so you should never hesitate to look for a template if you want to get all your important notes and information well-organized.

Writers need tricks, help and props to survive, because writing is hard. Create as many documents as you like and write all the notes you need to keep your plot, characters and other pertinent information organized. The more organized you keep all your information, the less editing and re-writing you'll end up doing later.

Going Inside The Tower

"Rain's life only becomes more and more turbid, more tangled, more mysterious...an excelent sequel."

"Jade Varden has created another EXCELLENT book...with drama, mystery, friendship, self-discovery, redemption and one of my favorite characters."

The Tower (Deck of Lies, #2) has been awarded 5/5 stars at Reading...Dreaming. The review is spoiler-free, so feel free to read it at will.

Writing 101: Parts of Speech

Webster's Dictionary (the standard for American English) contains more than 400,000 entries. That's a whole lot of words for writers to try and track, and it's one of the reasons grammar is so difficult to master. Knowing which word goes where is pretty much impossible -- unless you memorize everything about all 400,000 of those words (including the correct spelling). Know your parts of speech instead, and you'll have an easier time making perfect sentences that won't confuse your readers. 

Articles 

Technically, there are just two articles in the entire English language: a and the. Sometimes, a turns into an, but they're considered to be the same word (vowels like to confuse everyone). Articles are only used with nouns. A sentence using an article with no noun would look something like this: The blue wandered past. Somewhere inside your head, a voice ought to be screaming the blue what? That's how you know there's a missing noun.

 Nouns

Remember the classic English lesson? Nouns are persons, places and things. Sally and Herbert are both nouns; so are balloon and Luxembourg. You can't make a sentence without a noun. Articles and adjectives cannot possibly function without them, and you'd have a pretty tough time using verbs, too.

Nouns are a big part of speech; there are a lot of words that fall into this category. But this part of speech is not without its confusion. Jade is noun...but she isn't. She is a pronoun.

Pronouns

She, he, her and we are all pronouns. A pronoun is simply a word that replaces a noun, and it's absolutely a necessary part of speech for a certain writing trick that everyone uses. If you write a sentence like Emma stared between Roger and Henry, Emma's green eyes lit with an angry fire as Roger reached to take Emma's hand. How repetitive and ugly is that sentence? You absolutely need the word her to avoid this type of redundancy, so hold your pronouns close to you at night.

Conjunctions

It's incredibly difficult to write descriptive sentences without conjunctions. Also known as linking words, the conjunctions include, and are not limited to, for, and, nor, but, or, yet and so. You can't even describe the holiday season without a conjunction -- unless you know another way to write red and green. Conjunctions link sentence parts together and link words within the sentence together. Robb wanted to go to the movies, but I wanted to visit the museum. The Monet was red and blue. In order to properly use conjunctions all the time, you've got to know how to use commas.

Verbs

Verbs are action words. You need them to walk, run, think or even just sit. All derivatives of be and do are considered verbs, so even if something just is you're using a verb. Traditionally, verbs are used with nouns. You can write To run through the park, but it doesn't make much sense and there's no narrative. Tell me that Molly runs through the park, and I understand what the heck is going on. Even when you put the verb in the sentence first, it's still describing a noun: Coughing and sputtering, the car climbed up the hill. The verbs in that sentence are cough, sputter and climb, and every single one of them is used with the noun car. If you can't find the noun in your sentence but you can find verbs, you might have a grammar problem.

Adverbs

Like the name suggests, adverbs have something to do with verbs. In fact, they're completely dependent upon them. Whether you know it or not, you probably use a certain adverb a lot: it's very. Adverbs are used to modify verbs. A proper sentence containing a verb and an adverb would look something like this: She carefully wrote the blog post. Obviously, to write is the verb in this sentence. The adverb carefully modifies the verb by helping to describe it. How did she write? Carefully, that's how.  

Almost all adverbs end in ly. An example of one that doesn't is always. You can't always something unless there's a verb involved - you can always love grammar blog posts, because love is a verb. But you can never always blue car, because that's totally nonsensical.

Adjectives

No writer could effectively write without adjectives. All colors are adjectives, as are most feelings. Adjectives are otherwise known as descriptive words, because that's the purpose they serve. They describe. I can tell you that The wheelbarrow was sitting in the yard. But if I tell you that The rusted, brown wheelbarrow was sitting in the yard you can picture it a whole lot better, right? Adjectives are the writer's best friend, so use them well. 

You cannot have an adjective without a noun or a pronoun. I can tell you blue, worn and ugly, but if you don't know what's blue, worn and ugly then you aren't going to care.

Prepositions

The easy answer for prepositions is that they are words describing anywhere a mouse can go. They're so confusing, I wrote an entire post about prepositions in the past. They're simply used to link pronouns and nouns, usually to each other, and I ignore all rules of preposition usage. Prepositions include words like to, under, over, with, up, toward and between, to name just a few. If you're between a rock and a hard place, you're properly using your preposition to link nouns. Prepositions, like many other parts of speech, can appear pretty much anywhere in a sentence -- even at the very beginning or the very end. Usually, but not always, prepositions are immediately followed by a noun or a pronoun.

Interjections

Truly the most under-appreciate part of speech, interjections are great fun to insert into any sentence -- and they can go anywhere. Really, words that are classified as interjections have been given this label because they don't belong anywhere else. Wow! Oh! Yikes! and oops are all interjections, and no you don't always have to use them with an exclamation point (I just like exclamation points). Using them very occasionally can draw attention to a specific moment in your writing: And oh! He'd hurt me terribly that day. Wow, he's really changed.

Parts of Speech

Knowing the basic parts of speech will help you craft strong, grammatically-correct sentences. However, many words can be multiple parts of speech -- it just depends on where you put them in the sentence. If the leather is soft and smooth, the word leather is a noun. If the leather purse is soft and smooth, the word leather becomes an adjective. It's usually easiest to identify nouns and verbs first, so once you figure out where these guys are at you can often sort out all the rest.

Death Comes to the Page

Death (Deck of Lies, #3) is now available in print! You'll get a full cover and 206 lovely paper pages filled with lies, secrets and conspiracies when you order your copy from Amazon.

Praise for Death

"Rain continues her quest for the truth - but what truth that is continues to change: her hunt for her identity led to a murder, her hunt for a murderer led her to more of her own secrets... Death delivers a good dose of reflection on the previous rollercoaster of events from Books 1 and 2, whilst continuing to throw up more surprises....

"Deck of Lies is a fantastic YA mystery series, with plenty of twists and fans of soaps like Dallas, Days of Our Lives and Sunset Beach, will love the mad hookups and random family relationship relevations. Jade's writing is style is vivid and concise, helping you to completely immerse yourself in her stories."

-author Melanie Cusick-Jones 

"Once again I wasn't able to put the series down. I love the detail Jade Varden writes in, the family history has obviously been thought about a lot and it is easy to follow. I'm not going to say too much about the storyline other than, Rain once again finds her life being turned upside down and herself being put in difficult situations, as the unpredictability of the book is what makes it so great."

-Sienna Logan, Lost to Books

Still haven't started reading the Deck of Lies? Look to the left to find out where you can get Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) and The Tower (Deck of Lies, #2), and see if you can find the truth beneath all the lies.

Writing 101: The Truth About KDP Select

Most indie authors head straight for Amazon's KDP program when they want to self-publish a book, and for good reason. Amazon is the leader in the ebook market, and their system is incredibly user-friendly. Personally, I don't advocate this -- for formatting reasons, I always advise going to Smashwords first. Some indie authors can't go to Smashwords first, or at all, because of KDP Select. Some indie authors swear by KDP Select; they think it's great. Before you sign up for it, learn the truth about KDP Select, and make sure you know what you're getting into. 

What's KDP Select?

When you go to Amazon to present your ebook to the world, you're going to find something called KDP Select. This is a special program for indie authors that allows you to run free promotions on your books, and if you spend any amount of time on the Kindle forums you'll learn that many indies love it. 

The program certainly has its merits. Listing your book on Amazon's free list is a great way to get a whole lot of downloads (not sales, because you can't earn any money on free). This means you're potentially getting a whole lot of readers, and this is why so many self-published authors sign up for the program. 

Free Promotions

The best thing KDP Select has going for it is the free promotions. It's a good incentive, I'll admit, especially for indie authors who really want to spread the word about their work. But free promotions have a dark side, too. Kindles, Nooks and other ereaders hold a whole lot of books. Plenty of ereader owners download books because they're free. How long are those free books going to sit on those readers before they get a second or even a first glance? No one knows. Maybe it won't ever get looked at. 

Yes, you're going to get downloads from running free promotions, but this doesn't necessarily translate into readers. Once the free promotion is over, the majority of indie authors find that their book sales go right back to where they were prior to the promotion. Sales rankings change quickly in Amazon, and a brief spike is commonly accompanied by a quick fall. 

KDP Select isn't the only way to fun a free promotion, either. You can generate coupon codes on Smashwords to give books away for free, and you can even create special promotions to give your books away for free on your own blog.

The Dark Side

There's one huge drawback to KDP Select that makes it a deal-breaker for lots of indies: it's an exclusive arrangement. Once you list your book with the program, you cannot sell your book anywhere else until you pull it from the program. This means you can't sell it at B&N, Goodreads, Kobo, Apple or another other online ebookstore. Amazon does have the biggest chunk of the ebook market...but they don't have the whole pie. Once you enroll a book in KDP Select, you're automatically limiting yourself  and shutting yourself off from a wide group of potential readers because you're only selling your book in one place. Is it really a good idea for indie authors to limit themselves...in any way?