A Tome, Extensive Research and a Good Story

By Alex Raley

Big books were the norm in college and graduate school.  I also read such books for pleasure, but as I moved forward in time I found tomes rarely held my attention.

Recently a friend passed on to me a novel of 847 single-spaced pages. How could I tell him that I don’t read tomes? I kept it for six months without opening the cover. Then in January, 2012, I realized that I was 80 years old. To read the book might take the rest of my life. I knew I’d better get on with it.

I found myself buried in a page-turner: Stephen King’s 11/22/63. Why was this book gripping my mind? On the surface, the novel did not appear to be worth 847 pages, but an analysis of how King kept my attention began to turn up some answers:

·        The novel has a theme that is always present, though, its pinnacle is close to the end of the novel.

·        There are several subplots that are interesting in their own way. King weaves them into the overall story and theme.

·        The characters in all the plots are skillfully drawn.

·        Details flow as easily as the dialogue. In fact, most of the story and details are moved forward by dialogue.

·        The novel takes an almost overworked time-space-travel idea and makes it a great tool to address King’s philosophical stance.

·        Yes, King is philosophical here. He poses the question of whether we should tamper with destiny, even if this were possible. He takes his main character back in time-travel several times before he takes a firm philosophical position, which piles on more intrigue for the reader.

·        The work is based on an amazing amount of research. So much research that one has to forgive an occasional mishap. King can afford a research assistant, but he also visited many of the sites himself.

·        11/22/63 has plenty of gory actions to please all King lovers. For those who don’t like gore, the final trip back in time erases most of the blood and guts. You are left with only a memory of the gore.

We have all been surfeited with how-to workshops, but I found that a reading and analysis of King’s novel gave me examples to hang my hat on. This was not someone telling me what to do but my own examination of a successful author’s work. I tried the same examination on the work of a little known author. I easily could see why he is little known.

The next time you are tempted to pay for a how-to seminar, try reading and analyzing the work of a good author. It’s cheaper, and you might even be entertained while you are being informed. 

Keeping Our Illusion Honest

By Bonnie Stanard

I’ve just put down a novel of 368 pages after reading to page 179. I was interested in the story, so why did I call it quits? In a nutshell, I couldn’t take another erudite word from a 12 year-old. Dictum was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Kathleen Grissom’s The Kitchen House is historical fiction, my favorite genre, and has been praised by such as Robert Morgan. The first half of the book spans the time from 1791 to 1797, though the novel continues through 1810. The story develops around Lavinia, a seven year-old white girl who is orphaned when both her parents die on the ship taking them to America. The captain carries her to his plantation where, as an indentured servant, she lives with the slaves. Tension develops as Lavinia sees the negros as her family, though she is expected to behave as a white.

Lavinia, in telling the story, says things like:

I brought Sukey for a visit, for she elicited a vivid response.
…those excursions ceased as an increasing lethargy overtook him.
With the security of the past two years, I had become more sure of myself…Yet an underlying anxiety always stayed.

All of this from one page in the book. A few slips here or there can be overlooked, but the tone becomes that of an educated adult with 21st Century sensibilities, which, in my case, created a fault that shattered the fantasy.

Finally, Lavinia says “I often heard her state how she felt obliged to help the less fortunate, and there was no doubt that my welfare was included under that dictum.” What 12 year-old living in the 1790s would say this?

Grissom took on a double challenge when she chose not only an 18th century narrator but a child as well. Obviously the reader doesn’t want a tale told in simplistic language. The key is to sound simplistic without actually being simplistic. It’s in the tone, that ephemeral quality that doesn’t lend itself to a simple reduction.

As Shaun so capably reminded us in a previous blog, our characters can do unbelievable things only as long as we respect a consistent “reality,” which may be a far cry from what is really real; i.e., we can get away with any absurdity in our alternative reality, but if we violate the rules of our creation, we risk losing the reader.

In like fashion, the characters we create need to speak the language of the alternative reality we give them. Their words in many ways define them and can either reinforce or undermine their validity. Especially in historical fiction, contemporary language and sentiment can transport the reader out of the story.

POV and All That Stuff

By Alex Raley

Very early in my writing fiction, POV jumped up to challenge me. There was a constant battle between us. There was a story to be told. Who cared from what head it came? Finally, truth began to rule: the reader gets thoroughly confused when many voices try to tell the story. If not a tower, a book of Babel contorts the story. The reader is left to sort out the confusion or to take to the shelves for another book if he doesn’t have an e-book reader. All this can leave the writer a Prisoner of Viewpoint, while being prodded by colleagues to control the POV. Do we give up or find a solution?

Dwight Swain suggests that the purpose of viewpoint is to get the reader into the skin of the character. The reader then sees and feels everything as the character does. This lets the reader become attached to the character. The bond that is established, whether of admiration or revulsion, drives the reader to stay with the story. Many writers are successful in telling the story only through one person’s eyes. This doesn’t mean that there are no other characters in the story, but they exist only as the main character sees, hears and reacts to them. Any interpretation of what is seen and heard from the other characters is in the imagination of the main character and the reader.

For many writers, secondary characters are as important as the main character. That presents a host of possibilities and pitfalls. I began a novel that is still in progress because I realized that the story would make no sense at all unless the reader knew the inner thoughts of several characters. After trying many approaches, I settled on giving each important character a complete chapter, actually several chapters for the two most important characters. One of the problems with this approach is to have a smooth transition from one chapter to another. This became my nemesis. I tried writing transitions which simply added unneeded words. The next try was to pick chapter titles that would indicate the point of view. Some novelists have done this quite well. I zeroed out.

Then I read Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, a 2010 New York Bestseller and Edgar Award Nominee. Franklin has two main characters. Each character has his chapter at the appropriate times. The chapters are simply numbered. Readers know in whose skin they are by the way Franklin jumps immediately into the chapter with the character in action. What does this say to me? Get in there and make each chapter do its part to tell the story and make each chapter interesting by itself,

The Devil’s in the Details

By Ginny Padgett

I’ve never understood that adage, “The Devil’s in the details.” I think details are important, especially in fiction writing. When an author enters into an unspoken contract with her reader to suspend belief while engaged with her story, she should reciprocate with verifiable details (or in the case of fantasy, consistent details) to transform imagination into reality.

I am reading Scott Turow’s, Burden of Proof. Early on in this long novel, he tells us about a woman who has recently worked in her garden (100 or so miles west of Chicago) in early spring to tidy up the gladiola foliage left behind from last summer’s growth. It ruined the entire story for me because gladiolas totally die back by fall, even here in the much warmer climate of Columbia, SC.

This made me distrust the entire world Turow created, much of which revolves around trading futures on the stock exchanges, resulting grand jury proceedings and the pursuant court case. The plot is framed on the inner workings of financial markets and legal maneuverings, and if I’m going to slog through these specifics, I want them to be accurate.

Turow broke the contract between him and me. I think less of him because he seemed to think I wouldn’t notice that he didn’t do his homework when he added details to develop this character. The growing season of gladiolas is a minor detail in this book of 515 pages, but it was enough for me to reclaim my suspended belief.

I guess that’s how I came to be known as the “detail person” in our critique group. Maybe it’s my training in journalism that makes getting the facts right so important to me, or maybe it’s just my personality. In any case, I think, “Successful fiction writing is in the details.” I challenge you to get them right. Does that make me the Devil?

On the Subject of Nemeses

By Gregory Wyche

As a writer, I have long considered Michael Crichton my nemesis. I first became disillusioned with him around senior year of high school when I decided he was lazy, had improbable characters and cut corners. Case in point: the ending of Sphere. In the novel, these scientists find an alien artifact that endows each of them with the power to manipulate reality with their minds, with generally terrible results. Their unpredictable subconsciousnesses wreak havoc. Okay, that’s an interesting premise. But then, when you’ve finally gotten to the end, Crichton’s resolution is to have the characters use their reality-altering powers to make themselves forget that they have any powers. Uh… okay. Then there is this exchange:

“…We won’t remember anything but this [made up] story.”
“And we won’t have the power any more?” Beth said, frowning.
“No,” Norman said. “Not any more.
“Okay,” Harry said.
Beth seemed to think about it longer, biting her lip. But finally she nodded. “Okay.”

When I was younger, this passage really bothered me and I suspect it was because it seemed so much like a deus ex machina. These characters spend the whole book unable to control their thoughts and now they're going to do it on command?

All these gripes alone aren’t too annoying. Plenty of authors just aren’t good. But Crichton was different. Somewhere in there, I always knew there was a genuine talent. So why then did he try so little, so often? To me, it was disrespectful to the profession, especially considering how well his books sold and how hard it is for new authors to get published, regardless of their skill.

And then I found out he had died of cancer. And it was like I'd swallowed a marble. An old friend brought it up, figuring I’d appreciate the news. But I didn’t. Suddenly, I was forced to confront my long-held prejudices. I had never actually finished State of Fear or Timeline…

Perhaps Norman's certainty in Sphere that his final solution would work was meant to plant the idea of inevitability into his comrades’ subconsciousnesses. Perhaps I had simply missed the point. Perhaps, I needed to reread Andromeda Strain, or Sphere, or Airframe or the Lost World. Perhaps... it didn’t matter anymore.

At the time, this news was particularly resonant because I had fallen into a funk with my own writing and wasn’t really producing anything anymore. Suddenly, I felt like I had no purpose. But most of all, I just felt sad. Crichton obviously had a passion for writing. Sometimes… And now he could never write again.

Since then, I’ve been more tolerant with other authors. After all, they’re only human. As I finish this, I wonder whose ire I’ll inspire with my own idiosyncrasies, and what colleagues I’ll make in the process. I picked up a copy of Prey yesterday and got about a hundred pages into it. It’s pretty good.

Goodbye, Michael Crichton. My friend. My greatest enemy. Rest in peace.

A Man and His Passion

By Ginny Padgett

Recently HBO aired a remake of Mildred Pierce as a mini-series, starring Kate Winslet. Many of you will recall the 1945 Joan Crawford version. During the credits I noticed the movie was based on a novel. Since I had mistakenly thought this script came from an original screenplay, I was curious about the author of the original work. Quick research yielded more surprises.

James M. Cain, the author of Mildred Pierce, (the first ever block-buster novel) wrote several other novels that were made into big movies: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Serenade. In addition, I found a collection of his short stories entitled The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction, which I checked out from the library.

His introduction to this book of short stories was more interesting to me than his fiction. His father was president of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. The younger Cain graduated from that college at seventeen, after which he spent the next four years drifting from one job to another, including teaching grammar at his alma mater. One day in 1914, “out of the blue…he heard his own voice say: ‘You’re going to be a writer.’”

He was not successful at first, but he was committed and kept writing. He enlisted in WW I, came home and spent three years as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, and began to work on his first novel. After three drafts, he threw them all away. While he was writing a column for the “Metropolitan” section of the Sunday World, his short works were published in the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, the American Mercury, the Bookman, and the Saturday Evening Post. When the World folded, Cain went to the New Yorker magazine where he was very unhappy.

Upon the advice of his agent, he accepted a job as a screenwriter at Paramount Studios and moved to California. He was let go after six months: another failure. However, he decided to stay on the west coast and try to make it as a free-lance writer.

He found his voice and his characters in California, and he enjoyed his highest success as a novelist during the 1930s and ‘40s. Eventually, his work fell out of favor with the public and critics. He moved back to Maryland in 1953 and wrote twelve more novels – but only five were published before his death in 1977.

James M. Cain is my new hero because he never stopped writing, even when it became unprofitable. He felt that “those who can write must write.” I’ve adopted this as my personal motto. In addition, his experiences speak volumes to me about determination and passion.

I leave you with his quote about the practice of writing, recorded during the time he was working on his memoirs just before he died. “It excites me and possesses me. I have no sense of it possessing me any less today than it did fifty years ago.”

Woman in Red Dress

By Laura P. Valtorta

During a recent disaster evacuation drill at Stanford University, all went awry. Workers and students were supposed to stand outside the buildings, twenty feet away, between 10 and 10:30 a.m., marked by siren signals. The sirens failed to go off as scheduled. Still, the Stanford police managed to rally most people outside, and situate them in neat clusters with their groups -- physics department, law school, visitors center, the Cantor museum, etcetera.

Dante and I waited outside the Cantor museum studying the beautiful sculptures by Auguste Rodin, including the Gates of Hell. We waited 30 minutes for the drill to finish.

At 10:20, a woman in a red dress strode out of the Cantor museum. The guards looked at each other. "What happened?"

"She was inside." The guards shrugged their shoulders. This was the first disaster evacuation drill, and all over campus it had been a disaster. Foreign, non-English-speaking tourists refused to leave the non-denominational chapel. The sirens either failed to sound entirely or they were too soft to hear. Students remained inside the dorms.

Then there was that woman in the red dress, who might have been an employee of the Cantor museum. If there had been an actual earthquake or fire, she could have been killed. But there was no disaster. Instead, she illustrated a point. She pushed the boundaries and disobeyed the rules, either out of stubbornness or ignorance. She showed the system did not function well. During this drill, she was an auslander.

Why does disobedience exist? As an outsider myself, I can testify there is no choice involved. Outsiders are born challenging the rules, questioning authority, stretching the boundaries. Auslander writers, such as the great Stieg Larsson, create new realities, illustrate our unexpressed dreams, and blast aside stereotypes. The result is Lisbeth Salander -- the woman every intelligent woman wants to become.

My goal as an auslander writer is to create a vision of the future that no writer has expressed. My future world is inspired with hope -- it is a utopia as opposed to the dystopia described by such writers as Margaret Atwood. Being an outsider causes me pain and disaffection on a daily basis. Oftentimes I fail to understand the world around me because it seems to be so driven by fear. There must be a reason for my pain. Outside thinking pushes the human species forward. It helps us evolve.

What Ever Happened........?

By Beth Cotten

Remember the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? As I recall, it bordered on a horror movie. The title stirred my muse to write this blog. My question is different and doesn’t provoke the same sense of dread as the movie title....but close. The question is, "What the $#@& Happened to James Patterson?"

On the way to visit my daughter in Indiana, I stopped at the airport gift shop to pick up a novel to read on the trip. I selected a James Patterson and quickly read the blurb on the book about the story line. Science Fiction is not my cup of tea, and this was a different genre from most of his nearly 60 books published since I read Virgin in 1980. So, I rationalized it must be good because it was a James Patterson novel.

I can count on one hand....maybe three fingers....how many books I started and did not read to the end. One was written in Spanish, and it was taking me way too long because my Spanish was "way too long ago." This Patterson book, The Dangerous Days of Daniel X, had a total of 220 pages. I read 80 pages to the end of chapter 31. Almost every other page is the beginning of a new chapter. I did not read further. This is by far the worst book I have ever read!

The premise of the book is that Daniel X is born with an extraordinary power unknown to our world. He is capable of creating inanimate objects and human and alien beings. As a toddler, from his hiding place, he sees his parents cruelly slaughtered, but the killer is not aware of a witness to the murders. Later, he discovers a list of names of super-powered, evil, alien beings and determines his father’s mission had been to assassinate these evil beings to save the world; thus the explanation why his father and mother were murdered. At the age of fifteen, Daniel takes up the search to complete his father’s mission. I will not be the spoiler and tell more.

I did some research:

- Reviews about the Daniel X series were split between those who thought the books were substandard to Patterson’s previous novels and others who praised them.

- The average review was three stars out of five.

- The books were written for young readers between the tweens and teens. (Well, I am a bit older.) Patterson explained the books were written to encourage the younger generation to read something other than comic books.

-The favorable reviews were from the youngsters or from parents and grandparents who were thrilled their child or grandchild was reading rather than spending all the time in front of a computer or television.

-Since 2005, Patterson published an average of 5.4 books a year --- seven alone in 2008. Can any author write four to seven quality novels a year?

Please, Mr. Patterson, don’t leave us “Oldies-but-Goodies” hanging. We were here first!

Blue People, Billions and Basic Writing

By Kimberly Johnson

I didn’t pay the $7.50 at the ticket window last Saturday. That’s right; I’m the only one who didn’t see Avatar. You know, the flick with the blue people flying on dinosaur-looking creatures. The flick that made billions of dollars.

To borrow a phrase from Drew Barrymore’s date night film: I’m just not that into it—science fiction, that is. My history with science fiction is checkered, spotty at best. I did munch popcorn to the Star Wars trilogy. I smiled through E.T. I curled up on the couch to Close Encounters on DVD.

Again, not a fan of space, the final frontier.

I didn’t pay the $7.50 at the ticket window last Saturday. That’s right. I blew it. After watching James Cameron’s insightful interview with PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley, I realized that blue people and quality writing equals big bucks. The Smiley-Cameron exchange revealed the director’s vision on creativity, the use of computerized imagery and the writing process. I also realized Cameron is a prolific screenwriter with box office notables such as The Terminator, Rambo: First Blood Part II and True Lies under his belt.

I did pay the matinee price to see those films.

That interview got me thinking… Cameron must be a darn good writer.
I drove to the public library and checked out three screenwriting books. (There is an iceberg and leading man in my future.) Hal Ackerman’s, Write Screenplays That Sell, is a keeper. Ackerman states that you don’t need to take a screenwriting course to write professionally. Did I tell you he is a former screenwriter and film instructor? Well, his former UCLA film students give him high praise for his simple, yet effective techniques to write and to format scripts.

So, I rolled the dice and decided to skim the book.

Then, I decided to read it.

Finally, I decided to incorporate some of his ideas into my writing. (I liked Ackerman’s take on character descriptions--- Keep the language fresh and vivid. Never leave your reader wanting less.) Overall, Ackerman wants the reader to develop strong writing skills. He does a good job on providing the nuts and bolts. For example, Ackerman believes that “dialogue must function as a part of a character’s efforts to accomplish his or her immediate objective”. He offers helpful hints such as:
• It’s never a character’s objective to give information to the audience.
• Characters ought not to be complicit with the writer’s intentions for them.
• A character’s objective is not to tell the story or to supply biographical information, back story, mood or psychological diagnosis.

I didn’t pay the $7.50 at the ticket window last Saturday. That’s right. I didn’t blow it. I used my library card to check out a reference guide to improve my writing—and to find some blue people.

Is It an Autobiography?

By Tiem Wilson

Have you ever read a novel and asked yourself: is this a real-life experience for the author? When you read about certain tragedies in a story do you find yourself wondering how much of it is a first-hand account? In your own writing, how much of yourself can you see reflected in the characters?

In a recent conversation with my nephew, this question was asked in reference to Blair Underwood, actor-turned-author. Underwood currently has two published novels featuring the character Tennyson Hardwick. Hardwick is a struggling actor. Thus, we pondered how much of Hardwick’s life is mirrored from Underwood’s own close encounters?

The same question was posed to Eric Jerome Dickey when he penned Between Lovers. It is a heart-felt story of a now bestselling author confronting the woman who left him at the altar early on in his career. The experience is so compelling you truly feel it is Dickey’s own broken heart bleeding on those pages. Based on the love scenes in all of his novels, my girlfriends and I have had many wine-induced conversations about the kind of lover Dickey must be in real life. We wondered when would he have time to write?

More recently, this question was answered by author Alice Sebold. I just finished listening to a production of The Lovely Bones on audiobook. In the author interview, Sebold revealed there is a common thread shared between herself and the main character, Susie. Sebold professed she was a rape victim at age 18. Although she obviously lived through her ordeal, she admited that a lot of herself came out as Susie’s character began to take form.

I have tried to pen an experience for a novel. I never get too far as I realize my life, at times, is quite boring. Therefore, I stick to characters that have exciting experiences I only dream of. It has been said that everyone has a story to tell. The quest then becomes turning that story into a never ending journey to pass down through the generations.