Thursday, July 15, 2010
Bringing Dialogue to Life
I've been rereading Karl Iglesias' fabulous Writing for Emotional Impact, which focuses on screenwriting but is every bit as applicable for novelists. In the book, he quotes advice from the late screenwriting legend (and three-time Academy Award winner) Paddy Chayefsky (taken from John Brady's out-of-print The Craft of the Screenwriter):
Flat, mundane, and emotionally-false dialogue are death on the page, death to the project. But how does one get to the crisp, witty, plot-propelling and character-revealing lines that drive a real barn-burner of a script or novel? Rewriting, cutting, and refinement are crucial, but I believe the real key is in what Chayefsky says about envisioning the characters in the scene and imagining the conversation from them.
One helpful technique for improving dialogue that Karl Iglesias shares is the read-through or staged reading used by screenwriters and playwrights (a role I tried my hand at before my novels were published). To use this collaborative technique, a novelist might assign readers (critique partners spring to mind) each a role and read through a scene's dialogue. When the reader stumbles or something sounds clunky, that's where your red pencil comes in. If you have really good readers (experienced stage actors are wonderful at this, but anyone willing to engage his/her imagination will do) they may tell you, "My character wouldn't say this. I think she'd say _______________ instead."
Listen to the feedback you get. Embrace the spirit of collaboration. What do you have to lose, other than a few clunkers?
If you can't find a willing group of readers, you'll have to cast yourself instead. Let the scene play out in your mind. See and hear it "on the screen." Lock the writer in the back room and play the role of actor, director, and the audience instead.
Then take out your paring knife and sharpen every line.
"I write laboriously worked-out dialogue...because I know what I want my characters to say. I envision the scene; I can imagine them up there on the screen; I try to imagine what they would say and how they would say it, and keep it in character...Then I rewrite it. Then I cut it. Then I refine it until I get the scene as precisely as I can get it."
Flat, mundane, and emotionally-false dialogue are death on the page, death to the project. But how does one get to the crisp, witty, plot-propelling and character-revealing lines that drive a real barn-burner of a script or novel? Rewriting, cutting, and refinement are crucial, but I believe the real key is in what Chayefsky says about envisioning the characters in the scene and imagining the conversation from them.
One helpful technique for improving dialogue that Karl Iglesias shares is the read-through or staged reading used by screenwriters and playwrights (a role I tried my hand at before my novels were published). To use this collaborative technique, a novelist might assign readers (critique partners spring to mind) each a role and read through a scene's dialogue. When the reader stumbles or something sounds clunky, that's where your red pencil comes in. If you have really good readers (experienced stage actors are wonderful at this, but anyone willing to engage his/her imagination will do) they may tell you, "My character wouldn't say this. I think she'd say _______________ instead."
Listen to the feedback you get. Embrace the spirit of collaboration. What do you have to lose, other than a few clunkers?
If you can't find a willing group of readers, you'll have to cast yourself instead. Let the scene play out in your mind. See and hear it "on the screen." Lock the writer in the back room and play the role of actor, director, and the audience instead.
Then take out your paring knife and sharpen every line.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Best Book Ad. Ever. Or is it?
I got on http://www.thedevilinyou.com/
By the time I realized it was actually a book ad, I was hooked, and continued on with the quiz itself. And as clever as I thought the whole thing was, what I most noticed was that it didn't really make me want to buy the book, at least not any more than I did before I saw it. On the other hand, the Michael Koryta video Joni posted yesterday did. Possibly that's just my sensibility talking, but I think there's more than that at work here. I think I just respond more to seeing the author talk about his/her work and to getting a sense of what the book is about. That's what lures me in.
Oh, but it was fun to find out that despite my current penchant for horror, the devil in me is only 11 percent. ;)
Tasty blurbage coming in for Promise Me
Kirkus Reviews "A powerful memoir...joy, fear, love, and heartache told in a captivating voice...touching, inspiring..."
Cokie Roberts, news analyst and author of We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters "Susan G. Komen for the Cure has become a brand name in the fight against breast cancer...In Promise Me we learn about the remarkable work of that organization, and also finally get to know the woman behind the name--Suzy Goodman Komen’s sense of fun and family comes through these pages as a bright light leading her sister through trials and triumphs."
Laura Bush, former First Lady and author of Spoken From the Heart "...an inspiring tribute to a sister’s love and a must-read for all who know the pink ribbon."
Mehmet Oz, M.D. of The Dr. Oz Show "...emotionally and elegantly chronicles how sisterly love changed the course of modern medicine..."
Kelly Corrigan, bestselling author of Lift and The Middle Place "This is the story of what happens when a big heart meets an iron will. Nancy Brinker will make you sit back and wonder."
Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Einstein: His Life and Universe "This book is about the meaning of life. It will move and enlighten you."
So, yeah...I'm kinda feeling like a ninja today. (Click here to get a free signed copy for your sister!)
Writing scared and keeping up the suspense: 3Qs for Michael Koryta, author of So Cold the River
Michael, thanks so much for your time. First of all, how are you holding up? Good Lord, you're prolific! Did you have a few manuscripts in a drawer when you started publishing or are you writing two books every year?
Hey, look at that, an incredibly generous question to start! Thanks for asking. Honestly, this year has been a wildly different experience -- wonderful in all regards, but different. Having publisher support of the kind Little, Brown offers is extraordinary, but it has put me on the road a great deal as well. In addition, I have done multiple international tours this year. I won't be able to hold a two-book pace in the future. One a year is a challenge enough. The stretch that's coming up -- three hardcover releases in something like 14 months -- is the product of my first year as a full-time writer, 2009. I didn't travel much, I was writing in a white heat because the change in direction had offered so much creative fuel, and, frankly, I was writing scared. Not in a bad way, but in a way that added motivation. I felt, and still do feel, as if I'd been afforded an unbelievable opportunity to work with the best house and best editor in the country. I didn't believe I had earned it, and I was determined to try and do that as best as I could. I'm still trying. So, no manuscripts came out of the drawer, all are fresh (and rewritten extensively, as is my way), and as to how I'm holding up: elated and exhausted. Right now, feeling more of the latter.
Setting the tone in So Cold the River is the compelling protagonist, Eric Shaw. I'm curious about the genesis of that character and wondering, did you ever fear for where he was heading?
The genesis of the character, and of the story, is the fine line between healthy ambition and damaging narcissism. At what point do drive and self-confidence become dangerous hubris? Although they are very different characters, Eric and Josiah and Kellen all share in this experience. One of the things I feared with Eric was my ability to allow the audience to see him both for what he had been and still empathize. He starts the novel as a selfish character, a bitter character, and I needed to find ways to counter that, to show both the dark side and the side that made him appealing as a protagonist. Some reviewers have focused on that dark side. I think they're missing the arc -- think Paul Newman in the "The Verdict" -- but then again I'm biased toward Eric!
Many of our regular constituents are not just rabid readers, they're aspiring writers. What advice can you offer when it comes to pacing this kind of plot? (And by that I mean one that sucks us in, gets us in a headlock, and scares us out of our wits?)
My mantra for suspense comes from Hitchcock: "There is no terror in the bang, only in the expectation of it." Filling a plot with wild action sequences often fails with the audience, no matter the creativity, because there is no emotional connection with the characters. You need to care about the character who is in jeopardy to make that jeopardy pay off. So, build an emotional bond between audience and character, present the idea that something bad is on the way for them, and then....hold it off. I love an excruciating build of tension. Hitchcock was a master, Stephen King is a master, but I don't know that anybody's done it better than Fitzgerald in Gatsby. The Gatsby/Daisy relationship is a clinical study in prolonged reader suspense. We HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS! And he takes his sweet time.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Buy This Book: So Cold the River by Michael Koryta
Floundering documentary filmmaker Eric Shaw has been reduced to a workmanly career doing family home videos. A lucrative gig doing a retrospective on an elderly millionaire takes him to the resort town of West Baden, Indiana, where he's sucked into freaky/ mysterious/ sinister/ seductive circumstances surrounding the town's unusual water supply.
Some of the reviews I've read gave away too many secrets and surprises, so I'm going to resist summarizing the plot, which twists, flows and dips underground. The dynamics of the story are all about greed, ambition, frustration -- all manner of dark human elements condense, evaporate, boil over and freeze just like the water that haunts the living and the dead in West Baden.
This book is hefty, dense, and very heavily populated, so for me, it was a great binge read, but if I'd been picking it up and putting it down over several days, I'd have been lost. What kept me up all night and made it so effectively chilling is the relatable, full-bodied characters, who get you just comfortable enough to suspend disbelief. Ultimately the weirdness works because the writing is realistic and a pleasure to read.
A starred review in PW says, "Koryta spins a spellbinding tale of an unholy lust for power that reaches from beyond the grave... A cataclysmic finale will put readers in mind of some of the best recent works of supernatural horror, among which this book ranks."
Click here to buy from IndieBound and watch this space tomorrow for 3Qs with author Michael Koryta. Meanwhile, check out the video below in which he talks about the extraordinary setting for this terrific novel. It'll forever change your reaction to that old chestnut about "something in the water."
Monday, July 12, 2010
Go with God, Harvey Pekar
Pekar wrote his first comic strip in 1972; it was illustrated by his friend, R. Crumb. He began publishing regularly, or semi-regularly, a few years later. "American Splendor" was illustrated by a variety of artists and focused on the minutiae of Pekar's life as a file clerk.Click here to read the rest.
"Pekar’s greatest strength is the tension between his ordinariness as a man and his extraordinary skill in chronicling it," James Hynes wrote of him. "He is thoughtful, articulate and, above all, angry, a rare and precious attribute in his age of yappie nihilism."
Pekar and his wife, Joyce Brabner, collaborated on Our Cancer Year, a graphic novel about his lymphoma diagnosis and treatment. It was published in 1994, two weeks before I was diagnosed with lymphoma, so it was FOS at every bookstore when Gary and I went out on a mission to research this thing that had just barged into our lives. We didn't feel like laughing. We felt like being pissed off. Harvey Pekar let us do both at the same time.
Go with God, Harvey. And thanks.
Hitting the Tarmac
I found a question in my inbox over the weekend from a writer working on her first book: she had just shown the beginning of her manuscript to "an experienced writer and teacher" who had told her the first chapter had broken one of the cardinal rules of the novel: "it cannot begin with someone just sitting and thinking." Concerned, she sent an open email out into the writing world, asking if it was indeed true that it was impossible to begin a book with a woman sitting and thinking in an airplane as it circled to land. By the time I joined the conversation, the answers she'd received, all of them composed and sincere, were each about rule-making . . . either pointing out that there are no rules in writing . . . or that there are rules and that only a very experienced writer should think of breaking them . . . or that rules are made to be broken, after all . . . or that there might be rules but that this wasn't one of them . . . etc., etc. . . .
What not a single respondent had done, up to that point, was answer the question: Is it possible to begin a book with a woman sitting and thinking in an airplane as it circles to land?
Is it?
(Before I go any further, I need to confess the following: my eyes glaze over when people start talking about rules and writing, whether pro or con. Seriously now, friends. My eyes turn to gumballs. Our job is not to bandy. The job is difficult enough. It is in fact too difficult to waste time contemplating the theory behind a choice. The job is to make the choice, see the choice, and then see if it can work. There. I feel so much better.)
So. I wrote back. My answer was long, but it boiled down to this: that what the teacher was worried about was the dreaded "sitting in the bathtub" opening. That the s.i.t.b. opening can be problematic, but was not necessarily impossible (I've done it). That it is, in fact, possible to infuse almost any moment with dynamic action. Maybe the woman is doing something, perhaps something quite telling, as she sits in her seat while the plane lands. Or maybe, as we turn to page one, she's just gotten off the plane, and is flashing back to her very recent experience sitting on the plane and thinking, all the while moving through the airport and making active, telling choices. Or maybe whatever she was thinking about is so powerful it is narrative itself, filled with action and choice all its own. That, finally, the number of possibilities range in the thousands, and that those possibilities always include the seeds of both failure and success, and that the challenge of the opening of any story is always, always, always figuring out how to land your plane and have it take off at the same time.
It's not that there are rules or not. It is that there are a thousand runways, and all of them, all of them require a clear head and a steady hand.
Within minutes the writer replied, excitedly: "Okay, what if the woman on the airplane is a high-powered CEO typing on a laptop frantically trying to get work done before her plane lands, all the while thinking about the funeral she's arriving for?"
What if. Exactly. Exactly.
--MD
What not a single respondent had done, up to that point, was answer the question: Is it possible to begin a book with a woman sitting and thinking in an airplane as it circles to land?
Is it?
(Before I go any further, I need to confess the following: my eyes glaze over when people start talking about rules and writing, whether pro or con. Seriously now, friends. My eyes turn to gumballs. Our job is not to bandy. The job is difficult enough. It is in fact too difficult to waste time contemplating the theory behind a choice. The job is to make the choice, see the choice, and then see if it can work. There. I feel so much better.)
So. I wrote back. My answer was long, but it boiled down to this: that what the teacher was worried about was the dreaded "sitting in the bathtub" opening. That the s.i.t.b. opening can be problematic, but was not necessarily impossible (I've done it). That it is, in fact, possible to infuse almost any moment with dynamic action. Maybe the woman is doing something, perhaps something quite telling, as she sits in her seat while the plane lands. Or maybe, as we turn to page one, she's just gotten off the plane, and is flashing back to her very recent experience sitting on the plane and thinking, all the while moving through the airport and making active, telling choices. Or maybe whatever she was thinking about is so powerful it is narrative itself, filled with action and choice all its own. That, finally, the number of possibilities range in the thousands, and that those possibilities always include the seeds of both failure and success, and that the challenge of the opening of any story is always, always, always figuring out how to land your plane and have it take off at the same time.
It's not that there are rules or not. It is that there are a thousand runways, and all of them, all of them require a clear head and a steady hand.
Within minutes the writer replied, excitedly: "Okay, what if the woman on the airplane is a high-powered CEO typing on a laptop frantically trying to get work done before her plane lands, all the while thinking about the funeral she's arriving for?"
What if. Exactly. Exactly.
--MD
Your Monday Chuckle - Trailer for Vampires Suck
Remember the old saying about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery? I'm thinking Stephanie Meyers should be mightily gratified... or at least chuckling at this hilarious trailer for a movie sendup of the Twilight Saga.
Check out the trailer for the forthcoming Vampires Suck.
Check out the trailer for the forthcoming Vampires Suck.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Happy 50th Birthday, To Kill a Mockingbird!
Fifty years ago today, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was published by Lippincott.
Suggestions for celebrating: Dress up like a giant ham and drink some ice cold lemonade, test your knowledge of the iconic southern novel with Guardian's TKM trivia quiz. Or better yet, revisit the book with this special 50th Anniversary Edition from Harper Perennial, which features the original cover art, a deckled edge (for that 1960s library stacks feel), and a brief forward by Harper Lee, in which she reminds us, "I am still alive, but very quiet."
Suggestions for celebrating: Dress up like a giant ham and drink some ice cold lemonade, test your knowledge of the iconic southern novel with Guardian's TKM trivia quiz. Or better yet, revisit the book with this special 50th Anniversary Edition from Harper Perennial, which features the original cover art, a deckled edge (for that 1960s library stacks feel), and a brief forward by Harper Lee, in which she reminds us, "I am still alive, but very quiet."
Great Free Info from Agent Noah Lukeman
I thought I'd pass along some excellent free information from literary agent Noah Lukeman. Lots of great stuff here.
* My book, HOW TO WRITE A GREAT QUERY LETTER, is available as a free download at www.writeagreatquery.com
* My blog, ASK A LITERARY AGENT, is filled with valuable advice to help aspiring authors in their careers. Feel free to visit it, and to ask any general questions you may have about writing or publishing www.askaliteraryagent.com
* While there, you can also sign up for my free monthly ezine, which is filled with unique tips for authors.
* I have made available over 100 free pages of excerpts from all of my books (including THE FIRST FIVE PAGES, THE PLOT THICKENS, A DASH OF STYLE and HOW TO LAND (AND KEEP) A LITERARY AGENT) at www.noahlukeman.com
* And feel free to follow us on twitter: www.twitter.com/lukemanliterary
Happy reading!
* My book, HOW TO WRITE A GREAT QUERY LETTER, is available as a free download at www.writeagreatquery.com
* My blog, ASK A LITERARY AGENT, is filled with valuable advice to help aspiring authors in their careers. Feel free to visit it, and to ask any general questions you may have about writing or publishing www.askaliteraryagent.com
* While there, you can also sign up for my free monthly ezine, which is filled with unique tips for authors.
* I have made available over 100 free pages of excerpts from all of my books (including THE FIRST FIVE PAGES, THE PLOT THICKENS, A DASH OF STYLE and HOW TO LAND (AND KEEP) A LITERARY AGENT) at www.noahlukeman.com
* And feel free to follow us on twitter: www.twitter.com/lukemanliterary
Happy reading!
Saturday, July 10, 2010
This Year's Thriller Award Winners
So many books, so little time! This years Thriller Award winners have once more lengthened my towering To Be Read list. Congratulations, everyone!
Best Hard Cover Novel:
THE NEIGHBOR, Lisa Gardner (Now out in paperback. Gardner is one of my favorite authors, so I highly recommend this! Kindle-napping it now!)
Best Paperback Original Novel:
THE COLDEST MILE, Tom Piccirilli (Rockin' the noir novel, with some hard-boiled pizazz!)
Best First Novel:
RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL, Jamie Freveletti (Way to debut!)
Best Short Story:
A STAB IN THE HEART, Twist Phelan (Available on Kindle, by a master of the genre!)
Friday, July 09, 2010
"So, when are we getting published?": Or What Not to Say to a Writer
Four years ago, I was deep into the research for this novel, reading every psychological case study I could get my hands on about the pathology of my antagonist. At the time I didn't have a lot actually written; I was still deep in preparation mode. But I believed the advice that said it's good to make your goals public, because then you'll have many friends and family members to hold you accountable.
I'm not necessarily knocking that advice now, and it made sense back when I had oh, 100 or so facebook friends, most of whom were other writers. It was sort of fun to write about what scene I was working on that day, and how many words I'd written. I moved through draft 1 fairly quickly, bringing many people along with my process.
Flashforward to now, four years or so later, and the book is still not done. Now I'm on my third draft, still working away, trying to get the thing finally ready for agents. And now I have over 600 facebook friends, from all ages and all walks of life. Yesterday I used this to my advantage, by making a facebook status about my recent crisis of confidence in my ability to carry off this novel. Several friends answered, all with words of encouragement and sound advice. I felt better. The scene got better. But today when I checked facebook, I really related to one of my friends' statuses. Like me, she's been working on her book for the past 4-5 years. Like me, she's getting ready to query.
Her status said that she regretted the day she told people she was writing a novel, and that she hated certain "conversation killers," like "when is your book releasing?" or "why is it taking you so long?" I told her I related and admitted to altering my parking location largely because I don't want to run into my neighbor. If I park in my driveway rather than in my usual spot in front of the house, I can duck in the side door and avoid his well meaning "So when are we getting published?" comments, which make me dig my fingernails into my hands.
The thing is, writing a book is not like other goals. Once the initial goal is reached, then there's the expectation of what to do next, and that expectation is almost always publication. Well, you've written the book, shouldn't the next step be to publish? What people don't realize is that the overwhelming majority of books that are written never do get published, at least not by traditional publishers. In order to give our books a fighting chance, those of us who know better try to push, prod and cajole our rough drafts into something that will sell. But even then, the odds are daunting, and even if we beat them, the process from acceptance to publication is often long.
I told a friend of mine how the agenting process worked and how some writers take years to find an agent, and then once a writer has an agent, that agent has to pitch to an editor, and so on and so on, and even once a publishing house has accepted the novel, it generally takes a year or two to come out in print. When I said all that, her eyes sort of glazed over and all she could say was "wow. I had no idea it took so long." And then she was silent. Nobody realizes that today's bestseller was bought a year or more ago, and may have been written years before that. It's a long process, and it's part of the reason that those of us who know feel an icy plummeting at the bottom of our stomachs when people ask that kind but uncomfortable question.
So when are we going to be able to read it?
I'm not necessarily knocking that advice now, and it made sense back when I had oh, 100 or so facebook friends, most of whom were other writers. It was sort of fun to write about what scene I was working on that day, and how many words I'd written. I moved through draft 1 fairly quickly, bringing many people along with my process.
Flashforward to now, four years or so later, and the book is still not done. Now I'm on my third draft, still working away, trying to get the thing finally ready for agents. And now I have over 600 facebook friends, from all ages and all walks of life. Yesterday I used this to my advantage, by making a facebook status about my recent crisis of confidence in my ability to carry off this novel. Several friends answered, all with words of encouragement and sound advice. I felt better. The scene got better. But today when I checked facebook, I really related to one of my friends' statuses. Like me, she's been working on her book for the past 4-5 years. Like me, she's getting ready to query.
Her status said that she regretted the day she told people she was writing a novel, and that she hated certain "conversation killers," like "when is your book releasing?" or "why is it taking you so long?" I told her I related and admitted to altering my parking location largely because I don't want to run into my neighbor. If I park in my driveway rather than in my usual spot in front of the house, I can duck in the side door and avoid his well meaning "So when are we getting published?" comments, which make me dig my fingernails into my hands.
The thing is, writing a book is not like other goals. Once the initial goal is reached, then there's the expectation of what to do next, and that expectation is almost always publication. Well, you've written the book, shouldn't the next step be to publish? What people don't realize is that the overwhelming majority of books that are written never do get published, at least not by traditional publishers. In order to give our books a fighting chance, those of us who know better try to push, prod and cajole our rough drafts into something that will sell. But even then, the odds are daunting, and even if we beat them, the process from acceptance to publication is often long.
I told a friend of mine how the agenting process worked and how some writers take years to find an agent, and then once a writer has an agent, that agent has to pitch to an editor, and so on and so on, and even once a publishing house has accepted the novel, it generally takes a year or two to come out in print. When I said all that, her eyes sort of glazed over and all she could say was "wow. I had no idea it took so long." And then she was silent. Nobody realizes that today's bestseller was bought a year or more ago, and may have been written years before that. It's a long process, and it's part of the reason that those of us who know feel an icy plummeting at the bottom of our stomachs when people ask that kind but uncomfortable question.
So when are we going to be able to read it?
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