Plot
November 8, 2009
- I've been fortunate to sell most of the books I've begun, usually on proposal. Just one died in its early stages; its demise came about when my editor, talking about the plot of the novel, asked "So what?" Ouch. That was a painful moment, but an instructive one.Like the editor I quoted in my last post, I'm a lover of beautiful prose and well-rounded characters. I love creating ...
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November 6, 2009
- Just a sort of quick, humorous note. I am writing a novel with supernatural creatures in it. It was carefully outlined, and I knew going in pretty much exactly what I was going to write…except…I didn’t know that there was a werewolf in the story. What happened is simple, and worth noting. I set up a situation in the novel where one of the supporting characters needs something from my ...
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October 26, 2009
- Yesterday I went to a meeting with fellow writers, and we talked about plot. Plot gets a bad shake in the literary tradition, as language and character are deemed much more interesting, much more "arty." But without plot, characters fall to the ground. Sure, they can climb a long way without that scaffolding, but after a while, they teeter and plunge, the plot rail gone. I ...
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October 24, 2009
- In relation to the blog below, see the review of MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE in the NYTimes this Sunday. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/books/review/Schillinger-t.html?_r=1&ref=review Another writer who blurred the lines between sleeping and waking, nightmare and reality.Deep down, this kind of writing, raises a profound human question: What is it to be fully awake? and What is it to dream? ...
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October 17, 2009
- Colm Tóibín gave a short presentation earlier this year at the bookstore Politics & Prose, preceding his reading of the novel, Brooklyn. Among the memorable statements he made was this: he’d forbidden his writing students to use flashback. Though Tóibín has written eloquently about the inspiration for this novel, the remonstration to his students was partly what influenced him to write ...
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October 14, 2009
- I became immediately and sputteringly angry (figuratively…I don’t really sputter) at something fellow Backword Books member Christopher Meeks – very innocently – wrote to me this morning in an email. (He has given his permission to quote from the message.) One thing I’m curious about HOMEFRONT is the challenge you had in conceiving it and structuring it. When I first heard what ...
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October 7, 2009
- A particularly happy day today. Gina is an intensely focused writer, often working from the moment she wakes up until 4 or 5 in the morning. As anyone who follows my blogs knows, I am very proud of her and certainly do not begrudge her working practices. It’s always been my opinion that any creative person should never be interrupted when they are in the zone, as I call it, even if it means ...
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October 6, 2009
- It seems that successful (and otherwise sensible) writers often succumb to a terrible urge to write a book about how to write a book. If I were to become a famous writer (which is not unlikely in some parallel universe) I would break new ground by writing a book about how to write a book about writing books. The serious question is: can a writer learn to write a book worth reading from ...
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October 2, 2009
- Although it's still a month away, I'm bringing up the subject of November as National Novel Writing Month. If you've never joined this crazy club consider doing it this year. It's a pain with perks you will not regret. A few years ago... so I decided to do it. I was unemployed, so yes, I had lots of time on my hands, but remember, I was looking for a job which is pretty mentally ...
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September 24, 2009
- The Thematic Significance of your story is the thread that holds your story together. The more clearly you can define your thematic significance statement, the tighter your story. Once you have identified your Thematic Significance statement, your scene choices and word choices throughout your story will follow theme. The theme then serves as your compass, determining what fits and what ...
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