Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail 3/5/2010
By Kim Simmons

O for a Booke and a shdie nooke, eyther in-a-doore or out;
With the grene leaves whisp’ring overhede, or the Streete cryes all about.
Where I maie Reade all at my ease, both of the Newe and Olde;
For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke is better to me than Golde.
-John Wilson

Last Meeting
Clayton – Chapter 10 rewrite. Is Gram coming through? John wanted to know who Miker was talking to from the beginning of that section. John and Jerry think the beginning of the chapter starts strong, but should be in the active voice. Kim wants to know if a 12-13 year old kid would use the words sperm and semen. Jerry wants to see Miker gaining knowledge instead of the information dump. Clayton is trying to show that he’s searching for knowledge on his own. Kim had a problem with the sounds of the fish. Jerry goes into the basement – Miker gets trapped, but nothing happens to him, he doesn’t even panic. Pat is still not feeling Miker, emotionally. Jerry thinks we need a reason to care.

John – Broken, Chapter 10. Millie thinks Broken is a very sympathetic character. Clayton had a problem with the dread dropping and bird’s droppings. Alicia says just use fell instead of dropped. Jerry wants to know how Broken knows it’s bread? Kane thinks Broken’s relationship with the bread should be more complex. Pat wondered what the point of the chapter was, could it be metaphorical? Kane thinks Broken should feel something when Moca was taken. John reminded us of what took place at the end of his last chapter. Clayton wonders if Broken wouldn’t start to have hallucinations at some point. Perhaps as his body fails, snapshots would come quicker and quicker.

Kim – Chapters 4-6. John was curious about the mechanism of italics in Chapter 5. Non-italics are current thoughts of hers. Pat thinks the council chapter is a lot tighter now. Unclear about the name that can’t be spoken. Jerry didn’t get it. Neither did a lot of others. Would her character really hate the rain? Millie thinks of her almost as a nymph. John thought the language and the interaction between characters in chapter 5 weakened them for her. Perhaps start Chapter 4 a little sooner – too much flashback. Jerry wants to know why the kids are spying for a character on a meeting that that character is attending.

Alicia – Chapters 34 & 35. Millie is enjoying the descriptions. Pat thought she jumped right in and took care of the procedural stuff. Clayton thought the establishment of the facts of the case came along nicely. Kane thought if one character called another a liar it would personalize it. The crack noises of the gavel reminded Jerry of the sound of a whip. Pat doesn’t know who will win.

Cathy – Chapter 1! The second part could be its own chapter. Bill thought the description of the trash was too descriptive, and distracting. Clayton thought the tension could stretch between what she’s thinking and what she’s doing. Kane thought the creepiest thing so far was the gelatinous carp, so maybe finding the body could be grosser. Kane thought the dead body was too passive.

Jerry – Chapter 23 & 24. How many more chapters? Jen wanted to know what Deportment was. Kane was looking for color. Early’s been in a world of white, color could help show his excitement. No elation when he finds the matches. Also, should the schoolhouse be a bigger ruin. Is there some temptation to stay in the schoolhouse? It bothered Millie that he wasn’t in more pain. Clayton thinks he needs more pain. Bill doesn’t know what neglect smells like. Kim wanted to know how derelict is the schoolhouse if its sat there for years, neglected. Pat wonders if Early is afraid or, if in that great tradition of manly men, he gets pissed. Also, one of those matches shouldn’t work at first. Alicia had a problem with Early walking right into the school. Would he have to break a window or something? John thinks it might be full of snow. Jen thought the ten-mile remark awkward.

Who’s Up Next. . .
March 16: Kim Simmons (chapters 7-8, James Hyde), Clayton Gill (chapter 11, Fishing Derby), Amber Boudreau (chapter 10, YA novel), Jen Wilcher (fan fiction), Millie Mader (chapter 17, Life on Hold), and Shel Ellestad (???).

April 6: Kim Simmons (chapters 9-10, James Hyde), Jerry Peterson (chapter 25, Early’s Winter), Jeff Kalhagen (story), Jen Wilcher (fan fiction), Amber Boudreau (chapter 11, YA novel), Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 35, Lawyer Lincoln), and Cathy Riddle (chapter 2, Beer Crimes).

April 20: Kim Simmons (chapters 11-12, James Hyde), Jerry Peterson (chapter 26, Early’s Winter), and Jim Shaw (???).

Everything you need to know about Fifth Tuesday . . .
Date, time, and place: March 30, 7 p.m., Booked for Murder (Madison’s independent mystery bookstore).

Food operation: As usual, potluck. Bring a favorite hot dish, salad, or dessert for the food table. Don’t cook? You’ve got a friend at the Cubb deli.

Writing challenge: “A Night at the Bookstore”. Write a short story, poem, or essay about what might happen after lights-out, when, well, maybe books and characters come alive. They do, don’t they? No more than 400 words. Send to Jerry Peterson by March 21.

Reservations: Guarantee yourself a chair at the festivities. Tell Shel Ellestad, , that you are coming. Spouses, friends, and favorite children welcome.

Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing . . .
Leonard first composed his rules for the New York Times’ Writers on Writing Series, in an essay he titled “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle”:

These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.

They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday, but it’s O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy’s thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”

3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .

. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”

This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories “Close Range.”

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.

Unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you’re good at it, you don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

And finally:

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It’s my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character – the one whose view best brings the scene to life – I’m able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what’s going on, and I’m nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in Sweet Thursday was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. “Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts” is one, “Lousy Wednesday” another. The third chapter is titled “Hooptedoodle 1” and the 38th chapter “Hooptedoodle 2” as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: “Here’s where you’ll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won’t get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.”

Sweet Thursday came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I’ve never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

Tax Tips For Writers!
Jessica Monday, published freelancer and aspiring novelist, does a guest column for Guide to Literary Agents. Her timely discussion of tax tips will be helpful for all of us wondering how to correctly complete our tax forms this year or plan for the same time next year.

There are several deductions a writer can put on his tax forms. These include larger items such as a Home Office (% calculated from the house’s square footage), gas mileage to smaller things like ink, business-related phone calls and more. Don’t let the complexity of it worry you, the article is very easy to read and while it doesn’t offer a step-by-step guide it’s easy to bullet all of her advice and to remember the #1 rule: Save Your Receipts!

http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/Tax+Tips+For+Writers.aspx

I really recommend this article. (It’s also very short.) I hope it’s not too late this year to get some of my things in order.

What is Fanfiction?
Fanfiction is fiction by fans, for fans. Imagine Harry Potter. A fan reads the books and decides Harry (spoiler alert) is better off with Hermione as his girlfriend and writes a story about it. Or decides that Voldemort (the villain) should win the final battle. Or the fan decides to write about what life would be like if they went to Hogwarts (School of Witchcraft & Wizardry). That is fanfiction.

The source of the fiction can include any story from any media (TV shows, books, cartoons, even games and comics). Oftentimes when a comic book (such as the popular Naruto) or TV show is still in the process of airing/being published, the fans will write stories to ‘guess’ at the ending or what they think the ending should be. This can also happen after a story is over and the fans decide they wanted it to end differently.

Not all fanfiction comes in traditional story form. Some people choose to write a poem, song, or to portray their fiction in script format. Some stories cross over between their inspired media. An example would be if Harry Potter was in London and met Sherlock Holmes and they solved a (magical) mystery together.

There is a wide spectrum of writing ability within the fanfiction community. While a fair amount of it is poorly written, there are many out there that are well-written and of course everything in between. Some types of fanfics (short for ‘fiction) are loathed by those who consider themselves superior writers and all are rated depending on their nature, genre, and content.

In short, fanfiction and its accompanying community have certain rules, boundaries and clichés. It is considered a dangerous place to tread, even for veterans. But despite the booby traps and pitfalls, fanfiction has always been a medium for young writers. Personally I wouldn’t have become a writer if I hadn’t discovered fanfiction first. Me? I prefer the comedy. Even if it’s bad, it’s good. http://www.fanfiction.net , http://www.mediaminer.org , and http://www.deviantart.com are three sites where you can find fiction, fiction & art, and mostly art with some fiction thrown in, in that order. – Jen Wilcher and Kim Simmons

Lay vs Lie (vs Laid)
And not the dirty kind, either. This quick, but still confusing, article finally lays to rest the issue between these two verbs. Check the chart at the bottom if you ever get lost. Or, rather, write it down somewhere for easy referencing.
http://blog.writersdigest.com/qq/Lay+Vs+Lie+Vs+Laid.aspx

Writing Competiton (money prizes!):

Dear Madison Writers Group,
Would you please put this in your newsletter and pass this on to others if you
feel they would be interested. Thank you.

The second annual “Scare The Dickens Out of Us” ghost story contest offers $1000.00 first place, $500.00 second place and $250.00 third place prize money this year for a new, original ghost story up to 5000 words. Any genre is welcome.
This literary contest is a fundraiser for the Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas, the oldest continuously in use library in Texas. Entry fee is $20.00. The contest is privately funded, all entry fees go to the Friends for library projects.
Full rules are available at www.clarklibraryfriends.com or .org. Entries will be accepted from July 1 to October 1 2010.
We are also supporting a “Junior Scare the Dickens Out of Us” ghost story
contest with a $250.00 first prize. This is for ages 12-18 and requires a $5.00 entry fee.

And thank you. We appreciate your time.
Roxanne and Gretchen Rix, contest coordinators “Scare The Dickens Out of Us” 2010

Monster Book Review by Amber

Monster, now available in paperback, is the title of A. Lee Martinez’s sixth novel. It’s also the name of the main character. Monster runs a pest control agency but he catches more than raccoons. He catches the things that go bump in the night. Things like yetis, trolls, and Inuit walrus dogs.
Despite his colorful persuasion, he’s just another working stiff with the girlfriend from hell…literally. On a call he meets Judy, a clerk at the local grocery store. Judy’s a light cognizant who knows a magical creature when she sees one. The problem is she forgets magic is real almost as soon as she remembers.
The two don’t hit it off, probably because they’re so similar; the major difference between them being that Monster rounds up Cryptobiologicals while Judy rounds up canned goods. A surge in Crypto activity leads Monster back to Judy with help from his sole employee, Chester, and from Judy herself. Chester takes care of the paperwork, but he works twice as hard as Monster’s conscience. When the ultimate crazy-cat lady abducts Judy, Monster has to figure out Judy’s connection to the end of the human race before it’s too late.
The author, Martinez, prods at big-picture questions about the universe and happiness with equal parts humor and reverence. Memorable characters and hilarious scenarios move the story along, though the reader isn’t entirely sure where it’s going sometimes, but one could argue that that kind of plot works for this genre. The characters are so mired in their daily lives, when the chance to do something different comes along they almost don’t know what to do. One drawback is that some of the characters don’t go anywhere and, unfortunately, Martinez doesn’t do sequels. All of his novels are stand-alone works.
I would recommend Martinez’s books to anybody who enjoys fantasy. The characters are memorable and the story draws you in with a mix of the all too real and the fantastic. I’ve enjoyed all of Martinez’s novels and here’s the order I would put them in starting with the best read: Monster, The Automatic Detective, Too Many Curses, In the Company of Ogres, Gil’s All Fright Diner, and A Nameless Witch. And it may not be long before you can see Martinez’s work on the big screen. According to the website aleemartinez.com, Dreamworks Animation has optioned Gil’s All Fright Diner for a possible movie adaptation.

16 Ways You Can Create a Better Hero and a Better Screenplay
Shakespeare created many of the most memorable heroes in the English language. We acknowledge him as an artistic genius. But the Bard was also the most financially successful writer of his time. Even in modern times, tidy fortunes are made from retreading his work.

One of the keys to his extraordinary success is to be found in this trenchant and insightful quote form Dr. Samuel Johnson, who published a definitive edition of his plays in 1765.

The stage but echoes back the public voice
The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give.
For we that live to please must please to live

That one is worth pinning on your wall. It’s as true for you as it was 400 years ago when Shakespeare was penning his audience-pleasing masterpieces. Writing stories that will satisfy the desires of your audience can lead directly to your success.

Moviegoers, like the Globe theatergoers in 1600, have definite and strong desires about what they want in a hero. and they vote with their feet and their wallets.

You will write better heroes and better screenplays if you use the audience’s desires as your writing “laws.” What are those desires? And how can you tap into them? I’m going to suggest sixteen types of audience desires, both positive and negative, that may be helpful. I’ll try to illustrate with examples of what audiences want (or do not want) and what you can do about it.

1. The audience wants the Hero to be forced to struggle, change, and become a better, happier, and more successful person.
Professional screenwriters recognize this want and take ingenious steps to exploit it. Have you ever noticed that heroes at the beginning of a movie are stuck in a rut? They’re usually in a state of paralysis (literally or figuratively). They’re often imprisoned in some way. In Gladiator, for example, Maximus (Russell Crowe) starts out trapped in a miasma of political intrigue, and progresses to a literal state of imprisonment and despair.

By portraying this admirable hero so far from “happy and successful,” the writers intensified the audience’s desire to see him struggle toward justice and freedom.

Try to imagine how your Hero, at the beginning of your movie, could be in a state of paralysis, unable to act.

Perhaps she might be like Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) in The Net. Angela, in retreat from a hurtful love affair shrinks from human contact. She has woven a protective cocoon around herself and forged the bars of her own prison.

Then again, your Hero might be “imprisoned” like William Broyles Jr.’s hero Chuck Nolan (Tom Hanks) in Castaway. Chuck is so obsessed by the deadline culture of his job that he has become a barely human automaton.

2. The audience wants the Hero to exhibit a sense of humor.
This is a simple but important desire to satisfy. You don’t need a gag writer. Audiences respond positively to self-deprecating or ironic humor. When Angela Bennett is accused of not being a risk-taker, she counters that she does like risks: she doesn’t always floss, and she tears the labels off her mattresses. Try to make your Hero exhibit a sense of humor as soon as possible.

3. The audience wants the Hero to have bigger-than-life dreams and desires.
Maximus dreams of winning his freedom as a gladiator, and of bringing down the regime of the murderous usurper, Commodus, and freeing Rome. What dreams and desires (perhaps secret) can your Hero develop to satisfy this audience desire?

4. Moviegoers want the Hero to believe in (and act according to) the basic set of values that they believe in. In Titanic Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) believes that a poor sincere artist should be true to his inner calling. He believes in the value of life. He believes that true love should triumph over class barriers and financial considerations. He believes in heroism to save a human life. These are all values that North American movigoers believe in.

Dirty Harry believes that a cop should not follow regulations if it’s a case of protecting the honest citizenry from the scum that infest the streets.

What are your Hero’s values? Are those values shared by the majority of the audience? Take your best shot.

5. The audience wants the Hero to struggle to overcome increasingly more difficult obstacles.
In Analyze This, written by Kenneth Lonergan (and others), Dr. Sobel (Billy Crystal) tries to get out of treating a depressed mob boss (Robert De Niro). At first, there are meetings in offices, and chases around a hotel, but the obstacles escalate, until Sobel finds himself pinned down by a hail of lead in a waterfront shoot-out.

Is your Hero’s struggle escalating to the utmost level consistent with the premise?

6. The audience wants the Hero to take on an opponent who is more powerful and successful than the hero.
Erin Brockovich takes on the chemical company, Jeffrey Wigand takes on the tobacco cartel (The Insider), Angela Bennett takes on the wealthy megalomaniac computer baron, Chuck Noland takes on the ocean, and Luke Skywalker takes on the galactic forces of evil.

Some movies — romantic comedies mostly — don’t have an antagonist or opponent in the typical sense. The opponent is the person whose love the hero needs to win, As Good As It Gets, When Harry Met Sally, Pretty Woman, Bridges of Madison County — in movies like these, the gulf between the hero and the loved one seems to be more powerful than the hero.

What about the opponent for your Hero? Is he or she as daunting as you can imagine?

7. Moviegoers want the Hero to play for high stakes, some outcome, or ideal, or benefit that they believe is supremely important.
What’s at stake in your Hero’s struggle? Will your audience believe in its importance? Is it life or death? Is it the integrity of the community? Is it winning the only woman (or man) for the hero, as in a love story?

8. Moviegoers want the Hero to be forced to undertake frightening and difficult tasks which they would not willingly undertake themselves.
This is the “don’t go down in the basement!” syndrome. Nobody in their right mind would go down in the basement after a serial killer the way Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) does in Silence of the Lambs. But it’s exactly what the audience wants her to do — because she’s the hero.

9. The audience wants to believe that the Hero can win. They don’t want to be sure that the Hero will win.
John Book (Harrison Ford), the hero of Witness faces three lethal, armed killers who invade the Lapp farm. Book, although a trained police officer, has no weapons. The audience is on tenterhooks through the whole final sequence. They believe he can overcome the villains, but they have no idea how he will do it.

10. The audience wants the Hero to face his or her worst fears.
In the final sequence of The Terminator, James Cameron’s breakthrough movie, the hero, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) faces the robotic relentless killing machine all alone. Her worst nightmare has become a reality. What’s your Hero’s deepest fear? Use it.

11. The audience wants the Hero to escape death (literal or figurative) by means of strength of character, persistence, cleverness and courage, not raw strength.
The quintessential example of a writer manipulating this audience desire occurs in William Goldman’s Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. The heroes find themselves trapped at the edge of a cliff, with the posse closing in. Instead of surrendering, they jump off the cliff into the river below.

How many of these types of moments can you set up for your hero?

12. The audience wants the Hero to win the prize at the end of the movie.
At the end of Working Girl, Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) wins her dream job and finds herself in the corner office. What’s the prize for your Hero?

13. The audience does not want the Hero to be lucky, unless the luck is caused by the hero’s cunning or provident preparation.
In the final battle of Star Wars, it could be argued that Luke Skywalker “gets lucky” when he destroys the Death Star. In fact audiences readily accepted his good luck, because they had shared his hours of preparation with Obi Wan Kenobi.

14. The audience does not want the Hero to be able to quit, to abandon the task he or she has undertaken.
You need to create good reasons why your Hero cannot quit. In Robert Towne’s superb detective story Chinatown, Jake (Jack Nicholson) cannot quit because he has a score to settle with the villain, and because he’s fallen in love with Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), whose husband was murdered.

15. The audience does not want to have its expectations fulfilled.
It wants to be surprised. So don’t let your Hero do what the audience expects him or her to do. Write against the expectations of the audience, or have the expectations fulfilled but in a totally unexpected way.

16. The audience doesn’t want the Hero to be motivated by base selfish desires.
Audiences dislike base selfish desires like greed. They like admirable selfish desires like striving for achievement (to become a great opera star, or head of the company, or discoverer of Insulin).

They dislike base selfish desires like pure revenge. They like admirable selfish desires like wanting to redress an injustice one has suffered.

They love unselfish desires like wanting to redress an injustice others have suffered, so as to make the world a better place to live.

Caution: This does not mean that you should never create heroes with base selfish motives.

You can often create great tension and catharsis in an audience through heroes with base selfish motives. Four good examples from different eras: Macbeth, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Goodfellas and My Best Friend’s Wedding.

Try to imagine all the ways in which you can satisfy the audience’s desires and avoid (or manipulate) the audience’s dislikes at every moment of your movie.

Try to put in as as many audience-satisfying moments as possible. Put them in on top of each other if you can.

As you write, plan how you can satisfy your audience in some way on every page. Of course all those other elements — plot, theme, dialogue, cast of characters and structure — are important, but the most important task for you is to give the audience what they came to the theater for — satisfaction.

The Last Word
“The trick is not to become a writer, it is to stay a writer. Day after day, year after year, book after book. And for that, you must keep working, even when it seems beyond you.” – Harlan Ellison