Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
April 4, 2012
By Pat Edwards

“I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.” – J. K. Rowling

At the B&N Tuesday Night
Greg shares Chapter 20 of Beyond Cloud Nine. Jerry wants to know why one character is checking for her pulse. Pat was wondering why she couldn’t find it. She also had to slow herself down so she could critique the chapter because it read very fast. Pat wants to know how one character is getting his input from the bugs planted on another character. Greg tells us he would not get the info in real time. How do we see something that’s colorless? Very tight writing.

Amber shares Chapter 4 of her Noble rewrite. Pat is disappointed the books don’t whisper to each other and wonders where Ivan is. Greg liked the descriptive chapter on a new character. John wanted more mystery associated with the young man in the library.

Lisa reads from the first chapter of her new story Follow the Yellow. Everyone liked the opening line, but there seems to some question of how mute one character seems to be. Is there actual voice box damage to cause the character to be mute or does she just choose not to speak? John wants to know why they explain this all to an almost stranger. Greg reminds us all not to get too attached to certain plot points. Pat thought the dialogue moved, but got lost in some of the exposition. Jen questions the grand mal seizure scenario also. John wanted to know who Javier was—he sort of pops up out of nowhere. A few of us weren’t sure about who the main male character was.

Jerry reads from Book 2—Rage of Thou Shalt not Murder. Pat did not like reading this because it made her that uncomfortable. Greg found the gun a little hard to follow—literally. John wonders why the character even needed the book for the gun, if he didn’t do anything with the book. Lisa didn’t think the character was a high school student. Rebecca liked the use of the term ‘art knife.’ John found the character a little nebulous and had a question about the evacuation that follows the gunshots.

How To Write Query Letters … or, really, how to revise query letters so they actually work
http://queryshark.blogspot.com/
a. You’ll learn some stuff about writing
b. She’s funny. That makes it worth my time!

Here is an excerpt with some excellent advice and examples:
“UNNATURAL ACT is a comic crime novel that comes in at 86,000 words and moves at a rapid clip. It is the first of a planned series of books featuring Billy & Eldon, who dive so deep undercover, they often forget that they are looking for criminals and not really members of a rock band, or Hollywood stuntmen, or pro surfers.”

Comic? Um. Well, ok, if you say so, but I really hate to see you set yourself up like that. Telling me something is funny (or comic) means I’m always asking “is this funny?”
SHOW me it’s comic. Dinosaur rocker is a good start.
Don’t tell me it moves at a rapid clip. Anyone who writes 33 word sentences is immediately dis-membered from the Rapid Clip Club.
Just to be cruel, I toted up the word count in your first eight sentences:
33
37
12
21
34
19
42
37
Before you get hot under the collar about this, let me just tell you that I learned about counting words in sentences from a guy who is damn fine writer: T. Jefferson Parker. He’s got a couple of Edgar Awards that show I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Jeff Parker once told me that he counted sentences in paragraphs and words in sentences as a way to increase tension. At the climax, the sentences and the paragraphs got shorter; the words fewer. In other words: short crisp sentences are more energetic and keep the reader moving along at that rapid clip you want to claim.
So when you tell me your book moves at a rapid clip, but what I see are looooong sentences, I conclude (perhaps erroneously) that you want your book to move along, but your sentences aren’t actually doing the job. Show me a brisk query; I’ll show a book that moves along at a good clip. SHOW don’t TELL.

Read the whole post here http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2012/02/220.html

BOOK REVIEW: SILVER WINGS AND SANTIAGO BLUE by JANET DAILY
Submitted by: Millie Mader
Thanks to Pat, I got to read this compelling story of World War Two’s WASP (Women Air force Service Pilots).
We were discussing Janet Daily and her novels of the seventies, and I admitted I had never read this one. Pat highly recommended it, published in 1985. I realized this was the year I was fighting breast cancer, and hadn’t kept up with the best sellers. I remembered that a lovely acquaintance of mine from Dallas had been a member of WASP, and I had failed to question her about her career, much to my regret. I have found her, and her picture, on the internet. She died in 1981. Now I ponder all the tales she could have relived. She did say that she had attended Baylor, and that her mother encouraged her love of flying.
At the frontispiece of this novel is an exalting poem, found on the body of an RAF pilot, killed in a crash of his Spitfire. It will elicit tears with its beauty.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things
you have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and
swung—high in the sunlit silence.
Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting winds along,
And flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue, I’ve topped
The windswept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod the high
untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
*******************
This novel draws us into the lives, loves and ambitions of four protagonists. All are expert fliers, anxious to serve in World War Two. Unlike my friend, their families disapprove. Resolute, they march off with hundreds of skilled women fliers to barren barracks, and drab, unfitting uniforms. Here they are indoctrinated into the training program pushed through by women’s air race champion, Jacqueline Cochran.
They train in Houston and Sweetwater, Texas. Our heroines here are sent to the dry, windy plains of Sweetwater. They are subjected to aircraft and equipment declared unfit for combat. Instrument training proves fatal to one of their company, and lives are risked at every turn. When they graduate to the P-51 Mustangs they are elated. Although their personalities, loves and backgrounds are divergent, in the long haul they cling to one another– ambition and empathy bind them
After the rigors of training, they are ultimately assigned air transport duties, ferrying planes to embarkation points across the country. They have been awarded silver wings and Santiago blue uniforms and flight suits. They have graduated to four engine transport planes in record breaking time. However, the battle to become part of the army is never attained. Male pilots, many of them training instructors wanting to fly, are radically and openly opposed to women fliers. Many of the men are plainly jealous. These strong and intelligent women have proven that they can fly on an equal basis with any male pilot, even in cast off, faulty planes. At last several are assigned to test the new combat jets. The program lasted only two years.
************
Our heroines were ageing, but still vital and attractive as they gathered at the Pentagon in November 1977, and were finally declared part of the “military.” One of the four was missing.
In an anti-climax, golden wings were awarded to the women of WASP in 1984. At long last, in 2010, President Obama awarded them the Medal of Honor. Sadly, most medals were accepted by their children and grandchildren.
Who’s up next . . .
April 10: Carol Hornung (scene, Sapphire Lodge). Jack Freiburger will have a chapter.
April 17: Liam Wilbur (chapter, Scott & Rory), Rebecca Rettenmund (chapter 6, The Cheese Logue), Millie Mader (chapter 34, Life on Hold), Pat Edwards (poems), Judith McNeil (more of “The Waldorf Hysteria”), and Greg Spry (chapter 20, Beyond Cloud 9).
May 1: Aaron Boehm (???), Greg Spry (chapter 22, Beyond Cloud Nine 9), Amber Boudreau (chapter 5 rewrite, Noble), Lisa McDougal (chapter 3, Ben and Krista), Millie Mader (chapter 34, Life on Hold), and Alicia Connolly-Lohr (???).

For the poets among us . . .
A type of poem defined by Word Spy Paul McFedries:
piem
noun. A poem in which the length of each word corresponds to a digit in the decimal expansion of the mathematical constant pi. [Pi + poem.]

Example Citations:
People have devised any number of methods to help them remember well more than ten digits. There is a form of poetry known as a piem, in which pi’s digits are represented by the number of letters in each word. The best-known piem renders the first fifteen digits of pi as “How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics.”
– Calvin Trillin, “Try to remember,” The New Yorker, April 4, 2011

If calculating decimal places isn’t your idea of fun, you can always memorize them. The current unofficial world record belongs to Japan’s Akira Haraguchi, who rattled off 100,000 decimal places in 2006. People who need help remembering digits often fall back on memorizing a “piem”, a poem in which the number of letters in each word corresponds to pi’s digits.
– Ethan Trex, “10 Interesting Numbers in American Culture (Plus or Minus a Few)”, Mental Floss, June 1, 2011

Earliest Citation:
There are lots of ways to remember pi, including things called piems, poems where the length of each word represents a digit.
– Alok Jha, “Pi-eyed”, The Guardian, March 14, 2006

Notes: I posted this term in honor of Pi Day, which occurs every March 14. What’s so special about that date? In countries that use the m/dd date format, March 14 is 3/14, and the decimal expansion of Pi begins with 3.14. Easy as, well, Pi.

On writing dialogue . . .
Said horror writer Rob Walker in a recent post, the features of the speaker and the person listening are as important in dialogue as the words being spoken:
“It is not only important what is said but how the character’s expression do a dance-like interplay with those of the other person he/she is dialoguing with. What the characters do with their eyes, noses, ears, cheeks, if they wince, frown, gasp, or bare their teeth. If they wink or give out with the evil eye as they speak, not to mention what they might be doing with their feet, limbs, hands — the visible extension of the brain/mind. Body language. All important in dialogue writing. It’s part of keeping six saucers in the air while on the trick bicycle of performing as a writer.”