Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays With Story
July 16, 2013

Writer’s quotation . . .(thanks, Jerry)
“Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you’d most like not to lose.” – Neil Gaiman, novelist/graphic novelist/screenwriter (1960- )

Tuesday at B&N . . . (thank you, Amber)
Ruth shares chapter four of Motto of the Hound. Lisa has a question about the match and the sketch artist, but Ruth explains they only had a face not a name. Jerry points out that one character joins the chapter out of nowhere, she needs to be brought in, not just appear. Pat thought it moved well and she’s understanding the work, but noticed one male character uses a female speech patterns. Lisa had to ask if one character was a man or woman. Alicia thought she had an opportunity to play up the comedy more. Going back to Ruth’s rewrite of Chapter three Jerry suggests using parallel construction with the speech tags. Pat and Jerry think the magic needs more narration.

Alicia shares a scene from Lincoln’s Other War. Lisa and Judith really liked this scene. Pat thought it had great visuals and has a comment about the color of Dogwood flowers there should be. She also thinks the ending could be zingier as it doesn’t make her want to turn the page.

Bob reads from an older version of part two from What is Missing. Lisa thought he could separate the letter reading from the rest of the narration to make it easier to read. Andy wasn’t so sure. Pat wonders if the last sentence is the end of the story. Bob says it is. Pat thinks that works, the main character doesn’t have to be back at the home by the end of the story and she thinks there are some great images. Jerry had a question about the door handle. There is some question of whether it matters if the reader knows the letter from another character is real or not.

Judith shares chapter two of My Mother, Savior of Men. Lisa was disappointed to not hear from the mom in this chapter. Andy got confused with who was speaking from time to time. Alicia likes the main narrator because he’s got a lot of opposite qualities. Pat thought she had some good images and she liked the fast pace of the dialogue.

Mille reads from part one of chapter forty-six of Life on Hold. Jerry likes the one-word change she made from tossed to pitched. Andy thought the guilt trip the main character feels is too brief. Lisa suggests the guilt lasts a couple of days instead of being over in one night. Jerry points out that we don’t know what pills one character took too many of. Millie wonders if this is going to end in a trip to the emergency room.

Jerry reads from chapter twenty-six of The Last Good Man. Millie thinks the woman from the past is getting interesting. Pat wanted more reaction out of one character after a particular reveal. Millie wonders what happened to his first wife. Pat can hear the screaming of the kids on the Easter egg hunt and wonders if a four-year-old would say something about pee-pee instead of Bo peep. The group does not react well to learning that this is the end of the book. They feel Jerry has left a lot of the story up in the air.

Who’s up next . . .
July 23: Rebecca Rettenmund (Hales Tales), Carol Hornung (scene, The Ghost of Heffron College), Erin Syth (short story), and Ruth Imhoff (chapter, Motto of the Hound). Ray Woodruff, short story; Terry Hoffman, novel synopsis.

July 30: FIFTH TUESDAY!

August 6: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Rebecca Rettenmund (chapter, The Cheese Logue), Andy Pfeiffer (novella/part 1 rewrite, Pilleum), Ruth Imhoff (chapter, Motto of the Hound), Pat Edwards (poems), and Amber Boudreau (chapter 17, Noble).

August 20: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Bob Kralapp (???), Millie Mader (chapter 46/part 2, Life on Hold), Judith McNeil (chapter 3, My Mother, Savior of Men), Amber Boudreau (chapter 18, Noble), and Alicia Connolly Lohr (novella, scene, Lincoln’s Other War).

Next Fifth Tuesday . . .
Hey, it’s only two weeks away, July 30 at the Panera store on University Avenue. The writing challenge is Fortune cookie fortunes. Select a fortune from the list below or come up with one from another source, then write a story, poem, essay, or film scene in which you use the fortune in some way. You guessed it; the max length is 250 words. Email your mini-masterpiece to Jerry Peterson, jerrypetersonbooks@gmail.com , by Friday, July 26.

The list
When you feel defensive, examine what you fear.
A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest. – Irish Proverb
A man’s work is from sun to sun, but a mother’s work is never done. – Author Unknown
No gift to your mother can ever equal her gift to you – life. – Author Unknown
A sweater is a garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly. – Ambrose Bierce
There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it. – Chinese ProverbThe study of history is the beginning of political wisdom.The wit of a graduate student is like champagne.
The world is round so the place which may seem like the end, may also be only the beginning.
‘Yogi’ Berra’s real name was Lawrence Peter Berra.
80% of the results flow from 20% of the activities – Pareto Principle
A baby is God’s way of saying the world should go on.
A bashful admirer will soon be reveled.
A beauty is a woman you notice, a charmer is a woman who notices you.
A book is in your future.
A clean conscience is a soft pillow.
A committee of one gets things done. – Joe Ryan
A company is judged by the president it keeps. – James Hulbert
A diamond is a hunk of coal that stuck with it.
A friend asks only for your time not your money.
A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.
A friend will soon bring you a gift.
A girl who is free for the evening can be one of the most expensive things in the world.
A good beginning is only half done.
A good example is the best sermon.
A good time to start something new.
A journey of 1000 miles begins with one step. – Lao Tzu
A lean compromise is better than a fat lawsuit. – George Herbert
A little girl, asked where her home was, replied, “where mother is.” – Keith L. Brooks
A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough. – Ben Franklin
A man can’t get rich if he takes proper care of his family. – Navajo saying
A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary. – Dorothy Fisher
A mother understands what a child does not say. – Jewish proverb
A new challenge is near.

About Writing . . .
Free Samples of the PEN American Literary Award Nominees http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/free-samples-of-the-pen-literary-award-nominees_b74027

This article has links to free samples of writings nominated for the award in ten different categories, (Novel/short stories; Nonfiction; essay; Literary science writing; Open book by author of color; Biography; Literary sports writing; Picture book writing; Poetry in translation (no samples); Book-length translation). PEN American awards (in my opinion) are among the most worthy literary awards. It is enlightening to read a page or two of a few samples just to experience some pre-ordained really good writing.

Author slam . . . (Jerry)
Madison area writers will be reading from their books every 15 minutes at Mystery To Me Bookstore’s first author slam on Thursday and Friday evening, July 25-26, and Saturday and Sunday afternoon, July 27-28. Go to the new mystery bookstore’s webpage, http://www.mysterytomebooks.com/ , for times and writers . . . and then stop in. The store is at 1863 Monroe Street, across from Trader Joe’s.

Outlining and outlines . . . (Jerry)
Ever wonder what the story or book outlines of famous authors look like? Get a peek here: http://flavorwire.com/391173/famous-authors-handwritten-outlines-for-great-works-of-literature/view-all

Hooked on The Game of Thrones? . . .(Jerry)

Here’s where you can get a glimpse of the 10 sources George R.R. Martin drew on for the world, characters, and events he created in his series of novels. They, of course, led to the television series: http:http://io9.com/10-sources-that-george-r-r-martin-borrowed-from-for-ic-511679817

Her book didn’t sell without her name on it . . . (Jerry)

J.K. Rowling wrote on a crime novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, under the pen name Robert Galbriath, and it bombed with people who buy real books. Here’s YA novelist and blogger Nathan Bransford’s take on it:

In one of the great baller moves in recent literary history, news leaked out this week that J.K. Rowling published a crime novel called The Cuckoo’s Calling under the pen name Robert Galbraith.

Rowling apparently didn’t just make secret arrangements with a publisher as herself, the novel was actually submitted to editors under the pen name (though it ended up with Rowling’s editor for The Casual Vacancy, David Shelley). At least one editor has now confessed to passing on it:

So, I can now say that I turned down JK Rowling. I did read and say no to Cuckoo’s Calling. Anyone else going to confess? — Kate Mills (@Kate7Mills) July 14, 2013

Most of the news reports have focused on the fact that The Cuckoo’s Calling received pretty glowing reviews, with Publishers Weekly calling it a “stellar debut” in a starred review. Especially after getting Michiko Kakutani’d with The Casual Vacancy, that had to have been particularly gratifying, and it’s interesting to ponder whether The Casual Vacancy itself would have been reviewed differently had Rowling not been the name on the jacket.

At the same time, I think people are missing one of the other important illustrative elements of this story, which is that The Cuckoo’s Calling was not a great commercial success. It had sold only 500 copies in Britain. Despite all those glowing reviews and being published in a commercial genre, it didn’t catch on.
a. Some of this may have had to do with the fact that it was by most accounts, a quiet novel:
@14NC I thought this was well-written but quiet. And how do you get momentum for that? Oh wait…
— Kate Mills (@Kate7Mills) July 14, 2013
b. It’s equally possible, even probable, that commercial success wasn’t Rowling’s intent and that she wanted the thrill of receiving an honest appraisal of her work unencumbered from her reputation.

Still, it was a book written by J.K. Rowling. It received terrific reviews. It was published by great publishers. And it didn’t take off.

It just goes to show how fleeting commercial success is in the book world. Take away those magical series of events that result in bestsellerdom and it’s just another well-received crime novel that fails to catch fire.

Even J.K. Rowling can write a good book that drops into the ocean and barely makes a ripple.

*Here’s a footnote for you. When the story broke in London on Monday that Rowling was Robert Galbraith – she confirmed it in news interviews – the press run of 1,500 copies sold out, leaving those readers who still wanted to buy a real book to turn to eBay where copies were selling for $1,000.

Or they could buy the ebook, and they have . . . in massive numbers. Here’s Ewan Spence’s story that appeared in Tuesday’s Forbes online edition:

Once more, J.K. Rowling has a hit on her hands, as Robert Galbraith follows Richard Bachman with ‘cancer of the pseudonym’ and The Cuckoo’s Calling becomes a best-seller.

An interesting experiment has been unfortunately curtailed, and we’ll never know just how successful Galbraith’s detective series would have been. Now that the true author has been outed, the series is going to be a guaranteed hit. But it was already on course to do just that. As a debut novel the 1,500 hardback copies shipped, with around 500 sales, was an impressive number given the circumstances of a saturated genre, a debut author, and little marketing spend behind the title. Rowling more than likely had another hit series on her head as Galbraith, and it would have been delightful to get to book three or four in the series, a potential movie deal in place, Patterson Joseph cast as Cormoran Strike, and then do the reveal.

Much like Stephen King’s pseudonym of Bachman, who was ready to publish Misery and break into the A-list author category before the cover was broken, Galbraith had a career calling to him. How far he would have got will remain a point of speculation for the public, and an unanswered question in the mind of Rowling.

But the real winners here are the online eBook stores. Turning on my Kindle this morning, and the crime novel that had shipped around 1,500 copies, with around 500 public sales up until this weekend was now front and center, next to Dan Brown. Why the sudden change? Why indeed.

With book shops genuinely caught out and lacking stock (surely the biggest sign this wasn’t some fascinating long-con), anyone who wanted a copy of The Cuckoo’s Calling was going to have to go digital. The Kindles of the world are likely going to be the only place to read the adventures of Strike for the next few days. It wouldn’t surprise me if the book turns out to be one of the biggest selling eBooks of the year – from the lowest reaches of the charts sales rocketed 158,000% and it hit the number one spot on Amazon.

For all the tactile love, rich smells, and physical nature, of a new book, when the world had a sudden need to read a certain book, all at the same time, they turned to eBooks, portable readers, and software on their smartphones. The words are just as important, but the acceptance of the deliver mechanism is of far more interest to me.

With very few barriers in place, the world reached out to a digital bookshelf, there was a copy waiting for them, and you could read it just a few minutes later. It all just works.

How to write a Blockbuster Novel
http://www.communigate.co.uk/lakes/kendalwriterscafe/page12.phtml
There is a difference between a bestseller and a blockbuster.

Blockbusters have that common extra factor which boosts them from being a great book to being a blockbuster which you might find on the shelves of those people who do not consider themselves to be book lovers.

Albert Zuckerman in his book “Writing the Blockbuster Novel” identifies as a problem that many authors write commercial books that are “too small”. By too small he means, domestic or limited in the scope of its characters or setting.

Here are some elements you need to write the blockbuster.

High Stakes – Day of the Jackal where the fate of France rests in the success or failure of the assassin known as The Jackal or The Da Vinci Code where the influence of religion over the past 2,000 years will be put to the test as a conspiracy to silence critics of the Catholic Church is uncovered.

Larger than life characters – the blockbuster needs characters who are larger than life. Think of Scarlet O’Hara or Matthew Bourne in the Robert Ludlum Bourne series of books.

A grand dramatic question – will The Jackal be stopped in time? Will Matthew Bourne discover his identity and find out why all these people are trying to kill him?

High Concept – this term is borrowed from the movie world and describes an often audacious idea at the root of the story. The Da Vinci Code has this idea as its central theme.

Multiple points of view – often blockbuster novels are often told through the eyes of several major characters, it is a more filmic style.

Settings – the blockbuster is often set on the international stage or to a background of a national struggle. Think of any of the books by Wilbur Smith. Arthur Hailey trademarked this, he give his novels one-word titles; Hotel, Airport. James Michener went one further in his historical novels featuring the history of nations Hawaii, and Poland.

Having a grand idea for the blockbuster is fine, but the usual rules of writing novels still apply, as we have discussed before, these need to be brought into play and woven into your potential best-seller in the most suitable way for that market.

This is the key, blockbuster novels are not literary! Although there have been a number of literary novels which have become blockbuster novels (The Name of the Rose for instance) these are the exceptions to the rule and very often they are recognised as being difficult books – whether these books are ever finished being read is open to question.

The rules

Believable characters – Although there may be an element of archetype, your characters should still have real concerns that are recognisable to the reader. This makes your characters believable.

Eventful storylines – remember to have something new begin in every chapter and have something conclude in every chapter. Have each chapter finish with a cliffhanger.

Dynamic language – Make every sentence count.

Pace – your story should be peppered with incidents, feature set-piece confrontations, have some period of light relief/slowing of the plot.

Research – one element of the blockbuster is its attention to the details of world hidden from the general view. Think of the novels of Tom Clancy, or Da Vinci Code where the workings of secret societies are vital to the story.

Elements particular to the blockbuster novel

Avril Harper http://www.writersreign.co.uk/Blockbuster.pdf writes:

Keep the reader on edge, keep him turning the pages until the very end. In short,
make yours a book he can’t put down.

John Grisham, master of suspense, quoted in ‘Writers’ Monthly’: ‘It’s a deliberate effort to make the pages turn. I want people to lose sleep when they read them. I want people to skip work, to call in sick.’

Start with a bang, on the first page if possible. Grip the reader with conflict, trouble, fear, violence. Don’t worry about explaining it yet.

Make life tough for the main characters. Then make it tougher.

Create conflict. All good writing focuses on conflict: unrequited love, war, crime, oppression, poverty. Put your main character or his aims in jeopardy. Bestselling author Brian Garfield, writes of the main character: ‘His own life or those of his loved ones should be in danger. Whatever the conflict is, if he loses, it’s going to cost him horribly; that’s the essence.’

Don’t write anything you wouldn’t want to read. In other words, don’t try to write a blockbuster just because the particular genre is currently in vogue.

About your Readers and Publisher
Understand what readers and publishers really want. According to Shirley Conran:
‘When planning a book you have to think of what will be of interest to the general
public in three years time.’ Think of a current vogue and picture a scenario of “what if it all went wrong”. GM crops or genetic engineering, for instance, will probably still be a talking point in three years time.

If your novel has a historical setting, make sure readers can understand dialogue and descriptions used in your work. As an example, words used in the 60s, such as ‘groovy’ and ‘fab’ have little relevance for young people today.

Check everything you write. Check facts, dates, spelling, meaning of words,
descriptions, etc.

Don’t let your story become stale. Keep the pace going throughout. Drop hints,
make suggestions about future events. Keep the reader interested. Keep him reading!

Don’t ruin your chances with bad grammar or spelling.

Submit your manuscript to a suitable publisher and address that person by name. For
publishers major taboos include: getting the name wrong or, worse still, addressing
your manuscript to ‘Dear Sir’ when over 70 percent of publishers are women!

Get yourself an agent. This isn’t easy for newcomers but it can save a great deal of
time and frustration for you. Look in ‘Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook’ or ‘Writer’s
Handbook’ for agents who handle novels similar to yours.

Don’t give up. Frederic Forsyth’s ‘Day of the Jackal’ was rejected 20 times before
finding a publisher, and Catherine Cookson was once advised to look for another
career – writing was not for her!

A book you might want to look out for is “Write a Blockbuster and Get it Published” by Helen Corner and Lee Weatherley from Teach Yourself Books.

Great word . . .

Hobbledehoy . . . This grand word provided courtesy of Wordsmith Anu Garg.PRONUNCIATION:
(HOB-uhl-dee-hoy)

MEANING:
noun: An awkward young fellow.

ETYMOLOGY:
Of uncertain origin. Earliest documented use: 1540.

USAGE: “Burleigh’s breathless accounts of the many figures of the British peerage in the story read as though written by some overawed hobbledehoy, someone who fingers the noblemen’s lamé draperies in envious amazement and wonders how much they would go for at Wal-Mart.”
– Simon Winchester; The Nation’s Attic; The Boston Globe; Jan 11, 2004.

Food for Thought . . .
“I don’t think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he doesn’t know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it — you can’t teach it.” ― William Faulkner