What Would Elmore Do?

I learned this morning, MONKEY JUSTICE reached the elite eight in a contest for best ebook of 2011 on Spinetingler. I fear and dread contests (why can't we all win) but if you liked MONKEY JUSTICE and wish to vote for it--here it is.

http://www.spinetinglermag.com

It is Super Tuesday after all
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Adverbs are pretty much out of favor in fiction writing, but here is where it trips me up.

She smiled.
She smiled slightly.
She smiled broadly.
She smiled ironically.
She smiled maliciously.
She smiled hesitantly.

Now these are very different smiles. And of course, to avoid the adverb, I could say something like "Her smile was a slight one." Or spend several sentences getting that across.

But how is making it an adjective any better? And is embedding the sort of smile it was in a lot more words to avoid an adverb a good choice. Is the occasional adverb really so bad? Doesn't it cut to the chase sometimes?

What would Elmore do? What would Joe Konrath do?

Sunday Forum

4. Do most of your story ideas come from your own life, stories you read about, a flash of an idea? What?

Michael Bracken:
They come from everywhere. Lately I've been writing for a lot of anthologies so calls for submission are sparking many of my new story ideas.

P.A. I would say an overheard sentence or two. The more closely my story follows a real incident, the more trouble I have slipping into it. I try hard to find a way to make it mine when I can't pass something true up.

Sunday Writer's Forum

A terrific interview with Megan on Memphis Public Radio can be found here.







Question 2.

What is the average length of time it takes you to finish a polished story?

P.A. I would say a month. I might also be working on another story and go back and forth, but probably a month. I like rewriting more than writing and I think that slows me down.

Michael Bracken: Actual writing time? From a few hours up to about 10 hours, Rarely more. Rarely less. However, years may pass between the time I make notes for a story I'd like to write and when I actually write it.

Question 3

Do you outline your stories?

Michael almost never outlines and if he does, it's just a sketch.

I never do either. Even at my attempts at a novel, I just kept track of the characters birth dates on a chart. None of the plot.

How about the rest of you?

Sunday Discussion for Short Story Writers

I'd love to have you all sitting around a circle because I'd like to know more about your process as they call it. I originally posted a long list of questions but Rob Kitchin suggested doing one at a time so it could function as an ongoing discussion. Here's the first one for those interested in answering it. Next Sunday I will post another if interest merits it.



1. How often do you finish the rough draft of a story in one sitting?

I never finish the rough draft in one sitting. I would say it takes me about two weeks to finish a rough although not very rough draft and that is working on it nearly every day. I am very slow because I start with word one each time I sit down. So when I am done the rough draft, the story is pretty smooth from all the rewriting. At least the first half is.

Some Advice?

I am at sea in more ways than one.

While I am out here in CA, I have been working on putting my second attempt at a novel all in the first person. I had it from two POVs, a mother and a daughter. But it lacked immediacy so I decided it should all be from the kid's POV. Although things happened when the kid wasn't around, her mother told her about them or she heard about them so it was pretty easy to get them into her POV until page 230 or so.

In the last third of the book, there is an estrangement between the two and I cannot figure out the best way to handle the mother's story. Does anyone know of someone who handled such a thing well or have an idea. Or should I just have two POVs for the last third without making a fuss about it? Would it bother you. It would be a chapter thing mostly. I am flummoxed.

Horror or Fantasy?

I'm having trouble discerning the difference between fantasy and horror.
If a man turns into a moth and is appalled by it, that's horror. If he likes the transformation and takes off happily into the night, that's fantasy? Or is it? Is his acceptance or enjoyment of it enough to plant the story in the fantasy camp. Is it necessary that the reader be scared to qualify as horror?
I ask this because I wrote what I thought was a horror story and sent it off to a venue publishing horror and was told my story was fantasy. I am putting a similar story on here tomorrow and I bet you will call it fantasy.
I always thought of fantasy as stories with dragons or supernatural themes.
How do you define the two?

Finding the Write Voice

Sometimes finding my way into a story is nearly impossible.

In front of me now, I have the facts of an interesting crime story my son brought to me. It's got pathos, humor, intrigue, violence and a cast of colorful characters.

It can't miss.

But I can't find the right voice to tell the story, the right character to filter it through.

I know if I can figure out whose story it is, it'll be much easier. But is the right voice the victim's, the murderer's, the drug dealer's, the cop's, the girlfriend's, the bartender's, the prosecutor's, the ex-wife's.

Whose story is it? I can't figure it out. Until I do, I'm stuck.

Does this happen to you?

Agatha Christie

In a not very flattering article about Agatha Christie in THE NEW YORKER last week, as part of a review on a new book by John Curran entitled Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, Joan Acocella claims that Ms. Christie made sure no one could solve her puzzles because she provided little if any psychological depth to her characters.

Acocella also says "that any guessing we might do is fruitless because the solution to the mystery involved a fantastic amount of background information we are not privy to until the end of the book when the detective tells us." So it isn't so much that Christie was master puzzle-maker, but that she didn't allow the reader to figure it out. .

But even more damning, you cannot come away from this article thinking well of Ms. Christie either as a writer or a person. It is quite a long article and also delves into the racism, sexism, and xenophobia running through her books. Most of this went right over my head when I read all of her books in the seventies. I was reading entirely for the puzzle I think.

Another criticism, I've heard mentioned was Christie hard on the British lower classes. As Julian Symons said in his seminal work BLOODY MURDER, "the social order in these stories was as fixed as that of the Incas." And Symons was a more contemporaneous assessment.

What to you think? What strengths do you find in her work? Were her contemporaries any less subject to the prejudices of the time (Tey, Sayers, Marsh, Allingham)? Did they give their characters a firmer underpinning? Did they view the world with less prejudice? Did they play more fair with clues. I read them all years ago but haven't revisited except for Tey's Daughter of Time.

Or is the writer all wet in her observations? Defend Christie someone. Certainly our times define us to some degree, but did she fail to enlighten herself?

A Question for Any Writers Who Stop By

Public Gardens

Why is it that some of my best story ideas never get off the ground? And other ones, less clever or interesting, seem to write themselves. Am I the only one experiencing this?

Sometimes I think the stories that are fully formed before you sit down at the WP are harder to write because you feel like you are taking dictation. Especially stories based on what a friend or newspaper article has told you. It's their story and not yours and it's hard to seize control of it. Some of my better stories come from a single sentence or an image.

But sometimes the ones that just start with a concept of your own are hard, too.

Do you find this to be the case or is it just me? You never know which stories are going to be a pleasure to write and which ones aren't going into it.

What's In a Name?

Some people who write stories spend a lot of time thinking about names for their characters. (Or at least I do, how about the rest of you?)

In my current WIP, about a mother and a daughter-first their names were Iris and Ivy. People said they sounded too much alike, so I changed the mother's name to Lily. But pure as a lily-she wasn't.

So I decided I'd call her Eve but people said Eve and Ivy sounded too much alike.

So now their names are Eve and Christine. These names finally feel right and I am sticking with them.

As a reader, do you give much thought to character names? Do you ever say, I just don't believe in a villainous woman named Mary. Or a saintly woman named Eve. Or do you seldom think about names at all? I can't ever remember thinking a name didn't suit a character as a reader, but I sure think about it all the time as a writer.

What character names were perfect? Lew Archer, surely.

Luke Skywalker was such a great name that I know an attorney who changed his name to it. No kidding!

Every Once in a While

my subconscious mind writes a story without my conscious mind knowing it. Does this ever happen to you? Suddenly it comes pouring out as if someone was whispering in your ear or guiding your hand.

And if so, are those your best stories? Can you remember which ones came easiest later?

Are the best stories the ones we work on the hardest or the ones that come like a gift?


This certainly did not happen with the flash piece I will put up tomorrow. I sweat bullets over it because the milieu was not familiar to me. That voice was never there.
Neither my conscious or subconscious mind wants to claim it.

Will the writing style of today give way to something else?

Every once in a while, I look at my WIP and think, I need more dialog. Nobody writes much narrative anymore. Show me, don't tell me.

But if I pick up a book from the past or even a non-crime book, there is a lot of narration. Sometimes I get tired of constant conversation. Tired of constant action. And long for that more restful style.

Will this current style of writing eventually fade, too? Will the new technologies with their emphasis on succinct expression take us in a new direction. Does a page of narration put you off? Sometime introspection is a good thing. Right?

My Flash Fiction Piece

Joe Louis reading.







I drew an excellent first paragraph for my flash fiction story. And the middle came quickly. But I'm having a terrible time ending it. I didn't think of this as a problem when I thought of this idea. But we begin a story in a way that plays to our strengths as writers probably. It may be about atmosphere, character, plot, mood. We learn how to set it in motion. I usually begin with atmosphere rarer than the immediate statement of the problem. Just style really.

The paragraph I drew points in a definite direction. A direction that demands a good ending, a good plot. Unless I want to subvert that paragraph, I must head in that direction. I can't quite bring it off. I have two weeks still so I'm not worried yet. Not yet.

And here's another thing. In a longer piece, I might have time to prepare the reader for an unlikely ending. At this length, it will be a shot in the gut. And maybe it will have to be just that. Can you take it?

How's your story going?


BTW-Due to the confusion in my own life of late, I think at least one paragraph fell off the face of the earth. So if yours isn't up there, it's not because I didn't like it but because I lost it. If you resend it to me afterwards, I'll post it and we can all give it a crack.

Quantum of Solace

John McFetridge and Luke reading in Toronto.





Quantum of Solace

SPOILER ALERT (Although no real plot discussion).

I am not much of a Bond girl, especially since the replacement of Sean Connery with a bevy of pretenders. (Daniel Craig is the notable exception, maybe the best Bond for the current era).

So I am not wedded to a particular notion of what James Bond should be like. Perhaps that's why I was able to enjoy Quantum of Solace more than most of the reviews I've read. It didn't bother me that he was grumpy, nasty and prone to getting rid of people without asking too many questions. That seemed reasonable to me, given the type of man who becomes a spy, a sociopathic type, right?

Spies aren't necessarily heroic in my world-view. They don't often recruit spies from seminaries or British public schools anymore.

But my brother, who saw the movie with me, is more of a Bond fan and found Bond's behavior in SOLACE off-putting. He also thought the film lacked wit, a sense of humor, great gadgets, the prerequisite cool, indestructible car, the fantastic opening chase, the great song. Okay, maybe so.

But it didn't bother me that a lot of questions went unanswered; don't they always? And I especially enjoyed the fact that I could follow the plot. The night before I was in a sorry state trying to keep up with Diamonds Are Forever, with its circus theme. Although again I fault watching it on TV. My brother said that getting up a dozen times for various reasons impeded my understanding.

None of the elements mentioned above were important to me. So I asked myself: do I consider Bond a hero? Or does he occupy a world so separate from mine that I can't take it seriously.

And then I wondered what characteristics should a hero have?

So here's the question. What characteristics should a hero have? I'll start with a good jawline.

Setting

Olivia, Anthony and Anca reading.









Martin Edwards was talking about setting today on his blog. Wondering whether he would eventually use Barcelona in a story.

I have, on occasion, used a foreign setting in a story (Dubrovnik, Amsterdam, England) but I don't usually do it because most settings don't make themselves known to me that quickly. I spent a year in England and Amsterdam but I was still an outsider, especially where the language is difficult (Manchester more than Amsterdam).

Once or twice, making the characters tourists (Seville) worked. But I really can't capture the essence of a place like Bruges or Barcelona or Nice after spending only a week there.
So most of my stories are set in Philly or Detroit, but very often I set them outside those cities in a fictitious place I call Shelterville. It stands in for all the towns I've lived in or drifted through. Shelterville is amazingly generous in allowing me to modify it to fit the story. Its citizens are amenable to being crooks, scoundrels, victims and caretakers.

How do you handle setting? Are you usually specific about it? Do you ever set stories in places you've never been? (Obviously historical fiction must do this) Does research tell you enough about such places?

Advice from the Masters: Elizabeth George

In her book, Write Away, one of the many things George advises is that you make a checklist of your main characters' traits before you begin to write. She calls it a character prompt sheet and keeps in by her WP before and as she's writing.

Her list includes such items as gestures when talking, gait, what does he/she laugh at. I wonder if this is common. I've been going on the premise that I will discover most of these things about my characters as I write. That I will start off with just a few things in my head and let the rest take shape. Which do you do? Do you know the these things before you begin a story or novel?

WHEN IS THE TRUTH TOO MUCH?

There are some anecdotes I'd love to include in a story but they seem too hyperbolic or unbelievable when I try to write them.

For instance, when I was fifteen I had a friend named Bobbie. Bobbie was perhaps the most beautiful girl I ever personally knew. She often asked me to come pick her up before school activities.

Arriving, I'd find her wearing only her underwear and then the show would begin. Bobbie would try on every outfit in her closet. Many of them would demand a change in her stockings, or a change in her makeup or a change in hairstyle. Hair up, hair down; fishnet stockings, white ones; shoulder bag, clutch; cloche hat, beret. It often went on for as long as an hour. Maybe more We were always late.

At some point, I realized that "this" was the fun part of the event for her. Having an audience for her modeling. Having someone in awe of how many clothes she had and how nice she looked in them. Of how original she was in her choices.

There was nothing mean in any of it but when I write it, Bobbie seems disturbed or smug or frivolous, which she was not. Or not exactly. Are there incidents like this that never work in your writing? Is the truth sometimes too unbelievable or too hard to make real? Can a skilled writer make anything feel right or are there some things that elude even the best?

Am I Underpopulated?

In my umpteenth edit of the novel, I noticed there are only six characters in it--and two are minor. This is what happens when you move from shorts stories to novels. You forget to increase the cast! Will this make the reader claustrophobic? Can you bear this close scrutiny of such a small group of people? Do other novels focus in this tightly or do I need to repeople it?

Workspace Meme

Clair Dickson tagged me with this meme:

There are only a few guidelines:

1) You must take a photo of your workspace and post it to your blog.

2) You must provide a few words about it.

3) You must NOT tidy, clean or otherwise stage the workspace - it must be EXACTLY as it usually is (you can see that I followed this rule
religiously).

4) (Optional) You can tag someone.





Okay, third and fourth pictures on here are my husband's office but I'm actually at that desk more than at mine since the treadmill moved in and gave me claustrophobia. We had to put it in my room because we had to have a tv to watch while we tread and the cable was in there.

So as soon as he takes off, I sneak in and use the brighter office with more room, more light. In my office I have two tables, one with a PC with Internet and one without for when I'm really trying to work. It's a dull room. It needs to be as I'm so distractable.

Both offices are cleaner than usual because we had company come over Memorial Day. But mine never is too cluttered because it's too damned small for much clutter. The bookcase mostly holds technical books.
Please don't fault my husband for having the better office. He's written fourteen books and forty articles. I've written no books. He'd gladly switch offices with me.

I'm not tagging anyone but I encourage you to play. Here's a cool site on The Guardian with lots of British writers' offices if you haven't seen it. http://books.guardian.co.uk/writersrooms

POV: THIRD PERSON OMNISCIENT

In a sidebar to the discussion last week on why people stop reading a novel, a commenter asked about the Third Person Omniscient POV and Al Guthrie responded that he almost certainly would find this a difficult book to finish. In the TPO, the narrator speaks for all the characters, knowing what's going on in each of their heads, knowing what's going on in their life at any moment. It has always seemed to me like the voice of God speaking. Or at least the voice of Morgan Freeman.
It's much less common than it used to be. A prime example is Anna Karenina according to a site I came on.
Can you think of a book today that used this POV successfully? Do you ever write in this POV?