By Russel D McLean
Its 2002 (I think), and we’re trudging through a Graveyard. The Necropolis. The West End of Dundee, overlooking the newer Balgay cemetery.
My flatmate is looking for old graves. For Ancestors. For stories from history. I’m there for the ride, as is another friend. If I’m honest, I find graveyards oddly peaceful during the day, especially ones as isolated as this.
Up here, on a hillside, with trees overgrowing, and a sense of isolation, I start to look not at the inscriptions or the stories already told by history, but at the way the graves are laid out, the way the trees bend over some stones protectively as though through the decades they have come to care deeply for those buried on the hillside.
I see shadows move.
I tilt my head.
Connections are made.
Neurons fire.
My other friend – her name is Becca – says, “You look funny.”
And I do.
Only when I snap out of it does she realise what’s happening. “You’re thinking about a story,” she says.
I smile.
Because I am.
At long last, I think, I have a setpiece ending for the novel I’m working on*.
#
The thing about most writers, I suspect, is that we view the world in very different ways from other people. In the past, I’ve talked about going out for walks with my parents and seeing things among the trees that leads into later projects.
Sometimes its hearing something, even, a random line of dialogue. The story, “Pedro Paul” in the Expletive Deleted Anthology was inspired by overhearing two old women talk about the horror of the “Pedrophiles” in modern society.
But whatever it is, I think it’s a tic in the brain that makes us write, that forces us to create new worlds and seem alternatives in every situation. It is, perhaps, something that can be learned, but as far as I’m aware, it’s the way I’ve always viewed the world, as though I’m not content with reality the way it is, I have to recfocus and reinterpret it in my own way.
Which makes me sound more than a little nuts.
But then maybe I am. At a recent event, I bumped into my primary teacher – one of the many people who encouraged me when I was younger – who said that I was always away in another world, my “head in a book”. Now, that’s a cliché, but its true. I have always been happier using fictional world to make sense of the real one (its what fiction is best at, even on an unconscious level) so it was a natural extension to use my own fictional worlds to try and make sense of what was happening around me.
This does not make a writer, however, just a very odd person. Not that there’s anything that wrong with being odd. Its harnessing that point of view and turning it into a skill that can communicate with other people that’s been the hard part.
But I think – I believe – that the writer’s mind – the storyteller’s mind – has to be different in some way from normal people’s. I think that a writer has to be able to see not just the world around them, but the way in which the world could be. They have to see the alternatives, the out of view events, the probable and the possible. And above all, in some form, they have to be able to believe in these things they see, to make them concrete and real and communicable.
At least, that’s how it works for me.
*for anyone who cares, the setpiece – and the cemetery, in fictionally modified form – made its way into the finale for The Good Son. In fact very few of the beats changed from my initial conception of what would happen except where characters, story and plain physics dictated.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
One Day You'll Learn
by Dave White
One day you'll learn that the haters are just jealous.
One day you'll learn "anonymous" is the same thing as coward.
One day you'll learn to appreciate the day you drove 90 miles to buy a magazine that had one sentence that mentioned your name.
One day you'll learn to believe BOTH the bad reviews and the good reviews.
One day you'll learn a rejection is not the end of the world.
One day you'll learn an acceptance is not the end of the work day.
One day you'll learn to love revising crap as much as you love writing it.
One day you'll learn that writing in a coffee shop actually helps you get work done.
One day you'll learn that 9:06 pm the night before you blog is due is not a good time to scramble for an idea.
One day you'll learn to keep writing short stories, just so you're writing every day.
One day you'll learn to write EVERY DAMN DAY.
One day you'll learn that always believing helps...
One day you'll learn that the haters are just jealous.
One day you'll learn "anonymous" is the same thing as coward.
One day you'll learn to appreciate the day you drove 90 miles to buy a magazine that had one sentence that mentioned your name.
One day you'll learn to believe BOTH the bad reviews and the good reviews.
One day you'll learn a rejection is not the end of the world.
One day you'll learn an acceptance is not the end of the work day.
One day you'll learn to love revising crap as much as you love writing it.
One day you'll learn that writing in a coffee shop actually helps you get work done.
One day you'll learn that 9:06 pm the night before you blog is due is not a good time to scramble for an idea.
One day you'll learn to keep writing short stories, just so you're writing every day.
One day you'll learn to write EVERY DAMN DAY.
One day you'll learn that always believing helps...
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The Author Is Not A Camera
by
John McFetridge
This is the opening of Elmore Leonard’s novel, Tishomingo Blues:
Dennis Lenehan the high diver would tell people that if you put a fifty cent piece on the floor and looked down at it, that’s what the tank looked like from the top of that eight-foot steel ladder. The tank itself was twenty-two feet across and the water in it never more than nine feet deep. Dennis said from that high up you want to come out of your dive to enter the water feet first, your hands at the last moment protecting your privates and your butt squeezed tight, or it was like getting a 40,000-gallon enema.
When he told this to girls who hung out at amausement parks they’d put a cute look of pain on their faces and say what he did was awesome. But wasn’t it like really dangerous? Dennis would tell them you could break your back if you didn’t kill yourself, but the rush you got was worth it. These summertime girls loved daredevils, even ones twice their age. It kept Dennis going off that perch eighty feet in the air and going out for beers after to tell stories. Once in a while he’d fall in love for the summer, or part of it.
Elmore Leonard is the guy who wrote the famous, “10 Rules” and yet that opening seems to break the biggest writing rule of all: show don’t tell.
That scene is all tell.
Okay, sure, when it’s your thirty-seventh bestseller you get to break the rules, but maybe he’s onto something.
It starts in a way that only a written story can.
Oh sure, a movie could do it in voice over, but it would be lame. Or, a movie could dramatize the information, have a scene with Dennis talking to the girls, dropping a fifty cent piece on the ground, then maybe some cool transition to him on the high board and then a scene that lets us know he’s only fallen in love for, “the summer, or part of it,” driving away form the amusement park by himself. What would that take up, ten minutes? Maybe more. Would any of the other characters form that opening show up again? Not if the rest of the story follows what happens in the book, so there’s probably no way a movie would devote that amount of time to getting across that information.
But more than getting across information what that opening gets across is attitude.
It’s why it’s taken so long for adaptations of Elmore Leonard to finally be good.
People always say he’s a very visual writer but he isn’t really, he’s an inside-the-character’s-head writer, so when you read his books you see what the characters sees through their eyes and more importantly, through their attitude. It was finally with Get Shorty and Out of Sight that filmmakers started to understand how important attitude is to the characters (and in Elmore Leonard it’s usually subtle and movies usually try to make it too flashy).
And just like the movies have a tough time getting across subtle attitude, so do books that are all show and not enough tell. It’s really when people are telling a story that their attitude comes across.
It’s often a (valid) complaint when a book takes a side-trip so the author can expound on some personal pet peeve – the author’s attitude takes us out of the story.
But the character’s attitude brings us right into the story.
It’s one of the main things people like about first person PI stories, why they’re usually smart-ass guys full of attitude.
Books and movies are different and too often these days I find books trying to be movies. It’s natural, I guess, we’re all following the advice to, “show don’t tell,” and how everything should be so “visual” and have plenty of action.
But in following that advice, I think we sell books short.
When the author tries to be the camera and only shows us things happening instead of telling us why they’re happening or how the characters feel about what’s happening I think we’re limiting the storytelling.
Story. Telling.
We hear all the time that the movies are a “visual medium,” and usually the implicationis is that’s somehow superior to any other medium or that it’s something every other medium should be aiming for. But why?
Books aren’t a visual medium. Books should play to their strengths.
That opening of Tishomingo Blues gets across more information – and attitude – about Dennis Lenehan than the entire 90 minute version of the movie probably would.
Of course there are plenty of examples of books that open with dialogue or action – right in the middle of a scene – and they work, too. I’m just saying that maybe we’re following that one rule too much.
Hell, we’re crime writers, we’re rebels, we break rules.
Or, we should.
So, sometimes it may be better to, “Tell, don’t show.”
John McFetridge
This is the opening of Elmore Leonard’s novel, Tishomingo Blues:
Dennis Lenehan the high diver would tell people that if you put a fifty cent piece on the floor and looked down at it, that’s what the tank looked like from the top of that eight-foot steel ladder. The tank itself was twenty-two feet across and the water in it never more than nine feet deep. Dennis said from that high up you want to come out of your dive to enter the water feet first, your hands at the last moment protecting your privates and your butt squeezed tight, or it was like getting a 40,000-gallon enema.
When he told this to girls who hung out at amausement parks they’d put a cute look of pain on their faces and say what he did was awesome. But wasn’t it like really dangerous? Dennis would tell them you could break your back if you didn’t kill yourself, but the rush you got was worth it. These summertime girls loved daredevils, even ones twice their age. It kept Dennis going off that perch eighty feet in the air and going out for beers after to tell stories. Once in a while he’d fall in love for the summer, or part of it.
Elmore Leonard is the guy who wrote the famous, “10 Rules” and yet that opening seems to break the biggest writing rule of all: show don’t tell.
That scene is all tell.
Okay, sure, when it’s your thirty-seventh bestseller you get to break the rules, but maybe he’s onto something.
It starts in a way that only a written story can.
Oh sure, a movie could do it in voice over, but it would be lame. Or, a movie could dramatize the information, have a scene with Dennis talking to the girls, dropping a fifty cent piece on the ground, then maybe some cool transition to him on the high board and then a scene that lets us know he’s only fallen in love for, “the summer, or part of it,” driving away form the amusement park by himself. What would that take up, ten minutes? Maybe more. Would any of the other characters form that opening show up again? Not if the rest of the story follows what happens in the book, so there’s probably no way a movie would devote that amount of time to getting across that information.
But more than getting across information what that opening gets across is attitude.
It’s why it’s taken so long for adaptations of Elmore Leonard to finally be good.
People always say he’s a very visual writer but he isn’t really, he’s an inside-the-character’s-head writer, so when you read his books you see what the characters sees through their eyes and more importantly, through their attitude. It was finally with Get Shorty and Out of Sight that filmmakers started to understand how important attitude is to the characters (and in Elmore Leonard it’s usually subtle and movies usually try to make it too flashy).
And just like the movies have a tough time getting across subtle attitude, so do books that are all show and not enough tell. It’s really when people are telling a story that their attitude comes across.
It’s often a (valid) complaint when a book takes a side-trip so the author can expound on some personal pet peeve – the author’s attitude takes us out of the story.
But the character’s attitude brings us right into the story.
It’s one of the main things people like about first person PI stories, why they’re usually smart-ass guys full of attitude.
Books and movies are different and too often these days I find books trying to be movies. It’s natural, I guess, we’re all following the advice to, “show don’t tell,” and how everything should be so “visual” and have plenty of action.
But in following that advice, I think we sell books short.
When the author tries to be the camera and only shows us things happening instead of telling us why they’re happening or how the characters feel about what’s happening I think we’re limiting the storytelling.
Story. Telling.
We hear all the time that the movies are a “visual medium,” and usually the implicationis is that’s somehow superior to any other medium or that it’s something every other medium should be aiming for. But why?
Books aren’t a visual medium. Books should play to their strengths.
That opening of Tishomingo Blues gets across more information – and attitude – about Dennis Lenehan than the entire 90 minute version of the movie probably would.
Of course there are plenty of examples of books that open with dialogue or action – right in the middle of a scene – and they work, too. I’m just saying that maybe we’re following that one rule too much.
Hell, we’re crime writers, we’re rebels, we break rules.
Or, we should.
So, sometimes it may be better to, “Tell, don’t show.”
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