Human Resources

By Scott D. Parker

Last week, I wrote about my trip to the Galveston Railroad Museum for research and for inspiration. This week, I had the wonderful happenstance of asking a simple question...and getting a whole new wrinkle on the new book.

I started the new book on the first of the month. It's a World War II espionage thriller set in the days immediatley preceeding the Nazi invasion of France, Belgium, and Holland. My American characters start the story in Washington and events conspire to compell them to go to England. 

Now, when I originally envisioned this "getting to England" scene, I imagined the scene from all the Indiana Jones films where a map is shown with a red line to indicate the route travelled. Come to find out, when World War II started in 1939, Britain cancelled all civilian air travel. My heroine would not be able to fly to England.

That left ocean liner. Okay, no problem. Helped with the timeline of the story anyway. But then I ran into a road block: where did ocean liners dock in England? I knew it was unlikely to be London, so I assumed it was going to be somewhere on the southern coast. 

Now, my day job is for an oil and gas company with a multinational group of folks who work in my building. There was a gentleman down the hall--and higher on the pay scale--with an accent I pegged on Day One as "John Lennon." That meant Liverpool. A couple of days ago, I stuck my head into his office and asked if he knew anything about where ocean liners docked in Britain in 1940.

He grinned. Asked me to come into his office and shut the door. Then and there, I got a mini-lecture on Liverpool, Bristol, and another port I can't remember right now. White Star Lines was the company who operated all the liners. I knew that name from "Titanic." He preceeded to give me lots of local color about Liverpool, the folks who populated the surrounding region, and the Adelphi Hotel. That last was the answer to my question, "Where might a rich person stay?"

It was awesome. And unexpected. Heck, he even verified that amount of money--and the color of the five-pound note--that my spy was going to use to bribe one of the hotel workers. Who knew he was such a fount  of knowledge? I certainly didn't...until I asked.

So, that's my Lesson Learned this week: don't be afraid to ask folks if they might know something about a topic for your stories. You just might be surprised.

I only escaped to tell thee

By Steve Weddle

Hey, I'm teaching this month-long short story class over at LitReactor right now.

This first week, we're talking about character and I'm teaching from James Salter's amazing story, "Comet."

He was leaning on the table, his chin in his hand. You think you know someone, you think because you have dinner with them or play cards, but you really don’t. It’s always a surprise. You know nothing.

The story has been top-five for me since I first read it, and I always fall back into it when I'm thinking about character -- how bits and pieces of a person in a story get revealed as the reader works through. It's just a wonderful piece, honestly.

You can read it for free here: Comet by James Salter

OK. I have to get back to class. I only escaped to tell you to read the Salter and think about character.

Cheers.

PS - Paris Review interview with Salter is here

Tailoring Your Work for a Live Reading

by Holly West

Reading my work aloud remains one of the best techniques I've found to tighten up my prose. Mind you--I don't always do it--but when I do, the work is better for it. Cleaner, more concise, and much less "fluff." As a writer whose tendency is to write more words than are necessary to get my point across, I need all the de-fluffing I can get.

I was reminded of this recently when Eric Beetner invited me to read at a Noir at the Bar event in Los Angeles. There were a lot of readers so he limited our readings to two minutes--daunting at first but it really kept the evening moving. It was probably the best Noir at the Bar event I've ever attended (and I've attended quite a few).

So there's a hint for all of you Noir at the Bar hosts out there--consider limiting the readings to two minutes but adding more readers. We had ten that night and it didn't drag at all (well, if I'm being honest, it did, but only because one of the readers went well over their allotted time. Don't be that person).

Normally I like to read my flash fiction at Noir at the Bars because the form is perfect for it. But in this case, even my existing flash pieces were too long. Instead, I chose an excerpt from my second novel, MISTRESS OF LIES. My aim was to give the audience a taste of what the book was about and to make them want to read more. I had to find a short vignette within the greater novel, something with a defined beginning, middle, and if not an end, then a hook. That's not easy to do, especially when you've only about 375 words to do it in.

Though the passage I chose was short--about 500 words--it still put me over the two minute limit. I couldn't just chop off 125 words off the end because it would've ruined that my vignette. I decided to edit the whole passage from start to finish and ended up adding sentence to the end that doesn't appear in the original novel for my hook.

Just because you're reading from an already published novel doesn't mean you have to adhere to it word-for-word when you're reading it aloud for an audience. Often times, what works in a novel for regular reading isn't going to work as well for a live reading. Having now heard dozens of authors read their work aloud at various events, I can say with confidence that my attention begins to wander after about two minutes, maybe three if they're particularly good. While some of that might be the result of what I call my "adult-onset ADD," I have a feeling I'm not that different from the average audience member.

Once I edited the passage, it read more smoothly. I didn't trip over as many words. Stripped of much of its fluff, it was just better in general. Sure, I'd taken out some things that provided context for the the larger work, but for a reading like this, those things didn't matter. In fact, it's entirely possible that they don't matter to the novel as a whole, either. That might be a subject for another blog post.

In the meantime, don't be afraid to tailor your already-published manuscript for a live reading. It can give your work--and your performance--just the pop it needs for your next event.