Only One Thing Will Make You A Better Writer

Obviously, you need to hone your craft and develop your skills, and there are certainly a multitude of styles and genres to choose from. But the one thing you definitely have to be is open. Open to the idea your work might need to improve.

But you can’t be honest about what you need to do with your writing if you worry about what other people think of you. What they think of your writing is another matter. But tying up your self-worth with the stories you produce is not helpful.

The work is the work, and you are you.

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L is for Literary Literature

What is Literary Fiction, other than what's left after you take away all the other genres? I think it is generally accepted that literary fiction is more in-depth, takes on more serious subject matter, and deals with the inner life and what makes us human — although that could mean just about anything. As Justice Potter of the US Supreme court said about how to identify pornography: I know it when i see it. 

I think most of the books that are considered within this group were not written with the label Literary Fiction in mind, they were just written as stories. Ultimately when you look at a novel of whatever genre the main thing it needs to achieve is to tell a story and to tell it in an interesting way and I think that applies to all genres equally.

The problem with the literary genre is that when you try to critique it, because it doesn't have fixed parameters, it is very easy for the writer to squirm out of answering those criticisms head-on. A slower pace, a lack of purpose, a denser use of language are all things associated with this type of writing. But a story is either interesting or isn't and even though tastes differ, I think most people. like Justice Potter,  can spot a dull tale when they see it.

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H is for Hanging on to Hope

You look at the stuff on the bookshelves and you think:

That’s bad. I could do better than that. But that never really explains how something that bad got picked up in the first place.

That’s good. That’s exactly the kind of thing I should be doing. But that certainty gets forgotten somewhere along the way.

That’s really good. Too good. So good it depresses you. How can you compete with THAT?

And then there’s the sublime. So good it gives you hope. Not just in writing or whatever your chosen field is, just hope in general. That there are some intelligent, insightful people in the world, not just the screaming jackasses (jackasses scream, right?) that represent us on the television.

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Book Autopsy 2: A Love Story

In my last post I analysed the first chapter of Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying, but to be honest this was something of a soft target. As a thriller it naturally follows most of the 'rules' of contemporary literature popular with creative writing teachers and how-to books. Starting off with a hook, keeping pace high, using action to move the plot, these are all fairly standard for the genre.

My dissection of the first chapter still revealed some interesting things, but I think it would be even more intriguing to take the same approach with a book from a completely different genre: Romance.

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Chapter One Analysis

I'm going to take the first chapter of a successful novel and break it down to see how the author hooks the reader, what information he feels is necessary at this point of the story, how he approaches things like POV, character and voice.

The book I've chosen is A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby, Stepford Wives). A 237 page, tightly written suspense thriller, it is a commercial novel but with many unconventional touches, extremely well plotted with some very clever twists and turns. It was his first novel, which is also one of the reasons I chose it. Chapter One is just over four pages long.

There will be the spoilers. 

Chapter 1 starts with these lines:

His plans had been running so beautifully, so goddamned beautifully, and now she was going to smash them all. Hate erupted and flooded through him, gripping his face with jaw-aching pressure. That was all right though; the lights were out.

On the surface this gives a very clear indication of his mood.  In fact it tells the reader directly that 'he' is angry and blames 'she'. The writing is visual and the last line gives a nice sense that he's hiding his feelings, but in many ways this would seem to be a overly 'telling' start. But as we'll see, it isn't. 

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Yes, but that's just your opinion

The goal for the novice (or even the not so novice) writer is to write better. That doesn’t necessarily  mean writing to a grammatical gold standard, or following the rules laid down by the late and the great. It just means finding the words to tell your story in the way you would like it to be told. In your voice.

The thing is, we are all capable of moments of clarity where we say what we intended, in a way that hits home and actually means something. But we are also capable of saying the wrong thing, doubting ourselves, stammering like a loon and then bailing on the big moment we had been building up to. The great thing about writing is we can sift through the first draft and keep the good bits, and keep reworking them until they say what we meant to say.

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