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Writers’ Tip from John Steinbeck
- Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
- Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
- Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
- If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
- Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
- If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
But after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1963 — Steinbeck gave a disclaimer to all such advice:
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”
Lee Child Debunks Popular Writing Myths (from Writers Disgest)
Like his famous protagonist, Jack Reacher, Lee Child is a bit of a rogue badass—especially when it comes to his thoughts on writing, and debunking popular writing rules.
In his ThrillerFest session “Tell, Don’t Show: Why Writing Rules are Mostly Wrong,” Child battled a few of the biggest writing myths out there, and explained what really keeps a reader reading until The End.
Show, Don’t Tell
Picture this: In a novel, a character wakes up and looks at himself in the mirror, noting his scars and other physical traits for the reader.
“It is completely and utterly divorced from real life,” Child said.
So why do writers do this? Child said it’s because they’ve been beaten down by the rule of Show, Don’t Tell. “They manufacture this entirely artificial thing.”
“We’re not story showers,” Child said. “We’re story tellers.”
Child said there’s nothing wrong with simply saying the character was 6 feet tall, with scars.
After all, he added—do your kids ever ask you to show them a story? They ask you to tell them a story. Do you show a joke? No, you tell it.
“There is nothing wrong with just telling the story,” Child said. “So liberate yourself from that rule.”
Child believes the average reader doesn’t care at all about telling, showing, etc. He or she just wants something to latch onto, something to carry them through the book. By following too many “rules,” you can lose your readers.
Don’t Start With the Weather
“If the weather is what’s on your mind, start with it,” Child said.
Simply put, all-time great Alistair MacLean did it all the time. Enough said.
Suspense is Created by X, Y, or Z
For instance: Suspense is created by having sympathetic characters. More and more, Child said, this rule doesn’t add up. Case in point: In The Runaway Jury by John Grisham, Child said there isn’t a sympathetic character in the entire book—there are bad guys, and worse guys. Instead of sympathetic characters, the book is driven by what the verdict of the trial at the heart of the story will be.
“And that’s how you create suspense,” he said—it all boils down to asking a question and making people wait for the answer.
Child added that one thing he has learned throughout his career as a television writer and novelist is that humans are hard-wired to want the answer to a question. When the remote control was invented, it threw the TV business through a loop. How would you keep people around during a commercial? So TV producers started posing a question at the start of the commercial break, and answering it when the program returned. (Think sports—Who has the most career grand slams?) Even if you don’t care about the answer, Child said, you stick around because you’re intrigued.
Ultimately, he said writing rules make the craft more complicated than it really is—when it comes down to it, it’s a simple thing.
“The way to write a thriller is to ask a question a the beginning, and answer it at the end,” he said.
When he’s crafting his books, Child doesn’t know the answer to his question, and he writes scene by scene—he’s just trying to answer the question as he goes through, and he keeps throwing different complications in that he’ll figure out later. And that very well may be the key to his sharp, bestselling prose.
“For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader,” he said.
Sex, Love & Murder and other stuff
The publisher of my first book–Books We Love Publishing Partners–has given the ebook version of Mardi Gravestone a new cover and title to reflect the steamy content. It’s now called Sex, Love & Murder. The printed version retains the same title and look.
If you enjoy mysteries with hot romance, give this one a read and let me know what you think. I’m happy to say, it has received wonderful reviews. Romantic Times called it “an exciting mystery.”
First published in April 2004, this book features characters patterned after my family. Mother and Father-in-laws, Mare and Jere Semerad, lived in New Orleans at the time. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the area, they moved to Top of the World Community in Ocala, FL and couldn’t be happier. Jere still plays a mean trombone.
As to hurricanes, hubby Larry and I have survived a few, and I decided to write a book about our experiences, though it’s fiction, of course, with a unique protagonist (Catastrophe Investigator). Hurricane House is set in a Florida fishing village like Destin, where we lived before moving to Santa Rosa Beach. In the book, I changed Destin to Dolphin and Holiday Isle to Paradise Isle.
Here’s a one-sentence description: A hurricane comes ashore with a murderer at large. Midwest Book Review gave it five stars, Romantic Times, four-and-a-half Stars, and I’m estatic.
The book I’m now working on is based on a murder trial I covered as a reporter in Atlanta. I’ve had to do more research while writing this book than in my previous books combined. I may not finish it until the end of 2012. but when I do, I’ll post an excerpt here for you to read.