Writing best practice

good writing

Review: H is for Hawk

Posted by

0

Having read Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm, which was shortlisted for the Costa Book of the Year Award, I have now read H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald which won the top prize.

IMG_20150522_0001

H is for Hawk tells the experiences of Helen Macdonald, a writer, illustrator, historian and lecturer at Cambridge University in training a wild hawk. Macdonald had some advantages in this task: she was fascinated by falconry and hawks as a child, and she had experience of hunting with hawks, but she had never trained a wild hawk to hunt. There was a major disadvantage: her much-loved father, a renowned photographer, had just died suddenly when she acquired the hawk for £800 from a breeder in Northern Ireland. Much of the book deals with the intense commitment and frustrations which the falconer must endure over the lengthy process of winning the trust of a wild predatory animal so that it works together with the falconer in killing wild game. The goshawk in the book has personality: feral, proud and beautiful, unpredictable, iconic. One learns, incidentally, that Macdonald is a scholar, an intelligent and sensitive person, but the author also exposes her vulnerabilities: in particular, her crippling grief over the loss of her father. In parallel with the story of Macdonald’s goshawk, she tells the story of T H White, now deceased, a dedicated, but somewhat eccentric falconer and the author of The Goshawk. We learn of his mistakes and his anguish as he tries to train a goshawk. So this book operates at several levels: a present, objective account of the training of a wild hawk; there is a past, reported account of the training of a different hawk; there are psychological explorations of both the author and her role model, T H White. This may sound rather complex, and, in a way, it is, but Macdonald weaves it all together beautifully so that it is quite natural.

The writing, in style and language is exquisite. In particular, the descriptions of natural settings and the behaviour of the hawk are breath-taking. For example: “. . . she (the hawk) sees something through the trees, out there on the other side of the hedge. Her pupils grow wide. She snakes her neck and flattens her crown, and the tiny grey hair-feathers around her beak and eyes crinkle into a frown that I’ve learned means there’s something there.” And: “The fields are shorn, yellowed into stalky, rabbit-grazed sward spotted with foraging rooks.”

H is for Hawk is clearly a major labour of love. This love and its result: a durable classic about nature, surely merited the Costa Award.

As a child, I was very interested in falconry; I read everything I could lay my hands on the subject – even flirting with the idea of obtaining a hawk. For me, H is for Hawk has a special resonance, but I suspect that some potential readers may be put off by a book on falconry. For those potential readers, I would say, “This isn’t just a book about falconry. It’s a book about nature, the human condition, grief, joy, life and death.”

Coaches & Editors

Posted by

0

I just returned home from a coaching session with the chief executive of a London charity.  (I accept assignments from the Cranfield Trust for pro bono assignments with charities which need help.  Cranfield Trust is, itself, a charity – originally associated with Cranfield Business School – and which maintains a roster of management consultants.  The Trust’s role is to match consultants with charities in need.)

Like a professional football coach, I am supposed to be more experienced than the players (charity managers) I coach, and I am supposed to see problems and solutions which the player (charity manager) didn’t see or hadn’t seen yet.

images9DY2U8VS

The chief executive I’m coaching has some difficult problems.  The charity he is running is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and his board of trustees see their role as asking a lot of questions, rather than taking difficult decisions.  Moreover, the trustees seem to be allergic to the idea of making a personal commitment to do something useful.  I am by no means a perfect trustee, but I am treasurer of another charity which was technically bankrupt, and which absolutely had to win a particular contract to survive.  The chairman and I put a lot of personal hours into helping the managing director prepare a proposal which brought in £1.5 million in revenue.

My chief executive coachee believes that one strategy might be to merge with a larger, related charity.  Such a merger would reduce overheads, and, with a larger activity, would make fund raising easier.  But the trustees seem to feel that the charity would lose its identity, and they are insisting on meeting with the charity’s employees to get their opinions.  I think it’s pretty obvious that most employees, being worried about job security, will oppose any merger.  Some of the trustees seem to be so emotionally wedded to the current identity of the charity that they are unable to see that there is a larger question: which is better: a charity that does things differently with a different identity or no charity at all?

The chief executive is struggling to keep the trustees from behaving like lemmings and diving, en mass, into the sea.  We want to keep the trustees moving toward a rational decision: talk to other charities about their views on a potential merger.  In the meetings that he and I have, we talk about the details of how to: instill a sense of urgency; keep things rational; obtain a decision, and often, in our discussions, I will suggest a tactic, or an approach that he hadn’t thought of.

So, I got to thinking about the similarities between a coach and a literary editor.  As you may know, I don’t have a literary editor, but I would really like to have one.  An editor would be someone who might say: “These couple of pages don’t really add anything to your theme.  Cut it down to one well-constructed paragraph” or “This character would be more interesting and would add emphasis to your theme if you exposed this trait in her character” or “This section here comes across as foggy; what are you trying to say?”

As it is, I have to rely on my own judgement, but like the chief executive, I may sometimes miss a crucial point or detail.  And, I’m sure my writing would benefit from having an editor.

My publisher doesn’t offer an editorial service.  There is a lady who reviews submissions and accepts or rejects them, as submitted, in their entirety.  Traditional publishers have assigned editors who read the entire manuscript carefully, and suggest changes before publication.

I realize that I could hire an editor to review my manuscript.  But apart from the fact that I, personally, would have to pay him/her, the editor wouldn’t be part of a publication team that knows the market and is working together to please readers and increase sales.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that I, too, would like to have a coach, and that I haven’t given up on the idea of working with a traditional publisher.

Inside the Writing Life

Posted by

0

In the Winter 2015 edition of The Exeter Bulletin, the alumni magazine of Phillips Exeter Academy (the boarding school from which I graduated) there is an article Inside the Writing Life.  It is an interview of Roland Merullo (class of ’71, and quite a bit after my time).  Merullo has written 13 novels and four works of non-fiction.  He has been recognised for a Booklist Editors’ Choice, a Maria Thomas Award and was a finalist for the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Prize.  The interviewer is David Weber, who is Emeritus English Instructor at the Academy.

thSWS7R45G

Roland Merullo

Q: Does the act of writing allow you to enter a space where it’s only yourself you need to please?  Or do thoughts of agents, publishers, other writers, or readers enter in?

Merullo: I think you really have to work to keep agents, publishers and especially critics out of the room where you write.  At the same time, in order to improve, especially in the early going, you have to be open to criticism and suggestion, so it can be a tightrope sometimes.  I support my family only from my writing, so I can’t indulge myself and write a 2,000 page essay on the meaning of life, or golf, or learning to swim, or my love for my daughters.  But I’ve gotten pretty good at going into my interior room and mining my own truth, even if its eventually packaged in a way that will please publishers and bookstore owners.  Before I started on In Revere, In Those Days, I was well into another book, hundreds of pages, and it just felt false to me, as if I were writing to please  some outside critic and not from my center.  One night, I just said, “Screw this” out loud, put all that work aside and wrote 30 pages of In Revere in a couple of hours.  That felt right.

My comments: I agree that one needs to exclude external influences when one is writing, but that one has to be open to critiques at other times.  I, too, have scrapped whole sections of a novel that didn’t ‘feel right’.  I started over with what I felt was good and genuine.

Q: Do you think of writing as existing above all in its own realm, called art?  Or do you want your books to act in some way on the worlds of culture, politics, society – or even on the inner lives of readers?

Merullo: There is art to it, and art is essential to any healthy society, but I take a workmanlike approach to writing books.  It bothers me a great deal to hear writers talk about their work as if they have a special line to God or something, or as if it’s “torture” to face a blank page. People who value words should use that one more carefully.  Writing reminds me very much of carpentry, in both its methodical aspects and in the need to think ahead . . . though my body hurts less after writing a novel than it did after building a deck or a garage.  I’m all about the inner lives of readers, and the interior life in general – an area we tend to ignore as a society.  But I feel that for it to matter, the interior dimension should be linked to our outer lives, to things like politics, for example. . . .

My comments: I like the comparison of writing with carpentry, and I agree that both require methodology and planning.  I’m surprised by his comment, below, that he doesn’t outline.  To me an outline is essential to avoid the unnecessary and to include the essential, just as a carpenter’s drawing assures that the project will be completed as envisioned.  I sometimes feel that I have a muse – some external influence – because, occasionally, I will suddenly think, after I’ve written something: “Where did that come from?  That was brilliant!  I could never have thought of that!” I doubt that it was God, but maybe The Presence spoke up.

Q: By this time do you write intuitively, having internalised the skills you needed?  Or does technique remain a conscious focus?

Merullo: I write almost completely intuitively.  Early on, I’d study the work of other writers, but I’m not particularly analytical or scholarly.  I don’t outline, try not to over analyse.  When I taught in college – 10 years at Bennington and Amherst – it wasn’t especially enjoyable for me to analyse the great works of literary art, to break them down into pieces, and try to explain why they were so good.  Some of that is a teacher’s job, of course, necessary and good, but to me it was too often like eating a delicious piece of pie and having to sit there and talk about the ingredients in elaborate detail.  I just wanted to eat the pie.  And now I just want to bake the pie.  My feeling is that if you go down deep into yourself – beyond the purely intellectual level – you can maybe write something that reaches down deep inside the reader; you can connect with them in the most profound way.  I think about technique very little now.

My comments: I write pretty intuitively, but as I review what I’ve written, I think about details: technique.  I think his comment about reaching down deep inside yourself and thereby being able to reach something deep inside the reader is tremendously important.  I just wish I could do it more often!

Review: Orfeo

Posted by

1

I decided to read Richard Powers’ Orfeo (published in January, this year) when it was on the long list of ten novels for the Booker Prize. It has since been omitted from the short list for this year’s prize.

Richard Powers is an American novelist, born in 1957, in Evanston, Illinois. At the age of eleven, he moved with his family to Thailand where he became an avid musician. He began his studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a major in physics, but he graduated with a BA in English literature, followed by an MA. He worked as a computer programmer in Boston, but he quit that job to devote time to writing. His first novel was published in 1985. In 1992, he returned to the University of Illinois as writer-in-residence. In 2010 and 2013, Powers was a Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University, during which time he partly assisted in the lab of biochemist Aaron Straight. He was named the Phil and Penny Knight Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English at Stanford in 2013. He currently teaches a graduate course in multimedia authoring, as well as an undergraduate course on the mechanics of narrative, at UIUC, where he is the Swanlund Professor of English. He has written ten novels and has won a number of literary awards.

th

Orfeo follows much of the fictional life of Peter Els, a composer, music professor, and amateur bio-scientist. He dabbles in genetic experiments on bacteria and viruses in parallel with music composition, seeing similarities between the infinite variety of music and basic organisms. Els is driven not by fame or fortune, but by a compulsion to compose a piece of music which will have a lasting, ethereal effect on the listener. When he composes a piece which, for the first time, elicits critical acclaim, he refuses offers to stage it again.

The focus of the novel is on the sinister net of terror-prevention which tries to capture him when he becomes a bio-terror suspect, and which he tries to elude.

One has to admire Powers’ multiple competencies as a musician, as a poet and as a technologist. Nonetheless, this is not an easy novel to read. There are no chapters, and the shifts in scene and timeframe are sometimes difficult to follow. I say Powers is a poet because there are frequent passages of music description similar to:

“Then the damning glockenspiel, mute for three songs, silent for so long that the ear forgets the forecast from song one. Child’s toy, funeral chime, light in the night. A bell from out of the pitch-black; a shock but no surprise. A sound that makes hope sound primitive.”

If one is musically literate, and if one is familiar with the piece about which Powers is writing, I’m sure this would be lovely. (I was a singer, and I enjoy classical music, but never learned to read music.) Powers also uses unexpected nouns and adjectives in his descriptions. Sometimes, these seem very clever; at other times they are confusing.

The character of Peter Els is, for me, difficult to relate to: not because he is a musician or a bio-chemist, but because he seems, until near the end, to be a self-proclaimed, born loser. There are not sufficient likeable features with which to empathise. One shakes one’s head each time he makes a stupid mistake (mistakes which Els himself confesses), but there isn’t enough redeeming motivation for the mistake for us to understand and respect him, nonetheless.

Perhaps Powers was not aiming at any particular market when he wrote Orfeo. If you are an amateur composer or a competent musician and someone who is concerned about the encroachment of authority on our freedom of expression, Orfeo is a must read.

 

Creating Reader-Friendly Books

Posted by

0

In the October 2014 issue of Independent, the monthly journal of the Independent Book Publishers Association, has an article “On Creating Reader-Friendly Books for Today’s Busy Readers”.

IBPA_proudmember_1-175w[1]

The article is aimed at non-fiction books, but much of the author’s (Jodie Renner) advice is applicable to fiction, as well, except for the first item which recommends the “use of casual language and everyday words for immediate comprehension and inclusion.”  If it was ever fashionable to write fiction in casual language and everyday words, it has certainly gone out of style today.  One has only to look at the first page of almost any novel on the Booker Prize Long List (I know it has been reduced to a Short List, now) to see the use of unusual words, phrases and construction.  It seems to me that this is intended to announce, “I am an innovative and creative writer!” and is not intended to make things easier for the reader.  I think that the first page of a novel should be about capturing the readers interest (see my December 3, 2011 blog https://williampeaceblog.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=34&action=edit).  The use of unusual words, phrases and construction should be confined to intriguing the reader and clarifying the scene better than ordinary text.

Ms Renner goes on to say that one should “write lean; don’t waste the reader’s time”.  I think this is good advice: I find myself deleting extra words that contribute nothing when I review what I’ve written.

She recommends “cut down on the use of -ly adverbs. (adjectives converted to an adverb)  Instead of propping up a weak, overused verb with an adverb, use a strong, specific verb.  Instead of ‘walked slowly’ use strolled, sauntered, ambled, wandered, roamed, or meandered.”  In fact, some critics recommend the banishment of all adverbs.  I think this is a little harsh, but I confess to using my thesaurus to find a verb that’s more suitable than what first sprang to mind.

She says, “Avoid generic words such as things, objects, stuff, items, persons, places, food, plants , animals, pets, kids, which don’t give the reader an instant visual.  “They had lunch in a restaurant” doesn’t evoke a picture for your readers.  Be specific and create sensory imagery so readers know the mood of the gathering, visualise the kind of restaurant, and can almost smell the food and hear the sounds.”  Sometimes when I’m describing a new scene, I find myself going through a sensory checklist: if I were there, what would I hear, smell, see, and feel (both emotionally and tactilily.)

There are other bits of advice in her article, but for my audience their repetition would be boring.

Review: Sable Shadow and The Presence

Posted by

0

Readers Favorite has awarded Sable Shadow and The Presence Five Stars:

5star-flat-hr

Their review of the novel is as follows:

Author: William Peace

Genre: Fiction –

General   Appearance: Cover, Construction, Chapter Headings, Illustrations, Table of Contents 5

The appearance of a book makes a dramatic difference in the experience of the reader. Appearance includes everything from an enticing cover and intriguing table of contents, to interesting chapter headings and eye-catching illustrations. This book excelled in all of these areas.

Plot: Concept, Characters, Originality 5

The characters of a book should be well defined, and while they do not have to be likable, the reader does have to be able to form a connection with them. The theme should be consistent and the plot should be original or told from a unique perspective. All of these elements are exceptionally well done in this book.

Development: Description, Dialogue, Creativity, Organization, Length, Fluidity, Coherence 5

Besides the plot, the development of a book is the most critical. The dialogue should be realistic, the descriptions should be vivid, and the material should be concise and flow smoothly. The development of this book is very well done.

Formatting: Editing, Proofreading, Layout 4

Editing and proofreading is where most authors fail. An author should have more than one person proofread their book. The best plot will fail if the reader has to stumble through misspelled words, misused words, bad punctuation, and poor grammar. This book needs a bit of editing.

Marketability: Theme, Subject Matter, Size of Target Audience 5

Marketability refers to how well your book can be marketed and sold. The larger the target audience a book has, the greater the value it will have to publishers and retailers. Although this element is not indicative of the quality of a book, it is important to the success of a book. This book has a wide appeal and can be marketed to many types of readers.

Overall Opinion: Overall Starred Rating 5

This rating takes into account all previous elements and the reader’s overall opinion of the book. This is an excellent, very well written book.

Review: Reviewed by Mamta Madhavan for Readers’ Favorite
Sable Shadow & The Presence by William Peace is the the fictional autobiography of Henry Lawson who hears two voices from his childhood. These two voices represent good and evil and, like any of us, Henry also hears them while making decisions. The story takes us through Henry’s childhood to his college days, to his relationships, to his marriage and his business. Henry suffers a series of tragedies at the peak of his career which sees him attempting suicide. He recovers from that dark phase with the help of his wife and a psychiatrist. It is a story of triumph, tragedy, good, and evil.
The book has many interesting twists and turns in the plot. The author’s fascination for existentialism is revealed through Henry Lawson’s interest in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. That contributes a lot of wisdom in the discussions that occur in the story. The characters are well developed and they help in making the plot strong and powerful. There are some thought provoking details on good and evil which give readers an opportunity to think more about their individual beliefs and ideas. I found the representation of the good and the bad voices very practical and relatable. Readers can connect to that very easily.
The character of Henry Lawson has many shades which make him an interesting person. The author has captured well the triumph, tragedy, good, evil, sorrows, and happiness of human life that are palpable
good, evil, sorrows, and happiness of human life that are palpable while reading the book.

Review: Favors and Lies

Posted by

0

I decided to buy and read a copy of Mark Gilleo’s novel, Favours and Lies, because it received an award at a recent book festival. (One always wants to understand what other successful writers are doing.)

The brief biography at the back of the book says: “Mark Gilleo holds a graduate degree in international business from the University of South Carolina and an undergraduate degree in business form George Mason University. He enjoys traveling, hiking and biking. He speaks Japanese. A fourth-generation Washingtonian, he currently resides in the DC area. His first two novels, Love thy Neighbor and the national best seller Sweat were recognised as finalist and semi-finalist, respectively, in the William Faulkner-Wisdom creative writing competition.”

facephoto-150x150

This photo appears on his website.

Favours and Lies concerns Dan Lord, a private investigator with a law degree and a selected list of clients. He works in the DC area on ‘the blurred line between right and wrong’. When his brother’s widowed sister-in-law, Vicky, and her son, Conner, die under very strange circumstances, Dan takes a particular interest. Vicky dies in an apparent suicide and Conner dies of what seems like a drug overdose. Neither of these deaths make sense to Dan. Then the detective who was investigating the deaths of mother and son is killed, as is the son’s girlfriend. Dan finds that the records of several key phone calls have disappeared, and Dan engages a computer wizard to find out what happened to the phone call on-line records. There is a secretive company, the address and phone number of which are unlisted. There is a high class madam, a Russian intelligence officer, a medical doctor, a barber, a martial arts trainer an assistant district attorney, a night club owner, with whom Dan exchanges favors and lies in order to find the killers of his relatives. Some of these people end up dead; Dan, nearly so on several occasions. Toward the conclusion of the novel, we learn the reason for Conner’s death, and of the illegal conspiracy which lay behind it. The motivation for Conner’s death and those responsible is quite a shocking surprise. Fortunately, the favors given to Dan by those friends who remain alive are repaid.

Favors and Lies is a fast-moving book, which is difficult to put down: one wants to find out what happens next. The characters are distinctive and interesting, but they are ‘on stage’ for such short periods, in many cases, and described in terms of their appearance and history more than in terms of their values. One feels little empathy for many of them, the exceptions being Dan and Detective Wallace. The dialogue is clipped and punchy, fully in keeping with a fast-moving detective thriller. The locations of the various scenes are described is such detail that one senses the author’s pride in his familiarity with the streets of the US capital. There is some technology on which the plot for Favors and Lies depends, but it is pretty much understandable. For me – a very literal-minded person – the difficulty I have with Favors and Lies is the credibility of the plot, taken as a rapid-fire whole. But, in the genre of gripping, no-holds-barred detective stories, there are few better.

 

Subtlety

Posted by

0

One of my learnings as I’ve been writing and reading other authors’ work is the importance of subtlety.  Rather than spell out what has happened or what is going to happen, it is often better to imply and let the reader draw his/her own conclusions, or guess.  Obviously, there are times when it is necessary to be explicit: for example, when an author wants to elicit strong  feelings in the reader.  But there can be a fine line between developing strong feelings about a character and the reader developing negative feelings about the book.

Sex is one area where I feel, now, that less is sometimes more.  Presently, I feel that the use of explicit words can interrupt the reader’s attention, and force him/her to develop an explicit mental picture of what is happening.  Depending on the reader’s reaction, the explicit picture may or may not be erotic, or enjoyable.

Here is an example of the more explicit approach from my first novel, Fishing in Foreign Seas:

 

He stepped into the shower and closed the door behind him. They embraced, luxuriating in the delicious feel of wet skin against wet skin. He redirected the shower head so that it did not spray into their faces. They began a long, sensuous French kiss, their hands wandering over each other. Caterina’s legs had drifted apart, and his fingers found her black curls and then her secret cleft. “Oh, Jamie, don’t stop.” Her hand found his erection, and began to stroke. They moaned into each others mouths, their hearts racing and their breathing erratic, as they clung more strongly to each other, their eyes closed. She became rigid and stifled a cry of release.

“Oh, yes!” he groaned, and she opened her eyes to see his semen disappear in the streaming water.

They kissed slowly and lovingly, holding each other close.

“Oh, God!”

“What a beautiful way to start the day!”

 

And here’s a sample from my latest novel, which will be sent for final editing next week:

 

“Mary Jo, I must have tried to visualise you as you are now a hundred times.”

There was a slight giggle. “I didn’t try to visualise. I tried to feel your touch and smell your body. Now, it’s so nice to be real.”

He run his hand slowly and repeatedly from her cheek to her knee, pausing at her breast, her navel and her mound. “God, you’re a beautiful woman!”

“Well I’m not, but I’m glad you think so. Let me see your scars.”

She raised herself to a sitting position. She giggled again. “Rob!”

“What?”

“You know perfectly well what.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

“Nothing right now. Maybe later. How many stitches do you have here?”

 

Another area where caution is required is in descriptions of violence.  Violent scenes are sometimes necessary: they may represent an essential turning point in the plot; they may shed clarifying light on one or more of the characters, but too much clarity can turn the reader off.

Writing my latest novel, I discovered the importance of the use of ambiguity in the description of what has happened to a character, what she is doing, or what she is thinking.  Sometimes, if one paints too clear picture of these events, we are forced to develop a specific view of the character: strong approval, or disapproval.  What the author may want is a feeling of ambiguity about the character: I like her, but . . .  So,  for example, in my latest novel, one of the main characters may have become pregnant by her brother.  The circumstances and the symptoms are not clear.  What did she (and he) do?

Summer Reading

Posted by

0

There was an interesting article in The Daily Telegraph on July 8th which was subtitled: “‘I couldn’t put it down . . . Holidays are not the time and place to read books that you think you ought to read’, says A N Wilson. So, yes, leave Thomas Piketty at home.”

Wikipedia informs me that “Andrew Norman Wilson (born 27 October 1950) is an English writer and newspaper columnist, known for his critical biographies, novels, works of popular history and religious views. He is an occasional columnist for the Daily Mail and former columnist for the London Evening Standard, and has been an occasional contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Observer.”

untitled

Mr Wilson says that “there is a revealing and amusing survey that has been conducted  by a maths professor for the Wall Street Journal.  It is based on the ‘popular highlights’ chosen by users of the Amazon Kindle and comes up with a list of the summer’s ‘most un-read books’.  In the past when we only read books in book form, it was impossible to know, scientifically,  how far the average reader had penetrated into , say, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time – an impenetrable work, which it is sometimes tempting to believe that no one, except, perhaps, the book’s original copy-editor, has ever read to the end.  But now that so many of us read books on Kindle, it is possible to make an educated guess about how far the average reader has got.

“Each best-selling book’s Kindle page lists the five passages most highlighted by readers.  These extracts, designed to whet the appetite of other Kindle users, would – if they represented a thorough reading of the works considered – surely contain quotations from the whole book, and not just from the first few pages.  Jordan Ellerberg has come up with a playful ‘Hawking Index’ with which to estimate how much of a book most people have read.  The top five ‘highlights’ from Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch, for example, all come from the final 20 pages of the book, which suggests that 98.5 percent of readers made it to the end.  Highlights from Michael Lewis’ page-turning analysis of financial sharp practice, Flash Boys, suggest most people only read the first 21.7 percent of the book.

“And how about the book we of the Chattering Classes are all supposed to be reading and talking about this year – the French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century?  Here the quotes do not dig deeper into his 700 pages than a pathetic 2.4 percent – in other words, Piketty, the great economic sage of our time, is as unread as Hawking, our greatest scientific sage.

Wilson goes on to observe that, for most of us, a holiday is a time of relaxation with the distractions of children, sightseeing, family and friends.  He says, “Many is the thick paperback edition of some supposedly ‘great book’ that either gets left behind in the rented villa or hotel, or comes back home with only its first 30 pages smudged with sun-tan lotion.  The idea that this should induce ‘guilt’ is absurd.  Although to be as well-read as possible is a sort of duty of any intelligent person, this does not mean that it is a duty to read Plato’s Republic on a beach, or Proust by the poolside.”

Wilson says that the best sort of holiday reading is short.  In this case, he would probably recommend taking Hemingway’s short stories along, and I would agree.  In my view, the best summer reading is something that keeps inviting us back, all the while keeping us interested.

Of my own works, I would recommend Sin and Contrition (there’s a different sin in every chapter, and a discussion with the sinners at the end).  Or Efraim’s Eye or The Iranian Scorpion (both are unique thrillers).

 

Kurt Vonnegut

Posted by

0

Kurt Vonnegut, in his book, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, listed eight rules for writing a short story.  While I would probably adopt a different set of eight rules, I think Vonnegut’s rules are quite interesting:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

For me, the important parts of this rule are: “total stranger” and “time wasted”.  One never knows who will decide to read a book that one has written, and it’s important that whoever decides to read it feels that it is time well spent.  This suggests that the onknown reader got something out of the story: enjoyment, new knowledge, new ideas . . .

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

This is essential!

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

A character with no desires is not human and therefore not very attractive or interesting.

4. Start as close to the end as possible.

For a short story, this certainly makes sense.  I’m not sure this holds true for a novel.  One example that springs to mind is Emily Bronté’s Wuthering Heights in which the characters are young children at the beginning.  The Russian novelist, Tolstoy, didn’t believe in this, nor did Sholokov.  However, the rule, it seems to me, is useful in that it encourages one not to included unnecessary material.

5. Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.

It depends, I think, on what one means by “advance the action”.  A short story, by its very nature has to be tightly told.  In a novel, there is more latitude for scene- and context-setting.  I would argue that setting the scene and establishing the context are important in advancing the action, so long as they hold the reader’s interest.

6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

I’m not sure one has to be a Sadist, but it certainly shows the reader what a character is made of when tragedy strikes.  I good example is the principal character Henry in Sable Shadow and The Presence.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

I sense a slight conflict between this rule and rule number 1.  The one person for whom we write is a total stranger?  For me, the second sentence in this rule makes sense: one has to have focus in one’s writing, otherwise, it pleases no one.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I think this applies to a short story more than to a novel, but I’m not sure that Hemingway would have agreed with this.  His short stories often have surprising endings.