If you've never seen a whiteout -- you have now.
This photo is from the Edmond (Oklahoma)Sun, and was taken Christmas Eve, the day Mother Nature walloped Oklahoma with a blizzard, her parting gift for the Year 2009. I've never seen blowing snow like we had all day long.
Christmas Day brought dazzling sunlight, but temps are still freezing, and we'll be living through this mess for a couple of weeks. Still, it's an ill wind, as the saying goes. Being snowed in is a good time to clean up and reorganize and maybe do a little writing. In my dreams.
Never mind. Going through My Documents I came across a post I made to Jean Henry Mead's Mysterious People blog on Feb. 21, 2009. With her kind permission I'm reprinting it here.
*****
(MYSTERIOUS PEOPLE - Jean Henry Mead)
Saturday, February 21, 2009
A Little Dab’ll Do Ya
by Pat Browning
I’m dating myself with that Brylcreem slogan from the 1950’s and ‘60s, but that’s the trouble with being so ancient. What goes around comes back around. It’s old hat to one generation, red hot news to another.
Spend some time roaming the Internet and you’ll find umpteen ads for helping you write your book. Never mind the companies who want to publish/print it for you. I’m talking about the people who will sell you a piece of software or a book that will turn you into a published writer overnight.
Well, maybe. More likely, you’ll have to slug your book out line by line, page by page, the way writers have been doing since Year One. As far as help, it takes very little, just some basic stuff on structure and style. The rest is up to you.
Yet every writer is different, and you may on occasion need help from a software program. Case in point: I bought a CD program called “NewNovelist” in 2001, the year it was launched by Creativity Software, a British company. At the time, I had finished Book #1 and Book #2 was underway. Book #3 was a setting and an idea, nothing more. But I was busy and put the CD aside.
I opened the package eight years later-–Feb. 13, 2009--and then only out of curiosity. Surprise. The program is just what I need to kickstart Book #3, when I’m ready.
Apparently NewNovelist is still doing fine. There’s a current web site, and Lucinda Hawksley, the great, great, great-grandaughter of Charles Dickens, is the editor. That’s certainly a better endorsement than any I can come up with. Maybe there are other good programs out there, but one is enough. I don’t want to fall into a paint-by-the-numbers trap.
I have two nitty-gritty writing books that I wouldn’t part with.
One is How to Write Killer Fiction by Carolyn Wheat (Perseverance Press 2003). Among other things, she explains the difference between mystery and suspense, and takes you through the Four-Arc system for organizing your novel.
Wheat is a no-nonsense teacher. In her Preface, she writes: “If anything in this book works for you, I’m glad. If it doesn’t, toss it away and write from your gut, always keeping in mind the one immutable fact about fiction: You’re the one creating the reader’s experience.”
The other is Fiction Writing Demystified by Thomas B. Sawyer (Ashleywilde, Inc. 2003). Sawyer was showrunner and writer for the TV series "Murder She Wrote" so he knows how to move a story along. He writes from a screenwriter's experience, but it easily translates to the novel.
Chapter Six on writing dialogue cured me of using tiresome dialogue tags. Tom wrote his first thriller, The Sixteenth Man, without a single dialogue tag, letting action and internal monologue take the place of “he said” and other tags. An example:
(Quote:)
DiMartini disconnected, immediately dialed Harry Feldman in Reno. There was a knock on the door. “Come in.”
It was Alex Moffat. He’d been drinking, looked haggard. DiMartini waved him toward a chair. “Harry, Santo Martini here. Something else I want you to do for me. I need everything you can find on this private investigator… “ It wasn’t necessary, but he referred to the name he’d scrawled on his pad “… Charles Callan. Presto.”
(End Quote)
Sawyer calls it “high-energy writing.” Reading his novel is like being there, watching the whole thing take place. Try it. In fact, my cure for being stuck in a difficult scene apter is to draft the whole thing in dialogue. Works every time.
You can also read Leah Garchik’s gossip columns in the San Francisco Chronicle online. For three days leading up to Valentine’s Day her columns consisted of overheard conversations contributed by readers. The column of Feb. 13 had a section called “They’ve had enough.” Here are excerpts, with names of contributors and identifying locations omitted. (You can read all three columns at www.sfgate.com)
(Quote)
"Jeff, just to confirm, we're going to break up with our girlfriends before the trip, right?" "Definitely. I want to do it by Friday."
"I know I've been too clingy and whiny, but can we still sleep together until I get over you?"
"One of the perks of divorce: I have time to take a nap."
"Yes, we are divorcing. But we're also remodeling."
"It's the 80/20 rule. Ten percent of guys are jerks, and she found one of them."
(End Quote)
It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize the speakers as characters, and every conversation as a story nugget. Sometimes a writer doesn’t need a software program or even a good book. A sharp ear for what people say -- on the bus, at the mall, in the aisles at WalMart – and a pack of 3x5 file cards will do just fine.
*****
Good reading and writing to all in 2010!
By Pat BrowningRecently Lee Lofland of The Graveyard Shift had guest posts from a couple of veterans of the old Murder She Wrote TV show. Their behind-the-scenes stories are fun, and here are excerpts:
From Thomas B. Sawyer, who was Head Writer/Showrunner, and wrote 24 episodes:
(Quote)
Oddly, though not entirely unusual, the way I became a writer for MURDER, SHE WROTE before it began to air was the result of my agent sending the show’s co-creator, Peter Fischer, a non-mystery pilot script I’d written for CBS. Peter ‘saw’ something in it -- presumably, that I could write scenes that worked -- and he gave me a ‘blind assignment’ to write an episode …
All that aside, MSW looked to me like a hit, and I said so. I also offered that given my limited writing credits in the genre (a QUINCY and a MIKE HAMMER), he’d probably have to hold my hand. He assured me that that wouldn’t be a problem and, in response to my question about the approach, the show’s style, Peter explained -- as I feared -- that he envisioned it in the mold of traditional Agatha Christie puzzle mysteries -- what are known in the mystery genre as ‘Cozies’ ...
Which prompted -- with no hesitation -- a remark from me, the sheer chutzpah of which I really didn’t wonder at until I recalled the incident several years later. And having wondered, I realized that it was pretty much the way I’ve operated for most if not all of my life:“Peter, I have to tell you, when I was a kid I read a couple of Christies and one or two locked-room mysteries, and they bored the shit out of me. I’m not going to write that for you.”
His response betrayed no sign that I’d offended. “Okay. What will you write?”
“I’ll write The Maltese Falcon.”
Peter replied without missing a beat: “That’ll be fine.”
And that’s what I did for the next twelve years -- seven of them with Peter’s on-the-job blessing.
(End Quote)
And this from actor Ron Masak, who played Sheriff Mort Metzger of Cabot Cove for 8 seasons:
(Quote)
Murder, She Wrote though is the role I will be identified with forever I guess for a day doesn’t go by when someone doesn’t yell out “Hey Sheriff, How’s Jessica?” and you know what? I love it.
I couldn’t wait to go to work with that great lady. Angela is the Rolls Royce of our business, and the last 2 seasons I got to write 2 story ideas that were bought. I was proud of that for I always felt we had the very best writers in the business and the most loyal following…including a couple of administrations in the White House.
Now for those who care … Here is how I got the role. I had worked for Peter Fischer before, but the first time I went on location with him was when I played a detective on The Law and Harry McGraw.
We were in Massachusetts at a closed resort. A small staff was trying to feed breakfast to a film crew so I pitched in serving coffee, telling jokes and having a ball. A couple of months after we returned, Creator Peter Fischer called me and this is what he said on the phone:
“Ron? Peter Fischer … Tom Bosley is leaving the show to do a new series and I am creating a new sheriff. The role is yours if you want it but I have to know in the next 24 hours as I am leaving for Europe, so I have to know your answer before I leave.”
I responded “OK”
He said “Then you will call and let me know?”
I responded “I JUST DID” … And as the late Paul Harvey used to say, “And now you know the rest of the story.” (End Quote)
And now, just because this is the end of a week that was a Hell Sandwich, here’s a laugh from Leah Garchik’s column at sfgate.com:
(Quoting) At San Francisco Suicide Prevention's annual “Laughs for Life” fundraiser ... Executive Director Eve Meyer will end the evening, as she always does, “by asking everyone to join me in honoring the memory of my mother by taking a dinner roll and putting it in their purse.” (End Quote)
That won’t make you laugh unless your mother was like mine. She never left a restaurant without putting something left over in her purse. Used to embarrass me half to death. And now I do the same thing. Only now I simply ask for a to-go box and take everything – leftover salad, fries, green beans, butter pats …
By the way, you can read Lee Lofland’s blog at www.leelofland.com/wordpress/
By Pat Browning
Whew.
My reissued book is ready to launch. An E-mail from the publisher says he got the final proof copy today, and it is “gawjus.” Looks like I’ll have books for a group signing at the local library Dec. 4.
It’s been a hell-bent-for-leather project, but one of the nice things about a small, startup press is that it can turn on a dime, and Krill Press has done that a couple of times. ABSINTHE OF MALICE will be listed in Books in Print next week. It takes a little longer to get it up and running at Amazon and other online bookstores. Soon to come – Kindle.
I read once about an artist who was never entirely satisfied with his paintings. He went around to museums and art galleries, touching up his work when nobody was looking. I can identify.
Re-doing my book was a chore, but I got rid of a lot of ellipses and dialogue tags. I completely rewrote a couple of scenes, at the publisher’s request. It’s the same book, but it’s a better book. Yet even as I signed off on the manuscript I saw a couple of small things that should have been changed. Ah, well. At some point you have to let it go.
The web site for Krill Press is still under construction, but it’s at www.krillpress.com.
Writing and publishing today is a Medusa’s head. A sense of humor is essential, so I’ll sign off with a chuckle for the week. This is an item from Leah Garchik’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle online, Nov. 13:
(Quote)
Mary Patrick Kavanaugh, who says she spent seven years “writing, editing, revising and even refinancing her house twice to underwrite the costs of this dream,” has declared her novel officially dead and is throwing a funeral to mark that reclassification. The service and party will be Dec. 6 at the Chapel of the Chimes, and she says the event will be open coffin so that guests can dispose of “remnants of their own dead dreams to bury with the author's dashed hopes.”
Kavanaugh will sell self-published copies of her novel in the lobby to help pay for the refreshments. “Pity purchases are welcome and encouraged.” She invites guests who can’t show up in person to watch via Webcast at mydreamisdeadbutimnot.com.
(End Quote)
What a great marketing line to steal: Pity purchases are welcome and encouraged!
