What are you Writing?

[MikeKardec]

I'm currently writing scripts that will be turned into a comic strip to run on my band's website.
It will center around a fictionalized version of the band involved in a storyline that is sort of a mashup between "The Invaders" meets "This Is Spinal Tap".

I loved working in comics, really enjoyed moving between what was said and what was shown. When "Stonehenge" starts to play is it a tiny UFO that descends on stage?

Ah, historical accuracy. Sometimes the bane of our existence!

It was so elegant and economical before now that bit seems kind of awkward. I'll have to look at it again tomorrow with fresher eyes. I'm still cleaning up the mess. I'm also completely paranoid I'm going to miss something.

Ignorance was bliss!

 

[DesertDan]

I loved working in comics, really enjoyed moving between what was said and what was shown. When "Stonehenge" starts to play is it a tiny UFO that descends on stage?

Yeah, and since I'm the bassplayer I probably get trapped in it.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Is this thread one to ask a question about writing technique? Don't want to annoy anybody if it isn't.

 

[AmateisGal]

Is this thread one to ask a question about writing technique? Don't want to annoy anybody if it isn't.

Go for it! I see this thread as all things writing!

I finally got back to my novel last night. I really need a week off - no work, no doc appts, no school drop off and pick up for my daughter, nothing! Just an entire week to stay home and read and write and take naps.

 

[Benzadmiral]

AmateisGal, the words "takes naps" are engraved on my DNA.

Okay, here's the deal. Several of my writing group people objected last night to a sentence in a late chapter of my mystery novel, the one for which I asked here about medical issues and hospital procedures. Bear in mind that the narrator, Sydney, is a 23-year-old college graduate, funny, smart, and irreverent. All through the tale she has been narrating, sometimes in a breezy Archie Goodwin style, sometimes more seriously as the occasion warrants. So there has been a mix of tones. Sydney is watching a news broadcast about the death of two important characters, though not her friends, in the story. The excerpt:

*****
We stared in utter silence as the anchorwoman chattered on. “This video of their home comes to us courtesy of correspondent Richard Stentz of the Leadville Gazette. Police say that the bodies of the Drumbucks were discovered at approximately ten-thirty this morning.”

Cut to a shot of Sheriff Pacorini, looking harried. He cleared his throat. “Deputy Gonzales of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and I called on Mrs. Drumbuck this morning and found her and her son Blair, deceased. The investigation is ongoing.”

A reporter’s voice sounded, and Pacorini shook his head. “Evidence of foul play, no, not at present, but we won’t know for sure until the coroner files his report.”

*****

Their objection was to the use of "Cut to a shot of . . ." in the second paragraph. One member said he thought it was "too casual, like someone talking." Of course that was what I was going for -- a casual use of screenplay terms displayed by many people in America, especially those, like Sydney, raised on TV and movies. I would not have used it in 3rd person narration. Another commented that she thought it was a sentence fragment. I've known what sentence fragments were, and when and when not to use them, since I was a pre-teen.

The other 3 members of the group had no problem with the phrase. My writer's judgment tells me that it matches the character and is not too wildly casual for the serious moment. Sure, I can change it to "Sheriff Pacorini appeared on the screen, looking harried." It's no deal breaker. But is my judgment that far off?

 

[AmateisGal]

My first reaction is that it took me out of the story. I was reading along fine and then it felt like I was reading a script all of the sudden. Does that make sense? So while I see what you're trying to do, I don't think it works quite well here simply because it takes me out of the narrative.

 

[Benzadmiral]

My first reaction is that it took me out of the story. I was reading along fine and then it felt like I was reading a script all of the sudden. Does that make sense? So while I see what you're trying to do, I don't think it works quite well here simply because it takes me out of the narrative.

Yes, I do see. Good point. I know I've seen that literally done in published work, where -- in narration, mind you -- the author goes from regular narration to a page's worth of screen- or stage play setup, usually for comic effect.

 

[MikeKardec]

I would say that it utterly relies on the style of the rest of the piece. If you have adequately established a casual storytelling tone in the rest of the narration then it is definitely in style and okay ... but if you only do such things occasionally and the reader has a chance to forget that aspect of the tone then it will be jarring.

There is also the trickier aspect of whether or not it is "for real" ... hold on to your seat because this is complicated: The best example I can think of is the style in which James Ellroy wrote White Jazz and LA Confidential (forget the movie which was brilliant yet conventional). These books were written in a high energy, Jack Webb (Dragnet) meets Alan Ginsberg (beatnik free verse) style that is INSANE, relentless and kind of terrifying. You feel like the style shortened the writers life expectancy. It was utterly unique and totally legitimate artistically. It also took a rising author and made him famous.

However, it was unsustainable and exhausting to read. Intelligently, he stopped doing it, though he maintained the same flavor and produced work more in line with the similarly excellent work he'd done prior to those two novels. To be sure fame, age, or something else made him a stranger and stranger person in the ensuing years. Possibly something bad happened to him, possibly he simply had to play the wild man that was suggested by those two books in order to meet his own or the audiences' expectations. The work following White Jazz and LA Confidential was not bad at all, at first. It had it's own, more measured, style. Anyway, we come to Perfidia, the most recent novel of his that I have read. It reaches for some of the old style that so energized his most notable work ... but it sucks. It sucks century old cheese wiz. It's a hollow copy of his hey day. It's not "for real." It feels like he's faking it, faking his own work.

Personally, I think you can do that and get away with it. But you have to work it over and over until it becomes a new thing, it's own thing ... then it's fresh and no longer fake. I hope the guy breaks through into something new. I've always been a big fan.

Basically, if the style is consistent (not necessarily using screenplay jargon, just being light and inventive) it won't be jarring but if it's in and out and if it's not "real" it won't work. Try a rewrite where you only work on the narrator's phrasing. When I started writing scripts sometimes I'd do a draft where I only worked on one character at a time so as to make them as consistent as possible. Eventually, that wasn't necessary but it did help in the beginning.

It just needs to feel like this is the way the character presents the world, then if you are true to your character it will work. In the short bit you gave us it's hard to get a feel for that.

 

[Benzadmiral]

I would say that it utterly relies on the style of the rest of the piece. If you have adequately established a casual storytelling tone in the rest of the narration then it is definitely in style and okay ... but if you only do such things occasionally and the reader has a chance to forget that aspect of the tone then it will be jarring.

. . .
Basically, if the style is consistent (not necessarily using screenplay jargon, just being light and inventive) it won't be jarring but if it's in and out and if it's not "real" it won't work. Try a rewrite where you only work on the narrator's phrasing. When I started writing scripts sometimes I'd do a draft where I only worked on one character at a time so as to make them as consistent as possible. Eventually, that wasn't necessary but it did help in the beginning.

It just needs to feel like this is the way the character presents the world, then if you are true to your character it will work. In the short bit you gave us it's hard to get a feel for that.

That was what I was hoping for -- that it was in character for my narrator, Sydney. It's not as though the rest of the novel is grim and ultra-realistic in tone; it's not. Sydney occasionally refers to herself in the third person ("[A job] needed to pop up soon, if I was to continue my sacred duty of making sure Sydney got enough to eat"). Later she describes herself (she's 5'10", and slim) when she visited friends in California and tried surfing: "I must have looked like a giraffe on a surfboard, but I tried." So yes, it has a light tone from page 1.

As for James Ellroy, Mike, I found the one novel of his I tried (L.A. Confidential? Not sure) to be just as you said, exhausting, and I haven't tried any more. I prefer people like Chandler and Hammett, and Rex Stout!

 

[MikeKardec]

Ellroy is more the literary grandson of Jim Thompson, more baroque than Thompson but I suspect that may be the influence. He plays in Chandler's sandbox but he uses Thompson's voice. That's not fair, Ellroy is very much his own thing but if we have to relate him to his literary progenitors then that's my thought; Crazy Jim Thompson. Regardless, he REALLY makes that style work. I wouldn't ask anyone to like it (women should not read him while pregnant) but I do think it is admirable. A great fusion of elements and truly unique.

You can do a style too much. Ellroy does, but it works because that's part of the style, it's operatically over the top. Or you can do it just enough. Do it too little and people forget its a style and then they get jarred when you do it again or do it more. This is actually why there are always dozens of extras crossing the street in the background in movies ... even in towns that probably don't have that many visitors. If the crossings were occasional, you'd think that each new movement in the background had new and special meaning and it would be distracting and throw your enjoyment of the main story off.

 

[Bushman]

Just wrote up a story about the Van Gogh Bedrooms exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago that I did for my Reporting class.

 

[MikeKardec]

Cool ... I've seen the three side by side in a book but I never knew which one was painted when.

 

[AmateisGal]

Finished tweaking my presentation for a history conference this weekend. Best part: my job is paying for everything!

 

[MikeKardec]

What's the presentation on?

 

[AmateisGal]

What's the presentation on?

The Axis POW camps in Nebraska during WW2. That is what my book is about (if you're interested: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781626194199

It was a WONDERFUL conference. Focus was WW2 in the Northern Great Plains. I enjoyed it immensely and got to meet and network with an amazing group of people.

Now that this is over, I can focus on the novel. I CAN'T WAIT.

 

[MikeKardec]

Cool. Soon after the war, one of my cousins (much older than myself!) married a Japanese guy in the Grand Island area. I always thought that was sort of remarkable for that time and place only to discover, after some research and a few conversations, that they (the Japanese side of the family) were very respected by everyone around and had been for many generations. A fair number of them were well regarded college football players in the day! I'm always happy to find that some people weren't as prejudiced as modern culture makes them out to be.

 

[Bushman]

Currently writing a story on college student debt while also writing an essay review of the Jurassic Park series.

 

[MikeKardec]

College student debt .... arrragh! The bane of my existence. I don't have any, thanks to parents who started investing before I was born, but I am one of the founders of a student mentoring non profit and we have to hear about this all the time. Parents (and students) just refuse to plan well, as in the right colleges or the right order of colleges. It's the one HUGE investment that no one really does due diligence on. Colleges also waste money like mad then charge their poor students for it. We need to hear more and more about this from every angle. Whatever you have to say ... go get them!

 

[belfastboy]

College student debt .... arrragh! The bane of my existence. I don't have any, thanks to parents who started investing before I was born, but I am one of the founders of a student mentoring non profit and we have to hear about this all the time. Parents (and students) just refuse to plan well, as in the right colleges or the right order of colleges. It's the one HUGE investment that no one really does due diligence on. Colleges also waste money like mad then charge their poor students for it. We need to hear more and more about this from every angle. Whatever you have to say ... go get them!

I graduated without any debt but I had to wash pots in the student cafeteria 4 evenings a week.....call it character building!

 

[belfastboy]

I read Chapter 1 of my book at a Gallery evening event titled "Writers in Our Midst." It went well, the audience laughed in all the right places and seemed engaged in the story. The reading of a novel is a flawed process at best. I consider myself a story teller and hope the writing supports the telling. From that it is hard reading just the first chapter, it is an entry point into the story but it is NOT the story. But it felt good to put the writing out.....a public declaration of sorts that I have a book and I am a writer.....if I keep saying it one day I may begin to believe it.