Tag: Fiction

Three in one

Time for reader’s questions again. Perhaps some other day we’ll continue with the “Eccentrics” series, if you like it.

Freddy Orea Lanz writes from Venezuela to ask:

I’mwriting my first novel. Everything is define, I know where I’m going to and where I want to get, but I start by narrating three initially unrelated events (whose significance becomes apparent later) that take place in different locations. I need to make these changes of location clear without the need to use commonplaces such as “Meanwhile”, “In the meantime”…

OK, let me get in a replying mood.

Now I’m ready. As usual, dear listener, the question can only be answered by the author himself, but let’s do some brainstorming.

The first idea that comes to mind is simple: you can write three independent chapters, with their header or their line break or both. Sometimes these psysical separations are the simplest of solutions.

[…] text text text about Character A in Location X.

New paragraph with text text text that ends Event 1.

[rest of the page is blank. Next page:]

II

Beginning of Event 2 with Character B in Location Y, and text text text […]

If the events are so brief that they do not justify a whole chapter each, the separation can be as simple as a double line break. You only need to leave a little space between the final paragraph of one scene and the first paragraph of the next scene.

[…] text text text about Character A in Location X.

New paragraph with text text text that ends Event 1.

Beginning of Event 2 with Character B in Location Y, and text text text […]

If these structural ideas don’t work for you, then we have to enter the text itself.

The rest of options that come to mind would have to deal with the content of the text itself. Ask yourself questions. Do I really need all three scenes at the beginning, or can they be told later, as the become relevant? May I connect the three scenes somehow, or the two most interesting ones, leaving the third for later? These events are the beginning of my novel, are they a good start? All three of them? When I have trapped the attention of the reader, will I lose it by switching character and location? Should I tell them in the shortest possible way, as some kind of introductory anecdotes? Could they form together a preface in three parts? Or could I come up with a narrative voice who, as in Amèlie, connects the events not through the facts themselves but through the eyes that filter them?

You may need to fully write some of these variations to find out how well they work. the final answer, my writer friend, only you can find.

Empathy and resemblance

Un libro es un espejo
A book is a mirror?

On sesion 17 of our Spanish-language podcast we discussed how resemblance generates empathy, while difference creates curiosity: two opposite poles that we can use to attract the attention of readers. Today I’d like to emphasize the first idea with several examples.

For example romantic novels have a mainly female readership, and indeed their protagonist is most frequently a woman. Of course there’s also always a male main character to complete the couple, but the true heroin is, in 99,9% of the cases, the girl.

Similarly, tipically masculine genres like trial or spy novels are always populated by cops, lawyers and soldiers – of the masculine gender.

But we find the most evident examples in cinemas. Aren’t the protagonists in children’ movies always children? Aren’t teenagers, in horror flicks? Or women, in romantic movies? There are exceptions -as with everyhing else in life- but the standard is clear, right?

I am aware that most of my readers don’t write genre fiction or with a specific audience in mind, but rather follow literary fiction and write for themselves. That’s why I won’t advice anyone to “think about your objective audience and try to bring your protagonist as close to them as possible”, even though I could say it – in fact I just have. Instead we can also apply the rule backwards: from your main character you may infer the main body of your potential audience. Such information can be quite useful, for example when deciding what contests or publishing houses to send the work to, or who among your friends and contacts can give you an appropriate opinion, similar to your potential real readers.

As often, just a topic to think about.

Which book should I buy?

Wood or Lodge?

Time for listener’s questions:

I’ve read a couple good books on writing and I’d like to find others that study fiction in further depth. I’ve seen two available online and I’d like to know your opinion on them:

I’m afraid they might be critical articles on classical authors -when I’m not interested in literary criticism- or they may be too general or superficial.

Unfortunately I don’t know any of them. I see on Amazon that Lodge’s is a compilation of articles previously published on The Independent on sunday. Each chapter deals with one topic and illustrates it with quotes from clasics, which is probably a good idea for a structure and might waken up your appetite for further reading.  According to the back cover, Wood is not an author but a critic, and according to the table of contents, two chapters are devoted to Flaubert, which is probably a waste of pages unless you know his work. Both volumes receive generally good reviews, though Lodge’s sem to be slightly better. If I had to choose among those two, I think I’d go for Lodge, but you see it’s only a first impression. If you’re really interested? Get both.

Don’t fool yourself, though: there are hardly any “advanced” manuals for writers. I still haven’t found one that takes for granted that I know the difference between first- and third-person narration and takes on from there. They all stop to explain -and frankly, one gets sick of it. The reason why they all appeal to beginners is because by doing so they expect to reach a wider audience and sell more copies. If you know a book “for experts”, please share it in the comments!

On the other hand, one learns something from every book. Sometimes it’s a detail on structure, or perhaps a new trick for writing dialogue, or a new perspective on things we thought we already knew. As we can’t possibly learn everything from one book, the more we read, the more we’ll know.

But remember: we learn writing through reading, but mainly through writing.

Second editions

Freddy Astorga sends in a question:

After you edit and publish a book, can you make a reivsion with improvements on your story, or are second editions just minor revisions?

The idea reminds me of the “director’s cuts” we often see on DVDs and even in cinemas, which for the most part are a trick to make you pay twice for about the same thing. Moviemakers have found a range of excuses for not making “their” movie from the start: studio pressure, budget limitations, tight deadlines… Excuses that a novelist cannot rely on.

The only second -and subsequent- revised editions that we find on print are reference works, but there is a reason for this. With the evolution of the world (its techonology, its laws, etc.), the text describing them needs to be updated to reflect those changes. This reasoning does not apply to fiction either.

The author is the only person responsible for their text. Therefore, correcting the finished piece would discredit their own work. A revised version can correct edition errors (like typos, or page numbering problems) but should leave the text and its universe intact. What would be the point of saying “things did not happen exactly that way, but a little more like this”? It would say very little about our capacity as narrators. Incidentally, this highlights the importance of a good editor, who should point out the flaws in you work and make sure that the published text is, from the beginning, final.

(Español) Podcast 23

50,000 words

People often ask how long should their novel be. We’ve all faced the problem of wanting to fill up two hundred pages and having nothing to say after only didty. Contests often deman a minimum of 50.000 words. What is the right length of a novel?

Let the experts speak:

  • Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland – 26.700 words
  • Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness – 38.500 words
  • H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness – 41.300 words
  • Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows – 58.800 words
  • Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles – 59.600 words
  • Isaac Asimov, Foundation – 66.000 words
  • James Joyce, Dubliners – 67.500 words
  • J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye – 74.000 words
  • J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal – 77.000 words
  • Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game – 101.200 words
  • George Orwell, 1984 – 104.000 words
  • Stephen King, The Shining – 162.000 words
  • Leopoldo Alas Clarín, La Regenta – – 30.400 309.000 words
  • Miguel de Cervantes , Don Quixote – 383.000 words

As you see, both classics and recent best-sellers range in a wide variety of possible lengths. In other words: a novel is as long as it is. It will last for as long as the story requires. Asimov and Carroll were quite consisten in the length of their sequels -perhaps because they were, with all due respect, more of the same-, while for Card and Rowling the sequels grew longer as their universes expanded.

Take a look at your bookshelves: are the books thick, thin, or every size? And which are your favourites? That might be the type of novel that you’re best at writing…

Mrs. Carrington’s holidays

Our friend Abel Arana is filling up the summer at his blog by re-running Mrs. Carrington, isn’t that cool? Enjoy August with some still-fresh, fully-subtitled, black-and-white comedy!