Roger Angle's Blog
February 24, 2019
ONE WAY TO BEGIN A NOVEL
I taught writing for years, and students often ask, How do I begin?
When telling a story, you have to hook the reader and hold their attention all the way through. One way to do that is through a character we admire.
The other day, I read a beginning that I loved, in Ridley Pearson's novel "In Harm's Way."
A woman is driving along a country highway in the rain. She crosses a bridge. The river below is a raging torrent, full of trees and debris.
She sees a child, half underwater, trapped in the branches of a tree floating along in the river.
She slams on the brakes, runs across the highway. Cars swerve and slide to a stop. A man in a pickup truck stops and gets out.
The woman slides down the bank and dives into the water. She swims in the frigid water and struggles to find the child, finally finds her and holds her up out of the water, struggles to free the child and herself from the branches of the tree. She almost loses her grip on the child and almost drowns.
The driver of the pickup truck is suddenly there, reaching for her hand. He pulls her to safety. Other drivers are there, helping them out of the water.
She saves the kid's life.
Wow! What a beginning!
It works for several reasons. One, it is suspenseful and full of action.
Two, it reveals something about the woman's character. What kind of person is she? Is she brave? Yes. Is she heroic? Yes. Do we admire her? Yes, yes, and yes.
She risks her own life, without thought, to save a child, a total stranger.
Do we like this person? Yes. This is the first question we ask, I believe, when we read a story. We like her a lot. Is this a good beginning? Yes.
At the end of the scene there is a twist. You have to read the book to see what it is.
My point here is there is more than one reason to write this scene. Not just the action. That is not enough. You need to reveal character, too.
(NOTE: I finished reading this novel and it was not as much fun all the way through. See my review under My Books.)
RA
When telling a story, you have to hook the reader and hold their attention all the way through. One way to do that is through a character we admire.
The other day, I read a beginning that I loved, in Ridley Pearson's novel "In Harm's Way."
A woman is driving along a country highway in the rain. She crosses a bridge. The river below is a raging torrent, full of trees and debris.
She sees a child, half underwater, trapped in the branches of a tree floating along in the river.
She slams on the brakes, runs across the highway. Cars swerve and slide to a stop. A man in a pickup truck stops and gets out.
The woman slides down the bank and dives into the water. She swims in the frigid water and struggles to find the child, finally finds her and holds her up out of the water, struggles to free the child and herself from the branches of the tree. She almost loses her grip on the child and almost drowns.
The driver of the pickup truck is suddenly there, reaching for her hand. He pulls her to safety. Other drivers are there, helping them out of the water.
She saves the kid's life.
Wow! What a beginning!
It works for several reasons. One, it is suspenseful and full of action.
Two, it reveals something about the woman's character. What kind of person is she? Is she brave? Yes. Is she heroic? Yes. Do we admire her? Yes, yes, and yes.
She risks her own life, without thought, to save a child, a total stranger.
Do we like this person? Yes. This is the first question we ask, I believe, when we read a story. We like her a lot. Is this a good beginning? Yes.
At the end of the scene there is a twist. You have to read the book to see what it is.
My point here is there is more than one reason to write this scene. Not just the action. That is not enough. You need to reveal character, too.
(NOTE: I finished reading this novel and it was not as much fun all the way through. See my review under My Books.)
RA
February 18, 2019
WRITE LIKE YOU'RE SKIING DOWNHILL
Here is a writing tip that helps me:
Write like you’re skiing downhill, a little too fast, almost out of control.
Don’t sweat the quality of the writing on first draft, just tell the story.
And don’t re-read it until you are done, until the first draft is finished.
Nothing is as important as momentum.
Don’t show it to anybody until you have read the first draft and made your changes.
When you are first learning how to ski, you feel awkward, nervous, a little scared. Then, as you learn, you become more confident, until you are flying downhill, carving the turns and catching some air. The same thing is true of learning to write.
Going fast keeps me from being critical, from analyzing every line, from revising as I go, which is usually a waste of time.
When you finish, it's amazing how much of it holds up.
Good luck. Thanks for reading and for being on Goodreads.
RA
Write like you’re skiing downhill, a little too fast, almost out of control.
Don’t sweat the quality of the writing on first draft, just tell the story.
And don’t re-read it until you are done, until the first draft is finished.
Nothing is as important as momentum.
Don’t show it to anybody until you have read the first draft and made your changes.
When you are first learning how to ski, you feel awkward, nervous, a little scared. Then, as you learn, you become more confident, until you are flying downhill, carving the turns and catching some air. The same thing is true of learning to write.
Going fast keeps me from being critical, from analyzing every line, from revising as I go, which is usually a waste of time.
When you finish, it's amazing how much of it holds up.
Good luck. Thanks for reading and for being on Goodreads.
RA
February 6, 2019
WHY DO WE NEED THRILLERS?
Do we really need thrillers? Why are mysteries and thrillers such big sellers? Why are all of us not content to just read Jane Austen and Charles Dickens?
I believe that we, as humans, actually need thrillers. We need some excitement in our lives.
I used to be an active sports and outdoor guy: skiing, mountain biking, road biking, street racing, motorcycle riding, scuba diving, snorkeling, body surfing, boxing, martial arts (judo, jujitsu, Krav Maga), running 5-7 miles a day.
I needed all that activity. I would sleep like a baby at night.
Now I am 80 years old, and my knees are shot. I still work out, 2-3xs a week. But not like I used to.
So what do I do for excitement and fulfillment? I read and I write. I watch TV and movies.
Years ago, I took a class from the writer Paul Gillette at UCI. Paul said people read thrillers because real life is so boring.
OK. I agree, but I would also say that modern life doesn't satisfy our primitive, evolutionary need for excitement.
We evolved from primitive Neanderthals who slept in caves under blankets of woven leaves and hunted wild animals and foraged in the wilderness for food.
Imagine waking at dawn and staring into the eyes of a hungry jaguar or a pack of wolves.
Imagine chasing a wild boar through the woods with nothing but a spear. Probably not boring.
I believe we still have those genes and instincts within us, but nothing happens to us that rises to that level of intensity. We no longer fight to survive or face our own death every day. We no longer have to kill to live.
I think that is why we participate in sports and physical contests and why we watch other people do them.
I believe that is why we need thrillers, to stir our blood, to make our hearts beat faster, to exercise our flight or fight reflexes.
Deep inside, part of us is still primitive man. We are still programmed to kill animals for food and fight enemy tribes to survive.
Without that level of excitement, we grow bored and sluggish and soft, and something deep inside us dies.
We need thrillers, to keep part of us alive.
Happy reading. Hope you find thrillers that keep you up all night and make your heart beat faster.
RA
I believe that we, as humans, actually need thrillers. We need some excitement in our lives.
I used to be an active sports and outdoor guy: skiing, mountain biking, road biking, street racing, motorcycle riding, scuba diving, snorkeling, body surfing, boxing, martial arts (judo, jujitsu, Krav Maga), running 5-7 miles a day.
I needed all that activity. I would sleep like a baby at night.
Now I am 80 years old, and my knees are shot. I still work out, 2-3xs a week. But not like I used to.
So what do I do for excitement and fulfillment? I read and I write. I watch TV and movies.
Years ago, I took a class from the writer Paul Gillette at UCI. Paul said people read thrillers because real life is so boring.
OK. I agree, but I would also say that modern life doesn't satisfy our primitive, evolutionary need for excitement.
We evolved from primitive Neanderthals who slept in caves under blankets of woven leaves and hunted wild animals and foraged in the wilderness for food.
Imagine waking at dawn and staring into the eyes of a hungry jaguar or a pack of wolves.
Imagine chasing a wild boar through the woods with nothing but a spear. Probably not boring.
I believe we still have those genes and instincts within us, but nothing happens to us that rises to that level of intensity. We no longer fight to survive or face our own death every day. We no longer have to kill to live.
I think that is why we participate in sports and physical contests and why we watch other people do them.
I believe that is why we need thrillers, to stir our blood, to make our hearts beat faster, to exercise our flight or fight reflexes.
Deep inside, part of us is still primitive man. We are still programmed to kill animals for food and fight enemy tribes to survive.
Without that level of excitement, we grow bored and sluggish and soft, and something deep inside us dies.
We need thrillers, to keep part of us alive.
Happy reading. Hope you find thrillers that keep you up all night and make your heart beat faster.
RA
January 21, 2019
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES
Why are so many mysteries, both in print and on the screen, exciting and suspenseful at first and then dull and disappointing in the end?
I have been watching "Shetland," a wonderful British crime series on PBS. Each story takes two one-hour episodes to tell. So far, I have seen four, I think.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2396135/
In one story, we have a seemingly innocent young woman who appears to be a victim. (I will try not to spoil it here.) This character doesn't seem important for an episode and a half. A role player, they would say in basketball. A spear carrier, they would say in opera. Almost a background actor, they would say in Hollywood.
Then suddenly, out of the blue, she is the killer! Holy Christ, where in hell did that come from?
I think back over the two episodes and all the scenes she is in, and I can't see one hint or clue that she is dangerous or suspicious or even interesting.
I suppose the writers wanted to spring this big surprise, this big reveal, on us at the end. To fulfill the demands of the genre, I suppose.
But it didn't work for me. It was not satisfying. It wasn't up to the level of excitement of the rest of the story. It was a big let-down.
I find this kind of thing happens in a lot of mysteries that I read or see.
The explanation of the mystery is not as much fun as the mystery itself.
Is that true for you, too?
So how do we writers fix this?
The answer, for me as a writer, is to focus on suspense more than mystery.
A mystery is about the past. Who did it? Who killed so and so? Who left the unsigned note? Whose fingerprint is that on the dead woman's eyeball? Who made the ransom call?
Suspense is about the future. Will the killer strike again? Will James Bond defeat Dr. No? Will Jason Bourne survive a dozen attempts to kill him? And will he get the girl in the end?
In my novel, "The Disappearance of Maggie Collins," I tried to create suspense. Will Dupree rescue Maggie? Will they end up together? Will the killer go to jail?
This is not really a mystery. We know who the killer is. And we get to know him during the story. Maybe whether he gets caught is a mystery. Sort of.
Suspense works better for me than mystery.
Hope it works for readers, too.
Thanks for reading and thanks for being on Goodreads.
RA
I have been watching "Shetland," a wonderful British crime series on PBS. Each story takes two one-hour episodes to tell. So far, I have seen four, I think.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2396135/
In one story, we have a seemingly innocent young woman who appears to be a victim. (I will try not to spoil it here.) This character doesn't seem important for an episode and a half. A role player, they would say in basketball. A spear carrier, they would say in opera. Almost a background actor, they would say in Hollywood.
Then suddenly, out of the blue, she is the killer! Holy Christ, where in hell did that come from?
I think back over the two episodes and all the scenes she is in, and I can't see one hint or clue that she is dangerous or suspicious or even interesting.
I suppose the writers wanted to spring this big surprise, this big reveal, on us at the end. To fulfill the demands of the genre, I suppose.
But it didn't work for me. It was not satisfying. It wasn't up to the level of excitement of the rest of the story. It was a big let-down.
I find this kind of thing happens in a lot of mysteries that I read or see.
The explanation of the mystery is not as much fun as the mystery itself.
Is that true for you, too?
So how do we writers fix this?
The answer, for me as a writer, is to focus on suspense more than mystery.
A mystery is about the past. Who did it? Who killed so and so? Who left the unsigned note? Whose fingerprint is that on the dead woman's eyeball? Who made the ransom call?
Suspense is about the future. Will the killer strike again? Will James Bond defeat Dr. No? Will Jason Bourne survive a dozen attempts to kill him? And will he get the girl in the end?
In my novel, "The Disappearance of Maggie Collins," I tried to create suspense. Will Dupree rescue Maggie? Will they end up together? Will the killer go to jail?
This is not really a mystery. We know who the killer is. And we get to know him during the story. Maybe whether he gets caught is a mystery. Sort of.
Suspense works better for me than mystery.
Hope it works for readers, too.
Thanks for reading and thanks for being on Goodreads.
RA
January 19, 2019
DO WE NEED TO ADMIRE OUR HEROES?
I usually admire the main character Hondo in "S.W.AT." a CBS network show:
https://www.cbs.com/shows/swat/
Hondo is a little cartoony, a little larger than life, and sometimes buffoonish. But he serves the premise well: a tough guy who cares about people and whose basic mission in life is to help people.
So far, so good.
But last night I watched an episode in which Hondo tries to rescue a boy, 15, who has been arrested and is following in his gangster father's footsteps.
Anyone who deals with teenagers, as I have for years as a teacher, father, and grandpa, knows that getting mad at a teenager and yelling at him or her is not the best way to establish rapport and open lines of communication.
But that is what Hondo does. Yells at the boy. What the hell is wrong with you? Or words to that effect. Of course, the boy shuts down and shuts Hondo out. He heads defiantly on into a life of crime.
To me, that is bad writing and bad character development. It is also bad psychology.
Hondo lost my respect and admiration in that scene. He also lost my willing suspension of disbelief. If Hondo is so smart and such a good cop, why does he not know how to handle a teenager?
I don't need Hondo to be perfect. But I need him to be as smart as I am. Or smarter.
Do you feel that way about characters in fiction and on film?
I sure do. If a smart character does something stupid, it throws me out of the story. I pull back and argue with the logic, with the truth of the story.
I think identification and believability are important to fiction, whether on the page or on the screen.
I strive to care about my own characters, the ones I create in my own writing, and when I put them in harm's way, or have them confront a problem or moral dilemma, I want them to respond in much the same way I would.
Or the way I think I would. Or the way I think I should.
What do you think?
Do we need to admire our heroes?
Oh, BTW, what should Hondo have done? He should have taken a seat near the teenager, remained calm, open, receptive, and non-judgmental.
He should have smiled at the kid and said something like, Hey, how are you? And he should have listened without anger or judgment to whatever the boy said.
He should have listened to what the boy was feeling and thinking, why he was making these choices, and what he thought the results would be. The most important thing you can do with teenagers is care about them and listen to them.
If he had done that, I would have admired Hondo in that scene.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being on Goodreads.
RA
https://www.cbs.com/shows/swat/
Hondo is a little cartoony, a little larger than life, and sometimes buffoonish. But he serves the premise well: a tough guy who cares about people and whose basic mission in life is to help people.
So far, so good.
But last night I watched an episode in which Hondo tries to rescue a boy, 15, who has been arrested and is following in his gangster father's footsteps.
Anyone who deals with teenagers, as I have for years as a teacher, father, and grandpa, knows that getting mad at a teenager and yelling at him or her is not the best way to establish rapport and open lines of communication.
But that is what Hondo does. Yells at the boy. What the hell is wrong with you? Or words to that effect. Of course, the boy shuts down and shuts Hondo out. He heads defiantly on into a life of crime.
To me, that is bad writing and bad character development. It is also bad psychology.
Hondo lost my respect and admiration in that scene. He also lost my willing suspension of disbelief. If Hondo is so smart and such a good cop, why does he not know how to handle a teenager?
I don't need Hondo to be perfect. But I need him to be as smart as I am. Or smarter.
Do you feel that way about characters in fiction and on film?
I sure do. If a smart character does something stupid, it throws me out of the story. I pull back and argue with the logic, with the truth of the story.
I think identification and believability are important to fiction, whether on the page or on the screen.
I strive to care about my own characters, the ones I create in my own writing, and when I put them in harm's way, or have them confront a problem or moral dilemma, I want them to respond in much the same way I would.
Or the way I think I would. Or the way I think I should.
What do you think?
Do we need to admire our heroes?
Oh, BTW, what should Hondo have done? He should have taken a seat near the teenager, remained calm, open, receptive, and non-judgmental.
He should have smiled at the kid and said something like, Hey, how are you? And he should have listened without anger or judgment to whatever the boy said.
He should have listened to what the boy was feeling and thinking, why he was making these choices, and what he thought the results would be. The most important thing you can do with teenagers is care about them and listen to them.
If he had done that, I would have admired Hondo in that scene.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being on Goodreads.
RA
January 17, 2019
WHAT DO WE WANT FROM FICTION?
I often think about what I am trying to accomplish as a writer of fiction.
Do I want to:
-- entertain?
-- warn?
-- frighten?
-- enlighten?
-- teach?
-- provide a meaningful experience?
-- provide an escape from reality?
-- lead the reader to an eternal truth?
-- exercise my writing muscles?
-- all the above?
To answer this Q, I also think about what I want when I read fiction.
That Q is easier to answer.
I want three things:
1. To learn something about myself.
2. To learn something about the world.
3. To have a meaningful and enjoyable aesthetic experience at the same time.
The famous writer Ken Follett said there are three things a successful popular novel must have—my comments added:
• A main character you want to identify with—not some loser.
• A setting, a place, that people want to visit—not some dump.
• A big dramatic question to keep the reader hooked all the way through.
What do you want from fiction? (Add a comment, if you feel like it.)
One answer to my own Q, what I want from writing fiction: To use everything I've got to the best of my ability and to entertain the reader at the same time.
Also, for some reason, writing is difficult work and something I need.
Thanks for reading and for being on Goodreads.
RA
Do I want to:
-- entertain?
-- warn?
-- frighten?
-- enlighten?
-- teach?
-- provide a meaningful experience?
-- provide an escape from reality?
-- lead the reader to an eternal truth?
-- exercise my writing muscles?
-- all the above?
To answer this Q, I also think about what I want when I read fiction.
That Q is easier to answer.
I want three things:
1. To learn something about myself.
2. To learn something about the world.
3. To have a meaningful and enjoyable aesthetic experience at the same time.
The famous writer Ken Follett said there are three things a successful popular novel must have—my comments added:
• A main character you want to identify with—not some loser.
• A setting, a place, that people want to visit—not some dump.
• A big dramatic question to keep the reader hooked all the way through.
What do you want from fiction? (Add a comment, if you feel like it.)
One answer to my own Q, what I want from writing fiction: To use everything I've got to the best of my ability and to entertain the reader at the same time.
Also, for some reason, writing is difficult work and something I need.
Thanks for reading and for being on Goodreads.
RA
January 15, 2019
TOO MANY WRITING PROJECTS?
I have a tendency to work on more than one story or novel at a time. I like to flit among them like a bee in a rose garden.
Part of that is my ADD or ADHD, I think. Been trying to train myself to focus on one thing at a time. But it just isn't my nature.
I noticed the other day, online I think, a profile of a highly successful businessman who said he succeeded because of his ADHD, his ability to keep many balls in the air at one time, like a juggler.
Right now I only have two that I am pursuing almost every day, "Alien Love" and "Looking for Suzie Sunshine." The first one is really done, and I am just futzing with the language, which I love to do. In Hollywood, they call this polishing, but I don't think that metaphor is apt. To me, it's more like fine-tuning.
Also, I like to write in different styles with stories in different settings. I cannot imagine writing about the same characters in the same same setting over and over again.
But never say never.
One advantage of working on different projects: You never wake up in the same world twice.
RA
Part of that is my ADD or ADHD, I think. Been trying to train myself to focus on one thing at a time. But it just isn't my nature.
I noticed the other day, online I think, a profile of a highly successful businessman who said he succeeded because of his ADHD, his ability to keep many balls in the air at one time, like a juggler.
Right now I only have two that I am pursuing almost every day, "Alien Love" and "Looking for Suzie Sunshine." The first one is really done, and I am just futzing with the language, which I love to do. In Hollywood, they call this polishing, but I don't think that metaphor is apt. To me, it's more like fine-tuning.
Also, I like to write in different styles with stories in different settings. I cannot imagine writing about the same characters in the same same setting over and over again.
But never say never.
One advantage of working on different projects: You never wake up in the same world twice.
RA
January 8, 2019
NEW BOOK: 'SEARCHING FOR SUZIE SUNSHINE'
Jan. 8, 2019
Writing novels is a lot of work, not all of it fruitful. I have quite a few projects lying around that I'm not happy with. Mostly drafts of novels. I imagine a lot of writers have such a backlog. It's like having race horses that have injuries and are out on "injured reserve."
One of these novels is set in the world of horse racing. It involves an old horse trainer, Rafael "Sonny" Sonnenschein, from Kansas. His daughter Susan ran away from home when she was sixteen, after her parents got divorced. Her mother had an affair and her father threw her mother out.
Sonny has been looking for Suzie Sunshine, as her friends at school called her, and finds a lead in Los Angeles years later.
I know that much. But I don't know how many years it's been that he has been searching for her, in this new version.
I want him to find her, or find out what happened to her. I have many different versions of the story -- twenty , so far. The most recent is 93,000 words and 442 pages long. But none of these versions worked for me.
I am the first reader I try to please.
As you can see, I have spent a lot of time and effort on this story.
I am hoping this new version will work better.
I really like this character, Sonny. In the first chapter, he meets a young woman who reminds him of his daughter. I like her, too.
Wish me luck.
More later.
#
Jan. 9, 2019
I woke up thinking about Suzie Sunshine. One difference between this story and "The Disappearance of Maggie Collins" is that Sonny is not a cop.
Sonny has a personal stake in finding his little girl. (Not so little anymore.) But it is not his job. He doesn't have a lot of resources. He doesn't have the NYPD behind him. He's on his own.
He's been traveling for ten years looking for Suzie. But he has also been making a living. He takes his race horses with him, and his crew, a groom, a hot-walker, and an exercise rider. He races, he wins, he loses, he has to keep his team together. He has to keep his horses healthy.
So the story is complicated. It takes a lot of research. I spent days at Hollywood Park, before it closed. The Park hosted an event, called Rail Birds, for race fans. You had to show up at 7:00 o'clock Sunday morning. Rise and shine, race fans!
The morning I went, some twenty fans and I were treated to talks by trainers and touts and a free breakfast. It was great. We walked across the tracks, both grass and dirt, as I recall, across the infield to the stables. Jockeys and hot walkers, grooms and exercise riders--all the people who lived in the world of thoroughbred racing--ate in a cafeteria. And we ate with them.
The food was great and cheap. They had pizole and menudo, tacos and burritos. Wonderful. We ate next to a table of jockeys, tough strong athletes who mostly weighed less than 130 pounds and made their living riding thousand-pound animals running full-tilt at 40 mph.
The research was fun. The horse racing world is rich and complex.
The point is this: How do you make this story exciting when Sonny is not a cop?
More later. Gotta go.
Thanks for reading.
#
I'm back. Still thinking about Suzie. What makes a cop story exciting is the built-in conflict and danger.
In "Maggie Collins," the main guys, Dupree and Maggie, are after a serial killer who picks up hookers on Times Square (1986) and forces them to tell him they love him. If he doesn't believe them, well, you know what happens. It isn't pretty.
But this is a different story. As they say. The question is, should it be a thriller? Or should it just be a story about a middle-aged man seeking the family he once lost?
Or is there a way to combine the two?
I have the characters, and I have the setting. Now I have to decide what kind of book it's going to be.
More later.
Stay tuned.
Thanks.
#
Back again. I think I've got it! Or it's got me.
I think I have figured out how to make this a mystery/thriller and at the same time explore Sonny's character and his relationship with Cody, who becomes a kind of surrogate daughter.
Whee! Wish me luck.
I will let you know as it goes along.
#
Jan. 11, 2019
Back again. More about Suzie Sunshine.
I may have to change the title.
I was in a writers' group one time, and after I read the opening of a story, one of the other writers said, "What's new and special about this story?"
I hadn't thought about that. But I think it's a good Q. We don't like to read the same old story, over and over. Unless it's from a writer we love.
In this story, about Suzie Sunshine, we have an older man, bereft and alone, who has lost the two people he loved most in his life. His wife had an affair, and that violated his sense of right and wrong. So he threw her out. Now he is trying to find out what happened to his daughter who ran away when she was 16, ten years ago.
If she is missing, the central question is, Where is she? And, Why is she there? Is she all right? So the Q is about geography and Suzie's backstory.
But if something happened to her, if she was murdered, suddenly the stakes are different. The question is, Who did it? And, Why? Where are they? Do they deserve to die for what they did?
It seems to me those stakes are more exciting, and the story becomes more powerful.
What is new to me is that I cannot recall a story like this.
More later.
#
I am trying to take my own advice, in "How to Avoid Getting 'Lost in the Woods'," posted here on 11/29/18.
I am trying to set up a plot-point to drive toward in each chapter.
In Chapter One, Sonny is trying to figure out what kind of people he is dealing with. Are they good people? Can he trust them? Are they dangerous? Are they criminals?
He watches Cody Chase with her BF Kenny and his brother Bob. Cody seems OK, but the two guys, not so much.
I always thought the detective in crime fiction is in the same position we are all in when we deal with new people.
We may move to a new town, or take a new job, or go to a new school. We need to figure out who is reliable and whom we can trust.
There is a certain amount of tension, or suspense, built into this situation. In fiction, it's the set-up. And it's called the set-up for a reason. It sets the reader up for the story to follow.
#
Jan. 16, 2019
I find that, a lot of times, the fiction I write has something to do with my own life.
The story 'Suzie Sunshine' is a kind of father-daughter love story. It's about a man who meets a young woman and in a way falls in love.
He doesn't want to have sex with her. He wants to protect her and nurture her. He wants her to have a good life.
So, when she gets involved with an abusive man, it is all he can do to keep from killing the abuser. I feel that way myself.
Recently, I met a young woman about the age of my grandkids. I liked her a lot and sort of fell in love.
So I know what that feels like.
There comes a time in life when you feel you can tell who the good people are, men and women, boys and girls.
And you want to protect them. That is what this book is about. I think. So far.
#
Jan. 18, 2019
I am starting over with this story and trying to establish the voice and the tone.
I am hoping the story itself will lead me where I need to go, or where it needs to go.
I know Sonny is looking for Suzie, his daughter. I wrote some notes in which he knows what happened to her. But now I am not so sure.
With all this talk about outlining and knowing where the story is going, I really don't know.
I can feel Sonny's feelings and live in his world. Maybe that is enough. Maybe I don't need to know everything yet.
#
Jan. 22, 2019
I am reluctant to charge forward into this story without knowing where I am going. I've done that before and gotten "lost in the woods," as I have written about here before.
So I made a list of alternatives:
1. Sonny finds Suzie and she is a hardened criminal. Was he responsible for how she turned out? Can he stop her? Will he? Or will he join her?
2. Suzie is dead, murdered. He looks for her killer. Will he find justice? Or revenge? Did she deserve it?
3. Suzie is alive when he finds her. Then she gets murdered. Who did it? Or whodunit? And why?
4. Suzie is happily married, with children, but wants nothing to do with him. Her whole family gets murdered. OMG!
5. He finds her and she is in an abusive relationship. He rescues her.
6. He finds a series of woman in abusive relationships to see if she can find Suzie and her abuser. He rescues them, one after the other. Does he kill their abusers? Should he?
I don't know.
What do you think?
So back to square one:
What is the story problem?
Possible story problems:
-- How do you find your daughter after ten years? How did she turn out? Is she still alive?
-- You finally find a trace of your daughter, and she has been murdered. Who did it?
I don't know. It has not gelled yet.
More later.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being on Goodreads.
# Jan. 22, 3:18 p.m.
I'm back. The story problem now is:
How do you find your long-lost daughter who has been missing for ten years?
Who cares? I'm not sure I do.
I like these characters, and I like the set-up:
Sonny, an old horse trainer, comes to L.A. looking for his daughter Suzie, who ran away ten years ago.
But what is the central dramatic question?
In other words, why should we care?
What are we going to experience that is exciting?
What are we going to learn that applies to our own lives?
Beats the poop outta me.
One of my old screenwriting teachers at UCLA, Frank MacAdams, used to say that you had to have a protagonist and an antagonist.
The protagonist had to want something worth fighting for, and the antagonist had to try to stop him or her.
Hmmm. OK. Maybe.
If so, who is the antagonist here?
More later.
#
Jan. 23, 2019
In an earlier draft, I had a bad guy who could be our antagonist: Don Castillo, a wealthy horse owner who lives on a big fancy ranch up in the mountains north of Mexico, D.F.
What if I recast him? Recreate his character? What if he is truly evil?
This is the hardest thing about writing thrillers: creating an interesting, charming, believable, and somewhat sympathetic villain.
Why sympathetic? Only the worst thrillers have villains that are one-dimensional.
The best villain in all modern thrillers, IMO, is still Hannibal Lecter. He is charming, erudite, well educated, an accomplished doctor, a connoisseur of fine wines and rather odd food.
His relationship with the protagonist, Clarice Starling, is interesting. They understand each other. At one point in "Silence of the Lambs," Lecter says he won't come after Clarice. "The world is as more interesting place with you in it," he says.
My guess is that Thomas Harris spent years developing Hannibal Lecter. He was not invented in a flash. At least I could not have done that on the fly.
So far, what worries me about Don Castillo is that he seems to be a cliché.
So how do I make him more rounded, more complex, and more interesting?
Hmmm. A topic for further study.
I will say the best villains believe they are doing the right thing. Or say they are.
And some people believe them.
More later.
#
Jan. 24, 2019, 12:12 a.m.
I'm back. Been thinking about Don Fulgencio Castillo. I think I am on the right track. Gonna make him larger than life, charismatic, charming, wealthy, successful, and apparently a really good guy.
Everyone admires him. On the surface, he is admirable. But underneath, he is not such a great guy.
What does he do? Raises and trains polo ponies. This is truly rarefied air in the horse world.
Polo is a blast to watch. I recommend it. Gonna try to see some polo matches myself this coming spring and summer.
What is the essence of evil? I think it is total selfishness, caring about no one but yourself, doing nothing for anyone else unless it is a manipulation.
Remind you of anyone in the news or in your life? We have all known people like this.
It always amazes me that they can be so successful.
More later.
#
Jan. 26, 2019
I have spent the last four days--an enormous amount of time, for me--thinking about this character, Don Fulgencio Castillo, and making notes.
He is based on rich people I have known, as well as people I have read about. He is part fictional, part factual, part fantasy. Partly, he is based on a man I heard about from a friend. She was an airline flight attendant who picked up a man on a flight to Mexico, D.F.
She lived with him on his ranch in the mountains north of Mexico City. Famous bullfighters and horsemen would come to visit. Things would happen.
I don't want to give away too much.
At times, I am more interested in him than I am in my main character, Sonny. Partly, that is because Fulgencio is new and because I have never spent so much time on this kind of character before, the heavy, the villain, the antagonist.
In earlier novels, I wanted to discover the character as I wrote, as things happened, as the plot unfolded. That is the way I wrote Maggie Collins. Now I wish I had spent more time on the bad guy and on the plot. I'm proud of the book, but still.... You know. I have a writerly obsession with perfection. True of every artist, I think.
Now, with Suzie Sunshine, I'm trying to figure out the sequence of events, aka the plot. An old friend of mine, a best-selling mystery writer, did what she called a running plot outline. She would plot the story, chapter by chapter, scene by scene, as she wrote it.
My mind doesn't work that way. I am dreaming up the characters and then setting them at play in this fictional world.
For me, that is fun.
You always hope it is fun for readers.
More later.
Back to my notes, back to dreaming up the character. What does he want? What drives him? What kinds of choices does he make? What is he willing to kill for? To die for?
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being on Goodreads.
#
Feb. 1, 2019
Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. Seems fitting. I am going over and over my ideas for this novel. My life feels like that movie, except I am not falling in love.
You are probably sick to death of hearing about Suzie Sunshine. Me, too. Sick to death. But I can't afford to give up.
I am wrestling with ideas about the story and about Don Fulgencio Castillo, who is supposed to be Sonny's nemesis.
In the last draft, Sonny goes to Mexico to find his daughter Suzie. I had not been in Mexico in some years and felt unsure about setting the novel there. But I forged ahead. Good idea, I think now. (You can do a lot of research online these days. And, since this is fiction, you can just make up stuff.)
In my writers' group, years ago, one of the other writers, David, said, "I hope he doesn't go all the way to Mexico and find her dead."
Oops. That is just what I had planned.
In that draft, the story seemed to meander until it ran out of energy, like a desert creek that narrows to a trickle and then finally dries up in the sand.
What do I like so far? Sonny and Cody.
Do I care about Suzie? Of course, I have to care about her, because she is the MacGuffin, the whole point. Here is a link to explain the word MacGuffin:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...
My problem with the whole novel, up to this point, including 20 drafts and 13 pages and 3,629 words of notes, is that there is not enough suspense.
The search drives the story, but there must be barriers, difficulties, and dangers to make the story compelling, to give the story life.
In the beginning, nobody is in danger. Do I have to have danger to get the hairs to stand up on the back of my neck?
Yes.
How do you feel about that?
I went back and looked at one of the great-granddaddies of modern thrillers: "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," or, as I call it, The Girl with her Tattoo Draggin'.
Even though the writing is mostly exposition, which is dull to slog through, the plot is relentless. A small mystery leads to a bigger mystery and leads the two main characters into danger.
So how do I do that, with this story?
I have all kinds of ideas. Maybe Castillo knows Sonny is coming and sets a trap.
Maybe Suzie is held captive there. Or maybe it is more interesting if she can leave but chooses not to. Maybe she has a vital reason.
Dum-dee-dum-dum.
Trying to build suspense.
Will Sonny find Suzie? Will he rescue her?
I have no idea.
More later. Wish me luck. I will need it.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being on Goodreads.
#
Feb. 6, 2019
I have been struggling to save my previous writing in this novel. But it's hard to do that and write something new that works better.
I asked a friend of mine who is also a professional writer. He says if a story has serious problems, he starts a new draft and doesn't even look at the old ones. If he reads an earlier version, like me he falls in love with his own writing and gets trapped in endless revisions that never work.
It's hard to mix the new with the old.
Also, I have a friend who works in Hollywood doing all kinds of special effects and other work, including carpentry, explosions, electricity, and special effects.
He rigs cars to blow up and catch fire. He rigs buildings to explode. He rigs doors to blow open by violent explosion.
He told me one time that it is easier to build a new house and wreck it than it is to build a wrecked house, although the movie will only show the wrecked house.
The same thing is true writing novels. It is easier to write a new draft, starting from scratch, than it is to fix one that is structurally flawed.
So I am starting over, with two novels, Suzie Sunshine and "The Prince of Newport," which is a story for another time.
Thanks for reading and thanks for being on Goodreads.
RA
Writing novels is a lot of work, not all of it fruitful. I have quite a few projects lying around that I'm not happy with. Mostly drafts of novels. I imagine a lot of writers have such a backlog. It's like having race horses that have injuries and are out on "injured reserve."
One of these novels is set in the world of horse racing. It involves an old horse trainer, Rafael "Sonny" Sonnenschein, from Kansas. His daughter Susan ran away from home when she was sixteen, after her parents got divorced. Her mother had an affair and her father threw her mother out.
Sonny has been looking for Suzie Sunshine, as her friends at school called her, and finds a lead in Los Angeles years later.
I know that much. But I don't know how many years it's been that he has been searching for her, in this new version.
I want him to find her, or find out what happened to her. I have many different versions of the story -- twenty , so far. The most recent is 93,000 words and 442 pages long. But none of these versions worked for me.
I am the first reader I try to please.
As you can see, I have spent a lot of time and effort on this story.
I am hoping this new version will work better.
I really like this character, Sonny. In the first chapter, he meets a young woman who reminds him of his daughter. I like her, too.
Wish me luck.
More later.
#
Jan. 9, 2019
I woke up thinking about Suzie Sunshine. One difference between this story and "The Disappearance of Maggie Collins" is that Sonny is not a cop.
Sonny has a personal stake in finding his little girl. (Not so little anymore.) But it is not his job. He doesn't have a lot of resources. He doesn't have the NYPD behind him. He's on his own.
He's been traveling for ten years looking for Suzie. But he has also been making a living. He takes his race horses with him, and his crew, a groom, a hot-walker, and an exercise rider. He races, he wins, he loses, he has to keep his team together. He has to keep his horses healthy.
So the story is complicated. It takes a lot of research. I spent days at Hollywood Park, before it closed. The Park hosted an event, called Rail Birds, for race fans. You had to show up at 7:00 o'clock Sunday morning. Rise and shine, race fans!
The morning I went, some twenty fans and I were treated to talks by trainers and touts and a free breakfast. It was great. We walked across the tracks, both grass and dirt, as I recall, across the infield to the stables. Jockeys and hot walkers, grooms and exercise riders--all the people who lived in the world of thoroughbred racing--ate in a cafeteria. And we ate with them.
The food was great and cheap. They had pizole and menudo, tacos and burritos. Wonderful. We ate next to a table of jockeys, tough strong athletes who mostly weighed less than 130 pounds and made their living riding thousand-pound animals running full-tilt at 40 mph.
The research was fun. The horse racing world is rich and complex.
The point is this: How do you make this story exciting when Sonny is not a cop?
More later. Gotta go.
Thanks for reading.
#
I'm back. Still thinking about Suzie. What makes a cop story exciting is the built-in conflict and danger.
In "Maggie Collins," the main guys, Dupree and Maggie, are after a serial killer who picks up hookers on Times Square (1986) and forces them to tell him they love him. If he doesn't believe them, well, you know what happens. It isn't pretty.
But this is a different story. As they say. The question is, should it be a thriller? Or should it just be a story about a middle-aged man seeking the family he once lost?
Or is there a way to combine the two?
I have the characters, and I have the setting. Now I have to decide what kind of book it's going to be.
More later.
Stay tuned.
Thanks.
#
Back again. I think I've got it! Or it's got me.
I think I have figured out how to make this a mystery/thriller and at the same time explore Sonny's character and his relationship with Cody, who becomes a kind of surrogate daughter.
Whee! Wish me luck.
I will let you know as it goes along.
#
Jan. 11, 2019
Back again. More about Suzie Sunshine.
I may have to change the title.
I was in a writers' group one time, and after I read the opening of a story, one of the other writers said, "What's new and special about this story?"
I hadn't thought about that. But I think it's a good Q. We don't like to read the same old story, over and over. Unless it's from a writer we love.
In this story, about Suzie Sunshine, we have an older man, bereft and alone, who has lost the two people he loved most in his life. His wife had an affair, and that violated his sense of right and wrong. So he threw her out. Now he is trying to find out what happened to his daughter who ran away when she was 16, ten years ago.
If she is missing, the central question is, Where is she? And, Why is she there? Is she all right? So the Q is about geography and Suzie's backstory.
But if something happened to her, if she was murdered, suddenly the stakes are different. The question is, Who did it? And, Why? Where are they? Do they deserve to die for what they did?
It seems to me those stakes are more exciting, and the story becomes more powerful.
What is new to me is that I cannot recall a story like this.
More later.
#
I am trying to take my own advice, in "How to Avoid Getting 'Lost in the Woods'," posted here on 11/29/18.
I am trying to set up a plot-point to drive toward in each chapter.
In Chapter One, Sonny is trying to figure out what kind of people he is dealing with. Are they good people? Can he trust them? Are they dangerous? Are they criminals?
He watches Cody Chase with her BF Kenny and his brother Bob. Cody seems OK, but the two guys, not so much.
I always thought the detective in crime fiction is in the same position we are all in when we deal with new people.
We may move to a new town, or take a new job, or go to a new school. We need to figure out who is reliable and whom we can trust.
There is a certain amount of tension, or suspense, built into this situation. In fiction, it's the set-up. And it's called the set-up for a reason. It sets the reader up for the story to follow.
#
Jan. 16, 2019
I find that, a lot of times, the fiction I write has something to do with my own life.
The story 'Suzie Sunshine' is a kind of father-daughter love story. It's about a man who meets a young woman and in a way falls in love.
He doesn't want to have sex with her. He wants to protect her and nurture her. He wants her to have a good life.
So, when she gets involved with an abusive man, it is all he can do to keep from killing the abuser. I feel that way myself.
Recently, I met a young woman about the age of my grandkids. I liked her a lot and sort of fell in love.
So I know what that feels like.
There comes a time in life when you feel you can tell who the good people are, men and women, boys and girls.
And you want to protect them. That is what this book is about. I think. So far.
#
Jan. 18, 2019
I am starting over with this story and trying to establish the voice and the tone.
I am hoping the story itself will lead me where I need to go, or where it needs to go.
I know Sonny is looking for Suzie, his daughter. I wrote some notes in which he knows what happened to her. But now I am not so sure.
With all this talk about outlining and knowing where the story is going, I really don't know.
I can feel Sonny's feelings and live in his world. Maybe that is enough. Maybe I don't need to know everything yet.
#
Jan. 22, 2019
I am reluctant to charge forward into this story without knowing where I am going. I've done that before and gotten "lost in the woods," as I have written about here before.
So I made a list of alternatives:
1. Sonny finds Suzie and she is a hardened criminal. Was he responsible for how she turned out? Can he stop her? Will he? Or will he join her?
2. Suzie is dead, murdered. He looks for her killer. Will he find justice? Or revenge? Did she deserve it?
3. Suzie is alive when he finds her. Then she gets murdered. Who did it? Or whodunit? And why?
4. Suzie is happily married, with children, but wants nothing to do with him. Her whole family gets murdered. OMG!
5. He finds her and she is in an abusive relationship. He rescues her.
6. He finds a series of woman in abusive relationships to see if she can find Suzie and her abuser. He rescues them, one after the other. Does he kill their abusers? Should he?
I don't know.
What do you think?
So back to square one:
What is the story problem?
Possible story problems:
-- How do you find your daughter after ten years? How did she turn out? Is she still alive?
-- You finally find a trace of your daughter, and she has been murdered. Who did it?
I don't know. It has not gelled yet.
More later.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being on Goodreads.
# Jan. 22, 3:18 p.m.
I'm back. The story problem now is:
How do you find your long-lost daughter who has been missing for ten years?
Who cares? I'm not sure I do.
I like these characters, and I like the set-up:
Sonny, an old horse trainer, comes to L.A. looking for his daughter Suzie, who ran away ten years ago.
But what is the central dramatic question?
In other words, why should we care?
What are we going to experience that is exciting?
What are we going to learn that applies to our own lives?
Beats the poop outta me.
One of my old screenwriting teachers at UCLA, Frank MacAdams, used to say that you had to have a protagonist and an antagonist.
The protagonist had to want something worth fighting for, and the antagonist had to try to stop him or her.
Hmmm. OK. Maybe.
If so, who is the antagonist here?
More later.
#
Jan. 23, 2019
In an earlier draft, I had a bad guy who could be our antagonist: Don Castillo, a wealthy horse owner who lives on a big fancy ranch up in the mountains north of Mexico, D.F.
What if I recast him? Recreate his character? What if he is truly evil?
This is the hardest thing about writing thrillers: creating an interesting, charming, believable, and somewhat sympathetic villain.
Why sympathetic? Only the worst thrillers have villains that are one-dimensional.
The best villain in all modern thrillers, IMO, is still Hannibal Lecter. He is charming, erudite, well educated, an accomplished doctor, a connoisseur of fine wines and rather odd food.
His relationship with the protagonist, Clarice Starling, is interesting. They understand each other. At one point in "Silence of the Lambs," Lecter says he won't come after Clarice. "The world is as more interesting place with you in it," he says.
My guess is that Thomas Harris spent years developing Hannibal Lecter. He was not invented in a flash. At least I could not have done that on the fly.
So far, what worries me about Don Castillo is that he seems to be a cliché.
So how do I make him more rounded, more complex, and more interesting?
Hmmm. A topic for further study.
I will say the best villains believe they are doing the right thing. Or say they are.
And some people believe them.
More later.
#
Jan. 24, 2019, 12:12 a.m.
I'm back. Been thinking about Don Fulgencio Castillo. I think I am on the right track. Gonna make him larger than life, charismatic, charming, wealthy, successful, and apparently a really good guy.
Everyone admires him. On the surface, he is admirable. But underneath, he is not such a great guy.
What does he do? Raises and trains polo ponies. This is truly rarefied air in the horse world.
Polo is a blast to watch. I recommend it. Gonna try to see some polo matches myself this coming spring and summer.
What is the essence of evil? I think it is total selfishness, caring about no one but yourself, doing nothing for anyone else unless it is a manipulation.
Remind you of anyone in the news or in your life? We have all known people like this.
It always amazes me that they can be so successful.
More later.
#
Jan. 26, 2019
I have spent the last four days--an enormous amount of time, for me--thinking about this character, Don Fulgencio Castillo, and making notes.
He is based on rich people I have known, as well as people I have read about. He is part fictional, part factual, part fantasy. Partly, he is based on a man I heard about from a friend. She was an airline flight attendant who picked up a man on a flight to Mexico, D.F.
She lived with him on his ranch in the mountains north of Mexico City. Famous bullfighters and horsemen would come to visit. Things would happen.
I don't want to give away too much.
At times, I am more interested in him than I am in my main character, Sonny. Partly, that is because Fulgencio is new and because I have never spent so much time on this kind of character before, the heavy, the villain, the antagonist.
In earlier novels, I wanted to discover the character as I wrote, as things happened, as the plot unfolded. That is the way I wrote Maggie Collins. Now I wish I had spent more time on the bad guy and on the plot. I'm proud of the book, but still.... You know. I have a writerly obsession with perfection. True of every artist, I think.
Now, with Suzie Sunshine, I'm trying to figure out the sequence of events, aka the plot. An old friend of mine, a best-selling mystery writer, did what she called a running plot outline. She would plot the story, chapter by chapter, scene by scene, as she wrote it.
My mind doesn't work that way. I am dreaming up the characters and then setting them at play in this fictional world.
For me, that is fun.
You always hope it is fun for readers.
More later.
Back to my notes, back to dreaming up the character. What does he want? What drives him? What kinds of choices does he make? What is he willing to kill for? To die for?
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being on Goodreads.
#
Feb. 1, 2019
Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. Seems fitting. I am going over and over my ideas for this novel. My life feels like that movie, except I am not falling in love.
You are probably sick to death of hearing about Suzie Sunshine. Me, too. Sick to death. But I can't afford to give up.
I am wrestling with ideas about the story and about Don Fulgencio Castillo, who is supposed to be Sonny's nemesis.
In the last draft, Sonny goes to Mexico to find his daughter Suzie. I had not been in Mexico in some years and felt unsure about setting the novel there. But I forged ahead. Good idea, I think now. (You can do a lot of research online these days. And, since this is fiction, you can just make up stuff.)
In my writers' group, years ago, one of the other writers, David, said, "I hope he doesn't go all the way to Mexico and find her dead."
Oops. That is just what I had planned.
In that draft, the story seemed to meander until it ran out of energy, like a desert creek that narrows to a trickle and then finally dries up in the sand.
What do I like so far? Sonny and Cody.
Do I care about Suzie? Of course, I have to care about her, because she is the MacGuffin, the whole point. Here is a link to explain the word MacGuffin:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...
My problem with the whole novel, up to this point, including 20 drafts and 13 pages and 3,629 words of notes, is that there is not enough suspense.
The search drives the story, but there must be barriers, difficulties, and dangers to make the story compelling, to give the story life.
In the beginning, nobody is in danger. Do I have to have danger to get the hairs to stand up on the back of my neck?
Yes.
How do you feel about that?
I went back and looked at one of the great-granddaddies of modern thrillers: "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," or, as I call it, The Girl with her Tattoo Draggin'.
Even though the writing is mostly exposition, which is dull to slog through, the plot is relentless. A small mystery leads to a bigger mystery and leads the two main characters into danger.
So how do I do that, with this story?
I have all kinds of ideas. Maybe Castillo knows Sonny is coming and sets a trap.
Maybe Suzie is held captive there. Or maybe it is more interesting if she can leave but chooses not to. Maybe she has a vital reason.
Dum-dee-dum-dum.
Trying to build suspense.
Will Sonny find Suzie? Will he rescue her?
I have no idea.
More later. Wish me luck. I will need it.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being on Goodreads.
#
Feb. 6, 2019
I have been struggling to save my previous writing in this novel. But it's hard to do that and write something new that works better.
I asked a friend of mine who is also a professional writer. He says if a story has serious problems, he starts a new draft and doesn't even look at the old ones. If he reads an earlier version, like me he falls in love with his own writing and gets trapped in endless revisions that never work.
It's hard to mix the new with the old.
Also, I have a friend who works in Hollywood doing all kinds of special effects and other work, including carpentry, explosions, electricity, and special effects.
He rigs cars to blow up and catch fire. He rigs buildings to explode. He rigs doors to blow open by violent explosion.
He told me one time that it is easier to build a new house and wreck it than it is to build a wrecked house, although the movie will only show the wrecked house.
The same thing is true writing novels. It is easier to write a new draft, starting from scratch, than it is to fix one that is structurally flawed.
So I am starting over, with two novels, Suzie Sunshine and "The Prince of Newport," which is a story for another time.
Thanks for reading and thanks for being on Goodreads.
RA
December 30, 2018
END OF THE WORLD
Donald Trump's ignorant environmental policies are so destructive that, according to the NY Times, they are leading toward the destruction of all life on the planet Earth:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/op...
Do you worry about that, every day, all day? I sure as hell do.
I spend hours on Facebook and Twitter, ranting against Trump and communicating with both people who agree with me and people who don't.
I do the same thing on Quora.
Here are some links:
https://www.quora.com/Many-say-journa...
https://www.facebook.com/roger.angle
https://twitter.com/RogerAngle
I don't know if other writers have this problem. I used to spend all day writing, years ago. Now, if I did that, I feel like I'd be fiddling while Rome burns.
##
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/op...
Do you worry about that, every day, all day? I sure as hell do.
I spend hours on Facebook and Twitter, ranting against Trump and communicating with both people who agree with me and people who don't.
I do the same thing on Quora.
Here are some links:
https://www.quora.com/Many-say-journa...
https://www.facebook.com/roger.angle
https://twitter.com/RogerAngle
I don't know if other writers have this problem. I used to spend all day writing, years ago. Now, if I did that, I feel like I'd be fiddling while Rome burns.
##
December 20, 2018
GOOD PEOPLE IN DANGER
My first published novel, "The Disappearance of Maggie Collins," came out on Oct. 31. Since then, I have been working on four new projects: two short stories and two novels.
When I pick up Maggie Collins, I like the writing, but it isn't a book I want to write again, or the type of book I want to do again. My new projects are more character oriented, more mainstream, even perhaps more literary.
When I conceived Maggie Collins, I was trying to write what publishers call "a big-launch book," something they could get behind, pay a big advance for, spend advertising dollars on, and hope to sell to the movies and make a ton of do-re-mi off of.
I was trying to have it both ways, both satisfy my own literary desires--write a meaningful book with some insight into human nature--and appeal to a wide audience.
I'm pretty happy with the book itself. Parts make me really happy.
But the wider audience thing, so far, hasn't happened. People praise the writing, but it has not sold like hotcakes. Or even warm cakes. Other writers have the same experience.
I still like to write about good people in danger, who have to go up against bad people who want to do them harm.
I can't control the marketplace. All I can do is write the stuff the best I can and try to get it into the right hands. Mostly, now, I write because it lights me up.
I hope it lights you up, too.
RA
When I pick up Maggie Collins, I like the writing, but it isn't a book I want to write again, or the type of book I want to do again. My new projects are more character oriented, more mainstream, even perhaps more literary.
When I conceived Maggie Collins, I was trying to write what publishers call "a big-launch book," something they could get behind, pay a big advance for, spend advertising dollars on, and hope to sell to the movies and make a ton of do-re-mi off of.
I was trying to have it both ways, both satisfy my own literary desires--write a meaningful book with some insight into human nature--and appeal to a wide audience.
I'm pretty happy with the book itself. Parts make me really happy.
But the wider audience thing, so far, hasn't happened. People praise the writing, but it has not sold like hotcakes. Or even warm cakes. Other writers have the same experience.
I still like to write about good people in danger, who have to go up against bad people who want to do them harm.
I can't control the marketplace. All I can do is write the stuff the best I can and try to get it into the right hands. Mostly, now, I write because it lights me up.
I hope it lights you up, too.
RA
