Too Much Information

I had to laugh/gag when I read the piece that follows in David Morrell's Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing.

"Stephen King once told me about his vasectomy. The surgical procedure occurred in the morning. His physician advised him to go easy for the rest of the day. Instead, Steve went to work as soon as he got home. Only when he looked down and realized that he was sitting in a pool of blood and that his testicles were swollen did he finally quit."

Morrell was talking about the commitment to writing that successful authors have. I fear I'm not quite that committed. I draw the line at bleeding. Although, when my left shoulder was broken and my arm in a sling I did manage to type with that hand by resting it on the keyboard.

In other news, last night I saw fireflies in the woods behind my house. Took me back to childhood's summer evenings in Arkansas when we'd catch them by the dozens and keep them in a jar for their light.

The Pleasure of Holding a Book

As soon as I knew that Swords of Talera was on Amazon, Lana and I ordered a copy to see how the process would work. We got it late Wednesday evening, which seemed very fast to me, especially since other folks have told me that theirs is not going to be delivered until after mid-month. I imagine, though, that they had some printed and the first orders went out from those.

I was as excited as a kid to actually hold the book in my hand, and it looks very nice up close. The cover is great and the print and typesetting is dark and readable. The book is well put together and I’m very happy for that. Right now I have one signing set in Covington for July 31st, but I’ll be posting more on this as it gets closer. This was set up for me by the incomparable Lana Jackman, who is much better than the incomparable Dejah Thoris that John Carter fell in love with on Barsoom. I’ll probably have another signing in Arkansas when I go home to visit my family this summer.

Here’s a little bit of information from David Morrell’s writing book that I thought was interesting. He points out that Hemingway used more adjectives and adverbs than people often think but that he used them differently. Here’s the first sentence of A Farewell to Arms.

“In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels.”

We’ve got five adjectives and an adverb here, but the adjectives seem almost more like nouns because they stand alone, “dry and white in the sun” rather than directly modifying the nouns they are directed at, “pebbles and boulders.” If we rewrote it in a more standard fashion we’d have something like:

In the river bed there were dry, white pebbles and boulders, and the clear, blue water moved swiftly in the channel.

I thought this was an interesting observation, and one that had not really occurred to me. Worth considering.

Morrell Again

Here's David Morrell again, on showing and telling. "In practice, a certain amount of telling is inevitable. Otherwise, a story might never be completed. But it's useful to know which method you're using and to steer from telling to showing as soon as possible in order to provide the immediacy that is more likely to capture a reader's attention."

In this case, I agree absolutely. There are times when you have to "tell." There are times when "telling" gets you quickly through certain details that the reader needs to know in order to get to the exciting stuff that follows. That's the stuff you "show." Knowing when to show and when to tell seems to be the hard part.

David Morrell Talks About Hollywood

One chapter of Morrell's writing book is on his experiences in Hollywood. He mentions a certain producer (not by name) who invited him to sit in on his office day to see what it was like. It consisted mostly of not taking people's calls, then calling someone else to see if they knew what the caller may have wanted.

Apparently in Hollywood, the studio executives almost never actually read a book. They read the "coverage," which is a 1 to 2 page summary of the book done by someone other than the writer. Morrell told of a studio exec who put his arm around Pat Conroy one time and told him what a great writer he was. "The coverage on your book moved me to tears," the Exec said.

Morrell's primary advice? Be careful as a newbie writer dealing with Hollywood or they will eat you alive.

Forgetfulness and Confusion

Yesterday, as part of my work on the David Morrell article, I did a detail scan on First Blood and a few others of Morrell's books that I read years ago. First Blood is, of course, the book in which Rambo first appeared. I enjoyed that book when I read it back in the late 70s, but it's amazing, although not unexpected, how many details that I'd forgotten. Part of the source of my forgetfulnes of the book is, naturally, the movie made from the book starring Sylvester Stallone. Here are some things I'd forgotten.

1. Rambo's first name is never given in the book. It is in the movie that we get "John. J."

2. Rambo is taken out of town "twice" by the sheriff and returns a third time before all the crap hits the fan, thus making him somewhat less sympathetic.

3. Rambo does not escape from the police station with a knife in the book.

4. Rambo was raised Catholic.

5. Rambo's mother died of cancer when he was young, and his father was an abusive alcoholic. Rambo shot his father at one time with a bow and arrow.

6. Rambo worked in a garage before joining the military.

7. Rambo gets clothes from some moonshiners in the book.

8. Rambo kills a lot more people in the book.

Interesting how the memory works. Or, fails to work.

David Morrell, an Update on Work

Well, I'm deep into the reading for my David Morrell article. I've read quite a bit of his stuff before but have missed some of his newer stuff. I just finished Creepers, and his short story collection Black Evening. I also read his 1983 children's book, The Hundred-Year Christmas, and I'm about a third of the way through his thriller, The Covenant of the Flame. Creepers was a very fast read, about the new breed of urban explorers, but I enjoyed his short stories most. He included helpful biographical information throughout the collection and that is really beneficial. Since he and I are both members of HWA, I emailed him in hopes of being able to ask him some questions. So far no response, but it's only been a few days.

Nothing profound to add today, just an update on work.

So That's How It's Done?

David Morrell has a story called "The Typewriter," about an egotistical but untalented writer who buys a "magic" typewriter. No matter what drivel the writer tries to type, the typewriter turns it into commercial bestselling drivel, and the writer gets rich. (Until things go wrong, of course.)

Stephen King later used a somewhat similar idea for his "Word Processor of the Gods," and even moreso in Tommyknockers." But Joe Lansdale reported in "Bestsellers Guaranteed" that you don't need magic to make you a bestseller. You just need the "organization." This group will guarantee their clients to make the bestseller list by controlling all the elements of production, advertising, and distribution, and all the writer has to do is a little favor for them. Talent is not required.

The head of the organization in "Bestsellers Guaranteed" admits that he knows nothing about books. But then, he's not selling books, he's "selling success."

Preposterous. Insane. Absolute nonsense. This couldn't possibly be how it works in the real world of publishing.

Indeed?

A Piece of Dialogue

I read a pretty good piece on dialogue by David Morrell yesterday. It had much of the usual good advice. 1) limit the dialogue tags where possible. Much of the time you won’t need them, especially if you’ve got two people going back and forth. 2) if you do use tags make almost all of them “said” or “asked.” Hissing and spitting and growling are not often of much use. 3) generally avoid using adverbs as modifiers for dialogue tags, such as “he said bitterly.”

He also said something I hadn’t thought of before. He mentioned how some people like to read their dialogue aloud to see if it sounds natural, and I’ve been known to do that myself. But he actually said this is a bad idea. The reason? When you read dialogue out loud you supply the tone and inflection that you know should be there but which the reader will not see on the page. He said: “In fiction, dialogue is an act of silent communication. You can’t rely on a reader to imagine that your characters speak with the inflection you intend. Rather, you have to invent visual clues that will force the reader to imagine the tone you require.” That’s a very good point, and one that had not occurred to me.

Finally, Morrell made one point that seemed funny to me. He generally seems to dislike exclamation marks, and I agree. I try not to use them very often. The point he made, though, is that you don’t need an exclamation point when the dialogue already contains intensity, such as when a character curses. Now, Morrell has taught literature and would seem to know his stuff, but a writer friend of mine who is an English professor always told me that you should definitely put an exclamation point after any dialogue in which a character curses. His point was that the curse essentially demands an exclamation point. So who is right? I know I’m confused. Maybe you folks have an opinion?