Moving towards drama

I've been absent from the blog for some weeks and have picked up my George V. Higgins' "On Writing" again as we move from 'Creative Non-fiction' into 'Drama'. It's appropriate.
I said that Higgins is famous - and often criticized – for his novels being at least 95% dialogue. Higgins is a great fan of John O’Hara, probably best known for “From the Terrace” (not least because it was made into a successful movie starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward), but whose best novel is probably “Appointment in Samarra”. But O’Hara is most famous as a writer of short story fiction and, of course, his mastery of dialogue. I have not been interested in short stories (until now, perhaps), but Higgins reprints one of O’Hara’s completely in “On Writing”. The story is entitled “Appearances” and you can read a 1960 review of it and other O’Hara short stories at: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1963/3/21/how-important-is-ohara-pjohn-ohara/?print=1 According to Higgins it’s a little over 3,300 words and I would guess it’s probably 98% dialogue.
Higgins then proceeds to analyze how O’Hara tells the story so economically through dialogue in what he – Higgins - calls “the density of his material”. Having just read the story, Higgins’ analysis shows me how much of a picture of the characters and their surroundings and circumstances I have created from the dialogue alone. Higgins points out that “Reading is not a spectator sport, not when the writing is done by a John O’Hara; it is a participatory event”.
With regard to the ‘technique’ of writing dialogue, Higgins tells a true story of O’Hara. After submitting a short story, O’Hara was called in by his editor and questioned about his quote of a young well-educated society girl: “Robert didn’t come with she and I.” The editor, too, was college educated and insisted the college-educated character would have said “… with her and me.” O’Hara claimed that fashionable schools at that time so labored the grammatical rule in such phrases as “Josephine is prettier than I.” to the extent of developing an aversion to the objective pronouns, “her” and “me”; O’Hara got his way and the editor contacted him weeks later to confess that all the girls of that age and class she had met delivered the phrase exactly as O’Hara had written it. Though the simple error seems like a small point, O’Hara claimed, “… that it revealed more about the girl than a hundred words of descriptive matter.”
I guess my labored point is that the step between prose and drama can be almost non-existent.

Stephen King on Writing

I know I haven't been able to write for a while, but I have been able to read. Stephen King, for the first good portion of his book, seems to be telling more about his life and how he became a writer than actually on writing. (Something I actually like) One of the most intresting stories I read so far was about one of his first attempts at publication.

It was in the 1950s and he'd only just started watching T.V. he was very fond of a magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland who was edited by someone named Forrest J. Ackerman who later wrote his own Magazine called Spacemen he sent his story (That of which he forgot the title) to this magazine and was rejected, but Forry kept it all those years, and twenty years later when King was signing autographs in a bookstore Forry came up with the single-spaced story and asked him to sign it for him.

The first story he actually did have published was in a horror Fanzine that was made by Mike Garret, he gave it the title of In a Half-World of Terrors but King still likes his original title I was a Teen-Age Grave-Robber

Instructors have always tried to sell me the old clap trap, "Write what you know." I've never believe this preposterous opine. And Janet Evanovich has redeemed my theory. She says, "If I wrote about what I knew best, my books would be about someone sitting in a room with a parrot squawking in the corner - typing away for hours on a computer. Boring!"

She says, however, that you have to research. To portray Stephanie Plum, her main character correctly, she studied bondsman and their agencies. She got to know cops, rode with them, even carried a loaded gun in her waistband to see how that would feel. Then she tailored the facts she learned to her characters.

I'm looking forward to character development - though instead of a real, cold steely gun, I will use a water pistol with cool water.

Annie Dillard

My blog is about Anne Dillard and first and foremost, I would like to give you a little background about this author. Anne was born of affluent parents in Connecticut who encouraged her choice in writing profesionally. She was a rebel in high school and was influenced at that point by the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She went to college near Roanoke, Virginia called Hollins College and married her writing teacher. She graduated with a Master's degree in English and wrote a forty page thesis on Thoreau's "Waldon", and so Anne's writing reflected her love for nature. This love combined with her admiration for Thoreau's style of writing is reflected greatly in her own work as well.

On writing, Anne says "you make the path boldly, and follow it fearfully", and also quotes Jack London by saying, "every writer needs a technique, experience, and philosophical position." In describing some of the pitfalls one can encounter when writing anything of substance, what I am getting from her reading the most is that everyone has to have a focal point and that we all have things that sidetrack us from our goal, but most importantly, rewriting and changing the direction of your theme can and will happen numerous times before completion of any serious body of work and that it is part of the process.

Janet Evanovich on character development

On character development, Evanovich says, ". . .there has to be honesty." So consistency in character is a must to make the character believable. Three points Evanovich follows are: 1) The main character must want something. 2) Someone or something (nature, money, distance) must stand in the way of his getting what he wants and 3) The choices that a character makes in his efforts to overcome obstacles and ultimately get what he wants define a character.

I have found these four points to be so true to make interesting and consistent characters. I love the fact that she say 'there has to be honesty.' This to me means consistency. Would your character act or react this or that way. Will the reader believe what the character is say, feeling and/or doing in a situation. I also love that she points out there has to be a dilemma to make, not just the character interesting, but the story line interesting.

"On Writing"

In my continued reading of Stephen King's, "On Writing," there is still more discussion of his life before his fame and success. He talked of how his success was a long time coming and then finally getting the big break he was looking for. That big break was when the paperback rights to his story, "Carrie," were brought for $400,000. But with this success as in many cases there also is a downfall. Stephen spoke of his alcohol problem and how it got a hold on him and he lost his love for the craft. That was a shock to me because I didn't think this would happen to him but it did. Along with the alcohol came the drug use. With the help and support of family and friends he managed to shake off the drug and alcohol problem and began getting his feel back for writing.

I finally made it to the part of the book where he started talking about writing. King told of the powers that come with writing and what is needed. He feels the best environment required for writing is a isolated place, away from noise and enough room for you to gather your thoughts and proceed to write. What I also gathered was that there is the need to try and see objects in a different light of what they really are, which is being imaginative. Another key point he made was it's okay to be scared, nervous, or overly anxious to write but the bottom line is that you must love what you do. The statement that really stuck with me was, "If you can't or won't take writing seriously, it's time for you to close the book and do something else!" Next he began to talk about the necessary toolbox that you need to carry when writing. This toolbox he spoke of consisted of four levels or maybe six. Some of these levels were grammer, vocabulary, and paragraph organization. There were many examples of sentences that to him, are not a good way to go in writing. I see this as very informative and funny at the same time.

characters

Anne says in "Bird By Bird" that her mind spends much of the time having conversations with people who aren't there. She also says when developing a character, you really need to get to know each individual. Find out how they stand, what they carry in their pockets, what happens to their face and their posture when they're thinking, or sad, or angry. Why should we care about them anyway, what would be the first thing they stopped doing if they found out they had six months to live? She says you are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you and you are going to hate some of you characters for the same reason, but no matter what you are probably going to have to let bad things happen to some of the characters that you love or you won't have much of a story. Bad things happen to characters because they are human and do not behave perfectly all the time, and there are consiquence to all of our actions. What she says about developing a character is improtant. I never thought of looking at every character that deeply, but i know now that once you develop the charaters your story will come.