Starve Better
Jul. 31st, 2012 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushner So many wonderful people were at Readercon - ones I would gladly have spent all day with - or at least had a meal or even a drink with - I never even got to do more than wave at across the lobby! Which is not to say I didn't have a splendid time with the ones I did spend time with; I did, and I'd been hoping/planning to write up a full con report before it all floated away on a sea of "Now..." Maybe I still will. It's such a high for me every year, but I never write it down, and then all I remember is the general sense of elation, and am surprised all over again at the specifics!
Where was I? Oh, yeah: So I ran into Nick Mamatas just as he was leaving to catch a taxi to the airport. And he kindly gave me his new book, STARVE BETTER: SURVIVING THE ENDLESS HORROR OF THE WRITING LIFE (Apex Publications).
I was particularly taken with this, from his section on Writing Dialogue:
People in bad short stories [I would add, in novels as well! - ek] always say what they mean.
In real life . . . people only rarely say what they mean.
. . . . Character dialogue can serve to do more than just express in a straightforward manner what your characters are thinking and doing. Dialogue is full of mysteries . . . secrets . . . and lies.
So true.
Delia & I have been talking/thinking a lot about how most young writers now watch a lot of TV and movies, which are great entertainment, but not great writing. As teachers (she just got back from a week at Clarion), we really have to caution our students against "TV kabuki"-style characterization: where everything is coded for instant recognition. The Mamatas book also has a great bit about why people (other than us!) are able to read the opening of The Da Vinci Code without falling on the floor laughing: It's because it's written as if you're a film camera, not a reader. "These sentences," writes Mamatas, "are the sort of thing that give genre fiction a bad rap amongst people who actually pay attention to words. . . . But as bestsellers are books bought by non-readers, that snippet 'works' for its audience because the story is told in a manner with which they are familiar--the mode of modern Hollywood films."
Thanks for clearing that up, Nick! I feel better, now. Sorta.
Where was I? Oh, yeah: So I ran into Nick Mamatas just as he was leaving to catch a taxi to the airport. And he kindly gave me his new book, STARVE BETTER: SURVIVING THE ENDLESS HORROR OF THE WRITING LIFE (Apex Publications).
I was particularly taken with this, from his section on Writing Dialogue:
People in bad short stories [I would add, in novels as well! - ek] always say what they mean.
In real life . . . people only rarely say what they mean.
. . . . Character dialogue can serve to do more than just express in a straightforward manner what your characters are thinking and doing. Dialogue is full of mysteries . . . secrets . . . and lies.
So true.
Delia & I have been talking/thinking a lot about how most young writers now watch a lot of TV and movies, which are great entertainment, but not great writing. As teachers (she just got back from a week at Clarion), we really have to caution our students against "TV kabuki"-style characterization: where everything is coded for instant recognition. The Mamatas book also has a great bit about why people (other than us!) are able to read the opening of The Da Vinci Code without falling on the floor laughing: It's because it's written as if you're a film camera, not a reader. "These sentences," writes Mamatas, "are the sort of thing that give genre fiction a bad rap amongst people who actually pay attention to words. . . . But as bestsellers are books bought by non-readers, that snippet 'works' for its audience because the story is told in a manner with which they are familiar--the mode of modern Hollywood films."
Thanks for clearing that up, Nick! I feel better, now. Sorta.