By Bill Furlow
In a recent post, we mentioned that author John Irving said it often takes him seven months to a year to develop the first sentence of a novel.
I don't know how long it took my friend and former boss Dale Fetherling to come up with the first paragraph of his 1973 biography of "Mother Jones," but it's a dilly. Dale died last month at the far-too-young age of 69. He had spent the first two-thirds of his career as a journalist, principally as the editor of the now-departed San Diego County Edition of the Los Angeles Times, where he hired me as city editor in 1980. Then he became a successful author and collaborator on about 20 books for other people.
Read this opening to Mother Jones: Miners' Angel for inspiration in how to begin a book.
The fire, at times a 100-foot-high wall of flame, hurtled down streets, burst through buildings, and engulfed whole blocks. It bore down with heat and smoke and ash on the refugees and sightseers who jammed the city’s streets and bridges. To many of those who fled, the scene may have seemed like the preacher’s most spirited description of Judgment Day. Block after block was aflame. Wagons, carts, wheelbarrows, and buggies piled high with personal effects became stalled in a sea of pedestrians rained upon by blazing embers. Desperate owners and would-be looters tossed valuables from upper-story windows. Horses, dogs, and children ran through the streets in search for their masters. Bearers of makeshift stretchers jostled with the crowd in an attempt to move the sick and the injured. Toppling walls, the crackle of flames, and a strong wind competed with the screams of the frantic and the whistling of tugboats pushing sailing ships to safety. It was 1871. Chicago – ‘’the Gem of the Prairie’’ – was being destroyed by the then-most-destructive fire in American history.
Showing posts with label book editing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book editing. Show all posts
Friday, February 4, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
No One Said This Is Easy
By Bill Furlow
Let’s be honest: The ratio of just plain awful self-published books to decent ones must be at least 100:1. Okay, if you eliminate erotica from the equation, a little balance is restored, but if you change “decent” to “excellent,” it goes way out of whack again.
So what separates the inexperienced authors who can produce reasonably good books the first or second time out from the legion of those who cannot? Talent is part of it, of course, but my guess is it’s also about hard work and the desire to make something great rather than just get it done and see it in print.
A blogger posed a question about how long it takes to write a page. Nearly every author responded in a range from 15 to 30 minutes. Wow! Depending on the quality of the writing, I often can’t edit a page that fast.
Elizabeth George, who’s published 13 best-selling novels and a book about writing, says she writes five pages a day. John Updike said he’d write three. Stephen King writes a hare-like ten pages a day, but note that he does it every day, including holidays
John Irving said it takes him from seven months to a year to reach the point of writing a novel’s opening sentence. Barbara Kingsolver said, “I may rewrite the first paragraph of a novel fifty times before I’m satisfied.” Richard Price writes his novels by hand because it’s more labor intensive and forces him to think through each sentence very carefully.
If you think some or all of these folks write better than you do, you might consider spending a little more time pruning, polishing and exploring alternate ways to maximize the impact of each sentence and paragraph. As John Irving said, “Revision is more than half of my work as a writer.”
Here are a couple of almost-randomly-selected paragraphs from Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna and Richard Price’s Lush Life:
“The mother of Jesus, similarly sloe-eyed, bade us sit on a log while she dipped beans from a cauldron that must bubble eternally on the fire outside her hut. Her name: Maria, naturally. Her lath house, like every one in the village, had a tall, peaked roof of thatch, open at each gable end for ventilation. Inside the open doorway, a knot of motionless brown limbs, presumably sleeping children, weighted a hammock into a deep V shape, the reverse of the roofline…” BK
“Restless, agitated, trying not to think about the thing that didn’t happen, Matty found himself still in the empty office an hour after she left…,perusing the day’s mayhem, sorting them into kickbacks to patrol and squad-worthy; felonies obviously but domestics, too, always potential starter-kits for something more serious…” RP
If you can churn out writing like this in 15 or 30 minutes a page, it’s time to quit your day job and turn pro. If not, though…
Let’s be honest: The ratio of just plain awful self-published books to decent ones must be at least 100:1. Okay, if you eliminate erotica from the equation, a little balance is restored, but if you change “decent” to “excellent,” it goes way out of whack again.
So what separates the inexperienced authors who can produce reasonably good books the first or second time out from the legion of those who cannot? Talent is part of it, of course, but my guess is it’s also about hard work and the desire to make something great rather than just get it done and see it in print.
A blogger posed a question about how long it takes to write a page. Nearly every author responded in a range from 15 to 30 minutes. Wow! Depending on the quality of the writing, I often can’t edit a page that fast.
Elizabeth George, who’s published 13 best-selling novels and a book about writing, says she writes five pages a day. John Updike said he’d write three. Stephen King writes a hare-like ten pages a day, but note that he does it every day, including holidays
John Irving said it takes him from seven months to a year to reach the point of writing a novel’s opening sentence. Barbara Kingsolver said, “I may rewrite the first paragraph of a novel fifty times before I’m satisfied.” Richard Price writes his novels by hand because it’s more labor intensive and forces him to think through each sentence very carefully.
If you think some or all of these folks write better than you do, you might consider spending a little more time pruning, polishing and exploring alternate ways to maximize the impact of each sentence and paragraph. As John Irving said, “Revision is more than half of my work as a writer.”
Here are a couple of almost-randomly-selected paragraphs from Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna and Richard Price’s Lush Life:
“The mother of Jesus, similarly sloe-eyed, bade us sit on a log while she dipped beans from a cauldron that must bubble eternally on the fire outside her hut. Her name: Maria, naturally. Her lath house, like every one in the village, had a tall, peaked roof of thatch, open at each gable end for ventilation. Inside the open doorway, a knot of motionless brown limbs, presumably sleeping children, weighted a hammock into a deep V shape, the reverse of the roofline…” BK
“Restless, agitated, trying not to think about the thing that didn’t happen, Matty found himself still in the empty office an hour after she left…,perusing the day’s mayhem, sorting them into kickbacks to patrol and squad-worthy; felonies obviously but domestics, too, always potential starter-kits for something more serious…” RP
If you can churn out writing like this in 15 or 30 minutes a page, it’s time to quit your day job and turn pro. If not, though…
Monday, December 13, 2010
Don't Go THERE
By Bill Furlow
Of the many variables that help determine which books get selected by agents, publishers or readers and which sell only a few copies online, one of the most important is whether a book reads like a professionally crafted work. An agent or publisher can flip the pages reading random paragraphs and quickly spot writing that doesn’t make the grade.
One sign that a work was written by a hopeful amateur rather than a skilled professional is the repeated use of the word “there” to begin sentences. Sentences that begin “There is/there are” usually indicate that the writer either is too lackadaisical to search for a more interesting way to make a statement or doesn’t recognize the weakness in his/her own writing.
We’re not talking about “There he goes,” where “there” refers to an actual place. Rather this is about what I call the “lazy there,” the practice of using the word to begin a very boring sentence. Think high school term paper.
I thought about this when reading an article on how to improve the chances of a blog getting found and read. The paragraph began, “There are many millions of blogs that currently exist on the Web.” What an awful sentence on a topic that’s really important to anyone with a blog. Better would be, “Many millions of blogs exist on the Web today.” Or, “The Web today hosts many millions of blogs.”
Usually “there” sentences can easily be rewritten to make them more compelling. Here are a few examples quickly pulled from books found on smashwords.com.
“There was no music on as she preferred the quiet of her thoughts when maneuvering through traffic.”
She preferred the quiet of her thoughts when maneuvering through traffic, so played no music.
“There was a finch at the window and you had never seen one before.”
A finch sat on the windowsill, and you had never seen one before.
“There is a nude beach less than a hundred miles from where I live. I went there once in a while to get an all-over tan…”
Once in awhile I drove to a nude beach less than a hundred miles from home to get an all-over tan.
“There is a movie where the lead character says: ‘Every once in a while you've got to get a little bloody.’"
She remembered a movie character who says: “Every once in awhile, you’ve got to get a little bloody.”
Beginning sentences with “lazy theres” may not be a mortal sin, but it’s at least venal. If you want your book – or any other writing project – to be read by those who matter to you, read back over the work and find ways to eliminate them wherever possible.
Of the many variables that help determine which books get selected by agents, publishers or readers and which sell only a few copies online, one of the most important is whether a book reads like a professionally crafted work. An agent or publisher can flip the pages reading random paragraphs and quickly spot writing that doesn’t make the grade.
One sign that a work was written by a hopeful amateur rather than a skilled professional is the repeated use of the word “there” to begin sentences. Sentences that begin “There is/there are” usually indicate that the writer either is too lackadaisical to search for a more interesting way to make a statement or doesn’t recognize the weakness in his/her own writing.
We’re not talking about “There he goes,” where “there” refers to an actual place. Rather this is about what I call the “lazy there,” the practice of using the word to begin a very boring sentence. Think high school term paper.
I thought about this when reading an article on how to improve the chances of a blog getting found and read. The paragraph began, “There are many millions of blogs that currently exist on the Web.” What an awful sentence on a topic that’s really important to anyone with a blog. Better would be, “Many millions of blogs exist on the Web today.” Or, “The Web today hosts many millions of blogs.”
Usually “there” sentences can easily be rewritten to make them more compelling. Here are a few examples quickly pulled from books found on smashwords.com.
“There was no music on as she preferred the quiet of her thoughts when maneuvering through traffic.”
She preferred the quiet of her thoughts when maneuvering through traffic, so played no music.
“There was a finch at the window and you had never seen one before.”
A finch sat on the windowsill, and you had never seen one before.
“There is a nude beach less than a hundred miles from where I live. I went there once in a while to get an all-over tan…”
Once in awhile I drove to a nude beach less than a hundred miles from home to get an all-over tan.
“There is a movie where the lead character says: ‘Every once in a while you've got to get a little bloody.’"
She remembered a movie character who says: “Every once in awhile, you’ve got to get a little bloody.”
Beginning sentences with “lazy theres” may not be a mortal sin, but it’s at least venal. If you want your book – or any other writing project – to be read by those who matter to you, read back over the work and find ways to eliminate them wherever possible.
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