How Fiction Works....Part 2

A novel should ask the right questions. It does not necessarily have to give the answers.....

First Person: an unreliable narrator who knows less about himself than the reader eventually does. The novel teaches us how to read its narrator.

Dramatic Irony: to see through a characters eyes while being encouraged to see more than the character can see.

Fictional Narration: Do the words these characters use seem the words they might use or do they sound more like the authors?

How Fiction Works....

Just read How Fiction Works by James Wood (Random House 2008) which is a bit literary for a popular crime writer like myself but the final paragraph leaves all writers with something to ponder; ....the writer has to act as if the available novelistic methods are continually about to turn into mere convention and so has to try to outwit that inevitable ageing. The true writer, that free servant of life, is one who must always be acting as if life were a category beyond anything the novel had yet grasped; as if life itself were always on the verge of becoming conventional.

42 Chapters...

No, not me, not just yet anyway......little Thom, Big 'singer' Jim's brother announced last week he has just about finished his book. I saw him last night and asked him for a word count but all he would give me was "42 chapters!"

Please excuse me.......there is a score I need to settle!!
Now where did I put that 65 ways to kill your victim book......

65 ways to kill your victim.....

Have been diverted temporarily off course by a couple of non-fiction, writing books this week - as well as my night-time fiction reading. First book is The Crime Writers Handbook by Douglas Wynn (Allison & Busby 1997) which explains 65 ways to kill your victim.....in print. Unfortunately this is a borrowed book which Bryan would like to see again and so its time to make my research notes from it before returning it. Finding some juicy information.....

A single blow to the head will very rarely kill a person. It probably won’t even render them unconscious. A rain of blows, again to the head, is usually necessary and even then it probably won’t keep them quiet.

Death is more rapid in fresh than salt water because fresh water more readily enters the blood stream, upsetting the sodium/potassium balance, which leads to rapid and irregular beating of the heart (ventricular fibrillation) which, in turn, hastens death. Salt water has a higher osmotic pressure and does not diffuse into the blood stream so easily.

I have tried to get my own copy but to no avail. I even sent an email to the publishers but no reply...... Sweet Dreams

Show Don't Tell - A Reminder....

The reading of fiction is the experience of a dream working at the subconscious level. John Gardner in The Art of Fiction says; vivid detail is the life blood of fiction…the reader is regularly presented with proofs – in the form of closely observed details…it’s physical detail that pulls us into a story, makes us believe. When a writer is ‘showing’ he is suggesting the sensuous detail that draws the reader into the fictive dream. ‘Telling’ pushes the reader out of the fictive dream, because it requires the reader to make a conscious analysis of what’s being told, which brings the reader into a waking state. It forces the reader to think, not feel.

Good prose uses sensuous details. These are the details that appeal to the 5 physical senses – sight, sound, hearing, taste and touch – and the sixth sense the psychic sense. Much bad prose appeals only to the sense of sight. Need to appeal to more of the senses:
He walked into the musty room. An old, metal desk stood forlornly under the window, the wind whistling through the crack in the glass. He touched the surface of the desk, wiping a swath of soft grime from the hard surface. A picture of George Washington hung on the wall at an odd angle, making old George look somewhat odd, intoxicated perhaps.

The Great Rock N Roll Novel....

Wouldn't it be nice to write the great Rock N Roll novel? I had a brief fleeting idea about an Agatha Christie style novel and started to think about basing it around a band (Rock n Roll or not!). Searching on the net, I came across an article by Graeme Thomson; Where is the novel that can capture the essence of rock'n'roll? which gave me a few novels to start with http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/07/looking_for_a_rocknroll_hero.html

I was surprised to find one of them already on my shelf - Espedair Street by Iain Banks which I think an old boyfriend bought me about 20 years ago and I had never read (shameful I know!). Google books sums it up like this; Daniel Weir used to be a famous rock star. He's made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he'll regret forever. Daniel Weir has gone from rags to riches and back, and managed to hold onto them both, though not much else. And now Daniel Weir is all alone. But don't let that put you off. I really liked it!! I liked it a lot better than the other 'Rock n Roll novel' I read (and Theakston Short listed) - Piece of My Heart by Peter Robinson. In the course of twin narratives (it says here) Robinson weaves the stories of two interconnected murders that occur decades apart. It was 527 pages which was about 300 too long, as all the action / clues / build up happened in the last few pages. Disappointing.....

I asked around for peoples ideas of what is / was a great Rock N Roll novel. A friends son recommended Nick Hornby: High Fidelity which I found on ebay.....it duly arrived for me to realise that I had already read it (lasting impression then!).

However, I had decided that what I don't need at the moment is another started novel, so I am going to use the ideas that I collected to write a short story as a competition entry in an attempt to get the juices flowing again.....