I have been away for quite a while honing my craft - writing. Some might say you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, but I ain't no dog, just old. So here are some old tricks made new.
During my intermission from actual writing - in the process of learning to write - some of the people I have worked with were very helpful. My present mystery critiquing group tops that list. I have learn significant lessons - not just punctuation or spelling - isn't that what Grammarly and Spell Check are for.
I have also read a number of books on how to write. Most were written by people, MFA's aside, who prove the point: those who can't do teach. In literature, the corollary to that theory is those who can't write become literary agents. (For the benefit of all my future agents that was solely a cheap joke. Literary agents are chronic readers. We love ya.)
Many books are written about writing by successful writers who prove they have no concept as to why they are successful. Several of the books on writing were written by famous and/or successful authors who could communicate. In that group, the results of their theories and proposals vary from outstanding to awful or obvious. My meaning of awful, in this case, is not a work filling one with awe. Some, such as Sol Stein or Stephen King, actually understood the art of writing and how to communicate it to their reader. The greatest single précis on writing is Sol Stein's Ten Commandments of Writing. The true art in literature is communicating while holding your reader's interest.
Two types of writing live in this world. One type is concerned with the writer showing how knowledgeable he or she is. These creatures write primarily in "literary novels." Many of these writers have perfected the information dump - similar in value to perfecting a slug dump. The EPA should burn their books, but instead, people crown them with honors. I don't get it.
These authors feel obligated to communicate their superiority to the reader. Plot, pacing, story, character arc, as well as human interest are all secondary to vocabulary and obtuse logic that even the Navajo Code breakers could not decipher. These books become eligible for prizes, including Nobles and such. Their snooty audience gets on a very high horse and declares any one who writes below this level is a hack or worse yet, a "genre" writer, as if that epithet was a pejorative. I would infer from their statements they have never read James Lee Burke who by the way is a college English professor as was Robert B. Parker. Both these genre authors have prose of the highest order, as do many other "genre writers."
I have been in several groups that follow the tenet literature must be exotic, otherwise it's not real writing. If you can understand the manuscript on the first read, it is not literature. They believe real authors write "Literary masterpieces," because that is the only real writing. They worship a false God.
When you write any manuscript, its utility is served by accessibly. It must communicate an idea or story to your reader. Readers want to journey to places that they do not inhabit in their life. They want to feel and know emotions that they cannot allow in their lives without becoming uncivil. They want to identify with a major character in the story, especially if that character is beyond their life's scope. They want to know what drives that character to perform those acts in that way at this time.
The SAT level of the words used to create that journey is as important to the reader as the vehicle a traveler rides in to get to their journey's end. Chevy versus Rolls Royce, who cares, as long as we reach our destination. From inside the vehicle, it is only important to the passenger that the vehicle move toward the goal. Uber, Lift, cab or private car if it gets there, the rider is happy.
If the words are the vehicle, then the story and plot are the scenery. It is the scenery that interests the passenger on his or her journey. Fancy words and incomprehensible sentence structure are the mud on the windows of the vehicle/story. We can't see out the windows unless they are clear, allowing us accessibility to the scenery.
Reading should be an enjoyable avocation/trip to somewhere new. If you have to look up words constantly or imply their meaning from the context perpetually; if you are required to concentrate intensely to find the meaning; if theme is too arcane and occult, and beyond the concept of the reader, then the author has written a text book, not a novel or a story.
I write noir, hard-boiled feminist detective novels, unrepentant, and proud. I have created Samantha Cochran, a woman who left the NYPD as a gold-shield detective, because of a me-too-situation. She has become a female Sam-Spade-style private investigator. Hired as the in-house detective of Allyson Catherine Worthington, Esquire, (Thank you Rex Stout and Nero.) she fights dirty to reach a just end. I hope that really soon, you will have the opportunity to enjoy her first novel length mystery. Check back here to see where and when it is released.
At this time, the Central Jersey Chapter of Sisters in Crime's short story anthology 30 Shades of Dead, has a Sam Cochran/Catherine Worthington story called Thirty Years to Life. It is available through WC Publishing @ www.OnTargetWords.com/WCPublish.
I am L.A. Preschel and I authorized this message - sorry another bad joke.
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