Geoffrey P Moore Writes

Lincoln Write Stuff: Writing exercises to do at lunch

Checkout the December 2007 copy of The Writer.
Page 14 has a breakthrough story about Betty Grant Henshaw, who wrote an account of growing up in the Oklahoma Hills during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression era.
At 60 years of age she decided to try her hand at writing, took writing classes, joined a writing group and wrote stories about her life.
Then, recognizing that they did not hang together, she drew up an outline (something she said that she should have done at the beginning) and created a book length novel. She spent the next 10 years attending writing conferences, talking to agents and sending out samples of her work, only to receive rejections.
The breakthrough came when a writer friend recognized that her work told the history of the era and suggested she submit it to a university press.

Texas Tech University presses jumped at the chance to publish her memoir and provided editing support and cover design. The book 'Children of the Dust: An Okie Family Story' is a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award.

In a similar vain, page 30 has a six-page step-by-step article by Moira Allen on "How to Write a Family History", which includes interesting sidebars on the 'crazy-quilt memoir' (an alternative to the usual chronological approach), and using birthday letters and tales from the family newsletter as source material.

Labels: craft, magazines, publishing

I think of foreshadowing as similar to planting a clue or misdirection (red herring) in a mystery story – you don’t want to be to overt when you do it. Foreshadowing is the subtle positioning of information that usually serves two (or more) purposes.
The first purpose is to provide information relevant at the part of the story that is being told.
The second purpose is to explain something that happens later, for which an explanation at that point in the story would significantly disrupt it.

Here is a simple example from my Finger of Suspicion story.

Early on, I wrote "Kelly fingers, their nails chewed to the quick,”…

The first purpose was to tell the reader about Kelly – anxious, a nail biter, not in a position to be concerned with her looks.

This is then compared (though not specifically) with the long painted fingernails of the kidnapped heiress and finally revealed as the reason Kelly retains her digit (and perhaps her life).

Franklin explains foreshadowing on page 150 of ‘Writing for Story’ as “the technique by which the writer unobtrusively inserts details early in the story that will allow him [or her] to conduct his [or her] dramatic scenes without the necessity of explaining the background details.”

Franklin says that the principle was codified by Anton Chekov as Chekov’s Law, which specifies, “if the opening of a story mentions a shotgun hanging over the mantel, then that shotgun must be fired before the story ends.”

Labels: craft

I just realized that flashforward (think of it as the opposite of flashback) is not the same as foreshadowing. I would like to expand on this using information from the book I also mentioned in the last post.

According to Jon Franklin in his book 'Writing for Story' "flashforward is a woebegotten technique that usually goes something like:

Joe chose to go to the prom with Alice instead of Sue. In the future that choice would come back again and again to haunt him. But now he was much more attracted to Ann."

Franklin says "the flashforward is most of all intrusive, because it has the effect of the writer's telling a secret, sotto voce, into the reader's ear. Like any other intrusion by the writer, the flashforward reminds the reader that the story is an illusion and thereby destroys the sense that the story is real."

He goes on to say that a professional writer may use flashforward perhaps three times in a lifetime and he suggest that as such editors and critics automatically assume the writer who uses flashforward is an amateur. If he wasn't he or she would have foreshadowed instead.

So if that's flashforward how does foreshadowing work, at least according to a Pulitzer prizewinner?

Of course it's more complicated, but I'll sort out some of Franklin's words and post again later.

Labels: craft

As I mentioned there are numerous sources of guidance for the beginning writer. In my mind one stands out above others and that is:

Writing for Story
Jon Franklin

More details at Amazon - reviews are "wow this is great" to "anyone who needs this must be a bad writer".

Guess I know where I stand.

Stay tuned for others that have a permanent place in my growing collection.

Labels: books, craft

A jumble of books on the craft of writing competes for space on my crowded bookshelves. One book never finds a resting place there.

It is possibly the best book on writing non-fiction or fiction that I have ever read and has become a go to reference work due to its simplicity of structure and working examples.

I read it cover to cover and now dip in to it for specific topics.

The book makes use of two Pulitzer Prize-winning articles written by the author, who explains in detail every aspect of their construction and execution in easy to understand terms. The author also describes his process for focusing on the key points of the story and achieving a result with which the reader can resonate.

The appendixes contain a dissection of each article with no less than 292 annotations defining the reason or purpose of each word, phrase or thought in the articles.

The small paperback book is truly a remarkable aid to understanding the craft of writing for story.

So what is this book - I'll reveal that in my next post.

Labels: books, craft

Networking usually involves face-time. Since this has to be done in real time it's not always convenient. In fact my experience is that the networking event is often shorter than the time taken to make the journey.

So is it possible to network anonymously, using only a keyboard and derive some tangible benefits?

I logged on to the LongRidge Writers Group Lunchbox forum, expecting a moderated session, not realizing that there was none scheduled today.
I ‘met’ a friendly group of eight or so writers using pseudonyms, or more accurately, chat room handles, such as cajunbelle and speckledorf.

They said their “hi”, “hellos”, and asked questions like, “are you a student, are you new, are you on BIP or novel and, who’s your instructor?”

It some ways it may have been testing out my bona fides. I passed this first level, because I am student. The chat jumped topics as you would expect with five or six people typing and pressing ‘Enter’ simultaneously. We covered blogging, websites, Nanowrimo, cats, mothers, wives as I sat patiently waiting until 1:30pm for the 1pm session to start – but of course it didn’t, because this was it.

Poked by ‘reece’ I jumped into action, asking a few of questions that I might use in a one on one setting, but soliciting input from everyone. Some information was useful, all encouraging as befits my ‘new’ status.

Of course, in a true networking sense, the aim is to find somebody who knows somebody who can help with whatever your particular quest entails. This is not the case with chat rooms, since they are essentially anonymous and, because there is little restriction to chat room access, the conversation is guarded.

In fact when I asked questions such as “which publications are open to first time writers?” “does anyone have a list of magazine guidelines?” and other “help me break in” (or out) questions, I was simply told to read magazines and write pieces of work that was so good it could not be turned down. If anyone had a favorite target magazine or editor, they were not about to divulge it.

I can not argue with the advice and one chat room person did give me the name of their blog - http://storycrafters.blogspot.com/ - so that is definitely a start.

I’ll definitely go back and see it what happens next.