I finished a novel manuscript. I don't like it. I'm not sure why, other than maybe it's not doing what I set out to do as well as I would like. I like what I set out to do, and I like parts of the thing I'm reading now as I go back through, but there's still a nagging "Not yet" that holds me back.
I'm working on another one, too. Same sort of thing. It's just underway, but I already feel like I'm explaining too much, telling too much, and not just living and breathing the story the way I had originally felt it in the planning stages. I want to tell this story, I really do, but if it doesn't feel right, then I might as well wait until it does.
Which is what I'm going to do.
Oh, I'll still make forward progress on both of them, but I'm currently in a learning cycle again. Every so often, you have to really rethink your craft, re-see the things you do that you take for granted. You have to ask if there's a better way to do it while still maintaining whatever spark it is that separates your style of storytelling from all the others out there. I'm recapturing ideas that I know pretty well and have read in theory and in practice from other writers. I'm even thinking of rereading a book I read earlier this year (Lush Life by Richard Price) because the way he told the story has stuck with me, and I want to take another run at it, take the book apart, see how the magic works.
I'm a big fan of Penn and Teller for several reasons, but the one thing about their magic act is that they claim to show us how they perform the trick. But the explanation is never actually how they really did it, so that's another form of slight of hand right there. You're supposed to know the answer now, but you still don't, and perhaps you're even further boggled because of this new layer of magic on top of the first.
Isn't that the best writing, too? The stuff that looks so easy that you don't realize how difficult it is?
I guess what I'm saying is that for these new works, I want to be a better magician.
Which writers give you that sense of "making the complex look simple"?
Friday Bonus Non-Music Video:
Michael Connelly comes to mind. T. Jefferson Parker, especially his later books.
I've noticed---and tried to emulate them in my own clumsy way---that some authors are able to have both complexity and a taut story narrative at the same time. I liken this to a dog trial where the dog runs through a long, cylindrical tunnel. Like the dog, the story and the main character are running hell-for-leather through the tunnel, but surrounding them is the complexity of the world they're in--other characters, place, emotions, circumstances, etc.
Don't know what good that'll do anybody, but that's what I see.
I do think that the use of narrative summary, done well, can give roundness to the shape around the running dog.
Posted by: J. Carson Black | September 25, 2009 at 02:57 PM
Penn and Teller rock. "Magician lighting a cigarette" is a classic gag.
My favorite technician right now is the late Adam Hall, who wrote about a spy named Quiller. He would frequently start his chapters in the middle of the action, with no reference to how he got there from the last chapter, then backfill later. I plan to steal this at some point.
Posted by: Graham | September 25, 2009 at 06:58 PM
Don Winslow does it for me.
Posted by: David Terrenoire | September 25, 2009 at 11:08 PM
Andrew Klavan.
Posted by: J. Carson Black | September 26, 2009 at 07:02 PM
Don Winslow. Jesus does he make it look easy.
Posted by: Bryon Quertermous | September 27, 2009 at 11:09 AM
Stewart O'Nan. Every book he writes is different than the last. And they're all amazing.
Posted by: Karen Olson | September 27, 2009 at 11:18 AM
I'm with Karen on O'Nan.
Posted by: AlisonGaylin | September 28, 2009 at 10:42 AM
Terrenoire beat me to it. Don Winslow.
Posted by: Jeff Shelby | September 28, 2009 at 11:06 AM