BIBLIOGRIND
Adventures in Writing, Reading & Book Culture
May 16, 2013 at 1:53 pm · Filed under A Commonplace Book
“There’s too much good manner,” he said on the way back to Gstaad in the smooth sleigh.
“Well, I think that’s nice,” said Baby.
“No, it isn’t,” he insisted to the anonymous bundle of fur. “Good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handled with gloves. Now, human respect—you don’t call a man a coward or a liar lightly, but if you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what SHOULD be respected in them.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
September 12, 2012 at 8:49 pm · Filed under Food for Thought
“Can you read my palm?”
“No.”
“Can you read tea leaves.”
“No.”
“Do you look into a crystal ball.”
“No.”
“Well then, what do you do for this $5 reading?”
“Order off the menu. When the food comes here, I’ll find your fortune in the eyes, the faces, the animals, the bodies that I see in the food.”
“Wouldn’t that be reading the fortune of the chef who prepared the dish?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You ordered the food. It’s how you came to that order, in your mind, that settles matters. There is no other.”
Short-answer, short-comment, dialogue is effective to communicate a single idea through the personalities of your characters. Allow your story to tell itself. Don’t allow “line-length” to dictate how your scene plays itself out.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
August 20, 2012 at 4:12 pm · Filed under Food for Thought
“Eat it, it’s good. That plate is filled with homemade food.”
“You made gnocci?”
“I boiled it properly.”
“You raised the pig?”
“No, I didn’t raise the … Do you see pigs in my house?”
“You could have a sty out back you’re hiding from the neighbors. Did you grow the tomatoes.”
“No.”
“The carrots?”
“No.”
“The peas?”
“NO. Hey, I didn’t say home-grown or home-raised, I said home ‘cooked.’ Don’t you know the difference? Now eat before I take your plate away, send you out back to pick wild carrots and dandelion leaves for a mud-yard salad.”
“Hey, this is good chow!”
“See!”
“A bit cold though.”
Drama can be about the misunderstanding of words, actions, and intent. Great comedic moments can come with a simple (often universal) interaction b/w characters. It becomes cliché only when the context is left ungiven and scene shortened just to highlight this moment.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
August 9, 2012 at 7:54 am · Filed under Food for Thought
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Cup’a jo?”
“Joe? What’s that?”
“Coffee. Haven’t you ever seen a war movie.”
“Yeah … ‘The Hurt Locker’ is my favorite.”
“Not THAT war, dummie! World War Two.”
“Oh. That’s like really old, innit?”
“Your grandfather’s war. Maybe. Nineteen thirty-nine to ‘forty-five.”
“No, I mean the movie … it’s in black and white, right?”
“Of course its–”
“No-no, I can’t watch black and white films. It hurts my eyes.”
“So you’ve only read books about that war?”
“What’s a book?”
When you listen for the unintended response, your characters define themselves. Make your characters “try out” for their parts by letting them be what you half-imagine/half-invent. When you hear your main character’s voice, that’s when you begin to understand what he/she is about, and therefore what the story can become.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
August 2, 2012 at 3:41 pm · Filed under Food for Thought
“Do you want to be alone?”
“Sure, today. Tomorrow is another day.”
“That’s being fickle.”
“What the fuck is ‘fickle’? Are you calling me gay?”
“Does fickle sound gay to you?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Take me through that process … you’re brain, as it comes to the conclusion that fickle means something gay — whateverthefuck ‘gay’ means to you, anyway. We’ll put aside for the moment that we’ve been talking about getting you off your girlfriend to fuck another women, then sneak back into her heart — or at least bed — the next day. Okay?”
“Hey, man, I was just asking.”
“The wrong guy. That’s who you were asking.”
“Okay okay … hey, you gonna eat that? It looks good.”
“No, you can’t have it. This is ‘gay’ soup. It’s not for the fickle-brained.”
“Well is there anything on the menu I can eat?”
Writing dialogue takes more than listening to a character — although that is a lot — but you have to have a thread of story that connects (always connects) with the overall theme of the story.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
July 27, 2012 at 7:24 pm · Filed under Food for Thought
“What’s for dinner?”
“This.”
He set the plate between the spoon and knife and fork.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. It was my pleasure.”
Intimacy comes in many forms. We touch, we speak, we send looks to the one we love. We do things for that person. Food can be an extreme intimacy, particularly when its done alone, for someone, with love.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
July 25, 2012 at 8:55 pm · Filed under Food for Thought
“In twos, you say?”
“Yeah. Two of this. Duets of that. Double up hey wont’cha? Twice me the order. I’ll have seconds. Bi-friendly women. Bump-me-duos. Tandem ta-tas. Mark twain. It’s all the same.”
“It’s all the same.”
“Not the same. Dyadic. Get it?”
Word play lets your characters wander through a forest of possibility, not the least of which for the reactive characters. Allow your readers to play along.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
July 23, 2012 at 4:09 pm · Filed under Food for Thought
“The ‘active lifestyle’ tours are filled with middle-aged couples complaining after their horrible children, failed stock options, property taxes, and getting old.”
“You’ve come on the better tour then.”
“Yeah, we know. You retirees known how to live it up. Nothing to lose.”
“Nothing to lose? Say, join me in a cognac. Do you like cognac?”
“Never tried it.”
“Too expensive. See, that’s the thing–”
“Hold that thought. Waiter! Three snifters of Hennessy, please. Okay, you were saying?”
“I’s just saying a bit of grateful jabber. You old-timers know what life is like cuz you’d lived it.”
“Still living it, I’d say. Maybe enjoying it more, is what you mean.”
“Umm … okay. That is….”
“Let me give you a tip. Can you take some advice?”
“Sure thing.”
“Get a good paying job that doesn’t drive you nuts. Make some fucking money — excuse my French — and get yourselves in position to enjoy life, if you can’t do that now.”
“How do we do that?”
“Do what?”
“Get good jobs.”
“Hmm. Okay. You get things done by doing them. That’s all I’m going to say.”
Writers, be ready for the surprise characters who ask questions that open a vein for philosophical possibility, while at the same time defines characters and moves the story along.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
July 21, 2012 at 2:12 pm · Filed under Food for Thought
Jack came through the door in a hurry, whipped around and slammed it closed.
“Wine.”
“The red, or the white?”
Jill looked at the pots on the stove. Silver pots. Boiling water. Simmering sauce.
“The red. No, wait … bring ‘em both.”
“Where’s the screw?”
“Check the drawer.”
“Not here. Where did we leave it last?”
“Anywhere. The food’s done. What’ll we do?”
Writing for context gives you a lot of wiggle room when using dialogue. The characters shall give away their presence of mind with just the right words, and delivered the pace with established context. Let your audience figure some things out to share their presence with the story. Give them a place, and that one extra image to establish connection.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
July 16, 2012 at 2:36 pm · Filed under Food for Thought
“Don’t pick your teeth.”
“I used the last of my floss yesterday. Do you have some.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then can I borrow some?”
“Borrow? I don’t want it back once you’ve used it!”
“Lend, then. Will you lend me some floss? Please!”
“Here.”
“What’s this?”
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t enough to strangle a flea with.”
“Well what do you want? You’re not hanging laundry, are you?”
Characters “speak” in all manner and fashion. Words convey emotions. Phrases highlight the idiomatic nature character differences. Likewise, the idiosyncrasies of your characters present a wonderful opportunity for play — between each other, but also with the audience.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
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