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Joseph E Bird

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Fiction

Words matter.

One of my writing mentors, Sol Stein, once told me to avoid melodrama in my fiction, melodrama being characterized by exaggerated scenes or characters that are intended to appeal to the emotions.  The damsel in distress tied to the railroad tracks. The villain twirling his mustache.

I’ve been editing A Prayer for Rain, and even after great input from several readers, my manuscript is covered with red marks of my own doing.  Much of what I’m finding are sentences and phrases that make me cringe. Phrases that I thought were good when I wrote them, but now jump out at me as melodramatic. Even a simple word choice can make a sentence melodramatic.

In one scene, Trevor has an exchange with Jess, a young woman who works at a convenience store. Since his accident five years before, he has had very little physical contact with anyone, and when they shake hands for the first time, he has this reaction:

He took her hand in his and though it was only for a moment, he relished the soft touch of her skin on his.

The word in question is relish. By definition, it’s accurate enough. It simply means to take pleasure in something. But in reading it afresh, it strikes me as a little bit of an over-reaction.  I picture Trevor going “ahhhhh” and quivering like a bowl of jelly. Come on, man. Get a grip. It seems melodramatic to me now.

Here’s the current version:

He took her hand in his and though it was only for a moment, he appreciated the soft touch of her skin on his.

I’m not sure appreciated will be the final word choice, but it definitely takes away the melodrama. Trevor notices her in a unique way, but he’s not about to melt into a pile of butter.

I said to the guys at the Shelton College Review the other day that sometimes I’ll open my manuscript to a random page and read a couple of sentences and get embarrassed by the poor quality of the writing. I think what I’m seeing when I do that is the amateurish, melodramatic passages. Recognizing the problem is the first step to recovery, right?

That’s why there’s red ink all over my pages.

Words matter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Prayer for Rain – Logline

Logline:  The pitch you give to Spielberg when you see him at Hillbilly Hotdogs.  30-35 words, one sentence.

Logline for A Prayer for Rain:

A rising musician’s dreams of stardom are shattered in a debilitating accident, and as he rebuilds his life he discovers new ways to express himself musically, but struggles against the seductions of fame.

 

 

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The Long Shadow of Hope

Founding member of the Shelton College Review, Andrew Spradling, has just published a new novel, The Long Shadow of Hope.  Here’s my review:

Football, I think it’s fair to say, is primal. Speed and strength and aggressive ferocity matter. Coaches like to talk about game plans and strategy, but nine times out of ten, the faster, stronger players win. And make no mistake, winning is everything. There may be talk of building character and lessons learned in losing, but such subtleties are just that – talk. It’s a man’s game, in every sense of the archaic phrase.

So it is with Andrew Spradling’s novel, The Long Shadow of Hope.

His prologue paints the scene. If you’ve ever watched a college football pre-game show, you’ve seen it. The fans, the cheerleaders, the tailgating – and the players who still display a naive enthusiasm for a multi-billion dollar business that masquerades as a game.

Spradling’s book is a behind-the-scenes look into that world. There’s no Rudy who sticks with the game against all odds. There’s no underdog team battling for a championship. It’s a story of how selfishness and greed can ruin lives and it’s told with the same direct, unflinching fierceness that is on full display on Saturday afternoons every fall.

In Long Shadow, story is everything. It’s pretty clear who the good guys and bad guys are. In fact, Chap Roberts is one of the more despicable characters I’ve met in a long time and he has little time for inner reflection. And the men in Long Shadow, being the primal sorts that they are, are susceptible to the lure of illicit relationships and their encounters are described with direct clarity. Things are happening, surprises are brewing, and there are more twists in the story than the road up Lookout Mountain.

Like a good football game, you don’t know who is going to win until the end. It will leave you shaking your head, and hoping that college football isn’t really that bad.

The Long Shadow of Hope.  Find it now on Amazon.

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Almost

desk b&w grain for web

One brick.
Another.
Carefully.
Thoughtfully.
Almost.
Just a few more.
Stop.

Forty years ago.
Graphite lines
on vellum
give shape.
Buildings begin
with a stroke
of my pencil.

Turn off.
Unplug.
Gather.
Solemnly.
Almost.
Just a few more.
Stop.

Forty years now.
Wisdom guides
the architect
and builders
so kids
can play
in school.

Resume’.
Send.
Wait.
Anxiously.
Almost.
Just a few more.
Stop.

copyright joseph e bird, 2016

 

 

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A story in song.

A story is told.  A song is sung.

Darrell Scott on Mountain Stage.

2

The weak story.

I’m editing my novel, A Prayer for Rain.

I had a great set of beta readers who all have given me excellent feedback. Thank you, betas. Their comments have made me think and I’ll share some of my thoughts on their thoughts in upcoming posts. Just in case you’re having trouble sleeping at night.

I came across an excerpt from Story Fix, by Larry Brooks. He said this:

“Not every story idea is worth pursuing, even in the skilled hands of the world’s finest authors, and not every story written by a well-intentioned, even skilled, writer should be published.”

Sobering advice for the would-be writer. Before we just jump in and start slinging ink (or arranging electrons), we need to evaluate the entire story idea. I hope to learn that skill from Brooks’ book.

 

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Hairbrained Ideas

schedule for web

This is going to be a little embarrassing.

The image above is a schedule I made for myself when I was very young. I’m thinking junior-high age but I’m not sure. I obviously had a lot on my plate back then. And a lot of ambition. Since then I’ve at least learned to draw a straight line.

After I got home from school, I gave myself some time to rest. A half hour. Then some hoops. I guess I was health-conscious even back then. Home in time for supper, then help with the dishes. An hour and a half for homework. I tried to be a good student.

Practice Instruments. I was in the band. A trumpet player. I was probably working on “Flight of the Bumblebee” for band auditions. Seriously. But no, I never learned it and was never better than third chair. I was probably practicing the guitar, too, working on the same three chords I still play today. Hey there Little Red Riding Hood… Only some of you will get that reference.

And then at 9:00, the magic happened.

I’ve always been an unrealistic dreamer and I had so much I wanted to do, I carved out time every night to work on what my mother called hairbrained ideas, as is in What hairbrained idea are working on now? It wasn’t how it sounds. She really was encouraging.  But heck, at one point I wanted to make my own laser. This was decades before you could go to a dollar store and buy a laser pointer. And I wasn’t the Sheldon Cooper type. There was no way I’d ever make a laser. I made snow skis once, complete with old belts screwed to boards to serve as bindings. Then there was the space trip I took in our basement. Another story for another day. If nothing else, I was good for a laugh around the dinner table.

These days my hairbrained ideas are only slightly more sophisticated. I thought if I really tried, I could learn “Classical Gas” on the guitar. I thought I could teach myself Chinese, but after 90 lessons, I can barely order a cup of tea. Then there’s this whole writing thing.

Four finished novels; none published.

The schedule is still on the door of my childhood home where my father lives. I mentioned it to him today and he didn’t realize it was still there.  (I wonder if he remembers the time I covered the ceiling of my room with aluminum foil?)

I still work by schedules and have pretty good self-discipline. And I’ll always be that unrealistic dreamer. I’ll always have hairbrained ideas.

I’ve got a concept for my fifth novel. Dreams die hard.

P.S.  If you look closely, you’ll see different handwriting in the time slots.  Call Susie.  A girlfriend added that years after I posted the original schedule. It speaks to the challenge of living in the real world, where schedules and plans are sometimes pure folly.

 

 

12

The 1% lie.

According to surveys, about 80% of us believe we have a book in us.

Let’s play with some numbers.  The US population is about 320 million.  That means that about 256 million Americans believe they can (should) write a book.

Now let’s apply the 80-20, just for fun.

Of the 256 million who think they have something to say, only 20% of those will ever get around to actually trying to write a book.  That’s 51 million.

Of those, only 20% will finish their book.  That’s a little more than 10 million.  That’s a lot of books.

According to my non-scientific research, there are about 300,000 books published in the US each year, not counting self-publishing in all its forms.  Of the 300,000, about 100,000 are some sort of fiction.

Now 100,000 sounds like a lot.  Surely your novel can be one of the 100,000.

Let’s look at it another way.  Of the 10 million books that are written each year, only 1% get published.  The best 1%.

Maybe you’re in the top 10%.  That would earn you an A in school.  You’re better than 90% of the others.  But it’s not good enough to get published.  You need to be in the top 1%.

Here’s the part that’s not true.

The 1% doesn’t necessarily represent the best writers.  It represents the most marketable, the books that publishers are willing to take a chance on because they believe they can sell product.  Sometimes lesser writing is marketable.

So not only do you have to be a good writer, you have to have a sense of what is marketable if you want to get published.

The odds are against you.  But then again, it’s not about the numbers. It’s about the words.

Tell your story.  Even if it’s just for you.

 

2

Unsalted Pretzel

“Hey, do you guys think I’m an unsalted pretzel?”

“I could eat.”

“No.  Am I like bland and a safe snacking choice?  I was just wondering if that’s what people think of me.”

“Uh, I don’t think people think of you.”

“Well, I want people to think I’m spicy and fun and dangerous.”

“Like a bullet made of chorizo?”

“Kind of.”

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, I have to renew a library book.  It’s not due today, but I don’t want to cut it too close.”

“Spicy.”

This is a scene from the animated television series, Bob’s Burgers.  I’d never heard of the show, but yesterday when driving back from Logan, the show’s creator, Loren Bouchard, was interviewed by Chris Kimball on America’s Test Kitchen radio show.

It’s gold, Jerry.  Gold.

See the clip from Bob’s Burgers here.

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