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Mar. 30, 2006 For long time U-K contributors, I recommend doing a google search on your own name every once in a while to find out which websites have picked up your articles. Articles I have written have written for U-K have been put on such websites as The Thousand Year Old Blog, a Wiccan site, a blog that defends everything white and southern (in which my article was posted as an object of outrage), and a site about tabophilia. I didn't even know what tabophilia was until I googled myself. I don't have a problem with my articles floating around the web for free. I put them out there in the hopes of getting name recognition. However, I wish that I could go back and edit them. Most of my articles are well written and a few are probably deserving of paid publication, but I can almost always find some typo or even (horrors) careless grammatical errors. A few of my early articles were especially sloppy and rife with mispelled words and inappropriate punctuation and even in one of my recent articles I was appalled to find that I had a brainfart and used there instead of their. So I believe that in my efforts to improve as a writer, my biggest weakness is careless self-editing. Nevertheless, when I joined the Writer's Digest Book Club, I did not choose a book about self editing. The Writer's Digest Book Club offers new members a good introductory offer that works out to four books for twenty dollars and with no obligation to buy more books. They send monthly catalogues, but I found I could save a stamp and reject their monthly book choice online. I've already studied the first five books they sent, and I now offer brief reviews of each. The Novelists Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes by Raymond Obstfeld was the first book I tackled. I discovered that I'm already doing everything right. Mr. Obstfeld writes about using in media res (starting in the middle of things) to jump start scenes. In my novel Talk Radio I use in media res quite often. Much of what these writing books suggest is common sense and a writer who reads a lot of books written by master storytellers doesn't necessarily need books about writing. Mr. Obstfeld uses many examples from books that I have read (and recently), and I was a little ashamed that I didn't understand or even realize some of the metaphors until he explained them. I do disagree with him though when he disparages the use of tags in dialogue. I was annoyed with one of the books he praises, A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley. It's a good (Pulitzer Prize winner) book with strong characterization, but Ms. Smiley has a bad habit of not using tags for long stretches and in some dialogue I couldn't make heads or tails of who was saying what even after I went back and reread the passage. I say always use dialogue tags when it's not obvious who is speaking. The Novelists Essential Guide to Creating Plot by J. Madison Davis was, to be honest, boring and I don't think I got much out of it. It was included with the above book and counted as one selection so at least it cost next to nothing. Again, the book is mostly common sense. A plot has a beginning, middle and end. A story should start with a bang and increase with intensity but action scenes should alternate with less intense scenes. That's the lesson of the book in a nutshell. Dialogue by Gloria Kempton has one important lesson. If the dialogue has no purpose to the story, than it should be cut. This seems pretty obvious, but Ms. Kempton writes that this is one of the most common mistakes she sees from novice writers--they write dialogue where nothing is happening. I do have a pet peeve with her too, however. One of the recurring themes of her book is, "who wants to read long boring passages of narration?" The answer is one for the duh patrol. People who like to read like to read long passages of narration. Many great books have been written that were carried by pure narration. Plot and Structure by James Bell has one really useful technique to help brainstorm for new ideas. He says to sit down and right one great opening line after another, rapid fire. The sentences should be the first thing that pops into the writer's head. This technique deserves an article all by itself and I may write one in the near future. Mr. Bell also loves Dean Koontz and uses examples from his work extensively. Personally, I think that once a reader has read two Dean Koontz books, than they've read them all. There's the intelligent animal, the government experiment gone awry, and the protaganist in mortal danger. Mr. Bell defends the use of plot formulas because they simply provide structure like the frame of a house. The Complete Book of Scriptwriting by J. Michael Straczynski probably will have the most influence over my upcoming projects. I'm planning on spending the summer turning Talk Radio into a screenplay. Mr. Straczynski's book has everything about scriptwriting from the history of each medium to the correct format for the big screen, television, radio, animation, and stage to a detailed explanation on how to market the finished project. Surprisingly, Mr. Straczyski writes that agents only supplied him with twenty percent of his work which included producing such television series as the New Twilight Zone, Murder She Wrote, and Babylon Five. That's something to think about. Obtaining an agent maybe overrated. Next up I'm ordering the book, How to Get Published in Thirty Days. ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. www.mark-gelbart.com Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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