Wordcraft – Naughty or nice? Making a list, checking it twice

Steal from the best. – Kurt Vonnegut

  

Dallas literary agent Jim Donovan was generous in sharing helpful lists for writers after his appearance earlier this month at the Southwestern Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Last Tuesday I mentioned the first of his “15 Most Important Things to Remember in Writing Fiction.” But we’ll want the other 14, especially as we’re rounding the last turn this week with our NaNoWriMo manuscripts. So here, with no apologies for the theft, is Donovan’s complete list.

1. Resist the Urge to Explain. “The reader will respond proper if your dialogue and action do their job,” Donovan writes. “So let them. Which leads to. . .

2. Show, Don’t Tell. Joseph Conrad said a writer should make the reader HEAR, FEEL, and above all SEE. . . to do this, use concrete, sensory details. (But note Donovan’s caution: “if a description goes on too long, I start skipping. . . ”)

3. Be Aware of Rhythm. Reading aloud helps.

4. Involve the Reader First. If possible, begin in the middle of action or a scene.

5. Kill Your Darlings. (Or as the late, great, eminently theft-worthy Elmore Leonard said, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”)

6. Use Subject-Verb-Object. Avoid backing into a sentence with a modifying clause, especially if it starts with an “ing” verbal.

7. Avoid!!! Use exclamation points as sparingly as possible – almost never.

8. Know Your Characters More Than You Need To. “You should know them – at least the half-dozen or so most important ones – inside out.”

9. Use Markers. One way to make characters more vivid is to use “markers” (visual or otherwise) . . such as clothing, mannerisms, habits. . .and most obviously, how they speak. (See below.)

10. Make Your Characters a Mix of Good and Bad. No Dudley DoRights or Snidely Whiplashes. (I’d add an exclamation point, but that would violate Rule # 7.)

11. Read Dialogue Aloud. “Or aloud in your head, if you know what I mean,” Donovan writes.

12. Just Use “Said.” Unless someone is screaming, yelling, or whispering, don’t use anything but “said” with dialogue, and don’t use an adverb with “said.”

13. Everyone Talks Differently. Each character’s dialogue should be distinct, whether it’s through grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, rhythm, etc. (See Rule #9 above.)

14. Add Business. Another way to subtly drop in details about your character is to add some “business” during the dialogue – show the speaking doing something at the beginning or middle of a speech.

15. Advance the Story, or Reveal Character. Remember, dialogue should do one of two things: move the story along, or reveal character. That’s all.

For true listaholics, Donovan also has Sol Stein’s “Secrets of Good Dialogue” (expanding Rule #15), “Helpful Lists for Fiction Writers,” “Oakley Hall’s Writing Tips,” “Elmore’s Rules for Writing” and “Creating Unforgettable Characters.” Perhaps if you ask at his email address, he’ll send them to you. Say something nice about his books, too. You don’t want to get on an agent’s naughty list.

Wordcraft – What a literary agent wants to see

Nothing beats the thrill of having a literary agent – and a local one at that – at the mercy of a pack of writers. That was the scene at this month’s meeting of the Southwestern Chapter of Mystery Writers of America as agent Jim Donovan opened the floor for questions. Donovan could sympathize with our angst – he’s the author of the bestselling A Terrible Glory, the story of George Custer’s last stand, and more recently, The Blood of Heroes, about the fall of the Alamo. He’s also worked as an editor and book buyer. But more pertinent to his audience of writers, he has more than 20 years of experience as a literary agent in Dallas.

As readers may guess, he’s partial to American histories and biographies; in fiction he also likes “big” political thrillers, international thrillers and “gritty urban noir.”

He admitted (a dangerous thing in an audience of people steeped in ways to commit murder) that he actually takes on relatively few mysteries: “it’s a good market, but it’s a tough market”. And although he likes reading good memoirs, he doesn’t agent them: “the toughest writing to do,” he said.

He will look at some Westerns, and also sells occasional books on health issues. What he’s specifically not looking for are “old-style (mysteries) set in the 1940’s or 1950’s. And especially, “if you’re writing a cozy, I’m probably not the right person.”

Quipped a writer, “Does (a cozy mystery) have to have cats and crafts?” Donovan replied, “they usually do.” The bigger issue, however, is the low level of violence in so-called cozies.

Think that means he’s only interested in things that go boom? Not so, he said. “The number one thing is that readers like to read about people. You might have great plots (but it) the characters are cardboard --” and he paused to make a throat-slashing gesture.

Equally important for writers in every genre (and of some comfort perhaps to writer of cozies) he emphasized that “to get a book publisher for your writing, you’ve got to master the art and craft of writing. And I think it is a craft that you can learn to do. I recommend taking one of your favorite books and reading it not as a reader, but as a writer.” (John Le Carré’s The Night Manager is among his favorite books, “a spy story, a thriller, a love story.”)

Big musts for Donovan as well as for every other agent I’ve heard speak are: dialogue and action – the best way to reveal those memorable characters. And “chapter one has to start with a punch, a scene.” (If the first page is description, he skips it.)

He also recommended releasing information as slowly as possible. “Readers like to figure things out.” His personal writing mnemonic is RUE: “Resist the Urge to Explain.” “Readers,” he states in his personal 15 Most Important Things to Remember in Writing Fiction, “like not knowing everything, since it makes them curious and keeps them turning the pages to find out.”

So that’s one of Donovan's rules. What are the other 14? I’ll mention a few in next week’s post, although an email to him at jdliterary@sbcglobal.net, an address available at his author’s site, may net them as well.

He also accepts literary queries by email. For those who believe they meet his requirements, he wants a query that includes a paragraph or two about the story, a one-two page synopsis, including the ending (no teasers, please) and the first 30-50 pages of the manuscript.

And his final advice to the questioner who asked how to get on the New York Times bestseller list (and to the rest of us as well): “Write a good book.”

Wordcraft – What's the state of book culture in Dallas?

It’s the best of times for books in Dallas, agreed panelists at the recent reunion for the Dallas Noir anthology. And the worst of times. But then, it always is.

Dallas Noir is the brain child of local literary agent David Hale Smith, published appropriately shortly before Halloween in 2013 as part of Akashic Books’ series of noir anthologies based on cities around the world. Smith solicited short stories from 16 North Texas authors from a variety of literary backgrounds. Some of them were people whose names have appeared in this blog before: Ben Fountain, Daniel J. Hale, Clay Reynolds, Kathleen Kent, David Haynes, Harry Hunsicker, Suzanne Frank and more.

And then there was Smith’s former English teacher from Episcopal School of Dallas, Fran Hillyer. (I wonder: did Smith dare correct his former teacher’s word usage? Her grammar? Amazingly, they remain friends. Fellow contributor and noir novelist Hunsicker also says he was one of Hillyer’s students, but she disclaims any remembrance – or perhaps that should be, responsibility – for him.)

Smith wrangled nine of his contributors – Fountain, Frank, Hale, Hillyer, Hunsicker and Kent, as well as Catherine Cuellar and Merritt Tierce – back together last Saturday night for a discussion and book signing at what The Wild Detectives bookstore in the Oak Cliff neighborhood billed as Oak Cliff Wild Literary Festival #1. (Cuellar is the executive director of the Dallas Arts District. Tierce’s Dallas Noir contribution was a chapter from what would become her highly-regarded debut novel, Love Me Back.)

So, is there good news or bad news for books, book lovers and writers of books in Dallas?

The good news includes The Wild Detectives, the brain child of Spanish engineers and longtime friends Paco Vique and Javier García del Moral. The pair turned a rundown bungalow on Oak Cliff’s Eighth Street into a bookstore, cum coffee and wine bar, cum event center last year. The Wild Detectives is currently Dallas’ only independent bookstore specializing in current books, and is among those indies nationwide reporting sales for inclusion in The New York Times bestseller lists.

“First I’d like to say thank you to The Wild Detectives,” said Fountain, author of one of those NYT bestsellers, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (whose movie version by Ang Lee is scheduled for release Veterans Day 2016). “Living in Dallas is like living in the belly of the beast. It’s a hard culture for a writer. . . where people will pay $60,000 for a car but God forbid we should pay full retail for a book, but it’s also a very fertile climate for a writer.”

“I want to honor the groups like Wordspace and the Writer’s Garret that have been fighting the good fight for years,” Cuellar said. It’s such organization, she said, that make the “organic connections between naturally-occurring communities” such as the emerging Bishop Arts district in Oak Cliff near The Wild Detectives' location.

But really, what chance do most writers in Dallas have of getting the kind of attention, for instance, that Fountain has. Or that Boudrant has garnered. (Matt Boudrant claims to have caught Hale’s eye for inclusion in Dallas Noir when his novel The Wettest County in the World became the basis for the movie Lawless.

“You’ve got to write the best possible story,” Boudrant said. “The literary world is still operating in New York City, but once you break out, the attention is really out of your hands.”

Hale agreed. “If Charlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Stackhouse books that inspired the series True Blood) could do what she did from Magnolia, Arkansas, you can do anything you want in Dallas.”

“You can’t try and follow the market if you’re going to be authentic,” Fountain said. “Do the genuine thing.”