Mr. Harlan Ellison, a writer who has never been known as a shrinking violet, once had a slight disagreement with his publisher. That incident is recounted here.
Tell us, have you ever wanted to react just that way? What were the circumstances? How did you handle it? What would you counsel a young writer regarding when to be, er, demonstrable in his or her ire?
Monthly Archives: May 2013
First Page Critique: Heart Failure
James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Here is today’s first page critique. My notes follow the text:
HEART FAILURE
By the time Dr. Carrie Markham heard the shots, she was already huddled on the floor well of the car, shielded by Adam’s body.
One, two, three sharp reports. It took Carrie a moment to recognize them as gunshots. She flinched against an expected shower of glass, but none came. Instead, she heard muffled thumps as bullets hit the car’s seats, seats she and Adam occupied just seconds ago.
“Stay down,” he said. The pressure on her back lessened. She turned her head and watched Adam peep over the dashboard. Carrie’s heart continued its salsa dance while her mind wrestled with what was happening. After what seemed like an eternity, Adam bent down and whispered, “Okay, they’re gone. You can sit up.”
Carrie eased into a sitting position and looked around her. The parking lot of the Multiplex Cinema was as peaceful as it had been when she and Adam Davidson walked out after the late movie, just minutes ago. The few cars still there probably belonged to the people who were inside the theatre hurrying to close up and go home. If there were witnesses to the shooting, they were out of sight.
A few minutes earlier, she and Adam were talking about closing out this Saturday night date by going for ice cream. That option was off the table now. Instead, Carrie struggled to keep from spewing her dinner onto the floor of the car, and the thought of a hot fudge sundae almost pushed her over the brink.
She swept back a stray lock of hair, took a deep breath, and tried to control her breathing. When she was sure she could speak again, she said, “Adam, what was that all about?”
***
I like the beginning situation. I advocate an opening disturbance on first pages, and this certainly qualifies. While the disturbance doesn’t have to be “big,” here it is. The opening line, however, may be trying to do too much at once. Breaking it down gives it a crisper, punchier feel:
When Dr. Carrie Markham heard the shots, she was huddled on the floor of the car. Adam shielded her with his body.
[Note: I changed shielded by Adam’s body because that suggests Adam is dead. It threw me when it turned out he wasn’t.]
But there are problems (for me at least) with the setting and physical dynamics of the scene. Do we speak of “the well” of a car anymore? A floor’s a floor, yes? And if they’re in the front seats (because Adam peered over the dash), I just don’t think this can be accomplished physically. Front seats are divided these days, and even so, there’s not really enough room for two people to huddle down there, out of the seats, unless they are jockeys or Munchkins.
Tip: When you do an action scene like this, it’s a good idea to sketch it out for yourself, even construct a little scene on a table so you can “see” it (chess pieces work nicely for this). The readers are trying to make things fit in their minds, so you have to make sure they fit in yours first.
Next, the unfolding physics of the scene are hard for me to picture. You have no shattering glass, but bullets hitting the seats. That means bullets traveling through all kinds of metal and engine works (it’s presumed the shots are coming from the front, as Andy peers over the dash), but I just don’t think that can happen. What’s wrong with shattering glass, anyway?
I also have to wonder about two or more assassins firing into a car in a nearly deserted parking lot and then taking off without checking on their handiwork. Maybe this is to be a warning of some sort. Maybe Andy is about to explain. But right now I am thinking that subconscious reader question all writers must deal with: Would they really do that?
This also applies to emotional responses. Carrie’s question: “Adam, what was that all about?” seems almost comically casual. Wouldn’t she be a bit more freaked out? Especially if she’s about to spew?
Tip: Put yourself, like a method actor, into the emotional moments of a scene. How would YOU react? Find some kind of unexpected reaction. What if Carrie slapped Adam across the face?
Random notes:
Carrie’s heart continued its salsa dance
While it’s good to search from metaphors and fresh ways of “showing” emotion, it has to fit the tone and context. This metaphor connotes joy and happiness, the opposite of what’s going on in the scene.
That option was off the table now.
RUE: Resist the urge to explain. We don’t have to be told that the option for ice cream is “off the table.” It’s obvious. Cut this line.
Bottom line: I do like the initial situation. Couple comes out of a movie, gets in the car, and shots fired. And the shooters disappear. It makes for a great opening, where the reader will want to know what’s going on. Your task is to make it believable, both physically and emotionally. Re-envision this, re-work it . . . and then stick a novel after it.
Other thoughts?
Self-Discipline for the Writer
Nancy J. Cohen
Writers sit in a chair for hours, peering at their work, blocking out the rest of the world in their intense concentration. It’s not an easy job. Some days, I marvel that readers have no idea how many endless days we toil away at our craft. It takes immense self-discipline to keep the butt in the chair when nature tempts us to enjoy the sunshine and balmy weather outside.
We don’t only spend the time writing the manuscript. After submitting our work and having it accepted, we get revisions back from our editor. This requires another round of poring over our work. And another opportunity comes with the page proofs where we scrutinize each word for errors. How many times do we review the same pages, the same words? How many tweaks do we make, continuously correcting and making each sentence better?
These hours and hours of sitting are worth the effort when we hold the published book in our hands, when readers write to us how much they enjoyed the story, or when we win accolades in a contest. As I get older, I wonder if these hours are well spent. My time is getting shorter. Shouldn’t I be outside, enjoying what the community has to offer, admiring the trees and flowers, visiting with friends? Each moment I sit in front of the computer is a moment gone.
But I can no more give up my craft than I can stop breathing. It’s who I am. And the hours I sit here pounding at the keyboard are my legacy.
BICHOK is our motto: Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard. This policy can take its toll on writers’ health with repetitive strain injury, adverse effects of prolonged sitting, neck and shoulder problems. We have to discipline ourselves not only to sit and work for hours on end, but to get up and exercise so as to avoid injury. This career requires extreme discipline, and those wannabes who can’t concentrate for long periods of time or who give up easily will never reach the summit. They can enjoy the journey and believe that’s where it ends, but they’re playing at being a writer and not acting as a professional.
We’re slaves to our muse, immersed in our imaginary worlds, losing ourselves to the story. And then we have to revise, correct, edit, read through the manuscript numerous times until we turn it in or our vision goes bleary. We are driven. And so we sit, toiling in our chairs (or on the couch if you use a laptop). Hours of life pass us by, irretrievable hours that we’ll never get back.
So please, readers, understand how many hours we put into this craft to entertain you, to educate you, and to illuminate human nature in our stories.
And this doesn’t even count the time required for social media.
I put myself in the chair until I achieve a daily quota. In a writing phase, this is five pages a day or twenty-five pages per week. For self-edits, I aim for a chapter a day but that’s not always possible. I do this is the morning when I’m most creative. Afternoons are for writing blogs, social media, promotion, etc.
How do you get yourself to sit in the chair day after day? Do you set daily goals? Do you offer yourself rewards along the way? Do you ever doubt the time you sacrifice to your muse? Or do you love the process so much that you’d not trade those hours for anything else?
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Writers and their canine doppelgangers
By Kathryn Lilley
I considered the question. My dog MacGregor is a serious-looking guy, long and lean, like a black wolf. I am none of those things, except I was wearing a black jogging suit. But with my blonde hair and general demeanor, I would say I’m more of a Golden Retriever.
So I was walking my dog on the boardwalk in Hermosa Beach the other day, totally MMOB, when I was hailed by a couple of guys clutching beers in paper bags.
“Do you think people look like their dogs?” The slightly less enebriated-looking of the two men wanted to know.
I considered the question. My dog MacGregor is a serious-looking guy, long and lean, like a black wolf. I am none of those things, except I was wearing a black jogging suit. But with my blonde hair and general demeanor, I would say I’m more of a Golden Retriever.“Sometimes people look like their dogs, but hopefully not in my case,” I replied carefully.
My answer seemed to satisfy my inquisitors. But it got me thinking about writers and their canine doppelgangers. So of course, I set off on a search for some matches. Here are a few I came up with.
Tom Wolfe – Chihuahua-mix in a top hat
Stephen King – Dog with a Human Face
This dog, by the way, would make an excellent character in King’s next book.
James Ellroy – Elegant pals
John Gilstrap, TKZ Emeritus – One Tough Dog
Phillip K. Dick – Beard Buddies
Agatha Christie – Curly tops
So, do you have a canine doppelganger? If I have to look like a critter, I’d prefer to look like my cat, Smokie. He’s my muse, is featured as a character in my books, and he’s way cooler than MacGregor.
Hunting Down The Muse
I’m in a situation that I haven’t been in for four years. Now that I’ve delivered my latest book, I’m no longer under contract to a publisher expecting my next novel. This is the first time since I signed my first publishing contract in 2009 that I don’t have a hard deadline. It’s both a scary and liberating scenario because I have to decide what to write next.
Like every other author, I often get the dreaded question, Where do you get your ideas? I can usually come up with a response that sounds reasonable and interesting, but the real answer is that I don’t know where they come from. I wish I did. It would make everything so much easier. I wish I could flip a switch in my mind that goes, “Okay, Brain, time for the next idea. What sounds good to you?”
Instead, Brain usually tells me to buzz off. It’s much too busy forcing me to watch TV or worrying about whether I forgot to lock the car when I left it in the mall parking lot. Other times, Brain is throwing ideas at me left and right, many of which are versions of stories that have already been done, but dumber.
Brain: Hey, what about a book about a sea creature that terrorizes a small coastal town, but this time it’s a crazed man-eating jellyfish?
Me: I hate you.
But ideas typically aren’t a problem for an author. I’ve got plenty of ideas. I just have no clue whether any of them will make good stories. I’ve started at least eight books that never made it past page 150. A few of them never made it past page ten. Some of them may grow into full novels one day, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if none of them did.
The question for me is, how should I get started on the next book? Do I need a breather to gather a bunch of new ideas and select the right one or should I plunge back into it and trust that the alchemy will produce something worthwhile?
Some authors, like Stephen King, stick to their word count every day no matter what. They force themselves to hunt down the muse and throttle it until it gives up the goods. Other authors, like Chuck Palahniuk, can take a year off to recharge and explore the world until the pressure builds up so much that they have to sit down and write the story. The muse tells them when the story is ready to go.
I think Stephen King’s process works well for “pantsers,” authors who don’t outline and write without knowing where the story will take them. But I don’t know how that can work if you are a “plotter” and you outline and research to see how a story fits together. How can you write to a word count that day if you haven’t plotted out how the next scene contributes to the story?
One technique that I’m trying was suggested by my agent. It’s called the List of Twenty. You come up with a list of twenty of ideas for a novel. The first ten or so will be obvious, so obvious that someone else may be having the same idea as you’re typing (which is why we end up with situations like two movies this year about the White House being taken over by terrorists).
But when you exhaust those first ten ideas, you start having to come up with more unusual and off-the-wall ideas, and that’s where you find the gold. Those are the ideas likelier to be unique and amazing.
Even then, you may still come up with an idea similar to someone else’s, but your spin on it might be so intriguing that it’s worth doing anyway (look at how Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games explored a different take on the kids-fighting-to-the-death scenario that Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale had already established).
After having completed six novels, I thought this process would have gotten easier. It hasn’t, and I don’t think it ever will. But when that inspiration does strike and the muse becomes your partner in crime, the exhilaration makes all of the struggle worth it. For me, that’s the thrill of the hunt.
The Most Important Thing Literary Agents Owe Their Clients
James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood and put it into a gnat’s navel, and still have room for two caraway seeds and an agent’s heart.
– Fred Allen
Mr. Fred Allen was a famous curmudgeon who labored in the entertainment (mainly radio) business. I would note that the Hollywood agent and traditional literary agent are largely different species. But that doesn’t stop me from using the quote to tease my agent friends.
And I do have friends who are literary agents. Is that so odd? When I was a lawyer, people still befriended me. It can be done!
Seriously, those agents I know are good ones: caring deeply about the success of their clients, hurting when they can’t place a project, or when a client is dropped by a publisher. But they know this is the duty they signed up for. They are professional about it.
That’s a key word, professional. In any business relationship, no matter how warm, there are duties. So it’s proper to ask what each party owes the other.
What do writers owe their agents? I think they owe them productivity, optimism, partnership and patience. There will be times, of course, when concerns must be expressed and details hashed out. Time for phone calls and complaints. But these should be rare in comparison to the positives.
A writer needs to listen. Part of a good agent’s job (we’ll get to bad agents in a moment) is to guide a career, and the writer (who ultimately makes the decision about direction) ought to consider and attend to an agent’s wisdom.
And just plain not be a “pill” (slang, 1920s, “a tiresomely disagreeable person.”)
I said we’d get to bad agents, and here’s all I have to say: it is better by a degree of a thousand for a writer to have no agent than to have a bad agent. A bad agent is one who will make you pay fees up front before reading or submitting something; who will slough you off to an editorial service which kicks back a finder’s fee to the agent; who provides no feedback on projects or proposals; and who throws up anything against several walls to see if it sticks. How does one find the good and avoid the bad? The SFWA has a postthat’s very helpful in this regard.
Now, what does an agent owe a client? Honesty, encouragement, feedback. But I think there is one thing above all, and that is what prompted this post today. Over the years I’ve heard from writer friends who are frustrated and sometimes “dying on the inside” because of lack of this one thing:
Communication.
When I was an eager young lawyer I took a course on good business practices from the California Bar. One item that stood out was a survey of clients on what they most wanted from their attorneys. At the very top of the list, by a wide margin, was communication.Whether it was good news or bad, they wanted to know their lawyer was thinking about their case or legal matter.
Writers are the same way. Even more so, because the insecurity of the business is an ever-present shadow across their keyboards. So if a writer sends in a proposal or list of ideas to his agent, and the agent doesn’t respond within a few weeks . . . and writer sends follow-up email or phone call, and stilldoesn’t hear from agent . . .this is not a good thing. In fact, for a writer, it is close to being the worst thing.
So I would say to agents what the California Bar says to young lawyers: just let the client know what’s going on from time to time. Especially if the client has sent something to you.
Now, I know from my agent friends that there are times when they can’t drop everything to communicate immediately. They have other clients, and things may be popping for one or more of them. It may be that the writer has submitted something that is going to take a lot of time to go over and assess. The agent may be off at a conference or maybe, gasp, needs some personal family time. All understandable.
But communication can be brief, even if it is just a short email acknowledging receipt.
If I may be so bold: if a client submits a proposal, it shouldn’t take more than two months to get back to said client with substantial feedback. If the client submits some ideas, or communicates about another concern or quandary, I would think a couple of weeks is the outside limit, even if it’s brief.
I think there is one area where an agent, being human, is reticent about communicating: the area of bad news. It may be that a proposal or manuscript has failed to land. It may be a publishing house dropping a series. Perhaps the writer has sent the agent a proposal that, for the agent, falls flat, even after notes and suggestions from the agent have been incorporated. It may even be that the agent has lost confidence in the writer’s long term prospects.
At times like these it is tempting to put off communicating with the client. My plea: don’t do it. As hard as it is, as painful as it may be, this is the time the client needs you most.
And authors, remember, it’s a tough time out there in the publishing world, for agents and everybody else. So give them something good to talk about—namely, killer fiction from a productive writer.
Confessions of an Editor
By Mark Alpert
I’ve spent the past week going over my editor’s suggestions for revising my next thriller (working title: The Furies). They’re great suggestions, I’m happy to report. I feel an enormous sense of satisfaction as I go through the manuscript, repairing all the inconsistencies and gaping omissions that my editor pointed out. I’m a lucky guy to have such a careful reader. And my gratitude is enhanced by the fact that I know what it’s like to have a bad editor. Worse: I know what it’s like to be a bad editor.
For the first fifteen years of my journalism career I was a reporter for newspapers and magazines, but in 1998 I became a staff editor at Scientific American. This is a fairly typical career path because editor jobs usually pay a little better. (I’d like to emphasize the world “little.” Don’t go into journalism if you want to make a lot of money.) The new job involved some writing, but my primary responsibility was editing the magazine’s feature stories about breakthroughs in science and technology, most of which were written by the scientists who did the research. It was fun work because the topics varied so much. One month I learned all about metallic hydrogen; the next month I became an expert on the sex life of orangutans (which, by the way, is pretty damn fascinating, but that’s a subject for another blog post).
The stories were usually between 3,000 and 4,000 words, which were spread across six or eight pages in the magazine. Although most of the scientist-authors had extensive experience writing articles for research journals (such as Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, etc.), very few had written for a consumer magazine before. Therefore, the stories they submitted were full of terrible writing: lots of incomprehensible jargon, egregious overuse of the passive voice. On the other hand, the scientists were usually so delighted to be published in Scientific American — it was a big ego boost for many of them, and often a career boost as well — that they would tolerate heavy editing (and sometimes wholesale rewriting) with little complaint. And thus a monster was born.
In short, I became a tyrant. Each month I would rewrite the entire story, altering nearly every sentence. I wouldn’t have discussions with the author. I wouldn’t give the author the opportunity to make changes to his or her first draft. I would make all the changes myself and send back the rewritten manuscript with a standard note: “Please correct any factual errors I may have inadvertently introduced.” My justification for this approach was that I didn’t have the time for a lot of back-and-forth. It was quicker and easier this way. And I truly believed that I was doing my authors a favor. I was making them look good, I thought, by commandeering their stories.
I took the same attitude with the illustrations that accompanied the articles. I would draw them myself, in pencil, and fax my sketches to the artists. If their illustrations came back looking significantly different from what I’d drawn, I’d force them to do it over. I was drunk with power.
Luckily, I was saved by a book deal. After selling my first novel and getting a contract to write two more, I scaled back my duties at Scientific American. I became a contributing editor who meekly suggests story ideas instead of a staff editor who shapes and packages them. And in my new career as a novelist, I was as powerless as a cub reporter. I could no longer give orders to anyone but myself. For instance, I could suggest titles for my novels and offer my opinions on alternatives, but the final decision was up to the publisher. The same rules applied to the cover art. Most humbling of all, I had to acknowledge the fact that I made mistakes too and that my own writing could be pretty terrible sometimes.
If we lived in an Old Testament kind of world, the gods of publishing would punish me for my sins. They would make sure that the people editing my novels were just as bad as I was. My editors would force me to rip out the heart of each book, to chop up the manuscript to the point where it became unrecognizable. But apparently I’ve been granted a dispensation. My editors have always allowed me to come up with my own solutions for fixing the problems in my drafts. And the process can be intensely gratifying, like working out your problems in therapy. There are lots of Aha! moments. “Of course! The answer is so simple!”
I really don’t deserve such good treatment. If I ever become an editor again, I’ll try to be more patient and open-minded. (Who am I kidding? I’d probably go right back to being a tyrant.)
Reader Friday: Get Creative
Time to get creative. I’m going to give you two items, one is a character and the other is a thing. When you put them together, what picture pops up in your head? Write it down. Then write a segment of a scene, 150 words or less, from the picture you got. Don’t look at any comments until you do, then post your results! It’ll be a good lesson in how different writers handle the same idea in unique fashion.
Today’s combo: romance writer & red wine
The Dragon’s Pearl Critique – YA Fantasy Submission
My first page critique is a YA fantasy submission titled THE DRAGON’S PEARL. (Love the title!) My thoughts will be on the flipside. Enjoy!
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Misha who was neither kind nor beautiful, but very smart, and according to her mother, intelligence was all that mattered. For once, Misha had to agree because at this very moment, her immediate survival depended on her being very, very smart.
The gun dug against the small of her back. “Move faster,” the man holding the gun said. He wore a creepy-looking white mask—all three of her kidnappers did—and he had a real-looking black gun. He was smaller than the big man and stouter than the skinny one, with hairless arms smoother than her own. But since he held the one flashlight, Misha decided he must be the leader.
“Faster,” he said again.
She scooted down the tunnel, first in line. In case she sprung a trap, presumably. Designating a fourteen-year-old girl as a meatshield to catch all the arrows, it was the kind of thing she would consider.
“We’re almost there.” The kidnapper pushed past her, giddy like a sugar-overdosed child, darting his flashlight from wall to ceiling. “I can feel it.”
Where is there? Misha slowed her pace. She lifted both hands—handcuffed—to scratch her freckled nose. She had no idea where they were, what their purpose was. After removing her blindfold, they’d marched her down this abandoned subway tunnel for the past hour, twisting, turning, pausing, then picking a path less traveled.
The steel tracks were hard to see and easy to trip over. Her aunt had already tripped twice, with the big man there to catch her every time.
Her aunt Saria was the unfortunate tagalong to this kidnapping. She hummed tunelessly to herself, but Misha knew this was her aunt’s way of coping. Saria was afraid of everything, from plastic bags on the street that looked like dead cats to melodramatic fistfights on the movie screen. Violence terrified her.
“I’m sorry,” Misha said quietly. “If you hadn’t come to my tournament, you wouldn’t even be here.”
Saria sighed. “I wouldn’t have had to close my pawnshop for the day and lose all that profit.”
“Yes, that too.”
Saria barely winced when she smiled, her wrists raw from the nervous twisting of the plastic zip-ties. “There’s nowhere else I want to be, but by your side.”
My thoughts:
The “once upon a time” opener sounds cliché, but when it’s coupled with the twist of lulling the reader into the story as if it were a fable, only to spring into a kidnapping, the story keeps my interest. But the softer beginning diminishes the threat of the kidnappers. I’m not sure of the author’s intent. I don’t feel like Misha is in danger, especially once the aunt and the dialogue begin.
In the second paragraph, I got a little bogged down with the vague descriptions of the three men. There are not many lines there, but I don’t feel that it is important to detail the heights and weights of nameless men—especially since they are behind her. It’s like she has eyes behind her head and can see everything (while she is blindfolded, we later learn). When describing adversaries like these, it might be best to lump them together as threatening masked men and have their distinctive voices be the way she tells them apart, if that even matters so early in the story. If she’s blindfolded, she can only sense their presence by sound or smell. I would imagine that the smaller guy will play a definitive part in the story after he’s unmasked, but at this point, I don’t know that for sure. Only the author will know how important any of them will be.
I would like to see a dark world building setting play a part in this set up. That’s what makes fantasy great. This reads like an internal chapter scene and not the start of a book, perhaps because it doesn’t feel like Misha is in danger and the dialogue with the aunt. If she is to be the meat shield, I would like to feel that she appreciates the danger she is in and setting might help. She needs to be more wary and worried about what will happen to her and her aunt.
When Misha scratches her “freckled nose,” that took me out of the story. In her POV, she wouldn’t think of her nose as freckled. It would simply be her nose. That action trivializes the danger too. It’s a way for the author to get a character description in, but it also has the impact of diluting any threat.
Half way through the opener, we find out she has been blindfolded. That was not reflected in the first paragraphs. This reads as out of order to me. With her being bound and blindfolded, that would make it very awkward to walk, especially with her scooting down a tunnel. If she is blindfolded, the reader needs to see and feel this early on. She wouldn’t be leading the pack either. How would she know where to go?
I also didn’t know her aunt was even with her until well into the opener. Misha seems more worried for herself and not for her aunt, who would be in danger too. Plus their conversation does not translate the threat. It’s a bit chatty. And if violence terrified Saria, her humming a tune doesn’t seem appropriate, even if it’s a nervous tune. Plus when she’s more concerned about her profits for the day, that also diminishes the scary aspects of the scene.
The last couple of lines bounce into Saria’s POV. Misha can see her aunt wince and smile (if she is not blindfolded), but she can’t know how raw her wrists are, which tells me this is Saria’s POV. A head hopping thing.
The last thing I want to mention is the use of adverbs. Anything with an LY on the end is usually redundant and unnecessary if the rest of the action in the scene are well described. For example, “Misha said quietly” could be changed to “Misha whispered,” which would suggest she’s afraid of being overheard, but since the dialogue is a bit chatty, there is nothing she should be afraid of. If I were being kidnapped and had my aunt with me, I would be asking questions or trying to figure out where they were or how to get away.
When I first read through this, I thought it was okay. (I didn’t expect to be so picky.) I might keep reading to see where it goes, but unless you grip an editor or agent from this opener with something fresh, they will be looking for a reason to not turn the page. Focus on the danger more, make it eerie, and give a better glimpse into Misha’s personality and why she was chosen. Add elements of a mystery. That might make this opener better.
What do you think, TKZers?
What novelists can learn from song writers
Last Friday, a giant in country music passed away. George Jones was not only considered by many to be the greatest country singer of all time, but also one of the most self-destructive. His string of hits was fueled by a private life of booze that was nothing short of 
devastating. Once when his wife hid the car keys so he couldn’t go buy alcohol, he hopped on a riding lawn mower and rode it into town to the liquor store. He later parodied the story in a music video.
But despite the long chain of events that few mortals could survive, George Jones climbed to the top of the mountain and made a place for himself that will forever be the gold standard in country music.
His life was a soap opera that was mirrored in the songs he sang. His struggles with the demons of alcoholism are reflected in some of his album titles: “The Battle”, “Bartender’s Blues”, and the defiant “I Am What I Am”. But out of this self-inflicted carnage of a tragic life, one song emerged as arguably the greatest country song ever written: “He Stopped Loving Her Today”.
The song is performed with the singer telling the story of his "friend" who has never given up on his love. He keeps old letters and photos, and hangs on to hope that she would "come back again." The song reaches its peak with the chorus, telling us that he indeed stopped loving her – when he finally died.
It’s poignant, sad, and paints a heart-wrenching portrait of absolute love and devotion, as well as never-ending hope. Not only does it drill to the core of emotion, but it delivers the story with the few words.
So what does this have to do with writing books? Everything.
It’s called the economy of words—telling the most story with the least amount of text. It is an art form that songwriters must master, and novelists must study. There is no better example of the economy of words than in a song like ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’. Not one word is wasted. No filler. No fluff. Remove or change a word from the song and the mental picture starts to deflate. The story is told in the most simplistic manner and the result is a masterpiece. Every word is chosen for its optimal emotional impact. Nothing is there that shouldn’t be. It is a grand study in how to write anything.
I’m not suggesting that your 100K-word novel be written with the intensity of George Jones’ song. In fact, if it were, it would probably be too overwhelming to comprehend. But my point is that no matter who you are—New York Times bestseller or wannabe author, your book contains too many unnecessary words. If you can say it in 5 instead of 10, do it. Get rid of the filler and fluff. Respect the economy of words. Less is more.
For those that love George Jones, enjoy this video. For those that have not heard “He Stopped Loving Her Today”, click the link, listen and learn.
He Stopped Loving Her Today by George Jones