Hello, writers. SensibleShoes is cavorting this evening, so you're stuck with the backup auxiliary diarist. I've got three questions and a challenge tonight:
- How does writing affect your reading?
It occurred to me, in a conversation with pico, upon whom I have a literary crush, that writing has ruined me for reading.
I write genre stuff. I try to coddle the reader. Are things getting slow? Don't worry, I'll speed 'em up! Did the first page not fascinate you? My fault! I'll try to make the whole thing go down as easy as an inappropriate metaphor in a family diary.
So when I read anything challenging, I blame the writer. "Why are you making me work for this? I want the literary equivalent of channel surfing. Where's the damn remote!"
I know some (many?) people feel that they are better readers because they write. Where do you fall?
- What's one writing tip or technique or gimmick that you found helpful?
This is kinda trivial, but I distinctly remember about twenty years ago when I realized I didn't need to have 'said' or 'muttered' or whatever in dialogue. I could use action.
"Get away from me!" Charlene raised the shotgun. "I'm gonna count to one."
So obvious now, but twenty-one years ago, I was writing, 'Charlene said, raising the shotgun.'
- What technique, or plot point, or narrative beat, or fictive conceit, do you hate?
Racism, sexism, yeah. But more specifically? I once ranted about how I despise when the baddie kidnaps the protagonist's child, and my wife reminded me that that was the basis of one of my (still unsold) novels. Oops. Maybe that's why it's unsold.
I'm also currently engaged in a fairly large hate on any book that's set in a recent-historical era for no reason. "The story of a girl falling in love with a pony ... in 1982!" My suspicion is that the novelist is just too lazy to learn what music the kids are listening to these days.
And the challenge:
Write a scenelet from the POV of a character who loves a monster. Not a literal monster, necessarily, but an evil human being. The POV character should know that the monster is monstrous, but still love her or him. Bonus extra Sensible points if you make us appreciate him or her, too.