30 Days at 30% Off for WriMos

30% Off The Writers Junction 1-Month Membership for Participants of November's NaNoWriMo!  

That's $262 for a 1-Month Full-Time Membership (regularly $375), or $175 for a 1-Month Part-Time Membership (regularly $250) at The Junction. With this offer, there is no initiation fee and no required commitment to a 6 or 12-month membership.

What are we talking about?

What started in 1999 with just 21 Bay Area writers, National Novel Writing Month (affectionately dubbed "NaNoWriMo"), has grown into a writing movement that inspires hundreds of thousands of participants worldwide to attempt the seemingly impossible each November: write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. 

In the spirit of creativity that NaNoWriMo encourages, The Junction is offering a 30% NaNoWriMo discount on 1-month memberships during November. 30 days at 30% off.  Let's be honest, if you're writing a novel in a month, it helps to know someone else is subjecting themselves to the same. So, we hope to see you all at the Junction commiserating, encouraging, and, most importantly, writing.

How do you get the discount?

1. Click here to apply for membership at The Writers Junction.  

2. Be sure to mention the 1-MONTH NaNoWriMo discount in the question that asks about your current writing projects so we know to give you the special price!  

Good luck to all Wrimos!

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month

Give Your Screenplay the Magic Touch with Script Wizard Michael Heartsong

Want a FREE seat?
Hint: Give us a tweet!

  ~

What does it take to make a good script great? Everyone seeks that frustratingly elusive magic formula, but to put it simply: you need to have a really interesting story about really interesting people, and you've got to tell your story in a way that grabs an audience's attention and never lets go. How exactly you do that is what this workshop is all about.

During this information-packed workshop with development executive and script consultant Michael Heartsong, a.k.a. Script Wizard, you'll learn:

• Three simple techniques to overcome writer's block
•  The three items a script MUST exhibit in order to be attractive to Hollywood (and they aren't sex, violence, or chases)
•  The important and vital difference between a spec script and a shooting script
•  Script blindness 
• What the three-act structure really is, and why it is so important 
• 7 specific techniques guaranteed to make your screenplay much more interesting, engaging, and entertaining than it is now
•  Proper formatting and why this is important
•  A few ideas on finding an agent or manager
• A few tips on getting your script sold
• The significant ways in which a screenplay differs from a theatrical play 

This will be a highly interactive event, so bring your questions, issues, and concerns. Michael wants everyone who attends to come away with specific knowledge and insight about how to write better screenplays.

  

Saturday, September 14th
1:00pm-3:30pm

At The Writers Junction

General Admission: $15 

* FREE for Junction members * 

Limited Seats Available

RSVP here:

http://screenplaymagic.eventbrite.com

open to members & non-members
1001 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90401

~

About Michael Heartsong:

 

 For the past 10 years, Michael Heartsong has been a Development Executive and confidential script consultant, working with writers and producers to help make scripts MUCH better than they were when he first became involved. As an independent script consultant, he has always provided his help with an unconditional satisfaction money-back guarantee. If a client honestly feels he or she has not received abundant value, Michael's commitment is that he will cheerfully refund any money that was paid. No one yet has asked for his or her money back. His skill at helping to make scripts much better has earned him the moniker of "Script Wizard" by his happy, satisfied clients. You are encouraged to visit his website at www.scriptwizard.net.

 

Michael has been involved in the film industry for 30 years, and has an extensive background in production as a Director of Photography, cameraman, grip, electrician, sound recordist, editor, production manager, and projectionist.

 

From Michael's Clients:
 

"We'd been through six drafts and knew the project simply wasn't working. But no one seemed to know what was wrong or how to fix it. Your five pages of notes broke the logjam and made everything crystal clear. Now I understand what my film is really all about, and we are moving full steam ahead on a revision. Thanks!"

"Your viewpoint and comments on our project were enormously refreshing and insightful. I've never worked with anyone who comes at scripts from the perspective you do. Besides being innovative, your approach helped my partners and me better understand the film we want to make. Before your help, we were having difficulty getting a draft of the script we all liked. Now the project really sings! I look forward to engaging your assistance on future projects."

"I've directed or produced more than 50 films. I like to think I know something about this business. But, frankly, I was stymied with our project until you came along. Your extremely insightful and penetrating comments enabled us to break out of the blockages we were in, and understand how we needed to modify characters, plot line and story points to make the script and film work the way we wanted it to. I was initially very skeptical about your ability to be of help. You've made me a believer! I look forward to working with you on future projects. Thanks again for your help."

The Junction

3 Tried and True Tips to Block Writer's Block

by Jacqueline Fauni

We picked up lots of sage advice on combating writer's block from "Write Now with Corey Mandell" on April 28th. Here are a few tips Corey shared with us that can help you silence that inner critic, tap into your happy place, and churn out those pages:

(1) Dear, Dear Journal: Why is journaling different from screenwriting or novel-writing? Your journal presents no threats of rejection or failure because it's just for you-- not your manager, agent, spouse, or acquaintances-you-don't-like-that-much-anyway who barely contain their smirks when you talk about your "writing" (their quotations, of course). If you commit to it, your journal can be a safe space you can turn to time and again when you're feeling stuck and need to rediscover the pure, unbridled joy that got you writing in the first place.

(2) Meditate: If you're still stuck, getting burnt out, or your journal just isn't a happy place at the moment, put down that pen and do something else! Try meditating, or doing something that gets you into a meditative state. Go for a walk, or take a bubble bath, or dance, or exercise, or sing, or paint, or play an instrument, or listen to music-- anything that gets you relaxed, recharged, and ready to resume the battle against the blank white page.

(3) "Triage": Desperately need to finish that script in 2 weeks? Write a $500 check to an organization that you absolutely abhor (e.g. the KKK, American Nazi Party, etc.), give it to a trusted friend (or annoying person that never fails to follow through), and tell him/her to mail it if you don't meet your deadline. Needless to say, a device as extreme as this is extremely effective, but please note this is NOT a method to be used on a regular basis. This is a temporary solution that merely fixes the symptom, not the problem, and is meant for emergencies only!

Many thanks to Corey Mandell and all the attendees for making the class such a great experience! Missed out and want to attend a future presentation? Shoot us an e-mail at info@writersjunction.com and we'll let you know when Corey's having another one.

Best of luck, and happy writing!

Rediscover the Joy of Writing with Brooke Berman!

Locating the Joy

A Weekend Workshop for Writers of All Disciplines

With Brooke Berman

 Saturday, February 9th - Sunday, February 10th
1:00pm-4:00pm
$75 for each day

Package deal: $125 for the weekend

R.S.V.P. here:

http://joyofwriting.eventbrite.com
open to members & non-members
1001 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90401
~

From Brooke: 

Writers in Los Angeles face the unique challenge of writing in an "industry town." Many of us, myself included, look at Deadline, Facebook, The LA Times or New York Times before we sit down each day and actually get to work. We're writing for money or for the dream of earning more money-- and the baseline, why we started telling our stories in the first place, gets obscured. If you find yourself worrying about what's just sold rather than what you have to say-- or checking Facebook status updates instead of tuning into your characters and their idiosyncrasies-- this workshop is for you!

Spend the weekend rediscovering the joy of writing and creating multi-dimensional characters with playwright Brooke Berman. This two-day workshop is devoted to having fun while finding the authentic voice(s) of your characters and uncovering the story you most want to  

tell. Saturday's workshop will focus on the joyful writing process and Sunday's on the creation of vivid, rich characters. Both days will rely on in-class writing exercises designed to drop you back into your authentic voice and subconscious mind. Brooke has been teaching these exercises (or variations on them) since 1998, and they're drawn from her work with theater-makers Maria Irene Fornes, Anne Bogart, Deb Margolin as well as writer Natalie Goldberg and others.

Devote 2013 to your creativity!

About Brooke Berman:

Brooke Berman is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and memoirist whose work has been produced and developed at theaters including: Primary Stages, The Second Stage, Steppenwolf, The Play Company, Soho Rep, Williamstown Theater Festival, Naked Angels, MCC, WET, SPF, New Dramatists, New Georges, The Hourglass Group, The Bay Area Playwrights Foundation and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center; and in London at The Royal Court and The National Theatre Studio. Plays include: Hunting and Gathering (Primary Stages); Smashing (The Play Company, The O'Neill); Until We Find Each Other (Steppenwolf, The O'Neill); The Triple Happiness (Second Stage), Sam and Lucy (SPF, Cleveland Playhouse), A Perfect Couple (WET), Out of the Water (Cape Cod Theater Project, ARS Nova), Casual Encounters (New Dramatists Creativity Fund) and others. Her plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing, Playscripts, Backstage Books and Smith & Kraus.

Brooke is the recipient of a Berilla Kerr Award, a Helen Merrill Award, two Francesca Primus Awards, two LeCompte du Nuoy awards and a commissioning grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. She recently completed a seven-year residency at New Dramatists, where she served on the Board of Directors and developed countless plays. She has received support for her work from the MacDowell Colony and the Corporation of Yaddo and commissions from Arielle Tepper Productions and CTC in Minneapolis.

Brooke's short film All Saints Day, directed by Will Frears, won Best Narrative Short at the Savannah Film Festival and played at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008. She has since written screenplays for Vox Films, Red Crown, Fugitive Films, and the Mark Gordon Company.

Her memoir No Place Like Home was published by Random House in 2010.

Testimonials:

 

"Brooke is a perfect, nurturing, inspiring and open inspiration. She is a superb teacher and a loving complex thinker."

~Erin Cressida Wilson, writer, Professor and Director of Writing for Performance, UCSB

"Brooke Berman is an exceptional teacher. She has an innate ability to generously connect to her students and help them deepen and strengthen their writing. She creates a supportive environment where writers can truly grow. I highly recommend her workshops."

~Anne Garcia-Romero, playwright and theater professor, University of Notre Dame

"A terrific artist and a compassionate & patient instructor."

~Robert LuPone, Artistic Director, MCC Theater, New York, NY

"It is not axiomatic that a fine playwright make a fine teaching of playwriting, or any other kind of writing, for that matter.  But Brooke brings the same sense of imagination, wonder and rigor to her work as a teacher as her writing so clearly manifests."

~Daniel Aukin, former Artistic Director, Soho Rep Theater

"Brooke Berman is a deeply generous and ardent teacher; her insightful attention to structure and construction along with her belief in writing-from-the-self creates an ideal learning environment for the unhindered exploration of the creative self."

~Lawrence Dial, Playwright, NYC

"Brooke is easily one of my favorite teachers, of anything, ever. When I first took her class I was completely unsure of myself, completely unsure of what I wanted, completely unsure of whether or not playwriting was something I could do. But she grounded me, showed me that writing is not so much an achievement as it is a practice--as something you grow and live with. Her classes are motivating, challenging, exciting, and inspiring. She encourages you to reach deeper, to use what you have and to open yourself up to what's ahead. Every day that I write I call on something she taught me, and I am terribly grateful to know her."

~Meghan Deans, Playwright, NYC

"Brooke Berman kicks your ass out of pure love for the craft."

~Holland Hamilton, Actress, Writer, Artist and Activist, NYC

NaNoWriMo Promo: 30 Days, 30% Off!

Attention Wrimos! With just one week left until NaNoWriMo, we here at The Junction support (and some of us will join you!) in your brave and ambitious undertaking of writing a 50,000-word novel in just 30 day.

For those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about:

What started in November 1999 as 21 Bay Area writers, National Novel Writing Month (affectionately, NaNoWriMo), has grown into a project that each year attracts hundreds of thousands of participants worldwide. The internet, in all its magic and glory, has enabled the communal experience of NaNoWriMo to translate on an international scale.

Still looking for a writing nook to churn out those pages? In the spirit of creativity that NaNoWriMo encourages, The Junction is offering a 30% NaNoWriMo discount on 1-month memberships during November. 30 days at 30% off. That's $209 for a 1-month membership at The Junction, regularly $299.  With this offer, there is no initiation fee and no required commitment to a 6 or 12-month membership. Let's be honest, if you are writing 50,000 words in thirty days, it helps to know someone else is subjecting themselves to the same.  So, we hope to see you all at The Junction commiserating, encouraging, and, most importantly, writing.

How do you get the discount?

1. Click here to apply for membership at The Writers Junction. 

2. Be sure to include 1-MONTH NaNoWriMo in the question that asks about your current writing projects so we know to give you the special price! 

Best of luck to all you Wrimos!

Cheers,

The Junction

Plug and Play: A 13-Step Story Idea Generator

by Jacqueline Fauni

Step 1: Pick a number from 0-2. (For example, I’ll choose the number 1...)

Step 2: Pick another number from 0-9. (... and 7...)

Step 3: Pick another number from 0-9. (... and 2...)

Step 4: Pick one last number from 0-9. (... and 8, I guess.)

Step 5: Pick a city, anywhere in the world. (How about Paris?)

Step 6: Arrange the numbers you chose in Steps 1-4, keeping them in that order, to form the digits of a year. (Okay, 1728, it is!)

Step 7: Congratulations, you’ve chosen a setting for your story! (Paris, 1728. Nice.)

Step 8: Do some preliminary research. As a starting point, find and peruse the Wikipedia article for your city (e.g. “Paris”). In its history section, you may be able to get a sense of what was going on during the era in which your story is set.

For example, here is a part in the Wikipedia article for Paris that is relevant to my story’s setting:

“During the Fronde, Parisians rose in rebellion and the royal family fled the city (1648). King Louis XIV then moved the royal court permanently to Versailles, a lavish estate on the outskirts of Paris, in 1682. A century later, Paris was the centre stage for the French Revolution, with the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 and the overthrow of the monarchy in September 1792.”

So my story is set in Paris, after the royal court was moved to Versailles, and before the French Revolution.

If your story is set in the future, you can study the history and current culture of your city, examine trends, and imagine the conditions of your city at that future date.

Step 9: Do more research! Let your curiosity lead you on a natural course to different and related links, articles, and topics. Jot down all the things that jump out at you. (Hmm, who is this King Louis XIV character? How was courtly life in Versailles, and how did it compare to common life in Paris? So who ruled France in 1728? What was the Fronde? Was that like a precursor to the French Revolution? What exactly happened during the French Revolution?)

Step 10: Take a look at your notes and map out all the events, places, facts, figures, people, conventions, ideas, etc., that have captured your interest. Circle or highlight the ones that you feel most strongly about. And feel free to “cheat” – if you find that you’re more drawn to the royal court in Versailles than Paris, or to a moment in time that is 20 or so years after the year you came up with in Step 6, then by all means, go with it! Think of this as a word association or stream of consciousness exercise, and your Step 7 setting as merely the first word or prompt that gets your juices flowing. Go ahead and branch out!

Step 11: Sift through your ideas and find the character(s) or perspective(s) that you feel compelled to portray. (Maybe a peasant girl? Or perhaps a courtesan by the name of Madame de Pompadour, chief mistress of King Louis XV?)

Step 12: Write a diary entry in your character’s voice. Do not edit or judge as you write -- just keep writing! (I woke much later than usual this afternoon, exhausted from last night’s revels. The King had been particularly insatiable... Tee hee.)

Step 13: Channel your character and read the diary entry aloud. What kind of life does your character live? What does your character care about? What might threaten that? What problems does she have to deal with? Do the building blocks of a narrative emerge?

Have fun, and happy writing!

Freewrite of the Week: Jury Duty Gets Interesting

by Jacqueline Fauni

It takes a lot of courage to speak up and stick to your guns when you’ve got a different opinion... especially when you’re stuck in a hot, stifling room with 11 angry men.

That’s precisely the predicament that Henry Fonda faces as Juror 8 in the classic courtroom drama 12 ANGRY MEN. Fonda plays a quiet, unassuming architect who manages to turn a nearly unanimous decision to convict into a “not guilty” verdict after leading his fellow jurors through a closer examination of the case. As each eyewitness testimony and piece of evidence are called into question, so is the reasoning of the jurors themselves as their true characters and moralities are brought out through the grueling process.

Subjecting your characters to a pressurized and contained environment, and truly upping the stakes to life and death (e.g. of a defendant), are sure ways of bringing out explosive dynamics and poignant moments that capture the depth and complexity of human nature.

The prompt: Write a scene in which your main character is on jury duty. How does he/she interact with the other jurors? What role does he/she play? The voice of reason? The bigot? The guy who just wants to get out in time for the game? What’s the case and how does your character relate to it?

Have fun, and happy writing!

Freewrite of the Week: Party Lines and Party Fouls

Everyday eavesdropping, ca. 1957

by Jacqueline Fauni

Still looking for a story gold mine? Try a crazy convention from a golden era!

In PILLOW TALK, arguably the best of the Hudson/Day movies, Rock and Doris demonstrated the hilarity that can ensue from an arrangement we’d probably find peculiar today, but was actually a commonplace reality in the 50s. The arrangement I’m referring to, of course, is that of the party line.

Back in the day, telephone subscribers in different households would share a line, and were consequently subjected to the pitfalls that came with sharing that line. If one co-subscriber wanted to make a call, she would have to pray that the other wasn’t tying up the line with one of his many flavors of the week. And if one co-subscriber was on the phone, the other could very easily pick up the phone and listen in on (and even participate in) their co-subscriber’s conversation. Imagine the infinite possibilities -- the frustration, the intrigue, the calamity, the comedy, the party fouls -- that resulted from such a simple device!

The prompt: Write a scene in which two of your characters have to share a party line.

Let the eavesdropping, gossip, and other delightful shenanigans commence!

Announcing the Winners of The Writers Junction First Page Contest!

We read so many amazing entries, and are very excited to present the winners of our First Page Contest!

To view the winners, please visit our contest website, 

http://tinyurl.com/junctionpage

and click on the "Winners" tab.

Special thanks to Scrivener, and to our guest judges:

Jillian Lauren, author of Some Girls: My Life in a Harem and the novel Pretty

Michael Miner, screenwriter of the original ROBOCOP

A hearty congratulations to our winners, and many thanks to all who entered our very first writing contest!

Cheers,

The Junction

Filling “The Casual Vacancy”: A Harry Potter Generation Reader Anticipates J.K. Rowling’s New Novel for Adults

by Jacqueline Fauni

For those of us chomping at the bit as we near the highly anticipated release of J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy, Ian Parker’s profile of Rowling in The New Yorker may provide some desperately needed fodder until the novel hits bookstores on September 27th. Parker writes at length about the trials and triumphs Rowling faced before and after the conception of the boy wizard on that fateful train ride from Manchester to London in 1990, and intersperses an account of her life with tidbits about her upcoming novel--the premise of which, incidentally, also came to her while in transit (except on a plane).

The Casual Vacancy has been advertised as a black comedy about a small, seemingly idyllic English town called Pagford that erupts into war over who gets to fill the empty seat left by a recently and unexpectedly deceased councilman named Barry Fairbrother. Though the premise is obviously very different from that of the Harry Potter series, Rowling acknowledges a “through-line” in the themes of “mortality, morality... the two things that [she] obsess[es] about.” Parker notes that Barry holds “the same virtues, in his world, that Harry had in his: tolerance, constancy, a willingness to act.” Perhaps, then, as we witness the corruption in Pagford's local election, we may be reminded of Harry’s conflict with the wavering and blinded-by-politics Ministry of Magic.

Parker also notes that many of the key characters in The Casual Vacancy are in their mid-teens, and that “the novel seems most comfortable when it’s with them.” The teenagers in Pagford, however, deal with much more explicit and intensely dark issues than Harry Potter and his classmates did at Hogwarts, including heroin addiction, sexuality, and abuse. Gone are the vague references to Ron Weasley’s unmentionably rude hand gestures and utterances of oaths--those are apparently replaced in The Casual Vacancy by more graphic images and phrases, such as “a used condom glistening in the grass” and “with an ache in his heart and his balls.” Those key distinctions aside, perhaps it’s not too surprising that the coming-of-age-amidst-war dynamic figures prominently in Rowling’s new novel, as the plight of the angst-ridden teen is one that Rowling speaks to most compellingly as well as personally, having struggled through particularly unhappy teen years after her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

One point in Parker’s profile that especially resonated with me was Rowling’s recollection of a girl she met in a shop who told her, “You were my childhood.” As a bookworm whose middle-grade through young adult years were mostly shaped by the Harry Potter books, I grew up right alongside Harry and his friends, and learned important lessons about love, friendship, and courage along with them. After I read the very last page of The Deathly Hallows, I felt a void I’m sure was felt by my fellow Potter fans worldwide--a void that cannot be fed by anything like the series we had just finished, because there can be nothing that compares to the wonder and the once-in-a-lifetime experience that they were. And even though The Casual Vacancy is written by the very same, wonderful woman who gave us the Potter series, it is probably a misguided hope to expect it to fill “the casual vacancy” left by the end of the Harry Potter books.

Rowling’s new story promises to be a wildly different animal--which is not necessarily a bad thing, or a reason to readily dismiss it. I will always treasure (and revisit, time and again) the magic of Harry Potter's world, and do acknowledge and appreciate the remarkably mature elements in his story, but I am curious about this story Rowling has to tell exclusively to adults, especially now that I am an adult. While I’m sure J.K. Rowling did not time the release of her books to fit my timeline of personal development, it is a happy coincidence that it has turned out so, and I look forward to the continuation of that coincidence and to the opportunity presented by this new chapter in her life as an author, and perhaps a new chapter in my life as a reader.

And I will try my best to follow along without making (too many) Harry Potter comparisons.

Freewrite of the Week: Missed Connections

by Jacqueline Fauni

Ever read through the missed connections on Craigslist? It’s fascinating to read the (sometimes very creepy) messages that people are compelled to release into the interwebs after a random encounter with that special stranger at the supermarket/coffee shop/intersection/[insert typical or extremely bizarre place to meet somebody here]. It can be especially fascinating to writers because lots of questions abound that can inspire how you answer similar questions regarding your own stories -- who are these people (characters), what did they say to each other (dialogue), what happens next (plot), why should we care (theme)? When you’re feeling blocked, the missed connections section can be a gold mine for hours of procrastination story ideas.

Missed connections function as a central element in several movies -- Serendipity, August Rush, Sleepless in Seattle, and Before Sunrise (ditto Before Sunset, and perhaps Before Midnight), to name a few. An Affair to Remember is a classic example (and, in my humble opinion, the most romantic of all time), and is in fact the film that inspired this writing exercise! Take a page from the book (or screenplay) of those films’ screenwriters and see how your characters would interact in a missed connection story.

The prompt: If your protagonist wrote a missed connection to a special stranger, what would it say?

*Bonus exercises: Write the scenes in which (1) your protagonist first encounters that special stranger, and (2) they reunite (or not) (or freeze in anguish because all they could say was, “hello”).

Have fun, and happy writing!

Writers Blogging about Writers Talking about Writing #2

John McPhee

 

This guy, more commonly referred to as John McPhee, published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, in 1965, but The Paris Review didn't get around to interviewing him until 2010. Slackers (feel free to follow this characterization to all extremes of extrapolation).  Nevertheless, they did - fortunately - interview him and the whole thing went quite well. 

Among other things, McPhee discusses his history with The New Yorker, recurrent friendships with blind men, and a 60,000 word manuscript he read over the phone. Most significantly- a least for the sake of writers needing to blog about writers talking about writing - McPhee discusses the structure in his writing. Here he speaks specifically about working on Encounters with the Archdruid (1971), which covers confrontations between environmentalist David Brower and his ideological opposition:

...I read the notes and then I read them again... looking for logical ways in which to subdivide the material. I’m looking for things that fit together, things that relate. For each of these components, I create a code—it’s like an airport code. If a topic is upstate New York, I’ll write UNY or something in the margin...[Encounters with the Archdruid] had thirty-six components. What I ended up with was thirty-six three-by-five cards, each with a code word...I went into a seminar room here at the university, and I laid the thirty-six cards out on the table.

McPhee then explains:

After a while I was looking at two cards: Upset Rapid, which is a big-time rapid in the Colorado River, and Alpinist. In Upset Rapid, Brower doesn’t ride the rapid. Why doesn’t he ride the rapid? His answer to Floyd Dominy is, “Because I’m chicken.” That’s a pretty strong scene. What next? Well, there are more than seventy peaks in the Sierra Nevada that were first ascended by David Brower, hanging by his fingernails on some cliff. “Because I’m chicken”? This juxtaposition is just loaded with irony, and by putting the Alpinist right after Upset Rapid, in the white space between those two sections there’s a hell of a lot of stuff that I don’t have to say. It’s told by the structure. It’s all crackling along between those two things. So I put those two cards side by side. Now there are thirty-four other parts there on the table.

What McPhee describes here is a fundamental creative process that, most of the time, isn't given much deliberate thought: the arrangement of somethings and nothings. This is largely intuitive and, admittedly, the sheer vastness of somethings and nothings that comprise even a couple of sentences means it's easier this way. The same goes for art (the arrangement of positive and negative space) and music (the arrangement of sounds and silences). The 'nothings' in writing, the absences of details and the gaps in time, serve not only to frame the 'somethings' but to generate meaning that, as McPhee says, "[is] all crackling along between those two things." The Japanese even have a word for this crackling - Ma. Ma is not exactly negative space, or the interval between two things. Rather, it is the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these things.

At the levels of sentences and paragraphs, we cannot be expected to attend to every something and nothing; however, on larger scales, it becomes more feasible to carefully and deliberately organize for powerful effect.

So, do as McPhee does. Try to draw out the ma in your work.

If you would like to read the interview in its entirety, just click here.

The Hook #5: An Analysis of a Favorite First Line

In what may or may not be our final post in anticipation of the close of our First Page Contest, we offer up to you a few words mined from the opening page of Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay:

In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier’s greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini.

Chabon is known for sentences like these, a dog pile of clauses and colorful prose sorted in something long and textured and clean. These opening lines push us back a step at a time from the now-ish to Chabon's mysti-historical, 1930s Brooklyn. Chabon establishes a sense of distance, one that not only reinforces the fundamental structure of a novel of such scope, but that will also be iterated in the lives of the titular characters. He brings us to the beginning, when the escape artists still believed the audience was only one being fooled. 

Josef Kavalier, having escaped from Prague, arrives in New York City circa 1939, a refugee staying with his 17-year-old cousin Sammy  Klayman. Between Sammy's ambition and Joe's talent as an illustrator, the two create The Escapist, a wildly popular comic book featuring the exploits of an anti-fascist amalgam of Houdini, Captain America, and The Scarlett Pimpernel, among others. The story that follows spans nearly fifteen years, as the duo's success is met without proper recompense or recognition; as Sammy struggles with his sexual identity and Joe attempts to help his family flee Nazi-occupied Prague; as loves are built, broken, and puzzled back together. In a book of escapes, literal and metaphorical, spectacular and disastrous, Chabon promises, from the first sentence, something big and enthralling, something that we will be able to disappear into for a while.

The Hook #4: An Analysis of a Favorite Dedication

 by Jacqueline Fauni

We’re switching things up for today’s “Hook” post with Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner. The author’s first line,

“Here, I practice, and you practice,” 

is enough of a gold mine on its own, and I could easily go into raptures over how perfectly its parallelism and simplicity set the tone for Vaclav and Lena’s granted, intimate, just-us-two-in-the-world relationship. But for me, the real hook happened a little before I even read the first line--in the author’s dedication. In fact, I have never been so hooked by any first line I’ve ever read as I was by this:

Gavin, my partner in crime, my lovely assistant, 

my comrade, and the very best husband a girl could have, 

you are still my rising sun. 

You fill my life with wonder and joy and 

possibility every day. 

You were always on every page of this book, 

and now you’re part of the big, wild, gorgeous universe, too. 

I know you’re having fun out there, I can feel it. 

I love you.

Before we even get into the story, we are immediately swept away by Tanner’s unabashedly romantic, refreshingly earnest style, and are filled with the sense that we are about to witness something wonderful and profound. The graceful diction, lyrical movement, and overwhelming tenderness in Tanner’s dedication to her husband--who passed on after a six-year fight against cancer--pervade the light and whimsical, yet dark and intense love story that is Vaclav & Lena.

Vaclav & Lena is the story of two young Russian immigrants who met in an ESL class in Brooklyn at age six and have been incredibly close, destined-to-be-together-forever friends ever since. They go to Vaclav’s house every day after school and practice for their big magic show at Coney Island, proclaiming themselves to be Vaclav the Magnificent and his assistant, the Lovely Lena. Life for Vaclav and Lena seems as magical and pitch-perfect as their act, and Lena is drawn from her empty, unhappy home into the open arms of Vaclav’s warm, loud, and loving family. But everything changes the day Lena doesn’t show up for school and disappears from Vaclav’s life. His love endures, despite the probability that he’ll never see her again--but time, fate, and unyielding faith work their magic to prove how deeply connected Vaclav and Lena are, together and apart.

This sense of destiny, juxtaposed with whimsicality and a natural flow, carries over from Tanner’s dedication to small, poignant moments between Vaclav and Lena, like the first scene where Vaclav is practicing his introduction:

“Ladies and gentlemans, I give you, I present to you, I warn you in advance of his arrival, so that you may close your eyes or put your hands on your face if you are afraid, Vaclav the Magnificent, Boy-Magician.”

“Eh,” Lena says in a grumbly voice.

“Lena, what we are having here is perfect introduction to the act. It is long and perfect and made of only the best and longest thesaurus words,” says Vaclav.

Vaclav’s bright, garrulous personality is delightfully contrasted with Lena’s quiet brevity, and it is this effortless establishment of their voices and dynamic that lets us in to their own little world, and compels us to really care about them and invest ourselves in their fate.

* Moral of the day: Don’t skip over the dedication! You might miss a real gem. *

The Hook #3: An Analysis of a Favorite First Line

As we continue to post our favorite first lines, we encourage you to share yours. Next Wednesday, September 19th, we will compile your favorite first lines into a poll on our Facebook fan page to decide the favorite of favorites. Not only will the contributor of this quote receive a $10 Amazon Gift Card, but they will also be crowned Grand Champion of Quote Contribution.

Next up in our countdown, brought to us courtesy of John Steinbeck:

 "To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth." ~  The Grapes of Wrath

Steinbeck has managed to compress the thematic thrust of the next several hundred pages into all of  25 words. Destruction. Migration. Rehabilitation. The sentence is a declaration of movement, delivering us to a world that is anything but still. The Joad family, uprooted from their Oklahoman farm (escaping this, among other things), migrates west to California, spurred on by a stubborn optimism that pervades the novel. Their story is that of hundreds of thousands of Midwestern migrants forced from their land by merciless banks and the (even more merciless) Dust Bowl. As often happens, such shitty situations only get shittier: grandparents die, labor is exploited, goodhearted people are met with rancor and spite, fiances and brothers disappear, and babies are miscarried. For all that, though, Steinback leaves us with hope - and not the weak kind that's mostly a halfhearted lie. It is a feeling that echoes from the first words on the first page, carried on simple, rhythmic prose, engaging us from start to finish.

 

The Hook #2: An Analysis of a Favorite First Line

by Jacqueline Fauni

For those of you just tuning in, we’re sharing our favorite first lines of all time as we count down to the announcement of our First Page Contest winners. What are some of your favorite first lines? What exactly makes them so compelling?

*** And here’s another contest for you! Comment on any of the “Hook” posts with one of your own favorite first lines by Wednesday, September 19^th, and we’ll include it in a poll on our Facebook fan page, where people can vote for their favorite out of all the first lines submitted. The line with the most votes by Monday, September 24^th, wins a $10 Amazon gift certificate! ***

The next first line in our countdown is not a classic, but intriguing nonetheless:

Once upon a time there was a young psychiatrist called Hector who was not very satisfied with himself.

François Lelord’s first line in Hector and the Search for Happiness sets the playful, yet profound tone of his delightful parable. As the title suggests, Hector is the story of a psychiatrist (named Hector) who goes on an adventure around the world to find the secret to happiness. Along the way, as he travels from France to China to (an unspecified country in) Africa to the U.S., he meets many different people and learns many valuable lessons from them. Hector records his observations throughout his journey as numbered lessons in happiness, which are as remarkably insightful as they are beautifully simple, e.g.: 

"Lesson no.1: Making comparisons can spoil your happiness."

"Lesson no. 2: Happiness often comes when least expected."

In these lessons, and as he does in the book’s first line, Lelord uses minimal diction and concise phrasing to highlight the common, yet deeply philosophical sense in Hector’s observations. In doing so, Lelord makes us realize simple truths that we often overlook and would do well to be more conscious of.

From his first line, Lelord illustrates how Hector questions the worth of his profession as he works with patients who don’t necessarily suffer from any psychological disorders but are clearly unhappy, and then goes on to touch upon such topics as the economic disparities in society and the lack of access to mental healthcare for those who really need it, but can’t afford it. Pretty heavy stuff, but what’s interesting about Lelord’s approach to these issues is that he uses a lighter tone, and describes the state of society in general terms, e.g.

“Because, although everything worked better than in most of the world’s big cities, there were still some people who had only just enough money to live on, and some children who couldn’t stand school and behaved very badly, or didn’t even have parents to look after them any more.”

Lelord explains the world of his story as something that his readers are not familiar with -- only we find that we are, which creates a greater emotional impact on us. And by removing specificity from his descriptions, Lelord makes that impact universal (which might explain why Hector is an international bestseller). What is magical about the land of Lelord’s “once upon a time” is that it captures the realities of modern life on a basic human level. What is magical about Lelord’s first line is that it establishes our sense of that and of our relation to it, and ultimately compels us to immerse ourselves in Hector’s familiar world and idyllic, yet relatable quest.