Essays

Killing Time: Part One

September 16th, 2011

Imagine a stripper taking the stage, loud music, colored lights, the moment she enters, the stripper drops her dress to reveal herself fully nude.  In that first minute in the spotlight she’s already naked, not dancing, simply standing there with a stern face and she says, “This is my vagina... any questions?”

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Discon nected Dialogue: Part One

September 16th, 2011

Christmas twenty-five years back, I took the Greyhound bus to visit my family.  The last stop was a desert town thirty miles from where my mother lived with her second husband, and the two of them would drive to collect me, arriving in a rusted pick-up truck.  With my wrapped Christmas gifts in the bed of the truck we started our drive home, my new step-father swerved to intentionally hit a pothole in the highway, and all those gifts slammed into the rear of the cab.

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Body Language: Part One

September 16th, 2011

This month, let’s try something different. Let’s start with the assignment.  In March, put your television on “Mute,” and watch movies.  Just sit with a pad and pen and list the physical gestures that actors use.  What do their hands or faces do to undermine or reinforce the words they might be saying?  Doing this, build an inventory or wardrobe of physical gestures. 

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Objects

September 16th, 2011

A friend of mine in Italy – Paolo, who’s translated for me during my past three visits – well, last summer he told me this story.  Years back, when he was first working as a translator, Paolo had worked for Princess Grace of Monaco, Grace Kelly, and one evening she’d gone to bed in the palace, slid between the sheets, and found a surprise hidden there. An Indian tomahawk.  Or, as Paolo pronounces it, “A Tommy-hawk.”

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Required Reading -- Absurdity

September 16th, 2011

Before you go any farther, you need to read an essay by Shirley Jackson.  Also, an essay by E. B. White.  Neither will be difficult to find, and you might want a copy of each to read and reread for the rest of your life.  Both are short, no more than five pages, closer to three or four pages depending on the typeface.  And both are stunning examples of fast pacing, entering a world mid-stream and leaving just as quickly.  The Jackson essay is, “My Life with R.H. Macy.”

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Utility Phrases: When All Words Fail

September 16th, 2011

Growing up, whenever my family got together for a picnic or a birthday, if conversation lagged to silence, someone always said, “It must be seven minutes after the hour...”

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Names Versus Pronouns

September 16th, 2011

Nothing I say here is law.  These are not rules carved into stone.  Consider these guidelines more like shirts hanging on a rack in a store:  If you like them and they fit, try them on.  If they’re comfortable and make you look good, wear them.  The goal is to collect options and techniques you can use as you need them.  A wardrobe or tool set or paint box that will always be ready. So, relax.

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Nuts and Bolts: Plot Points

September 16th, 2011

This seems obvious, embarrassing even to mention, but you need to know the purpose of each scene or chapter or passage before you write it.  To make each part of a story do its job well, to best effect, you need to be very clear what the job’s supposed to accomplish.  Is the scene a set-up (what’s ‘Rosebud’?) building toward an eventual pay-off?  Is the scene or chapter a reveal or pay-off (‘Rosebud’ is a sled)?

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Tell a Lie, Bury a Gun

September 16th, 2011

Let’s revisit the idea of a “buried gun” in plotting.  According to Chekhov, if you put a gun in a drawer in Act One, then you must take it out and shoot someone in Act Three.  For example, think of the furnace boiler in “The Shining,” we’re told in the first few pages of the book that the boiler will explode if you don’t watch it.  We revisit the furnace several times over the subsequent chapters.  And when the plot needs to climax – guess what – the boiler explodes.

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A Story from Scratch, Act One

September 16th, 2011

Years ago, Ira Levin wrote a very polite rejection letter to me.  As the author of Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives and Deathtrap, Levin’s my hero of tight, fast plotting.  I’d written to thank him for endorsing my book, Diary, and asking if he could offer any advice based on his method of writing fiction.  In response, Levin told the story about a very, very old man with a long beard.  Once someone asked if the man slept with his beard inside or outside the blankets, and the old man couldn’t readily sa

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