The Movie To See Before Writing A Speed Novel
It's hard to believe but a couple of days ago I got an e-mail from the municipal liaison of the Chicago region (it was a group e-mail since I'm not really one of the inner circle of Chicago NANOWRIMO) asking for input on where to have the kickoff party.
Wherever it is, of course I'll go since one of the big regrets I had from last year is not attending it (but it wasn't my fault since I was in Los Angeles at the time). One thing I know I'll talk about and recommend to everybody participating is that they watch "Stone Reader" at some point during November.
While the documentary film maker sets out with the agenda only to track down the author of a long lost book that changed his life, he loses the plot. But in going off track to a huge extent, he actually ends up exploring what it is to be both a reader (which is something that I used to be before I got obsessed with trying to watch 200 movies this year) and a writer (which is something I'm going to try to be again in a little over a month).
And the second part is why I'm going to recommend, shout from the mountaintops even, that everyone pariticipating in NANOWRIMO watch it.
The documentary explores why writer's write and more important why writers stop writing. It's a celebration of the "one novel wonder." The common conception is that some people only have one novel in them (and I hope that's not the case in that I finished the skeleton of one already) but the truth is laid out in bloody glory - sometimes the entire process destroys the writer. Even those with a seeming wellspring of ideas like Dow Mossman (at least that's the impression the film maker gives).
There's a quote right at the beginning of the movie that I found so powerful that I think I'm going to paste it to my computer screen:
"All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you've read one of them you will feel that all that happened happened to you and that it belongs to you forever."
It was also summed up in the movie with a quote from another author, "if there's no tears in the writer than there's no tears in the reader."
That's actually the feeling that I got writing "Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream?" last year. It was such a personal story, even if it was completely fictitious (though the scenes stemmed from real experiences, as I stated last year, I extended them into either the nightmare scenario or the ideal scenario) that it wrote itself at points - and those places where it didn't are going to get trimmed when I revisit it.
The thing of that is that I'm trying to get so much psychic space from it that I can view it as someone else's book. If it doesn't illicit the same feelings in me reading it again as a stranger as it did writing it than it's going on the cutting room floor as it was. I even remember some things at the time that I stuck in to keep the story moving. And I know that everyone who's read the story saw right through these - Prague anyone?
I have that going for me this year. Now that I've finished a book (in that it has three acts, defined characters, and occasionally snapping dialogue and prose), which was my goal last year, this year I can concentrate on getting out the best 50,000 words that I can during November.
The story itself is the problem. I'm thinking of writing a story where a "petit protesteur" (I'll look up the actual French translation) gets caught up in something much bigger than he or she can handle (I'm thinking the protagonist is going to be male but to make the main character female again, with the stereotypical male trait of being bull headed, could be fun) with real revolutionaries - Michigan Militia types (but in the context of the fact that it's trying to start an American revolution in the modern day after a prior one failed, I'm keeping the alternate timeline).
The protagonist will be playing at carrying off a master plot that will set the country into turmoil, but the conflict will come in when they meet those who really are. I know there will be the storyline I've been kicking around about an agent provacateur in the midst of the small band that ends up getting the protagonist in a sticky situation. The situation will be that the member's of the hardcore revolutionaries think he or she is the government agent and their life hangs in the balance of figuring out who it actually is and exposing them (except no one believes they're not).
I can't wait to write the dialogue where the protagonist is tied to a wall and someone gets in his face and says, "you're only alive because I want you to be alive."
And I can't wait to start the book because it will be interesting writing a novel in which the protesters are conservative as hades but in a way that's not recognizable of the Freeman's movement or the survivalists in Montana or whatever. That could be the only thing that keeps me going since the novel isn't personal.
It could be crap but I guess I'll know in a little under two months.
Wherever it is, of course I'll go since one of the big regrets I had from last year is not attending it (but it wasn't my fault since I was in Los Angeles at the time). One thing I know I'll talk about and recommend to everybody participating is that they watch "Stone Reader" at some point during November.
While the documentary film maker sets out with the agenda only to track down the author of a long lost book that changed his life, he loses the plot. But in going off track to a huge extent, he actually ends up exploring what it is to be both a reader (which is something that I used to be before I got obsessed with trying to watch 200 movies this year) and a writer (which is something I'm going to try to be again in a little over a month).
And the second part is why I'm going to recommend, shout from the mountaintops even, that everyone pariticipating in NANOWRIMO watch it.
The documentary explores why writer's write and more important why writers stop writing. It's a celebration of the "one novel wonder." The common conception is that some people only have one novel in them (and I hope that's not the case in that I finished the skeleton of one already) but the truth is laid out in bloody glory - sometimes the entire process destroys the writer. Even those with a seeming wellspring of ideas like Dow Mossman (at least that's the impression the film maker gives).
There's a quote right at the beginning of the movie that I found so powerful that I think I'm going to paste it to my computer screen:
"All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you've read one of them you will feel that all that happened happened to you and that it belongs to you forever."
It was also summed up in the movie with a quote from another author, "if there's no tears in the writer than there's no tears in the reader."
That's actually the feeling that I got writing "Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream?" last year. It was such a personal story, even if it was completely fictitious (though the scenes stemmed from real experiences, as I stated last year, I extended them into either the nightmare scenario or the ideal scenario) that it wrote itself at points - and those places where it didn't are going to get trimmed when I revisit it.
The thing of that is that I'm trying to get so much psychic space from it that I can view it as someone else's book. If it doesn't illicit the same feelings in me reading it again as a stranger as it did writing it than it's going on the cutting room floor as it was. I even remember some things at the time that I stuck in to keep the story moving. And I know that everyone who's read the story saw right through these - Prague anyone?
I have that going for me this year. Now that I've finished a book (in that it has three acts, defined characters, and occasionally snapping dialogue and prose), which was my goal last year, this year I can concentrate on getting out the best 50,000 words that I can during November.
The story itself is the problem. I'm thinking of writing a story where a "petit protesteur" (I'll look up the actual French translation) gets caught up in something much bigger than he or she can handle (I'm thinking the protagonist is going to be male but to make the main character female again, with the stereotypical male trait of being bull headed, could be fun) with real revolutionaries - Michigan Militia types (but in the context of the fact that it's trying to start an American revolution in the modern day after a prior one failed, I'm keeping the alternate timeline).
The protagonist will be playing at carrying off a master plot that will set the country into turmoil, but the conflict will come in when they meet those who really are. I know there will be the storyline I've been kicking around about an agent provacateur in the midst of the small band that ends up getting the protagonist in a sticky situation. The situation will be that the member's of the hardcore revolutionaries think he or she is the government agent and their life hangs in the balance of figuring out who it actually is and exposing them (except no one believes they're not).
I can't wait to write the dialogue where the protagonist is tied to a wall and someone gets in his face and says, "you're only alive because I want you to be alive."
And I can't wait to start the book because it will be interesting writing a novel in which the protesters are conservative as hades but in a way that's not recognizable of the Freeman's movement or the survivalists in Montana or whatever. That could be the only thing that keeps me going since the novel isn't personal.
It could be crap but I guess I'll know in a little under two months.
posted by incendiarymind at 9:03 PM
2 comments
