Oh, I've read that one . . . It's very weird. I think it's his twist of Fifty Shades of Grey. I was repulsed by it but couldn't quit reading. (haha!) Fight Club is the one you should check out. I've got to add a disclaimer for "Haunted." Do NOT read it on my recommendation. There are some sections in there that are absolutely deranged (much worse than what's in Beautiful You, and that gets pretty twisted). I don't want to be responsible for someone picking that up. Now I'm reading this: And this one I would definitely recommend. Especially on this board. CP moves quickly through topics but covers such a broad range. I'm only a little ways in (page 60) but he's hit some critical issues: mixing tenses, speaking with authority (critical for my genre, horror, and thankfully it's a big section), the passage of time in scenes and between them, dialog attribution. And . . . I love this bit, he opened with the same advice I subscribe to. I have a few posts on this board talking about it. "Think of your story as a stream of information. At best it's an ever-changing series of rhythms . . ." He then calls it "shifting textures," but it's the same idea as rhythm. The concept of rhythm reaches from the sentence to the scene and higher. It's my own personal writing approach, the grand strategy that shapes everything, and I don't hear it mentioned often in writing books. I'm delighted that Palahniuk opened with it.
Chuck Palahniuk is in my top ten, maybe five. He's so good. Fight Club and Choke are both amazing, the former being one of my favorite books. Damned and Doomed are both good. I very much hope he rounds them off as a trilogy. If you enjoy satire, those are worth reading. They remind me of Christopher Moore, another top ten author for me. The subject matter is darker than most of his other books, but somehow they're a fun, much less intense read. I didn't care as much for Survivor, but it was still worth the time I spent on it. I was going to read Rant next for no specific reason, but then he released Consider This. I will never read Haunted. I have a slight touch of crippling, blackout-inducing blood phobia. Apparently at all of the readings on his tour for Haunted, he asked the audience to hold their breaths while he read Guts, and a few people passed out cold every time. He wrote three horror books in a row after his father was murdered, and I hear they're all pretty intense. He said he had some anger get rid of. I have Consider This cued up. I'll get to it in the next month or so. I can't wait. Well, apparently I can wait, if I have several books I plan to read first, but I can't wait very long anyway. I'm glad to hear you recommend it, as you're our resident expert on writing manuals. Speaking of writing advice from writers, have you read Zen in the Art of Writing? I just picked that one up too. I love Ray Bradbury, so I figure it should be enjoyable, good advice or not. I'm also curious about The Spooky Art by Norman Mailer. I've never read Mailer though, so I thought I'd read a couple of his novels before I get to his book about how he wrote them. First up is The Naked and the Dead. Lastly, I picked up The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr. I have a fictionalized memoir of sorts I want to write eventually, so why not. I've been in a writing slump, and Stephen King's On Writing inspired me out of my last one. Maybe one of these guys will do the trick this time.
You're going to like that one a lot. It's like Stephen King's "On Writing" in what it delivers. Some of it you'll have thought about before, but definitely not all of it. It's a very easy read with lots of humorous asides and CP's own history in writing groups. It's part motivational, part theory, with lots of reading recommendations to see certain writing styles in practice. Here's a part that I liked, summarized because I know this board hates long excerpts (bad copyright juju and all that) . . . Palahniuk is in another of his writing groups. These are always led by an established author of great repute. Chuck's having problems with his writing, and so the author goes to his personal shelf. He peruses the titles for a while and finally decides on one. He hands it to Chuck and tells him to read it carefully and tell him what he thinks about it at the next meeting. So Chuck does. (He's apparently a very dedicated student.) It's a short book and so he reads it twice. The story's about a family of hillbillies who are barely scratching by. Chuck doesn't see how it applies to his writing at all. In fact, he hates it. It's meandering and pointless. At the next meeting, when the author asks Chuck what he thought about the book, Chuck hems and haws. The best he can answer is that the prose was very good, while he tries to stay casual. He can't let the others know that the book was smarter than him. That he is a pretender who can't grasp "important" fiction. He shouldn't be an author. Later, a few of the students and the group leader are hanging around after the writing class, just drinking wine and taking it easy. Chuck has enough wine in him that he finally blurts out: "I hated it!" And he explains to the group leader how he didn't understand what the book was doing. There was no point to it, and in shame, he admits that he isn't of high enough writing caliber to appreciate it. The group leader looks at him and replies. "Good. It was terrible. That's why I gave it to you. I just wanted you to see what you were up against, and that anything is publishable."
Re-reading Robert McKee's Story—the best book about story structure I've ever seen by ten miles. It's reshaping my current WIP as I go.
These double posts are really getting on my nerves. I refreshed the page to see if it had posted and it wasn't there, so I pasted it back in and posted (the ol' Paste-and-Post) and then it comes up double. Maybe if the response box is empty when I refresh that's a sign that it actually posted, even if it isn't visually there yet? FFFFFfffffuuuuuuuuu....
I read that and it annoyed the crap out of me. McKee is all about three-act structure, and he hammers that home about 75 million times. Well, not all stories fit naturally into three-act structure, and suffer if you try to force them to fit. Heck, even Shakespeare wrote most of his stuff in a five-act structure. I keep thinking slavish adherence to McKee is what makes so many movies so predictable. But I could be wrong. I often am.
Actually I read 50 Shades of Grey but the book I’m currently reading (and I’ve only just reached the sexually twisted parts) is not as awful as 50 Shades of Grey. Beautiful You is actually quite bearable. 50 Shades of Grey was not bearable and I COULD NOT finish that book. Beautiful You still has me in suspense. Yes, it’s rather dark.. and I’m not seeing a relationship between Penny and Maxwell that is based on real love. If the movies are anything to go by, I think the main characters in 50 Shades of Grey DO eventually fall in love, don’t they? In Beautiful You, Maxwell talks to an audio tape recorder all throughout their “intimate” moments and TAKES NOTES. He doesn’t love her which is a bit of a tragedy.. but then that’s probably not the kind of book that Chuck Palahniuk is trying to convey. I’m still wondering in what direction this story-line is heading, whether Penny will eventually find love (maybe with someone else) or probably I should expect things to get more disturbing for her? Horror? Yes. This is what it is.
I haven't read that one yet, but I've read five others so far, and I don't think "based on real love" is something Chuck does most of the time. I don't know how he feels in real life (looking forward to that memoir,) but he seems to take a Woody Allen-like stance on soulmates and true love, i.e. that they don't exist. As cynical as his writing tends to be though, he's far from a nihilist. Maybe it will work out. I can think of one so far that actually had a very sweet ending.
Among other books, The Bone Collector. I like thrillers but have never read any of the Lincoln Rhyme novels. So far, so good.
You know, I had those exact thoughts several times. But I want to take Gardner's advice to learn structure and then work intuitively. I suspect that's the best of both worlds approach, assuming you don't get hung up on the structure too much. Actually McKee does talk about multiple act structure though. His book is set up with 3-act as the basic minimum (for a full-length feature or novel) and then he shows how to incorporate as many acts as needed. He also gives amazing advice on short stories and non-narrative stories showing far better understanding of it then I've seen anywhere else, though admittedly he is biased toward narrative.
Does anyone know of a good book that embraces diversity in structure (three-act, two-act, five-act... no-act?)
Short stories are a good way to go when you can’t commit to anything longer. That “Supernatural Stories for Uncertain Times” certainly sounds interesting. Have you read:
Aside from McKee, who covers all that though some of it just in a single short chapter devoted to each, there's John Truby's Anatomy of Story. To add slightly to my defense of McKee above, he not only talks about more than a 3-act structure, he explains quite clearly exactly what an act is and how to know when you need more than three. The only time you would need less than 3 (in narrative) is for short stories. It's actually not 3 act structure he's so persistent about, it's narrative, which is usually presented in 3 acts.
I haven't, but given that subtitle I very much doubt it would be my 'kind of thing' It just occurred the title of the Unexplained one makes it sound like horror/sci-fi fiction, but they're all supposedly true accounts. I don't buy in to all this paranormal nonsense, but I do believe some things occur that can't be explained.
A lot of plays and television episodes are two-act, as well as the occasional movie. I feel almost sure I've read books that were clearly cut in the middle with no other discernable breaks, but nothing comes to mind, so maybe not.
I'm almost a quarter of the way through Carrion Comfort. It's my second Dan Simmons. I finished Song of Kali a week or two ago. Damn it, that was a good book.
You saw my anti-recommendation, right? Yeah, that first story is something else. I haven't laughed that hard in ages. People at his readings have passed out when he reads that one (it really did happen many times), and I think I've figured out why. . . The story's repulsive, but it keeps building on this insane humor. It reaches this peak where it really can't go any farther. (For me that's the "retarded two-headed baby" and then "both of the faces are mine.") I had to set the book down during that. I just felt this sick joy. And then . . . well, you know what happens next. And it's so vile that those emotions just slam into each other. It's as if the humor made you receptive to the horror, and then it just hits mercilessly. It's a shock to the system. Anyway, for anyone else: I don't recommend this book (though I do give it 4 stars out of 5). Some of those stories are . . . well, they're transgressive fiction. They don't have a filter. You won't forget them and that's not always a good thing. And they're not all funny. "Fight Club" is the Palahniuk book I'd recommend. His "Consider This" is really good for writers too, just know that a lot of it is on-the-road tales, a day in the life of a writer stories. Though there's some excellent writing advice in there too.
Finishing up parts of Poetry by Michael Myers. Does alright in its description of the basic elements of poetry and provides literally hundreds of great examples, even examples of what not to do which are incredibly helpful. Worth checking out if you're a new and aspiring poet. This week I will be reading Bruce Boston's poetry collection titled Close Encounters wit My Third Eye. He writes pretty incredible poetry in a range of odd genres, mainly speculative, but also fantasy and horror. Also Alchemy of the Stars which is a poetry collection of all the Rhysling award winners for speculative poetry up until the early 2010's. They are difficult poems, but quite rewarding once they are read a few times each and understood in your own way. A few of the techniques I'm trying out recently are utilized in this collection, so it's a bit of an experience.
He also asks the audience to hold their breaths, so any light-headedness compounds, and they're out like a light.
So he's trolling, maybe? Just seeing how far he can push it before people just can't abide? I always got the feeling Palahniuk was holding back some laughter in his earlier works. It sounds like my kind of thing, to be honest.
I picked up William Zinsser's On Writing Well, as recommended by @Seven Crowns in that thread about books on writing. I already want to prune and polish my manuscripts. It's time I further my education, such as it is, about the craft. I don't have it in me to read very much right now, what with things, but I'm getting into Wells' The Time Machine. It's interesting so far, and charming in that old-timey sort of way. I've also recently finished the Discworld novel The Fifth Elephant. I found it a bit below average, as far as that franchise goes, but still very enjoyable.
I should point out, that Zinsser book is for nonfiction, but kind of like "The Elements of Style," it translates pretty well to fiction. If you skip the chapters that are clearly non-fiction only (The Interview), you'll find good points on elegance.
