Author: Zoetic Words

Editing Proofreading and ePublishing

Books, their souls and secrets

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Secrets of souls

One of the things I love about reading is that it opens up to us the secrets of the rest of the world. Written down are all kinds of secrets, secrets of all the educational disciplines,  stories, strange and true, weird and wonderful, biographies and autobiographies of people, their cultures and quirks.

The more I know about others, the more I learn about myself by identifying where I differ from others and where I am similar. It’s much easier to see in others what I find difficult to see in myself. It’s a good thing that reading is so personal and private. A lot of the things I learn are not things I want to broadcast to the world, especially not until I’ve had the chance to correct my direction. As a lifelong learner, there have been many such corrections I’ve had to make and every day I find more.

Fiction reveals truths

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Reality obscures

How does a good fiction writer reveal the truths that reality obscures? There are two ways: by what she tells us, and by what she leaves out of the story.

The story the reader finally reads in your book is like the 10% of the iceberg above the waterline. The rest, the 90% below water is the blood sweat and tears that went into the 10%. All the things the writer knows about the story but left on the ‘cutting room floor’.

So what should be left out? Big blocks of back-story,  The boring bits, the mundane everyday things that happen, the bits of dialogue that translate to ‘Hello, how are you?’ and the ‘Fine thanks. Hasn’t it been hot lately.’ Unfortunately, there’s always lots of interesting information about the characters, lots of intriguing research and darling little scenes. But, anything that slows the pace of the story, anything that drops the reader out of the story, anything that allows the reader to remember that sleep is essential, that phone calls need to be made, housework must be done, that’s what’s left out. Padding, filling, fluff, waffle, anything repeated…you got the idea.

So, what’s in the tip of the iceberg? The story, the whole story and nothing but the story.

Someplace to go…

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Reading

The setting of your story can be almost as important as character and plot. The same story set in different times and places can change it completely while demonstrating that despite the advances in technology and differences in lifestyle, humans are basically the same no matter where or when we live.

Fairy Tales have always triggered the imagination of writers, becoming some of the most popular tropes like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. Echoes of these stories can be heard around the world in every conceivable time and place.

Jane Austen’s original classic English Regency romances have been rewritten or “updated”, set in different times and places with varying degrees of success. Even adaptations for movies based on Pride and Prejudice vary widely from the miniseries of 1995 (starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth) and the 2005 movie (starring Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen) to variations like the 2004 Bollywood movie Bride and Prejudice, or the London of Bridget Jones’ Diary. Each has a very different feel and atmosphere while telling more or less the same story.

Look at the novels of Agatha Christie. She definitely knew how to make setting work for her story. Murder is murder whether it happens on a train, a river cruise, an island or in the middle of London such as of Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None and Sparkling Cyanide.

As a reader, I am grateful to writers everywhere who can spirit me away from the dentist’s waiting room, the sickroom, a long commute or a relaxing holiday to anywhere in the world or outside it from deepest darkest space, anywhere in time or to the familiarity of my own town and time, making stories come alive.

Books v Movies

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Movie

There is a lot that writers of different persuasions can learn from each other despite their differences. Books and movies both have advantages and disadvantages when we’re talking about story.

Starting with the most obvious, the time taken to watch a movie is (usually) much less than that necessary to read the book of the same story, and a movie gives the watcher more aural and visual information which a reader must imagine. The writer, on the other hand, has much more scope to insert information which it’s impossible to include in a commercial length movie.

Commercial considerations and the particular skills of writers, publishers, screenwriters, directors, actors and editors of each version will shape the final book and movie. Whether the book or the movie of a story is better often hangs on personal preference and those commercial decisions.

A writer of books will always need to read and analyse as many stories as possible to continue learning and keep up-to-date with their craft. However, analysing movies to study story is efficient and effective as anyone who has watched Casablanca over the course of a day with Robert McKee can attest.

I highly recommend Alexandra Sokoloff’s website Screenwriting Tricks for Authors to anyone wanting to learn more.