Ms. Kingsolver’s thirteenth and latest novel, The Lacuna
, has hit shelves, and its publicity campaign is full speed ahead.
It’s her least favorite part of the writing process. Though reportedly animated and engaging during interviews, Kingsolver shies away from limelight. She told The Age, an Australia-based publication,
”I’m much too shy to be a public person. But I think shyness goes with writing. I am the person standing by the wall, watching the person who is dancing with the lampshade on his head, and I am taking it all in and wondering, ‘What happened to him? I bet his mother didn’t love him.”
Writer’s tip: Observe your own environment shrewdly. Your eye for detail will transfer to your writing.
In that same interview, Kingsolver shares her views on novel writing, which must center around a big idea. That big idea may take years to incubate. She explains,
“It’s an audacious act to create something that you are going to ask people to take into their lives. It requires a degree of reverence. It also requires a lot from me… so I want to make sure it’s a big idea that I think is very important, that I think is worth my time and, more importantly, worth yours.”
Writer’s tip: Write about big ideas. Anything less is a waste of time.
These tips come from Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life
.
6. Show, don’t tell. Consider the difference between these two sentences:
“The young man was clearly disgruntled by the news.”
“The young man furrowed his brow at the news.”
The second sentence describes the character’s actions without interpreting them, which makes for much better storytelling and more pleasurable reading.
7. Avoid the grocery-list approach to describing characters. Grocery lists interrupt the action and make your prose feel stuffy. Plus, it’s easy to botch the parallelism in long lists, and if you don’t catch your own errors, don’t expect an editor to, either.
8. Characters must always be in a story for a reason. Stories center around action, and action requires streamlining. Sure, you can have subplots, but every character should contribute something to the story’s movement forward.
9. Names are important. The central symbols in your story, names offer a wealth of supra-sentential meaning, tapping into humanity’s linguistic, historical, and archetypal heritage. From a marketing standpoint, names also act as branding.
10. Don’t bore the reader. ‘Nuff said.
These tips come from his autobiography and writing guide, Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life.
1. Write what you know. If you know law, write a suspense novel. If you know Vietnam, write a war novel. If you know Norse mythology, write a fantasy novel. Let your knowledge and life experience determine your niche.
2. Your characters must act in a believable fashion. Every good guy has vices, and every bad guy has virtues. Even yours.
3. Your protagonist must confront a challenge that requires resolution. In other words, your characters need a plot. If you don’t have a plot, you don’t have a story.
4. Movement equals growth; growth equals change; without change, nothing happens. There is a season turn, turn, tun…
5. The strength of the protagonist is measured by the threat of the antagonist. Some budding writers try to shelter their characters from hardship, but without hardship, their characters cannot show and develop strengths. Strong characters must overcome big challenges.
Reading, Writing | Administrator | 
November 14, 2009 12:05 am | 
Comments (0) 
Subscribe