Comments on: What kind of writer are you?

By: Nicola

Nicola — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:32:49 +0000

Jaym, Scott. Yes.

By: Nicola

Nicola — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:29:05 +0000

Dianne, hey, everyone’s mileage varies. I love LotR–but that’s the only thing Tolkien’s written that I like.

Will, I tend to stop reading fiction when I writing–it’s so easy for others’ styles to creep into the work.

By: Will

Will — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:00:17 +0000

I’d have to go with Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. I find that it has lately been influencing my writing a great deal, especially the sort of magical realism that it deals with so well. The style, as well as the aforementioned subject matter, is so compelling that it makes me come back again and again.

Perhaps also Good Omens. Messrs. Gaiman and Pratchett have done such a fine job with a conversational style that draws in the reader but flows easily and seems so simple to write yet is oh so hard to emulate.

By: Dianne Cameron

Dianne Cameron — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:39:29 +0000

Sorry to say, Lord of the Rings bored me to tears. It reads like a travelogue. (Perhaps the fact that this was my sister's favorite author increased my antagonism toward Tolkien?) I grew up on Poe and Asimov and Shakespeare. Of the books from my childhood, I'd have to say Winnie the Pooh, The Martian Chronicles, Madame Bovary, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Seagull and Hamlet have been the ones I've most revisited over the years. Later on, when I began "seriously" writing, my favorites were The Exorcist and The Godfather. Of the books I've read the past couple years, I'd say my favorites have been the first few Anita Blake novels, The Girls by Lori Lansens, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, and The Blue Place. Having reluctantly given up on writing novels and short stories, I'd like to write a movie like Brick, Blood and Chocolate, or possibly The Lake House.

By: Nicola

Nicola — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:27:06 +0000

Linda, that’s a lovely quote. Dillard is so good.

Your comment reminds me of something I want to talk about soon: leaving room in fiction for a reader to make the story her own.

By: Nicola

Nicola — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:22:16 +0000

Rhyanna, watching the director’s commentary of an otherwise mediocre film I first came across the notion that films are about what people say and do and novels are about what people feel and think.

As writers I think we’re luckier than film-makers. We can do it all: the action, the conversation, the emotion, the interior life.

By: Linda

Linda — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:07:28 +0000

I thought hard about all my books and the ones I have read over a lifetime-which is now six decades and counting. I keep coming back to Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I have never been able to find an early edition hardback copy and my paperback is yellowing and worn. My questions and comments line the page borders.

One of my favorites lines in the book is …”It was a clear picturesque day,a February day without clouds,without emotion or spirit,like a beautiful woman with an empty face.”

I want what I read to pull me into the landscape of the whole story-immerse me into it and it’s characters. Allow me to become a silent observer from within the story! I want depth and color, visceral emotion, I want to be challenged to figure a few things out without direction from the writer,and I want the characters to become alive again each time I open the book cover, and to discover something new each time I read it.

By: Rhyanna

Rhyanna — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:06:27 +0000

I find that the action, the conversation that occurs between good characters for me…So when I start writing, I do that part and then go back to fill in the background.
I’m also learning how to cut back the number of conversations.
What can I say? I see the story as a movie, complete with sound, scent, atmosphere and emotion and I hurry to write it all down before I lose it.

By: Nicola

Nicola — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:04:04 +0000

Natania, characters, oh yes. And for me the setting, particularly landscape, is a character. (All the books I mention have a fantastic sense of place.) This notion–of landscape being of primary importance to me as a writer–is so huge, so ever-present to me as a writer that I didn’t think to mention it. Huh. Now there’s a lesson: the reader can’t read the writer’s mind :)

By: MDN

MDN — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:53:48 +0000

Good question for weekend mulling…