Writing the Filmic Novel:  A Workshop with Ellen Meister

For all my writer friends who want film-worthy novels (and c'mon, who doesn't?):  My pal Ellen Meister is leading a workshop on the subject at Hofstra University: Writing the Filmic Novel. Here's the description from the course catalog:

Almost all bestselling novels have one thing in common: a strong narrative thread that plays out like a movie. In this intensive one hour webinar, master storyteller Ellen Meister will show you how to structure your plot in three acts to create a story that will appeal to readers, agents, publishers and maybe even Hollywood. Regardless of your genre, you'll learn tricks for involving the reader in your protagonist's inner and outer journey, building to an exciting climax and delivering an ending that gives the story purpose. This is an invaluable class for any fiction writer who wants their novel to come alive with the kind of "filmic" structure that resonates so powerfully with modern readers.
OFFERED JUNE 5, 7-8 PM Eastern Standard Time
http://ellenmeister.blogspot.com/2012/04/webinar-writing-filmic-novel.html 

Guest Blog from Author Margaret Marr

Editing...How I Finally Learned To Write

by Maggie Marr

I am a writer.

It took years before I could actually say those four words without a coy smile or an apology hidden in the tone of my voice. For me, admitting that I am a writer was akin to waking up and deciding to stroll down my street without clothes. Those four little words created more than a hint of embarrassment within me because of the audaciousness of proclaiming myself to be someone who thought my words worthy of publication--to actually believe I had something of value to say/write/publish/expect people to read.

But I am a writer.

For me, words flow. Story ideas blossom like wildflowers after a spring rain. Characters bounce around my brain whispering their secrets. There are so many different people living in my grey matter I sometimes don't have room for my own thoughts. I have little choice but to write down the stories that flood my mind, should I refuse to tell these tales, I fear I might actually lose sight of myself.

But here is the thing--just because I write down these words, characters, scenes, and settings doesn't mean I write them well. Just because I have a fully formed character in my brain chatting away telling me about their life, love, childhood--doesn't mean I create a multi-dimensional fully formed human being on the page. At least not in the first draft. While the initial story often comes fast for me--the refining, the crafting--well that took years for me to understand.

This is a diamond straight out of the mine.



That dark brown piece of rock looks like my first draft. Brown. Dirty. Mucky. Mishapen. Really--in a sense kind of ugly. A lot like any other rock you might pick up off the ground. For a number of years (more than I care to admit) I believed that the words--because they flowed so fast and so well were the right words. They were perfect as they came.

Those words were a first draft.

As most writers will tell you--the first draft--well she ain't that pretty. Just like that rock--there is a whole lot of potential within that draft but well you've got to cut, craft, and polish before your manuscript shines.

I read once that Michael Crichton claimed to touch every page of his manuscript a minimum of 54 times. 54. That is 54 edits. 54 cuts, 54 polishes, tweeks, rewrites, rereads, pastes--54 times. Whether you enjoy Crichton's work or not--he's a hell'uv a writer. It took me 7 manuscripts (2 published) before I truly understood the meaning of editing.

Editing is not rereading and fixing minor inconsistencies and typos. Editing is not simply making certain your character is clever and cute. Editing is not having your critique group take a pass and then you are finished. At least editing isn't any of those things for me. 7 manuscripts (actually it may be more...) and 16 years later I finally understand what editing is.

Editing is a pain in the a**. Editing is picking apart piece by piece every scene, every sentence, every word to try and squeeze the most emotion out of every little bit. Editing is doing justice to the story you've been given by sitting and sweating over visceral emotion and body language. Editing is ruthlessly cutting the scene, line, sentence that you adore but know deep in your heart does not deserve a place in your book. Editing is craft.

And editing--when done right--can make your writing (fingers crossed) look like this.



Leave a comment about something you spend the time to polish--whether it be writing--painting--practicing law--baking--raising kids--anything you know that you've made better because of your time and dedication. Thanks to random.org one commentor will win a copy of Can't Buy Me Love.



Maggie Marr is the an attorney and former motion picture literary agent. Her latest book and first contemporary romance Can't Buy Me Love published in March. Her next contemporary romance, Courting Trouble will publish July 2012. She is also the author of Hollywood Girls Club and Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club. She lives in Los Angeles, is married and has children. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and any other soon to be discovered social networking tools that serve as excellent procrastination devices. Please read her books--she has so many stories to tell!

Thanks, Chicago Tribune!

For the shout-out for best 2011 books. Link here.

Thanks, San Francisco Book Review

http://citybookreview.com/2011/11/everyone-but-you/

By Sandra Novack
Random House, $26.00, 285 pages
ISBN 9781400066810

The rawness and honesty of Sandra Novack’s Everyone But You is exemplified by its artfully crafted characters. Whether it be through the dying wife and-mother in “Ants” or the idle, suspicious writer of “Save My Soul”, we are exposed to the intimate workings of the narrators’ minds. In this place, complex webs of doubt and regret are ultimately tempered with the blatant and beautiful contradictions of words spoken. Such is life.

“Who knows how many complaints the heart holds, quietly and forever?”

Most of the stories in this collection are first-person narratives, a fact that lends an undeniable self-consciousness to the book as a whole. The self-consciousness is, for the most part, masterfully meted out by Novack; her characters shoulder the weight of their own introspection, grappling to reconcile truths in complex relationships. The well-intentioned Bud of “Memphis” weighs the burden of his volatile, schizophrenic brother against his strained marriage with a resigned helplessness. “At some point”, Bud laments, “it is as though you are suddenly on the other side of your life, looking in on it as though it were a spectacle.” Likewise, if there is any weakness in Novack’s stories, it may be blamed on this same championing of the ego, the occasional flat paragraph where one can’t help but wish for certain plot details to materialize with less direct personal explication. This, however, does not detract from the fascination nor the poignancy in which these tales are steeped.

Reviewed by Lauren Papalia

Everyone but You: A Reader's Digest Recommends Book

Everyone But You
By Sandra Novack | Publisher: Random House
Thanks, Reader's Digest!

In Everyone But You, Sandra Novack’s first collection of short stories (her novel, Precious, was published in 2009), she gives the subject of relationships a good going-over. Human affairs—be they among family, friends or lovers—are usually fraught in these tales, yet their tension can be magnetic. Oddly skewed and unpredictable, the narratives feature people who are often stubbornly unconscious of their own needs and desires, yet vulnerable enough that they are mostly sympathetic. In “Fireflies,” a impetuous, unknowable woman wreaks havoc on the life of a young man struggling to find his way. In “White Trees in Summer,” after an old woman dies, misunderstandings break out between her neighbors, local teenagers, and the elderly husband she has left a widower. Connections falter between people, even as they try to do their best. These scenarios could add up to a failure of storytelling if Novack’s characters weren’t as intriguing as they are confounding. Booklist wrote that the Everyone is an “…[electrifying collection of sexy, gutsy, imaginatively compassionate stories. Vividly tactile, funny, irreverent, and incisive, these stories of imperiled relationships are also richly plotted.”
- Review by Barbara O'Dair, Executive Editor, Reader's Digest Magazine

Enter to Win a Free Book!

My girlfriend Laura Spinella is giving away a signed copy of her book, Beautiful Disaster! Details here, on the Girlfriends Book Club site.

New York City