Writing a Literary Blockbuster Merge the Metaphysics of Moby Dick

with the Action of Jaws.

by Susan Sutliff Brown, PhD

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To the Writer:

In my decades as a creative writing professor and book editor, I’ve witnessed talented writers unable to publish beautifully written and profound literary novels. As a James Joyce scholar and an equally enthusiastic consumer of “trash lit,” the question for me has always been: where’s the slasher novel that’s also philosophically profound? Is it possible to write is a well-crafted, complex, meaningful literary novel that’s also a page-turner and commercial success—even a blockbuster?

The answer has been “no” until now

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Adapted from my workshops, “James Joyce Meets Judith Krantz,” and inspired by two events—the discovery of the blockbuster formula and a new trend in genre fiction—this PDF “handbook” offers one approach to transcending the polarity between literary and commercial fiction. Your challenge is to create a fresh new genre—the literary blockbuster—which merges the goals and devices of serious fiction with those that keep readers up all night. In a word,

James Joyce

Judith Krantz

Part I: Why the Literary Blockbuster? The emerging literary environment that’s made a hybrid possible. Slides 5-30 Part II: Plan Your Book Brainstorming prompts for merging the secret handshakes of serious and commercial fiction. Slides 31-90 Part III: Complete a Rough Draft Writing prompts for drafting your literary blockbuster. Slides 91-135 Part IV: Revision, Polish, Proofreading

Suggestions for how to “rewrite” and complete your book. Slides 136-142

Table of Contents

Why would you want to merge your gorgeously written and thought-provoking literary novel with the formulas for commercial fiction? Crime writers knew the answer to this in the 1940’s. The average detective novel is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn’t get published. The average—or only slightly above average—detective story does. Not only it is published but it is sold and it is read. Raymond Chandler “The Art of Murder” 1944

Part I: Why the Literary Blockbuster?

Which opening paragraph seizes you by the throat and keeps you turning the page? Which passage goes down like required reading: you know, a book that is “good” for you—like wheat grass? SOME PEOPLE ARE harder to kill than others. The Ghost was thinking about this as he huddled in the deep, dark shadows of Grand Central Terminal. A man named Walter Zelvas would have to die tonight. But it Wouldn’t be easy. Nobody hired the Ghost for the easy jobs.

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not—some people of course never do—the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime.

The first passage is the opening paragraph of Kill Me If You Can, a number one bestseller by James Patterson and his co-writer, Marshall Karp. The second passage opens one of the most admired classics in Western Literature, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.

We may adore Henry James, but we don’t drop everything to find out what happens next. Had James inserted foreshadowing--something like— “This bucolic portrait, however, deceives. In the bowels of this country home, coiled in the jungle of lace and polished silver, treachery waited her turn.” —we might be reading him on the beach today instead of just in lit class.

Good writing alone is not enough

Literary fiction writers like James often sublimate and even ignore story-telling techniques emphasizing philosophical and psychological themes revealed through character development (as is taught in every creative writing class and textbook). Grounded in character change and philosophical goals, the literary novel was never designed as an addictive read. It requires reader attention and contemplation; the writer’s goal is to explore the human condition, and the narrative is focused on a character’s personal struggle and failure or success at transforming his or her life. This plot rarely leaves a reader panting for more.

Literary fiction is “assigned” reading for a reason.

One the other hand, commercial fiction could use a heavy infusion of craft.

Too often bestselling genre fiction is hastily penned with poorly edited, superficial content and writing that can only be described as embarrassing. Although the laziest writers just use clichés, a metaphor still must be useful to be artful. Regard John Sanford’s irrelevant metaphors in one of his recent bestsellers. At eight forty-five they were in the air, lifting out of the airport landing zone, Lucas’s group of choppers fixing themselves over I-495 south of Minneapolis, while Sloan’s group hovered south of St. Paul. Below them, the lights in the cars on I-495 went by like streams of luminescent salmon, and the street and house lights stretched into the distance in a psychedelic chessboard.

Neither the salmon image or the chess metaphor symbolize events nor forward the plot. Can’t we can expect more than just a strong plot from Sanford (a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist). In contrast, see effective imagery, slides 100-01.

Buried Prey by John Sanford

And that’s no accidental gaff. Embarrassing metaphors occur on every page of Sanford’s book.

Note Sanford’s stunning lack of sensitivity to his kidnap and rape victims with this set of artless images—as well as a charming set of metaphors for the kidnapped victim’s parents: Andi rolled half over, then pulled herself away from him,

toward the wall, like a cartoon woman dying of thirst in a desert.

* * * Andi and Grace had lost their grip on passing time. Andi tried to keep them alert but found that more and more they were sleeping between Mail’s visits, huddled on the mattress, curled like discarded fetuses.

* * * “A charming couple,” Sloan said. “Helen is a tarantula disguised as Betty Crocker. And Tower looked like somebody was pulling a trotline out of his ass.”

Why would a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer like Sanford grind out this stuff without more editing?

Duh.

• Easy writing: you repeat a formula • Devoted readership—especially for a series • Guaranteed publication • Steady income • The possibility of unimagined fame and fortune if one book sells over six million copies and

then we have the Blockbuster!

Blockbuster novels are genre fiction that attract those who don’t read novels. To sell six million books, you need to sell to those who don’t read (or read one book a year, maybe).

Peter Benchley’s first novel, Jaws, sold 20 million copies and helped invent the Hollywood summer blockbuster. It is one of the fifteen top grossing movies of all time. Return on investment: 1308%, budget $36 million, gross revenue $471 million.

Scruples created publishing history and was translated into twenty languages. On the bestseller list for one year, Scruples sold 14.6 million copies in two years and Bantam's purchase of the paperback rights at $3.2 million for Judith Krantz’s second novel, Princess Daisy was, at the time, the most ever paid for a work of fiction.

The question is why?

These mega-blockbusters by Krantz and Benchley lack unity, sophisticated writing style, psychological depth, and good taste. They’re strewn with abysmal imagery, irrelevant subplots, illogical events, irritating sexploits, one-dimensional characters, and tedious non-events.

It was Spider’s very special knack for moving through a woman’s mind, trading easily in her idiom, speaking directly to her, cutting across the barriers of masculinity and femininity without any of the warping caused by fag bullshit that did the trick. He had a passionate absorption with the sensuous secrets of raw femaleness, which drew him naturally into the center stage of the erotic-narcissist atmosphere that reigned at Scruples. . . .And no matter how cunt-happy he was, he was never unprofessional. If the men of Beverly Hills had guessed of Spider’s underground reputation as a dedicated, world-class cocksman, they might not have paid their women’s staggering Scruples’ bills.

Scruples is literally un- readable

Marvel at the ways Scruples is aesthetically and politically offensive in this typical passage:

The author of Jaws clearly got the memo about repetition as he struggles to find synonyms for “vomit,” but he failed to notice his repetition of “clump” and “weed.”

As he turned back and started walking again, Hendricks saw something ahead of him, a clump of weed and kelp that seemed unusually large. He was about thirty yards away from the clump when he began to think the weed might be clinging to something. When he reached the clump, Hendricks bent down to pull some of the weed away. Suddenly he stopped. For a few seconds he stared, frozen rigid. He fumbled in his pants pocket for his whistle, put it to his lips and tried to blow. Instead he vomited, staggered back, and fell to his knees. Snarled within the clump of weed was a woman’s head, still attached to the shoulders, part of an arm, and about a third of her trunk. The mass of tattered flesh was a mottled blue-grey, and as Hendricks spilled his guts into the sand, he thought—and the thought made him retch again—that the woman’s remaining breast looked as flat as a flower pressed in a memory book.

And Benchley needed a creative writing class.

Jaws by Peter Benchley

Nothing excuses the metaphor for the “woman’s remaining breast.”

The explanation falls somewhere between elitism, peer pressure, and “shame.” Writers, creative writing professors, and critics promote the notion that using commercial formulas to sell your brilliant writing is selling out. Moreover, creative writing programs, literary critics, The New York Times Book Review, grant programs, writing fellowships, and literature prizes exclusively privilege “serious” fiction and segregate novels into two mutually exclusive camps : literary and commercial.

So? Why don’t writers of both camps trade secrets?

Why hasn’t a writer merged the profundity of Virginia Wolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and the page-turning mega-reader appeal of Valley of the Dolls?

The time is finally right for a book that is both

If you’re a new breed of writer able to leave elitism behind and think out of the box, a Literary Blockbuster is in reach.

Three reasons

Reason One: The Code is Cracked

Mario Puzo and Dan Brown sold millions And now we know why! Creative writing professor James W. Hall has discovered and published the formula common to mega-blockbusters. In a study of bestsellers from Peyton Place, Gone with the Wind, and To Kill a Mockingbird to Valley of the Dolls, The Godfather, Jaws, and The Da Vinci Code, Hall has identified twelve ingredients common to these strikingly different bestsellers.

Cracking the Code of the Twentieth

Century's Biggest Bestsellers (2012)

Of course, Dan Brown and Harper Lee stumbled on the formula. They didn’t know about the “code.” But you do. Without compromising content or style, you can add the blockbuster code to your unpublished literary manuscript. You will want to read Hall’s book, but you’ll see references to the code in Parts II and III of this guide.

Reason Two: the stunning success of the “literary mystery” has paved the way for blending the

commercial and the literary.

In the 1990’s a new breed of talented novelists and college creative writing professors—sick of being broke and barely published—broke ranks and abandoned pure literary fiction for crime fiction producing what the New York Times calls “literary mysteries.” Already trained in literary writing, the likes of James Lee Burke and Dennis Lehane applied canonic literary techniques in their detective novels, raising the bar in the crime genre, and achieving critical and commercial success.

“There is an odd turn of events in the crime fiction genre: The 1990s detective can't shut up about anything. It's hard to go even a few pages without being assaulted by a confession of inner feelings.” "Soft Boiled: Detectives," The Atlantic Monthly (1999)

"The themes that stalk Dave Robicheaux through the swamps in James Lee Burke's Louisiana mysteries—the the arrogance of wealth, the corruption of power and the price a man must pay for the sins of his past—trail Burke's new series hero, a country lawyer named Billy Bob Holland, out to Texas hill country." The New York Times 1999

Check out James Lee Burke’s career: After two decades of making no money publishing literary fiction, Burke was one of the first creative writing professors and fiction writers to turn his prize-winning literary talents to commercial fiction. Burke gave crime fiction new respect. For his mystery series, he received critical recognition, awards, and fellowships previously reserved only for literary and non-genre novels.

• nominated for the Pulitzer Prize • received a Guggenheim Fellowship • received an NEA grant

And Burke is not alone. His fellow creative writing professors “went detective” inspiring critical acclaim and non-genre prizes and grants.

Crime fiction writer Larry Beinhart received a Fulbright at Oxford

It’s no surprise that James W. Hall left pure literary fiction behind and applied his skills to commercial writing.

“James W. Hall is in the vanguard of those who have erased the line between literary fiction and genre fiction.” Naples Florida Weekly

Walter Mosley’s mysteries are the subject of serious literary criticism

Then we have Dennis Lehane

• MFA • Creative writing professor (including at Harvard) • Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction for Mystic River • Numerous Crime fiction awards • Acclaimed movie adaptations “Lehane’s voice, original, haunting and straight from the heart, places him among the top ranks of stylists who enrich the modern mystery novel.” Publishers Weekly

Literary agencies and publishers are finally open to novels that combine genres. Check out these postings from agents at the Donald Maass Literary Agency: • Cameron McClure is especially looking for projects that combine genre style plotting with literary quality writing. • Katie Shea specializes in fiction and memoir, especially women’s fiction and commercial- scale literary fiction.

Reason #3: The Marketplace is Ready

There you have it.

The Literary Blockbuster is the Next Frontier

Are you the writer who will bridge the long-standing gap and write something philosophically meaningful that readers will take to the beach?

• Dust off that beautifully written literary novel you haven’t sold, insert the blockbuster formula, and turn it into a bestselling page-turner.

• Confront the hero of your whodonit with an emotional abyss that causes a character change even as the mystery is resolved.

• Write an entirely new novel merging the formulas of literary and commercial fiction.

• Follow this guide for one way to write a

literary blockbuster.

How to Get Started?

Note to Self: You Can’t Afford to Be Lazy, Impatient, or

Cocky

To write a great novel and be a great writer takes study, practice, training, and trial and error. Just because you speak English doesn’t mean you can write. It’s as difficult as learning to play the piano or perfecting a ballet performance.

• Whether you’re working with an existing project or starting from scratch, develop your situation, mull over the plot, get to know your main character, write an amazing opening, puzzle over your themes.

Part II: Plan Brainstorm, Cogitate, Ponder, Outline, Jot

Notes, and Scribble Drafts

• Follow the lead of great writers like James Joyce by proceeding in layers, first jotting rough notes.

• You’re not writing the book yet. You want to spend serious time planning before you attempt a draft. Like James Joyce and all other serious writers, start a writing project by doodling, jotting notes, making lists, writing stray paragraphs, doing exercises, following orders, thinking, changing your mind, replacing one idea with a better one, outlining, and planning.

40 percent of Ulysses was written in the margins of typescripts and page proofs.

Joyce took notes continually throughout the seven years of writing Ulysses.

1. Create a setting/situation

2. Disturb the status quo with a violation of the natural order (possibly commit murder)

3. Decide on the potential theme

4. Create a memorable main character

5. Establish the point of view

6. Develop a premise (not the plot)

7. Configure the plot

8. Make a rough outline 9. Choose a tentative structure

To plan your literary blockbuster, here in order, are nine brainstorming prompts.

Get humble. Drawing from the most effective devices from the great writers to bestselling commercial writers, brainstorm and jot notes before you rush into a draft.

masterpieces blockbusters Literary

mysteries

You might also want to use your EntirE Brain

The two sides of the human brain have mutually exclusive functions. The left lobe records and remembers the details of a painting (boat, clouds, lake, trees, mountains) and the right sees the broader pattern (“landscape”). The most integrated and creative acts engage both the left and right sides of the brain working together to analyze and to project a scene, a character, a setting, a sound, a theme.

For several decades writers in all fields have used the simple exercise developed in Gabriele Rico’s book, Writing the Natural Way to prompt the two sides of the brain to interact. College writing textbooks call it clustering. Draw a circle in the center of a paper, write a question in the center of the circle (with a question mark) and then bubble out from the center circle without stopping or analyzing for 30 seconds. Look back at the center circle to keep going. Why not try it for each prompt in the process? It can pull things from your subconscious in a nanosecond, details and ideas you didn’t know were there. Let’s say you’re writing about a deeply disturbed third grade teacher who goes berzerk on lunch duty one day. Set the scene by first gathering sounds, then smells from two clustering exercises. It will take 60 seconds total.

Who or what is the

What are the sounds In the school cafeteria

at lunch?

Chatter, Squeals laughter

.

Bells and intercom

Silverware clattering

Cash register dings

Trays smacking metal

Plates clinking

Chairs scraping

Pick the two best details and repeat with smells.

Brainstorming Prompt #1: Setting Jot notes to create a dynamic setting/situation; use

clustering if it works for you. a. What is the specific world of your story: cutthroat corporate life, small town intrigue, a courthouse

scandal, fly-fishing tournaments, interactive websites, a beach bum hangout, a grocery store in a working class neighborhood?

b. Where and when does the story take place?

c. Describe the novel’s insider knowledge (secret society?) biker gangs, emergency rooms, the court system, prisons, industrial spying, NYPD, literature departments, daycare? d. Does your situation illustrate the fulfillment or debunking of any universal societal myths: social mobility, class structure, altruism and charity, welfare, class warfare, manifest destiny?

c and d are from Hall’s Block-buster “code.”

e. How bad is it? Revise your situation to make the scope the worst or best of its kind: the largest corporation, the worst fratricide on two continents, the world’s best ______ g. What is the Lost Eden or Eden-at-risk (what Hall calls “The Golden Country”) as your novel opens? Jot notes and phrases which show your setting at its best (or former best) and most idyllic. List vegetation, sounds, colors, gleaming objects, positive and symbolic details of prosperity, health, and contentment: i.e. framed awards, finger- painting on frig, jewels, a garden, the smell of baking bread, brand name possessions, the glow of computer screens, the click of high heels, the thrum of the machines, etc.

Setting Prompts continued

e and f are also based on Hall’s block- buster code

Set aside your notes, scribbled drafts and stray phrases for the setting/situation.

Brainstorming Step #2 Now It’s Time to Kill Someone

If you kill someone on page one and pose the question “whodunit?” a fair number of people will stay with you. A non-genre writer has to . . . create a question that people will want answered. Larry Beinhart, How to Write a Mystery

You don’t have to kill someone for your literary novel to be a blockbuster. But you do have to dramatically violate the natural order and threaten harmony, balance, and, well, life as we know it. In fact, in all fiction:

Okay, don’t panic.

A disturbance of the status quo sets the plot in motion with a reaction to the “crime” that is:

• a quest to resolve the specific crisis

• an attempt to recover balance (Eden)

• an attempt to ignore the disturbance

• all of these.

No disturbance, no plot

In Literary Fiction the disturbance that sets the plot in motion is subtle, often not a “crime.”

A death or loss A betrayal A divorce or marriage An economic crisis A misunderstanding

A fire or storm A secret or lie An insult A change at work A birth Two girls in bathing suits walk into the market

where the hero is bagging groceries. That’s the life-changing disturbance in John Updike’s “A&P.” In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I'm in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the bread. . . . I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not. . . .the girls had circled around the bread and were coming back. . . .They didn't even have shoes on.

“A&P” by John Updike

In Crime Fiction a Violation of the Natural Order is, well, a Crime

•Serial Killings •Family Annihilation •Stranger Abduction •Sexual Violation •Patricide •Severe Child Abuse •Rape of the Earth •Infanticide •Terrorism •Political Assassination •War Crimes •Torture

2nd Chance, James Patterson

Aaron Winslow would never forget the next few minutes. He recognized the terrifying sounds the instant they cracked through the night. He couldn’t believe that someone was shooting a high-powered rifle in this neighborhood. His choir was just leaving the La Salle Heights Church. Forty-eight young kids were streaming past him toward the sidewalk. They had just finished their final rehearsal before the San Francisco Sing-Off. Then came the gunfire. A strafing. An attack.

The crime in commercial lit is often introduced in a prologue or the opening paragraphs. It’s graphic, shocking, and hooks the reader with questions. Who did it? Why did they do it? Will they get caught? Will they be punished? For a blockbuster it must be the worst crime of its kind. Think Hannibal Lecter. Or the slaughter of innocent children:

• serpent that shakes up

Forget subtle disturbances such as a jolt to the main character’s self-esteem. In a few sentences or paragraphs describe the blockbuster-sized “crime”—with larger-than-life sensational proportions and originality—a “violation” that has enough power to shatter the status quo of your setting and represents symbolically the serpent in Eden coming awake.

Time to Write Something

So, what’s your crime?

By the way, who did it?

a psycho mobster a lethal organism an alien form PTSD global warming an inept CEO a seductive terrorist poverty callous lawmakers a religious zealot a cult leader a boy scout leader The reader doesn’t have to know who did it

yet, but you do.

?

Who or what is the

Who or what is the snake in the

garden? Who is most dangerous

to the company?

power hungry

saved company by wits

furious ex-wife

.

board chair

angry journalist

stockholder rep. secretary

hated And

feared

CEO

veep

Oh Yeah. Another thing: does your crime relate to your theme? It better—or you’ve violated narrative

unity.

In a literary blockbuster, the world-shattering threat, one-of-a-kind crime, or blockbusting disturbance prompts a sea change in the main character (even if gradually over the course of the book) and sets up the literary half of the equation—the book’s theme or themes.

Soooo. Time to brainstorm for a theme.

• Opening with vigilante murder points to the universal question of who should dispense justice. • A scene with mutant butterflies flapping on the ground suggests the dangers of nuclear or biological “accidents.” • A shocking scene of foster children committing group suicide in a group home indicates a themes of social injustice and institutional failure.

The crime or violation opening the book indicates the universal question at stake.

For example:

Brainstorming Step #3: What’s the Point?

A literary blockbuster has the philosophical and thematic goals found in literary fiction

Commercial fiction purposely avoids an in-depth treatment of philosophical, political, socio-economic, or psychological themes or character development that would require the reader (or writer) to work too hard. And readers want entertainment and escape, not homework. Jackie Collins sold 400 million novels of appalling writing in 40 languages.

In the formula for literary fiction the events of the narrative and their impact on the main character illustrate the author’s original and complex exploration of one or more of the timeless and eternal questions. Faulkner went broke and finally worked in a post office and sold out to Hollywood.

The point is money

Faulkner had a point and no money

THE TIMELESS AND ETERNAL QUESTIONS And Themes of Philosophy and Literature.

Is there a design in the universe? Why do evil and pain exist? Are there absolute truths or is truth relative and subjective? What is our relationship to nature? How do we apprehend reality? Does romantic love exist? How should resources be distributed and retained? And I’m just getting started

The questions don’t change. From age to age and culture to culture, the answers do. The answers equal a set of assumptions that constitute a culture’s or an individual’s world view. How writers answer these questions determines their approach to the thematic thrust of a narrative and characterization.

Why are we here? Is there a God? Are humans innately evil? What is the self (essential or existential)? What constitutes heroic or worthy behavior? What are human limits (free will or determinism)? What is beauty?

Stating the theme insures your novel has unity

Well-crafted literary novels have “unity” which means all events, characters, conversations, and descriptive details must be relevant to illuminating the theme or themes. Although a statement of your theme will not appear directly in your novel, stating this clarifies for you which content is needed and which must be slapped on the operating table and removed. For example, if your novel explores the risks of romantic love, then a character’s Iowa Test Scores aren’t relevant but his or her Herpes test may be.

So, What Point Does Your Book Illustrate? What is your “theme?”

•Love Can’t Save Us •Love Can Set Us Free •We Make Our Own Luck •Control Is an Illusion •Life Is Unfair •Determination Can Triumph •The Struggle/ Journey Is All •The World Does Not Reward Talent • Art Is Elitist and Thus False •The Desire to Create Is Innate •Love Sucks

In a phrase or sentence state your potential theme—the point of telling

this story.

Brainstorming Prompt # 4: Create a Memorable Main Character

First, Who Has to Be in Your Book? List the characters essential to the story—the ones that have to be there—and their relationship to the basic situation.

• The nurse who witnessed the botched surgery • The neighbor that was in love with the victim • The cousin who couldn’t keep the secret

Now choose the main character

• Which character has the most to lose in the premise you’ve established?

• Which character is insightful enough to be capable of change and growth?

• Which character has the most potential to fascinate in terms of complex personality.

• Do these descriptions fit one specific character?

They need to, and that’s your main character.

1. Choose appropriate, symbolic, and memorable names for characters, towns, streets, mansions, and pets.

2. Scarlett, Rhett, Scout, Ishmael, Ahab, Holden, Tara, Peyton Place, and Amity are taken.

3. Vary the opening letters for characters' names the number of letters and syllables in each name. Avoid Lenore and Lydia or Amber and Ambrose as names in the same work of fiction.

4. Use a baby name book for appropriate origin and meaning for each character's name.

5. Use a phone book for last names.

6. Experiment with name changes while drafting and revising.

Next, imagine Scarlett O’Hara named “Jane Smith” or Rhett Butler as “Norman Brown”

Other Identify Markers? Aside from the main character’s connection to the novel’s

premise, list additional descriptors.

1. Professional history: stick with what you know. Are you or someone close to you an astronomer, a gay activist, a local theater actress, a bus driver, a madam, a first grade teacher, a medievalist?

2. Family make-up: is your main character a twin, a parent of triplets, bi-racial, adopted, donor-conceived?

3. Family history: blockbuster protagonists come from fractured families: death, divorce, foster care, abuse.

4. Avoid any mention of physical features unless relevant to illuminating a personality trait. If the person has brown eyes, so what? Big brown eyes? Double so what. Literary writers never mention the “rose-petal skin” or “carmine lips” of a character. If a feature makes the character arrogant or self-conscious and it’s relevant to the plot, okay. You can mention it.

Build a personality profile by listing potential personality traits

• Operates as an individual, rebel, and often loner

• Facing seemingly insurmountable internal and external problems • Passionate about an agenda and has tremendous determination; he or she won’t take “no” when set on a goal • Conflicted about religion (did God send the shark?)

First, consider choosing traits from the Hall’s blockbuster code:

Add at least 2 traits from literary fiction to your list (Note: also create a worthy villain from the traits on this slide)

• Capable of introspection and change • Engaging because poetic, linguistically interesting • Tortured—or at least conflicted • Truly witty about the world, self, & human nature

Add a positive feature to the list

In harmony with nature Roots for the underdog Committed to family Honest and perceptive about self (with reader) Volunteers with special needs kids Loves all animals

(Even a sniper aiming his gun from the rooftop will gain empathy [i.e. interest] from the reader if he reaches down to pet the dog he has rescued from a gutter and asks himself, “what’s wrong with me? Why do I do this?”)

Complicate the main character’s profile by a coin toss

heads tails organized disorganized cynical sentimental health nut no exercise/ junk food political junkie doesn’t read news social animal reclusive confident insecure

Exercise borrowed from mystery writer Lawrence Block

A selfless housewife with brown hair, hazel eyes, and a lovely disposition who’s let herself go and is depressed because her husband is cheating has a good chance of being boring if not irritating.

The traits that don’t go on your profile are “unintelligent,” “uncomplicated,” “pure,” “pitiful,” or “out of shape.” Compare:

An overweight, pissed-off soccer mom who is plotting to trap her adulterous husband after she sneaks a GPS tracker under his Jaguar and refits her mini-van for surveillance has a chance of getting our attention.

• Being “good” doesn’t equal fascinating. • Being a victim doesn’t make wife 1 sympathetic. • Eye color is irrelevant. Wife 2’s weight might be behind her anger. If not, drop it.

Create a character or entourage of characters you want to spend more time with and charismatic enough to leave readers wanting more. Think about Easy Rawlins (Mosley), John Corey (DeMille), Dave Robicheaux (Burke), the shark (Benchley), Angie and Patrick (Lehane), George Smiley (le Carré ), and Bond, James Bond (Fleming).

Think Like a Commercial Writer: Think Series

Brainstorming Prompt #5: Establish a logical and effective point of view

In literary fiction, the point of view character is the main character. It is through the main character’s perspective and growing insights that the themes are illuminated. Multiple points of view mean multiple main characters exploring multiple and parallel themes.

Avoid inconsistent and amateurish points of view

• Limit the point of view to the main character unless multiple points of view are critical to your theme. • Avoid gratuitous time in a minor character’s head. Readers align with point of view characters, so avoid confusing the reader’s allegiance with too many points of view.

• Avoid shifting points of view within a scene.

• To see pt. of view problems review the minor characters on slides 15-16: Jaws (Hendricks) and Scruples (Maggie and Spider).

Consider different options for point of view

1. First person (The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick)

2. Third person limited (The Sun Also Rises, Death in Venice)

3. Omniscient / Objective (Madame Bovary; The Godfather)

4. Alternating points of view (Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway, Wuthering Heights, The Sound and the Fury)

5. Internal monologue (Ulysses)

6. James Joyce’s “initial style”: Third person limited blended with internal monologue/first person (Ulysses)

7. Double perspective/naïve narrator (Huckleberry Finn)

8. Unreliable narrator (Lolita)

1. First person: “If only I had thought it through.” 2. Third person limited omniscient: “If only Sally had thought it through.” 3. Try another point of view.

Experiment with Points of View

Have your character think about the crime in the first and then in the third person. Start with these two, the most common points of view, both of which limit the perspective to a character’s experiences and observations. Fill in your character’s name.

Select a Tentative Point of View and

Set Aside Your Notes for the Main Character’s Profile

(You’re going to build on the list of traits and use the point of view when we move to writing prompts and begin drafting the opening of your literary blockbuster.)

Brainstorming Prompt #6: Develop a premise that kicks butt

The premise is not the plot. It’s a 1-sentence to 2-paragraph description of what’s wrong or about to go wrong in your setting. It’s the problem from which the plot will spring.

If someone asks, “What’s your book about,” your answer is the premise. i.e.

(Although the premise won’t appear as a direct statement in your novel {it will be illustrated by events}, it’s a critical first step, the jumping off point.)

These are not real books. Yet.

• “a religious cult is invaded by aliens”

• “a CEO off his meds buys a failing circus”

• “the child of a bi-racial transsexual couple is expelled from daycare”

Spend real time on this. To create a literary blockbuster, the writer must blend two opposing goals—commercial and literary—in a high-stakes, thought-out, original concept.

The premise is any single image, moment, feeling or belief that has enough power and personal meaning for the author to set his or her story on fire and propel it like a rocket for hundreds of pages. Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel

The Premise is a Critical Step

A lawyer who left his law firm and unhappy life taking with him the firm’s 90 million dollars is finally captured, tortured, and returned to the U.S. As the legal maneuvering unfolds, secrets emerge, clever strategies are in play, and the thief embarks on a secret plan which requires out-strategizing the FBI and the courts.

Premises for commercial bestsellers promise a suspense-filled, addictive read.

Written before 9/11, the novel opens as a rogue Arab terrorist enters the United States by taking over an airplane. The hero and narrator John Corey, a detective, takes us on the wild ride to track down the terrorist. A literary writer can learn a lot about plot, structure, pacing, and engaging narration from this bestseller.

The Partner by John Grisham

The Lion’s Game by Nelson DeMille

A husband who is still grieving eight years after the “death” of his beloved wife, receives an email message with an attached photo of her on that day thus setting in motion a suspenseful mystery as he attempts to find her and unravel the facts.

Tell No One by Harlan Coben

Premises for 3 famous literary narratives Literary fiction focuses on philosophical, psychological, and emotional concerns grounded in character and theme—not action and suspense.

A young boy packing groceries is changed forever when two girls in bathing suits enter the store and his limited world, which includes mimicking his co-workers’ sexism, is tested and he is forced to choose between the comfort of his old life and beliefs and the freedom of facing the dark unknown.

“A&P” by John Updike

Although the smug mid-Western narrator scoffs at the careless life of the filthy rich in the East and is fascinated by the efforts of a self-made imposter, as the book opens, he fails to recognize his own shallow rationalizations and intolerance.

The Great Gatsby

A young woman married to a doctor falls in love with a dashing nobleman over whom she becomes suicidally obsessed, thus facing a conflict between passion and the internalized 19th Century societal messages that tell her she’s wrong.

Madame Bovary

Hints for creating a killer literary

blockbuster premise

1. Broaden the scope and make the stakes impossibly high. At risk must be the whole country, all adopted children, the entire horse- racing industry, the foster care system, cancer research, or the Constitution. 2. Give your character an impossible personal conflict to resolve. What’s at risk for him or her? Self-worth, freedom, hope, security, love?

This is what the premise of The Godfather might look like if Puzo had made his blockbuster a “literary blockbuster.”

When a Mafia don’s refusal to provide a “favor” leads to an attempted “hit” on the “Godfather” and sparks a book-length bloody “five-family war,” the youngest son, Michael Corleone, abandons his attempt to live a crime-free life and leads a ruthless campaign to take vengeance and keep his family on top of the Mafia heap. The plot hinges on Michael’s internal conflict as he struggles and discovers he is capable of suppressing his “true nature,” thus illustrating the existential question of “how to define the self” as the theme at the heart of the book. In the blockbuster original, Michael’s change from model citizen to new head of the Mafia is the expedient result of external events, unaccompanied by any in-depth examination of his internal conflicts and motives. to premise,

The God- father by Mario Puzo

Turn Escape Lit into Serious Literature

Now Develop Your Premise Combine the flashy and exciting buzz of a commercial premise

with a protagonist whose self-esteem and/or world view is shattered to the core by the stunning violation of the natural order which opens your book. The “crime” detonates the change (the awakening) in the main character thus illustrating the author’s point (theme).

These aren’t real books.

For example: The murder of a stable of thoroughbreds leads a detective through a maze of shocking revelations to face her own twisted impulses thus illustrating the theme that reality is a function of perspective. An abduction of his handicapped niece for ransom causes a man filled with self-loathing to confront his own inhumanity thus demonstrating the human need for self- delusion. A violent neighborhood feud humbles an arrogant housewife and forces the community to choose between an individual and “the greater good.”

Want a model? The combined premise already exists in crime fiction.

In the “literary mystery,” a shocking crime and criminal are pursued by a detective whose own self-image and values are tested and changed while working the case. Look at the premise of Lehane’s Gone, Baby, Gone where the crime is child abduction:

Gone, Baby, Gone, Dennis Lehane

When Patrick, a straight arrow detective in South Boston, solves a case and finds a missing child, the shocking facts of her disappearance pit Patrick against his girlfriend, his faith in justice, unanswerable moral questions, and more importantly, himself and his own conventional and idealized beliefs.

So?

What’s your novel about?

(Can you put the premise in one or two sentences?)

Brainstorming Prompt #7: Configure the Plot Build on Your Premise and Merge the Plot Lines of

Commercial and Literary Fiction

This is the Big One, the Mondo-Task, the Uber-Challenge—the reason writers haven’t produced a literary blockbuster. To create a literary blockbuster, the writer must blend two mutually exclusive plot lines.

The excitement in a blockbuster is fueled by suspense and a series of sensational events solving a mystery and/or apprehending the bad guy. It’s pure escape and entertainment. Airplane lit. There’s no deep treatment of a theme, no psychological study and the characters are unchanged by the crime or its resolution.

Plot One: The Blockbuster Plot

1) The shark kills a skinny-dipper 2) The shark kills a child 3) The shark kills a man 4) The shark kills a shark expert 5) The chief of police hires a shark hunter 6) The shark kills the shark hunter 7) As the shark sinks to the bottom dead, the chief heads for shore and a sequel 8) For no good reason, the hero’s wife cheats on him

Check out the plot of Jaws Hello. You can do better.

In the literary plot the surface events (usually non-sensational and mundane) trigger the real plot, the main character’s internal crisis and emotional-spiritual-psychological quest. The plot of Ulysses constitutes two characters’ existential struggles with their self-images and world views. One character, Leopold Bloom, doesn’t battle a whale, find stolen rubies, or solve a murder. Instead, in the first 200 pages, he:

1. Buys a pork kidney 2. Feeds his wife breakfast 3. Discovers his wife is about to cheat on him at 4 p.m. 4. Mails a letter 5. Goes to work 6. Stares at the statue at the National library 7. Eats a cheese sandwich

And Plot Two: the Literary Plot

Ulysses by James Joyce

The real plot occurs in Bloom’s mind and heart as external events trigger internal conflict, reactions, and changes. Although Bloom tries every trick he knows to avoid emotional pain, he has a crisis of faith over his wife’s infidelity and the memory of his son who died as a baby. Bloom’s emotional quest, succeeds and brings him to a place of equanimity and compassion as he finds his feminine side, a capacity for nurturing, and enough tolerance to climb into bed with his sleeping wife. In his despair, he has “seen” what has meaning. The novel’s character-driven literary plot illustrates the theme that love, not fidelity, is the only thing of value in a world of shifting truths and social stagnation. As we learn through access to Bloom’s thoughts and memories, he comes to peace as he acknowledges human nature on the one hand and his own part in his wife’s desire for a lover on the other.

So what are the “real” events of Ulysses while Bloom is cooking a kidney or mailing a letter?

Ulysses by James Joyce

So how can one combine in the same plot a series of shark killings and a man embracing his feminine

side while eating a sandwich? The first three “events” in the plot of Jaws might look

something like this as a Literary Blockbuster:

1. The shark kills a skinny-dipper and chief Brody, a by-the-book official who has always been a trusting believer in God’s mysterious design, feels the first twinge of doubt as he looks at the corpse. He’s also confused when the townspeople seem unperturbed because the girl was a tourist—and naked. Brody spends a sleepless night after telling the victim’s horrified parents.

2. When the shark kills a visiting child, Brody becomes physically ill, unable to sleep, and racked with guilt for not insisting the beach be closed. His questioning of God increases as the town stirs.

3. When the shark kills a local man in front of a crowd including his own son, Brody finds himself siding with the local population against his bosses, the town board, and becomes increasing cynical and angry at God.

Chief Brody, not the shark, would be the main character

1. When Leopold Bloom, a Jew in Catholic Dublin and a compassionate but not very brave man, steps out to buy a kidney for breakfast, he witnesses a struggling child being pulled into the side door of a church. He recognizes one man as a priest. Bloom stands frozen on the sidewalk. His own son died at 11 days old and would be about this age had he lived. When Bloom tells a policeman what he saw, he is rebuffed. Priests are not questioned about their behavior in 1904 Dublin.

Adding a blockbuster element to a literary masterpiece might look like this as Bloom

purchases a kidney in Ulysses:

Ulysses by James Joyce

The literary blockbuster is a novel that seizes the reader by the throat with a sensational, gripping storyline while illustrating profound truths about the human condition through the main character’s struggle with his deepest fears and crippling beliefs. Moby Dick meets Jaws.

Just so We’re Clear

Describe your merger of the two plots in less than a page, even one sentence.

1. Make a loosely chronological list of all essential events, the ones that have to occur for the blockbuster half of the premise to proceed and resolve.

2. Revise this list of scenes making sure the literary, character-driven storyline is developing in each scene. What’s happening in the main character’s internal struggle? 3. To write an economical outline with only essential scenes, visualize your premise being made into a film. What scenes have to be there. Just as in film, in fiction you leave any events or scenes that aren’t essential to developing the plot and theme. We don’t need to see the family driving to the picnic. Cut right to the main event at the picnic the next day. 4. Place a check beside the most important scene, the central event upon which the two plots pivot.

Brainstorming Prompt #8: Prepare a Rough Outline This is a list of the potential scenes required to execute your

tentative plot.

Free download: The Story Structure to Die For http://www.pjreece.ca/blog/wordpress/story-structure-to-die-for-pj-reece/

P.J. Reece offers an excellent format for plotting a novel which works well for a literary blockbuster:

The protagonist’s self-esteem and/or world view is “rocked by an 8.2 on the Richter scale leading to a loss of faith,” after which the character descends to “the dark heart of the story where terrifying uncertainty gives way to vision and insight.” The character ‘sees’ the truth and either “throws off crippling beliefs” and is changed and reborn or fails to do so.

Summary of Reece’s analysis:

Brainstorming Prompt #9: Choose the Best Structure for Your Novel

Note to Self: plot and structure are not the

same thing. At all.

Plot is what happens chronologically as the crime is resolved and the main character goes through a dark night of the soul and a rebirth. Structure is how events (the plot) are placed in space and time for the reader.

Chronological with flashbacks: the most common structure in which the story proceeds in order from the catalyst to the resolution, with flashbacks to fill in history and background (Great Gatsby and most novels)

Closed Frame: the novel opens in present, flashes back to the bulk of the story and then returns to the present (Frankenstein; Bridges of Madison County) Open Frame: the narrative opens in present but the entire book is a flashback (Turn of the Screw, Wuthering Heights) Epistolary: the entire story is told in letters, either from one

letter writer or in an exchange (We Need to Talk about Kevin; Incendiary)

Typical Narrative Structures for a Novel

The Quest: the main character embarks on an emotional, psychological, and/or physical journey seeking an internal and/or external goal. Increasingly difficult obstacles must be negotiated (Huckleberry Finn; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) Rites of Passage: any narrative (short story or novel) which dramatizes a character’s move from innocence to experience, childhood security to adult realities (usually at age 13 to 18). A rites of passage novel traditionally proceeds from childhood to the loss of innocence (usually from birth to 16 or 18) (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Angela’s Ashes, “Barn Burning”) Parallel Narrators: multiple narrators and narratives are given parallel representation in the novel and provide two versions of the evolving story, sometimes protagonist and antagonist but often differing perspectives on the same events (Mrs. Dalloway; The Sound and the Fury; As the Great World Spins. Prologue/ Epilogue:: often combined with another structure

Narrative Structures Cont.

Work with your chronological list of events. Now experiment with the order and trying out one of the structures listed on the previous page. Don’t actually “write” the novel to find a structure. Writers use several methods to “visualize” the novel spatially and look at different structures. • story boards (index cards on a bulletin board) • shuffling index cards • digital tables in Word

Experiment to find which structure is most effective for organizing your plot.

Choose a tentative structure

Part III: Writing Prompts

Okay. Whew. Good Work. You now have the raw material to begin writing.

It’s time to employ the secret handshakes of the great authors while you draft a

page-turning blockbuster plot.

And a first draft is just that. Most writers don’t keep more that 5 percent of their original attempts. And those are the lucky ones. Literary agent and Breakout Novel guru Donald Maas estimates that most novels go through 25 to 50 revisions.

Aim Low

Draft Section One: The Opening

Draft Section Two: The crisis/revelation, the crucial scene for both plots, the one you highlighted in your rough outline, the one that brings everything for the character and the crime to a turning point. This is the character’s “awakening” scene. Draft the Final Section: The Ending

Jot Notes to Draft 3 Key Scenes

Before you write the whole book, draft three sections of your proposed literary blockbuster.

You hook or lose a reader on the first page, so this section has to be provocative and well-written. This section also has to do a lot of work for your novel. All the threads and elements are established here. Working from your notes, draft the opening of the book which establishes the setting/situation, the premise, the crime, the main character, the point of view, the theme, the plot, and ongoing symbolism. In the first pages, your main character’s conflicted interior life is rocked by the “crime” at the center of your book. You want the main ingredients of the dual plots—the “crime” to be resolved and the character’s conflict about it—to emerge clearly in the opening.

Draft Section One: The Opening

You need your notes for the setting, crime, main character, premise, and theme.

Independently and in any order, follow the writing prompts for these elements of the opening:

1. The setting

2. The crime and mystery to be solved

3. An introduction to the main character and his or her internal conflict as the story opens

4. The character’s confrontation with the “crime,” setting the literary plot in motion 5. A look at the character’s deeper motives

6. A “plot point” which creates suspense

7. The ordering of these parts of the whole opening

8. Add a leitmotif or symbolic recurring image

Opening Writing Prompt #1: Draft the Setting Based on your notes, write a description of your setting or

situation (small town, office, circus?)

Include every element of the setting recorded in your notes without using adjectives or abstractions. Employ the stylistic secrets of the literary masters and learned in creative writing programs:

No abstract adjectives or adverbs No abstract nouns or phrases (show don’t tell) No clichés Use sensory details (other than sight) Use symbolic objects and details (i.e. weather) Use strong and imagistic verbs Use metaphor and personification

Hints • Include at least three symbolic objects or details • Add one sound, one smell, and one color • Create a metaphor to capture the mood

Employ Effective Imagery in Your Description

If your reader can’t see, smell, hear and sense the setting for the scene, you’re still too general and abstract. It needs to be concrete to be believable. In the example below see the contrast. Strong imagistic verbs and specific details create the sense of place and bring to life the tawdry environment where something is about to take place.

Vague: The alley is full of junk and garbage and smells. Concrete: In the alley behind the Elbow Bar squats a rusty Plymouth, its tires flattened to puddles. As a streak of gray disappears among the sloppy platoon of trash cans, a cat screeches. Somewhere a car coughs into gear. The odors of mildew, pizza, and stale beer float from the bar’s back door.

Dennis Lehane relies on imagery and symbols to establish the numbness and tedium that pervade a neighborhood in Boston. The setting suggests that “working class” unrest and values inform the story and hint at the premise—a missing child. Note the personification of the setting using words like unsettled and listless to set the city’s moods. At the end of an April day, after the sun has descended but before night has fallen, the city turns a hushed, unsettled gray. Another day has died, always more quickly than expected. Muted yellow or orange lights appear in window squares and shaft from car grilles, and the coming dark promises a deepening chill. Children have disappeared from the streets to wash up for dinner, to turn on TVs. The supermarkets and liquor stores are half empty and listless. The florists and banks are closed. The honk of horns is sporadic; a storefront grate rattles as it drops. And if you look closely in the faces of pedestrians and drivers stopped at lights, you can see the weight of the morning’s unfulfilled promise in the numb sag of their faces. Then they pass trudging toward home, whatever its incarnation.

Let the imagery and setting suggest the mood and even the premise of the story.

Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane

One trick to creating a killer setting: steal from the great writers

Just as a painter learns palette knife technique sitting at the feet of Van Gogh's Wheatfields with Cypresses in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, writers of all types of fiction can improve their writing by copying the masters. Take a few sentences from one of these settings from literary fiction and fill in the sensory details and nouns with ones of your own that are just as vivid and evocative. Or pick a setting from a major author you love. The setting can be slick, lush, ironic, or witty. Note how the settings set up the premise: the impulse for romance in Madame Bovary, dimming expectations and disappointment in “Araby,” lives wasted in excess and opulence in Gatsby, and self-destruction and nihilism in Fear and Loathing.

It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars of the arbour and away beyond, the river could be seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapours rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

“Araby” by James Joyce

Setting:

When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas.

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. . . .A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea. The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, “I feel lightheaded. Maybe you should drive”. . . the car which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down towards Las Vegas. My attorney had taken off his shirt and was pouring beer on his chest to facilitate the tanning process. “What the hell are you yelling about,” he muttered staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered by wraparound Spanish sunglasses. . . .It was almost noon and we still had more than 100 miles to go. And they would be tough miles, I knew. Very soon we would both be completely twisted.

Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter Thomp- son

Write a draft of the main setting for your novel (or one of the key settings) weaving in a second paragraph which shows the Edenic version—what the setting used to be like or ideally could or should be.

(Set this aside. You’re not sure yet where this will appear chronologically.)

Opening Writing Prompt # 2: Revise the “Crime.” Based on your notes and drafts, make sure the depiction of this shocking blockbuster-worthy “crime” is sensory, concrete, subtle, and original.

Tips for drafting the “Crime”:

1. Try to depict the “crime” with originality and suggestion: sounds, smells, symbols (a shoe slick with blood in the

stairwell, the sound of a dog whimpering, the squeak of a rope rubbing on the rafter, the empty car still running, onlookers backing away.

2. Make sure it’s relevant and sets the plot in motion (which is a quest to restore order). 3. The violation must prompt a dark night of the soul for your main character, shaking to the core his or her self-esteem or valued beliefs. 4. Be subtle. To be literary, describe the crime without gore or graphic details (Faulkner never described the horrid events at the heart of his novels).

Check out this example: Look at the minimal amount of blood in this description of the murder of Jay Gatsby by Mr. Wilson, who mistakenly believes Gatsby is responsible for the automobile death of his wife. Daisy was actually the driver. Gatsby’s chauffeur hears shots and the narrator and staff hurry to the pool where Gatsby had been sun-bathing on a floating raft.

The Great Gatsby

There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing. Like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water.

Another example: Ann Pachett’s bestselling Bel Canto opens with an international group of diplomats and celebrities being taken hostage by a violent insurgent army in a third world country. Crime and violence occur, but the book is basically a psychological study of the relationships between victims and captors in a hostage crisis. See how the “crime” is introduced with subtlety without gore and shock value (blood is spilled later of course):

When the lights went off the accompanist kissed her. Maybe he had been turning towards her just before it was completely dark, maybe he was lifting his hands. There must have been some movement, a gesture, because everyone in the room would later remember a kiss. They did not see a kiss. That would have been impossible. The darkness that came on them was startling and complete.

Bel Canto by Ann Pachett

Each day in this country, twenty-three hundred children are reported missing. Of those, a large portion are abducted by one parent estranged from the other, and over fifty percent of the time the child’s whereabouts are never in question. The majority of these children are returned within a week. Another portion of those twenty-three hundred children are runaways. Again the majority of them are not long gone, and usually their whereabouts are either known immediately or easily ascertained. Another category of missing is the throwaway—those who are cast out of their homes.

Gone, Baby, Gone By Dennis Lehane

And yet another model: Dennis Lehane introduces (hints at) the “crime” with statistics in these opening paragraphs of his novel about an abducted child.

“People Like Us Are the Only People Here” by Lorrie Moore

In this literary story, the violation or “disturbance” is worse than murder. It’s a crime against nature.

A beginning, an end: there seems to be neither. The whole thing is like a cloud that just lands and everywhere inside it is full of rain. A start: the Mother finds a blood clot in the Baby’s diaper. What is the story? Who put this here? It is big and bright, with a broken khaki-colored vein in it. Over the weekend, the Baby had looked listless and spacey, clayey and grim. But today he looks fine—so what is this thing, startling against the white diaper, like a tiny mouse heart packed in snow? Perhaps it belongs to someone else. Perhaps it is something menstrual, something belonging to the Mother or to the Babysitter, something the Baby has found in a wastebasket and for his own demented baby reasons stowed away here. (Babies: they’re crazy! What can you do?) In her mind, the Mother takes this away from his body and attaches it to someone else’s. There. Doesn’t that make more sense?

Draft a description of the “Crime” (sin, outrage, violation of the natural order) and set it aside for use as a prologue or in the opening paragraphs.

Opening Writing Prompt # 3: Based on your notes, let’s get to know your main character

Write a sequence describing your main character during a typical day from waking in bed to pouring a beverage in the kitchen.

1. Without using any of the terms on your list of character traits, illustrate as many attributes from your protagonist’s profile as possible, including those acquired from the coin toss.

2. Open with a sound (not the alarm clock).

3. Use only gestures, objects, and specific details (what’s on his/her feet? temp of shower water? beverage preparation?). Show, don’t tell.

These are the rules:

Be sure the scene illustrates (show don’t tell) all your character’s traits. Furthermore, you need to communicate in this first scene:

• The main character’s insurmountable problem or conflict when the novel opens (internal or external or both)? • The main character's agenda: Hope? Need? Desire?

What’s going on with your character on this day?

Revenge? Love? Reassurance? Security? Sex? A Mercedes Benz? Appreciation? World Peace? Happiness? Gratitude? A white picket fence? Drugs?

Work on your character’s “voice” or attitude.

Through my binoculars, I could see this nice forty-something-foot cabin cruiser anchored a few hundred yards offshore. . . About this time of day you can hear crickets, locusts and who knows what, but I’m not a big fan of nature so I had a portable tape player beside me on the end table with The Big Chill cranking and the Bud in the left hand, the binocs in my lap and lying on the floor near my right hand was my off-duty piece, a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver with a two-inch barrel which fit nicely in my purse. Just kidding.

John Corey from Plum Island by Nelson DeMille

Protagonists who snag and hold our attention have depth, humor, style, irreverence, and/or smarts.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Catcher In the Rye, J.D. Salinger

Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience. "If you say 'war' just once more, I'll go in the house and shut the door. I've never gotten so tired of any one word in my life as 'war,' unless it's 'secession.' Pa talks war morning, noon and night, and all the gentlemen who come to see him shout about Fort Sumter and States' Rights and Abe Lincoln till I get so bored I could scream! And that's all the boys talk about, too, that and their old Troop. There hasn't been any fun at any party this spring because the boys can't talk about anything else. I'm mighty glad Georgia waited till after Christmas before it seceded or it would have ruined the Christmas parties, too. If you say 'war' again, I'll go in the house." She meant what she said, for she could never long endure any conversation of which she was not the chief subject.

Brattiness and determination is a great combination.

Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

1. Expand the morning scene.

2. A sound signals that something is about to happen (knock on door, telephone rings, radio static in the car, or a gunshot) Try to be original: the clang of an overturned garbage can?

3. Is your character a witness or is the news second hand?

4. If from another source, how is the news delivered? friend, television, employee, relative, police, neighbor, stranger?

5. What is the main character’s reaction? Swears, pulls the car over, throw a coffee mug, weeps, runs to a file cabinet, calls his lawyer, eats the cheesecake she was hiding from herself in the freezer? Give the reader action.

6. What does your main character say? What is your character actually thinking?

Opening Writing Prompt # 4: The main character learns about the “disturbance” that rocks his or her

world.

Opening Writing Prompt # 5: Dig for the Truth Find out what makes your main character really tick.

At the end of the encounter with the crime, write: “Who was I kidding anyway?” and keep writing. (replace “I” with the character’s name for third person point of view)

(You’ll discover for yourself and the reader the character’s deepest motives and real feelings, the acknowledgement of which will signal the character’s courage and intelligence and create a bond between the character and reader. Use this device in each scene and then remove the prompt phrase or change the wording.)

Opening Writing Prompt #6: Add a Cliff-hanger This is a critical device for a book to achieve literary

blockbuster status. A plot point or cliff-hanger propels the reader forward by hinting that things aren’t as they seem and creating suspense, mystery, and curiosity. Typically commercial writers employ plot points while literary writers rarely include them (it’s seen as a cheap device) and miss an opportunity to produce tension and boost readability in their narratives. Use one from this list, or modify one of the samples on the next slides.

•She should have seen this coming. •This isn't the way it was supposed to happen. •I had just about given up on human nature. •There was no use trying to ignore him any longer. •Sometimes we have to do things we don't like. •If it were me, I'd want to know. •I like to think of myself as a truly honest individual. •He should have known better. •It had been the perfect arrangement. •It began innocently enough. •There’s a man I don't know waiting for me.

Then, of course, the police found Marlene Mason’s body along Interstate 75.. . . . Things like that shouldn’t happen around here. Besides, the Mason case was a head-scratcher. The girl was found fully clothed and her purse intact. . . . Now where was her roommate?

Plot points (foreshadowing) appear in the first paragraph or pages and create suspense.

The Killing Hour, Lisa Gardner

When he left his Park Avenue condo for his regular morning stroll, Walter C. Pettibone was blissfully unaware he was in his last hours of life.

Reunion in Death, J.D. Robb

I was ignorant. I was near age fourteen. The sky is just about the size of my ignorance. The pure wideness of my ignorance—is what got me up the hill to the Sacred Heart Convent and brought me back down alive.

“St. Marie,” Louise Erdrich

I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.

The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls

Opening Writing Prompt #7: Experiment with the order for the opening elements:

• The crime in the prologue followed by plot point, morning scene and learning of the crime. • The morning scene followed by news of crime and plot point; then cut to crime scene • Following the morning scene and plot point, the character witnesses the crime.

Using a story board or drafts on your computer experiment with the order and interweaving of the crime, the setting details, the morning scene, and character learning of the crime and reacting. For example:

Note to Self Seek whichever order best insures that the dual plot—the disturbance to be resolved and the character’s conflict about it—are in your draft. Be prepared to revise the opening order and content.

Opening Writing Prompt #8: Add a recurring symbol or leitmotif

In addition to sensory images, strong verbs, and figurative language, insert a detail, image or object which symbolizes your theme and can recur as a leitmotif (a term from music)—a symbol which you will then weave through the book reminding readers of the point of the story (a burning bible, mutant frogs, a flock of helicopters?)

In this example of a recurring symbol or leitmotif, Louise Erdrich uses repeated images of humans as fish in her short story “St. Marie” to ironically expose the superior and cruel treatment of native American children at the hands of Catholic nuns trying to convert them. “Be fishers of men,” is the scriptural foundation of the Church's rationale for conversion.

So when I went there, I knew the dark fish must rise. Plumes of radiance had been soldered on me. No reservation girl had ever prayed so hard. There was no use in trying to ignore me any longer. . . they'd have a girl from this reservation as a saint they'd have to kneel to.

“St. Marie” by Louise Erdrich

My ignorance is what got me up the hill to the Sacred Heart Convent and brought me back down alive. For maybe Jesus did not take my bait, but them Sisters tried to cram me right down whole. You ever see a walleye strike so bad the lure is practically out its back end before you reel it in? That is what they done with me. I don't like to make that low comparison, but I have seen a walleye do that once. And it's the same attempt as Sister Leopolda made to get me in her clutch.

Draft Section Two: the Critical Scene at the Heart of the Book.

The commercial plot reaches a head and the main character hits the wall—the dreaded crisis, rock bottom.

In literary fiction, this scene often comes near the end of the book, sometimes just pages or paragraphs away from the final scene in which the changed character takes new action or sees differently. It represents the character’s last stand against his or her old thinking. The emotional and psychological crisis is triggered by often subtle external events (a rejection, a loss). An awakening or crisis takes place in what P.J. Reece calls “the dark heart of the story where terrifying uncertainty gives way to vision and insight.”

The crisis scene in literary fiction is about the character

In commercial fiction, there are a series of scenes which change the course of the plot and final outcome as the characters try to solve a mystery, catch a perp, run up against false leads, confront bad guys, and cope with escalating disaster. Every chapter is a new crisis as another abduction or new information send the detective down a new road.

The crisis or climax in com- mercial fiction is about externals

In a literary blockbuster: • The most critical event in the surface plot unfolding around the “sin” at the heart of the story would be the logical trigger for the character’s rock bottom.

• The main character coming to an awakening changes the course of the external plot. (Again, these are simply my suggestions and imaginings about how a writer might leap the chasm and combine the two plots. There are no rules. It hasn’t been done.)

Go outside the box and merge the two goals in this scene.

How does a crisis scene look in a literary block- buster?

Draft the Crisis Scene in Layers

• Set the scene. Where does the conversation take place? Open with a noise, the weather, and three details. You know how to do this. Be sure to include the recurring image that you established in the opening.

• Illustrate, through the use of dialogue, the dynamics of

the relationship as the characters discuss the “crime” by first discussing a benign topic which superficially conceals larger issues. To establish conflict, start the battle with something confrontational:

"I won't do it." "You're blaming me?" "You don't understand." "This is blackmail." "You're doing it again." "You've gone too far.” • Brushstroke the minor character.

• End the scene with a plot point; leave the reader hanging.

Craft a dialogue/confrontation about the “crime” between the main character and a secondary

character. • Develop dialogue that’s believable and forwards the plot. Use no

mechanical dialogue or gestures (we don’t have to see characters get seated or place a food order).

• Use no dialogue tags. Instead use a gesture (body English) with each utterance (in the same paragraph).

• Avoid explanatory adverbs or prepositional phrases (“she said emphatically”; “he cajoled without any hint that he was steaming on the inside”). Let the gestures say it all.

• Fuel the dialogue with conflict and tension; a lot is at stake; both parties want something and fight for it with looks, gestures, and words. Make clear what each want or need from this conversation. As Donald Maass suggests, “include friction in every conversation.”

• Add an internal aside or "crack" from the main character every time he or she speaks. Characters say one thing and think another, something revealing, often sarcastic.

With whom is the main character talking about the “crime” or “disturbance”?

Sidekick? Lover? Detective?

Brushstroke a portrait of the minor character

Bad Guy? Friend? Witness?

• Keep minor characters (all characters not the main character) as foils—one-dimensional. We only need to know one thing about this character. What is his or her trait which helps or hinders the main character.

• Characterize (stereotype) by one gesture (an uptight person straightens the napkin on the table; an angry person clenches and unclenches a fist); one gesture is all you need.

• Give no history or background.

• Stay out of the minor character’s head: no internal thoughts or point of view.

A secondary character is, well, secondary.

Because plot points at the end of each scene or chapter are pure manipulation—a cheap and easy way to grab and keep a reader—they have a bad rep. with serious writers. You don’t care. Using plot points (foreshadowing, teasers) is essential for a literary blockbuster; it’s the crack in an addictive read.

That should have been the end of it. Or so we (I) thought. That was that. I just wasn’t thinking. I hadn’t figured on ….. I should have been paying attention.

Insert a plot point or cliff-hanger at the end of this scene and every scene

Sample cliff-hangers which suggest the situation is not as it seems:

Although a literary blockbuster requires plot points, use them judiciously, with grace and more subtlety than the examples on the next two slides.

Review an abuse of this device in James Patterson’s You’ve Been Warned, which uses cliff-hangers to seduce readers into thinking that a shallow, implausible, and psychologically indefensible plot is a gripping narrative. With no regard for ethics and sound judgment, the story introduces a “nanny” who is having an affair with the husband in the household. Throughout the book, she struggles with a terrifying dream about murdered people—one of whom turns out to be her—but that is not revealed until the end. As the book closes, she discovers that “hell” is reliving over and over a set of brutal events for which she is partially responsible. As you can imagine, this is very tricky to pull off. Trust me. The lame premise and O’Henry ending are not an adequate payoff. Plot points make it work. The cliff-hangers kept me reading this silly airplane lit from New York and Portland OR. Even though the whole book is a trick, it seems as if a drama is unfolding because each chapter ends with a cliff-hanger and many begin with an “opener” plot point.

Here’s how plot points work. Just take care not to use them in place of substance.

End of Chapter 2: Only after grabbing a chair to climb closer to the ceiling

do I realize what’s going on. The music isn’t coming from anywhere.

The music is inside my head. Opening of Chapter 4:

SO, WHAT OTHER BAD THING can possibly happen to me this morning?

End of Chapter 4: It’s the kind of day that makes people happy to be alive. Right up until I turn the corner onto Madison. And scream. Not just a little one either. I scream at the top of my lungs.

Opening of Chapter 5: OMIGOD. Omigod. The police cars, the ambulances, the twirling beams of

blue and red light.

Note the use of upper case, italics, and exclamation marks, and choppy sentences to turn up the volume on a weak plot.

You’ve Been Warned, James Patterson

End of Chapter 5: Please, someone, listen to me. And that’s when someone does.

Opening of Chapter 6: I SEE HIS EYES FIRST, very dark, intense, and unblinking, staring right into mine.

End of Chapter 12: The day’s mystery continues, only it’s getting worse.

End of Chapter 13: It’s too early for bed. I need to get out of here! And I know just where to go.

End of Chapter 29: Staring back at me is something I can’t believe. . . Something impossible. Something that makes me feel that I must be crazy. Only it’s worse than that, because I know I’m not crazy. But what I’m looking at sure is.

End of Chapter 51: Now comes the hard part.

End of Chapter 67: I know him! Or at least I used to. Before he was murdered in my hometown.

The writer who can keep readers reading with clever cliff-hangers in a book with substantial content and a provocative theme, will have a

bestseller. That’s my prediction.

Draft Section Three: a Tentative Ending for Your Literary Blockbuster

The resolution of the mystery or “crime” occurs because of the character’s growth or change and the book ends—not with the solution of the “crime”—but with a final gesture by the character signaling the character’s change from the opening scene or lack thereof. Either the character will throw off crippling beliefs or fail to do so. If there’s been growth, the character gains an expanded consciousness in the aftermath of emptiness and despair.

This may be a few pages or one paragraph and may change profoundly as you write the book.

1. First and most importantly: Does the main character experience triumph or defeat as a result of the events of the novel? This refers to the character’s opening conflict.

2. In a blockbuster, until the very end, the external forces of evil may seem to be winning. Ditto for internal evil.

3. In the final paragraph: List the weather, a sound, and three other specific setting details.

4. Is there something in the character’s hand or a final gesture or action by the character?

5. What are the character’s final thoughts about the “crime”/and or his or her future?

6. Include a symbol from your recurring leitmotif (i.e. slide 121)

7. What is a strong sensory image to leave with the reader? Is there a metaphor which sums up the theme?

Points to Consider for Drafting the Ending:

8. How is your main character challenged and changed philosophically by the events of the novel? Which of the following apply?

9. The character’s self-image is altered by the crime and its resolution (he or she becomes less or more cynical, arrogant, confident, despairing, needy, etc.) 10. The character’s world view shifts as a result of the novel’s events (from apathetic to active about the environment, from right to left wing, from very religious to agnostic) 11. In many literary novels both changes occur.

12. A character can also refuse to change, thus becoming more entrenched in old beliefs. P.S. Having a liver transplant or inheriting a million bucks is

not a “character change.”

The ending of a literary blockbuster will be philosophical; see these examples:

But there was no heart in it. No joy when she bent to touch the floor. No dark leaping. I fell back onto the white pillows. Blank dust was whirling through the light shafts. My skin was dust. Dust my lips. Dust the dirty spoons on the ends of my feet. Rise up! I thought. Rise up and walk! There is no limit to this dust!

“St. Marie” by Louise Erdrich

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. . . . His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

“The Dead” by James Joyce

(Marie defeats the nuns but it’s a hollow victory and see the recurrence of the leaping fish symbol):

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The Great Gatsby

Now Write a Draft the Whole Book You’ve finished a critical part of the drafting process.

Now it’s time to write a draft of the whole book. One scene at a time, that is.

• Using the identical steps described above to draft the crisis scene, write the other essential scenes which build logically toward the climax. • Write and revise all scenes separately.

• Play with the order and placement of the first drafts of your scenes and arrive at a loose order which aligns with your plans for the novel’s structure. • Keep the pages turning: increase the difficulty of ongoing obstacles; remind readers of unanswered questions; introduce a game change; add a new clue • Continue moving, adding, removing, and fine tuning until you’re committed to the content and order.

IV: Edit, Polish, Proofread

A. Complete the First Edit (Revision) of Your Rough Draft B. Polish the Writing Style C. Proofread

• Writing is rewriting so take off in any new direction inspired by your reading of the rough draft. Improve the plot, kill a different victim, add a character, change names, create a subplot.

• Clarify again the main theme or themes and begin revising and improving each scene by adding any descriptive details, action, or dialogue relevant to illustrating the theme. • Weave the recurring image and symbol throughout the book, while improving verbs and adding sensory details, metaphors, symbolic objects, gestures, dialogue, and action. • Be willing to add, discard, or radically change anything as you encounter new possibilities in your material.

A. Complete the First Edit (Revision) of Your Rough Draft

• Edit in layers making several passes through the draft first

looking at verbs, then imagery, then dialogue etc.

• Last step in editing: sentence variety. Rewrite each paragraph insuring varying lengths and patterns of sentences, avoiding two sentences in one paragraph beginning with the same word. Any sentence can be rewritten to change it’s pattern and length. Mix complex sentences with simple, short with long, and open sentences with participial phrases and dependent clauses.

This comes late in the process when you are completely committed to the content and organization of your book. As we saw in the examples by Sanford, Benchley, and Krantz, commercial writers often skip this step. Among problems such as word repetition and diction inconsistency, commercial writers rarely smooth out each paragraph with sentence variety. It’s unclear whether they don’t care or don’t know better. Anyway, rewriting for flow and style is the last step in the editing process, and the writer of a blockbuster that is also literary won’t skip it.

B. Polish the Writing Style

C. Proofread

• Proofreading is grunt work. It is not editing. It’s what you do to catch errors and mistakes once the book proper is finished. Try to avoid revising content or style. • Correct spelling, punctuation, and typos.

• Better yet, have someone else do this, preferably a friend who’s a professional copy editor

Plan the plan, not the outcome

Just because you wrote it, doesn’t make it literature—yet. Writing is rewriting so be willing to toss what doesn’t work.

Good Luck

Go forth and make publishing history.

Write a book that attracts a

Pulitzer Prize nomination and six million readers—a literary

blockbuster!

Susan Brown, PhD writing coach and personal editor susansbrown.com 941-855-0444