Archive for the 'Fiction' Category
Interview with Christopher Noël , Vermont author of fiction and nonfiction, Sasquatch Investigator and owner of the Tall Rock Retreat in East Calais.
Prompt: This week’s Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Christopher Noël . During the show, Chris mentioned that writers should meditate on the monsters that move us, those mysterious creatures that fascinated and perhaps repelled us when we were small. Contemplate the monster that lived under your bed, inside your closet, or outside your window, and then free write. This is a great way to enlighten or SHOW yourself what interests and motivates you. It may well also show you something you’d forgotten or hadn’t even realized about yourself.
Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another…
Readings by Christopher Noël , from Impossible Visits. Copyright © 2009 by Christopher Noël. Recorded with permission.
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)
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Interview with Philip Graham, fiction and cnf writer and co-founder of the journal Ninth Letter.
Prompt: This week’s Write The Book Prompt is inspired by a passage from Philip Graham’s new book, The Moon, Come to Earth, published by The University of Chicago Press. The following is the book’s first paragraph, from the essay titled “I Don’t Know Why I Love Lisbon.”
The grilled sardines lying on my plate are much larger than the stunted little things packed in tins which go by the same name in the U.S., and their eye sockets stare up at the ceiling, where hanging light fixtures are shaped like gourds. The aroma of sardines led me here, the scent sharp at first as it hit the nose (perhaps too sharp), until the smoky complexities took over, akin-at least for me-to a bouquet of wine. I take another sip from my glass of vinho verde and peer up at the small square of the TV perched on a high shelf beside the restaurant’s open door. The screen displays a smaller green rectangle of a soccer pitch, with the even smaller figures of the players racing back and forth.
Consider the middle passage, about the aroma of sardines, their sharp scent and smoky complexity, and how the passage is enriched by the details of scent. In your work, have you remembered to include smells? This week, look at heightening the power of description by way of scent. From perfume to overcooked eggs, pine needles to paint thinner. Be sure to let the smells into your writing, to present a richer, fuller presentation of the world you’re trying to convey.
Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another…
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Do Lado De Cá Do Mar” - Mario Laginha
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Interview with Novelist and Middlebury College Professor Robert Cohen
Prompt: This week’s Write The Book Prompt is inspired by the interview you heard today with Robert Cohen. First, let me remind you of a sentence of prose from his latest book, Amateur Barbarians: “The room, the very world, seemed a vast expectant place, like a house in the aftermath of a party.” During our conversation, Robert said, “Metaphor is a kind of muscle; the more you exercise it, the more it starts to flex on its own.” He also suggested that, in writing metaphor, it’s important to find “the right cast of mind for a particular character.” For example, in his novel, Amateur Barbarians, Teddy, the more conventional, middle-class character, is more likely to see the metaphor about the house than Oren, who has never settled down. As Robert explained it in our interview, Oren is “a renter, not an owner,” so he’d be less likely to recognize or conceive of the metaphor about the house.
As you write this week, play with metaphor. And consider Robert Cohen’s advice. Work to find metaphors that are apt not only for the material, but for the character whose perspective is being presented.
Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another…
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)
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Interview with Vermont Writer Doug Wilhelm
Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was inspired by the interview you heard with Doug Wilhelm. The crux of this prompt is find out what you don’t know. And the advice is really twofold. First of all, decide if you need to do more research in order to move forward with your writing. What don’t you know that a book or a person or the experience of immersing yourself in a situation might teach you? Do that research before continuing with your work. The second part of this advice is to ask yourself relevant questions that aren’t being answered in your work, and then free write. These questions may be closer to the heart of your project than simple research. For example, if your main character is an arsonist, you might need to do research on how to set fires. But you’ll also need to ask yourself, Why is my character setting these fires? What is motivating him? If you don’t already know the answer, then put the question to yourself and spend some time free writing.
Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another!
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)
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Interview with Writer and upstreet Editor and Publisher Vivian Dorsel
Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was inspired by the interview you heard today with Vivian Dorsel. During our conversation, she mentioned an exercise that she likes (by Natalie Goldberg). A similar activity might be to try writing the words “I used to,” on a page, then follow that with a ten-minute free write about something you USED to do. Then write “I’m going to,” and write for another ten minutes about something you’re going to do.
Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another!
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)
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Interview with Pulitzer Prize Winner Richard Russo
Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was inspired by the interview you heard today with Richard Russo. The title of his new book, That Old Cape Magic, refers at least in part to those things we wish for and can not ever have. What do your characters want? What do they dream about? Are their dreams within reach? Do they need unattainable dreams, simply to go on? What might that say about them? How do their goals and dreams make them behave? Consider dreams and motivations as you work. It’s important to know what your characters want before making them act, react, speak and think.
Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another!
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)
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Interview with author of fiction and creative nonfiction Phyllis Barber.
Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt is suggested by my guest, Phyllis Barber. She recommends, “Read Flannery O’Connor, who does things with character that I don’t think I’ve seen many other writers do. Her characterizations are fabulous. So… Look at Flannery!” And that is your prompt today: look at Flannery. Her stories can be found in the books Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, among other collections. She also wrote two novels: Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away. And, of course, every writer can benefit from reading her essays on writing and the writing life, collected in the book, Mystery and Manners.
Here’s a snippet from her story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Even if you’ve never read this story and even if you don’t know the context of the scene, I think you’ll come to know the characters very quickly, from these few paragraphs:
They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. “There was a secret:-panel in this house,” she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, “and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . .”
“Hey!” John Wesley said. “Let’s go see it! We’ll find it! We’ll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can’t we turn off there?”
“We never have seen a house with a secret panel!” June Star shrieked. “Let’s go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can’t we go see the house with the secret panel!”
“It’s not far from here, I know,” the grandmother said. “It wouldn’t take over twenty minutes.”
Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. “No,” he said.
The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother’s shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his father could feel the blows in his kidney.
“All right!” he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. “Will you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don’t shut up, we won’t go anywhere.”
“It would be very educational for them,” the grandmother murmured.
That, again, is an excerpt from Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Phyllis Barber suggests reading O’Connor’s work in looking for inspiration on character development. Good luck with this activity and please listen next week for another.
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)
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Interview with fiction author Tammy Greenwood.
Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Tammy Greenwood. When she is stuck in her work, Tammy frequently turns to prompts from the book A Writer’s Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life, by Judy Reeves. Specifically, Tammy once broke through writer’s block with the help of a prompt to write a scene in which a character takes a bath. So that’s your prompt today: have your character take a bath. And thank you to the author Judy Reeves for the book that suggests that prompt. Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another.
Readings by Tammy Greenwood, from Two Rivers (New York: Kensington Publishing Corp). Copyright © 2009 by T. Greenwood. Recorded with permission from Kensington Books.
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)
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Interview with best-selling author Anita Diamant.
Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was inspired by my guest, Anita Diamant, whose fiction is often based on “found stories” and historical events. Navigate to the Library of Congress’ “Today In History Site” ( http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/ ) Read about this day in history, keeping your mind open about how you could create a fictional character who might have participated in or witnessed the event of the day. Then write a scene featuring that character. Here’s an example:
On Sunday March 7, 1965, about six hundred people began a fifty-four mile march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery. They were demonstrating for African American voting rights and to commemorate the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, shot three weeks earlier by a state trooper while trying to protect his mother at a civil rights demonstration. On the outskirts of Selma, after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers, in plain sight of photographers and journalists, were brutally assaulted by heavily armed state troopers and deputies.
Given this historical moment, would you choose to write a scene from the perspective of a bystander, a marcher, from Jackson’s mother, from the state trooper who shot Jimmie Lee Jackson? Perhaps from the viewpoint of a photographer? Use this moment in history as a starting point. Honor the sacrifices of the past by re-imagining it in your fiction. Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another.
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)
Standard Podcasts [ 53:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (191)(0 ratings) | Email it
Interview with author Robert Vivian and Burlington business owner Norbert Ender. Hosted by Shelagh C. Shapiro, Write The Book airs on WOMM-LP 105.9 FM “The Radiator,” in Burlington, Vermont, every Monday afternoon from 2-3 p.m. - a new time.
Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my first guest, Robert Vivian. In his work with students, he occasionally distributes postcards from small towns, and asks each student to write a note on that card to a fictional recipient. Look at the postcard and imagine you’re traveling across the country and you’ve landed in this small town. Use the postcard as a trigger and write to someone. It could be someone who’s wronged you in the past or it could be a beloved person. You might be writing this postcard due to a situation that you’re fleeing. “Dear Randy. Hello from the middle of nowhere. I’m in a diner. Icicles are hanging down from the roof. I’m driving to Santa Fe. I have 20 dollars in my pocket. I can’t stop thinking about the last time we spoke…” Etc. Invent a situation and write. Let the postcard be a trigger, and lose yourself in the creative act. Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another.
Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink
Standard Podcasts [ 59:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (168)(0 ratings) | Email it
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