Larry McMurtry Talks About Writing

Good interview. I haven't read all of his work, but I'd liked what I've read.

Larry McMurtry on Writing

Enjoy!

Describing Clothing--more than style and fabric

Dressed to kill?

How you describe clothing can and should be more than just a list of what a character is wearing.  It can be described in such a way as to show the point-of-view character's attitude about the apparel, or what the point-of-view character assumes because of it.  The point-of-view may be as astute as Sherlock Holmes or as biased as Severus Snape.

Here is a comprehensive list of descriptions. Don't use them as jigsaw pieces to plug into your work. Use them as inspiration for how your character would view and define what is seen, or what they're wearing on their own body.

Writing About Fashion by Sharla Rae


One snippet:

Less Than Presentable

All flash and no dash
Beauty blight
Bedraggled
Blowzy over-done
Boots with newspaper stuffed inside to cover the holes in the soles
Clothes painted on her
Donned grubbies for yard work
Dress gone limp in the heat
Dressed like an unmade bed
Dressed like he’s fleeing a fire/the devil
Ensemble clashes... and more!

Great Thoughts and Links from One Author's RWA Experience

Fae Rowen returned from the RWA National Conference with a list of the 13 most valuable things she heard, and links to where you can follow up for more info on those that sound helpful to you. It's a great list.

Example:

1. A complex character has two emotions at war at the same time. This increases reader interest. (James Scott Bell)

Check 'em out.

Digging deeper.

Mary Robinette Kowal and Neil Gaiman

Mary Robinette Kowal's blog today addresses authenticity in historical fiction, and digging deeper to find the right reference.

The term that concerned her was "paper cut."  Making a humorous reference to a paper-cut as a safety issue works today, but not two hundred years ago when paper didn't have sharp edges. She began to go through potential 'safety issues' involved in handling one's correspondence, until she found one that worked--but even better, it was more interesting.

She says, "This is a better joke, and I got to it because I’m using language that reflects the culture. Doing so also forces me to really think about what is happening in the scene, and what the lives of people in the time would be like."

This is true, and it's what I love about research, even though sometimes I drive myself mad googling and digging through my own references, and sometimes asking on facebook or twitter or emailing colleagues with vast knowledge in the area of my current projects.  What makes it worth it is that I inevitably end up with something, at the very least, more interesting than my original thought.

Often it opens up a new avenue to explore in the book itself, an 'aha!' moment that will brighten up my day, week, or longer, as a wonderful new 'what if this happens?' presents itself, because that small detour for research took me to new knowledge of the subject I hadn't considered before. Sometimes it makes a scene 'pop' and work in a terrific way I hadn't anticipated.

Sometimes--and this is more common than you might think--it presents a plot twist that makes me squee.

So, am I musing about research here, and authenticity, and if you don't write historical fiction, you don't need to care?

No. The idea of historical authenticity just got us into this idea.

The bigger idea is 'digging deeper' whenever the first thing that springs from your fingertips is so natural, so easy, so obvious--that it might even be a cliché.

While the paper-cut reference was satisfactory if the setting was contemporary, and nobody would have stopped cold and wondered about it, nor would any readers probably have thought, "How obvious, what a cliché," it's also worth highlighting or marking for later thought. (Never stop your writing process in the middle of a scene that is flowing over this kind of issue. Note that MRK was returning to this much later rather than during the writing process.)

Even if the setting is the year 2014 and paper-cuts are real, painful and can be funny if used properly in your story--if you dig deeper, can you think of something else to substitute? There are several options, and I'm sure you can come up with more.

1)  Some other easily-imagined minor office injury that is less generic and expected and thus--more interesting.

2)  A minor injury that reflects their specific location, business or interests, whether they are in a taxidermy shop, a morgue, or having a picnic in Central Park.

3)  A minor injury that refers back to something one of the characters did earlier, something meaningful. It can be a jab or tease, it can be an insult, or it can be a tender reassurance.

Have fun with it!

Oh, and sometimes, after much work and consideration, you will decide it really can be a paper-cut, after all.

Cross-posted at planetpooks.