Posts filed under “writing”.
A Voice From The Book Trade
Over at The View From Here Magazine, Helen Miles talks about her experience of the book trade:
I was quite unprepared for the bizarre practices that persist in the selling of a book. Apparently, I must set a price for our books (that must end with 99p, obviously) and then offer a whacking discount to the [...]
Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller
First published in 2003, Heller’s novel opens like this:
1st March 1998
The other night at dinner, Sheba talked about the first time that she and the Connolly boy kissed. I had heard most of it before, of course, there being few aspects of the Connolly business that Sheba has not described to me several times over. [...]
Ding. Dong. Dang.
We were called to Boleslaw’s Saw Mill just after lunch on Monday. I was the patrol-woman assigned to the area, accompanied by rookie cop, Billy Kristian. We were first on the scene.
The lawyer woman’s leg was trapped under a huge rectangular stone. I spoke to her briefly but she was slipping in and out [...]
All Characters are Entirely Fictitious
It usually goes something like this:
All characters in this publication are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
And it’s nearly always a lie. Robert Liddell suggests that the passage deceives nobody and would be no protection in a libel action, and, he continues, one must suppose that the [...]
Character or Plot?
Most writers who appear on a platform, giving a reading or a talk, will come across the naïve question: What comes first for you, character or plot?
The question is unsophisticated, because in reality it is not possible to separate the two. Character is plot.
Character, in any sense in which we can get it, is action, [...]
