also: i'm looking for a new kind of exercise.
3 miles. 3 really, really bad miles. I've had an epiphany.
I had another terrible run this morning, and I've finally come to a decision: I'm giving up running for a while. Clearly I'm not into it, whether because it's just a time not to be into running or because it's suddenly gotten damn hot in the morning or whatever. I'd rather walk or go into the gym and do the bikes. Perhaps this is just a cycle in my exercise life. But rather than fighting it, I'm going with it.
Tuesday night was the second night of the mystery writing class. We discussed what you need in Act One of a mystery in the first half of class (a sleuth, a corpse, and some suspects, for those of you studying at home). After the break, we started reading students' work.
Jerrilyn wanted the people who went this week to read a few pages out loud, the only week we'd read out loud. This made me slightly nervous--there's nothing like knowing you have to read out loud for every single error in your writing to pop to mind--but as it turned out, of all the people scheduled to go week 1, I was the only one who didn't get to go. Emotionally, I'm over it, but thanks for your support.
One very funny thing was that the first two people who read both opened with scenes in which the sleuth wakes up from an alcoholic stupor to find out someone--an acquaintance, a close friend--has become an ex-parrot. I wonder if this is a cliche of the genre (most of the mysteries I have read has not had one of these scenes, but perhaps I have not read extensively enough).
The third person who read opened with a monologue by a serial killer in the midst of his latest artwork. Several things bothered me about this scene--the one I mentioned in class was that we start getting into the reasons/excuses for why this guy is doing what he does and frankly, we just don't care--we're on page 2, for crying out loud. Someone else--also a reader of serial killer novels--pointed out that Red Dragon starts out with several chapters having to do with Will Graham, the FBI family man, before getting to Francis Dolarhyde, serial killer, in order to comfort the reader a bit before hitting them with a club.
Darin mentioned something I hadn't thought of: if you start with a scene like the one he opened with, where do you go from there? You either have to top the horror of that scene--in which case you go right to the edge of, if not over the edge of, pornography--or the reader begins to say, "Well, that was bad, but at least it was nothing like that opening scene"...which totally destroys the build of tension.
I have to remember to point this out next week.
(The thing I didn't want to mention and I didn't know how to mention was that the monologue was really cliche and banal. The killer feels alienated and unloved. I don't care if most real-life serial killers feel alienated and unloved--in fiction, it's a big ol' cliche. You have to find exciting and new reasons why people ritually and continually murder their fellow citizens.)
I've barely written a word this entire week. I have to buckle down.
|
|
|
|
Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com