In addition to a number of telephone calls and face-to-face encounters where folks have given me pointed, yet helpful tips on how to do my job, I have, over the past few years, received in the mail offers to sign up with two separate writing schools that will teach me how to write if I pay them enough money.
Is somebody trying to tell me something here?
The last straw, however, arrived just the other day in the form of a pleading magazine publisher who, rather plaintively asked, “Would you like to learn how to turn your life’s experiences — your sense of humor, your pain, your love affairs, your fantasies, your unique view of the world — into film scripts, plays, suspense novels, romance novels, magazine articles … that pay?”
Ummm, no, I don’t think so.
What I do think is that, suddenly, there seems to be a dramatic upswing in the teaching-people-how-to-write business. And rather than be on the buying end of it, I’d much rather be selling.
I mean, look … what is the point of writing, anyway? It’s simply a way to fill up whatever space you need which lies between the beginning and the end. So, as part of my continuing effort to educate those participating in my own Prof. Dubya’s Journalism Class — and to give you a glimpse into my new venture … Dubya’s Famous Columnist School — I’m going to tell you how writing your own novel is done.
This lesson is free, for now.
Class is in session …
Beginnings aren’t that difficult. You toss out a little hook that will invite the reader to swallow a bit more.
Beginnings used to be easier than they are now, though. Generations of journalism students were given, as a good example of a hook, the following: “Damn,” said the duchess as she lit the cigar.”
That obviously won’t cut it in the new millennium.
So, to hook a reader in a jaded world, you’ll need something slightly less mundane. I’ll leave you to craft one that best suits your tastes, but it could go something like … “Sparky the spaniel wagged his stub of a tail and his big brown eyes flashed death rays of 257 million volts, which blew the head off his master, Jeff.”
OK, now you’ve got your beginning. The promise of a reader moving to the next paragraph is very high. Now comes the absolutely pointless part: filling the middle.
Most people won’t take the time to read the middle. They’ll skip to the last paragraph to see what happened — much like most of you are doing right now. BUT! Because of your last paragraph, which we will get to shortly, they will eagerly go back to the middle, into which you can pour just any ol’ thing you want.
Adjectives are always good, and for this you will need a thesaurus — a book that gives you a list of words that all mean relatively the same thing.
Willie looked into Mary’s mug. “The blueness of your eyes tax description,” he whispered. “They are at once azure, cerulean, robin’s egg, peacock, hyacinth, cornflower, sapphire, turquoise, lapis lazuli, beryl, aquamarine, ultramarine, cobalt and really, really blue.”
Mary slapped him … hard.
See what you did with adjectives? You filled several lines with utterly no effort.
You’re now rolling toward your destination, and to pick up speed, it can now be most helpful to throw in a famous quotation. Familiar quotes put readers at ease and make you seem like a “regular” person. Happily, there is an entire book of these from which you can mine at your leisure (“Book of Familiar Quotations”).
In the cab of his mighty 18-wheeler, roaring through the pitch-black night, Curtis heard a ping in his engine. “Twitched strings,” he thought. “The clang of metal, beaten drums, dull, shrill, continuous, disquieting; and now the stealthy dancer comes undulantly with cat-like steps that cling.”
It was from Arthur Symon’s ‘Javanese Dancers,’ one of his favorite poems studied at the A.R. Crushhammer School of Massive Truckery.
Finally, if you still have not filled the allocated space, you are encouraged to employ some dialogue.
“Oh, Tammy!”
“Oh, Willie!”
“Oh, Tammy, my minx!”
“A cat with a rudimentary tail?”
“That’s a Manx.”
“Oh, Willie!”
And now, the reason that when people skip to your ending and then bounce back to the middle again is that, at the finish of your literary construct, you have — and cleverly, I might add — written the words:
“To be continued …”
Next week we will look at Dubya’s 21 Rules for Perfect Prose. Attendance will be taken.
W. Curt Vincent can be reached at 910-506-3023 or [email protected].
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