The Book of Air & Shadows
Nov. 25th, 2007 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraAm reading Mag's novel, The Book of Air and Shadows. It has an unfortunate beginning. First person narrative. Narrator is a dull sort who drops all sorts of names (characters, we are to presume, who will be appearing later in the novel) and David Copperfield-style insists on presenting his own creation myth: Although officially lodged in the Third Army headquarters-company barracks, Dad spent most of his time in a suite he maintained in the Kaiserhof Hotel in Ulm. Big yawner.
I kept reading because I know the guy. Sorta.
By page 18, it had picked up: the POV had shifted into the third person of a more interesting character. Mag is that unusual writer who writes third person better than he writes first person.
I keep the Karp books he ghosted on their own little shelf in my office. I refer to them when I write fiction: how does Mag manage to get the character up from his desk and out of room without writing lots of boring filler like, 'Then Karp rose from his chair, stretched his six foot three frame lazily and ambled gracelessly to the door. He put his oversized hand on the brass door knob…' Aha! Great solution!"
Those are the kinds of things I worry about when I write fiction. Transitions. Never plot, never characterization, never momentum. I'm good at the hard stuff and bad at the easy stuff. I guess the easy stuff is craft.
Mag is a really talented writer. Almost a great writer. The thing that keeps him from being great is his detachment. The most vivid writers seem to channel their characters – it's a bit like method acting in a way; while they're writing that character, they feel what the character feels. Flaubert's famous, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." Sometimes this results in graceless prose, but always it's passionate prose, and so involving.
You have to be porous in order to channel a character.
I suspect Mag has a healthy ego and he's not porous.
I kept reading because I know the guy. Sorta.
By page 18, it had picked up: the POV had shifted into the third person of a more interesting character. Mag is that unusual writer who writes third person better than he writes first person.
I keep the Karp books he ghosted on their own little shelf in my office. I refer to them when I write fiction: how does Mag manage to get the character up from his desk and out of room without writing lots of boring filler like, 'Then Karp rose from his chair, stretched his six foot three frame lazily and ambled gracelessly to the door. He put his oversized hand on the brass door knob…' Aha! Great solution!"
Those are the kinds of things I worry about when I write fiction. Transitions. Never plot, never characterization, never momentum. I'm good at the hard stuff and bad at the easy stuff. I guess the easy stuff is craft.
Mag is a really talented writer. Almost a great writer. The thing that keeps him from being great is his detachment. The most vivid writers seem to channel their characters – it's a bit like method acting in a way; while they're writing that character, they feel what the character feels. Flaubert's famous, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." Sometimes this results in graceless prose, but always it's passionate prose, and so involving.
You have to be porous in order to channel a character.
I suspect Mag has a healthy ego and he's not porous.
