Congrats, Jessica Souders!!!
Many thanks to Charlie Price for helping us develop better technique pacing our writing, as well as this awesome giveaway!
Happy reading and writing,
Martina & Marissa
new posts in all blogs
By: Adventures in Children's Publishing,
on 11/28/2010
Blog: Adventures in YA Publishing (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Books, Pacing, Craft of Writing, YALit, Charlie Price, Add a tag
Many thanks to Charlie Price for helping us develop better technique pacing our writing, as well as this awesome giveaway!
Happy reading and writing,
Martina & Marissa
Add a Comment
By: Adventures in Children's Publishing,
on 11/23/2010
Blog: Adventures in YA Publishing (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Pacing, Craft of Writing, Charlie Price, Add a tag
Pacing balances acceleration with aesthetics to make each story a trip worth taking. Writers decide whether a section is best served by speed toward a particular destination or a winding journey through evocative details. Paragraph by paragraph we choose the route, rate of travel, and scenery.
I recently finished The Interrogation of Gabriel James, a novel I had written and re-written ten or eleven times from various points of view, always in sequential fashion. The story had a quiet girl with a bizarre home life, racism and hate crimes, sports, arson, family drama, homeless heroes, police, mayhem, and even love! Still, something about it didn’t grab me by the lapels.
One afternoon while I was doctoring a particular scene, an idea bobbed to the surface. What if I could tell the story as a day’s interrogation? Ten weeks, collapsed to six or eight hours in a room with two detectives? And further, what if their questions would not only be answered in real-time dialog, but would also open zip files in the protagonist’s memory? We would spend the day with the kid, and the law officers would force the whole complex tale out on the table.
Since, once the interrogation began, I was going to rocket into the story’s events, I could afford a more leisurely, almost literary, initial approach: a cold and lonely graveyard scene on the buffalo plains of Eastern Montana seen through Gabriel’s eyes.
“I stood at the back of a small crowd in a bleak cemetery north of the Yellowstone River, the second funeral I had attended this week. . . . I knew enough to wish that time could collapse like an old telescope, that some events once seen in greater detail would disappear from the horizon, gone for good. Gone forever.”
Then, after a single space break, the Interrogation:
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” The deputy folded her hands on the table between us.
“I’m not sure what the beginning is,” I said. It was true. I never cau Add a Comment
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Charlie Price, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 2 of 2
By: Adventures in Children's Publishing,
on 11/28/2010
Blog: Adventures in YA Publishing (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Books, Pacing, Craft of Writing, YALit, Charlie Price, Add a tag
Many thanks to Charlie Price for helping us develop better technique pacing our writing, as well as this awesome giveaway!
Happy reading and writing,
Martina & Marissa
By: Adventures in Children's Publishing,
on 11/23/2010
Blog: Adventures in YA Publishing (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Pacing, Craft of Writing, Charlie Price, Add a tag
We're excited to have author Charlie Price joining us today to discuss the ever-so-sticky wicket of pacing. Charlie works with kids in at-risk schools, mental institutions and psychiatric hospitals. He is also an executive coach and a consultant who conducts business workshops. He lives in Northern California, but went to high school in Billings, Montana where his most recent novel, THE INTERROGATION OF GABRIEL JAMES is set.
I recently finished The Interrogation of Gabriel James, a novel I had written and re-written ten or eleven times from various points of view, always in sequential fashion. The story had a quiet girl with a bizarre home life, racism and hate crimes, sports, arson, family drama, homeless heroes, police, mayhem, and even love! Still, something about it didn’t grab me by the lapels.
One afternoon while I was doctoring a particular scene, an idea bobbed to the surface. What if I could tell the story as a day’s interrogation? Ten weeks, collapsed to six or eight hours in a room with two detectives? And further, what if their questions would not only be answered in real-time dialog, but would also open zip files in the protagonist’s memory? We would spend the day with the kid, and the law officers would force the whole complex tale out on the table.
Since, once the interrogation began, I was going to rocket into the story’s events, I could afford a more leisurely, almost literary, initial approach: a cold and lonely graveyard scene on the buffalo plains of Eastern Montana seen through Gabriel’s eyes.
“I stood at the back of a small crowd in a bleak cemetery north of the Yellowstone River, the second funeral I had attended this week. . . . I knew enough to wish that time could collapse like an old telescope, that some events once seen in greater detail would disappear from the horizon, gone for good. Gone forever.”
Then, after a single space break, the Interrogation:
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” The deputy folded her hands on the table between us.
“I’m not sure what the beginning is,” I said. It was true. I never cau Add a Comment
congrats to Jessica :)
Hey! I won! Awesome! Thanks for hosting this contest and I'm so glad that I'll be able to read this book! :)
Congrats to Jessica :)