What Peter's Reading

Notebooks, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Accidental Creative

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption, Stuff

I’ve been re-reading Secrets of the World’s Best-Selling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner this week, tracking down a quote I wanted to use for my thesis.

It’s an incredibly intriguing book–Gardner is, after all, best known for creating Perry Mason, but was also known as the king of the pulps for a time, including a year-long stint where he maintained 13 different series characters.

What’s really intriguing is that Secrets isn’t actually written by Gardner–instead, it’s an assemblage put together by two other authors using the vast archives of his notebooks, correspondence, and other resources archived at a university library. This means there’s less “this is how you do it” advice, and more glimpses into the ongoing development of the writer for whom writing did’t come naturally. Gardner taught himself to write using a lot of diligent study and stress-testing of ideas, and recorded a lot of it in his dairies and notebooks.

One of the quotes that has stuck with me, courtesy of his notes from a correspondence course on playwriting:

To have the plot instinct is a great blessing for the writer. Lacking this, however, the most valuable asset he can possess is the note book habit. Carry one with you constantly. Jot down everything that may be of help in framing and developing a plot, as well as in creating a dramatic scene for a story…

The rule of jotting down your thought on the instant does not apply merely to ideas that come as inspirations, or thoughts suggested by what you read or see, but it applies especially to ideas that come to you at the tie you give yourself up to concentrated thinking on play-production.

Secrets of the World’s Best-Selling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner

This is, going by the details that follow in the book, exactly what Gardner did.

What’s intriguing about this is the way it syncs up with a lot of the advice in Todd Henry’s Accidental Creative, which doesn’t necessarily advocate for carrying a notebook constantly, but does advocate for engaging in active reading that involves copious note-taking and setting aside dedicated time to ponder a particular problem or idea.

What’s really intriguing about Henry is the way he puts a frame around these activities. For example, when reading, he suggests a short series of questions to ask yourself and take notes about:

  • Are there any patterns in what you’re reading that are similar to something else you’re working on? (My friend Kathleen Jennings, upon reading Accidental Creative, took this a step further by forcing herself to draw connections and patterns to current projects, just to see what emerged)
  • What do you find surprising about what you’re experiencing?
  • What do you like about what you’re experiencing and why?
  • What do you dislike about what you’re experiencing?

I’m relatively bad at remembering to do this (despite the fact that the first step largely what I’m going here), although I do tend to set aside some dedicated study time where I actively take notes. Reading about Gardner’s approach has convinced me it may be worth taking things a step further–I’ve taken to packaging a small pocket notebook alongside my phone (aka my primary reading device, especially for non-fiction), in addition to incorporating any online reading into the bullet journal beside my computer.

It’s stepped up my notetaking game considerably–particularly when it comes to online content, which now involves a lot more thought about what I’m reading rather than just flicking through and bookmarking stuff that may seem useful.

Recent Reading: Sharks and more Sharks

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption , , , ,

One of the projects I’d like to work one, somewhere down the line, is essentially a deranged giant monster horror/thriller that should not exist. Since I’m primarily a fan of these in film form, rather than fiction, I set myself the task of reading a bunch of books that serve as an introduction to the form in a literary sense.

The result was Shark Week.

I kicked off with Steve Alten’s The Meg because a) I’d really enjoyed the recent film in all it’s goofy glory, and b) it had a surprising number of sequels, which immediately caught my eye as a researcher interested in series. 

The Meg in book form is a very different beast to the film. There are still giant sharks, of course, and plenty of people who get eaten along the way, but the character traits wrapped around the default archetypes are different enough to mean something. Our protagonist, Jonas Taylor, isn’t just a retired navy deep sea specialist, but now has a PhD in Sharks and a not-so-whackadoodle theory that megaladons are still alive after his experiences in hte navy. His ex-wife isn’t a fellow sub specialist, but a highly-ambitious journalist whose life has been destroyed by protagonist Jonas Taylor’s obsessions and isn’t quite an ex yet. Everyone else is similarly a few steps sideways from the film adaptation, giving us a decent spread of POV’s and a whole lot of internal dramas to play out.

The Meg isn’t a subtle book, but its a hell of a lot of fun and a really great example of a how to handle a few aspects of genre (for example: give the antagonist a POV, give the reader a basic education in the “science!” of  your setting; big motivations leading to dumb, stupid decisions). Plus, it does that thing I live as a reader: take an absurd concept, then play it absolutely straight.

Here’s what’s interesting, though: the cinematic version of The Meg is undoubtably a tighter story. It’s had to winnow down the details and streamline things, tie it together with a unity and underlying action that makes a good film work. And it’s a hell of an enjoyable film, if you dig a goofy monster film (although my partner, who does enjoy a goofy monster film, was not as big a fan).

At the same time, I’m not sure that the film is as outright enjoyable as the book. Despite it’s sprawling plot and increasingly goofy motivations, with folks swearing vengeance against the Meg and setting out to hunt it every couple of chapters, the fiction version couples a sense of outright glee with the feeling that you’re getting a glimpse into secret worlds and learning details.

And that can be just as powerful as a tightly woven story. More so, if you’re a certain kind of reader. 

I’m curious to read the sequels to see what they replicate, what the escalate, and what they allow to fall by the wayside.

THE MEG, BY STEVE ALTERN: AMAZON (AUS | UK | USA); KOBO: BOOKTOPIA

The other half of informal Shark Week reading was Peter Benchley’s Jaws, the New York Times bestseller that went on to be adapted into the Stephen Spielberg film and launch one of the most iconic soundtrack riffs fo all time.

I raved about this book a few times while reading it, and I’m probably going to do so here: it’s worth a read. Like a lot of 80s films that seemed to spin off endless sequels, Jaws is one of those stories whose original qualities got burried under the absurdity of trying to reiterate a simple story. Going back to the source is interesting, because it shows just how smart the book is: the broad metaphors of class, the conflicts between intellect-driven decisions and Sheriff Brody’s insticts, the way that the conflict of stopping the shark is routinely tied to really personal goals in the protagaonists. 

It’s even more interesting to read this back-to-back with The Meg, because you can both see the influences on Altern’s approach, but also the genre traits worth replicating. Once again, there’s the POV given to the animal as a means of escalating tension; the minor characters who get a few moments in the sun before getting eaten; the big, not-at-all-related-to-this motivations that both tie into and get subsumed by the marauding shark; the exploration of the science of sharks, even as we’re hunting it down.

It’s definitely the stronger of the two novels, although I suspect that The Meg may be a little more fun if you’re the kind of reader who likes their giant monster stories to be a little goofy and cheesy.

JAWS, by PETER BENCHLEY: AMAZON (AUS | UK | USA); KOBO; BOOKTOPIA

RECENT READING: The Five Book Catch-Up

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

I am probably offline when you read this. Of late, I’ve been programming Freedom to block my internet access for eight or nine hours a day. No social media, no checking sales numbers, no logging into this blog to check stats. The net result is a lot of writing, and a whole lot of reading.

Right now, this series is running several books behind my actual reading. I’m starting to forget things and get the order all mixed up in my head. So here we go, a quick-and-dirty catch-up of books I heartily recommend.

Go and read Mary Robinette Kowal’s THE CALCULATING STARS. Obviously, you don’t need me to tell you this, given that it just won a Hugo and seems poised to win all the other awards in short order.

Short version: It’s great. It’s really, really great. I gave a copy to my partner, and it largely sparked off a week of good book noises and momentary pauses to tell me about a new bit she really loved. So I read it, and spent about twenty-four hours making good book noises, because once I’d started this book I didn’t put it down until the whole thing was read.

It’s a smart alternate history about asteroids wiping out Washington and the sudden realisation that it’s time to get off this damn planet before the human race is extinct. The research that’s gone into the science and astronaut side of things is palpable and well-deployed.

But the stuff that will sucker you in is the diversity of the cast, the considered narrative around anxiety and mental health, and just the general awesomeness of Kowal’s writing as she lives up to this particular promise:

THE CALCULATING STARS, MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Amazon (AUS | UK | USA) | KOBO | BOOKTOPIA

While it’s written by the same author, Mary Robinette Kowal’s SHADES OF MILK AND HONEY is one of those books that I’d recommend in a more targeted and considered way.

Shades is an excellent book, but it’s also Kowal’s first and your enjoyment will largely depend on how much you’re likely to enjoy the riff of Jane Austen, but in a universe where young ladies of quality learn the arts of glamour and magical illusion. This makes it a touch more of an acquired taste than the Calculating Stars, but I expect the folks who love will really, really love it.

Fortunately, I’m an inveterate Austen fan and part of of Georgette Heyer book club in addition to being a fantasy fan, so I’m pretty much the target market for this book and all of its sequels. If it sounds like your kind of thing from the pitch, it’s almost certainly going to deliver, up-to and including a pretty awesome Darcy riff that quietly comes into his own as the book goes on.

SHADES OF MILK & HONEY, MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Amazon (AUS | UK | USA) | KOBO | BOOKTOPIA

Anne Lamott’s BIRD BY BIRD is one of those classics in the writer’s guide space, following in the tales-from-the-trenches approach which I enjoy far more than any other. The kind of book that’s immensely helpful if you’re just starting out, and something of a curiosity if you’ve been writing for a while and you’re just poking about to see how other people do it.

What’s interesting to me is the way this book tends to lag behind Stephen King’s On Writing in terms of being a book people recommend to new writers. Having read them both now, I’m inclined to suggest that Lamott’s book is the superior choice.

BIRD BY BIRD, ANNE LAMOTT: Amazon (AUS | UK | USA) | KOBO | BOOKTOPIA

There’s a lot of talk about indie writers treating books (and series) like episodes of TV, building towards an eventual boxed set where you get a complete narrative. Having read a bunch of indie series for my thesis, there’s relatively few that seem to match the product to the rhetoric in a way that feels meaningful.

Lindsay Buroker’s FLASH GOLD is one of the series starters that seems to get it right. It’s a short, fast novella that reads like the pilot episode of a Joss Whedon Steampunk Western, featuring a sword-carrying mysterious stranger and a plucky young inventor desperate to get the hell out of the small town she’s been stuck in since her father died.

Together, they beat up some bad guys and make the decision to team up as bounty hunters…and chase after a whole suite of goals that promise a pretty interesting season arc. The upside of this one is that you can download the ebook free, and it’s good enough that I’ll be following along for another book or two at least.

FLASH GOLD, LINDSAY BUROKER: Amazon (AUS | UK | USA) | KOBO

Libbie Hawker’s TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS is an interesting one in the how-to-outline-a-book-space. Ostensibly, it’s a focused distillation of the ideas in John Truby’s screenwriting book The Anatomy of Story, which is itself one of the two books on plotting that legitimately rocked my world after twenty-odd years of reading guides built upon the Heroes Journey and the three-act structure.

This meant I went into Hawker’s book with a certain amount of trepidation, as I figured the last thing I wanted was a more stripped down version of Truby’s process. Turns out, I was kinda wrong about that; Hawker does a great job of winnowing down the messier aspects of Truby’s system and streamlining it for fiction use, while frequently directing readers back to The Anatomy of Story if they want to see more examples and detailed unpacking of the ideas she’s talking about.

I may be getting my milage out of this book by using Hawker’s system for a first-run, broad-detail sketch, then dialling back to Truby’s book to get a more detailed and nuanced vision of what I’m doing, but I’m a geek who likes to get technical and detailed with my work. If you’re just after a quick-and-dirty planning system that doesn’t involve cleaving to the three act structure, then Hawker is going to have plenty to add to your process on her own.

TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS: OUTLINE YOUR BOOK FOR FASTER, BETTER WRITING, LIBBIE HAWKER: Amazon (AUS | UK | USA) | KOBO | BOOKTOPIA