<$Susan Goodwill$>

Saturday, November 11, 2006

NaNo #9 Evanovich

Okay! With NaNo Post #8 Lila picked up on our theme of cooking.
So let's go on with that a little bit and take a page (literally) from How I Write Secrets of a Best-Selling Author by Janet Evanovich with Ina Yalof. From the question-and-answer section, page 40.
Q:I really want to be a best-selling author, how do you get your books to be so easy to read into appeal to so many people?
JANET: I work very hard at the mechanics of writing so the reader doesn't have to work at all. This means I'm conscious of the rhythm of each sentence. I vary the building blocks (narrative, action, description, and dialogue) so the pace is interesting. And I keep my books relatively short and the structure linear so they're easy to read.
Also, I strongly believe in reduction writing. It's like reduction in cooking. When you make gravy you take a big pot of ingredients—meat, spices—and you boil it down to a little pot of stuff, which is the essence. If you use that principle in writing. You're getting two terrific sentences rather than four long, tedious paragraphs. While my writing may give the impression of being simple and effortless, it actually takes me hours to get it to appear that way.
And here's another little quote. A good plot draws its energy from a reader's curiosity, as you write your story keep asking yourself, And then what happens?

And she is a firm believer in the finished rough draft before the editing begins. You have to have a lot of ingredients before you can reduce. Write on NaNo-ers.
Gotta go. These posts made me hungry.