Went to a really interesting book signing tonight, by David Gessner, who is on tour with a book called All the Wild that Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and The American West. He spoke really intelligently about the environmental movement as seen through the eyes of two premier novelists who were also, in very different ways, emblematic of the quest to save wildness.
Oral Storytelling and the Antihero
This blog ties back to the one I wrote a couple days ago about backstory. What I want to talk about today is the concept of the antihero. For me, these are my favorite types of heroes, because they’re real, they’re flawed, they’re not James Bond, they’re not entirely good or ethical, but we love them because they are like us. Only, in most cases, they dare to do things we wouldn’t dare to do. The caper I’m writing now, about bank robbers, is a great example of this.
What the Heck is a Memoir Ghostwriter, Anyway?
I met someone new yesterday, and it happened again. When people find out what I do, they often do this thing where they squint, look off into the distance, look at me, look off into the distance again, shake their head, and finally ask, “I don’t get it. What kind of people hire you to ghostwrite a book?”
That’s pretty much what happened. Usually, such new friends have never heard of a memoir ghostwriter before, and their brains kind of short-circuit for a minute while they try to process the new information.
The answer to the questions is: a wide variety of types of people in terms of ages, backgrounds, and intentions for the book. But what the clients usually have in common is that they have had a single remarkable experience in their lives that they want to write about.
Flashing Back
When I’m ghostwriting a memoir, an interesting challenge usually comes up: there are two stories that need to be told. This is also a big issue when the book reads like a novel based upon a true story: there is the “real time” story, and then there is the “back story.”
The real time story is the one we’re telling–
- “How I succeeded in business,”
- “How I overcame MS and became a celebrated athlete,”
- “Our trip to Africa and how it changed us forever,”
- “How I escaped from one cult only to join another one,”
- “How and why my best friends and I robbed a bank.”
(just using examples from the books I’ve written in the past few years. You get the picture.)
Of course, the back story is what the reader needs to know in order to understand how you got to be you. Often, this involves the story of your childhood, sometimes the story of your young-adulthood too.
Using Dialogue to Build Characters
On the current crime novel project, I’ve been writing a lot of dialogue lately. A lot of clients working on memoir (or novels based on true stories) actually end up coming to me after trying to write their own book. This is specifically because they have finally realized they can’t write dialogue.
I thought here I’d try to talk a little bit about how I do it. The answer of course, is I just DO it. The characters come alive as they talk. But if I were to break it down into the various components of what goes on, subconsciously, when I bring them alive like that, I’d say the following.
Writing a Fake True Story
Back to my favorite blog topic: ghostwriting. Now, I take my client confidentiality very seriously, but at the same time, Inquiring Minds Want to Know–what’s it like to be a ghostwriter? I get asked all the time, so let me, without naming names, bring you into the world I currently inhabit.
A couple of years ago I wrote a true-life epic romance novel, and got to really research the romance genre. Then last year, I wrote a southern coming-of-age novel in something close to a linked-short-stories style. It was very Jeannette Walls, if you know what that means. And now, I’m working on a fun crime caper where the story is completely fictional, but the characters and the pasts of the characters are based on real people.
Humor in Memoir Workshop
I recently conducted a workshop entitled “Humor in Memoir.” Originally, the workshop was actually called “Laugh and the World Laughs with You.” I gave this workshop at the Association of Personal Historians annual conference in St. Louis, MO, last October.
This was an attempt to try to teach memoirists how to inject humor into their work. If you’ve read my ghostwriting site, you’ll know I use humor a lot in all the work I do, but when people ask me how I do it or what situations call for humor, sometimes I just shrug. It’s intuitive! But I wanted to answer that question once and for all and codify (if you will) writing with humor, so that people who just don’t have a natural knack for it can try to learn to do it.
Bits of String too Small to Save
Very soon now, I’m going to be able to show you the book cover for my upcoming fantasy novel, Bits of String too Small to Save. It’s being created by a brilliant UK artist named Phillip Harris. My vision for the book is to have it clothbound and peppered with beautiful, detailed pen-and-ink drawings.
This is not a graphic novel at all, but it will be illustrated. I had a version of Alice in Wonderland, as a child, which surprised me every once in a while with a really breathtaking illustration, right in the middle of a chapter, as if the publisher wanted to say, “I know you’ve got your own idea of what the caterpillar smoking a hooka looks like, but I just really, really, really want you to know how I’m picturing that, too.” That’s the kind of real treasure of a book I’d like to create.
Welcome to the Dollhouse
Getting excited for the upcoming Santa Fe Speakeasy themed “Welcome to the Dollhouse”–stories about houses, homes, unusual living situations, or anything miniature. I could do the entire show myself, just talking about wierd places I’ve lived, attempts at “co-housing”, attempts at “sustainable living”, attempts at playing house with a boyfriend, attempts at “making it on my own in the big city.”
Seems like life is nothing but one strange dollhouse after another. But I have settled on telling a story about a roommate who literally tried to kill me. Well, seduce me, then kill me. A New York story, of course.