{"id":2171,"date":"2010-01-25T07:02:16","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T11:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=2171"},"modified":"2010-01-24T23:14:24","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T03:14:24","slug":"writing-advice-learning-from-the-masters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=2171","title":{"rendered":"Writing Advice: Learning From The Masters"},"content":{"rendered":"

In October 2009 I was fortunate to meet, very briefly, one of the smartest and prolific authors of my time, Francine Prose.\u00c2\u00a0 She was in town to talk about her latest book, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife.<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0 The format for her visit, she said, was different from her other stops to talk about it.\u00c2\u00a0 She would discuss the book and research for it, read some passages, and then take questions.\u00c2\u00a0 Honestly, it\u00c2\u00a0felt like a master class to me and I envied her students.<\/p>\n

Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife<\/em> is not the book she originally set out to write at all.\u00c2\u00a0 Prose wanted to write a novel with a teenager as the main character and what better source could there be but Anne Frank? (I’ve had Prose’s Reading Like A Writer<\/em> on my TBR\u00c2\u00a0pile for years but I promise this is the year I will read it!)\u00c2\u00a0 From there she got so caught up in Anne Frank as a writer that she wrote a different book altogether.\u00c2\u00a0 Many multiple published authors believe if you want to write well that it’s good to know why or how other writers\u00c2\u00a0were able to pull off an idea or theme successfully.<\/p>\n

The last week or so I’ve been taking mental notes on Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn<\/em>. I know this will not be my first reading of it.\u00c2\u00a0 Back in November 2006 I wrote over 15,000 words of a novel originally titled Untitled 2006<\/em> for lack of a better name.\u00c2\u00a0 As always, I thought an appropriate title would spring up along the way.\u00c2\u00a0 In One Good Turn<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0Atkinson has one event happen seen from multiple points of view and then slowly all the people who witnessed the event are tied together.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re strangers so they don’t know they’re connected.\u00c2\u00a0 In Untitled 2006<\/em> I had one event happen and then began writing a chapter about each key person who witnessed or was part of the event but overlooked the extraordinary thing about it.\u00c2\u00a0 But I ran out of steam after a while\u00c2\u00a0mainly because\u00c2\u00a0I didn’t know what that extraordinary thing was.\u00c2\u00a0 After several years I still don’t know but that doesn’t mean the day won’t come when I will have that answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In October 2009 I was fortunate to meet, very briefly, one of the smartest and prolific authors of my time, Francine Prose.\u00c2\u00a0 She was in town to talk about her latest book, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife.\u00c2\u00a0 The format for her visit, she said, was different from her other stops to talk… Continue reading Writing Advice: Learning From The Masters<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[229,226,227,228,232,231,230,804],"class_list":["post-2171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-anne-frank-the-book","tag-francine-prose","tag-kate-atkinson","tag-one-good-turn","tag-reading-like-a-writer","tag-the-afterlife","tag-the-life","tag-writing","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t