Anyone here written a book?
Or rather… had one published?
I would love any suggestions for fiction/satire
I am currently writing a novel, mostly for fun/practice… but I figure if I’m going to write one, I might as well do it the best I can.
Never been published (aside from a few poems back in the day when I wrote poetry) but I have written one full novel and one practically full novel which I’ve decided needs a mythological element to counterbalance the technocratic world in which the story takes place.
In terms of satire - a mock diary is probably the easiest structure to work with because you can write long and short passages, use all sorts of colloquial language without it seeming contrived, you can strike wonderfully comic comparisons between the writers actions and their actual feelings…
Subject matter - I dunno, you are into a bunch of different stuff, I wouldn’t have thought that you’d ever struggle for something to write about, if you follow…
It did just occur to me that in some respects you are a lot like the British satirical author (and TV writer) Ben Elton, who has sadly sold out and become an idiot in recent years but during the 80s and 90s he was a prolific and talented writer. He wrote a series of satirical leftwing novels about global conspiracy, climate change, ecological disasters and so on. I dunno if you’ve ever come across him but I think that you could learn from him and even if you didn’t that you’d enjoy reading his stuff.
i may be published in a journal soon. i am submitting a paper on Kierkegaard and theology to a few journals…
Siatd,
Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll be sure to look up Ben Elton.
I’m not suffering for subject matter, persay… the story is in the head of a kid not so much unlike myself who is a basketball player, but eventually gets involved in the ‘rap game’ as a ghost writer.
I plan on basically poking fun at the black rapper culture, with some existential/individualistic philosophical trends throughout.
I’ve written a few chapters already, they’re tentative… but the story works alot like the tv show host one on symposia. Sort of hearing the thoughts from the character ‘marshall’ (after marshall macdaniel - I just think it’s a cool name) as he narrates what is going on around him.
The thing I’m finding sort of difficult is working in what I feel to be enough dialogue.
Isn’t a writer an actor too lazy too wait on tables?
Nah…
Gobbo,
Do you include action sequences of the guy actually playing basketball? I’ve always thought that sports action, if written well, is a great way to draw people in. Especially with a sport like football (soccer) or basketball, one that’s played all over the world by people of all sorts of ages and abilities.
In terms of working in dialogue, this can be difficult with the sort of novel that you are writing (one that is essentially introspective). The first novel that I wrote was like this so I simply, and from the opening pages of the book, had a repeated scenario where I had my protagonist meet up with friend of long standing and drink and chat. This is one way to ‘naturally’ build in backstory and flesh out your protagonist, you can drop hints as to why he feels the way he does about life and where he feels he is going. Now you might not want to use a friend, he could be going to confess to a priest or to see a shrink. Or some other version of the same thing - a barman who he doesn’t actually know but with whom he shares conversations, a waitress in a cafe where he likes to eat, there’s any number of possibilities. In fact, someone that your protagonist doesn’t know (like the barman) might work better because it justifies having conversations about details that might otherwise be hard to fit in convincingly.
But that’s the easiest way that I’ve found, just have some repeated scenario (also makes the film adaptation easier) which engenders dialogue, as I say, ‘naturally’. It could be some old guy who watches the kids playing basketball and shares memories with your protagonist of his glory days on the court. All you really need is something that will fit in with what you want to do that is plausible within the context of the story. This is a mechanical way of thinking about it but ultimately structural aspects like that are tedious and mechanical. The fun part is inventing some cool cat for your protagonist to talk to, my advice would be to make the cat as different from your protagonist as the story will allow. If you want to write about big themes then having a broad range of potential events, characters and so on helps you to flesh it all out. A basic example would be to have the cat drag the protagonist off to do something unfamiliar, thus presenting you with a chance to show how your protagonist would deal with something other than what you’ve already discussed in the book.
All of this is conjecture, take it or leave it. Obviously I’d have to read what you’ve got so far in order to make any less vague comments.
Ive never written a novel, the idea daunts me. But I have written a comic book script and im always working on film scripts. At the moment im thinking of writing a script for a film about the inevitable coming of globilisation, a few centuries from now there will be one race, one language, one culture, one power. Mah, I figure if I write enough of these crappy scripts one of em’s gotta be good.
Anyway, nothing published… yet 
.
I think I ate a bonafida once.
I was in Europe, spain I think.
It tasted like chicken.
Kropotkin
My art work has been published, but I’m too clumsy with words to make anything of real literary value.
Yeah, I have 1 so far, but during the scene he is mostly concerned with a certain rap icon in the audience… and his incessent heckling.
Once i get a bit of direction and I get some more work on it done I’ll let you read what I have so far.
Right now this is more practice than working on a ‘project’, or rather… it’s practice -for- working on a project… if that makes sense.
Check out ‘the next day’ in the creative writing section… that’s one of the chapters.
Yes, considering the only way anyone can understand anything you write is because I edit it for you first.
I used to write in high school, but now that I’m older, I’m less inspired. Plus anything I read from back then makes no sense whatsoever. I occasionally stumble across something and think it wasn’t so bad for a 16 year old.
Now, of course, I don’t have any time to actually read a book, much less write one.
BURN