Charles Benoit's Blog, page 3
March 25, 2012
When your characters take over
"My book was going nowhere. Then my characters took over and showed me where to go."
When I used to hear authors say this, I used to think: bullshit. Then it happened to me. It might still be bullshit, but here's how it goes.
March 1, 2012
Write Something Wrong
Now I know you never get anything like writers’ block, but for us mere mortals, here’s a little trick that supposedly originated somewhere in the Ad world back in the Don Draper days—
When you can’t seem to write a good ad, write the worst ad possible.
Can’t think of a reason why people should switch from Brand A to Brand X? Write an ad telling them why they shouldn’t.
No idea how to convince folks to visit destination B? Create an ad warning them to stay away.
Don’t know the right things to have your character say in a key scene? Write the scene having her say the worst things she could possibly say at that moment.
Trust me on this, it works.
Fine, you don’t trust me, so I’ll explain.
February 5, 2012
The Artist and The Blood Countess
Rose and I went to see The Artist the other night - it's the modern day silent movie and it's as great as you've heard. I recommend it highly.
This weekend we also saw The Blood Countess, a new ballet by the Rochester City Ballet. This was amazing and if you live in Rochester and you can still get tickets, you really need to see this show. Absolutely fantastic. Okay, it was my first ballet and I have nothing to compare it to, but it was still fantastic.
January 30, 2012
Writing when you'd rather not
I don't want to write tonight.
It was a busy day at the office--challenging, productive, fun at times, but in the end, mentally exhausting. After that, I had my weekly saxophone lesson. Not exausting but challenging, which is what I'm paying him for. And now it's time to work on my next book. It would be easy to say, 'take a night off, do it tomorrow, catch up on your relaxing' - the problem is, it's always easy to say that. Now I'm a clever guy, I'm sure I could come up with a dozen bullshit excuses why I don't need to write tonight. Tomorrow night I could come up with a dozen more. Yet no matter how many excuses I come up with, they're all still bullshit.
January 6, 2012
All my personal information
Below is an email I received the other day and my response:
Mr. Benoit
I am a High School student who is currently doing a report on one of your books, "You". Some of the requirements are to find basic personal information on the writer. Such as, Birth Date and Place as well as the name of your parents. I've searched many websites and cannot seem to find any of these things. I'd appreciate it if you could enlighten me with this simple information. Thank You
Dear Eric,
December 21, 2011
Time Management and Writing: The Choice is Yours
I got a letter last week from a reader named Megan. She's realized that she's one of those troubled souls who just has to write (welcome to the club, Miss!). She's trying to master time management so that she can have time to write, and she dropped me a note asking for advice. Here's what I had to say:
Hi Megan,
November 27, 2011
Extreme Materials
The Memorial Art Gallery here in exotic Rochester, NY has this really cool new exhibit called Extreme Materials* and it’s a collection of works by 40 or so artists from the US, Canada, England and Germany, and the thing they all have in common is that they use non-traditional materials in their works. Non-traditional as in a gown made of (new) condoms, an illuminated portrait created by layers of shipping tape, a “space” created by using thousands of bars of Neutrogena soap, some cool prints done on used coffee filters, a book mined for images (impossible to explain, but I was this close to stealing it), and a massive wave sculpture made from found objects that makes you think about surfing and polution and Star Wars figurines.
November 13, 2011
Swearing Off Swearing?
I'm trying to figure out where I stand on swearing in YA novels. This was never an issue in my mystery novels. If a character needed to say something he/she said it the way I figured that character would talk. But with YA it's different. At least I thought it was.
Before I wrote YOU, I had assumed that things like swearing and really described sex were not allowed in YA books. That's because I had never read one. Since then I 've read enough to prove how wrong I was, and some of the YA books I've read say and show more than my adult mysteries. So I guess if I wanted to, I could be as specific and explicit as I wanted. Thing is, I don't want to.
October 14, 2011
Anthony Trollope and me
I’m reading Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister & John Tierney. It’s good stuff and I recommend it, especially to authors who, like me, sometimes lack the stuff needed to sit the hell down and write.
Here’s a few paragraphs from the book—plus a few notes from me—that should be of interest to all writers:
October 7, 2011
Best Books for Writers
Okay, let’s get this outta the way—any book can be a great book for a writer to read. What I’m talking about here are books that you can read that will actually make you a better writer. And there are exactly 400 zillion of these kind of books out there. I have read them all and offer the following—in no particular order—as my Best of the Best:
