Charlie Huston's Blog, page 71

I've got a question about your writing process: How do you approach individual scenes? Do you know where it is going to end up before you put pen to paper? Do you use the Mamet formula of Character wants X, makes efforts to get X and is thwarted? Or do you

I rarely ever think about discreet scenes as separate from a whole unless I’m doing some kind of scripting. Comic book scripts, teleplays, and screenplays allow for that kind of compartmentalization, but I can’t remember ever looking at a single scene in a novel and conceiving it as anything other than the next bit of the story. That said, I’ll try to give you an answer that isn’t deliberately coy.

Sometimes, yes, I have a good idea of what’s going to happen next. That next may be a single lin...

I've got a question about your writing process: How do you approach individual scenes? Do you know where it is going to end up before you put pen to paper? Do you use the Mamet formula of Character wants X, makes efforts to get X and is thwarted? Or do you

I rarely ever think about discreet scenes as separate from a whole unless I’m doing some kind of scripting. Comic book scripts, teleplays, and screenplays allow for that kind of compartmentalization, but I can’t remember ever looking at a single scene in a novel and conceiving it as anything other than the next bit of the story. That said, I’ll try to give you an answer that isn’t deliberately coy.

Sometimes, yes, I have a good idea of what’s going to happen next. That next may be a single lin...

I've got a question about your writing process: How do you approach individual scenes? Do you know where it is going to end up before you put pen to paper? Do you use the Mamet formula of Character wants X, makes efforts to get X and is thwarted? Or do you

I rarely ever think about discreet scenes as separate from a whole unless I’m doing some kind of scripting. Comic book scripts, teleplays, and screenplays allow for that kind of compartmentalization, but I can’t remember ever looking at a single scene in a novel and conceiving it as anything other than the next bit of the story. That said, I’ll try to give you an answer that isn’t deliberately coy.

Sometimes, yes, I have a good idea of what’s going to happen next. That next may be a single lin...

Photo

slaughterhouse90210:“He couldn’t imagine Bekka as a teenager....

slaughterhouse90210:

“He couldn’t imagine Bekka as a teenager. Or rather, he could, sort of, since she often acted like one already, full of rage at the incompetent waitstaff that life had hired to take and bring her order.”
—Lorrie Moore, Bark

"From now on I hope always to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will..."

“From now on I hope always to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”

-

Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing (1990)

"We are cups…"

"A little boy, not more than 8 or 10, pulls the hood of his gray...

"A little boy, not more than 8 or 10, pulls the hood of his gray sweatshirt over his head and keeps pulling until is covers his eyes and face. He is sobbing. The hood is only chance he has at privacy as his small body shakes and a packed bus accelerates away behind him. Someone he loves is on that bus. "

Jared J. Kohler

jaredkohler:"Can I take your picture?" “Yes, but only if you...

jaredkohler:

"Can I take your picture?"
“Yes, but only if you make me look pretty.” @unrefugees #portrait #love #woman #jordan #dignity #instadaily #instabest

Hey man, I finished reading Skinner today and I loved it. Your books mean a lot to me, and if you don't mind I'd like to ask you for a little advice. How much importance would you place on actual writing schooling (like college courses/programs) for someon

My personal experience with writing programs was my first semester at CSUSF. I enrolled in the creative writing program, and by the end of the semester I was dropping classes to keep my GPA just high enough to land on academic probation instead of being expelled outright. The following semester I loaded up on theater classes to lift my GPA, and never took another writing course in my life.

But the only conclusion you can really draw from that story is that me at that age and that writing prog...

Hey man, I finished reading Skinner today and I loved it. Your books mean a lot to me, and if you don't mind I'd like to ask you for a little advice. How much importance would you place on actual writing schooling (like college courses/programs) for someon

My personal experience with writing programs was my first semester at CSUSF. I enrolled in the creative writing program, and by the end of the semester I was dropping classes to keep my GPA just high enough to land on academic probation instead of being expelled outright. The following semester I loaded up on theater classes to lift my GPA, and never took another writing course in my life.

But the only conclusion you can really draw from that story is that me at that age and that writing prog...