Jamie Arpin-Ricci's Blog, page 13
March 10, 2016
How (Not) To Start Your Novel
You might be wondering why I am returning to the topic of your story’s beginning again, given that I have written about twice in the recent future- first, with the 8-Word Spark exercise, then again with “The Best of Times: A Story’s First Sentence”. One of the reasons it is so important to get the beginning right (while acknowledging that you shouldn’t get stuck trying to make it perfect) is that so much of what follows is impacted by it. The more you are able to begin your story well, the ea...
March 6, 2016
Mixed Racial Messages in Disney’s “Zootopia”
This weekend, my wife and I took our 8 year old son, Micah, to see Disney’s newest animated film, “Zootopia”. The movie proved to be a fun, fast-paced buddy-cop story that was enjoyable for parents and kids alike. The story follows the unlikely friendship between a rabbit police officer- the first of her kind as part of an intentionally inclusive city hiring policy- and charming con-artist fox- who chose his life of petty crime because of societies refusal to give him any other options- as th...
March 5, 2016
The Untold Story
-Maya Angelou
March 2, 2016
What Makes A Great Story
Have you ever started reading a novel and found that the story didn’t seem to work? Perhaps there was a plot that the characters moved through, but somehow it felt disjointed and even confusing. Or the idea behind the story was good and the characters were even compelling, but it lacked that sense of cohesiveness that really draws you in. I know I have read a few like, most of which I didn’t finish.
There are many reasons why a story might fail to draw readers in, but one of the most common i...
February 29, 2016
Writing and the Gift of a Great Editor
Last week, my wife showed me a clip from the X Factor of an early audition by a young singer name Jake Quickenden. During the audition, the judges stop Jake in the midst of his performance. While they were not keen on his performance, they recognized something behind it all and encouraged him to try again with a different approach. The results were remarkable. If you have not seen this clip, take a moment to watch:
The startling difference between the first and second song in this audition i...
February 26, 2016
Why (Not) Write Under A Pen Name?
Writing under a pen name is something that has always intrigued me. I first discovered the concept when I was a young reader and came across a novel by Richard Bachman at the local library. As a flipped through the pages, a friend leaned over and said, “You know that Bachman is actually Stephen King, right?”. I had no idea! Years later I learned that the reason King used a pseudonym in the late 70’s/early 80’s was due to an unwritten rule in publishing, that a “real author” only released one...
February 25, 2016
Look What Arrived!
I got a real treat this week when the first physical copy of “The Last Verdict” arrived in the mail. It’s just an advanced proof (and the cover art is not the same as the final), but holding a copy has made this whole process real. I should be getting another proof in a week or two, then the final edits get finished up. Then the book gets released!
I am so excited and wanted to share this moment. Thanks for sharing this joy with me!
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February 23, 2016
John Grisham & Stephen King on Writing
As much as I am a great aficionado of literary fiction, I am also a shameless fan of popular fiction. In fact, popular fiction has played a big role in influencing my writing and my life. Two examples of this can be found in John Grisham and Stephen King, both highly successful popular authors with very different genres. Grisham write legal thrillers, where as Stephen King writes horror/thrillers, generally speaking.
John Grisham’s writing impacted me in several ways. First, his novel “The St...
February 22, 2016
Looking For Justice
Last year saw a new record in the American justice system. Nearly 150 people were exonerated for wrongful convictions, with the average prison stay for these victims of the system being 14 years. Consider that: the number of years wasted in prison from the lives of innocent people in 2015 alone is well over 2000 years. That is just one year and only those who were exonerated- and let’s face it, if 150 were exonerated, we can be assured that there were many innocent people who were not.
It doe...
February 17, 2016
Why I Moved To Fiction
“If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.”
—Peter Handke
With my first novella, The Last Verdict, releasing in the coming weeks, several people have been asking me why I made the switch from writing non-fiction to writing fiction. First of all, I will continue to write non-fiction as the projects come in. After all, I am still unproven as a fiction writer and even one novella won’t be enough to know.
However, it is true that I hope to write more fiction in the coming years...
