craft

Featured Today on Scarlett Archer’s “1001 First Lines”

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I’m excited to be today’s featured interview on Scarlett Archer’s great blog, 1001 First Lines.

Scarlett’s questions about the importance of first lines–and some of the lemons I’ve both read and written–were a lot of fun to answer. It’s a pleasure to just talk about craft sometimes!

Check it out if you have a few minutes and see if you agree with my views on what some people think are the most precious words in a book.

1001 First Lines: http://1001firstlines.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/first-lines-interview-with-author-matthew-iden/

Book Critique: Robert Parker’s Looking for Rachel Wallace

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Earlier this week, I talked about the usefulness of the book critique to help refine my writing. I thought I’d show a critique I did on one of crime fiction writer Robert Parker’s best Spenser novels, Looking for Rachel Wallace, a book that has helped me immensely as I try to make a career in the same field.

If the writing seems abbreviated or sloppy or informal, that’s the way I write these so as to better understand the critique later. It’s essentially a monologue I have with myself on paper; if I wrote any more formally or self-consciously, I feel that I’d lose something in the study. Unlike my guide in the previous post, there’s not much in the Issues section and there’s no Summary…I think I cover everything in the other sections. If I get a positive response, I’ll post a more complete critique on another novel.

I hope you find it helpful, but there are huge SPOILERS, obviously. Don’t read the critique if you haven’t read the book!

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Reading to Write

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I imagine that, for most authors, the urge to write comes from reading. My earliest attempt came from having read a story and wanting to emulate it. There is something about the cognitive process that, for writers and would-be writers, makes the act of reading equate almost directly with writing.

Unfortunately, our cognitive process blithely glosses over an important fact: that writing a book is an order of magnitude harder than reading one. That single issue has broken the will of more than one would-be novelist over the years. We probably all know someone who, flush with the pleasure of having finished a really good book, has bought a new laptop, a shelf-full of Writers Digest guides, and sat down to knock out their first novel in a weekend…only to give it up before Monday morning.

But that doesn’t mean that the original impulse—to read in order to write—was unfounded. To be a good writer, you have to continue to read and, in fact, improve as a reader if you want to be successful.

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Compassion Play: Treating Your Victims With Respect

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A few years ago I attended the renowned Boucheron convention, a fan-based convention for mystery and crime fiction. UK comedian-turned-crime fiction-novelist Mark Billingham was one of the many panelists that I listened to that day, but he said something that stuck with me when the words of many other bright lights at the conference faded away. Something I’d never heard a mystery or crime fiction author talk about before.

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Guest blogging on David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital

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Friends –

I’m excited to be the guest blogger on David Gaughran’s fantastic blog, Let’s Get Digital, today, where I’m talking about how digital publishing has–or will soon–change not just publishing, but the art of writing itself by eliminating one important dimension: length.

If you have the time, please swing by Dave’s blog and add to the discussion!