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Titled: By Their Mistakes You Shall Know Them Get the Fiction category RSS Feed

By Their Mistakes You Shall Know Them

Article Summary: How hard it is to pierce the shell of professionalism in the masters. College professors and writing instructors have enjoined us to peer beneath the surface of Twain, Hemingway, Emerson, Grey, and those in our fields so that we can emulate their plots, their characterizations and produce our own masterpieces.

How hard it is to pierce the shell of professionalism in the masters. College professors and writing instructors have enjoined us to peer beneath the surface of Twain, Hemingway, Emerson, Grey, and those in our fields so that we can emulate their plots, their characterizations and produce our own masterpieces.

So pitiful were my powers of observation in the beginning that I read the first page of Tom Sawyer fourteen times in a row before I could at least understand why I laughed.

Other would-be writers have similar densities. Maybe it is the instructor then? In one writer's conference a professor began dissecting a work by Isaac Asimov and dishing out fascinating insights. One bushy-faced man stood up and protested that Isaac Asimov had not meant any such thing when he wrote the book.

"You don't understand the mind of Asimov," the professor responded.

The man shook his head in disbelief, "I am Isaac Asimov."

The professor glared at him.
"And what makes you think you understand your own mind?"

The great Asimov was silenced.

There are clues which dangle like little strings from a huge ball. Pull the right one and everything unravels. In 1954 I discovered Ellery Queen. Ellery was meek, mild mannered and capable of brilliant feats of deduction. His father was a high standing police detective that could get Ellery introduced to various crimes that needed solving, and his valiant sergeant could keep the bad guys from physically demolishing our great master of deduction.

For years I wanted to write like Ellery Queen and waded through all of his books again, in despair. Where the professors of literature can extract skeletons that hold up the plot and make the story move, I found nothing. Queen was too smooth, too polished for my mind to pierce even when some professor showed me the entire layout. Oh, I could understand what the professor was saying, even see it in some instances; but as far as duplicating those feats in my own writing... huh uh!

Dick Francis has been my hero of mystery fiction authors for more than a dozen years. Mr. Francis was an Edgar winner and he received the prestigious Crime Writers Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger. He was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of American in 1996 and was awarded the CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honors List in the year 2000. Every book he wrote, I devoured. Every one that I bought was so good I kept them for rereading purely for pleasure and did so on a regular basis. Even after dozens of readings a Dick Francis novel could pick me up within a page and carry my interest at white-hot pace throughout the book. After about the twentieth new book I could tell you who the killer was just as soon as he was introduced. To a remarkable degree I could tell in advance when this was going to happen or that was going to transpire and occasionally even the words Francis would use.

Therefore it was without any premonition of any kind that I opened up his book UNDER ORDERS and discovered all the magic was gone. I could not believe it. I must be having a bad day and not have known it when I began. Over again I started, and the novel still failed to lift me up and carry me forward. I set the book aside for a day then came back, and it was still the same. Me, it had to be me! Back to my bookshelf I went and picked out any Dick Francis book at random. Within two paragraphs he had picked me up and was sweeping me forward, as always.

Under Orders was opened again and I began to read once more. I wanted to quit, every minute, but I slogged on through the whole, entire book, searching for that breath of magic that endeared me so completely to Dick Francis. Alas and alack, that magic was entirely missing. The plot was there, the flow was there; had it been some new author's name on the jacket I would not have been disappointed in the least for it was and is -- good. But this was Dick Francis, MY Dick Francis and the magic was missing.

The reason that I mentioned Ellery Queen earlier is that all of the Queen stories and novels were written by two brothers. One created all the plots and the other fleshed all of them out. Occasionally there were family bickerings over the merits of the writing, or of the plot but all in all they did a remarkable job of creating a cohesive work of art. Now that I have read Under Orders and pondered over it for some time I wonder if I would not have been in the same state of shock had I read an Ellery Queen novel that had been written by only one brother.

By his mistakes and failures we shall understand his successes better.

It may be that Mr. Francis had a wife that gave a final polish to his work. Perhaps Mr. Francis gave a final polish to her work? Somehow I doubt that either of these permutations are true. What I really want to believe is that Mr. Francis did not finish this book. It was written, well-written, but I do not believe this book was published before the master started the final polish. Oh, it was mapped out -- mapped out and ready for the master's hand.

And THAT is wonderful news for you and me as emulative writers. Under Orders is a Sid Halley sequel, one of the master's favorite characters. That means we can go back to Whip Hand and the other Sid Halley novels and see EXACTLY how Dick Francis set up the scenes and plucked the plums off the trees he planted. As we read along little promptings will come, "What Mr. Francis was going to do here is --"

Even if we never learn how to duplicate his finesse, we can glean an understanding of the principles involved. As it is with Mr. Francis so it is with any other writer we admire. Given unlimited access to any writer's trash can we could eventually understand every tool and strategy s/he employed. Failing to obtain the trash can we can almost duplicate the Under Orders opportunity.

First, we need to know the master we wish to emulate. That is predicated on reading their best work repeatedly. Then we read the earlier works (or the later works if the magic is lost) and -- using what knowledge we have gleaned -- REPAIR the work to our own satisfaction.

We're not going to publish this repair work so there is no plagiarism involved. It is purely a personal learning experience. What we want to happen is for the groove of greatness to open in our own minds so that we can use the mechanics to produce our own masterpieces. Maybe we will never produce plums for the world, but our work shall definitely improve with professional practice, following in the footsteps of the masters.

Article Source: http://www.upublish.info

About the Author:
Lin Stone
Independently less than wealthy, Lin Stone writes how to articles for the writing trade. His first book, HOW TO BUY LAND AT TAX SALES, is so good it is still selling after eight years. You'll find 14,000 hand-picked resource articles for writers on http://www.talewins.com/ Lin's latest contributions are listed on http://www.talewins.com/StoneSoup.htm