C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

06/05/2012 • 8:56 PM 15

Author Blog Challenge: I love the voices in my head

Michael Clarke Duncan at the Warner Brothers Lot in Burbank, California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the writing prompts for the Author Blog Challenge is to choose a favorite literary character. That’s tough. I mean, I relate to Tyler Durden from Fight Club, but the cognitive dissonance kicks me in the pills when I realize that, beside the insomnia and ennui, I am not even Tyler’s alter-ego. I have a few things in common with Portnoy from Portnoy’s Complaint, though. Ugh.

This isn’t a dodge and I don’t mean to fall into douchey pimping, but the truth is my favorite literary character is whichever one I’m writing at this moment. I have several works on the go, so let me introduce the interesting people I hang out with while strangers assume I’m staring off into space and drooling:

Legs Gabrielle is a very funny comedian whose career has fallen through the floor. She finds herself back in Poeticule Bay, Maine, in the house she ran away from as a teenager. A killer has come to town, the Sheriff disappears, the deputy is cute, her sister has cancer (and might also be crazy.) I love Legs’s sense of humour and she’s a pleasure to write for the jokes that work as counterpoint to her emotional depth. Hollywood has rejected her, but she’s the star of her own book soon.

Chili Gillie is a Michael Clarke Duncan lookalike, Legs’ bodyguard and has Mike Tyson’s voice. He’s a sweet man who only looks mean when needed. He’s the calm rationality around which the crazy revolves. His presence is extraordinary, but he’s the most normal of my characters. Both Legs and Chili are the stars of the first story in Self-help for Stoners and Chili shows up again in Bigger Than Jesus in a larger role. I’ve got big plans for him.

Dr. Circe Papua turns up a lot in my fiction. She’s a psycho psychotherapist who is magically persuasive and can be deadly if provoked. I love her cunning, unexpected lethality. Circe’s complex relationships with her patients often demand a battle of wills and wit. She shows up in different incarnations in Self-help for Stoners, Vengeance is #1, Corrective Measures and Sex, Death & Mind Control (for fun and profit).

Jesus Diaz is a mob enforcer who doesn’t want to be what his tragic childhood and circumstance has made him. He wants, above all, to fall in love with the right woman (if he can ever find her) and go relatively straight. He’s the main character in my crime novel, Bigger Than Jesus and I like him most for three things: he’s clever and prefers to lie rather than fight; he’s not really all that tough despite his profession; and he’s funny. I like funny people and chapters that whip along, full of pops and surprises. The series reads like a Cohen brother’s movie. Bad things keep happening even though you think you have an easy way out. This book will be out very soon and I’m jonesing for it. Just nailing down the cover and then we’re just about there. Jesus Diaz originally came to me as a story for Self-help for Stoners, but in that incarnation, he’s a much older, wiser and experienced assassin.

Jack (from Corrective Measures and Sex, Death and Mind Control.) Jack is a serial killer who I find interesting because of the way he sees our world. He thinks about vengeance quite a bit, but I’m actually more interested in writing him when he’s not himself. He’s fascinating when he’s trying to fit in and working through his twisted motivations and problems. He’s a dark avenging angel who has to hide his wings (metaphorically, that is) as he punishes people he decides deserve bad ends.

What’s fun is, eventually, I’m going to have all these characters meet in one book, but they have a lot of work to do before they meet. I have a lot of books to write before that happens, too. It’s exhilarating, daunting and pretty cool. Yeah, I said so myself.

Author Blog Challenge: Writers to adore (chazzwrites.com)
Inside the Author’s Mind – Robert Chazz Chute (edenbaylee.wordpress.com)
REVIEW! INTERVIEW! MORE! YAY!: Sex, Death & Mind Control (for fun and profit) (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, Bigger than Jesus, characters, Dr. Circe Papua, ebook, fight club, indie, Jesus, Jesus Diaz, Michael Clarke Duncan, Robert Chazz Chute, self-help for stoners, Stoners, writing

06/04/2012 • 10:02 PM 18

Author Blog Challenge: The Writing Mistake You Might be Making

English: The main character in the comic series “Lame Strips” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I sat at the front of the writing class, giving a reading from Self-help for Stoners. The story, “Another Day at the Office” is about a guy with a skunk talking his way out of search, seizure, jail and worse at the hands of a policeman in Texas during a traffic stop.

When I finished, I looked up and asked, “How old is the main character?”

I pointed around the classroom. “22! 28! 35! 40!” they answered.

“What colour was his hair?”

“Red! Blonde! Bald! Black! Brown! Wispy Comb over!” (Good for you. I never would have thought of wispy combover for that character.)

There you go. Too much description limits your readers’ imaginations and puts their visions in little boxes that belong only to you. Be more generous and don’t assume your reader is an idiot. They’ve seen people in their lives. They’ll fill in the blanks. The readers want some ownership of the story in the theatre of their minds, too. Don’t describe too much. Was it Dashiell Hammet who said his hero was “knuckly” and left it at that? Too much description has become a cliche that often opens a lot of books: the main character inspects himself in the mirror before heading off for work. They preen and describes themselves to the reader. Don’t. Instead, please let the action and dialogue carry me along. Let me insert my own vision of your characters. I’ll have a picture in my mind before long and I might even be annoyed if the author’s description differs with my own.

Even then, be sparing. My hit man in Bigger Than Jesus has a thing for expensive suits. It comes up as it pertains to the action and as it pertains to character. It is not there just to make up an arbitrary word count. In fact, it’s crucial to the character. No campfire story starts with a long description of what everyone is wearing unless there’s a point or a clue to character. Be just as judicious, whether you’re telling ghost stories to a bunch of kids around a campfire on their first trip into the woods or writing books for the masses.

BONUS:

Tuesdays and Fridays, I do a little podcast from my author site at AllThatChazz.com. A fresh episode (#29!) is up now in which I tackle letters from Republicans, creep out my twelve-year-old and worry, too late, about my blood pressure.

Author Blog Challenge: Writers to adore (chazzwrites.com)
The Author Blog Challenge: My Earliest Memory of Writing is the Typebrighter (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: publishing, Author, Bigger than Jesus, campfire story, dashiell hammet, description, narrative, Protagonist, Writers Resources, writing, writing mistakes, writing tips

06/03/2012 • 12:01 AM 12

Author Blog Challenge: Writers to adore

The Princess Bride writer William Goldman His Q&A closed the Expo and included the largest audience of the Expo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Another writing prompt for the Author Blog Challenge is: Which writers do you most admire? In a week or so I’ll release Bigger Than Jesus, my first crime novel in a series. In part, the book is dedicated to William Goldman. You know the movies he has written: The Princess Bride, Marathon Man, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But you probably don’t know his many novels: Edged Weapons became the movie, Heat with Burt Reynolds; Brothers (a sequel to Marathon Man); and my beloved The Color of Light. What sets Goldman apart is his plotting, his humour and his enormous capacity to surprise the reader. Just when you think you know what happens next, he sucker punches you. I’m all about surprises, too, so I love that.

Who else? Stephen King gets a nod for telling a story straight and well and for sheer output. Chuck Palahniuk is another favorite because we share an interest in the weird but true. Also, Chuck does not rest on his laurels. He takes chances with his books. He’s not trying to do Fight Club over and over and he has even jumped boldly into experimental fiction here and there (like Pygmy and Rant.) What distinguishes his style is that he does not judge his characters. Things happen. Morals are for readers to come up with (or not). There are traits from Goldman, King and Palahniuk I either came by one my own or absorbed. I don’t really believe in emulation of other writers, but I recognize similarities in process.

Recently, someone on a podcast reported that fiction is dead. They said people don’t have time for novels anymore. They want it short and then? Make it shorter than that. The death of the novel has been predicted almost as many times and with as much certitude as “Vampires are so over, man.” I’d worry about the state of fiction, but then I read Run by Blake Crouch and I don’t think we have to worry. Write a great book and tell the story in such a way that the reader can’t put it down. Make them laugh. Make them cringe. Sucker punch them with surprise. The novel will survive. I hope so, anyway, because I am otherwise unemployable.

With each opening, with each beat, with every chapter that ends with a cliffhanger: