Writing and Publishing Fiction

Novel Critique: Apes with Bald Kneecaps

Let's hear what the Unpublished Guy fiction panel, including Dr. Zaius, 18th century poet and engraver William Blake, and Mrs. Butterworth, has to say about the novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was developed while the movie was being filmed.

Does Entering Fiction Contests Feel Like Playing the Lottery?
photo by Jeffrey Beal

Last week I announced that I would rework the incomplete novel that resulted from July Novel Writing month to enter a short story contest. I could take one of two approaches to begin this task. I could be true to the vision of the artist and complete the story first and then shop around for a suitable contest. Alternatively, I could take the shallow route by selecting a fiction contest first and then rewrite the fiction to improve the chances of winning that particular contest. I'll be taking the shallow route.

An Unpublished Guy visitor made an insightful comment to a previous post about fiction writing. This individual, who has a blog of her own, observed that I used the writing equivalent of leftovers and recommended that I try starting fresh.

The fourth of July and four days into July Novel Writing Month. Four days of staring at a blank page wondering what font I should be using to write my novel. I settled on Verdana. I prefer sans serif, but it's not as overused as Arial.

Now that I have font selection settled, I have to figure out what the novel should be about. I suppose I could brainstorm, but I've decided to dredge up one of my older short stories and repurpose it as a novel length story. The particular story I had in mind was originally intended to be a multi-layered tome of symbolism like Moby Dick, except the source of my ambition was the epic poem, Jerusalem, by William Blake.

The Land of the Lost was one of many cheesy and cheap Saturday morning programs that I watched when I was a kid. Like several other similar Seventies programs by creators Sid and Marty Kroft, the show featured live actors negotiating sets that delivered all the Styrofoam boulders, costumes with visible seams, and puppets you could expect from a low budget children's program. In the program, the Marshall family (Dad, son, and daughter) fall through a time-space portal while white water rafting and end up in a land of dinosaurs puppets, latex lizard men, and spray-painted pigs. As a child, I enjoyed Land of the Lost, as well as Sigmund the Seamonster, the Lost Space Saucer, The Bugaloos, HR Puffinstuff, and the Far Out Space Nuts (nice that Gilligan was able to find work, again).

The Italo Calvino novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler, opened me up to a completely different type of story-telling. First, the story is written in the second person point of view. You know the second person, that point of view you are warned not even to try, because it is nearly impossible to make it work, but every writer at some point tries anyway. Well, Calvino pulls it off. How?

The knock against second person is that the writer doesn’t know anything about the reader, so how can the writer pretend to know how the reader would think or feel any of things that the writer assigns to the second person character. In this case the bridge is made by identifying with the reader as a reader and nothing else, simply someone who is beginning to read a Italo Calvino’s book, If on a winter’s night a traveler.