Donna Brennan’s interview with Robert Liparulo continues. It’s not too late to register for the May 16-19 Colorado conference where Robert is teaching a continuing class on Writing Suspense / Thrillers. The price increases slightly on May 11. Walk-ins are welcome.
Donna Brennan’s Interview with Robert Liparulo
Part 3 – Writing for Hollywood, YAs, and More
Question: Your first two books seemed to have been optioned for film right away, and a novel you’re currently working on has garnered the interest of two movie companies before it’s even released. That has to have something to do with the pacing and how your construct your scenes. Will you be sharing some of your “secrets to success” during the continuing session? Can you give us any hints now?
Yes, I’ll talk about the correlations between pacing in novels and pacing in motion pictures, as well as other ways in which writers can “steal” secrets from movies to make their stories more vivid and attractive to readers who have been raised on film- and TV-based storytelling. I was a motion picture production major in college, so I tend to think like a screenwriter. All the tips and tricks center on one thing: Can you see your story on the screen? I mean, really. Act it out, speak the dialog. Who would play the characters? If you have to change too much to make it fit on the screen-and you want readers to experience a similar sense of immersion into your story as they do in movies-then maybe you need to rethink a few scenes.
Question: How different is writing for the Young Adult market from writing for the general market? Did you have to change the storyline or the language of your Dreamhouse Kings series?
I decided that the only two things I would change from my adult stories for my YA stories were that the protagonists would be younger and that the story would be something younger readers would appreciate more than, say, a police procedural (Dreamhouse Kings is about time travel). Other than that, my style, the structure, even the level of violence and scariness are similar to my adult stories. I didn’t want to “write down” to younger readers. I think they are far more intelligent-especially about character and story-than adults give them credit for. I believe that’s the key to its success.
Question: Surely all those years you spent as an investigative journalist must contribute to your writing style and your research skills. You must have had to do a lot of technical research for Germ, and Comes a Horseman must have involved research into how the FBI works and maybe even some biblical research. Exactly how much research is involved in your books? When do you know you’ve done enough? And how do you resist the urge to include all the details you learned that may be intriguing but have nothing to do with moving the story along?
Honestly, I over-research, but I’m okay with that. I’m always looking for that little gem, that nugget of information that will tell readers that I have done my homework without inundating them with trivia. That nugget is the thing that you can’t find by reading articles or limiting your research to the internet. Once I have that, I don’t worry about anything else. The details about an occupation or a weapon or location or scientific breakthrough will come through the characters, or the needs of the plot.
I don’t want to impress readers; I want them only to feel as though they’re spending time with real people in real jobs with real technology. But still, I always ask myself, why am I putting this tidbit in here? How does this move the story along or how will it impact the story later? If I don’t have a good answer, I don’t write it. Of course, that’s subjective, as all writing is. So I may think describing a fishing boat docked in Sesimbra, Portugal, puts me there, and someone else will think it’s meaningless. That’s where your instincts as a writer come in.
Question: Your road to success seems to have been very different than most authors today. What words of advice do you have for someone just starting out?
Read everything and finish whatever you start. The reading will fill your head with viewpoints of the world outside of your own. It’ll introduce you to vocations and philosophies that you’d have no other way of knowing. It teaches you the cadence of dialog.
Finishing things is crucial to learning how to be a writer. Too many new writers shift gears halfway through a story. They think, “This doesn’t interest me anymore,” or “I’ve been writing about vampires and now zombies are hot. I have to go write my zombie story instead.” But by finishing, you learn the entire arc of storytelling. You learn how to wrap things up, which also teaches you how to set things up. And then you have something to show editors and agents when the opportunity arises. Editors and agents need to be confident that you know how to finish a project, even if it’s not something they want to buy. Finishing is what it’s all about.
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