Chris Orcutt, Writer

Dean Koontz wrote somewhere that "the first half-million words are just practice." I agree with that. I have a garage full of boxes of my writing, and a filing cabinet drawer jammed with notebooks, all of which prove his point.

Most of what I wrote there was crap because I was trying too hard. I hadn't learned the importance of restraint and proportion in a piece of writing. I hadn't read John Gardner's The Art of Fiction and learned that sentences are comprised of syntactic slots, and that when creating a sentence you shouldn't overload more than one slot with information. There were a lot of things I hadn't learned, and still haven't.

There are a few gems in the old notebook drawer.

Much to the annoyance of their spouses, most writers never throw anything away. We hoard everything graced by our words—pocket notebooks, hotel stationery, cocktail napkins and business cards. I suppose the thinking here is that one day we'll remember such-and-such a line and want to use it in a new piece.

I've had this experience a couple of times, but the problem was, when I when to my "archives" and read the piece of description, dialogue or journal entry, the moment the piece was removed from its current context, it didn't have the same meaning. Like the famous iceman found in the Alps, my notebook entires are moments frozen in time that require some forensic reconstruction to understand their larger meaning. The Zeitgeist is lost, and as time goes on, the fire that compelled me to jot them down fades away.

But as the title of this entry suggests, buried within those million words are a few diamonds. I plan on dipping into my notebook drawer once in a while to share some of these snippets with you. Think of it this way: if a writer's creations are his children, these are my lovable and kind-hearted, but clueless, kids whom I want to have every opportunity. They may never go anywhere in life, but I still want them to have their 15 minutes. So, here goes:

Writing Advice
I open a tiny CVS pocket notebook and discover some story principles I paraphrased from somewhere. I have no idea what book these came from, but they're good and here they are:

• Start with a change, a lack of harmony with the environment—a threat to the central character's self-concept.
• As a result of the change, the character will create a goal—a story goal.
• Get the change shown as swiftly as possible and show the character beginning to react with predictable unease—or worse.
• Most "setup" stuff are author concerns. The reader just wants the story to start.
• You have 25 words to engage a jaded editor's interest.
• Arouse curiosity.
• Grab the reader and give a hint of what to expect.
• Some editors claim they can be sure if a book is going to be well-written and exciting enough to publish by reading just the first sentence or paragraph.

Quotes
In an interview once, David Mamet, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and one of my idols, was asked if he ever used the conversations of regular people as the basis for dialogue. He replied, "Have you ever listened to subway talk? Subway talk is boring. I'd like to think I can come up with better dialogue than the crap people say on the subway."

I agree with Mamet that most overheard conversations aren't good enough to be used as dialogue in a story or play. (At least not without a lot of work.) However, sometimes people can surprise you, saying things that are incredibly apt or funny. Here's my favorite eavesdropped line from the Overheard in NYC website.

Dipping into my own collection of snatched things that people have said, here are a few of the best:

[Guy in his 30s talking to a male friend about women]

"They're gonna see what they want to see. You can come home with fucking flowers every day and it won't make a bit of difference."

[Elderly man on train asking other passengers the same question at every stop]

"Is this Scarsdale?"

[On line at Boston Market; one fat man interrupts another]

"Wait, is there meatloaf in this story?"

[No idea where I heard this]

"You know...you two are standing just far enough apart to form an ellipse."

[In a toy store; one man in his 50s to another]

"Toys these days? I've never seen such wimpy shit. Political correctness, I'm telling you. Now, back when I was Lou's age, know what I had? I had a Big Bang Cannon. And you know what the slogan said? You know, that italicized type? Yeah, it said, 'Big noise for boys!'. Toymakers back then, they didn't give a shit if you lost an arm."

[Some young lady—maybe one of my gal-pals in college— wrote the following in my notebook]

"I cleaned my room! I found my checkbook! I fucked my professor!"