If I watch one more rerun of Seinfeld I swear I’m going to turn into one of the characters. I think I’ll be Jerry. He seems the least neurotic. Kramer is the happiest in the group, but being Cosmo Kramer would be risky business most days.
George and Elaine? Really? Don’t even go there, although the time that Elaine got to be boss for a while and talked on the phone while she smoked a cigar with her feet up on the desk is memorable.
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Here’s the third question that helps us understand how readers and writers connect. Earlier we looked at the connecting power of humor and laughter, as well as a common concern by readers and writers for characters in pain.
Now we come to poison and dying, and at a time like this I wish I were a mystery writer. Agatha Christie loved to kick off her mysteries with a good old-fashioned poisoning. Her 80 mystery novels have sold about four billion copies in 45 languages. They say that everybody loves a good mystery, and apparently everybody also loves a good poisoning.
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Here’s a second question that helps us understand how readers and writers connect. Last week we looked at the connecting power of humor and laughter (“if you tickle us, do we not laugh?”). Now it’s time to share a little pain.
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? This is the first of several questions I want to begin to explore, with the goal of understanding how readers and writers connect. The tickle question comes from Shylock’s speech in Act 3, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice.
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Maureen O’Connell asked me a few questions about romance and Valentine’s Day for an article in this Sunday’s Honolulu Advertiser. Yes, I write romantic comedy, but I don’t pretend to be an expert on romance. I may be a bit less confused than when I began writing about romantic entanglements, but, like most guys, I still feel somewhat clueless and clumsy when it comes to questions of romance.
One of the questions Maureen asked me was to name my most romantic character. Excellent question, and for this one I had the answer in about two seconds. Donna Cooper, the title character in my first novel, Queen of the Rodeo, seeks true love and romance for herself throughout that story. Then, in the prequel, Chasing Cowboys, she’s a 19-year old who plays a supporting role as one of the two narrators.
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At last! The Winter Olympics are almost here. Opening ceremonies take place this Friday. Once every four years we are treated to a festival of the world’s best athletes on snow and ice. I know we had the Summer Olympics in Beijing two years ago, but I’m one of those people who enjoy the Winter Olympics more.
It’s smaller and cozier, and it has all that snow and ice, cool stuff we don’t see living in Hawaii. Before the show begins this week in Vancouver, I’m feeling nostalgic for the 2006 Winter Olympics from Turin. Here’s what I wrote then about some of the nice-on-ice highlights, including some lessons for writers.
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Richie’s wife, Noelle, was the one who began asking a series of questions about the Colts and their no-huddle offense, and while Richie was patiently explaining to her how it works, and why Peyton Manning was dancing around before the play and shouting things and gesturing to his teammates like crazy, that’s when I got this brilliant idea that writers can have their own no-huddle approach to writing. At least I think it might be brilliant, although I haven’t told anyone about it. Until now.
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl. Ah yes, the old Hollywood formula. But what if it’s 1948, and you have Howard Hawks to produce and direct the movie, and John Wayne and Montgomery Clift and Joanne Dru to light up the big screen, and Borden Chase and Charles Schnee to write a powerful screenplay, and … since the story is about the first great cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail, let’s get a few thousand head of cattle to stir up the dust and challenge the cowboys, who aren’t boys at all but men, real men, tough men.
And let’s make the women strong and brave, and ready to face the hard life of the Wild West and the hard heads of the cowboys they love. Then let’s call it Red River, and make a classic that will take its place with Stagecoach and High Noon and Shane and Lonesome Dove and the very best examples of that great American invention, the Western.
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