writing | Bertram's Blog

You can be a bestselling novelist, but do you really want to be one?

October 3, 2007 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been reading the works of a bestselling novelist, trying to pinpoint why she’s been so popular for the past two decades. It’s hard work. Her writing style is surprisingly amateurish, her characters are not well drawn, she tells and explains instead of showing, and she repeats herself as if she can’t remember from page to page what she’s already said.

So, why do people keep reading her books?

Passion. Her characters never like or dislike anything. They love and hate, but mostly love. “She ate a piece of cherry pie, and she loved it.” “They had sex, and they loved it.”

Identifiable characters. She gives her characters tags that readers can identify with (mother, prosecuting attorney, abused child, wronged wife) and lets the reader fill in the blanks.

Issues. She picks an issue people are passionate about, and wraps her story around that.

And most of all, she gives readers someone to love and someone to hate, and makes her character choose between them. And, brilliantly, the character chooses the one the reader doesn’t want.

Example: a prosecuting attorney, who adores her husband and their young daughter, gets breast cancer, has a mastectomy and chemotherapy. The husband can’t handle it, is mad at her for “pretending” that she’s sicker than she is, is totally unsupportive, and even worse has an affair. A coworker supplies the support the husband refuses to give her, and she and the coworker fall in love and plan to get married when her divorce goes through. A year after being diagnosed, she is doing well, and the husband comes nosing around again. In the end, they get back together.

See? Passion. Identifiable characters. Issues. Someone to love and someone to hate. And the wrong ending.

Why is the wrong ending the right one? If the author went with the new love, who would remember? By having the character go back to her husband, the author is manipulating us into thinking about the story. Would we go back to a husband (or wife) who treated us like garbage just so we can uphold the sanctity of marriage?

As you can see, even though I hated the book, she got me. After all, I am blogging about it.

Posted in blogging, books, life, writing. Tags: bestseller, novelist. 2 Comments »

Some darlings are hard to kill

October 2, 2007 — Pat Bertram

By definition, darlings–those parts of our manuscripts that we love even when they serve no purpose–are painful to kill, but some are more painful than others. This painfully dead darling is set it in Vietnam, but the incident it is based on took place during World War Two.

“I heard about this kid, a gentle kid, really. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, good-looking, with reddish-gold hair. But what really made him stand out was his smile. He always smiled.

“This kid was so thrilled to be doing something for his country that nothing bothered him, not even the climate. Since he was a swamp rat from Louisiana, he felt right at home.

“He came from a very large, very poor family who never had enough food; when he was drafted into the army, he felt as if he had won the lottery. He always had plenty to eat and, compared to the meals he had grown up with, it seemed like haute cuisine. He even loved the c-rations, including the ones that everyone else threw away, like ham and lima beans.

“He was delighted with his government issue clothes, too. In his entire life, he had never worn anything new or had boots that fit. He felt like a king. No matter what happened, it was better than his life back in the swamps of Louisiana, and he could not help smiling.

“His platoon was stationed near a Vietnamese village. Those people hated the Americans, but for some reason they took a liking to this smiling kid. They called him Wa-ky number one. Wa-ky was what they called the Americans, and number one meant the best. They also called him dinky-dao, which means retarded or mentally ill, because he was always smiling. They thought it was the funniest thing that the best American was dinky-dao.

“The one person who hated the kid was his sergeant, a really nasty piece of work, who felt he was being mocked by that constant smile.

“One day, in a fit of anger, the sergeant took an empty sandbag, and made a crude mask by cutting holes for the eyes and nose. He yanked it over the kid’s head, and snarled, ‘I never want to see your fucking smile again.’

“When the kid removed the hood, he was still smiling—he thought it had been a joke. This really infuriated the sergeant. He slammed the butt of his rifle into the kid’s face, grabbed the hood, and jammed it back on the kid’s head, screaming, ‘I’ll kill you, you motherfucker, if you ever take this fucking bag off again.’

“After a few days of wearing the hood, a change came over the kid. He would wade into the center of a battle and just let loose as if he thought he were invincible, or as if he no longer cared whether he lived or died. Afterwards, he would bayonet the dead bodies and mash their faces with the butt of his M-l6.

“All of this made the sergeant very nervous. He ordered the kid to take off the hood. The kid refused.

“As time went on, the man in the hood—you notice I say man, Sarge? That’s because there was nothing left of the kid he once was—got more and more out of control. He would go off by himself to hunt VC, and would return wearing a necklace of still-warm ears. Everyone was scared of the man in hood, particularly the sergeant, who was certain he would be fragged, but the man just ignored them and went about his job of methodically eliminating the VC.

“Finally the time came for the man in the hood to be rotated out. That morning he arose, casually took off the hood, folded it neatly, then packed it with the rest of his gear.

“Everyone gasped in shock when they saw him—his face was hideously deformed. When the sergeant had butt-stroked the kid, he had destroyed the kid’s left cheek and orbital bone, and they had never been repaired; no one even knew that he had been badly injured.

“He still had a smile on his face, however, but this time it was the rictus of pain, or of death.

“And his eyes . . . You’ve heard of the thousand yard stare, Sarge? This was a ten thousand-yard stare, as if the man in the hood had looked too long into hell, and now hell was all he knew.”

Posted in fiction, writing. Tags: Vietnam. Leave a Comment »

The Moving Finger writes, and having writ, Moves on

October 1, 2007 — Pat Bertram

A couple of days ago I used a tongue-in-cheek version of the above title, and now people are coming to my blog in search of the quote. So here it is, along with several other well-known quatrains from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

     Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it.



Here with a little bread beneath the Bough,

A Flask of Wine, A Book of Verse—and Thou

     Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!



Into this Universe and Why not knowing

Nor whence, like Water, willy-nilly flowing;

     And out of it, as wind along the Waste,

I know not whither, willy-nilly flowing.



Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit

Of This and That endeavor and dispute;

     Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape

Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.



Heaven but the Vision of fulfilled Desire,

And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,

     Cast in the Darkness into which ourselves,

So late emerged from shall so soon expire.



Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things Entire,

     Would not we shatter it to bits—and then

Re-mold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!



Oh, Thou, who Men of baser Earth didst make,

And ev’n with Paradise devise the Snake:

     For all the Sin the Face of Wretched Man

Is black with—Man’s forgiveness give—and take!

: : : : : : : : : : :

Posted in writing. Tags: Omar Khayyam. 3 Comments »

Unkilling another darling

October 1, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Originally, in More Deaths Than One, I had a war correspondent tell Bob some of his experiences. Since the speech did not add to the story, I killed it, but I am unkilling it here.

“I came here to Vietnam so early in the war that no American flags were being flown anywhere in the country; they were still keeping up the pretense that the United States was merely an advisor to the ARVN, in what was primarily a civil war.

“I was sending out competent, if uninspired articles, when I stumbled upon the story of a lifetime—the CSG was involved in the drug trade! The Combined Studies Group, as I’m sure you know, Bob, is the front under which the CIA is operating.

“I carefully researched the story, and discovered that the drug dealing had started out innocently enough, but that over the years the Agency’s role had increased dramatically.

“It all began when the Agency started to enlist the indigenous hill peoples, the Montagnards, in the fight against the North Vietnamese.

“The Montagnards hated all Vietnamese, who treated them as if they were less than human, but they had a special hatred for the Viet Cong, who demanded that they pay taxes, forced their young men to join their army, and stole their cash crop—opium.

“They were eager for the opportunity to kill the VC, but first they had to work their poppy fields and sell the crop. When the Agency agreed to buy their opium, saving them the trouble of smuggling it out of the country, the Montagnards agreed to join the South Vietnamese Army.

“The Agency sold the raw opium to the Union Corse—a world-wide crime syndicate from the island of Corsica, not far from Sicily. The Union Corse had massive refineries in Marseilles for turning the raw opium into heroin, and a vast network, probably the greatest in the world, for distributing the final product.

“Much of the Agency’s heroin found its way onto college campuses in the United States. Don’t you find it ironic, Bob, that those anti-war activists who think taking heroin is so hip and anti-establishment are, in actuality, funding the CIA’s clandestine operations around the world?”

Posted in fiction, writing. Tags: CIA, Union Corse, Vietnam. Leave a Comment »

Kill your darlings

September 30, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Our darlings are all those bits that we hate to part with. We think they add to the story, but in reality all they do is slow it down. In my novel, More Deaths Than One, I had my hero Bob going to a Vietnam Vet support group and listening in, but I had to kill the discussion because it served no purpose. So here, for you, I am unkilling it:

Marvin’s voice rose in anger. “My kid came home from school the other day and told me we lost in Vietnam because the American military did not know jungle warfare.”

“Horseshit,” Frank said. “We didn’t lose. We left.”

“After winning every major battle,” Dolph added. “But, like Korea, it was not a war. We were only supposed to be there, a presence, until the people who make those kinds of decisions got what they wanted.”

Gaston leaned forward. “Even if you Yanks didn’t know jungle warfare, we Australians did. We’re tough and well trained, and are some of the best jungle fighters in the world. Everyone seems to have forgotten we were in Vietnam, too. So were thirty thousand Canadians, though I’m not sure how much they knew about jungle warfare.”

“But the South Koreans did,” Dolph said. “Man, those guys were really good at hand-to-hand combat. I’m glad they were on our side. So were the Chinese mercenaries, the Nungs, and they definitely knew jungle warfare. There were also some French soldiers who remained after France pulled out of the country.”

“That’s beside the point. We Americans”—Frank pounded the air using his fist as a hammer—“know jungle warfare. What the hell do they think we were doing in World War Two? Much of that action took place in jungles—Burma, the Philippines, the South Pacific, to name a few. And the OSS was already in Vietnam back then, helping the Viet Minh fight the Japanese. While the OSS was teaching the Viet Minh modern warfare, the Viet Minh were teaching the OSS their way of fighting. So anyone who says we lost because we didn’t know jungle warfare is full of shit.”

Marvin made balloons of his cheeks, then blew out the air. “I tried telling my kid that, but he wouldn’t believe me. I hate to think what other crap they’re teaching him.”

Posted in writing. Tags: kill your darlings, Vietnam, writing. Leave a Comment »

The moving finger writes, and having writ, continues to write.

September 29, 2007 — Pat Bertram

I’ve heard that one of the questions published authors most hate to be asked is where they get their ideas. To them, the talented ones, the question is silly–they have more ideas than they can possibly put to paper. But the rest of us have to struggle to find an idea that will capture out time and attention for the months and years it will take to write the book, to rewrite it and rewrite it again.

So, for us idea-challenged writers, where do stories come from? They don’t come from anywhere. They have to be created and nurtured and grown in the hopes that someday they will take shape. Beyond that, the most important thing is to write.

After all, whether published or unpublished, a writer writes. Always.

Posted in writing. Leave a Comment »

The Match King

September 29, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Early in the twentieth century, Ivar Kreuger, a match manufacturer, managed to corner the match market. Through various deals, he ended up with the exclusive rights to sell matches in many countries, including most of Europe, but this monopoly was not enough for him. Back then, it was a common practice for two or three people to light their cigarettes from the same match. Ivar realized that if he could somehow keep that third person from using the match, he could greatly increase his sales, so he had his advertising department start the rumor that it was unlucky to light three cigarettes from the same match. Tales were told of dreadful things happening to the third person who used a match, like the bride who had been left at the altar and the soldier who was killed after each had lit a cigarette from a match which two others had already used. Even today, though most people use lighters, the superstition that it’s unlucky to light three cigarettes from the same match still persists.

That’s the power of words. How many of us bloggers and writers use them wisely?

Posted in blogging, writing. Tags: Ivar Kreuger, The Match King, three on a match. 1 Comment »

Cool Guys are C…C…C…Cool

September 27, 2007 — Pat Bertram

Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper. Hard guys with hard names. And what about Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, Nicholas Cage, Clint Eastwood? More hard guys with hard names.

Is it any accident that some of the world’s best-selling authors are men with hard names? King. Would he ever have become King if he had a name like Shayne? Only if his first name was Mike. And don’t forget Koontz, Clancy, Cook.

I thought a lot about using a pseudonym, something hard like Cole Black that would immediately proclaim: here is an author with an edge. But there would be problems with a pseudonym: cashing royalty checks; explaining to a publisher that I’m not hiding anything by using a fake name; being invited to the White House as Cole Black and only having identification for Pat Bertram. Ouch.

In the end I decided to stick with my own name. It’s a good-sounding name for an author. Besides, it has the whole androgynous “It’s Pat” thing going for it. I can be the author I want without trying to live up to a fictitious name or persona.

And anyway, p’s and b’s and t’s and r’s didn’t hurt Brad Pitt any.

Posted in writing. Tags: movies, pseudonym. Leave a Comment »

As the ax descended, she struggled in vain.

September 26, 2007 — Pat Bertram

I’m sitting here trying to come up with a witty first line, something that will immediately catapult me into a story, but all I can think of is Billy Crystal in Throw Mama From the Train. I remember watching him struggle for the perfect first line, the perfect word until I wanted to scream “Skip the first line! Start anywhere! Or at least dig out a thesaurus.” But that was before I started to write, and now I find myself doing the same thing.

Odd that first lines are so important, yet few set the mood or do anything else they’re supposed to. And fewer still are memorable. Probably the best known line is “It was a dark and stormy night,” but it’s also considered to be the worst first line in history. Why? It seems evocative to me, and though it’s supposed to be redundant, even city people should know that stormy nights are not always dark. Maybe that’s why I haven’t yet found a publisher. Maybe I just don’t get it.

How about this for a first line? First and last, actually. As the ax descended toward her head, the young mother struggled in vain to free her hands from the nylon rope. But that doesn’t tell us who she is, why someone killed her, or why we should care.

And that’s not what I want to write anyway. I’ve always wanted to write the story of a love that transcended time and physical bonds, told with sensitivity and great wisdom. Unfortunately, as one agent pointed out, I have a matter-of-fact writing style, little talent, and no wisdom. So I put words to the page one at a time, and thank heavens I can always rewrite later.

Now if I can only think of that first perfect word.

Posted in writing. Tags: first lines, movies, perfect words, wisdom. Leave a Comment »

The Art of Procrastination

September 25, 2007 — Pat Bertram

It seems as if lately the only art I’m practicing is the art of procrastination.

There’s no art in going about your daily life and telling yourself you have no time to write. The art is in pursuing other activities to keep from going about your daily life and telling yourself you have no time to write.

Thus far in my procrastination, I have:

Taken an on-line class to increase my word-processing skills
Read almost the entire oeuvre of a best-selling author to see why she’s so popular (still have no clue)
Cleaned out my closets
Started this blog

It would probably be easier just to sit down and begin writing the novel, but where’s the art in that?

Posted in writing. Tags: procrastination. 1 Comment »

« Older posts

Newer posts »