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The Scent of Channel Number 5

January 13, 2010 — Pat Bertram

Lately in online discussion groups I’ve been coming across the attitude that only the story counts, that a few errors more or less in a book make no difference. Perhaps. I’ve been told that there are three errors in Daughter Am I, three in More Deaths Than One, and one in A Spark of Heavenly Fire. Of those seven errors, two were the replacement of the letter el with the number one and one was the replacement of the number one with the letter el, so I don’t really count those, though apparently others do. Someday, perhaps, I will get them corrected. But that’s not the point of this little discussion. The point is that although errors are hard to eradicate completely, some errors do count.

I was reading a thriller the other day, one of those convoluted stories with a dozen endings as if the author couldn’t figure out which ending he wanted to use. There were three crimes, all dealing with the same group of people yet none of the crimes were related. One of the crimes was a kidnapping, and though I know who did the kidnapping, the story was so complicated I still don’t know who instigated it. Despite all the flaws of the book, the one thing that took me out of the story was a typo. The author tried to set the scene using smells — the aroma of an expensive cigar, the smell of leather chairs, the scent of Channel Number 5 lingering in the air.

Channel No. 5? Makes me wonder that smells like. The English Channel? Salty, perhaps a bit fishy, perhaps a tinge of pollution? Maybe it’s a clean scent — after all, what do I know about the English Channel. Or perhaps it’s the smell of a television channel, though I’m not sure what that would smell like. Or perhaps it’s the smell of a gutter or a conduit. Not quite the feeling he wanted to portray! And if I hadn’t been so taken with the idea of Channel Number 5, I might have learned who the kidnapper was.

Posted in writing. Tags: Chanel No. 5, copyediting, mistakes, reading, typos. 7 Comments »

A Thrill of Books

March 23, 2009 — Pat Bertram

51miDOzhkHL._SX333_BO1,204,203,200_ A murder of crows. A quiver of cobras. A charm of finches. A mischief of mice. A tower of giraffes. A scurry of squirrels. To this list of wonderfully evocative group names, I’m adding “a thrill of books.”

When I was young, I used to love coming home from the bookstore or library with an armful of books. I’d study the covers, read the blurbs and acknowledgments, open the book and sample a few words. It was a special thrill, this stack of new worlds that would soon be a part of me. Where would I go? Who would I meet? What challenges would I have to overcome?

The years did their damage, as they always do. Or maybe the culprit wasn’t the passing years, perhaps it was too many trivial stories, too much homogenization of genre, too much corporate policy infringing on the art. For whatever reason, I lost the thrill of having new books to read, and I thought it was gone forever.

I mentioned in my previous blog that I offered to review a few books, and today I received two of them in the mail: Steel Waters and Toxic Shock Syndrome by Ken Coffman. I looked at the covers (okay, I did more than look, I ran my hand over them, savoring the feel of the brand new books). I read the back covers, the acknowledgements, the author’s signature — “To my friend and fellow writer, Pat Bertram. I wish you all the best with your work.”

Already I could feel the glimmer of that old familiar feeling. Then I opened Steel Waters to the middle and saw, “I looked and smelled like a Bolivian sewer rat.” From comments others had made, I knew this was no homogenized piece of corporate bilge, but right then I felt it — the thrill.

So thank you, Ken, for giving me — one more time — a thrill of books.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: books, Ken Coffman, reading, Steel Waters, Toxic Shock Syndrome. 7 Comments »

Finding the Dunce in Redundancy

October 10, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I’m reading a book set in Australia in the early 1800s. Or rather, I was reading it. The author seemed competent, the story flowed, and the characters were engaging. Then all of a sudden I was jerked out of the fictive dream. “She had the intestinal fortitude necessary to help build this new country.” What? Intestinal fortitude in the 1800s? I think not.

First, intestinal fortitude is a ridiculous euphemism for guts. Fortitude is courage. Period. It needs no modifier. And it has nothing to do with intestines. Sure, some people do get cramps or diarrhea when facing fear, but then it’s up to the author to show it rather than relying on the wretched phrase “intestinal fortitude.”

Second, guts meaning fortitude did not make an appearance until the 1930s. Which means that the euphemism intestinal fortitude came later.

There are certain terms I would like to rub out of the English language. Intestinal fortitude is one. Coed is another. What a patronizing term! Coed is short for coeducational and refers to the women who were allowed into previously all male colleges and universities. Perhaps it had meaning back in the nineteen-thirties, but its use today is demeaning. It says men are educated, and women are co-educated. (Like a pilot and co-pilot.) So please, do not use coed. Student is sufficient, or woman student if you have to differentiate.

Another term that grates is excess verbiage. Verbiage means excess words, so excess verbiage is excess excess words. Doesn’t even make sense. Nor does “reiterate again”. Reiterate means to say again and again. Reiterate again means to say again and again, again and again.

The moral of the story? Don’t take any of your words for granted. They are a gift. And a responsibility.

Posted in books, culture, fiction, life, writing. Tags: coed, euphemism, excess verbiage, fortitude, guts, intestinal fortitude, reading, redundant, reiterate, reiterate again, verbiage, writing. 2 Comments »

What Do You Want to Say to Your Readers?

June 9, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The publishing industry seems determined to keep writers on a tight leash of fast and easy fiction, but I don’t see any reason why a good writer can’t find a way of saying something important in readable stories.

In all these years I’ve been writing, I never really considered what I wanted to say to the reader, or what role I wanted to play in their lives. I knew I wanted to be a good storyteller, but that’s all. Odd to find myself thinking about this now after having written four (unpublished) novels instead of at the beginning.

One theme that has run through my books is, “Beware. Nothing is as it seems. You are being lied to and have always been lied to,” but other than that, I’m not sure I ever considered what I wanted to say to potential readers when I was writing a novel. I wrote for me and I concentrated on telling a good story with the hope that someday someone would like to read the book and be entertained.

I no longer know where I am going with my writing.

The first book I wrote was a fictional autobiography (sort of). I had a lot of matters I needed to work through and thought it would be a good way to do it. It worked, but the book was so bad I don’t consider it one of my finished novels.

The first real novel I wrote because I wanted (needed) to make some money. Silly me! I also wanted to talk about the Vietnam war and the misconceptions that people have about it. I ended up deleting most of those parts in the rewrites.

Then I read Albert Zuckerman’s book “How to Write the Blockbuster Novel” and decided I wanted to write a blockbuster novel and make a ton of money. In many ways, that book is my best work, but the one that has the least interest for agents and editors.

The third book I wrote because I read “The Writer’s Journey” by Christopher Vogler and I wanted to write a mythic journey story. And debunk the Hollywood myths about the mafia. And make a lot of money.

The fourth book was a compendium of conspiracy theories — a different way of looking at the world. (Interestingly enough, it was also the first novel I conceived. It just took me five years to get the whole thing worked out.)

My current book was supposed to be my declaration of independence from the dictates of the publishing industry. It was supposed to be a silly story, but it’s metamorphosing into something deeply metaphysical, and while it’s doing that, it’s changing the way I look at my writing and myself. I’m not sure where I want to go with my writing, but I do know I want to be better than I am. To learn how to make every word count. To create a vivid world. To make it mean something.

I wanted to be a good storyteller. I never really had any interest in writing the great American novel, but because of the changes my WIP are bringing, I’ve been getting the feeling that I want to get so good at both storytelling and writing that I will not be ignored. In the end, I want to make a difference, even in a small part, in the lives of people who might someday read my books. And yes, I want to say something important.

Posted in books, life, writing. Tags: making a difference, reading, storyteller, writing. 2 Comments »

Why Should I Read Your Novel? Why Should You Read Mine?

April 25, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Why should I read your novel? Why should anyone? Only you know the answer to that, and you tell us by the story you choose to tell, the characters you choose to create, the themes you choose to develop.

We read not so much to escape our lives but to add meaning, understanding, and depth to our days. If we find nothing but the same old stories told in the same old ways, we come away from the experience intellectually and emotionally unsatisfied. If the characters don’t change in a fundamental way, if they don’t struggle with an idea bigger than they are, we don’t change either.

Too often when I finish reading a book, I wonder why I bothered. The story is stale, the characters undeveloped, the stakes trivial, the theme banal. This is particularly true of books written by prolific authors. After three or four books, they plagiarize themselves, using the same basic characters and plots they did before. Perhaps their first book was fresh, with something new to say, but that something becomes stale with each succeeding book.

Not being a published writer myself, I don’t know how to keep that from happening, especially in today’s book market where an author is expected to churn out a clone every year. And new writers are being steered into that same pattern. We’re told to write in the genre we read because obviously we like the genre and because we are familiar with its conventions. But perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps we should write in a genre we don’t read so we don’t keep perpetuating clichés. We might unwittingly rehash old stories in the unfamiliar genre, but there is greater chance of saying something new.

My current work-in-progress is developing into an allegorical apocalyptic novel, which is bizarre because I don’t read that particular type of book; I don’t even know if that is a type. What isn’t bizarre, though, is all I am learning by writing in an unfamiliar genre. I may very well be writing a clichéd story — I have no way of knowing — but at least I am coming to it from my own unique viewpoint, not the distilled vision of all the authors who have gone before. And I am learning more about writing from this novel than any of my previous ones because I have to pull what comes next out of the creative ether, not from my memory of the stories I have previously read.

Without a mystery at its core as in my previous works, I have to search for other ways of adding tension to the story such as the inner conflicts that beset my hero. How much freedom is he willing to give up for security? How much security is he willing to give up for security? How much of freedom and security are illusory? And I am becoming cognizant of theme, symbols, and other mythic elements as ways of unifying disparate parts of the story.

So why should you read my book when it’s completed? Because, if I do it right, it will be an entertaining way for you come to terms with one of the major dilemmas facing us today, and it will take you into the life of a character whose conflicts and choices will help make sense of your own life.

At least, that’s the way story is supposed to work.