Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

A writer takes a minute for a closer look

recent posts

  • The right question

    Robert McKee’s “Story” is my current best writing friend. It’s a book about how to write screenplays, but it is excellent as a guide to sorting out the architecture of a good story regardless of the format.

    I love it for being pragmatic. Here’s an example: “Here’s a simple test to apply to any story. Ask: What is at risk? What does the protagonist stand to lose if he does not get what he wants? More specifically, what’s the worst thing that will happen to the protagonist if he does not achieve his desire? If this question cannot be answered in a compelling way, the story is misconceived at its core.”

    But I also love it for recognizing why we love stories: “We not only create stories as metaphors for life, we create them as metaphors for meaningful life — and to live meaningfully is to be at perpetual risk.”

    McKee makes me want to simultaneously write well and live well. How cool is that?

    from page 149 of the 1997 hardback edition.

     

     

     

  • Wrong name

    Should have called this blog “Exquisite later” since I much prefer fantasizing about getting things done to actually doing them. The year of finishing, that’s what I blithely said last week about my approach to 2012. Today? Forget it. Just want to listen to the rain on the roof.

  • Long time coming

    I have been thinking about “The Booker Rebellion” for seven years. I have been writing it in my spare time for five. And yesterday, a day of furlough from my newspapering job, I finished the final draft of the first chapter. It is good. It is pointing, finally, in the correct direction. I am easy in my heart.

    I don’t know why I had to write so many bad first chapters (I think at least seven).

    Now to overhaul the next 19  chapters. Yesterday, as I began examining how this rewrite will fit with the rest of the story, I could feel things falling into place, like the tumblers in a lock lining up at last because I found the right key.