Things I would change
When your book sits on shelves and other people thumb away at it, it’s beyond repair. There are parts which you want to tweak; other parts which could be slashed and burnt. But without re-entering the debate on whether you can ever really finish a book, here are a few things I would change.
1) Introduce a car-chase in the Chapter 1: All great stories begin with a car-chase.
2) Give the love-interest a name like Ingrid von Luvpump
3) Guns. Give ‘em all guns.
4) Remove the single mention of the C-word: My Mum has to read this.
5) Introduce one blatantly anachronistic American to get the thing to sell in the US
6) Change the final line to: And then he woke up and realised it was all a dream.
7) Make Schiele’s father a midget with a hump and a limp and a stump
8) More smells: Yes, I read Sueskind’s Perfume and envied it
9) Slip the titles of Wham! songs in the dialogue: e.g. “But, Egon, that’s just a careless whisper.”
10) Introduce an Italian secretary and rename it The Stenographer of Sienna
1) Introduce a car-chase in the Chapter 1: All great stories begin with a car-chase.
2) Give the love-interest a name like Ingrid von Luvpump
3) Guns. Give ‘em all guns.
4) Remove the single mention of the C-word: My Mum has to read this.
5) Introduce one blatantly anachronistic American to get the thing to sell in the US
6) Change the final line to: And then he woke up and realised it was all a dream.
7) Make Schiele’s father a midget with a hump and a limp and a stump
8) More smells: Yes, I read Sueskind’s Perfume and envied it
9) Slip the titles of Wham! songs in the dialogue: e.g. “But, Egon, that’s just a careless whisper.”
10) Introduce an Italian secretary and rename it The Stenographer of Sienna
posted by Lewis Crofts at
07:13
3 Comments:
For your anachronistic American, you can borrow one of my characters: Johnny Dungeon, hip-hop record producer, ethanol magnate and Extreme Sports enthusiast. Also, he's a top-secret agent. And he's immune to snakebites.
I can only be happy it's too late for changes now... ;)
Waiting on the next one... anxiously!
Dear lewis, I can only be happy it's too late for changes now! Maybe Schiele's father would deserve the hump, the limp and the stump, but being a midget would call for the sort of compassion he never deserved... About the smells, I can agree, but my advice is you send Süskind a copy of the PoV and wait to see what he envies in it... Car-chases and guns... Leave it to the US, and forget about wishing they'd read your book... do you really think that would be a positive thing?? And I dont think Schiele would ever be interested in a woman called Luvpump, although... well... maybe... Having WHAM! lyrics sliped in the dialogues... well, i'm an 70's child, WHAM! will always do it for me! Finally... would you buy a book called 'The Stenographer of Sienna'?... Unless you'd add 'Miller' to the end of it, I bet you your first problem would be to get to the shelves anyway...
Sorry for the late and long comment, just really thought I should say something...
Now, all that matters: when can we thumb away the new one?...
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