I’m very excited to introduce my guest today, debut New Zealand author, Maree Anderson. Maree’s book Even Demons Get The Blues came out on the 1 June, and now that I’ve turned in my current work-in-progress I’m off to grab my copy from Red Sage Publishing. Check out the blurb of this intriguing book about demons here. Today Maree is telling us how to write a prize-winning novel!
The Recipe for a Prizewinning Novel
Those of us who’ve been to writers’ conferences know that aside from awesome speakers and catching up with friends, you usually score loads of books. Free reading material for the next few weeks? Woot! And of course, because they’re random giveaways, you’re bound to be given a genre you wouldn’t normally buy, by authors you might never have heard of.
For me, one such score was Jaclyn Moriarty’s I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes, which turned out to be a complete delight! One of the characters in this book is an erotica writer named Fancy, who discovered what she thought was a recipe for writing a prizewinning novel. Here’s the excerpt from the book:
“Having read several prize-winning novels, Fancy was confident that she now knew the recipe:
1. Write a simple narrative.
2. Make a long list.
3. Scatter the contents of your list throughout your narrative.
So, for example, in the prize-winning novel that Fancy had just read, the author had done the following:
1. He wrote a simple narrative in which two people fell in love, then the man left the woman, and the woman cried.
2. He made a long list of leaves.
3. He scattered the story with his leaves.
So, ‘Tears fell from her eyes’ had become:
‘Tears the shape of sugar maple leaves fell (like so many blackjack oak leaves falling on an autumn day) from her eyes.’
Voila! A richly-textured (prize-winning) novel all about love and leaves.”
A recipe for a prize-winning novel? Mmmmm. I wonder if there is such a thing?
Now I’ve had a few goes at doing this already—just for fun, of course. And the results were…ah… interesting! So here’s my challenge to you: have a go at cooking up Fancy’s prizewinning novel recipe and post your result in Shelley’s blog comments.
Just for the sake of consistency, try to keep a similar sentence structure to the one Fancy has used. Make a list or whichever object takes your er… fancy. And BTW, to make it even more fun, make your “list” or “object” the absolute first thing that pops into your head!
Just to get you started, I’ll list the two I’d already done plus I’ll add a couple of extra off the top of my head. Feel free to laugh and poke fun at me—I can take it *grin*.
Simple narrative #1: Man and woman are stuck on an aircraft which is about to crash into the sea, they finally admit they love each other.
List: insects
From something like this: Tears of regret shone in her eyes.
To this: Wistful tears the shape of tiny larvae shone (like the dew-kissed carapaces of beetles) in her eyes.
(BTW: Just couldn’t bring myself to use what first popped into my head, which was “tears the shape of maggots”….eeeeeuuuuwwwww!)
Simple narrative #2: Man meets woman. He completely misunderstands her. Conflict. Resolution. The end.
List: tart fruit
From something like this: It was a beautiful spring morning but the sour tone of his voice dampened her delight.
To this: His lemon-sour tone spoiled (rather like biting into a sweet Pacific Rose apple and tasting instead, an unripe Granny Smith) her delight in the spring morning.
Simple narrative #3: Woman meets man, falls in love, then is horrified to discover he harbours a dark secret.
List/Object: chocolate
From something like this: Horrified tears slid down her cheeks.
To this: The horror lurking in her bitter-chocolate eyes overflowed (like warmed Belgian chocolate oozing down the sides of a cake) to smear her cheeks.
Simple narrative #4: A hungry werewolf is sent to feed her boss’s cat, it doesn’t end well!
List/Object: stilettos
From something like this: The instant her hunger eased, she began to feel terribly guilty about eating her boss’s Persian.
To this: Stiletto-sharp guilt stabbed (like the honed steel tips of her prized Manolo Blahniks punching neat holes in a cheap linoleum floor) through her hunger-fuzzed brain as she coughed up a fur-ball.
Yes. Well. Okay then. I don’t know that I’d win any prizes with these, but they’re definitely worth a few smiles.
And talking about prizes, Shelley will pick one commenter’s prize-winning novel recipe effort and the winner will receive a pdf final proof of my Red Sage Presents debut release, Even Demons Get The Blues. So get cooking because we can’t wait to see your results ;-)
Cheers!
Maree Anderson
EVEN DEMONS GET THE BLUES, Red Sage Presents
www.eredsage.com
www.mareeanderson.com
www.writersgonewild.blogspot.com
