I’m still working back through “The Deer On A Bicycle,” and here are some suggestions from Patrick McManus:
Style – shouldn’t call attention to itself, but should serve to advance the story. The example he gives is a story he wrote with a vivid passage–one that steed out. He later regretted including the passage because, he felt, it called attention to itself at the expense of the story. Even those the passages may be clever, and show off our style.
Fear — Fear keeps many people from sending their work out into the world. McManus says there’s no magic way of beating this. Fear is helpful when it pushes us to do better, but if we wait for perfection, then we’ll never send anything out.
Short Humor — McManus says this format typically runs from 800 to 2500 words. The shorter format is seen in daily newspapers. Its brevity limits it to amusement, rather than falling-out-of-the-chair laughter. But syndication, if it comes, leads to much more visibility and significantly more money. Pat says that he had a chance at syndication, but he turned it down because he didn’t think it was worth the five-or-so years of scrambling it would take. He says that this decision may have been a mistake, and he recommends that any writer offered a syndication deal jump at the chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment