On Saturday, I took Laura Kalpakian’s Self-editing class at the community college. Her books on Amazon are here. I didn’t know who she was nor had I read any of her books. I usually try to read at least one book of an instructor prior to class but this time, I didn’t get to it.
Prior to class I saw a friend, Susan Colleen Browne, teaching a class across the hall. I stepped over to say hi and she said how much she enjoyed Laura so now I felt really excited for the class and ashamed of my laziness.
Luara knew several people in the class and most of us had a fiction work in progress. While the rest of the class introduced themselves, I looked her up on my blackberry. Ignorance was not bliss. Who the heck was she? A prof at the local University besides a published novelist many times over.
She used The Great Gatsby mostly as the example to pull from in the lecture part of the class. She had three hand outs which she read from verbatim so I didn’t have much need to take notes. Two books she mentioned were Word Menu by Random House and Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. I immediately went to PaperbackSwap and requested them.
She explained she used the Word Menu book to get related words in a subject area to help with word choice in her novels. The example she used was a ship and how you could find words related to ships easily. I could see how that would help with both theme and specifics.
She explained that the original title of The Great Gatsby had been Trimalchio and that she used Brewer‘s to look up it’s meaning. She also mentioned Brewer‘s was just a fun book to read.
A couple of areas that she discussed I hadn’t heard before were: bridges and narrative sludge. Bridges are any bit of writing at the beginning of a chapter or scene that you write just to get into it. At the time you probably need it to get to the writing itself instead of facing a blank page but once the material is on the page, you can go ahead and edit the bridge. Narrative sludge can be anything that doesn’t serve the narrative such as: insignificant repetition, too realistic dialog, every element of a scene regardless of how meaningless.
One thing she kept coming back to that stuck with me was Narrative Space. The idea was that you shouldn’t waste your narrative space but to examine every word to see if it deserved space in your work. I could almost see a plot of land, a small plot. What deserved to grow there?
It was a great class.
Word Menu is a well-worn hardback on the shelf a foot or so from my computer. In addition to its obvious uses, I find it is helpful as a starting point for what terms to research, which might be key and provide the depth for which I’m searching without…well, more searching than necessary. Hope you enjoy it. Brewer’s is new to me, but not for long. Thanks