Official Blog of Josh Corin, author of Nuclear Winter Wonderland from Kunati Bookshttp://www.kunati.com/blog-of-josh-corin-nuclear-win/Official Blog of Josh Corin, author of Nuclear Winter Wonderland from Kunati Booksen-US2008-09-07T07:12:11ZSquarespace Site Server v5.0.0 (http://www.squarespace.com/)The best laid plans...http://www.kunati.com/blog-of-josh-corin-nuclear-win/2008/5/23/the-best-laid-plans.htmlJoshua Corin, author Nuclear W2008-05-23T10:25:07ZHere's how I write:
I come up with an idea. Don't ask me how. Please. Then I let the idea soak in its juices for about a year. Sometimes less, sometimes more. By now I have the makings of a plot, some major characters, a theme to hang my hat on, etc.
In the case of something long, like a novel, the next step is the trickiest. I outline. I don't mean outline as in roman numerals, though. For me, an outline is more of a series of waypoints. In other words, I know my characters need to go here, here, here, and here for the story to work. For a screenplay, that breaks down into act breaks (thank you, Syd Field) and those act breaks subsequently break down into beats (thank you, Stanslavski).
For a novel, I've come up with a method even more anal retentive. I plan out the novel to run 30 chapters, 3000 wds. a chapter (approximately). That comes out to 90,000 wds. total, which is a goodly number for a contemporary novel. In the case of Nuclear Winter Wonderland, I divided it up into 3 equal parts: Chapters 1 through 10 set up the conflict, Chapters 11 through 20 ratchet up the conflict, and Chapters 21 through 30 defuse the conflict. Or, more simply: Adam (my protagonist) has a problem which he fails to solve and then he succeeds.
For my current novel, Galileo's Aim, I decided to break it up in 5ths, rather than 3rds. There were a number of reasons for this, but probably the best one was the fact that it's easier to worry about having to write six chapters a month than ten. Yeah, I'm lazy.
The problems arise, of course, in the writing. What may have seemed like a great idea in the planning stage may turn out to be inorganic and contrived in the actual writing. I hit a snag like that with Ch7 of my current novel, and I just overcame a snag like that with Ch13. I imagine I'll hit another similar snag (following the pattern) with Ch19 and Ch25. Ah well.
If all of this deflates for you the "magic of creative writing," I apologize. Sometimes it is indeed best not to look behind the curtain. However, sometimes it's also good to know how things work, and why. And this is what works for me.]]>The Crimson Finalehttp://www.kunati.com/blog-of-josh-corin-nuclear-win/2008/3/17/the-crimson-finale.htmlAuthor Editing2008-03-17T19:28:19ZSo I'm in high school, about to enter college. I've received accolades for my amateur legal skills while my teachers consider my fiction writing to be, well, amateur. Other classmates were selected for creative writing scholarships. Other classmates had their work published. I was editor-in-chief of the school literary magazine, yes, but only because no one else wanted the job.
Then, one day, I just began to write again. No monumental event inspired me. No epiphany opened my eyes. Real life is far more anti-climactic. I just sat down at the typewriter and once again wrote fiction. Lots of fiction. I wrote a horror story about a rain of insects (inspired by Canadian "man-bugs"). I wrote a short novel for my clique of friends and gave it to them at the end of senior year. I got to college and wrote a stream-of-consciousness about suicidal roommates (inspired by my odious roommate at the time).
I was so prolific that my social life took a backseat -- or perhaps I was so prolific because my social life took a backseat.
Anyway.
Despite Ms. Moran's comments about my dialogue - in part because of Ms. Moran's comments about my dialogue - by my junior/senior year of college I had begun to concentrate my efforts almost exclusively on playwriting. I took a summer class through NYU and Playwrights Horizons and my instructor, Paul Selig, helped me find my voice; by the end of that class, I had written "The Motherpucker," a Very Dark Comedy about a prom date from hell, a horny girl impregnated with a kiss, and her serial killer brother. When I brought it back to SUNY Binghamton to be performed, the audience loved it...well, most of the audience. A few of my classmates and most of my college instructors felt the content to be puerile and pointless. To which I replied, "But did you laugh?" For which I was, for the next few years, raked over the coals. This apparently was the wrong question for me to ask them. Ah well. I never have gotten along well with elitists. Some of my instructors (thank you, Tom Kremer) and most of my classmates (thank you, very long list of people who will be singled out at another time), however, were very supportive of my playwriting and for the rest of my time at Binghamton, I continued to put on a full-length original play a year, including my best play, a three-act whirlpool entitled Pop Apocalypse.
I never did take a law class in college. I never took the LSAT. This, of course, created some friction between me and my father. Fortunately, with the success of my writing career, that friction has mostly abated. He's my biggest fan.
One final note: in reading the past few entries, you may have surmised I'm the type of writer who needs constant encouragement to maintain constant output. Sad but true. I think what it comes down to is attention...which is bizarre because I'm extremely shy and most of the time shrink when confronted with flattery.
If only I had been a mock psychiatrist.]]>An Etymological Interludehttp://www.kunati.com/blog-of-josh-corin-nuclear-win/2008/3/13/an-etymological-interlude.htmlAuthor Editing2008-03-13T01:05:15ZIn ancient Greece, when Thespis decided to honor the god Dionysus by grandstanding, a new profession was born. In the springtime, following Thesis' example, young men would don masks and robes and reenact the tales of heroes and gods. The masks were essential - not only did they delineate character, but they allowed the wearers to skirt accusations of blasphemy ("I don't really think I'm a god. See, it's just a mask.")
But what to call these practitioners in this new art of drama in which one pretender converses on stage with another pretender? What label could adequately describe this new profession? Because their primary function was to provide a dialectic onstage with the chorus, the Greeks decided to call these new men "answerers." The Greeks lauded these new "answerers" and many joined their leagues and performed in the springtime at their many theater festivals.
By the 4th century BC, this new word shows up outside of context of the theater. The great Athenian statesman Demothenes used it in one of his speeches to defame a rival. By calling him an "answerer," he was in effect comparing the rival to a fabricator in a mask, and even after the fall of the Hellenic civilization, the word continued to maintain this secondary, derogatory meaning.
"Answerer," of course, is a modern English translation of this ancient word. The actual word in Greek was a combination of two roots, hypo + krinomai.
Hypokrite.
This lesson is dedicated with love to Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York.]]>The Kangaroo Scribblethhttp://www.kunati.com/blog-of-josh-corin-nuclear-win/2008/3/10/the-kangaroo-scribbleth.htmlAuthor Editing2008-03-10T19:20:10ZWhen last we met, it seemed I was destined to pass the bar exam, fill my closet with neckties and suits, and litigate your next divorce. Destiny, however, has a wicked sense of humor. Just ask John Kennedy Toole.
See, way before I had ever heard of mock trial, I had been a writer. I wrote my first story when I was six. I knew how to use a typewriter by the time I was eight. Again, this was my father's fault. He sold office machines and so we had ready access to typewriters, copiers, and shredders. Some of my earliest, fondest memories involve me perched over an IBM Quietwriter at my dad's store on a quiet Saturday afternoon. Yep, I was weird even back then.
I wrote my first real short story in 2nd grade. It was around Halloween and my teacher, Mrs. Short, had assigned us a list of 10 Halloween-related words for us to combine into a narrative.
I scribbled down a missive about a young vampire named Vinny who had a loose tooth...but no one would help him out because, well, he was a vampire. Poor Vinny. I remember the story being praised by my parents, Mrs. Short, and even Principal Freeman (who, previous to that, believed I was borderline autistic - no joke, long story, 'nother time). All this positive attention sated my prepubescent neuroses and provided fuel for my creativity for a long, long time, and by 6th grade, I had written a novel. It was 10 pages long, but heck, it was a novel. I submitted it to the statewide Young Authors contest...and won for the entire city of Warwick (trouncing all efforts contributed by the kids in ALAP, the city's program for gifted youth......nope, no spite here....). All the winners of the contest got to attend a seminar on writing and meet Real Live Authors like Jon Land (who had read my book and proceeded to offer some very specific and tremendously helpful constructive criticism). What a blast that was.
It occurs to me that this is beginning to sound like a Watch Josh Kick Ass sermon. I guarantee you - there will be many more stories where you will Watch Josh's Ass Get Kicked. But I'll save those for when the flowers are blooming.
I continued to write all through junior high school, even as the wave of mock trial swept over me. I won a few more awards. I received some more praise. But, more importantly, I received a Stinging Rebuke from one of my instructors. Upon reading my latest batch of fiction, Ms. Moran, who taught the gifted program as Winman Junior High School (a program which my father fought tooth and nail to get me in, I should add), told me that my dialogue was "stilted and trite" and recommended I give poetry a try instead. Was the dialogue in my stories stilted and trite? Probably. I was in 7th grade. Should she have dissuaded me from ever writing fiction again? Probably not, but whatever. The point is she succeeded, and I turned my back on fiction writing forever.
Then destiny, with its wicked sense of humor, stepped in.
More later.]]>In the Court of the Crimson Kangaroo (or How I Became One of Them Writer-Type Folk)http://www.kunati.com/blog-of-josh-corin-nuclear-win/2008/3/9/in-the-court-of-the-crimson-kangaroo-or-how-i-became-one-of.htmlAuthor Editing2008-03-09T22:14:52ZMy father wanted me to be a lawyer.
I think his reasoning was two-fold: one, I seemed to be a passionate arguer (at least with him) and two, I seemed to have a knack for the law. Well, at least mock law. You see, in high school, I was a participant in mock trial.
Mock trial was fun. Every year we were given a new civil case to argue and had to prepare both an effective defense and a powerful prosecution. The witnesses in the case were always given unisex names like Pat and Chris so any gender could portray them in the trial. Mock trial, at its heart, was and is improvisational theater. And for whatever reason, I was very good at it. After our first trial, the presiding judge (who was a real superior court judge) called me over to the bench and commended me on my "performance" and recommended that I pursue the law as my career.
My father, who attended every trial, couldn't have been more proud.
My fondest memory of mock trial, though, came two years later, in the quarterfinals. You know those great cross-examinations you see on TV, where the lawyer blindsides the witness and then proceeds to streamroll them until the witness is basically forced to recant every single statement they previously made? Well...that was me. I crucified the prosecution's star witness and won the case for my school. The state mock trial board later gave me an award for Best Cross-Examination.
I'm really not trying to be boastful or self-aggrandizing. The following week, I helped contribute to our school losing the semi-finals. But for that day? For those ten minutes when it was mano y mano and I absolutely crushed that witness on the stand?
No stimulant can compare.
My father, who had been enthusiastic before about my pursuing a legal career, now became adamant. Not a day would pass when he wouldn't bring it up. Not one day. When it came time to apply for colleges, he made sure I included schools that had excellent pre-law programs. To him, for me not to pursue a career in law would have been an unforgivable squandering of potential. And I kinda/sorta agreed.
So what happened? How the heck did I end up here instead?Stay tuned.
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