|
HAHAHA. Blake, I wrote a newspaper column for 14
years. Several years ago, I wrote a column for a sports tabloid. They paid me a
nickel a word. Often I would have to pepper it with "ands" "buts" "howevers" and
on the "on the other hands" to get it up to the required length of 600 or 700
words.
Bob Dove
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 1:13
PM
Subject: Re: Kunsan and Inchon
Bob,
That's a pretty good beginning of a novelette--about
10000 is all you need to add. Many great writers thought that the
novelette's length was more powerful than full-length novels as there is a
tendency--no--a need to "fill pages" with "restatements, paraphrases,
reiterations, and fantastic personal digressions, etc.," until the reader was
either dead or dying and didn't know it. The HUGE books written by many
writers today--often 900 pages!--are hack jobs. Their whole story could
be effectively told in a longish short story or novelette, but BIG
books pay more and there's the point. Since you have experienced
the actual war no one knows better how it feels to be chased around a tree by
a bear than the man who was chased around the tree by the bear.
Try and do a quick rough draft of your most powerful
memories--ignore formats and "simple-minded" theories of writing--tell
it in the FIRST PERSON! Just you and the
bear! For helping you get started, here are some of
the most important principles most great books follow: short stories to War
& Peace tomes! All great books seem structured around these
first six points! These are NOT associated with clever software
programs that "write" (via formulas) your story! The six are
highlighted in BOLD RED. The
remaining are important but NOT as critical as the first six!
For you information or concern, you and any other
veteran can use any aspect of this copyrighted material. I taught
writing for over 35 years at The New University School and this is the
structure (plot) line that over 90 percent of all great books
follow: "Red Badge of Courage," (Stephen Crane), "All Quiet on the
Western Front," Eric Remarque, and "For Whom the Bells Toll," (Ernest
Hemingway). Just a few titles to keep all this simple and direct.
And please don't be misled by the following word, "FICTIONAL." All the
great books on war must always "leave the mind of the lead character and
"enter the mind of the secondary characters" via speculations on the writer's
part. Such projected and imagined interior monologue(s) occur in
all the other characters' minds! That's the "fictional" part of all
"true" stories.
A COHERENT LINE OF STRUCTURED PLOT DEVELOPMENT
How to Plot a Fictional Story
Blake Mooneyİ
New University School
New Orleans, LA
1963
1. Quickly establish a sympathetic lead
character from whose point of view the story is told.
2. Immediately confront lead with urgent and
vitally important problem which he must but cannot solve.
3. Detail lead's efforts to come to grips with
problem.
4. Introduce series of rising complications,
based upon the successive dynamic of struggle and failure, which act to take
narrative forward.
5. A point of absolute crisis, the 11th hour,
where all looks bleakest, must show lead about to rally or
fail.
6. Finally, full resolution is reached where
lead satisfyingly solves original problem and effects lasting and meaningful
change on his personal life and his entire set of future consequences. If lead
fails to solve original problem lead must arrive at a state of enlightened
resignation. In either case, lead must have been tested to the utmost before
coming through or failing.
7. Lead must be focus of book throughout.
8. Lead can be either protagonist or antagonist.
9. Do not switch point-of-view from lead.
10. Avoid all non-individuated characters.
11. Avoid episodic development of story material.
12. Avoid indirect development of all characters.
13. Establish distinct motivation for all characters.
14. Establish absolute clarity and conviction to all encounters.
15. Do not improvise, wander, digress, detract, deviate, roam, zigzag,
stray, or in any way indicate writer's fatigue by flying off at a tangent with
the plot.
16. Maintain sense of proportion throughout story. Use of similes (Like
ancient trees, we die from the top), metaphors (the spring of our
life), and anecdotes (word comes from Greek meaning "things
unpublished" and are little asides or stories within the main story line)
should always be avoided if they are longer than two lines.
NOTE: Unless specific approval to quote or copy any
part of this copyrighted document is given by the above author, any copying or
duplicating by any means will be treated as an infringement upon the author’s
copyright. Full credit must be given, if approval to quote any or all of this
document is approved. Blake Mooneyİ
—END—
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003
11:59 AM
Subject: Kunsan and Inchon
By this time, Sept. 10, 1950, my
company was well on its way toward the invasion feint we pulled off at
Kunsan on Sept. 13. And Maines, Clance, and Puttin had only three days left
to live.
I wish I could remember the date
we set sail from Yokohama on the British frigate Whitesand Bay. We had to
sail all the way around Japan to get to the west coast of Korea. The trip
had to take four or five days.
The next time I go to war I am
going to write some of that sort of stuff down.
Bob Dove
1st Raider Co.
Korea 1950
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003
11:18 AM
Subject: The CIB and its worth
For those of us who have the award of the CIB and it
was issued in 1950 or so, I found out that a badge from that time sells
for around $35.00.
It is because the old ones from WW II and Korea
are solid sterling silver and the later issues are I think 1/20 sterling,
there for are only worth a few bucks to collectors.
Collectors of
military items are hot after the old badges for their collections, so hang
on to yours if it is from the time of WW II and or Korea.
I still
have the one issued to me on 7 March 1951 and is worth more to me
for what I went through, then to sell it for a few
bucks.
John Sonley Korea
1951
|