Letters From Alex

While watching an episode of Party Down, I was struck by an important concept for us writers. The series is about cater-waiters in LA, every episode showing them working a different party. They’re mostly actors waiting for their big breaks, which, of course, may never come.

                                                                                                            
In this episode (from the original series, not the recent revival), they show up to work a birthday party for the real-life movie star Steve Guttenberg, who’s rich but no longer relevant. However, there’s a mix-up, so he’s not having this party, but he invites the cater-waiters to party with him instead. When he discovers that one of them, Roman, is a screenwriter, he insists they do a reading of Roman’s latest script.

Roman—who only writes “hard” science fiction—fancies himself a visionary who will never sell out. But when they start reading his script, it becomes painfully clear that it’s awful. Here’s a sample:

CAPTAIN DUKLARK

Reading on deuterium levels.

BORP-7 (a bio-cybernetic organism)

Seven oh five point two, captain.

KROND

Your ship will never withstand the quantum flux between a binary star.

CAPTAIN DUKLARK

It will in a Godel spacetime field.

Everyone, including Roman, realizes the script is dead on arrival. Steve Guttenberg urges Roman to do a quick revision, which he does. The actors read the new version, which begins showing the heat of life.

BORP-7

Captain. I’m worried–

CAPTAIN DUKLARK

About our deuterium levels? Me too.

BORP-7

About you, sir.

CAPTAIN DUKLARK

Since when was worrying part of your programing? Coordinates set?

KROND

Thread a binary star? You’ll kill us all, DuKlark. Or is that what you want, since she died?

CAPTAIN DUKLARK

Maybe it is.

No, it’s still not a great script. But Roman has started making the characters act and sound like real people (even the bio-cybernetic one) rather than entities with no discernible emotions.  

Roman, who almost never smiles, shows the hint of a smile, pleased with himself.

Roman didn’t just revise the script. He re-envisioned it. He saw his story in a new light and breathed some actual life into it, which spurred the actors to really play something rather than rolling their eyes as they spoke their lines. 

Sometimes, that’s what it takes. Not a tweak. A makeover. Don’t be precious with your writing, especially if it’s not quite working. Crumple it up. Take a break. Then start over, with a new perspective. Maybe it won’t be improved. Maybe it’ll even be worse. And that’s okay, because this is always a process. But…chances are quite good that you’ll have pushed yourself onto the path of making it better. Maybe even as great as you once imagined.

Alex Steele,

Gotham President

Yes, we have a Children’s Book Conference coming up, May 21 and 22. On Zoom.

This is a great event if you have a children’s book (picture book, middle grade, or YA) ready to go to market, or if you dream of publishing a children’s book. It goes like this:

Day 1: Panels and Presentations, featuring writers and agents, including two Newbery Medal-winning authors: Matt de la Peña and Erin Entrada Kelly.

Day 2: Pitching Roundtables, where you get the chance to present your book to a table of two top-shelf agents who rep the kind of book you’re pitching. (Most on Zoom, some in NYC.)

You can sign up for both days, or pick just one.

This follows the format of previous Gotham Conferences, but we have a beautiful new plan. Instead of one conference encompassing all kinds of books, we’re doing a rotating series of four conferences, each one specializing in a type of book:

Children’s Books
Genre Fiction

Literary/Commercial Fiction

Nonfiction

You can view the full schedule here.

The mastermind of this whole thing is Gotham’s Director of Publishing Guidance, Josh Sippie. Here Josh explains the logic behind this plan:

I wanted writers to know they were in the right place. By being more specific with four separate conferences, we can dig deeper into important topics within each genre to allow for a more targeted experience. And having multiple conferences also allows more exploration for writers eager to write across genres.

You can see the full lineup of panelists, presenters, and agents for the Children’s Book Conference right now, and stay tuned for the lineup of the coming conferences.

We believe our conferences are better than most (if not all) other conferences for these reasons:

• We offer truly interesting and informative Panels and Presentations.

• Our Pitching Roundtables give you in-depth exposure to agents right for your work, where you spend four hours with two agents, as well as some fellow writers.

• Our prices are reasonable, in contrast to the high expense of many conferences. 

And, wait, Gotham also offers other ways to get direct feedback from an agent:

Query Letter Coaching

Agent/Editor Evaluation

Agent Evaluation Quickie

The mission is personal to Josh, who says:

I moved to NYC on a whim in 2014 to get involved in publishing and existed solely on trial and error for years before finding my path. I would have loved these kinds of resources at the start of that journey. 

Josh and the rest of us at Gotham are dedicated to giving you the best shot at success in the publishing world. We’d be honored to have you join us.  

A sound, barely perceptible. Musical notes, quite high, shimmering in strings. So begins the Prelude to Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, which I recently saw at the Metropolitan Opera.
 
Among Wagner’s many contributions to music was the development of the leitmotif, a recurring musical theme that represents an element in the story. For example, Lohengrin has leitmotifs for the Holy Grail and the Forbidden Question, among others.
 
You’ll hear leitmotifs in movie scores—assorted melodies crisscrossing throughout the show, giving psychological undercurrents to what you’re watching.
 
Writers, too, can make effective use of leitmotifs (or motifs) with words and images.
 
For example, in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, colors are used as a leitmotif, showing how characters fight against the deadly reality of slavery, even after freedom. Sethe, a mother, buys colorful ribbons and bows for her daughter. Beloved, that daughter, sleeps with a quilt that has two orange patches. And so on.
 
In Barry Jenkins’s movie Moonlight, there’s a leitmotif of water, representing change or perhaps rebirth. The movie opens and closes with the sound of water, and water appears at other points, most memorably when Juan teaches the boy Chiron how to swim—Chiron unaware that Juan is the drug dealer supplying his mother.
 
Moving on to another legendary composer: Burt Bacharach recently passed away. His music makes me smile inside, always has. It goes down easy, but is rather sophisticated, blending influences of jazz, classical, pop, and bossa nova into something unique.
 
A distinctive feature of a Bacharach song is the tricky rhythm. Lots of syncopation and shifting meters. In other words, it runs, then skips, then slides, then switches direction.
 
Here’s “I Say a Little Prayer,” sung by Dionne Warwick.
 
Playing with rhythm is an excellent way to wake up your words in writing.
 
In this passage from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club, the narrator describes his soul-sucking office:
 
             Everything where I work is floor-to-ceiling glass. Everything is vertical blinds.
             Everything is industrial low-pile gray carpet spotted with little tombstone monuments
             where the PC’s plug into the network. Everything is a maze of cubicles boxed in with
             fences of upholstered plywood.
 
            A vacuum cleaner hums somewhere.                                                            
 
Notice the repetition of the four sentences starting with Everything, then a sharp break with that distant vacuum cleaner.
 
One of my favorite celebrity sightings happened about ten years ago. I’m riding the subway in NYC. And Burt Bacharach is sitting across from me. He was in his mid-80s, looking cool as ever. As I recall, he was chatting to a young woman who seemed to be a stranger.
 
Hey, let’s celebrate Burt and NYC with Burt’s “Arthur’s Theme,” from the movie Arthur.

Alex Steele,

Gotham President