It's a real departure for me. Generally I have focused on coming-of-age stories. This one is much more of an adventure, but it is grounded in characters who have lived challenging lives.
My influence for this novel (possibly a series) is my favorite writer: Armistead Maupin.
I read Maupin's "Tales of the City" series for the first time as a teenager. They transported me to 1970s (and 80s) San Francisco. They introduced me to characters who felt like a part of me, who felt like family, back when I was really struggling with mine. I cannot say enough about how much these books meant to me, and how much he has influenced my writing. Readers sometimes talk about how my novel "Out of the Pocket" has great humanity for its characters. That is something I learned reading Maupin.
I have re-read the six-book series (now eight books) many, many times. I have recently re-read them again, but this time with an eye at understanding the similarities and differences between us as writers.
It has been an eye-opening experience for me.
I have always thought of myself as a crisp writer, someone who can say a lot with a little. I am not prone to wordiness when describing a scene. In talks about writing, I have often pointed out the need to pick out two sensual details about any setting. Maybe three, but usually two.
Compared to Maupin, I may as well be writing War and Peace.
Check out the first two paragraphs of the first "Tales of the City" novel":
Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time.
She came to the city alone for an eight-day vacation. On the fifth night, she drank three Irish coffees at the Buena Vista, realized that her Mood Ring was blue, and decided to phone her mother in Cleveland.
Did you catch that? Maupin covered five days in three sentences. It's masterful, really. In the third sentence, he uses a local establishment name and a clothing accessory as place holders for setting and time. Even if you don't know exactly where the Buena Vista is, it is clear that it is a bar. The Mood Ring is a nice touch because it is evocative of both a period of time, and character. Not all characters would make the decision Mary Ann is about to make (moving to SF) in such a callous way. He also juxtaposes San Francisco and Cleveland, which, as it turns out, is a huge aspect of Mary Ann's personality. The juxtaposition between wide-eyed Midwestern innocence, and the laid-back aura of San Francisco circa 1975.
Here's another example of Maupin creating a setting in three sentences:
The pier was dark. Clusters of Chinese fishermen broke the silence with laughter and the tinny blare of transistor radios. A helicopter made a whup-whup noise in the sky over Fort Mason.
I love this approach. He doesn't do it all the time. Sometimes he'll describe landscapes in greater detail, especially when foliage is involved. But for me, this is a masterful job of creating a credible setting in very few words. I see that it's dark. I hear the helicopter and the transistor radios and the fishermen laughing. Because it's a pier, I smell the salt air.
A former teacher of mine, Melissa Pritchard, used to have us to an exercise called "Aping." She'd have us "ape" different authors. It was always interesting to try to write like different people.
I don't want to "ape" Maupin in my novel, but this morning I have been playing with Pritchard's exercise and writing Maupin-like scenes. It's been a challenge. As I said, I don't want to copy, but I do want to allow him to influence my style in this series. I'm going to work with intertwining story lines, which is a Maupin thing. I want to rely heavily on dialogue (he will occasionally write pages of dialogue without description of even a "he said" or "she said"), and I want to focus on action rather than description to create my characters.
It will be a challenge. If you've read Out of the Pocket, you know that I have a certain style. As it turns out, that style has followed me into my other manuscripts (hopefully you'll see this soon!). It works for me, but I have a feeling that this attempt I'm making to change will be good for me.
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