LIVE! #51
4 June 2023
Agenda
- Why We're Here
- Literary Forensics
- - What do I bring?
- - What do I feel?
- - What do I notice?
- - What do I study?
- Next Month's Reading & Study
Why We're Here
We Writers want to improve our craft
by Reading like a Writer
through Literary Forensics training
we learn from each other
Roundtable Rules
Always refer back to the book
We practice active listening & serendipity
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but not every conclusion
Always refer back to the book
Meet today's author: Gabrielle Zevin
- Mother is Korean; father is Jewish - both IBMers
- Computer programmer dad provided Gabrielle with video games
- Studied American Literature at Harvard
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- Published 10 novels since 2005: 5 Adult novels and 5 YA novels
- Elsewhere (YA - 2005) sold 350K; The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (2014) sold 850k
- Wrote 4 screenplays, including Conversations With Other Women and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
- Has lived in Boca Raton, Cambridge, Manhattan, Austin, LA, spent time in Tokyo
- Moved to LA in 2012, where she now lives with film director Hans Canosa
What do I feel?
What in the book elicited that feeling?
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but every conclusion should be questioned
We practice serendipity
- nothing is too crazy
Always refer back to the book
What do I notice?
- • Language and Grammar
- • Context
- • Point of view
- • Character & character development
- • Pacing
- • Horizontal structure
- • Layering of themes
- • Overall effect
Writing Tomorrow x3
- In 2017 Gabrielle Zevin had recently published Young Jane Young but sales were sluggish
- As a distraction she turned to video games, but the games of her youth were gone
- Her idea: "Story of two game designers. The games they make are their lives."
- Sam is Zevin's first fictional character who resembles her ethnic background
- Writing about virtual worlds, she wanted the real world settings to be sensual
- 2021: 10-publisher bidding war; Knopf paid a seven-figure advance
- 25 bidders for screen rights; Paramount Pictures paid $2 million
- Foreign rights sold in 37 territories
- July 2022 release (60,000 print run) - New York Times best-seller list No. 3; stayed for 8 weeks; dropped off
- December: critics’ best-of-2022 lists propelled it back onto the best-seller lists
- Knopf has since reprinted the book 21 times to keep up with runaway sales
- Spring 2023: carried by box stores like Walmart, Target, and grocery chains for the first time
- Emily Blaster is now a real game!
Stats & Background
- Marketing: Friendship Fiction, Cultural Heritage Fiction, World Literature, Literary Fiction,
Contemporary Romance - Genre: Realistic Historical Arch-Plot Long-Form
- Print Pages: 416; Word count: 132,957;
Reading Grade: 7th
Avg. wds/sent.: 11.05; Lexical Density: 47.84; Flesch Reading Ease: 75.04 - POV: Sam, Sadie, Marx, Anna, Ant
Person: 3rd (2nd: The NPC); Tense: Past (Present: The NPC) - Publish date: July 5, 2022
- Publisher: Knopf
- Audio book length: (13 hours 52 mins); Narr. Jennifer Kim, Julian Cihi
- One of the best books of 2022: The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, TIME, GoodReads, Oprah Daily
- NYT bestseller since publication • Jimmy Fallon Book Club Pick • #1 IndieNext List Pick • Sunday Times
Best Seller • Amazon’s #1 Book of 2022 • Book of the Month Club’s 2022 Book of the Year •
A Barnes & Noble Book Club Selection and Book of the Year Finalist • A BBC Radio 2
Book Club Pick • An Apple Book of the Month • Bookshop.org Book of the Month
Writers Who Read: Coming Up
- Summer Break (with socials?) -
September 3: The Passenger – Cormac McCarthy (USA, 2022)
October 1: Stella Maris – Cormac McCarthy (USA, 2022)
November 5: Avalon – Nell Zink (USA, 2022)
December 3: Trust - Hernan Diaz (USA, 2022)
RMFW Gold Conference Sept 8-10 - Aurora, CO
- Literary Forensics Masterclass September 8, 8am - noon
- Structure Workshop (1 hour)
- Literary Forensics Worksheet