LIVE! #51
4 June 2023
Agenda
- Why We're Here / Roundtable Rules
- Introduction to Literary Forensics
- Group Discussion
- Further Study
Why We're Here
We writers want to improve our craft
by reading like a writer
We learn from each other
using Literary Forensics
Roundtable Rules
Always refer back to the book
Practice active listening & serendipity
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but not every conclusion
Always refer back to the book
Reading Teaches Writing
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 you 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 you notice?
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
