LIVE! #61
2 June 2024
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: Lawrence Wright
- A staff writer for The New Yorker, playwright, monologist, and screenwriter (The Siege), Wright is the author of three novels, including the best-selling The End of October, about a global pandemic, published in April of 2020.
- His eleven nonfiction titles include Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief; and The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, which won the Pulitzer Prize.
- God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State inspired a three-part documentary that premiered on MAX in February, 2024.
- Wright and his wife are longtime residents of Austin, Texas. He also plays the keyboard in the Austin blues collective WhoDo.
"It was a revelation to me when I started writing movies that
there's no narrative--it's all scenes and characters . . . That was one thing I thought I could put in my toolkit.
Dialogue was another. I feel like if you have a good feel for dialogue it brings characters alive and it nails them
to a place."
- Lawrence Wright
"The thing about Texas is, as much as people hate
their government, they cherish the characters."
- Lawrence Wright
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 Mr. Texas
- The origin of the idea was a Texas Monthly issue dedicated to Texas Cowgirls. The cover portrait featured a woman whose story was untold, and inspired Lola's character, who became an excuse to write Sonny.
- Mr. Texas began as an unproduced movie script entitled Sonny’s Last Shot, written in the early 1990s. Sonny was a Democrat. In 1995, the Texas legislature turned Republican, and in 2003 Wright rewrote his screenplay as a stage play, produced it, and revived it in 2005. In the meantime Sonny became a Republican.
- Buoyed by the success of his play, Wright then collaborated with pianist-singer-songwriter Marcia Ball to adapt Sonny's Last Shot into a musical. Rights were also auctioned to HBO for a miniseries. Wright also planned to produce a musical podcast. None of these three versions came to fruition.
- After that Wright decided to turn his story into a novel. Many, if not most, of the characters and scenarios within the novel are based on real people and real situations and are the result of Wright's decades of interviews with scores of Texas legislators.
Stats & Background
- Marketing: Political Fiction, Fiction Satire, Family Life Fiction, Southern United States Fiction, Marriage & Divorce Fiction
- Genre: Realistic Modern-Day Long-Form Archplot
- Print Pages: 336; Word count: 103,577
Reading Grade: 7th; Avg. wds/sent.: 10.16
Lexical Density: 49.72; Flesch Reading Ease: 72.77 - POV: Multiple; Person: 3rd; Tense: Past
- Publish date: September 19, 2023
- Publisher: Knopf
- Audio book length: (12 hours 12 mins)
- Narrator: Steven Weber
- Recognition: An NPR best book of 2023.
- Fun Fact: The end of the Mr. Texas audio book contains 8 songs from Wright's musical version. Instrumental music can also be heard throughout.
