Author / Dave White

by Dave White

Influences

As as writer, I always find it interesting what other writers consider their own influences. Most times when you read interviews, the influences usually range among the author’s favorite authors. Sometimes they range out of genre, but rarely do they range out of books.

I have talked before about how I learned to write from comic books, along with Michael Crichton and James Bond novels. Comics taught me pacing and plots twists.

But the biggest non-book influence I’ve had recently actually came after I started writing. It’s the show that taught me about location, mostly because it’s filmed in my home state. THE SOPRANOS just gets New Jersey. As silly as it seems, NJ is like that, as integrated with stupid and smart people. With people who, despite having funny accents (which I contend I don’t have) have souls deep, dark and sad. And the shots, that grainy, gritty look is part of the state I love.

Yes, we’re the Garden State. And if you watch the show, they show that part of the state too. As gritty as it looks near the Turnpike, it’s just as beautiful in South Jersey.

Part of getting a location right, however, is attitude. People act that way and are influenced by their surroundings. My favorite moments of the show have to do with “going to Booton” or meeting “Sil in Paterson.” New Jersey is close knit like that, almost like a really big city.

The Sopranos gets it, and it has helped me get it as well.

by Dave White

Coming Up for Air

Thought I’d take a moment just to introduce myself after yesterday’s dive into the world of blogging. I have a novel coming out in September titled When One Man Dies. I’ve written several short stories over the years, which are available at my website.

Right now, reading wise I’m into comic books. I don’t know where that came from, but it’s probably a combination of things. Seeing Spider-man 3–which I actually liked–and reading a really, really fast paced novel by Duane Swierczynski called SEVERANCE PAKCAGE. It’s one of my favorite books and it comes out in the fall too.

Anyway, the book was so high paced that everything I read after wasn’t fast enough for me. So I figured I’d try some highly recommended comic books. And boom, now I’m back into trade paperbacks and graphic novels, and especially digging Ed Brubaker.

by Dave White

For My First Post: I’m going to cheat

Hey guys, I’ve posted this piece a couple of places, but I wanted to see what reaction it would get from a different audience. Originally I posted this at my blog and over at Crimespace, so if you’ve seen this post there, my apologies for the cross post. More original work to follow in the coming days.

There’s a conversation going on on Crimespace about pet peeves of incorrect grammar. Everybody has one. Mine is people saying “I could care less” when they mean “I couldn’t care less.” But I have another argument as well.

Grammar is not important.

Well, I’ll back off of that… simple grammar is something everyone should learn young and grasp. But after that, who really cares?

What is important, and what I stress when I teach, is meaning. A student has to be able to put together an argument or a storyline or a sentence that has meaning. They have to learn how to put together a logical progression and THEN you can go back and fix grammar.

Hell, look at a lot of writing in books these days. People break grammar rules all the time, whether to sound colloquial or to create effect. I understand that you have to understand grammar to break the rules, but grammar should still not be the end all be all of writing.

It should be the least important thing.

National tests these days do not grade on grammar and spelling. They let most errors go as long as it does not affect meaning. Hence, meaning is where we should focus. That’s what I work on.

If a story starts:

“Me and you went to the store. Your a giraffe and heads spilld across the road.”

I am not going to sit there and help fix the “me and you” and the correct “your” first. I’m going to ask why is there a giraffe in this story, why were there head’s spilling across the road, and what does that have to do with the store you went to.

I want to get to the point where someone will write “Me and you went to the store. You bought skittles and I bought a soda.”

Then we can go back and fix grammar.

I think people worry about grammar because it’s easy to fix. You can–when you edit someone’s piece–say well this is wrong and this is wrong and it’s easier than saying, but there’s a plot hole here on page 202 and I don’t know how you can fix it. That involves a back and forth and a conversation.

I’m always willing to talk about writing, be it with students or with other writers. I’m always willing to brainstorm plot ideas and why a paragraph works as a thought. But folks, what it comes down to is this: Whether you are in 8th grade or writing for ten years, most grammatical errors can be fixed by just reading your sentence out loud.

Meaning, however, takes work.

What do you think?

FOR THE RECORD: This is in no way an attempt to trash teachers. I am a teacher and I believe in teachers. All teachers want to make students smarter and more well rounded young men and woman.

However, I think there is an old fashioned thinking vs. a new type of thinking among all citizens of the United States on whether or not grammar should be the key to good writing.