Giving Back

by Gayle Bartos-Pool

I’ve learned a lot from other writers. This blog has allowed me to gain knowledge about what we need to do to get those words on paper or into our computers. We might have a few different technical methods for getting that story actually written down, but many times I’ve noticed that we use similar ways to come up with the narrative.

Many writers actually let their characters “talk” to them so they can craft a unique person in their story. I’ve done it so often that I rely on that connection with those characters when I’m writing.

When I first had the idea for my Johnny Casino books, I sat down and basically let Johnny give me a two-page monologue about who he was. That “chat” ended up being the opening pages of my first book about Mr. Casino.

I learned about creating a biography for a character when I took acting classes from a terrific actor named Rudy Solari. He told us when we were doing a scene from a play to write out a short bio about the character we were playing. The script might have the words and the actions of our character, but Rudy wanted us to know more about the person we were playing like their education, where they grew up, and how they viewed the world so we would know who our character really was when we first stepped onto the stage and delivered our lines.

I use that method when I write my characters in my short stories and novels. When I start crafting the story, I jot down the name, age, general attitude and some special characteristic of that person so I can keep track of him or her throughout the story. I don’t want a 25 year-old blonde named Mary to turn into a 45 year-old red head named Mildred later on in the book because I forgot who she was supposed to be.

That lesson from acting class has stayed with me for over fifty years. It works. I learned a few other things from actors, other writers, and by just honing my craft. But for many years I thought I should share this stuff I was learning with other writers, so when I became Speakers Bureau Director for Sisters-in-Crime/Los Angeles, I thought I would put on a few classes to let other writers know how I got words on paper.

This “giving back” to fellow writers became something I have done for years. Not everybody can give money to groups and causes they endorse, but we can give of ourselves. I’ve done this by speaking at women’s clubs, libraries, and to other writer groups. And the times I’ve been on a writers’ panel has always been fun, because I learn new things, too.

Something else I try to do is to encourage people, not just somebody wanting to write that first novel, but to regular people who have lives that are frankly extremely interesting. I tell them to try writing their own autobiography so they can share their life experiences with their family and friends and maybe a whole bunch of other people who learn that this person they just met has a book out there about their incredibly interesting life. That just might prompt the next guy or gal to jot down a few of their own memories for a book of their own. But somebody else learns from that memoir – the writer. They learn things about themselves. Nothing wrong with that.

I want to encourage people to write and to read. Both are becoming a lost art. Look at the handwriting of kids and even young adults nowadays. It looks like a first grader. Ask a teenager what was the last book they read. You’ll be lucky if they ever read a book outside the classroom.

By encouraging people to write, we might get a few more words on paper, a few more ideas in print, and a few more interesting stories to keep people company when the Internet is down. People might actually see there really is a world out there and they are an interesting part of it and they have a few stories to tell as well.

Read On, Write On, and Teach Others!

Here are a few of us Writers-in-Residence at one of the writers conventions.

Rosemary, me and Jackie

Or how about one of the panels I put on at the Burbank Library. It was a Total Hollywood moment…And yeah, I had fun doing those events.