Category Archives: Book reading

Book reading, flying, flyingstories

How to write a matryoshka

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Everyone knows what a matryoshka doll is. The name means precisely what you see when you set your eyes on this strange object. You see a Russian woman, and the shape reminds you of an Egyptian sarcophagus. So, you’re expecting to find a mummy, inside?

And now something completely different

Searching in our Matryoshka

What happens is that, when you open your matryoshka, you find out it contains the same one but slightly different. It’ll remind you that present you received for Christmas, once. You got deceived by the size of the pack, but then the more you open it, the less you find. From a huge packet to a tiny present. But, what if the last one is a ring set with a diamond?

Next level, next stop

You remove as much layers as possible, one small Russian matryoshka after another. Yes, in the end, you want to find something important, you want to feel that all that fuss was necessary, the diamond is there waiting for you! And yet, after removing the last copy of your matryoshka, you realised that the last gift is an exact copy of the rest, but smaller.

I need to get upset?

Think about it, how many movies, piece of theatre and also books end up exactly as we expected from the very beginning? We remove one layer at the time, but we continue to see the same thing. Same characters, same flat plot, just smaller and smaller, but nonetheless the same. Nope, there’s no diamond awaiting for us most of the time, but just the old same matryoshka!

How to avoid matryoshkas

It’s quite easy to answer that question. Open up any book, read the first twenty lines and wait. Something inside yourself has to tell you that you’re not waisting your time. The style, the way the characrers are presented (or they’re not), how the plot is open under your feet to walk through it.

You are a Sherlock Holmes, and now in twenty lines, you have all that you need to understand if that book is right for you. At least book are honest, you don’t have to buy them to understand if you like them or not.

To be continued…

 

 

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Book reading, flyingstories, marketing, translation

Reedsy

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What is Reedsy

A few months ago I was surfing on the ocean of the Internet, lost somewhere between the Island of

“How to improve my writing”

and the Archipelagos of

“Writing contests”.

The discovery

Then, by chance, I entered in a blog called Reedsy.

“Nothing special”

I thought before taking a better look at it.
I started reading and after hours I didn’t finish half of the material inside this website. From daily writing courses to weekly contests, everything seemed to be everything I always dreamed about. And everything with that special human touch that lets you forget for a moment to be on a website.

A sacred place

I felt like I was in a sacred place, a safe place in which you can express yourself, study, read and ask other experts for help. I stopped surfing in the Ocean of the Internet and I started to swim lightly in this small sea. The water was warm, but not hot enough to make you feel dizzy. It was refreshing and it gave me the strength to start my writing with a renovate energy.

My first short story

Last week I sent my first short story to the website. It’s not my first story, since I have my stories published on my Flyingstories website. But if usually I decide the theme of my stories, this time I had to follow a path, and it wasn’t easy.

“Write about two strangers that keep meeting each other”

This was the prompt.

And for me, accustomed to write mostly fantastic stories, it wasn’t really an easy task.

A story about a shepherd

So I sent Reedsy a simple story about a shepherd of camels. It comes from my experience living in Dubai and the chats I had with hundreds of taxi drivers all around the city. Sometimes you forget to be in a big city, when you turn your head to the desert and meet “wild” camels around.
I decided then to write a story about a man lost in the desert, a man that doesn’t feel human anymore, but more one of the animals he’s trying to help grow. A lost man in a period of pandemic, when everyone feels lost for a reason or another.

A way out

And he finds himself a way out.
As we, every one of us, is supposed to do.
Thanks Reedsy for the opportunity of discovering a story, hidden somewhere inside myself.

 

Book reading, flying

A dirty job

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How to be hooked

A few months ago, I was reading an exciting book called Hooked, by Les Edgerton. While I was hooked by the book, discovering new techniques to engage a reader, I find out something else. I found out a book that, in a few lines, was able to take me deep into the writer’s world. And it doesn’t happen every day. The book was A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore.

When I finished it, I asked myself: it would be the same if I’d rather watched a movie instead of reading this story in a book?

Literature vs. Movies

Which one has the most significant “hook”?

I don’t think it’s an easy question to answer. First of all, both books and movies are, and they will always be connected. All the best movies come from a fantastic book or script. And many books are more and more “visual”, citing and referring to movies. What changes sometimes is the audience they’re referred. In some cases, when people want to lay down on a sofa and relax, they don’t want to do it with a book in their hands. Maybe they’re with their wife, and they want to spend their quality time watching something together.

A book is private

Yes, this can be a first answer.

A book is a private game between you and the author. He never had to know how much time and effort the author had to put together to give birth to a single phrase, sometimes. The reader has to jump into the new world she has to discover, and the only way to do so is to forget there is a writer there, somewhere. In this sense, it’s obviously easier for an excellent writer to hook a reader. What a writer has to do is to whisper the right words in the ears of the reader, and he will be tempted to turn the next page.

A dirty, dirty job

Coming back to A dirty Job, you can it’s the quintessence of what I said before. You turn each page thinking:

“And now?”

Your precious key enters in a new keyhole. And this is a magic sensation, something rare, captivating. You feel like the first man entering a pyramid after thousands of years.

What is the story about?

The story is about a beta male who, after losing his wife, finds himself trapped in an unwanted and quite crazy job. Eventually, he will adjust to his new life and routine, but you won’t know who the enemies are and who the good boys are there until you turn the last page.

A world in which souls can be exchanged through an object. A book that profoundly influenced me when writing my book Souls Alive.

Thanks, Christopher Moore.

If you want to read another great book, have a look to The queen’s gambit.

Daniele Frau

Book reading, flying, flyingstories

The urge to read

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A book is a journey

I was six years old, I was sitting in my room when I realized that reading was the indestructible boat I needed to explore every ocean in the world. It didn’t mean I didn’t need to move. Most of the people start with the assumption that reading is quite dull and static activity, although I thought the opposite. I felt it back then, and I still believe this is true.

A book makes you travel

Reading must be more than just taking ideas passively from a stranger. It must be a journey, an adventure. And as any traveler experienced, you end up penniless (tickets costs, as well as books, have a price), but empowered. The experience, the travel you just made, must give you memories you’d use in times of need.

A good book

What a good book is, then, it’s all about your taste. A few days ago a colleague of mine told me: 

My favorite writer ever is J.K. Rowling.

This is the kind of reader I’d call an emotional reader. It doesn’t matter the style, the message of the story, the layers the writer carefully put one over the other. No, the essential part is how she felt when she was young, and she read those lines for the first time. That journey never ceased for her.

What a great book looks like?

So it’s time to see another critical expression: this is a great book. Think about the travel, which travel do you remember as a great one, and what do you recollect as being just ok? The same stands for reading a book. The great books are the ones that, for different reasons, opened a small door, let us cry or laugh, comforted us like a good friend.

The lake

I called the book a journey, but I can say it’s a lake as well. What a story and a lake have in common?

And a matryoshka? Keep reading, and you’ll discover soon!

Daniele Frau

Flyingstories