Martin Amis - Writing Advice

[antibling]

He's using words !!!!! omg what a cliche !

[WorkForYourMoney]

The word 'cliche' is cliched.

[FrisbeeX]

Make it your own? Ain't that a little hackneyed, Mart?



[pingguo2]

He is full of shit.

[MichaelRyerson]

And then he says, by way of explaining the 'war against cliche...' one must 'make it your own' which is, of course, a tired cliche.

[bryngOneOn]

thinking aloud i am. stand up comics are filling stadiums, i hear, with there observational wit. why is this? lots of reasons i imagine, but one i suspect being that novelists of thepast 30 odd years dont ever nail it, never THAT funny. saw a 3 minute stand up routine that was inciteful, hilarious(well it would be, wouldnt it) took listener in unexpected directions and had message about the porn industry that mullered amis' multi paged ramble on the subject in yellow dog

[bryngOneOn]

the cheek of the man to extol on the fouls of the literary cliche after writing yellow dog, i've only read that book by him, but on the strength of that i wouldnt read another of his, but then he gets all this respect and i wonder should i give him some more of my money if in the case of yellow dog he was having an off day or a year long temper tantrum. okay its decided, if i see a book hes written on the pavement , i'll pick it up instead of booting it into traffic.

[jismith1989]

Is that supposed to be ironic? Because, y'know, "a war against" is pretty cliché.

[Smoochy44]

@jismith1989 I think you're missing the message here. Opposing any and all "heard words" in speech and writing becomes painful and almost routine if done so consistently. In fact, this was Kingsley's complaint about his son's writing, that it was "relentlessly original." But Martin Amis hardly has his head so high in the clouds that he doesn't know when to use certain heard phrases for emphasis ("I can't believe my luck"/"It took my breath away" -London Fields) There's a balance needed. Always.

[jamesgowdy]

@jismith1989 Ha excellent! Well spotted. "An act against clishé?" then Amis corrects, "a war against clishé." 

[Zimnyification]

Don't read or listen to Amis, but this was good advice!

[KenyanObama]

[ALL hippies are philosophers. Here comes the necessary poverty, that will degenerate into penury, in the name of saving mother Earth...Let us be thankful that the high doses of radiation in the atmosphere from Japan's China syndrome cures cancer. Remember: radiation cures cancer. I shall now, through the miracles that radiation provides, cure every metabolic malady known to allopathy.]

[sarahthewriter1]

Great interview! Could always use writing advice.



[madviolet]

Both a pair of tools...the whole 2.31 makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

[madviolet]

Both a pair of tools

[oldproji]

All the writing advice one needs is right there in any Dickens novel or essay. For anyone wanting to be a novelist, I would say read Dickens. What can be gained from his work is an understanding of characterization via dialogue, and structural perfection, of both plot and English grammar.

[fool1977]

@oldproji Which novels of yours best demonstrate this view point.

[stratocaster1986able]

Think it was Palahniuk that said, "A cliche is recieved text"

[ListenToBigFace]

Its cliched to be cynical at christmas

[thaichas]

@smoochy . . .I should have said, instead of "nothing happening" . .the same thing happening over and over and over and it wasnt pretty either . Get drunk, have sex, get drunk, have sex, .. .I lost count and very little else was going on besides that. To top it off, the main character had no redeeming features whatsoever and so following his daily sex/ drinking binges page after page got pretty sickening. Maybe something wonderfully interesting happens on Page 107 I just couldnt stick it out.

[thaichas]

All style . .no substance .. .and no plot. Couldnt get past page 106 of MONEY. Nothing happens except that the very unattractive main character is constantly drunk and banging every chick that enters.

[Smoochy44]

@thaichas It's a shame to me that readers are unable to see that substance is so connected to style (in fiction, anyway) that saying there's one and not the other is a hideous mistake. But then the endless and blinkered statement that "nothing happens" in a book, a brilliantly crafted book in this case, is commonplace with your average reader.

There's a radical difference between no plot and nothing happening.

What are some of the contemporary novels that you find meet your criteria?

[bryngOneOn]

the interviewer is the cliched tounge ala crack kisser. he says what is process , a cliche question anyhow, but amis replies " you dont take a cliche and then.." the interviewer tries to preempt and say "discard cliche", prempting wrongly, inanely and then he starts laughing as if hes saying the same response as amis, ..maybe its just me, only i find him to be very abrasive and to use a cliche " a fucking irritant" or might just be i got wet walkin home after forced 4 hrs overtime

[chris69666]

@bryngOneOn I noticed that too, I hate interviewers

[fctchk]

@bryngOneOn

C. Rose is like getting wet walking home after forced 4 hrs overtime

[Lebowski53]

This guy is a bellend. Stick to his dad.

[spd13062]

Just this moment finished reading MONEY. So, so good. How old was he when he wrote it? Looks to be in his twenties from the jacket photo....incredible. A sordid, sexy, drunken romp and a true thing of beauty. I was amazed on page 332 with the new section that starts "The streets sing. Yes they do. Can you hear them?" The next three paragraphs are pure beauty, and so far along in the novel! I was astounded at his achievement with this book. Cheers, Martin.

[bhattkris]

... till the knuckle shown white, is my favourite. Terrific.

[apexxxx10]

Please note how Rose says literature @ 0:14 : "li-tte-ra tueeree"

Charlie is funky! Charlie Rose is that is real name?

Dr John

CarSanook!

[Messjuh1]

Brilliant, thanks so much for sharing. I can really imagine a lot better now how he goes about his business.

[postalsock]

Its cliche for English teachers and writers to mock dead words.

[barry123www]

You can't avoid cliches in life. They are cliches for a reason- they are found in life.  Literary cliches are different, they exist because of laziness and they are found in bad writing.

[iLoveSalami]

@postalsock

It's cliché for English students to mock English teachers and writers mocking dead words.

[iwthorpe]

@postalsock and there's an Emerson quote that's now a cliche too, about "a foolish consistency..." which you and many of the other commentors might bear in mind (oops, there's another one)

[ZachClooney]

It's always a pleasure to listen to Martin Amis. Thanks for posting this.

[NevilleRhysBarnes]

"You must be absolutely sure of what it is that you want to say, and be committed to finding the best way of saying it—the verbal equivalent to the feeling."

—Jeanette Winterson, quoted in an OU programme

[leconciergeus]

Yes: Read Orwell's essay on Language and politics. He describes this as one of his 'rules'.