Today I am delighted to have author Howard Kaplan on the show!

Howard is a native of Los Angeles, but he has lived in Israel and traveled to numerous places across the world, including Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. He also has had some incredible adventures in the former Soviet Union which, along with his time in Syria, inspired his bestselling thriller The Damascus Cover.

Published forty years ago to rave reviews, The Damascus Cover is finally coming to the big screen. The movie debuted in September 2017 at the Boston Film Festival, and is scheduled for release everywhere this spring.

Listen in as we talk about this bestseller, the art of film, and how to take a story from page to screen.

In this episode Howard and I discuss:

• The importance of endings, and how to do them right.
• How to use film to elevate your story.
• Kill your darlings, knowing what to cut on the page vs. the screen.
• When your characters come to life, what to expect when working with actors.
• Setting the right tone in scene one for a book and a movie.

Plus, Howard’s #1 tip for writers.

About Howard Kaplan

Howard Kaplan, a native of Los Angeles, has lived in Israel and traveled extensively through Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.

At the age of 21, he was sent on a mission into the Soviet Union to smuggle a dissident’s manuscript on microfilm to London. His first trip was a success. On his second trip, he transferred a manuscript to the Dutch Ambassador inside his Moscow embassy. A week later, he was arrested in Khartiv in the Ukraine and interrogated for two days there and and two days in Moscow, before being expelled from the USSR. The KGB had picked him up for meeting dissidents and did not know about the manuscript transfers.

Howard holds a BA in Middle East History from UC Berkeley and an MA in the Philosophy of Education from UCLA. He is the author of four novels. The feature film adaptation of The Damascus Cover, which is Book 1 in his Jerusalem Spy Series, will be released in theaters worldwide in spring 2018.

The Damascus Cover

In a last ditch effort to revive his career, washed out agent Ari Ben-Sion accepts a mission he never would have 30 years ago, to smuggle a group of Jewish children out of the Damascus ghetto. Or so he thinks.

In Damascus, a beautiful American photographer, Kim, seems to be falling in love with Ari, but she is asking too many questions. His communication equipment disappears. His contact never shows up. The operation is only hours away and everything seems awry.Desperate to succeed, Ari might risk everything. Even his life.

Forty years ago, Howard Kaplan’s bestselling thriller, The Damascus Cover, debuted to rave reviews. On September 23, 2017, the film adaptation premiered at the Boston Film Festival as a major motion picture. An action-packed thriller, this film features an all-star cast, including Jonathan Rhys Meyers (The Tudors, Bend it Like Beckham), Olivia Thirlby (Just Before I Go, Between Us) and in one of his last performances, the late, great Sir John Hurt (The Elephant Man, television’s I Claudius).

After ten years of annually optioning the movie rights with director Daniel Berk, the film is finally seeing the light of day, and the story has never been timelier. “My books are generally about reconciliation between Israelis and Arabs/Palestinians,” Kaplan says, “and this film is very much a hard-hitting representation of the excesses of both sides.”

If you decide to check out the book before you see the movie or if you want to check out the writing book Howard mentioning in the interview, we hope you’ll do so via these Amazon affiliate links — The Damascus Cover and Writing to Sell —  where if you choose to purchase via the links DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 182

(Right-click to download.)

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 182: Adapting a Book to the Screen — Interview with Howard Kaplan appeared first on DIY MFA.

A single sentence about smells can reveal more about a place than several paragraphs of visual descriptions. For example, the hero enters a home for old people. “The place smelled of boiled cabbage, urine and disinfectant.”  These nine words are enough to convey what kind of old people’s home this is, and it creates a strong image in the reader’s mind.

Or try these: “The room smelled of pizza, beer and unwashed socks.” “The room smelled of beeswax, joss sticks and patchouli.” “The corridor smelled of mould and leaking sewage.” “The kitchen smelled of coffee, cinnamon and freshly baked bread.” “The kitchen smelled of burnt milk, overripe pears and bleach.” “The garden smelled of lilacs and freshly mown grass.”  “The cell smelled of blood, urine and rotting straw.”

Where and How to Use this Technique

The best place to insert a sentence about smells is immediately after the point-of-view character has arrived at a new location. That’s when humans are most aware of smells, so it feels right if you mention them. Smells trigger emotions. If you want your reader to feel positive about the place, use pleasant scents. To make the reader recoil, mention nasty odours.

Also consider the genre. Thriller and horror readers appreciate being taken to places where odours are as foul as the villain’s deeds, but romance readers want a pleasant experience, so treat them to lovely scents.

Variations

If you like, you can use this technique in almost every scene. To keep it fresh, vary the sentence structure and the wording. Here are some suggestions:

• The place reeked/stank of AAA and BBB.
• The odours of AAA and BBB mingled with the smells of CCC and DDD.
• Her nostrils detected a whiff of AAA beneath the smells of BBB and CCC.
• The smell of AAA warred with the stronger odour of BBB.
• The air was rich with the scents of AAA and BBB.
• The smell of AAA failed to mask the stench of BBB.
• The stench of AAA hit him first, followed by the odour of BBB.
• Beneath the scent of AAA lay the more ominous odours of BBB and CCC.
• The scents of AAA and BBB greeted her.
• The smells of AAA and BBB made his mouth water.
• He braced himself against the stink of AAA and BBB.

Professional Examples

These examples show how authors have used this technique in their fiction.

• The room smelled like stale smoke and Italian salad dressing. (Michael Connelly: The Poet)
• I took a couple of deep breaths, smelled rain, diesel and the pungent dead-fish-and-salt stench off the river. (Devon Monk: Magic to the Bone)
• The place smelt of damp and decay. (Jonathan Stroud: The Amulet of Samarkand)
• A rare south wind had brought the smell of Tyre to last night’s landfall: cinnamon and pepper in the cedar-laced pine smoke, sharp young wine and close-packed sweating humanity, smoldering hemp and horse piss. (Mathew Woodring Stover: Iron Dawn)
• The smell hit her first: rotting flesh, ancient blood. (Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Sins of the Blood)
• The air reeked of hot metal, overheated electronic components, scorched insulation – and gasoline. (Dean Koontz: The Bad Place)
• The air held the warm odours of honey and earth, of pine resin and goat sweat, mingled with the scents of frying oil and spice. (Rayne Hall: Storm Dancer)

Your Turn

Have a go. Whatever story you’re working on right now, whatever scene you’re writing, think of two or more smells that characterise the place. Write a sentence about them. If you like, post your sentence in the comments section. I’d love to see what you come up with.

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 Rayne Hall has published more than forty books under different pen names with different publishers in different  genres,

mostly fantasy, horror and non-fiction. Recent books include Storm Dancer (darkepic fantasy novel), 13 British Horror Stories, Six Scary Tales Vol. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5(creepy horror stories), Thirty Scary Tales, Six Historical Tales Vol. 1 and 2, Six Quirky Tales,  The Colour of Dishonour: Stories from the Storm Dancer World, Writing Fight Scenes, The World-Loss Diet, 

Writing About Villains, Writing About Magic and Writing Scary Scenes.

She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies. Rayne has lived in Germany, China, Mongolia and Nepal and  has now settled in a small dilapidated town of former Victorian grandeur on the south coast of England.

Visit her website or find her on Amazon!

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The post Writing Technique: Smells Make a Story Real appeared first on DIY MFA.