Written Literary Conversations with Nora D’Ecclesis
Featuring Dan Schorr
author of
Open Bar
Nora D’Ecclesis ~ Do you write for a specific audience?
Dan Schorr ~ I don’t write for any specific audience. For every character and plot decision, I only consider what’s best for the story and characters. I don’t care about potential commercial appeal, or what the reader wants to see happen, or what I want, or whether certain material will be embarrassing when my parents read it. All that matters is: What works for this story? What works for this character? I’m not saying I don’t very much want readers to enjoy what I write – I definitely do – but I never make story decisions based on what I think specific readers will like. I understand that some readers are looking for a certain type of story that I’m not looking to write.
Nora ~ Did you omit anything significant from the final draft before publishing?
Dan ~ I didn’t omit any significant scenes or characters, but I did have to cut a lot of lines and other details before the final draft. One of the most frustrating parts of writing is coming up with lines I really like, but then seeing they just don’t fit with the story. I give them to a specific character, and it’s just not working. So I try them with another character, and it still doesn’t work. Or they may fit the story, but they make the scene too wordy. So I have to just cut the lines, even if I love them. I have a Word document of pages and pages of lines that I hope to use one day, but I just haven’t found a home for them yet. Sometimes I see writing as a jigsaw puzzle that’s supposed to be 100 pieces, but you have 200 pieces, and there are a lot of pieces that look intriguing, seem like they must fit great somewhere, but I just try and try and they don’t fit anywhere and I save them in the hopes that they will later work with a different puzzle.
Nora ~ How did your personal experience craft this novel? Tell us more about your background and area of expertise.
Dan ~ I grew up with a mother who was a high school English teacher and gave me a love of novels at a young age, then I majored in English in college with a dream of being a writer. I was constantly exposed to great books and others who loved reading. After law school, I became a New York sex crimes prosecutor, and my current non-writing work involves numerous campus sexual misconduct investigations. Based on these experiences, for Open Bar, I was interested in writing about some of the real-world, problematic situations occurring at colleges and universities around the country, especially large-scale sexual misconduct scandals, and how educational institutions, corporations, and government officials respond to them in less than ideal ways, which don’t best serve sexual abuse survivors.
Nora ~ What do you hope the readers will take away from your novel?
Dan ~ I hope readers will better understand some of the chaotic and toxic situations I’ve seen develop as companies and universities seek to investigate complex, high-profile sexual misconduct investigations. The news media often covers such cases, but they’re generally unable to tell the inside story of the real behind-the-scenes problematic battles when campus, corporate, and local political interests don’t neatly align with seeking justice for those involved.
Nora ~ Please share a little of why you selected the perspective of three protagonists, a politician, a university human resources representative, and a corporate investigator, to tell this story?
Dan ~ I thought it was important to show this story from different perspectives because each person independently makes decisions based on the incomplete information they have and the pressures and motives that are specific to them, but how they act impacts everyone else in the novel. As an investigator, I see every day how different people have very different opinions and views about the same events, and this makes tragic situations such as widespread sexual misconduct more complex and challenging to address.
Nora ~ How do you think you might feel about your antagonists while rereading your novel in twenty years, specifically for people like Cole or Rob?
Dan ~ I suspect that I may see some of the Open Bar characters differently in twenty years as I continue to have more life experiences and society evolves, but I think that Rob Dempsey’s culpability, which is established early in the novel, won’t change. As for Cole, I don’t want to give away any spoilers, so I’ll defer answering that part…
Nora ~ After clicking the publish button, did you start a new manuscript or take a vacation?
Dan ~ I love writing and find writing to be its own mini-vacation each day, so I keep writing whenever I can. Before Open Bar was published by SparkPress, I began writing a third novel called In Happier Times, about a woman searching for the biological mother of her stalker ex-boyfriend, who was adopted at birth. As with my novels Final Table and Open Bar, this book is inspired by actual investigations that I have conducted.
Nora ~ How do you handle reviews with only 3 or 4 stars out of 5? Do you reflect on why the review is excellent, and they submit it with 3/5 stars?
Dan ~ I’m not concerned about how many stars I receive, and I focus more on what the reviewer says. I understand that, like every writer, my novels are not for everyone, so even though they’ve fortunately been very well received, not everyone will look at them favorably. One of the most important writing goals for me is that I want my writing to be original. It’s fine if some readers don’t give it a 5-star rating, but I don’t want anyone to ever say, “Yeah, I’ve read this type of story before.” That’s the reaction I need to avoid at all costs.