Today at Crimespree magazine, I take part in their 5 Things feature.
Meg Gardiner: Five Books That Changed My Writing Life.
1. The Stand, Stephen King. When I was in college, and looking for a novel to read, a family friend said: Want something scary? Try this—an apocalyptic plague kills 99% of the people in the world… and then the bad stuff happens. I had never heard of Stephen King.
Read the rest here. It’s full of good stuff about Elmore Leonard, Tom Wolfe, Sue Grafton, and Carl Hiaasen.
1. I can listen to the Inception soundtrack while I work, with the volume as loud as I want.
2. I can watch Explosions Gone Wrong and call it research. And while watching Explosions Gone Wrong, I can learn new vocabulary. Did you know that a bleve (pronounced “blevy”) is a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion caused by the rupture of a vessel containing a pressurized liquid above its boiling point? Now you do. Also, if you hear that a gasoline tanker is on fire at a propane storage depot, turn around and head in the opposite direction.
3. That mother who belittled at my kindergartner on the playground? The one who yelled at my son because he told her kid to stop knocking him off the swings? Yeah, she ends up as a villain in a novel.
Robert McKee, in his Story Seminar, says that 90% of all ideas are crap. Part of a writer’s work is to keep coming up with ideas until you get to the good 10%. And you have to learn to recognize the difference between it and the crappy nine-tenths.
Sometimes people are surprised that I jettison ideas. Writers just starting out, perhaps working on a short story or their first attempt at a novel, often struggle to do this. They’ve sweated over every word, and editing is painful. I’ve heard, “I had to cut two paragraphs today. It killed me.” I replied that I’ve cut whole chapters. I’ve dropped an entire novel into a file cabinet because I knew I needed to write something better. I chalk it up to learning the craft.
Non-writers sometimes ask me if I get negative feedback on ideas I propose for novels. Has an editor ever nixed a plotline or a story twist? Surely not.
I just laugh.
90 percent, folks. I try to winnow out the dreck before I send ideas to my agents and editors, but sometimes my initial thoughts don’t meet with enthusiasm.
How about a mystery where members of a writers’ group are being murdered? (No. Aside from Misery, name a successful novel about writers in jeopardy.)
How about a thriller where eco-terrorists take remote control of a jetliner over the Pacific? With Evan Delaney aboard! (Sounds too much like a boys-and-toys novel.) Even if the villains are a BDSM couple who like to get out the whips and handcuffs in the cockpit? (Oh my dear, I didn’t think anything could shock me, but really.)
What about a storyline involving the sale of bull semen? (Uhh.) Cousin Tater diversifies beyond her lingerie business! But trouble brews when she hires Jesse Blackburn’s brother, P.J., as her assistant, unaware of his criminal record. And when a prize bull’s semen is stolen… (Stop. Stop.)
And I did. That idea will remain unwritten.
Or has its time come around at last?
Why the rest of the world is hankering for America’s bull semen.
American dairy farmers use software to predict and test the hypothetical production of milk from offspring based on the traits and data collected on possible parents, according to Dr. Harvey Blackburn, the coordinator of the National Animal Germplasm Program.
So you see: the Blackburns are already involved. I would only be catching up.
On second thought, it remains a really bad idea. I think.
“You should put that in a book.”
Every writer has heard this — from friends whose baby has just shouted a swear word, from family when the Thanksgiving turkey ends up in the back yard with the dog, and from the driver as the bus plunges into the ravine.
Most often, I don’t use that material. It doesn’t fit the story I’m writing, or any story I might write. For example, despite your enthusiasm I don’t see myself writing a book about:
1. Things the window washer has seen on the job.
2. The nightmare of that endless PTA meeting.
3. Your divorce.
And sometimes I decide not to write odd real-life incidents into my books — generally because nobody would believe the story, even though it really happened. Several examples:
1. On a two-lane highway in the southwest, my dad pulled out to pass a slow-moving car. As our station wagon accelerated past it in the left lane, a third car pulled even with ours, passing all of us on the left-hand shoulder. It was a Cadillac with longhorns on the grille.
2. My brother once stopped at a traffic light next to a Rolls Royce. He promptly rolled down his window and called to the driver: “Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?” Huffiness ensued.
3. At Newark airport, the man ahead of me in the security line took off his belt and then kept going. He unzipped and dropped his trousers. To the floor.
On second thought, some of these might just end up in print.
This is only the start of what should be a long, long list.
1. Chase scenes need to be extremely clear and visual, and even more emotionally powerful than they are on the screen. Readers don’t have the visceral sensory impact that they get from watching these scenes on a movie screen, so the writer has to make up for it by delivering other kinds of punches. And if a chase scene is going to excite readers — not just keep them from becoming bored, but excite them — it has to avoid every cliche and “standard” twist pulled from other chase scenes you’ve seen or read.
Bullitt is iconic. Try to duplicate it, and you’ll just write a cheesy, predictable knock-off.
2. The antagonist cannot be stupid. When I first set out to write a novel, I wanted to show the ignorance, selfishness, and cruelty of certain fundamentalist cults. So I decided to make fun of them — by making them absurdly, overtly moronic. The only problem was, ignorant and moronic people aren’t scary or dangerous opponents. Rewrite.
3. Explicit violence doesn’t make a book more frightening. Gore doesn’t necessarily up the tension. What does increase fear and tension is a threat that remains partially veiled in mystery — because readers’ imaginations will create terrors more frightening than I can portray. The theater of the mind is more powerful than a bucket of blood.
4. Heroes and heroines without weaknesses are boring. Because without weaknesses, a character is God. And God can swat aside any challenge as though flicking away a fly. There’s no genuine risk, no chance that such a character can be defeated. And where’s the fun in that? (See also: Kryptonite.)
5. If you want to vanish, faking your own death is about the worst strategy possible. So don’t try to make it look like a grizzly tore up your pup tent and dragged you into the forest. You’ll only get the Forest Service, CNN, and your friends combing the woods to find you. Wall-to-wall news coverage and smooth disappearances simply don’t go together.
Just so you know.
Next month my novel The Shadow Tracer will be published in the US and Canada. This month, next month, and all summer long I’ll be busy writing another novel. The book in progress will be published in 2014.
What does this mean in practice?
1. I’m writing 2,000 words a day on the novel. This works out to 7-10 pages, double-spaced. I sit down and tell myself I will type like a monkey on crystal meth until I reach that word count. Then I will either pitch face down on the keyboard or, if I’ve had enough coffee and Junior Mints, will finish the sentence I’m typing.
2. I’m working from a 3500 word outline that took six weeks — and lots of back and forth with my editor — to develop. This is the backbone of the story. Keeping a copy of it open on my desktop helps me stay on track as I write. The outline follows on from an initial document called Story Ideas, which is 15 pages of notes, random thoughts, lists of potential character names, half-baked ideas, plot setups followed by lists of twenty ways those setups can pay off, character sketches, grocery lists, and reminders to buy more coffee and Junior Mints.
3. I stick to the outline – except when I don’t. The outline is the novel’s structural skeleton. But as I write, the characters come alive. Better ideas come to me. Twists present themselves. Throwaway characters develop such vibrancy that I decide they shouldn’t be killed off at the end of a scene, but should stick around to cause more mayhem.
4. My daily 2,000 words contribute to the creation of what Anne Lamott calls “shitty first drafts.” I just write. I don’t edit. I don’t nitpick over word choice. I let the characters say whatever they want to, in whatever crude or absurd terms they want to say it. I get five pages into a scene and have a fresh idea for how to make the story go forward and I don’t go back and cut the original idea, but just plow ahead. I can edit later. I love editing later. Later, in the rewrite, I can fix things that are stinky or broken. I can put clever words in the characters’ mouths, at my leisure. Of course, this means that my first draft is a hot mess. It means that I pray every night to a list of deities, asking that I not be hit by a bus before I get the chance to repair my shitty first draft. Seriously. You should see my spare room. It’s an absolute pantheon of statues, votive candles, offerings, and shrines dedicated to the world’s known gods. Just don’t step on that pentagram in the center of the room. And nobody touch the stuff on the altar. It’s sacrificial coffee and Junior Mints.
And now back to it.
Here, have some links to entertaining articles about writers and writing.
First, Kate sends this link to the TV Tropes entry on Chekhov’s Gun.
“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
—Trope Namer Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.)Chekhov’s Gun is a literary technique whereby an unimportant element introduced early in the story becomes significant later on…. Many people consider the phrase “Chekhov’s gun” synonymous with foreshadowing (and they are related), but statements the author made about the Gun can be more properly interpreted as “do not include any unnecessary elements in a story.”
Recently I used Checkhov’s Gun to explain why a movie some friends and I had just watched felt disastrously disappointing. The film was about two men repainting lines on country roads in Texas after a wildfire in the 1980s. It opened with a written introduction that said: The fire was arson. The perpetrator has never been caught.
Cut to: two guys having coffee over an open flame before they get to work in the fire zone. Hmm.
But no. The movie was just about two guys painting lines on country roads.
TV Tropes’ list of items stocked in “Checkhov’s Gun Depot” is entertaining. Kate particularly likes “Checkhov’s Volcano.” As do I.
Second, check out these pages from the official 1967 Star Trek writers’ guide.
THE STAR TREK SCRIPT FORMAT.
THE TEASER.
We open with action, always establishing a strong jeopardy, need, or other “hook.” It is not necessary to establish all the back story in the teaser. Instead, we tantalize the audience with a promise of excitement to come. For example, it can be as simple as everyone tense on the bridge, hunting down a marauding enemy ship… then a tale-telling blip is sighted on the screen and the Captain orders “ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS.” Fade out, that’s enough.
Fantastic stuff, says she who has only once worn a Starfleet Captain’s shirt to a Star Trek exhibition. Honest.
Finally, 30 Pieces of Wisdom from Stephen King Novels.
It’s a great list of pithy quotes. Such as this one, from Wizard and Glass:
Fools are the only folk on the earth who can absolutely count on getting what they deserve.
There’s also a quiz. Enjoy.
A few weeks ago Publishers Weekly reviewed my upcoming novel The Shadow Tracer, saying: “Gardiner’s second stand-alone (after Ransom River) boasts another of the strong female characters she’s known for and enough pulse-pounding action to satisfy the most avid thriller fan.” This made me run outside and dance in a manner that would severely embarrass my children.
For a friend, however, the line about “strong female characters” grated. Ann Aubrey Hanson pointed out: “They never say that Lee Child writes strong male characters.”
True. Almost universally, thriller heroes in novels written by men are expected to be strong. Whereas some heroines might be strong and others, even when they’re main characters, might be fragile femmes.
Ann added: “I think it’s about the reviewer trying to indicate that you aren’t writing a ‘girl’s book’ and that you do the genre justice… but aren’t we past that by now?”
Maybe, maybe not.
It’s true that I try to inject strength into my characters — by the end of a novel, they’d better have picked up a banner and rushed into the teeth of battle, metaphorically at least. Besides, how many readers like to spend time reading about wilting flowers who cringe and require rescue? I don’t. To paraphrase my fellow crime author NJ Cooper: Who wants to spend 300 pages with wimps?
In any case, I am happy to have the women in my novels recognized for their strength. Because in my books, “strong” means that the heroine is:
It does not mean:
I try to write about women who are realistic, flesh-and-blood, full-hearted human beings. And because I write thrillers, these women are going to be thrown in front of spinning propeller blades. (Again, metaphorically. Probably.) Last autumn at Bouchercon, somebody suggested that my heroines are all tough women. I said that in my mind, they aren’t; they’re ordinary women facing tough situations. They’re people who must rise to the challenge.
Digging deep. That’s what my heroines have to do. Just like folks in real life. If that makes them strong, I’ll take it.
Writing fiction means crafting scenes out of my imagination. But readers appreciate accuracy. They can spot writing that’s pallid, or vague, or that completely mis-describes a place or an activity. In other words: get it wrong, and they’ll catch me out.
So I make it up, but I try to make it right. And a dozen times a day, I’m glad to have photos I can draw upon to help bring a scene to life. I might use only one bit of it — the light, the geographical setting, the clothing people are wearing — but I’m always grateful when a vivid image helps me create vivid words on the page. An image such as the one above.
Anybody recognize the location?
I write novels, which means I invent stories. But to make the novels as authentic as I can, I do a lot of research. Some research means going on location — to China Lake, Oklahoma City, San Francisco, and London. Some means talking to professionals — cops, forensic psychiatrists, Air National Guard pararescuemen, physicists, process servers, and rally drivers. Much involves reading articles online.
And a whole lot involves reading books. I’ve just glanced at my office bookshelf. Here’s a partial list of books I’ve used for reference over the course of the novels I’ve written.
Mindhunter: Inside the FBI Elite Serial Crime Unit, John Douglas & Mark Olshaker
The Anatomy of Motive, John Douglas & Mark Olshaker
Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi
Air Warriors: The Inside Story of the Making of a Navy Pilot, Douglas C. Waller
Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence, John Hockenberry
Holy Bible, King James Version
The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
Santa Barbara Gold, Tom Tuttle
Blood and Sand, Frank Gardner
The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger
Pararescue, Michael Hirsch
None Braver: U.S. Air Force Pararescuemen in the War on Terrorism, Michael Hirsch
Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D.
On the Ridge Between Life and Death, David Roberts
Eiger Dreams, Jon Krakauer
Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer
How to Disappear, Frank M. Ahearn & Eileen C. Horan
How to Be Invisible, J.J. Luna
Forensics for Dummies, D.P. Lyle, M.D.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
Each of these books has enriched my novels. Some of them have saved me from sounding like an idiot on the page. All of them have made me more knowledgeable. I owe my thanks to the authors of all of them.
What a great job I have.
This weekend I’ll be in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, for the Broward Public Library Foundation Literary Feast. This is the 25th year of the event, which has raised $3 million for literacy programs run by the Broward library system.
Saturday evening there’s a reception and dinner with supporters. Sunday I’m taking part in “Darkness & Peril,” a discussion of mysteries, with Ace Atkins and Patrick Mascola, moderated by sterling mystery reviewer Oline Cogdill. After that I’ll be hanging out with festival-goers and other authors at a reception featuring Dave Barry. And on Monday I’ll join the other authors at Broward County high schools to talk about the craft of writing.
There’s still time to sign up. I’m looking forward to seeing some of you in Florida.
Yesterday’s post talked about the message that I found in the blog’s spam filter — the message that said, “You are the worst author”. Today I found a new message, caught in the spam filter in response to that post:
Do you have any video of that? I’d care to find out more details.
I hate to tell the spambot (named “project freedom”), but I don’t. I don’t even know how an author would get video — what, of the wanton use of adverbs? Stories with characters made out of such flimsy cardboard that they’d melt under a garden sprinkler? Plots with holes so big that the Blue Angels could fly through them, side by side?
I’m waiting to see what spam delights come next.
And I’m off on a long flight to the USA. Back tomorrow.
Every day I check the spam filter on the blog and hose out the goo. Generally, spam messages include 37 links to cheap V1agra, or are written in Russian, or exude, as this one does: “hello!,I love your writing so so much! proportion we be in contact more approximately your post on AOL?” And they usually connect randomly to posts written three years ago.
But this morning I found this spam comment “in response to” the page Buy My Books:
You are the worst author
I had to laugh. Clearly the comment was spam–it came from a fake Yahoo address, was linked to a site advertising cheap PCs, and was posted by a randomly generated name. Still, in context it could have made sense. And I have to wonder: Is this message actually effective? Does it drive thin-skinned authors to click the link and attempt to yell at the putative commenter? Does it really help to sell cheap knockoff computers? If so, it’s brilliant reverse psychology.
And now I have a name for a villain in a future book: the randomly generated Milton Bax.
Drafting a novel can be thrilling, frustrating, enlightening, fun, and, as my former writing teacher Ron Hansen has said, “a ramshackle process.” From developing the plot to choosing character names, it’s always an adventure. As a few other writers discuss:
Rebecca Makkai describes what happened when a man discovered he had the same name as a character in one of her short stories: When Characters Attack.
In a story, I’d tone down the following for believability; but what follows is the verbatim email: “i thoought when you write a novel all people whom have that name should be notified before writing a novel for the people won;t sue you for infringe ments on said name. and also royalties there are three of us left with the name peter t______.”
Rose Tremain explains how she was inspired to become a writer: New-Mown Hay is the Best.
One evening, lagging behind the other tennis players, with a June sun beginning to go down, I stopped still on the path, inhaling something new and impossibly seductive in the air. During my two-hour game of tennis, the hayfield had been cut. I experienced the scent of the new-mown hay as something so perfect, so life-affirming, that the idea of its inevitable transience (it was, after all, only the frail and final outbreath of a fallen crop) felt crushing. I stood very still and wondered if there existed, in me, any magic by which I could hold onto it for as long as I remained alive. And it was in that moment that the idea of becoming a writer took shape in my mind. I couldn’t capture the smell; what I could capture was the power of my experience of the smell in words.
When the scent of new-mown hay comes to me now, I see how my fear of the ephemeral lessened in an instant. Writers give ephemeral things multiple existences: they understand how a single childhood experience may one day inform countless different stories. And so I saw the direction of my life set out before me across the field.
And Ramona Ausabel is among several novelists who explain how they approach first drafts:
For me, the first draft is really just a big mud-rolling, dust-kicking, mess-making time in which my only job is to find the story’s heartbeat. I allow myself to invent characters without warning, drop them if they prove to be uninteresting, change the setting in the middle, experiment with point of view, etc. I figure that the body will grow up around the heart, that it’s always possible to bring all the various elements up and down, sculpt and polish, as long as I’ve got something that matters to me. The second draft (and the 3rd through 20th, Lord help me) involves getting out the tool belt and thinking like a carpenter. But the first draft is all dirt and water and seeds and, hopefully, a little magic.
Of course, this method means that my first draft is almost unreadable. Maybe someday I’ll invent a way of making a slightly cleaner mess, but until then, I try to enjoy the muck.
Words to live by.
