How Chandler Overcame “Plot Constipation”

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Raymond Chandler

I’m having fun reading the selected letters of Raymond Chandler. He’s as entertaining in his correspondence as in his fiction. Plenty of opinions, yet also aware of his own foibles.

In 1945 he was under contract to Paramount (he had just written the classic screenplay for Double Indemnity, which was ironic as he loathed James M. Cain’s writing. “Everything he touches smells like a billygoat.”) The money was good, but the demand for original stories plagued him. That’s because Chandler was never one to grind stories out of “the sausage machine.” He believed that style and voice were more essential than plot, precisely the opposite of what Hollywood wanted.

But to keep a paycheck he needed to produce, and did, with mixed results.

A letter from this period talks about a method of writing Chandler happened upon out of necessity:

In less than two weeks I wrote an original story of 90 pages like this: All dictated and never looked at until finished. It was an experiment and for a guy subject from early childhood to plot-constipation, it was rather a revelation. Some of the stuff is good, some very much not. But I don’t see why the method could not be adapted to novel writing, at least by me. Improvise the story as well as you can, in as much detail or as little as the mood seems to suggest, write dialogue or leave it out, but cover the movement, the characters and bring the thing to life. I begin to realize the great number of stories that are lost by us rather meticulous boys simply because we permit our minds to freeze on the faults rather than let them work for a while without the critical overseer sniping at everything that is not perfect.

Here at TKZ we’ve talked a lot about the tyranny of the “inner editor.” The writer, whether plotter or pantser, needs to get that first draft finished to truly know the story trying to emerge. Only then do you get to the “fixing” of it. In another letter Chandler wrote: “[Y]ou never quite know where your story is until you have written the first draft of it. So I always regard the first draft as raw material.”

I’ve told my students to write a first draft “as fast as you comfortably can.” Do a quick edit of the previous day’s work, then move on.

That broke through the “plot-constipation” for Chandler (although there’s no record of what became of that story; likely it went to the story department for an assessment and never got the interest of a producer).

In the same letter, however, Chandler identified a potential weakness:

I can see where a special vice might also come out of this kind of writing; in fact two: the strange delusion that something on paper has a meaning because it is written…Also, the tendency to worship production for its own sake. (Gardner suffers badly from this…grinding the stuff out of the sausage machine.)

Chandler nailed it. Just because you write something doesn’t make it good. And publishing junk over and over doesn’t make a career (it does make a persistent and rather annoying hobby). He believed that style (the writer’s “individual mark”) makes all the difference. Style (or voice) is a “projection of personality” but “you have to have a personality before you can project it.” Thus, if you’re cranking things out of the machine, or using a machine to crank things out for you, you may create something with, in Chandler’s words, “an immediate impact of competence,” but it will be “hollow underneath.”

Two lessons to draw from this:

  1. Write fast first drafts

When you get to a point of constipa…er, when you get stuck, jump ahead to another scene. You can go back to this spot later. Get to know your story first.

  1. Concentrate on voice as you write

Voice is not something you can fake. Neither can AI. I wrote a book about ways you can pan for the gold of your own voice. Put that on the page. It’s what will set you apart in this sea of conformity.

It’s also why we still read Raymond Chandler today.

Comments welcome.

17 thoughts on “How Chandler Overcame “Plot Constipation”

  1. Very much my process, JSB, although I have to write in order. I can’t jump ahead, but I just write “the next scene” knowing I can cut it or change it once I get a better handle on what’s supposed to happen.
    Happy Groundhog Day.

  2. Jim, this post rang the bell for me.

    Chandler has long been my all-time favorite writer. His voice is captivating b/c it sounds casual yet is packed with significance and not a speck of sausage.

    Your VOICE book is one I recommend frequently to other writers, as well as use your techniques in my own work.

    Remember the claim that Chandler didn’t know who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep? I found this interesting discussion on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/noir/comments/1eeb79u/the_myth_of_that_unsolved_murder_in_the_big_sleep/?rdt=45816

    • Yes, that’s always been an interesting point of Chandlerian trivial. I need to revisit! I do know Chandler didn’t like straight mysteries, and found tying things up in a nice little bow rubbed him the wrong way.

  3. Yet another timely post, Jim. Thank you. Recently I began really working on ending the tyranny of my inner editor in a more consistent fashion, and am currently working on a new novel while the finished draft of “Fine Me Deadly” sits for a while, to give me distance.

    Writing “as fast as you comfortably can” is indeed the way through this, along with focusing on voice.

    I’m letting myself write the new novel, a contemporary fantasy, more intuitively, but you better believe I’m relying on all the writing craft I’ve worked hard on learning to come through–especially a feel for plot and structure, while working to let the first-person narrator and hero’s voice through.

  4. Good morning, Jim. Chandler is one of my favorites. As a slow writer, I’m encouraged by the fact that Chandler didn’t fall into the “grinding stuff out of the sausage machine” school of writing.

    Write fast first drafts. I’m always reminded of the quote by Nick Lowe: “Bash it out now, tart it up later.”

    Concentrate on voice as you write. I had the honor of interviewing an expert on this subject last year: James Scott Bell! Folks can go to
    https://kaydibianca.com/2024/01/22/the-craft-of-writing-january-2024/
    to get a taste of your expertise on the subject of Voice.

  5. Chandler’s yesteryear Dictaphone approach has its equivalent in today’s online voice chats with an AI to which (whom?) you pose a story idea, the names of protag, antag, and support staff, and maybe a blank 40-chapter outline. It comes back with ideas for you to flesh out as first-draft writer.

    Fantasy writer Jason Hamilton has a YT channel (Nerdy Novelist) where he tries to keep up with rapid-fire developments in AI tools that suit fiction writing. Just before the recent Deepseek explosion he was enamored with specialized tools Sudowrite and Novelcrafter. He stresses that while they accelerate the process, they don’t write the book for you, but instead help you through slumps and gaps.

    This may be the brave new world of long-form fiction, but I’m getting off the bus right here and sticking to my tortoise pace.

  6. When I was writing my first novel, I wrote as fast as I could because I feared that the story and characters in my head would disappear. The longer I wrote the less I feared the creation void and trusted my own abilities. Around my fifteen novel, I was writing at a steady pace with text so clean it needed very little editing. We all have our process, and it changes.

  7. Just downloaded The Big Sleep and plan to start on it tonight. I hate to say I’ve never read any of his work. Figure I’m in for an education.

    Lately I’ve been trying out dictation and while there’s a learning curve, it’s getting more comfortable to speak my story. I’m liking the way my dialog sounds…

  8. Pingback: How Chandler Overcame “Plot Constipation” | Katherine's Chronicle

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