Author Archives: James Scott Bell

About James Scott Bell

International Thriller Writers Award winner, #1 bestselling author of THRILLERS and BOOKS ON WRITING. Subscribe to JSB's NEWSLETTER.

Does Your Novel Sag?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

At the turn of the last century, the Second Industrial Revolution was well underway (dating roughly from the mid-19th to the mid-20th). Demographics moved from rural to urban. Cities swelled. And men faced a real problem—sagging socks.

Oh, it was fine back on the farm, when only Bessie the cow and a few scattered chickens were witnesses to sartorial sag. But for the city-dwelling male—businessmen, newspaper reporters, plainclothes cops, or any man going to a public space like a ballgame, church, or saloon—slumping hose was a real challenge. Thus arose the men’s garter business. (It would not be until the late 1930s that synthetic fiber was patented by DuPont and made possible elastic socks.)

Novels can sag, too, in five key areas. Let’s see if we can’t make them tighter and firmer, and eliminate the need for garters.

  1. The Opening

We talk a lot about opening pages here, for obvious reasons. They can make or break a potential sale. (Search our archives for First Page Critiques.) I’ve written about beginning with a disturbance. This is an automatic hook. The enemy is too much backstory and exposition.

Sag Fix: Act first, explain later. Cut out all explanatory material on the first few pages. But I need the readers to know the circumstances and set up, don’t I? No! “Exposition delayed is not exposition denied.” Readers will wait a long time for exposition if they’re caught up in a disturbance.

  1. The Delayed Doorway

The Doorway of No Return is when the Lead is forced into the “death stakes” of the novel. It’s the turning point into Act 2 and the main plot. In classic movie structure, this happens at the 1/4 mark. In a novel, I’ve found that it’s best at the 1/5 mark. But that’s too much to think about! I just want to write my story! I hate outlines!

I hear you, pantser. Keep your pants on. Write the way that makes you happy. But if you don’t know structure, all that happy creativity may be for naught. If a reader is going along and starts feeling This story is dragging, they may not stick around.

Sag Fix: Know how and where to cut or move scenes, so that the battle is joined around the 20% mark. You can look at the total word count of your first draft to figure it out. I use Scrivener with four folders: Act 1, Act 2a, Act 2b, and Act 3. Scrivener shows me the total word count in each folder.

  1. Friend Scenes

There are times when you slow the action a bit to have the Lead confer with a friend or confidante or potential ally. Often these are “eating scenes,” which has its own fixes (see How to Write an Eating Scene).

Sag Fix: You can always find a way to insert tension into a friend scene. Something inside a character is making conversation difficult. For example, your Lead doesn’t want to fully open up about something, and the friend starts to probe. Brainstorm possibilities.

  1. The Middle

Oh boy, that sagging middle! It’s a three-bear problem: Is it too cold? Too hot? Just right? Is it too short? Too long? Too boring?

It’s funny (or nerve-wracking) how so many writers report the same problem around the 20k or 30k mark. “Holy Moly! Here I am and I’ve got 60k or more words to go! Yikes! Do I have enough going on? Too much? Is it getting out of hand? Or is this thing I’m writing just a novella? Should I make this a “trunk” novel and put it away for another time? Or should I just junk it? Is this wasted effort? Where did I put the bourbon?”

There are too many ways writers get lost in the Act 2 weeds that it is beyond one section of a blog post to deal with. (Let me modestly mention that I cover the whole subject in my book Plotman to the Rescue.)

Avoid the temptation to add “padding.” By that I mean scenes you conceive just to increase word count, as opposed to scenes that are organically related to the plot.

Sag Fixes:

  • Add a true subplot. This comes in the form of an additional character who complicates the main plot for the Lead. In a thriller, it’s often a romantic or family subplot.
  • Bring in a guy with a gun. This oft-quoted piece of advice is attributed to Raymond Chandler. It of course does not mean a guy with an actual gun (unless that fits your thriller or mystery mode). It can be a character with a bombshell secret, or a link to past trauma, or a connection to the “shadow story.”
  • A corollary to Chandler’s tip is: Kill somebody. Pick a character in your draft and send the poor thing to their maker.
  • Add a societal complication. In my Mike Romeo thrillers I usually have some issue of collective madness swirling around, muddying up the plot.
  1. Anti-Climax

When the final battle has been won (or in some cases, lost), and the loose ends all accounted for, wrap it up! Don’t give us pages and pages of after-plot.

Sag Fix: Add a scene that adds resonance to the ending. This is a scene that resolves a character issue for the Lead. It should be short and sweet, as it is in my favorite Bosch, Lost Light.

She lets go of her mother’s hand and extended hers to me. I took it and she wrapped her tiny fingers around my index finger. I shifted forward until my knees were on the floor and I was sitting back on my heels. She peeked her eyes out at me. She didn’t seem scared. Just cautious. I raised my other hand and she gave me her other hand, the fingers wrapping the same way around my one.

I leaned forward and raised her tiny fists and held them against my closed eyes. In that moment I knew all the mysteries were solved. That I was home. That I was saved.

 

This fulfills Spillane’s axiom that “the last chapter sells your next book.” Connelly has sold quite a few. Go thou and do likewise.

What plot sags have you encountered? What do you do about them?

Living, Breathing Characters

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Colin Clive in Frankenstein

In the classic Universal horror movie Frankenstein, Colin Clive, overacting as Dr. Frankenstein, shouts, “IT’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIIIIIIVE!” He’s thrilled to the core when his creation takes on real life.

The doc was onto something. Isn’t that how you feel when your character starts to come alive as you write?

While there are many aspects of great character work, I think the following three features are always present.

1. Attitude

Compelling characters have a way of looking at the world that is uniquely their own. This is attitude, and done well it sets them apart from every other fictional creation.

If you are writing in first-person point of view, attitude should permeate the voice of the narrator. Julianna Baggott’s Lead in Girl Talk, Lissy Jablonski, is smart, witty and a bit cynical. She describes an old boyfriend:

He’d been a ceramics major because he wanted to get dirty, a philosophy major because he wanted to be allowed to think dirty, a forestry major because he wanted to be one with the dirt, and a psychology major because he wanted to help people deal with their dirt. But nothing suited him.

We learn a lot about Lissy from her singular voice. One thing she’s not is dull.

A third-person character shows attitude primarily through dialogue and thoughts. In L.A. Justice we’re given a look into the head of Nikki Hill, the deputy D.A. who is the Lead in the Christopher Darden/Dick Lochte legal thriller. In one scene she reacts to her superior, the acting D.A. He’s a man of two personalities she had labeled “Dr. Jazz” and “Mr. Snide.” In the office he was the latter, bent and dour, with an acid tongue and total lack of social grace . . . At the moment, he was definitely in his Mr. Snide mode.

This is a quick look at Nikki’s attitude toward authority, which continues to be developed in the novel.

The best way to find your character’s unique views is to listen. You do this by creating a free-form journal in the character’s voice. It’s okay if you don’t know what the voice is going to sound like when you start. Keep writing, fast and furious, in ten to twenty minute stretches. A voice will begin to emerge.

Have the character to pontificate on such questions as:

  • What do you care most about in the world?
  • What really ticks you off?
  • If you could do one thing, and succeed at it, what would it be?
  • What people do you most admire, and why?
  • What was your childhood like?
  • What’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?

Let the answers come in any form, without editing. Your goal is not to create usable copy (though you certainly will find some gems). Rather, you want to get to know, deeply, the character with whom you’re going to spend an entire novel.

2. Courage

A great novel, I say again, is the record of how a character overcomes some form of death—physical, professional, or psychological. Which means the Lead has to have guts.

In Rose Madder, Stephen King gives us a Lead who is weak and vulnerable—a terribly abused wife. In the Prologue we see Rose Daniels, pregnant, savagely beaten by her husband. The section ends, Rose McClendon Daniels slept within her husband’s madness for nine more years.

Chapter One begins with Rose, bleeding from the nose, finally listening to the voice inside her that says leave. She argues with herself. Her husband will kill her if she tries. Where will she go? But finally she works up the courage to open the front door and take her first dozen steps into the fogbank which was her future.

Every step she takes now requires courage. Rose is unprepared for dealing with the outside world, with simple things like getting a bus ticket or a job. And all the while she knows her husband is going to be tracking her. Still, she moves forward, and we root for her.

3. Surprises

A character who never surprises us is dull by definition.

Surprising behavior often surfaces under conditions of excitement, stress or inner conflict. Archie Caswell, the 14-year-old protagonist of Han Nolan’s When We Were Saints, is torn about his experience of the divine. Alone on a mountain he dug his hands into the ground beneath him, pulling up pine needles and dirt. He threw it at the trees. He picked up some more and threw it, too. He berates God, then asks God’s forgiveness.

It’s completely unexpected behavior from a heretofore normal, troublemaking kid. And bonds us to him all the more.

When your character has an emotional reaction, don’t choose the first one that comes to mind. That’ll be expected. Brainstorm. Make a surprise.

If you plumb the depths of your characters’ lives by exploring these three aspects, your fiction will truly come ALIIIIIIVE!

What do you do to bring life to your characters?

Whither Social Media?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Free Social Social Media illustration and pictureOr should that be Wither Social Media?

A couple of months ago I wrote about the scourge of phishing, bot-generated emails sent to writers with books on Amazon, purporting to be from marketing gurus who can get your book “the attention it deserves” or some such. Generated from a cubicle in some foreign land, what they want is your money and access to your KDP (and even bank) account. The bot-letter starts with a dopamine hit on how great your book is, adding some details scraped from the internet to make it sound like they’ve actually given your book a careful reading. (Hint: no live, human marketing professional finds random books and gives them a careful reading, then crafts a client-seeking email.)

I and many authors I know get these daily. But there’s been a new development. Skynet AI keeps training itself, and knows that authors have warned their fellows about this scam. So I had a good laugh other day when I got one of these that eschewed a fake professional style and generated a cutesy, I’m-cool-and-fun-and-down-with-the-kids type voice. What really got me chortling was this paragraph:

Before you picture me as another one of those “promo bots” crawling out of the algorithm swamp, relax. I’m Alisa, and I run a community of book-hungry readers who devour stories like yours and actually leave honest, detailed reviews (yes, human ones, no Mars-based bots or shady smoke-filled deals involved).

Got that? A bot assuring me it’s not a bot! Which got me thinking about just how we’re going to be able to judge what’s real and what’s not in the years ahead.

Now we have “AI social media.” Whatever that means, it probably means “kissing reality goodbye.”

OpenAI released the Sora app on Tuesday, just days after Meta released a similar product as part of its Meta AI platform. NPR took an early look and found that OpenAI’s app could easily generate very realistic videos, including of real individuals (with their permission). The early results are both wowing and worrying researchers.

“You can create insanely real looking videos, with your friends saying things that they would never say,” said Solomon Messing, an associate professor at New York University in the Center for Social Media and Politics. “I think we might be in the era where seeing is not believing.”

More:

“We’re really seeing the ability to kind of whole-cloth generate incredibly realistic, hyper-realistic content in any kind of different way you want,” said Henry Ajder, the head of Latent-Space Advisory, which tracks the evolution of AI-generated content.

As concerned as he is with people being duped, Ajder said he’s also very concerned about the consequences of nobody trusting what they see online.

“We have to resist the somewhat nihilistic pull of, ‘we can’t tell what’s real anymore, and therefore it doesn’t matter anymore,'” he said.

The astute publishing expert Thomas Umstaddt, Jr. was recently a guest on the Writing Off Social podcast talking about social media.

Thomas: The metaphor I like to use is that social media is like a sporting event. The people in the stands are shouting as loud as they can, but just because you are shouting louder than everyone else doesn’t make you famous on social media.

Social media only works for the people on the field. If you’re the quarterback, for instance, social media works for you. The same goes for major brands like Coca-Cola that advertise in the stadium. But regular fans in the crowd can’t get famous on social media. It’s an illusion. Buying a ticket doesn’t make the crowd listen to you.

That’s how social media works for most authors. You can’t expect to shout about your book amongst all the other shouting and get people to listen.

Sandy: It’s an illusion of access. You think you have access to all 5.24 billion people who are on social media.

Thomas: Many of those are AI bots.

Sandy: True. Regardless, you go there and think you have access to billions of people, when in reality, you only have access to a handful. The people who see your content are the ones immediately around you who can actually hear you. That’s it.

So what are we as authors to do with social media? The early counsel was to jump in with both feet (or both hands on the keyboard, as it were), on as many platforms as you can, because of the “reach billions” hype. Ha! No. We are in the stands at a Seattle Seahawks game, and the people in the adjoining seats can barely hear us when we scream.

Does social media make any difference (meaning, does it sell books?) TikTok is the latest rage, but there’s a tsunami of content there and getting through that noise is even worse than in a packed stadium. (I once threatened my daughter by telling her I was going to start doing “dad-dancing” videos on TikTok. She said, in all seriousness, “That can work. You could really go viral, Pop.”)

Um, no.

Social media has never been a place to sell books. If you have the right book, the right market, and the right reach, maybe you can move a few copies. But the truth remains: unless the book itself is so good that the last chapter sells your next book, you’ve spun a lot of wheels and invested a lot of time for little return.

My advice early on was to pick one social media platform you enjoy, and major in that, but not with a string of “buy my book” posts. I subscribe to the 90/10 rule, with the 90 being welcome, non-commercial content, and the 10 about your books. Make 100 percent of it fun to read. Don’t become yet another scold about some political or cultural hobbyhorse. It’s not good for the ol’ psyche.

FWIW, my social media footprint has been X (formerly Twitter), but I’m most active now on my Substack, which is a blend of newsletter and mini-social community (i.e., comments). It is there that I post another kind of writing I call “Whimsical Wanderings” as an oasis from the screaming mimi-dom of most social media today.

But I always keep writing books the main thing.

What about you? What’s your view of social media for authors? How much time do you spend on it? Any advice you’d like to offer?

What Writers Can Learn From It Happened One Night, Part 2

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Last week we began a discussion of Frank Capra’s 1934 classic It Happened One Night. It was spurred by my meeting with a couple of young ladies at Trader Joe’s who do not watch black-and-white movies. Matters took an alarming turn in the comments when Brother Gilstrap told of a 22-year old fellow in media who’d never heard of Clark Gable or John Wayne!

This almost drove me to drink. Instead, with hope in my heart and zeal in my fingers, I clack on.

The plot of It Happened One Night (which Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin refined after priceless feedback from a writer named Myles Connolly) is simple. Spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) wants to get to her husband in New York, flier King Westley. But she is held a virtual prisoner on her father’s yacht so he can pay off Westley to have the marriage annulled. She dives overboard and swims to freedom. Wishing to stay incognito she gets on a night bus, but is woefully deficient in street smarts. Another passenger, a fired newspaper reporter named Peter Warne (Clark Gable), spots her and offers her help her get to Westley in exchange for her story, exclusive. She resists until she realizes that only he can keep her on the down low. And so the journey begins.

Death Stakes

As I’ve written many times, the best fiction is about a battle with death, which comes in three forms: physical, professional/vocational, or psychological/spiritual.

For Ellie, it’s psychological death, as it usually is in a romance. The standard trope is that unless they two “soul mates” end up together, they’ll “die on the inside.” Here, there’s a twist: Eillie wants to get to Westley mainly to rebel against her controlling father. She’ll “die inside” if she isn’t allowed to live her own life.

For Peter, it’s professional death. His editor at a New York newspaper has told him never to show his face there again. Peter needs a story, a scoop, or his reporting days are over.

Lesson: Nail your death stakes from the jump, or your plot will have a weak foundation. You can have more than one on the line, though one should be primary. For example, a thriller will almost always have physical death as the crux, but the character can also have psychological challenge as well.

A Romance of Opposites

Morality and Relationships, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT – Once upon a screen…Who are these two at the start of the picture? Ellie is a spoiled brat. Thus, one part of the plot is The Taming of the Shrew. But the brilliant move by Capra/Riskin is that Peter is an egotist who also needs taming. It’s a perfect balance.

There are two main romance tropes: 1. The couple who hate each other at first, then grow into love; and, 2. The lovers who want to be together but are kept apart by other forces, e.g. Romeo and Juliet. This movie is obviously the first kind.

Lesson: Know your tropes because the readers expect them. Disappointed readers do not become return buyers. Your task is to originalize how tropes are played out. This movie does that exquisitely.

Three Unforgettable Scenes and No Weak Ones

Writer-director John Huston once said that a great movie must have at least three unforgettable scenes, and no weak ones. Here are the three I’d pick in It Happened One Night.

1. Early in Act 2 Peter, to conserve their money, rents a single cabin at an auto camp, registering as husband and wife. Ellie is aghast. Peter ties a rope across the room between the two beds and throws a blanket over it. “Behold the walls of Jericho,” he says. “Maybe not as thick as the ones that Joshua blew down with his trumpet. But a lot safer. You see, I have no trumpet….Do you mind joining the Israelites?”

Ellie just stands there, defiant. So Peter decides to show her how a man undresses. It’s “quite a study in psychology.” He takes off his coat, his tie, then his shirt. He’s about to remove his pants when Ellie quickly scoots to the other side.

What made this unforgettable was not only Gable’s delivery of the lines, but the fact that he wore no undershirt. After this movie came out, undershirt sales in America suffered a serious decline!

2. The most famous scene in the movie is the hitchhiking scene. Peter has been bragging to Ellie how he knows everything, including the right way to dunk a donut. “I ought to write a book about it.” On the road, he explains to Ellie he can get a ride by the magic of this thumb and explains the various thumb moves. He says he’s going to write a book about it called “The Hitchhiker’s Hail.” Ellie is not impressed.

As cars stream by, Peter tries every one of the moves and not a single car stops. Crestfallen, he says, “I don’t think I’ll write that book after all.”

Ellie says, “You mind if I try?”

“You? Don’t make me laugh.”

“I’ll stop a car and I won’t use my thumb…It’s a system all my own.”

Ellie then waits for the next car. When it comes she raises her skirt and sticks out her attractive gam. The car screeches to a halt. The taming of the egotist has begun.

3. The wedding scene at the end, when Ellie is about to marry King Westley once more and makes an unforgettable escape.

Lesson: However you plan your scenes, be ye outliner (before) or pantser (during) push yourself to the original, the fresh, the unanticipated.

Spicy Minor Characters

I call minor characters the “spice” of great fiction (see Mr. Charles Dickens for the Master Class). Two of them come by way of two of the best character actors of the time, Roscoe Karns and Alan Hale.

Mini Tribute: Character Actor Roscoe Karns | Classic Movie Hub BlogKarns plays Oscar Shapeley, an oily (and married) traveling salesman who fancies himself a ladies’ man. On the night bus he starts yakking to Ellie. “Shapeley’s the name and that’s the way I like ’em.” On and on he goes, until Ellie cuts him down with a line.

“Hoo hoo!” says Shapeley. “There’s nothing I like better than to meet a high-class mama that can snap ’em back at you, ’cause the colder they are, the hotter they get. Yessir, that’s what I always say. When a cold mama gets hot, boy how she sizzles. Now you’re just my type. Believe me, sister, I could go for you in a big way. Fun-on-the-side Shapeley they call me, with accent on the fun. Believe you me!”

Peter has been watching all this with amusement, but finally saves Ellie by telling Shapeley to move to another seat because “I’d like to sit next to my wife.” Shapeley quickly complies.

Later, Shapeley will show up again, after figuring out who Ellie really is. Peter will then scare the pants off Shapeley by pretending to be a mobster who is “holding that dame for a million smackers.” And if Shapeley talks, the mob will find him and his family. Scared to death, Shapeley runs off into the woods.

Davelandblog: It Happened One Oscar NightIn the hitchhiking scene, the car that stops is driven by Alan Hale (you may remember him as Little John in The Adventures of Robin Hood). He is loud, jovial, talkative.

“So, you’re just married? That’s pretty good. But if I was young, that’s the way I’d spend my honeymoon. Hitchhiking. Yes, sir.” He begins to sing: “Hitchhiking down the highway of love on a honeymoon!”

It turns out he’s a “road thief” who picks people up then drives off with their luggage. It’s a short bit, but a flavorful spice.

Lesson: Do not waste your minor characters by making them clichéd or throwaways. Give them a life of their own, with unique tags of manner and speech. Readers love spice. It’s one of the best ways to elevate your work above “AI slop.”

Dialogue

I’ve long held that the fastest way to improve any manuscript is with sharp, orchestrated dialogue. The movie is full of smart Riskin banter. One example: When Peter first sits next to Ellie on the bus, she is not pleased. He offers to put her bag up top for her. She gets up to do it herself. The bus lurches forward and she falls back on Peter’s lap. She quickly scoots off. Peter grins. “Next time you drop in, bring your folks.”

Lesson: Standout dialogue is a craft that can be learned. I ought to write a book about it.

Pet the Dog

A “pet the dog” beat is a moment in Act 2 when the lead helps someone who needs it, even though it comes with a cost. In the movie, the passengers on the night bus are bonding by singing “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” (a popular ditty of the day). Then the bus hits a muddy rut and comes to a hard stop, tossing the passengers. They mostly laugh, but suddenly a little boy is screaming “Ma! What’s the matter with you? Somebody help!” Peter rushes over, determines the mother has passed out and assures the boy she’ll come around.

“We ain’t ate nothin’ since yesterday,” the boy says. He says his mother has a job waiting for her in New York but had to spend all their money on the tickets. Peter reaches into his pocket for a bill, a ten-spot he and Ellie need for the trip. He hesitates. Ellie takes the bill, hands it to the boy and tells him to buy something to eat at the next stop. The boy says he “shouldn’t oughta” take it. He holds the bill out to Peter, “You might need it.” Peter waves him off and puts on a smile. “I got millions.”

Lesson: Pet the dog moments deepen our bond to characters. Think of Katniss with little Rue, or Richard Kimble getting the distressed boy to the operating room in The Fugitive. The key is that the act puts the character in a worse position in the plot.

Final Thoughts

Capra always said that the Gable in It Happened One Night was the real Gable—unabashedly masculine, with a vein of sardonic humor. Colbert showed herself adept at drama, comedy, and pathos, playing a “brat” whose inner decency finally breaks out. In true rom-com fashion, each transforms the other for their ultimate good.

Would that today we had more movies as tight and multi-faceted as It Happened One Night.

And books, too.

Black-and-white movies forever!

Comments Welcome.

Note: It Happened One Night is free to watch on YouTube.

And for your viewing pleasure, here’s the famous hitchhiking scene:

What Writers Can Learn From It Happened One Night, Part 1

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

The sun was shining, the sky was blue (sorry, Elmore, for starting with the weather). So I decided to take a walk to Trader Joe’s. At checkout the pleasant young lady asked, “How’s your day going?”

“Swell,” I said. “It’s such a nice day, I walked here.”

“You walked?”

“Only half a mile.”

“Nice. Any plans for the rest of your day?”

“I’m going to watch an old movie.”

“Oh, which one?”

“The Women.”

“I haven’t heard of that one.”

“1939. Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Roz Russell.”

She frowned. “Is it in black and white?”

“It is indeed.”

She pursed her lips.

I said, “Don’t you watch black and white movies?”

“Not really,” she said.

“Oh boy!” says I. “There are so many great movies waiting for you to see! You can start with Casablanca.”

“I’ve heard of that. I’ll have to check it out.”

Another pleasant young lady appeared to bag my items. “Check what out?” she said.

“An old movie,” the checker said.

“Casablanca,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” said the bagger.

“You’ve seen it?”

She shook her head. “But I’ve heard about it.”

“You both need to see Casablanca.”

“I will,” said the checker with a smile. The bagger nodded.

“My work here is done,” I said.

It is my work indeed to extol the virtues of classic movies for entertainment, edification, and writing instruction. When I started teaching over 25 years ago and would mention Casablanca, everybody had seen it. Not these days. When I speak to young writers now, most of them have not seen it. Which blows my mind!

Yes, Virginia, there are black and white movies you must see if you wish to write (and now I wonder how many youngsters know where Yes, Virginia comes from. But I wonder a great many things these days).

It Happened One Night (1934)Today I want to talk about another pure classic every writer, especially romance writers, should know—Frank Capra’s 1934 mega-hit It Happened One Night. Arguably the first true rom-com, the movie swept the major Oscars: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay.

And it almost didn’t get made.

Capra tells the story in his autobiography, The Name Above the Title. The short version is that no one but Capra and his screenwriter, Robert Riskin, wanted to make the movie, originally titled Night Bus. Capra had to fight the mercurial Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures to get it done. And potential stars kept turning it down.

MGM owed Cohn one of their stars for a picture, because of a previous deal. For Night Bus, Louis B. Mayer sent him Clark Gable, partly to “punish” Gable for being difficult over salary. It was “punishment” because Columbia was considered far below MGM in prestige. Which is why Gable showed up to his first meeting with Capra three sheets to the wind. He had no idea this was going to be life changing for him.

Finding the lead actress was more difficult. After several turn downs, Capra went to his last resort. He had worked with Claudette Colbert before, but the movie turned out to be a stinker. She wasn’t wild about working with Capra again, but said she’d do it if she got double her usual salary and the shooting would be finished in four weeks so as not to interrupt a planned vacation. She thought that would be a deal breaker. But Capra accepted. A shooting date was set.

But there was another problem, the script itself. Capra and Riskin had laughed a lot as they wrote the first draft of Night Bus. But their enthusiasm wasn’t shared by anyone else. It had some funny bits, but they were too close to the material to see the gaping hole.

Which is when Capra showed it to a “beta reader,” his friend Myles Connolly.

The Golden Advice That Made a Hit

Myles Connolly was a “hard-boiled newspaper reporter” turned Hollywood scribe. He was especially adept at seeing what was wrong in other scripts. He told Capra:

Frank, it’s easy to see why performers turn down your script. Sure, you’ve got some good comedy routines, but your leading characters are non-sympathetic, non-interest grabbing. People can’t identify with them. Take your girl. A spoiled brat, a rich heiress. How many spoiled heiresses do people know? And how many give a damn what happens to them? She’s a zero. Take your leading man. A long-haired, flowing-tie, Greenwich Village painter. I don’t know any vagabond painters and I doubt if you do. And a man I don’t know is a man I’m apt to dislike, especially if he has no ideals, no dragons to slay. Another zero. And when zero meets zero you’ve got zero interest.

He went on to suggest making the heiress want something to make her more sympathetic, like getting away from her controlling father. And make the man a tough, crusading reporter on the outs with his pig-headed editor and needing a story. Boom! Capra and Riskin knew he was right, and set about re-writing the script.

Retitled It Happened One Night, Capra shot the movie in the allotted four weeks. And the rest, as they say, is movie history. Next week I’ll unpack it.

For now, two takeaways. First, for your lead character, you must create an immediate rooting interest, something that hooks the reader and gets them on the character’s side, even if the character is flawed at the beginning. An opening objective. Scarlett is a brat, but she’s also in love with Ashley. [Tip: We always root for people in love, at least for a while.] So we’ll follow her along for a time to see if she gets him. We’ll also see that she has an inner strength [Tip: We always root for people fighting long odds] and hope that moxie might turn Scarlett into a better version of herself.

Tip: Ask, What does my character yearn for before the story begins?

The other takeaway is the value of a trusted editor or beta reader. I’ve been lucky over the years to work with some fantastic editors who made me a better writer, and with some priceless beta readers (starting with Mrs. B) who always see things I don’t. This is not a profession that rewards pride or narcissism, so don’t park your keister in either place.

Myles Connolly saved Night Bus from bombing. Had it done so, we might never have had all the great Capra movies to follow, or the roles where a “new” Gable really strutted his stuff—from San Francisco to Gone With the Wind, all the way to Teacher’s Pet.

1. Do you consider your lead character’s yearning before the story begins?

2. Do you have a trusted editor or beta reader(s)? How have they helped you? What advice can you give to a writer who wants to find a good one?

On Starting a New Project

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Evan Hunter author photo from The Moment She Was Gone

Today is release day for Romeo’s Truth. (Ebook at deal price; print to follow shortly.) Tomorrow I begin working in earnest on Romeo #11.

I make it my goal to hit the ground running on a new project as soon as a book is released. I’ve written before about being like a movie studio. I want to have a main project and a few in various stages of development, waiting to get a green light.

Starting a new novel is always a high. I know there will be low points, like the “30k wall.” I don’t know why this happens, but I’ve heard other authors experience it, too. When I get to that mark I begin to think of the long road ahead, and also wonder if my foundations are strong enough. I look at my outline and structure. My main concern is having the hero locked into a death struggle. My definition of great fiction is that it is the record of how a character fights with death. Death comes in three forms: physical (as in the thriller); professional or vocational; and psychological/spiritual. The stakes have to be that high to generate optimum reader interest.

There’s always a way to break through the wall, or at least climb over it. Once that’s done, I’m off and running again to the end.

I always celebrate when I finish a book. Do something fun, like take my long-suffering wife out for a nice dinner. Or cook our favorite meal at home, which always involves a ribeye steak and nice bottle of California Cabernet, followed by a movie or one of our favorites shows, like a Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett, or a Poirot with David Suchet.

 Before starting work on the new book, I pause. I’m anxious and ready to go, but there’s also a little knot of hesitation. How do I do this again? Write a whole book? Thriller writer J. T. Ellison once said, “It’s the whole getting started thing for me. I forget how to write a book. The first ten thousand words are like digging fossils from rocks.”

In a TV interview, Dean Koontz expressed a similar feeling, So he goes into a huge room in his huge house, where shelves are packed with all his books, foreign and domestic. He looks a them and says, “I did it before, I can do it again.” That’s Dean freaking Koontz! (Over 140 novels, 500 million sold).

So I have a little ritual. I settle into my chair with a cup of my favorite java. I look at the visual inspirations in my office. There’s a photo of John D. McDonald, pipe in mouth, typing away. There’s an author photo of Evan Hunter, aka Ed McBain, looking at me as if to say, “Don’t give me any excuses. Write!” There’s the black coffee mug with WRITER on it, which  I bought the year I decided I was going to be a writer, even though naysayers had told me I couldn’t learn how. I put that mug where I could look at it every day, which I did for the seven years it took me to sell my first novel.

Then I put on coffeehouse sounds via Coffitivity, wiggle my fingers, and start typing.

How do you feel about starting a new project? High, hopeful, or hesitant? Do you have any writing rituals?

Traditional Publishing Advice

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

It’s been 18 years already! Can you believe it? The Kindle came out in late 2007. So did a little device I like to call the iPhone. These twin explosions (to put it mildly) changed the world of publishing and reading—and even the culture—forever (I mean, in 2006 you never saw a mom or dad pushing a stroller in broad daylight with their face glued to a phone, as little junior or missy plays with a tablet with digital bunnies instead of looking at live birds flying in the sky).

In 2007 we had two major tragedies: The Sopranos ended and Keeping Up With the Kardashians began.

Evel Knievel, age 69, died in 2007 (shockingly, of natural causes). Tony Bennett, age 80, got married (but did he leave his heart in San Francisco? I certainly hope not).

Where were you in 2007? I was on the verge of signing a new contract with a major publishing house. Traditional publishing was my home. Back then all writers longed to make it through the gates of the Forbidden City.

Then in 2008 and ’09, seemingly out of nowhere, brand-spanking new writers publishing 99¢ Kindle books directly on Amazon started raking in huge bucks. The indie revolution had begun.

It exploded over the next several years, along with prophecies of the demise of traditional publishing. At the time I noted that reports of trad’s death were greatly exaggerated, likening the biz to Jake “Raging Bull” LaMotta who was famous for getting bloodied but never going down.

And so today we have the two paths—trad and indie—firmly established, each with its own set of challenges. I have been a happy indie since 2012. It’s a joy to publish a book the moment I deem it ready. So I wonder what advice I’d give today to an author yearning for a traditional publishing contract. Let me give it a whirl.

  1. You’re going to need lots of patience. And by that I mean, lots.

Over at the Books & Such Literary Agency blog, Rachel Kent explains a typical timeline in trad publishing:

  • Revamping the proposal with your agent for submission to editors: 1–4 months
  • Agent pitching and selling the project: 2 months–2 years (sometimes longer and there’s no guarantee of a sale)
  • Contract negotiation: 2 weeks–4 months
  • Final book is due: 0–18 months after contract
  • Editorial revision letter back to author: Approximately 2 months after book is turned in.
  • Revisions done by author and sent back to publishing house: 7-30 days from the time the revision letter is received.
  • Galleys to author: 4–6 months after revisions
  • Galley corrections back to publisher: 7–14 days after receipt of galleys.
  • Book goes to the printer: 1–14 days after galleys are finalized.
  • Book ships to stores: 1–2 months after it is sent to printer.
  • Book officially releases: 1–2 weeks after stores receive the product.

Note that chilling number: It can take up to 2 years for an agent to pitch a project with no guarantee of a sale. And if the book is published, there is no guarantee that it will sell in sufficient numbers to get another contract.

If it’s still your dream to be traditionally published, that’s fine. Everyone should pursue their dreams. Just be aware of the above, and:

  1. Don’t expect the system to change for you

It’s a glacially slow and frustrating process. It is what it is. I wish it was what it could be. So does writer and former agent Nathan Bransford. He recently offered a “Publishing Submission Bill of Rights” for the publishing industry which I like very much, including:

Article 1 – If you are a publishing professional who’s open for submissions, you owe everyone who follows your submission guidelines a timely response…

Article 2 – If you are an author or agent who doesn’t follow submission guidelines, you are not entitled to a response…

Article 3 – One month for queries and two months for manuscripts is an acceptable timeline unless otherwise agreed – If you’re a publishing professional who can’t stay on top of incoming submissions you should close for submissions, get more assistance, or request fewer manuscripts. Again, it’s unfair to authors to leave them in limbo with hazy timelines…

Article 4 – “Thanks but not for me” is not only an acceptable submission response, it’s better than saying something just to say something – The submission system should reward timeliness and clarity over detailed feedback…

Article 5 – If you receive “thanks but not for me,” you are not owed further clarification. Don’t ask. Don’t bog down the process or put undue pressure on agents and editors who simply say “not for me.” If they only have a gut feeling and don’t have anything helpful to add, don’t follow-up. Just move on.

All that said, the primary advice I’d give to a young writer seeking trad publishing is keep the main thing the main thing. The best book you can write is the main thing. And don’t be a snoot about learning the craft. Learn what works, and why, before you go off and “break the rules.” And don’t think AI is going to give you any shortcuts. If you rely on it for the writing itself, it will give you a competent product at the same time it melts your brain. And competent fiction does not make fans. Unforgettable fiction does, and for that you must tap your heart and your blood, and know how to translate them through craft.

Further advice:

  • No agent is better than a bad agent. Do your due diligence.
  • Educate yourself on publishing contracts, esp. the non-compete clause and the reversion of rights clause (tie the latter to royalties, not “out of print”).
  • Don’t hang your ultimate happiness on getting published. If you don’t make it, you’ll be severely disappointed. If you do make it, your books may not sell enough to keep you inside the Forbidden City. And if you do make it to the “A List” and think you’ll be eternally and gloriously happy, read the end of The Great Gatsby again.
  • Manage expectations, write and learn, and find your joy in the production of good words.

Carpe Typem.
Seize the Keyboard.

Over to you now. What’s your view of traditional publishing these days? Any further advice you’d give our hypothetical writer?

How Long Should a Series Go?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

A little horn toot today as I announce that my tenth Mike Romeo book, Romeo’s Truth, is available for pre-order for Kindle. And at a special deal price, too. (The publisher insisted on this, and after a tense three-hour meeting I agreed to go along with it. Since I am also that publisher, I’ll leave it to the psychologists to figure out what’s going on in my head, a project my wife has been working on for 44 years.)

Ten is always one of those numbers you pause and reflect upon. A tenth anniversary. A tenth child. A tenth bagel. Thus, this series author wonders, wherefore art thou going, Romeo? How long should a series go?

I look at some of the big name series authors and am in awe. As of this post John Sandford has written 36 Prey books (#36 is coming out next year). And 12 Virgil Flowers books. He’s 81 years old and still cranking them out without employing ghost or co-writers or, God help us, AI.

And then there’s Michael Connelly, with 25 Bosch books, 8 Lincoln Lawyers, and 6 Renée Ballards.

(One interesting difference between Lucas Davenport and Harry Bosch is that Sandford has frozen Lucas’s age while Connelly has Bosch aging chronologically with each book, making Bosch about 74. Funny, but in the first Prey book, Rules of Prey, Sandford describes Lucas as having “straight black hair going gray at the temples.” Makes me wonder when Lucas started using Grecian Formula.)

Even dead series authors are still at it. Robert B. Parker is “co-writing” two series, Spenser and Jesse Stone, 15 years after his death. Ditto Vince Flynn, Stuart Woods, Clive Cussler and others.

How can that be? Money, of course. That’s why the traditional publishers of these books perform literary reanimation. It makes complete economic sense.

On the other hand, many a series that doesn’t earn enough dough is dropped, leaving the authors pleading for their rights back, which may or may not happen.

With indie publishing, the author is in full control of the length of a series. Money is a factor, but not the only one. Maybe a series is only making Starbucks scratch but the author still enjoys the writing. (I have no advice to pass along to those who produce by bot. The reward of working hard on a book and nailing it to one’s satisfaction is a joy that cannot be bought by prompt.) Sweating a novel is also fantastic exercise for the brain, which I’d like to keep healthy for the years I have on this orb.

There are also the readers to consider. If they’re pleased, I’m pleased. One reader offered:

“As others have said, this SERIES was hard to put down. The main characters were exciting and not one dimensional at all….I tried to figure out why the plots were so engrossing. There were no chapters…. Just a fast paced, hard hitting story line that flowed from one moment to the next and plot twists that kept one guessing. I hope Mr. Bell writes more in this series.”

Mr. Bell will. I am already at work on Romeo #11. If you’re new to the series, you should know that you can read any of the books as stand-alone thrillers. Romeo’s Truth is a good one to whet your appetite for the others.

If you’re outside the U.S., got to your Amazon store and search for: B0FT6ZR4PJ

As I worked on the last lines of the book, I got that feeling that happens sometimes when an author finishes a project into which they’ve poured blood. A warmth, a palpable satisfaction. And I realized how much I love my characters—Mike, Sophie, Ira, C Dog. It’s that deep affection that comes only when you’ve walked side-by-side with people through a life-threatening crisis (even though it was a crisis of my own making!)

Thanks for listening. Now tell us about a series you love, and why. And if you’re in the midst of writing your own, how are you feeling about it?

Picturing Your Characters

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

One of my favorite noirs is the 1944 classic Laura. Dana Andrews plays a NYC detective investigating the murder of the beautiful Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney). It becomes personal when he sees a framed portrait of Laura and is enraptured by it. And why shouldn’t he be? It’s Gene Tierney, after all.

I thought about this the other day when I read a story about the artist Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) and his painting “Portrait of a Young Woman.” The subject was Simonetta Vespucci, wife of Marco Vespucci who was cousin to Amerigo, the explorer for whom our country was named (history lessons are no extra charge here at TKZ). Sadly, Simonetta died at age 22 or 23, probably of tuberculosis. Botticelli was clearly captivated by her beauty. I am, too.

Sandro Botticelli, “Portrait of a Young Woman” (1485)

I understand the allure of the Mona Lisa. Her enigmatic smile has been the source of centuries of speculation, and even song. Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa? Or is this your way to hide a broken heart? But I admit sometimes she frustrates me.

Simonetta invites. I gaze at her eyes and wonder what’s going on behind them. She wears the trappings of wealth—a head covering festooned with pearls and feathers, and a medallion that may have been the gift of Lorenzo de Medici, the Florentine who was patron to both Botticelli and Michelangelo, and whose brother Giuliano may have been Simonetta’s lover.

Is she thinking, How did I ever get into this mess? Or, I’ve finally found happiness and I am at peace.

Well, just like with Mona Lisa, it’s not the answer that counts, but the imaginings and the various pathways they open in the vast neural networks of the mind.

Which is why I always find a visual for my characters.

When I start assembling my cast I first choose a name. I usually use Scrivener’s Name Generator for this. I start a Character Sheet and write what their role in the story will be.

Then I go looking for an image. Several authors I know use AI for their character images. My preferred method is simply to search Google Images for “Middle aged fisherman” or “Thirty year old businesswoman.” Then I scroll around looking for a face, and especially eyes that spark something unanticipated in me. That’s the key. I want to be surprised. I’ll copy that image into the Character Sheet then write some notes on what the eyes are saying to me.

Later I can open up the Corkboard View and see all the faces at once. When I write a scene, I can put the picture of a character onscreen as I type.

In the years before Google I used to buy magazines with lots of pictures, like Us and People (and no, I didn’t buy that picture magazine). I’d go through them and cut out faces and toss them in a box. When I started a project I’d take out the box and play casting director.

Much easier now.

Shell Scott

In the 1950s, Richard Prather wrote a series of PI books that outsold all others except those by Mickey Spillane. His hero was Shell Scott, and his defining feature was a buzz cut of white-blond hair. The publisher, Fawcett Gold Medal, decided to put a picture of Shell on the books.

 

Travis McGee

In the 1960s, John D. MacDonald gave us Travis McGee, and Fawcett did the same thing.

[FWIW, Sam Elliott played Travis in a TV movie and didn’t fit the profile at all. Much better was Rod Taylor in a little seen adaptation of Darker Than Amber (1970). Catch it if you can. Taylor is spot on.]

Personally, I think it’s better when readers form their own picture of a series lead. When I first conceived of Mike Romeo I went looking for a face…and found one that was, and is, perfect (for me). But I shan’t reveal who it is. Let the readers form the image for themselves. That gives them a “personal” Mike.

But for my own use in a project, a picture is a portal into a character’s soul.

What about you? Do you like to find pictures for your characters? Or are the pictures in your head enough?

Trouble is Your Business

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Imagine the first storyteller. I’ll call him Og. He was out hunting for meat. He was about to bag him some wolf when he got surprised by a mastodon lumbering by.

Bummer.

He dropped his club and ran. He hid in some rocks. An hour or so later he came back to his prey and found it being devoured by a saber toothed tiger.

Double bummer.

Then Og had to trek back to the waiting fire. His tribe was sitting there awaiting some steaks (they were tired of berries and roots.) They looked at Og and grunted something which can be roughly translated, “Where’s the meat, man?”

Og was on the spot. His position as chief hunter-gatherer was up for grabs, depending on what he said next.

The last time something like this happened, and the tribe asked what went wrong, Og merely shrugged and threw dirt at them. This didn’t help matters at all. They seemed unwilling to give Og more chances.

So now Og gets on his haunches and says, “I was out hunting like always, and had a wolf in my sights. I threw a rock and got him right on the head. He went down. I was about to go get him when I heard this ROAARRRR!”

He pauses to take stock of the reactions around the fire. Every face is turned toward him. He can see consuming interest in their eyes.

He has them hooked.

Good, Og thinks. Let’s see if I can keep them that way while I figure out how to get out of this.

“I spin around,” Og says, “and there is a tiger with those long, spiked teeth. There is spit dripping off those teeth. His eyes were huge, as big as lakes! I could smell his fur. It smelled like death.”

The audience is leaning forward now. Og thinks, That went well. If I take time to describe things this way, it stretches out the story and the tension. And that bit about the smell, that was pure genius.

Og is beginning to develop a style.

He’s also searching for an ending, and so he lays out, beat by beat, a story of this encounter with the tiger and the ensuing fight to save his own life. He finally gets to the end and speaks of a mighty battle with the beast, until his ultimate triumph.

Someone in the audience asks, “So where’s the tiger?”

Og must think up a twist ending. So he comes up with the speculative fiction genre, and says the god of the mountains came down and took the tiger as tribute. He was about to call down fire from the sky on Og’s tribe. Og told him not to, that it would be bad, and he would fight the god if he had to. The god relented.

So Og has saved all their lives. Or so the story goes.

Well, the reaction of the listeners is so good that Og gets a double portion of berries. An attractive woman gives him a blanket of squirrel fur in honor of his exploits. One of the old men gives Og his best club. A couple of the younger tribe members hand over their favorite trinkets, and promise more if Og will tell more stories.

And Og thinks, Maybe I can make a living at this.

Og’s brother, who collects the booty, keeps 15% of it.

Og had more thrillers on his tongue.

Later, Og began to tell stories that were about his emotions. How he was having to deal with past demons, like his father flicking pebbles at him when he was a boy, and when he fell in love with a cave girl who later got stepped on by a wooly mammoth. Og starts calling these “character driven” stories, but knows they are based on the same idea: a high stakes threat to the character’s life and happiness.

And you know what? The essence of story has not changed—from Og to the early myths to the Greek drama to Shakespeare; from Jane Austen to Herman Melville to Mark Twain; from Dashiell Hammett to Raymond Chandler to Sue Grafton.

It’s all about trouble.

Trouble comes on a continuum, from the annoying to the life-threatening. When you can’t find your reading glasses that’s one kind of trouble. A kidnapped child is quite another.

Every scene in your book should have some form of trouble that produces emotions that are also on a continuum, from low-level worry to outright terror.

That’s your palette, writer. Dip into it each day as your write your story. Always be thinking How can I make more trouble? How can I make it worse?

Then stick the landing. Nail the ending. And readers will line up to give you a double portion of berries.

Are you making enough trouble? Do your openings disturb? Do you write “friend talking to friend” scenes that need more tension (watch out for eating scenes)? What are some of your favorite ways to make trouble (a la “bring in a guy with a gun”)?

Note: The link in the post takes you to an Og-inspired thriller that is on Kindle-sale for 99¢ this week. The book is Your Son is Alive.